D&D General WotC Has Owned D&D Longer Than TSR Did

As Matt Forbeck pointed out on Twitter, WotC has owned D&D for 24 years since it purchased TSR in 1997. TSR created D&D in 1974, 23 years before WotC bought it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'm not criticising the taste of those who chose to play any particular disposable version of the game or even the wisdom of those who pay into successive iterations of 'crunch' that the owners plan to seasonally junk and rewrite in relative short order. Your system taste and how you chose to spend your cash is your own business.

My comments were reserved solely for the 'bean-counters' who chose to prey on customers in such transparent fashion rather than maintain support in game systems once the 'crunch' has been invested in by their customers. My point to them is a simple one - its nothing to be proud of that over 23 years you built up a publishing brand name that is now famous amongst hardcore gamers for making a succession of disposable RPG rulebooks, and fore-knowledge of that reputation is being passed on by hardcore gamers to their progeny when they teach them the game - you know the next generation of potential customers are being forewarned what to expect from you.

"I'm not criticizing all the stupid people who are being fleeced into buying a series of stupid games every couple of years... I'm criticizing the jerk company that is taking advantage of all the stupid people for being stupid."

Yeah... I think we got what you were trying to get across Ace.

By the way... now that we're 40 years later and we now know what qualities a good roleplaying game has, I can tell you straight away that the AD&D game kinda sucks.

Oh wait, I'm sorry... I don't think I was being subtle enough with my criticism.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

The games franchises can't be frozen but they have to change with the new times. It is not only with the gameplay of Sonic or Mario Bros, with their success and failures, but also some IPs from speculative fiction need a reboot. For example the superheroes from the golden age (near 40's) today need an updated look, and not only for the suit and uniforms. We shouldn't reject all the changes, but only select the right ones.

Aside from sensitivity issues, which settings and subIP do you think deserve an update? I believe something low/grim fantasy must be introduced. Forgotten Realms pervasive and weird magic everywhere attitude and 1 billion different races attitude maybe are old fashion, now

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I don't know enough all the D&D settings because most of them weren't translated into Spanish language. I miss Greyhawk and Dark Sun, and I see a great potential for Spelljammer. Birthright is perfect for a Real-Time-Strategy videogame. I also miss the alien races from d20 Future and the creatures from Gamma World. Sometimes I suggested a reboot of inhumanoids (a longly forgotten Hasbro franchise) as a "Doom Eternal for teenages", and a reboot of Jackandor with a tribal-punk look. I feeled a lot of curiosity about how some metaplots would continue, but now I see the settings are going to be rebooted, and then I wonder about the novels from past decades. Are they decannoniced as Star War Legends? An unconfortable idea.

 

[Garmorn]

The true owner(s) of that trademark and the associated copyrights are the human beneficial owners of the majority shareholdings of whichever parent company controls WotC from time to time - not some company where the asset is notionally parked in a corporate veil from time to time.

Of course. when it comes to chest-beating, how long you have possessed such assets is only relevant to count the years you have spent successfully selling individual copyright materials associated with the brand to successive generations of mankind.

The real measure of a successful book of any stripe, is your ability to keep selling the same publication and any associated library of publications to successive generations, without needing to completely re-write the entire book or its associated library every 6 years - because its been decided by the owner that that version of the game is now junk.

Clearly, success is not measured by how much time you have wasted on producing unreliable experimental books that become redundant and disposable every 6 years whilst you try to find such a reliable and successful publication, whose usefulness to consumers survives from one generation to the next - like any fine book or fine library of books should.

The more time you have wasted on this search and the more disposable versions you produced trying to find such a winning antiquarian formulae, the more embarrassing your failure to produce such a collection of publications must be ... surely?

I know I would be very embarrassed if I was coming up to to a 6th offering of experimental books in the lifetime of just 1 generation of consumers.

I certainly wouldn't be trumpeting how long I have been at it producing disposable experimental rule systems for a kind of game whose main selling point is that it is capable of being played for whole lifetimes and from one family generation to the next .... as it turns out.

WotC I think has the ignominious distinction of distributing the highest number of different versions of the main game, each for the shortest periods of time. Gygax and even Williams only ever distributed 1 version a piece, as I recall and they were at least largely compatible with each other - whatever the relative merits of their distinctions. I'm not sure that is something to be proud of but then all of the generations of my family in living memory bought and still buy Original Coke, so what do I know. Maybe its just an unusual family oddity.

Is that the anniversary clarion call to announce a 6th 'version' of 'the game' I hear rumblings of? You know calling it an 'edition' when its a complete re-write is not really correct English but ah well back to 'editing', eh.

Game systems are not books. They are closer to cars are computers are even computer operating systems. They are tools to create create stories and fun. With that in mind, D&D is closer to Windows then any thing else. A long list of great to horrible versions but still continue to dominate its market.

As far as the call for a new addition. It has been around since the white box to some degree or another. It just that the internet gives it a louder and more unified voice.

 

[jasper]

Different strokes, indeed...

Tonight on Different Strokes a very special episodes about the dangers of D&D,

 

[wingsandsword]

And sadly, that game did for the most part.

The name is the same, but the game is not.

Unless, of course, you consider Life and Monopoly the same game...or Chess and Parchesi...or Hearts and Spades and Bridge as the same game...or Texas Hold em and 5 card draw the same game...in which case...more power to you I guess...

I'm not exactly a huge fan of 5e, but I will say that it's clearly a form of D&D. The biggest deviation that WotC did was 4e, 5e definitely comes closer to the 2e AD&D era than 4e ever did.

The TSR era gave us OD&D, then a number of different versions of Basic D&D, then AD&D (in two editions, that were mostly compatible, but were definitely distinctly different). . .and D&D-derived games like Dragon Quest.

Even in the TSR era, D&D wasn't strictly confined to one very specific game, they usually had two (sometimes more) different and somewhat incompatible editions out at the same time, like the Basic and Advanced lines.

 

[wingsandsword]

Given the large number of OSR indies I'd say there's some interest in older forms of D&D. Thing is the original 1st ed was kind of disorganized and had rules nobody used (remember the to-hit modifiers for each weapon (including all of Gary's polearms) for each armor class? the rules on catching diseases and parasites?), so it tends not to get knocked off as much. BECMI D&D had fewer rules, so it's easier to pick up and still familiar to people playing newer versions. Plus everyone knows what 'Dungeons & Dragons' is.

I recall that purging those various odds-and-ends rules nobody could remember, was a specific selling point of 3e.

In the 2e era, I knew some DM's that still would pull out random 1e AD&D rules into a 2e game, surprising (and confusing) players with them, because the DM's learned under 1e and those rules stuck around in their heads, and they would just instinctively use them in a 2e game, with players that had never heard of them. These were typically not for the player's benefit, and players either didn't know that was a danger they could face, or was something they could do (until they saw an NPC do it at them).

One example I remember is that 1e AD&D had a rule that you could cast spells directly out of a spellbook. . .but it would erase the spell out of the book permanently and had a 1% chance per level of the spell of consuming the whole spellbook. It was a "dirty tricks DM" trick to have an enemy wizard do that, so they could have a lot more spells to cast, and if it destroyed their book, then they'd go to spells in memory (and they wouldn't have a spellbook as treasure). . .but since it wasn't in the 2e rules, most newer players didn't even think of that as an option. . .until the DM has some villainous lich reading out of his spellbook every round.

It's been 21+ years now, but I remember some promotional items for 3e that had a big "checklist" what would be in, and not in, 3e, one of the things that wasn't in it was "rules you weren't using anyway"

 

[wingsandsword]

I have never been satisfied with rangers in post-1E version - but after 2E was even worse because I don't like them becoming a spellcasting class so early.

I've honestly never liked Rangers getting spellcasting by default.

To me, a ranger is supposed to be a woodsman, a hunter, an archer, not a fighter that gets some druid spells. Robin Hood as a typical ranger. Then again, I like low-magic and historic games, where a spellcasting ranger doesn't make sense.

Personally, I think if Rangers get spells, it should be from a Kit/Prestige Class/Subclass, and not part of the core class.

 

[Rikka66]

Forgotten Realms pervasive and weird magic everywhere attitude and 1 billion different races attitude maybe are old fashion, now

While there's an appetite out there for settings that are different, I would not use the word old fashioned.

 

[Umbran]

Maybe the subtlety of my references to a library of largely compatible books were lost on you, or it was the subtlety of library itself that was lost on you

Well maybe I'm was making a kind allowance for the previous poster's obtuse system analysis ...

Mod Note:

Your rhetorical style may entertain you, but the pretentious elevation masks rather meager additions of meaningful semantic content to the discussion, all the while manifesting an air of disdain for those who fail to agree with you. For an account responsible for so few missives for such an extended period to suddenly undertake such a pattern of posting is more than a touch suspicious, and it would behoove you to demonstrate and establish goodwill before you risk, as they say in the vernacular, "cheesing people off".