WotC: "seven or eight" D&D video games are coming over the next few years

[serch]

In before a Dungeons, Dragons and Baguettes, Hasbro endorsed.

 

[Kruno]

Yeah I don't think Hasbro would ever license a 2E game. It doesn't benefit their current brand.

This is the part I don't understand.

How does it not benefit them?

They will have to reprint existing work. Small cost to them and they can jack up the prices.

People could licence specific versions of their rulesets.

How is it different than doing the exact same thing with 5E?

People who play 5E will still need the books, but those who want to play the other rulesets still require purchasing those. Essentially Hasbro could be double/triple/etc... dipping.

 

[Dillrodimus Prime]

pretty sure part of their current marketing strategy is specifically tailored to avoid the massive splashbook bloat that occurred with 2 and 3e. You're suggesting they reverse that course to reprint dozens of outdated, mechanically clunky books notorious for power creep because... why exactly? Who do you think is going to buy them?

 

[Voids]

Yeah I don't think Hasbro would ever license a 2E game. It doesn't benefit their current brand.

This is the part I don't understand.

How does it not benefit them?

They will have to reprint existing work. Small cost to them and they can jack up the prices.

People could licence specific versions of their rulesets.

How is it different than doing the exact same thing with 5E?

People who play 5E will still need the books, but those who want to play the other rulesets still require purchasing those. Essentially Hasbro could be double/triple/etc... dipping.

2E seems to have a negative reputation among current D&D players as being too complicated. Have you ever read what newer players complain about when they play BG? Bitching about THAC0 is common, even though the EE's do all the work for you. Also, I think from a business standpoint a company would rather invest in its newer property than an older one that has lost popularity and is frequently criticized instead of remembered fondly among the current, popular tastemakers.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

pretty sure part of their current marketing strategy is specifically tailored to avoid the massive splashbook bloat that occurred with 2 and 3e. You're suggesting they reverse that course to reprint dozens of outdated, mechanically clunky books notorious for power creep because... why exactly? Who do you think is going to buy them?

You're not wrong, though I'll say that any love given to martials/non-full-casters in 3.x supplementals was actually on the right track. They just did a SHIT job of tying the whole mess together (and sometimes the books were so badly written that the community had to "fix" them - see Complete Divine).

 

[Gargaune]

Yeah I don't think Hasbro would ever license a 2E game. It doesn't benefit their current brand.

This is the part I don't understand.

How does it not benefit them?

They will have to reprint existing work. Small cost to them and they can jack up the prices.

People could licence specific versions of their rulesets.

How is it different than doing the exact same thing with 5E?

People who play 5E will still need the books, but those who want to play the other rulesets still require purchasing those. Essentially Hasbro could be double/triple/etc... dipping.

Market fragmentation, WotC won't want to have competing lineups breaking up their player base as various groups decide they prefer X over Y, it jeopardizes long term product development. In fact, this was before I took an interest, but wasn't something like this a problem for TSR in their latter days, causing WotC to start jettisoning settings and consolidate when they came in?

Either way, I think I recall Oster saying this was an issue for Beamdog at one point, having them release Siege of Dragonspear as an expansion since Hasbro/WotC wouldn't greenlight a new standalone game on a past edition.

 

[Kruno]

pretty sure part of their current marketing strategy is specifically tailored to avoid the massive splashbook bloat that occurred with 2 and 3e. You're suggesting they reverse that course to reprint dozens of outdated, mechanically clunky books notorious for power creep because... why exactly? Who do you think is going to buy them?

Beamdog managed to get a hold of a 2E licence for Siege of Dragonspear. If they don't want to reprint previous works, then they could still licence out 2E to game devs, much like they have with Beamdog.

 

[Voids]

pretty sure part of their current marketing strategy is specifically tailored to avoid the massive splashbook bloat that occurred with 2 and 3e. You're suggesting they reverse that course to reprint dozens of outdated, mechanically clunky books notorious for power creep because... why exactly? Who do you think is going to buy them?

Beamdog managed to get a hold of a 2E licence for Siege of Dragonspear. If they don't want to reprint previous works, then they could still licence out 2E to game devs, much like they have with Beamdog.

Siege is canonically part of the original BG saga. There's no way they would put a 5E game "in the middle of" the rest of the saga, even if it did come later.

 

[Gargaune]

Siege is canonically part of the original BG saga. There's no way they would put a 5E game "in the middle of" the rest of the saga, even if it did come later.

No, I doubt this is a continuity issue, like I said above, I believe it was stated that SoD got around Hasbro's "latest edition only" policy by releasing as an expansion to an existing game. If all that mattered were the events timeline, there shouldn't have been any reason Beamdog couldn't have put it out as a standalone game with the same plot.

 

[Luckmann]

pretty sure part of their current marketing strategy is specifically tailored to avoid the massive splashbook bloat that occurred with 2 and 3e. You're suggesting they reverse that course to reprint dozens of outdated, mechanically clunky books notorious for power creep because... why exactly? Who do you think is going to buy them?

Beamdog managed to get a hold of a 2E licence for Siege of Dragonqueer. If they don't want to reprint previous works, then they could still licence out 2E to game devs, much like they have with Beamdog.

I think they managed to grandfather the BG license under some idea of it essentially being a stand-alone expansion. I don't know for sure, but there's just no way they would've gotten that if they'd made a new game.

 

[Dillrodimus Prime]

Market fragmentation, WotC won't want to have competing lineups breaking up their player base as various groups decide they prefer X over Y, it jeopardizes long term product development. In fact, this was before I took an interest, but wasn't something like this a problem for TSR in their latter days, causing WotC to start jettisoning settings and consolidate when they came in?

Pretty sure this is true and is what I was getting at with the bloat comment. Unless I'm mistaken it's pretty well accepted that part of the reason 2e and 3e failed was simply the massive amount of books required to keep current along with the lack of quality control. My understanding is they released so many random sourcebooks of such varying quality that only the most die hard fans were still picking them up, and the massive amount of material to sift through was a barrier to entry to prospective new fans. Now each sourcebook is selling less, which means they then have to keep pumping them out faster to break even, accelerating the problem.

In other words, I'm pretty sure there's tons of business sense in not just re-releasing them all.

 

[Chippy]

So it's been 3 years. All I know about is PF:K.

 

[NJClaw]

[...] 3e failed [...]

3.x failed so hard that it still was the most prominent and relevant tabletop RPG even after 6 years since it was abandoned by WotC, crushing their next edition in the process.

 

[Alex]

What is stopping developers from making 2E based games anyway? Does Hasbro's legal dept. just sue those who don't use the latest version of their rules?

Nothing prevents you from using the basic 2e ruleset, because you cannot copyright rules themselves.
(snip...)

I may have misunderstood it, but I thought that you could get in trouble for using particular names in your rules as well? For instance, calling your defence roll a "saving throw" or using the term "hit dice"? This is murky terrain, since a lot of these terms are simply descriptive. So getting into trouble for naming your class a "fighter" or even a "paladin" (or even using the word "class") should be fine, but I am not sure where the line is drawn.

 

[Lhynn]

crushing their next edition in the process.

4e failed on its own terms, it was a shit edition and few people enjoyed playing it.

 

[Mortmal]

Yeah I don't think Hasbro would ever license a 2E game. It doesn't benefit their current brand.

This is the part I don't understand.

How does it not benefit them?

They will have to reprint existing work. Small cost to them and they can jack up the prices.

People could licence specific versions of their rulesets.

How is it different than doing the exact same thing with 5E?

People who play 5E will still need the books, but those who want to play the other rulesets still require purchasing those. Essentially Hasbro could be double/triple/etc... dipping.

2E seems to have a negative reputation among current D&D players as being too complicated. Have you ever read what newer players complain about when they play BG? Bitching about THAC0 is common, even though the EE's do all the work for you. Also, I think from a business standpoint a company would rather invest in its newer property than an older one that has lost popularity and is frequently criticized instead of remembered fondly among the current, popular tastemakers.

2E is ultra niche now, still many modules and rules are available for purchases on FG2, but far from being complete, shows the lack of interest . So a 2E d&D crpg will cater to few old people impossible to satisfy , and likely will torrent it, why even try ? Even amongst the old crowd we are playing 5E, you are not missing a lot playing that and its smoother.It's already a miracle we get BG3 , and i am not hearing anything of those so called six or seven more d&d crpgs.

 

[Dillrodimus Prime]

3.x failed so hard that it still was the most prominent and relevant tabletop RPG even after 6 years since it was abandoned by WotC, crushing their next edition in the process.

I didn't mean to suggest 3e was a bad ruleset, I played the shit out of it and quite enjoyed it at the time. Through 4e even.

I meant to suggest that their strategy of releasing every kitchen sink sourcebook they could find a writer to knock out was a big contributor to the eventual unsustainability of the product line.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

3.x failed so hard that it still was the most prominent and relevant tabletop RPG even after 6 years since it was abandoned by WotC, crushing their next edition in the process.

I didn't mean to suggest 3e was a bad ruleset, I played the shit out of it and quite enjoyed it at the time.

I meant to suggest that their strategy of releasing every kitchen sink sourcebook they could find a writer to knock out was a big contributor to the eventual unsustainability of the product line.

Sometimes they couldn't even find a writer to knock it out completely. See entire parts of Tome of Battle that were just copy-pasted from Complete Mage. I like a lot about ToB but I know people who bought that book, got to those sections and did a fucking doubletake. And then got very upset.

 

[Bara]

What is stopping developers from making 2E based games anyway? Does Hasbro's legal dept. just sue those who don't use the latest version of their rules?

Nothing prevents you from using the basic 2e ruleset, because you cannot copyright rules themselves.
(snip...)

I may have misunderstood it, but I thought that you could get in trouble for using particular names in your rules as well? For instance, calling your defence roll a "saving throw" or using the term "hit dice"? This is murky terrain, since a lot of these terms are simply descriptive. So getting into trouble for naming your class a "fighter" or even a "paladin" (or even using the word "class") should be fine, but I am not sure where the line is drawn.

A lot of that stuff is covered by the OGL and there are a lot of retro-clones books out there being sold which WotC has made no movement against that so at this point its safe for more to do so. Hell it probably at least makes them some money as OSR retro-clones are all mostly compatible people buy and use the old books all the time through DMsguild this way.

At least for saving throw and hit dice I've seen quite a few books using the terms and the exact tables from previous editions so those are safe to use as WotC has never acted against those books for years now.

If some one really wanted to make a B/X to 3.5e DnD game they could just say their basing it off one of the many retro clones out there that reversed engineered themselves via the OGL to play it safe.

If some one wanted to make a 1e game they could use OSRIC, B/X could use OSE, and 2e could license out For Gold and Glory. If some third party wanted to could even make a 4e-like game via 13th Age license.

But unless it's a passion project no ones going to target a niche like that. 5e is too big and companies will always chase after a bigger install base to get a safer return.

Side note anyone else think that when the Forgotten Realms MTG set releases onto MTG arena that's going to count for one of the seven projects?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Yes, existing tabletop RPG retro-clones already use identical terms for classes, races, ability scores, hit dice/points, armor class, saving throws, alignment, hirelings/henchmen, et cetera as existed in the versions of D&D/AD&D they are emulating. The only restrictions are for terms and names explicitly stated not to be "open content" in the Open Gaming License (although this includes all proper names, without specification):

The text of the Open Gaming License itself is not Open Game Content. Instructions on using the License are provided within the License itself. The following items are designated Product Identity, as defined in Section 1(e) of the Open Game License Version 1.0a, and are subject to the Conditions set forth in Section 7 of the OGL, and are not Open Content: Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master, Monster Manual, d20 System, Wizards of the Coast, d20 (when used as a trademark), Forgotten Realms, Faerûn, proper names (including those used in the names of Spells or items), places, Underdark, Red Wizard of Thay, the City of Union, Heroic Domains of Ysgard, EverChanging Chaos of Limbo, Windswept Depths of Pandemonium, Infinite Layers of the Abyss, Tarterian Depths of Carceri, Gray Waste of Hades, Bleak Eternity of Gehenna, Nine Hells of Baator, Infernal Battlefield of Acheron, Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, Peaceable Kingdoms of Arcadia, Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia, Twin Paradises of Bytopia, Blessed Fields of Elysium, Wilderness of the Beastlands, Olympian Glades of Arborea, Concordant Domain of the Outlands, Sigil, Lady of Pain, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, Beholder, gauth, Carrion Crawler, tanar’ri, baatezu, Displacer Beast, Githyanki, Githzerai, Mind Flayer, illithid, Umber Hulk, Yuan-ti.

Spoiler

The displacer beast was ripped of the A.E. van Vogt story "Black Destroyer" and so shouldn't have been claimed as an original creation of TSR.

 

[NJClaw]

3.x failed so hard that it still was the most prominent and relevant tabletop RPG even after 6 years since it was abandoned by WotC, crushing their next edition in the process.

I didn't mean to suggest 3e was a bad ruleset, I played the shit out of it and quite enjoyed it at the time. Through 4e even.

I meant to suggest that their strategy of releasing every kitchen sink sourcebook they could find a writer to knock out was a big contributor to the eventual unsustainability of the product line.

I'm not talking about its quality, but about its sustainability. With Pathfinder, Paizo proved that with a slight change (less "core" handbooks, more adventures and more focus on 3rd party stuff) the edition was still able to sell a lot.

From 2009 to 2018, Paizo released 32 core rulebooks: nothing compared to the =~ 60 released by WotC from 2000 to 2008 (to which you have to add =~ 20 Eberron books and =~ 40 Forgotten Realms books), but still an impressive number. However, in the same time frame, Paizo published 140 "adventure paths" (with a few exceptions, each book is around 100 pages long and is part of a "bigger" adventure), far more than the =~ 60 adventures released by WotC (and keep in mind that most of these adventures are far shorter than those sold by Paizo, since they mostly are around 30 pages long). In comparison, Paizo published more stuff than WotC, but they had the intuition of focusing on modules instead of rulebooks.

WotC simply had to stop throwing a rulebook out every single day and to print a couple of "compendium" books with the most essential rules, classes, and features printed so far. Done that, they could have followed the exact same "adventure paths" business model used by Paizo, adding a couple of new rulebooks each year. They didn't have to drop everything and jump to the next edition: as proven by Paizo, 3.x had the means to sell and survive for 10 more years.

 

[Luckmann]

What is stopping developers from making 2E based games anyway? Does Hasbro's legal dept. just sue those who don't use the latest version of their rules?

Nothing prevents you from using the basic 2e ruleset, because you cannot copyright rules themselves.
(snip...)

I may have misunderstood it, but I thought that you could get in trouble for using particular names in your rules as well? For instance, calling your defence roll a "saving throw" or using the term "hit dice"? This is murky terrain, since a lot of these terms are simply descriptive. So getting into trouble for naming your class a "fighter" or even a "paladin" (or even using the word "class") should be fine, but I am not sure where the line is drawn.

A lot of that stuff is covered by the OGL and there are a lot of retro-clones books out there being sold which WotC has made no movement against that so at this point its safe for more to do so. Hell it probably at least makes them some money as OSR retro-clones are all mostly compatible people buy and use the old books all the time through DMsguild this way.

At least for saving throw and hit dice I've seen quite a few books using the terms and the exact tables from previous editions so those are safe to use as WotC has never acted against those books for years now.

If some one really wanted to make a B/X to 3.5e DnD game they could just say their basing it off one of the many retro clones out there that reversed engineered themselves via the OGL to play it safe.

If some one wanted to make a 1e game they could use OSRIC, B/X could use OSE, and 2e could license out For Gold and Glory. If some third party wanted to could even make a 4e-like game via 13th Age license.

But unless it's a passion project no ones going to target a niche like that. 5e is too big and companies will always chase after a bigger install base to get a safer return.

Side note anyone else think that when the Forgotten Realms MTG set releases onto MTG arena that's going to count for one of the seven projects?

If I remember correctly, certain terms like the aforementioned "saving throw" and "hit dice" are things they claim are "theirs", but I believe it was never truly settled, but I could misremember or have forgotten. I just distinctly remember it being iffy legal ground, and some games renamed those things specifically to avoid issues. They are still covered by OGL, however, but the OGL "requires" you to declare that you're using the OGL. However, it is debatable whether the OGL has any legal relevance whatsoever as, again, you can't actually copyright games rules.

The issue of "where the line is drawn" is not known by anyone for sure, I think. I have a vague recollection of WotC trying to claim things like "class", "fighter", and "paladin" as concepts, but I think they lost all of those. Games Workshop tried to do the same with their "Space Marines", "Imperial Guard", and "Eldar", and even tried going to court over it. They lost, of course, which is why they decided to start inventing ridiculous names for their everything. The marketing department (which rules GW) realized that "our IP is our greatest asset, not models", but they still haven't understood how or why.

Say what you want about WotC, but the 3.X OGL was a genius move, creating an exposure and basis that marketed their product even though it was likely never necessary to begin with, but people bought it.

 

[Dillrodimus Prime]

I'm not talking about its quality, but about its sustainability. With Pathfinder, Paizo proved that with a slight change (less "core" handbooks, more adventures and more focus on 3rd party stuff) the edition was still able to sell a lot.

From 2009 to 2018, Paizo released 32 core rulebooks: nothing compared to the =~ 60 released by WotC from 2000 to 2008 (to which you have to add =~ 20 Eberron books and =~ 40 Forgotten Realms books), but still an impressive number. However, in the same time frame, Paizo published 140 "adventure paths" (with a few exceptions, each book is around 100 pages long and is part of a "bigger" adventure), far more than the =~ 60 adventures released by WotC (and keep in mind that most of these adventures are far shorter than those sold by Paizo, since they mostly are around 30 pages long). In comparison, Paizo published more stuff than WotC, but they had the intuition of focusing on modules instead of rulebooks.

WotC simply had to stop throwing a rulebook out every single day and to print a couple of "compendium" books with the most essential rules, classes, and features printed so far. Done that, they could have followed the exact same "adventure paths" business model used by Paizo, adding a couple of new rulebooks each year. They didn't have to drop everything and jump to the next edition: as proven by Paizo, 3.x had the means to sell and survive for 10 more years.

That's a fair point. I'm certainly not an expert on the subject and may be slightly intoxicated by now, but isn't Paizo a privately held company? Wouldn't they be more suited to carving out a small niche like "disaffected 3.x gamers" and sticking with it, than an entity like WotC who has annual profit reports to file and investors breathing down their neck and shit? My off the cuff assumption would be that the corporate overlords simply decided that "this shit don't make enough money anymore, figure it out" and the company had to adjust. Now that I think about it in these terms, I'm kind of pleasantly surprised they haven't thrown themselves down the shitter with reckless abandon.

edit: as an addendum, that was assumption I was fully prepared to make throughout the lifetime of 4e

 

[Alex]

Yes, existing tabletop RPG retro-clones already use identical terms for classes, races, ability scores, hit dice/points, armor class, saving throws, alignment, hirelings/henchmen, et cetera as existed in the versions of D&D/AD&D they are emulating. The only restrictions are for terms and names explicitly stated not to be "open content" in the Open Gaming License (snip...)

Ok, thanks! But do you need to use the OGL in your game to use the said terms, or can anyone just use them? I was under the impression you had to use the license yourself, which is why I mentioned it at all.

 

[Mortmal]

So Alex you granted me your fake new button yet cold hard facts 2e is ultra niche , being optimistic its amongst the uncategorized with hundreds of other systems , with people more likely to play DCC or LOTFP instead :

Oh i found it https://blog.roll20.net/post/617299166657445888/the-orr-group-industry-report-q1-2020, dscroll down its exactly 0.26% AD&D 1E and 2E combined


0.26% !!!