A little more on TSR's strange strategy

[TerraDave]

Hm. Very interesting. It was easy to use 1e and 2e materials together, so I could see keeping their 1e modules and sourcebooks in print, but that's pretty darn weird.

Right. It was that other stuff that went out of print...presumabley to make way for all the "high quality" modules that where being developed and released (roll eyes)

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

WotC isn't going to produce new material for an outdated version of D&D. All they'd be doing is further segmenting their market and dividing their resources between different versions of the same game. This is a non-starter from the outset.

As for why some other D&D settings aren't being licensed out by WotC, that's probably b/c they're so niche that WotC doesn't want to see them fail (again). The stuff they've licensed out so far (Ravenloft, Dragonlance) have huge followings, especially online (dragonlance.com, kargatane.com). They're obvious choices for licensing. But it's foolish to license everything just b/c you can.

 

[trancejeremy]

Hmmm. That page is actually wrong, albeit on an unrelated matter,

"D&D includes rules for character levels up to 100 or so (and actively encourages characters to rise that high, through the Immortals-series sets)"

But that's not true. It only went to level 36 (and then another 36 for Immortals).

It was the H series, which was for AD&D, that went up to 100.

Anyway, a lot of people didn't like 2nd edition or didn't want to upgrade to it right away. So it makes sense to me that they kept printing 1st edition, at least for a while. The same reason they still make PS1 games.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Weird stuff.

 

[Alzrius]

The thing is, some of those settings didn't fail, they were terminated when WotC started to cut down on settings. Planescape most notably fits this model.

Along with quite a few others. I'm not sure of which ones, except that Al-Qadim was only planned to be a three-year run. It was actually so successful that it ran for four, and was then terminated.

WotC used to license out some of their old settings, it was expensive and the terms of the license were harsh, but Gamma World, Ravenloft and Dragonlance were licensed out. Other gaming companies have tried to license out some other discontinued settings and were at first cited truly outrageous fees that the property could never make, then eventually told that WotC has no interest in licensing out old settings anymore.

From what I understand, this isn't quite accurate. The way I heard it was that initially into 3E, WotC was tentatively willing to make licenses. Sword & Sorcery Studios (under White Wolf) was the first to do so, with Ravenloft and Gamma World. Needless to say, these were successful. At this point, there was something of a fervor among the third-party community about licensing old worlds.

WotC, however, (in a move I find somewhat sleazy) saw how successful those other licenses were, and changed their policy. They now insisted on having publishing rights for the campaign setting book, leaving all of the other books of the line to the third-party company. Now, everyone knows that the campaign setting book is always the best seller of a campaign line; so WotC was basically demanding virtually all of the income (beyond the fee paid to the actual authors) for publishing a book that they didn't write, at the behest of another company. So far, only Sovereign Press has chosen to eat that financial hit with the Dragonlance line.

Some people say that there's no problem with this arrangement; that WotC deserves this since it's their IP. In all honesty, while I feel that WotC does deserve either a one-time payment for use of their IP, or some small continuing residual for the books sold, demanding the publishing rights for the best book is the series is far and away too much. WotC doesn't need the money as badly as the smaller companies do, and their new attitude has prevented the fan community from having the new incarnations of the settings we all miss. WotC's stance on this is something that I find to just be awful.

 

[Bront]

WoTC is sitting on several other systems too. They don't release them because they don't want the competition. A friend of mine is trying to aquire the rights to one of them in particular.

 

[D+1]

I think key to TSR's strategy is that they lacked one. They didn't really have a version transition plan. The 2E to 3E transition went much smoother, partly because, they advertised and released conversion guides (the internet helped a lot with that).

The 2E-3E transition went much smoother because TSR was out of business for a couple of years already at that point. 3E was developed and released by WotC who had the sanity to tell everyone they were only going to support ONE edition - the new one - and everyone else was on their own.

 

[Numenorean]

TSR has become infamous for its many "interesting" bussiness decisions over the years.

This is one I stumbled across, and was a little surprised by it. Though it could be seen as just responding to the customer.

From this webpage

Real simple. 1st edition AD&D had been the D&D mainstay for a VERY long time by that point in time and had a big loyal fan base. A fan base that was quite hesitant to move to 2nd edition. So TSR was making both because obviously the old 1st edition PHB still sold.

I like that sort of business model, not one that shoves changes down my throat ... *cough* WOTC *cough* ... and ultimately is controlled by a parent company who also makes GI Joe figures.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Real simple. 1st edition AD&D had been the D&D mainstay for a VERY long time by that point in time and had a big loyal fan base. A fan base that was quite hesitant to move to 2nd edition. So TSR was making both because obviously the old 1st edition PHB still sold.

I like that sort of business model, not one that shoves changes down my throat ... *cough* WOTC *cough* ... and ultimately is controlled by a parent company who also makes GI Joe figures.

However splitting your own market is seldom a good idea. Especially if one line has been discontinued in regards to new product - folks playing with the defunct 1st ed. were unlikely to buy the new 2nd ed. stuff. Not a great idea marketing wise, and a mistake that they made frequently over the years, splittinhg their market into smaller and smaller shares.

The Auld Grump

 

[Glyfair]

WotC isn't going to produce new material for an outdated version of D&D. All they'd be doing is further segmenting their market and dividing their resources between different versions of the same game. This is a non-starter from the outset.

As for why some other D&D settings aren't being licensed out by WotC, that's probably b/c they're so niche that WotC doesn't want to see them fail (again). The stuff they've licensed out so far (Ravenloft, Dragonlance) have huge followings, especially online (dragonlance.com, kargatane.com). They're obvious choices for licensing. But it's foolish to license everything just b/c you can.

I think part of the issue is the first. WotC has made it no secret that their research showed that TSR lost a lot of money by putting out so many settings. Each new setting was taking fans away from their other settings, causing all the settings to be making less money.