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.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

Well maybe I'm was making a kind allowance for the previous poster's obtuse system analysis of the organic but homogenous modular expansions to the original light and advanced versions of D&D, or it could be recognition of unsubtle sarcasm is a lost art these days.

sarcasm isn’t especially interesting or impressive, or even useful. It’s mostly wankery.

 

[Marc_C]

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.

Yes TSR also had Gamma World, Top Secret, Boot Hill, Gang Busters, Star Frontiers, FASERIP, Buck Rodgers and Alternity running a the same time as D&D. None were compatible with each other or D&D.

TSR was out to get all your pocket money! They were so good at it that I spend almost 100% of my gaming budget on TSR products, until Magic the Gathering came out.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

When Magic the Gathering and other CCGs started filling up the space in gaming stores, I just didn't understand it. I do remember a friend coming up with a "get rich quick" scheming involving importing a bunch of Magic cards from overseas at a lower cost and selling them, but that fell apart because he didn't reckon on things like taxes, shipping fees, and tariffs. The irony being that if he had just bought a bunch of regular old boxes and waited 20-30 years or so, he'd have likely been sitting on a goldmine.

In the D&D dark days of the mid/late 1990s, that is what I thought was going to "replace" D&D -- Magic: The Gathering. It was the hot new thing at the time and you could just plop down and play a game without the hours of prep D&D required. The success of the Everquest MMORPG in 1999 only convinced me further that these new games were taking over the gaming space that D&D occupied. They were the next generation. D&D might as well have stood for Dinosaurs & Dodos.

I was right in one sense. MtG and the MMORPGs became potent forces in the gaming industry. They are here to stay. But the idea they would render D&D obselete was dead wrong. I came back to D&D in 2001, the dawn of 3.X. Within a year I realized my earlier prediction was off.

During the edition wars chatter began again that D&D was dying. This time my older self viewed the talk more skeptically.

Except, multiple iterations are not a sign of lack of quality. In fact, general quality methodology indicates the opposite. Continual Service Improvement is defined by repeatedly reassessing and revising a product, system, or service.

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.

 

[Greg Benage]

Reading over Forgotten Rums again it really shows how hands off Hasbro has been with 5e.

Of their own accord, the elves aren't making the stuff that doesn't sell. Hmm.

 

[Jack Daniel]

So I celebrate the success of modern D&D. I am relieved that young people can purchase rulebooks and not be accused of Satanism, be threatened by bullies. I'm glad to see it sell well and be available in department stores. But I do miss the old times and how the game used to feel. It's not the same game, and even when I go back to play the old editions it can never feel the same because I am not the same.

It's still worthwhile, though. They're different games that do different things better than others. Players behave differently when playing 1e vs. 5e, and it's very much because of the differences in mechanics.

I'd say 5E and 3E are almost as compatible as AD&D 1st, AD&D 2nd and Basic D&D to be honest.

I’ll say the opposite because 5e is more compatible, well, eat to convert to from 1-2e & Basic and than 3e to 5e or 3e to 1-2e. Sure you can but with it’s simpler chassis designed specifically to be easy to convert older materials to, 5e trumps 3e era. 4e is just an entirely different game.

I would say two systems are compatible if you can make a character with one system and then drop them, unconverted, into a campaign where the DM is running a different system without issue. 5e is not compatible with other editions in this sense. 3e is only compatible with 3.5. And all of the TSR editions are pretty much compatible with each other.

So there are four "official" D&D systems: The TSR system, the 3e/PF1/d20 System, the 4e system, and the 5e system.

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.

That's a pugnacious and unqualified blanket statement if ever there was one. AD&D kinda sucks… at what? It's freakin' awesome at certain things the WotC editions all kinda suck at, after all.

I'm curious: what are the qualities all the "good" role-playing games share, that AD&D supposedly lacks?

 

[innerdude]

So on a certain level, it is interesting / cause for reflection that the D&D game has been owned by its "acquirers" longer than its creators. And were Gygax and Arneson still around, I'm certain they would have some interesting musings to share on the topic.

But as I think about it, on a broader level I don't know that the ownership of the Dungeons and Dragons game property really matters any more.

To be clear, I'm talking about ownership of the game, not the brand. Ownership of the D&D "brand" obviously matters a great deal to whoever is trying to monetize it.

But ownership of the game is really no longer even a "thing." Some of that is directly attributable to the OGL and the 3e game mechanics essentially being added to the public domain. Some of it is attributable to the internet, and the ability for gamers to meaningfully connect and share information in ways that weren't possible 25 years ago---homebrews, variants, the OSR movement, ready access and word of mouth around competitor products. As such, D&D the "game" is broadly available to literally anyone who wants access to it with a bare minimum level of monetary investment.

What's more interesting than the simple elapsing of time is the fact that in almost 50 years, nothing has come close to toppling "D&D - The Brand" as the #1 market leader in its space---even though IMHO there's objectively better game systems out there.

If anything it's an absolute testament to the power of market networking / mindshare / lifestyle interconnection / brand identification. D&D is a fascinating case study of the power of brand loyalty.

 

[DEFCON 1]

That's a pugnacious and unqualified blanket statement if ever there was one. AD&D kinda sucks… at what? It's freakin' awesome at certain things the WotC editions all kinda suck at, after all.

I'm curious: what are the qualities all the "good" role-playing games share, that AD&D supposedly lacks?

If you read the post by the person I was quoting, you'd have a better understanding of the reason I posted the barb.

And I have no need to give any reasons for my statement. Everyone can take it or leave it for what it is.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I guess here we should remember the famous superhero Shazam and the marvel family weren't created by DC but by other publisher what later was bought by DC decades ago. Some videogames franchises also were started by "indie" studios and theses later acquired by a "bigger fish".

The game now is in its best age, with changes, but keeping the true essence, where a divine spellcaster and a tinker-artificier can be friends and together talking about phylosophy, theology and science, where an elf, a dwarf and half-orc can learn to stop fight each other and to cooperate against a common menace.

 

[MGibster]

What's more interesting than the simple elapsing of time is the fact that in almost 50 years, nothing has come close to toppling "D&D - The Brand" as the #1 market leader in its space---even though IMHO there's objectively better game systems out there.

D&D isn't my favorite game out there and 5E isn't my favorite set of rules. But I'm trying to figure out how I might quantify what makes another game system objectively better than 5th edition and I'm coming up blank. I think maybe nobody has been able to topple D&D because every edition has been a pretty good game.

 

[Istbor]

Different strokes, indeed...

Yeah, I realized after I posted...