WotC Hasbro selling D&D IP?

[payn]

Movies are expensive and I don't remember anyone saying good things about the first D&D motion picture. While I enjoyed Honor Among Thieves, apparently even that movie wasn't all that successful depending on sources. Gygax tried to to break into Hollywood in the 80s and met with limited success. We got the D&D cartoon out of it I guess. I don't know if Hasbro would have been better served pouring resources into trying to make D&D successful on television and movies. They tried it with GI Joe and met with limited success.

Part of the lack of success has been due to poor contract and licensing of the rights for both film/tv and videogames. Both ended up deep in a hole for most of the aughts up to recently.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't think it was a forgone conclusion either. But ultimately it was a bad product that was rejected by a significant portion of WotC's customers.

It feels like cheap edition war stuff to call it a "bad product", if I'm honest.

It was the marketed astonishingly badly, the GSL was insane thing to impose on it, and it telling people to basically throw away the 8 years of 3.XE products and adventures they'd been building up, and Pathfinder offered an alternative that didn't involve throwing that stuff away. None of that makes it a "bad product", but all of that had a huge impact on how well it did.

I think it'd be fair to say it wasn't the ideal product for the market of 2008, but I don't think anything about the actual product was necessarily worse than 3.XE/Pathfinder. Change the marketing, keep the OGL, and the DDI succeeds and the main drag is that it's forcing you to drop your 3.XE products, but I think that's a lesser issue for more casual consumers. In that case I think 4E would have probably done significantly better, whatever the grogs here said (we've never been terribly representative!).

5E though had something that neither 3.XE nor 4E had, which was accessibility and relative simplicity of rules. For all the talk here about AEDU and the like, I doubt most groups really cared - but it didn't offer them much better than 3.XE either - the improvements were likely lost the same way.

 

[Vaalingrade]

But ultimately it was a bad product that was rejected by a significant portion of WotC's customers.

Ultimately it was a product retconned into being considered bad thanks to a concentrated and inexplicably ongoing campaign to convince people it was so.

 

[Timespike]

I never even played 4e, but from the sound of it, it at the very least had some good design in it.

 

[mamba]

It feels like cheap edition war stuff to call it a "bad product", if I'm honest.

depends on how you define ‘bad’ I guess. Was it a bad set of rules, no. Did it miss the mark by being rejected by a significant part of its target audience, absolutely…

It was the marketed astonishingly badly,

worse than 5e? I don’t think marketing helps all that much if your core audience rejects it

the GSL was insane thing to impose on it,

not sure how much that actually matters in reality. 5e had its OGL crisis (luckily averted) and 5e seems to have been impacted very little from it. Chances are they could have gone through with it without losing more than 5-10% of customers (whether they would have won in court is a separate matter)

and it telling people to basically throw away the 8 years of 3.XE products and adventures they'd been building up,

same with 2e to 3e, 4e to 5e. They did it at a time when sales were low, so not releasing a new edition would not have done them any favors either

and Pathfinder offered an alternative that didn't involve throwing that stuff away.

which only matters if they do not like your new game better, and in that case you have a problem already anyway

None of that makes it a "bad product", but all of that had a huge impact on how well it did.

some of it makes it a bad product, but not a bad ruleset / game

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I never even played 4e, but from the sound of it, it at the very least had some good design in it.

It definitely did.

It wasn't perfect or even close design-wise. There were major mistakes, among them:

1) It was rushed out (so was 5E though) which left the overall mechanics flatter than the designers really wanted (they improved this later but it was a lot later).

2) They offered too many abilities which were Reactions (of which you could make several in a round), Interrupts (to someone else's turn/action), Immediate actions (usable at at any moment), especially from level 10 and up. These served to massively bog down the game.

3) Someone senior at WotC but seemingly not one of the main designers literally secretly increased the HP of everything in the MM shortly before it went to print. This is mysterious as hell and I'm sure WotC people know who it was but they're not saying. This made them work way, way worse. Again they fixed it, but not until later.
4) They let Feats get completely out of control. Again. They should have learned from 3.XE on this, but they totally didn't. It might even have been worse than 3E here, in real terms.

Most other mechanical/design things were a matter of taste/perspective, like not for everyone (what is?) but not "bad" design, and in some cases extremely good design.

worse than 5e? I don’t think marketing helps all that much if your core audience rejects it

Hugely so. Absolutely night and day. 5E's marketing was clean and straightforward and avoided any major mistakes.

The marketing CAUSED the core audience to reject it even. The main marketing campaign literally implied that you were stupid and bad for liking older versions of D&D. Like I said, it was like a Simpsons bit - it was even narrated by someone who sounded like generic "Snooty European". I was amazed that didn't go even worse than it did based on that. At the same time WotC's then CEO was saying insane stuff like "I want D&D to be WoW!" (by which he meant something people play online with a subscription, in this case via a 3D VTT), which like, no-one thought was a good idea in 2008.

not sure how much that actually matters in reality.

I obviously don't agree and your rationale is "WotC had to back down when it tried to do it again and they were fine!" and you're ignoring the bolded bit. I think 5-10% audience loss would be true in the short term, but five years from now? We'd have seen bad consequences. We may still.

same with 2e to 3e, 4e to 5e. They did it at a time when sales were low, so not releasing a new edition would not have done them any favors either

And none of the others had an alternative waiting in the wings. There was no Pathfinder equivalent for 4E because of the GSL.

which only matters if they do not like your new game better, and in that case you have a problem already anyway

My point is that most groups don't have a strong preference for new edition over old edition and don't care about the details of the rules very much. But a snooty European (like me) telling them they're dumb losers for liking 2E/3E, the CEO saying "D&D will become WoW!" and so on sets you off on a very bad footing, that no other edition remotely faced.

More to the point you're engaging in revisionist history of the bad kind, because you're acting like people knew 4E's rules before the bad marketing happened, but that's completely false. The bad marketing, the GSL, etc. that was all known for months before the details of 4E's rules were. People were really mad with 4E already when the rules hit so they were basically getting out of limo into a mob full of villages with pitchforks and torches.

 

[payn]

More to the point you're engaging in revisionist history of the bad kind, because you're acting like people knew 4E's rules before the bad marketing happened, but that's completely false. The bad marketing, the GSL, etc. that was all known for months before the details of 4E's rules were. People were really mad with 4E already when the rules hit so they were basically getting out of limo into a mob full of villages with pitchforks and torches.

lol, thats one of the best descriptions ever.

 

[MGibster]

It feels like cheap edition war stuff to call it a "bad product", if I'm honest.

I think we really need to get over the idea that voicing a negative opinion is edition warring. I didn't like 4th edition D&D because I thought it was a bad game. And that's okay. We don't all have to like the same things.

Ultimately it was a product retconned into being considered bad thanks to a concentrated and inexplicably ongoing campaign to convince people it was so.

Who retconned it? When I started playing 4th edition back in 2008 I had been looking forward to it. But after a few sessions figured out that it wasn't the game for me. I thought it was a bad game back in 2008 and I think it's a bad game now. It's not the worst game ever. I'd rather play 4th edition than 1st edition at this point, but that doesn't make 4th edition any less bad.

 

[Oofta]

I never even played 4e, but from the sound of it, it at the very least had some good design in it.

It had some good ideas and was initially well received. However, there was a ton of errata, and it just didn't have staying power. I was heavily involved with public play in a major metro area and at first we were running over a dozen tables twice a month. It dropped to a table or two once a month after a couple years. With the people I continued to play with off and on (about 15 of us), one person said they would like to continue playing 4E. Most of us? Likely would have gone on to something else.

So I don't think there is any way 4E could have matched the success of 5E based on what I saw. The edition has it's fans, but it didn't have lasting appeal.

 

[SteveC]

I think we really need to get over the idea that voicing a negative opinion is edition warring. I didn't like 4th edition D&D because I thought it was a bad game. And that's okay. We don't all have to like the same things.

I think we really don't need to go over this again in 2024. If you think any RPG isn't good, okay that's what you think and how can anyone argue with it? When you start to say "this RPG was a bad product," you're starting to get into something else. That's something that we can discuss. I just think that the ship on that has sailed long ago and nothing good will come from it.