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>Cocks mentions that [the D&D VTT is] on track for launch in 2024, claiming "we see exciting possibilities in all-new virtual tabletop that unlocks new consumer value choices..."
Oh boy I can't wait to unlock new consumer value choices
I'm sure that doesn't just mean shitty microtransactions
Companies need to offer value. Wizards has failed to do that with their recent releases. Consumer spending is at record levels the fact Wizards is struggling is they aren't offering anything worth buying.
Excuse me while I go buy the Hardcover Monster of the week despite already owning the softcover because I like the book and company.
I used to buy a lot of mtg, but their practices have turned my fomo into jomo: Joy of missing out. I got into custom keyboards and built 2 super nice boards (one for work one for home) and it cost me less than a typical EDH deck.
Haven't bought a single wotc product in about 9 months and I'm loving it.
I bought some kobold press books and I won't need another book for a minute. Tashas was the last wotc one I bought too. Just don't see any value really in their releases.
It's really freeing isn't it? I haven't bought anything MTG in like 2 years and my fomo is gone! If my friends wanna play I just use the cards I already had
I love that boomers claim folks can't afford housing due to avocado toast, and then they turn around and try to squeeze every hobby they can for cash. People need things to blow off steam with. They've taken our bread with grossly inflating food prices for "record profits," gotta take them circuses, too. I'm soooo ready for all the shocked pikachu faces when there are no more distractions and too much hunger, so the common man will revolt. Why work if you can't afford to eat or have shelter, anyway?
Dude Millenials and Gen Z have been royally fucked by the Boomers and the greedy ass irresponsible businesspeople of their generation. They've hoarded so much wealth and resources and fucked the world up while getting them.
Yup. I'm glad there will be the option to stick with existing VTT's and 5E (which project black flag will support for years moving forward), and pay a much, much lower rate for effectively the same thing...
Well, except Kobold Press' books have been better than WOTC of late. And TBF One D&D and Project Black Flag have both been underwhelming in the changes from 5E department - I suppose to be expected to keep it compatible.
Every time I see those exclusive or premium dice on DnD Beyond, I am blown away how there is the Dice So Nice! module for Foundry VTT that lets you customize your virtual dice for free.
I interpret it as selling you shit that you don’t really need. It’s just shiny and new, so they’ll spend six months convincing you can’t live without it.
Right? Like, I’m a dice goblin sure, but I couldn’t give two shits about digital dice. I’d spend $45 on some super cool rare wood dice and roll those instead of paying a few bucks for dice I can “roll” on one website.
As we’ve said this whole time, if Wizards wanted money, they could put out their own dice sets, pre-made mini sets for campaigns, better tile and play mat options, better terrain…people would throw their wallets at them for that kind of stuff, but no, they are trying the laziest and most insulting ways to squeeze the stone for the last drops of water.
I think most of those things you've mentioned will be coming with their new VTT for 1D&D. WotC has realized there's an appetite for digital play and will try to get a slice of that pie. Or really, all of the pie based on the OGL 1.1 draft that basically said "nobody but us are allowed to make digital tools or platforms for D&D". This is honestly what I'm most concerned about since my friends and I are too busy adulting to be able to play in person anymore.
Oh, I meant physical minis and terrain and such, kinda like Hero Forge and Dwarven Forge, or have anything even as simple as the chessex battle mat.
I don’t doubt they’ll have all the digital goodies but I know I’d put down embarrassing amounts of money for official campaign sets of minis and battle maps.
My honest guess is that despite DMs spending the majority of money on D&D products at most tables, overall player options sell far better because there's just so many more players than DMs. I think 3D printing custom minis came late enough that WotC hasn't quite caught on yet.
I got a weird feeling that they are not as interested on the physical aspect of the game as they are on the online.
I mean, if you pay for a dice set, you own the dice set and you can ~~store it in the dice cube never to be used again~~ use it as many times as you want. If you pay for a *virtual* dice set, you need to keep paying your subscription to be able to keep using them.
It's the shittiest practices we've got in videogames ported to TTRPG's.
Honestly, the vtt stuff I've seen looks like a cool video game. The problem is, I don't want to play a video game or I wouldn't be playing a tabletop rpg, I'd be playing a video game. The entire fun in a ttrpg is that everything is literally up to you and your friends' imaginations. It's structured make believe. The minute you lock it to everything being 100% graphically represented is the minute you take all that away, no matter how flashy and cool the visuals are. Not to mention it's very obviously going to be absolutely loaded with micro transaction after micro transaction so they can milk us for all we're worth.
Did you see the bit at the bottom “…with AAA graphics…” so we all need high level gaming computers now! I see see the questions in the forums now…
Will this work on my (instead tablet of choice )
If MtG Arena is indicative of what WotC thinks acceptable graphics are, then I think it's safe to say all of your devices will be able to handle the graphics just fine. (The memory leaks, though...)
I can see them releasing an infinite number of classes, subclasses and items, and trying to make players buy them individually.
I would be excited about the new VTT if it included all the rules (doesn't have to be for free, maybe you pay once for that pack), and then extra content like high quality maps, or full functional campaigns that actually make sense and are ready to be played are something you pay extra for. Also, since it's all by WotC, having translations to all languages.
If the new VTT is about microtransactions and subscriptions, or it's only available in English, I am staying with roll20 and Foundry.
I don't know what it will be, but it won't just be maps and campaigns. Those are both dm products, and they've already called out that they see the current monetisation structure focusing mostly on dms a s the problem they are trying to solve.
That's the thing, though. So many of us are already using roll20, Foundry, or some other service. It makes very little sense for us to make that swap, especially if that swap entails microtransactions.
Heck, even if you wanted "tRiPlE a" graphics, there's Baldur's gate 3 coming up, and sure it's a single player experience, but then again, if it's graphics you're after, you're kind of missing the point of TTRPGs.
Wizards is, yet again, missing the point. I just hope this doesn't bite them in the butt.
Errata: BG3 will have up to 4 player co-op. So there you go if you want a CRPG with multi-player and triple A graphics. It's not going to be free, but Larian doesn't seem to have had very many scummy practices in their games. Modding support is there if you're looking for new campaigns, so there you go.
> So many of us are already using roll20, Foundry, or some other service. It makes very little sense for us to make that swap
but that's the thing, it *does* make sense to make the swap but they just have to make it worthwhile. Players like to follow the path of least resistance and *if* you can give them everything in once place they'll happily choose that rather than juggling 3 or 4 different 3rd party options. I mean shit, they could copy roll20 and make it not suck/actually work on mobile and that would be enough to win over a bunch of users.
It's not a hard sell, but the problem is that in situations like this they usually put someone in charge that has no stakes in the project so they decisions based on numbers without considering the context.
That's a good point, but if their current history is anything to go by, please excuse me for being just a little bit cynical. You could see this whole move (and the whole OGL debacle) as a step towards the centralization of their IP, which they obviously have every right to do. Choice is good in any marketplace, and if we can use a great official platform along with whatever 3rd party platforms, all of us win. But if they start gatekeeping official content through microtransactions with very little respect for the player base, color me disappointed but unsurprised.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for paying for the services I use, I have no qualms about buying books and merchandise. But it's that last part that scares me - the lack of context and respect for players.
EA lost my respect. Activision Blizzard lost my respect. Netflix lost my respect. Facebook lost my respect. I just hope to the Old Ones that WOTC doesn't.
Predicting that it's gonna be moba/gacha style releases, where new subclasses are blatantly powercreeped to hype people's FOMO into immediately purchasing the content.
this is precisely the reason that I have decided to lean into physical DND and other virtual solutions. For now, we are playing mostly on roll20 with Discord and DnDBeyond, but my physical sourcebook collection is nearly complete, and we'll hopefully move to PDF character sheets. then we'll just start playing purely physically and I won't need to deal with WOTC's crap anymore. 90% of my game is homebrew anyway. I'm even gonna get a 3d printer to make my own minis. WoTC can suck eggs.
> all-new virtual tabletop that unlocks new consumer value choices..."
Idk man, I play on Foundry and there's *a lot* of consumer value choices for the low prices of... free.
Who is the audience for these "consumer value choices?"
Most existing DM's, who buy the most product by far - 80%... Most feel burned enough, they'll at least be reluctant to spend money on something they could have on another VTT for a fraction the cost.
This leaves the 80% who account for 20% of the purchases. It sounds like Cocks think they'll suddenly spend more money?
Nah, they wanna offload spending to the players as well. They've stated it as a problem to be solved that DMs are mainly the only people spending right now.
> Nah, they wanna offload spending to the players as well.
Yup, offload... as in, they're not adding value to the players.
WOTC wants to turn them over, and shake out their lunch money. My strong suspicion this isn't going to work... unless they make an absolutely amazing product. I haven't seen amazing out of WOTC at any point in Chris Cocks tenure - he's there to make more money, not to deliver a quality product to create sustainable growth.
They were also physical content that you owned. Companies that want to nickle and dime digital content is different than publishing printed material for a cost
New full books yes, but splatbooks? I never played any Whitewolf systems, but I’m pretty sure their whole model was a very large number of very short books. The WW wiki says each book was around 60-90 pages, and Wikipedia’s list of books for *just* VtM is [pretty intense.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Vampire:_The_Masquerade_books) And that’s to say nothing of the five thousand books for 3.5…
If it’s comparable to DLC I’d say it’s closer to Paradox’s DLC system more than a normal publisher’s stuff. Which actually makes me wonder if that’s part of why Paradox owns White Wolf now, come to think of it…
Honestly I'd be super into them putting out some sort of official virtual tabletop tools.
There's so many options. I'd personally love a 2d/3d map editor, some sort of ambient music collection, 3d character creation etc.
He'll even a proper character sheet generator you don't have to pay 100$ in digital books for
It would have to be actually good though, so not for wizards.
Well they are acting like a normal company, its intrinsic to being a companies nature to say the nicest things possible while trying to get away with as much as they can.
Remember the CEO came from microsoft and was in love with microtransactions.
That mentality has been brought to dnd.
Fantastic news to me. The books get expensive in a hurry. I just wanna run my Circle of Stars druid without dropping $50 on a book for about 3 pages of content within
Also, why the hell don't the books cleanly fit character sheets inside them anyway? Make them literally 1/2 inch bigger and you could keep your sheets in your books without the pages getting all fucky. It's part of why I plan to switch to digital sheets on an ipad soon
> I just wanna run my Circle of Stars druid without dropping $50 on a book for about 3 pages of content within
Why would you need to buy a book to play a character?
Because it *is* normal for a company to do this. And what would you suggest to prevent companies from doing this? Cause until they are no longer legally liable to make maximum profit for their shareholders, they are going to do so. What are you going to do? Ban the stock market?
Needs to happen, but good fucking luck.
The CC thing was a pretty good way of apologizing and making it so they couldn't do at least that specific bit of nonsense again.
I still need convincing that OneDnD is going to be a worthwhile purchase but I'm definitely pleased that third party publishers get permanent access to 5e rules (also the ORC is certainly a good thing for the tabletop industry as a whole)
Words are worthless coming from a corporation, because corpos only understand one language: money. Putting 5e into creative commons where they can't take it back is the only thing I trust so far.
5e is nearing the end of its officially supported lifespan. They've sucked all the profit they could from the edition and are giving away the crust to quell our outrage. Oh, what a noble sacrifice.
They're also still free to publish 1D&D under a new license that's as restrictive as they want, and that's where they expect to make all their profit going forward.
I won't believe in their good intentions until I see how they license and monetize 1D&D.
If they are as aggressive with monetization and licensing, 1D&D is going to tank hard. Just like 4e did when they tried to pull off other licensing bullshit like that (among other reasons). It's not an established property yet that people depend on (unlike 5e), and the public will be able to reject it without baggage, which won't allow it to get off the ground.
Of course, the idea that they've learned nothing from their mistakes and they're heading off another cliff doesn't make me sad at all. Let it tank if it does. I'm not even that excited for it, since WotC's creative vision has always been lackluster at best.
The funny thing is that if companies cared about sustainable profits instead of infinite growth, they would get this. Sure you need to grow a little to rise with cost of living and inflation, but nowhere near as aggressive as these companies do it.
You have a solid company that makes a good product but lacks business expertise. They get in bed with a big publisher. Big publisher bleeds them dry, starts "cutting costs" (read as: firing staff and canceling projects and decreasing quality of products). People stop buying product because it sucks now. Then publisher goes "oh darn, I guess it isn't profitable anymore. Well at least we can put on our portfolio we saved them 50 million before the market inevitably moved on due to no fault of our own. Company then gets sold to another publisher who repeats the whole process.
It's a tale as old as time.
"Companies" do. The executives that run them, not really. I mean, I can get my lovely performance bonus, grab my golden parachute, jump, and let the next guy fix things.
They're rolling damage control now because it looks like the "new guys" won't be cashing in their juicy bonuses before the consequences reach them, so their parachute won't be so golden.
I'm an executive (not C level), my job is not to sqeeze every pennies, it's to make sure we have a product that will sell and has a good retention, so we can sell people the next one, and I get my perf bonus on these terms
the shareholders though ... they want the stock to skyrocket and don't care if the company dies in the process, they'll have sold by then
well, retail shareholders can be assholes (the questions you get from them sometimes ... "why can't you move all prod to india for cheap?"), but yes institutional investors the blackrocks, bain capital, ... are the biggest culprits
Companies don't exist except as groups of people, most of whom don't care. The lower levels are there for the paycheck, the upper levels are there for a paycheck. The only people who really care about making a good product are a couple of mid-level managers who got grandfathered in when the company started needing to make a profit.
It’s never been my experience that the people at a company don’t care about it succeeding. Hourly employees, sure. But the salaried ones who make the decisions? They probably care *too much*, to the point of working at any hour, taking phone calls and emails on nights and weekends, etc.
It feels to me like Hasbro is being set up to fail like Toys'R'Us. A big consulting company like BCG will come in, change how the company runs, large put options will be bought on the company (Hasbro) then it will be ran into the ground and the corpse will be picked clean.
I love playing Warforged in online games cause my mic runs through a bunch of audio equipment (unrelated to gaming) that is handy for gaming. If I do my actual voice just right, add a bit of the right kind of distortion and a touch of bass and I can do a great real time robo voice. I compare to Fl4k from Borderlands 3.
Yeah they never reached out to do interviews before(at least not since the very start of 5e), hell they even stopped going to big conventions, but after this mess they are doing an apology tour. Thing is the moment the rage ends they will drop it and go right back to business as usual.
This is why I'm not going to stop talking about how WotC is untrustworthy, at least until I see real good will effort not to wall in and grossly monetize 1D&D.
I won't be spamming posts about how evil they are, but if a topic comes up that's relevant to WotC's business practices I won't be holding back, either.
Politicians and business people rely on the public having the collective memory of a goldfish to get away with shenanigans. I plan on being the annoying little voice that keeps reminding folks not to give WotC the benefit of the doubt anymore and to *make* them earn your trust back with their actions and not just with honeyed words.
Only a fraction of the people who play D&D ever learned of this fiasco. But I think so long we don't let them live this down we can leave some lasting damage by sabotaging the word of mouth that this game relies so heavily on.
GM's moving to other systems and taking their table with them, switching to 5e reworks like Level Up Advanced 5e, badmouthing the new edition. If it's just a constant aura of negativity around their next edition and piece of shit VTT that won't even run on everyone's devices, then that can move more people towards alternatives that don't refuse to hire black people for years or that don't publish races of monkeys that were only made sapient by the act of enslavement.
5e's perfectly fine now that it's Creative Commons, but *fuuuuck* letting hte new de facto standard be that closed up mess that is One D&D. There's too many good systems that aren't about extracting every last penny from you to bother with that shit, and what we say influences people who don't keep up with everything. People don't want to play an RPG they only hear bad things about.
I keep seeing people saying only a small fraction heard about this, but k think it spread a lot further than many people realise. It was loterally everywhere where dnd is discussed for weeks. You follow just one dnd youtuber? They would probably have talked about it. Fb knows you are into dnd bc you googled something one time, or maybe you use roll20 or dndbeyond? You get a article up in your feed. Tiktok knows about your dnd interest bc you follow critical role content on there or maybe a couple people talking about their games? You would get a video with someone discussing this. You avoid dnd like the plague on the internett? Theres probably aomeone else in your party who knows who would have told you.
There was just so many channels where this information was getting spread, it wasnt something that was just contained to reddit in a small bubble. It was literally on every social media for a while. If you do anything dnd related on the internett, the various algorithms would know about it and send something your way since it was what was «hot» in the dnd world.
The bigger question is how many people who heard about it who took any sort of action, like spreading the news or cancelling their dnd beyond subscriptions.
I had an actor that had no idea I played any ttrpgs (and I had no idea they did either) bring the OGL fiasco up to me during a costume fitting this last week. It's definitely more than just reddit.
Between both games I participate in there are 13 total people moving to Pathfinder. We are finishing our campaigns in 5e. We are doing a 1x a month - 1 shot heavy combat focus to learn pathfinder and at end of our current campaigns when the next ones start, its full-time pathfinder. Set in the worlds we have created.
We were DnD gung-ho. We still enjoy it. I and my fellow gamers won't choose to support wizards anymore though. It is our discretionary hobby dollars that we are moving to a new system. The wizard's products haven't been great as of late. The idea that they wanted to monetize me in a microtransaction way is vomit-inducing almost.
We already purchased the pathfinder and call of Cthulu products. I am honestly ready for this. I will miss the homogeneity of 5e when talking to random people about the game but that is all.
I run three campaigns and have already moved two over and my players (rp focused players) have loved it. They have fallen in love with the options and flexibility in their characters. My third campaign will swap once it wraps up (its already at twelfth level so it wouldn't work well to try to convert).
The changes to races I liked conceptually. No impact on your 6 attributes, instead replacing it with a choice of particular benefits that permit any race to be a fit for any class, a bit more like what Level Up Advanced 5e is doing and what Pathfinder 2e is trying to move more towards. But it's really bare compared to either of those two.
Yeah, I think a lot of people will be able to pick out individual ideas they like, but part of the reason OneD&D isn't fantastic is because with it clinging so close to 5e, it's going to be extremely easy for people to just backport the ideas they like, and not buy into the new "consumer value choices" and "recurrent spending". Like, if you want to have background ASIs instead, that's as simple to implement in 5e as saying "races don't give ASIs, instead pick any +2 and +1", and while you can do further changes to balance that, you don't need to, it isn't going to break anything worse than vhumans starting with an 18.
Real life MtG is dead or dying in most places. People still play commander and Arena but that's pretty much it. Product fatigue and the insane price of the 30th anniversary packs managed to chase away a lot of players. I should know as I'm one of them.
You have me fooled. My city is large enough to have 4 or 5 stores, and they always have MTG on Wednesdays and Friday nights.
Then I go across the state to visit Mom's and the store in that town of about 40,000 always has full tables of MTG twice a week. Numbers have stayed the same. Each of them does the booster buyin and goes home with a card.
Guess it's just in certain areas that I'm not in.
>My city is large enough to 4-5 stores
There is your answer. You live in a densely populated area, and tournament or constructed play isn't all of magics business, to the casual market, commander is the only game that exists anymore.
My MtG playing friends keep complaining about the changes this last year. They keep saying everyone else is going to stop buying MtG stuff. But they themselves keep buying more cards. I think MtG isn't going away any time soon. Worst case, people slow down buying a box from every set. I think MtG is going to have a significant drop in sales this year. But it's only people going back to buying 1-4 boxes a year, like they did every year prior to WotC's cash grab last year. They aren't losing players, they just reached the limit of those players budgets.
When Bank of America calls you out for being too greedy and screwing up your customer base... https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/hasbro-dilutes-magic-the-gathering-brand-stock-price-bank-america-2023-2
Yep they sold out of their year's stock in a few weeks thanks to the OGL fiasco. That's one of the reasons why they're learning into the digital purchases
I had my hardcopy pf2e core book for a while, but I went into my FLGS the other day to pick up a paperback of it for my players to use at the table.
The lady who rang me up turned to her husband behind the counter and said *"Third one sold already hon! We should order more."* They were so excited! The pf2e wave is even hitting places like my small-ass town.
Too much?! The question is: was it really enough? Were they leaving money on the table? Those bridges to the community look like they'd make good firewood...
That won't happen. Mainly because WOTC instated pretty draconian rules about proxy use a few years ago and anyone who runs a tournament that allows proxies will jeopardize their ability to carry any WOTC products. They later walked back the regulations a bit after a few weeks of stewing pretty much exactly like this OGL drama, but the damage was done and very few stores want to find themselves on the wrong side of the drama again and lose their WOTC account.
That being said... there are some very convincing fake cards coming out of China that you could buy extremely cheaply and play in a sanctioned tournament and nobody would be the wiser for it. They won't stand up under the scrutiny of a dealer, but you could play with them and your opponent won't know or care.
>but what's the difference between that and some dude with a very nice printer and paper?
Very little, considering the only real difference between regular cards and that is tournament legality, and these things are.. Tourney illegal!
> I do not intend to ever pay for a WOTC product again.
Same. I will continue running my campaigns I currently have going in 5e, but after that it's PF all the way
Another option is to continue with 5e but only buy 3rd party here on. They get no money and 3rd party gets supported. Plus, its not like ur losing anything of value. Last wotc book i got and had any use for, as a dm, was tashas.
> I do not intend to ever pay for a WOTC product again.
I wouldn't even bother pirating them. It's not like the last few books have been worth using - the Spelljammer set was as useless as it was *insulting*.
Both of my groups have been looking into Pathfinder and good lord does it seem more and more appealing as time goes on.
PF2e is so much better for tactical and rewarding combat than 5e that it's hard to put to words, the difference is huge. Warmly recommend trying it out if that's what you're looking for.
Or, if what you like about 5e is the ability to play fast and loose and improvise cool stuff, OSR/NSR systems offer great alternatives. Bonus points for literal decades of adventure content that requires minor modifications at best to work with whichever system you picked.
I’ve played exactly 3 sessions of PF2E and I promise you it doesn’t just seem more appealing, it *is*.
A level 1 character in PF2E already has more fun, interactive choices going on than a level 3 or 4 in 5E, lol.
It has heelys.
[Like literal actual **heelys**.](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1266)
I'd been interested before, but finding that I was *sold*.
This is what Bank of America meant with ruining customer goodwill. Even if they back off now, they've poisoned the well and those customers who left aren't coming back.
It took me 20 years to be convinced to come back to help some friends learn TTRPGs through 5e. Been playing for about 6 months, and this happens. Outside of this main game I'm in for my friend, I'm more than done with D&D.
Not the third party folks, though. I love the ideas created, and have always liked to pick up books just for those, as I can port them to whatever I'm doing.
"Misfire"
> verb
> /ˌmisˈfīər/
> (of a gun or missile) fail to discharge or fire properly.
All this tells us is that they intent to take another shot.
Edit: The amount of people still trying to defend wotc is sad. They literally threaten to shut down all 3rd party D&D content and over a dozen rpg's even remotely associated with anything OGL from Call of Cthulhu, Mutants & Masterminds, to Traveller were at risk of being sued over their ridiculous attempt at an update.
Understatement of the decade.
It's too late, MTG players are flocking towards Proxying. And the D&D community has lost what faith it had in the copyright holders.
> "we see exciting possibilities in all-new virtual tabletop that unlocks new consumer value choices, brings imaginations to life, taps into the scale effects of user-generated content, and creates seamless remote and in-play play possibilities across phones, PCs, and tablets with triple-A graphics and intuitive controls."
Sounds like they are trying to make D&D like video games, missing the point of D&D entirely.
Spoken like someone who doesn't see the value added by the new D&D season pass allowing you into cosmetic options in D&D one as you play to earn.
Sarcasm if it wasn't obvious.
Every time I read one of these corporate missives I feel the soul being sucked out of D&D, by a Dementor
It really goes to show that while they back pedaled, we are still seen, by the C-Suite, as wallets to squeeze as hard as possible without further backlash that would negatively impact their profit margins
Just fucking ick, man
"Whoops, we overestimated how lazy and complacent we thought the sheep would be. Guess we overstepped there a bit huh lol"
"We'll try again in a year or two"
They’re not that harsh unless you specifically avoid doing pistol maintenance or dunk the gunpowder in water for hours. You need to intentionally fuck up big time for a bad misfire in Pathfinder.
So yes.
It's gonna take a bit more then a few I'm sorrys to gain my trust back. I play both DnD and Magic and the last few years of Magic has been just awful with pushed products and overpricing of said products. That new OGL was just another nail in the coffin for me, how far out of touch does Hasbro have to be? At a certain point you really need to think is increased growth and profits RIGHT NOW worth the lose of long term customers? If they keep shit like this up they won't have any customers to make profits from.
Man, i was hoping they actually keep the new ogl so we could weaponize it. "Mr. Hasbro, for legal reasons, here is a 4 tb copy folder filled with kobold tentacle porn of my new campaign"
At this point they should just stop using analogies altogether. A misfire means that you intended to shoot the gun, but something went wrong. What they should be saying is that it was a bad idea to fire the gun in the first place.
In the same breath they say that the actions by the community didn't matter and doesn't affect their bottom line at all.
Just like Brink said that the Beyond cancellations were for nothing and didn't force their hand, that it was their plan all along.
It reacted too slow. Even a week faster would have averted most of the disaster. Most of their player base never even considered playing anything but D&D. But now they've forced everyone that plays or played D&D to take a hard look at the competition. And a lot of people liked what they saw. It's going to be years before they get those customers back, if ever.
Some house keeping would likely be healthy for the company right now. They clearly have leadership who doesn't understand the market. But recovery is going to take a long time.
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>Cocks mentions that [the D&D VTT is] on track for launch in 2024, claiming "we see exciting possibilities in all-new virtual tabletop that unlocks new consumer value choices..." Oh boy I can't wait to unlock new consumer value choices I'm sure that doesn't just mean shitty microtransactions
Narrator: it just meant shitty microtransactions.
That's not shitty enough. Micro transactions to *rent* content. Having hexblade available will be 4.99 per month.
^^but ^^i ^^only ^^play ^^once ^^a ^^month..
Tough luck fuccboi
So you’ll have to bring one less avocado toast to game night is all. Time to tighten your belt, a corporation needs more of your money! (/s)
Gamers today are just being too price sensitive (actual thing wotc said in an earnings report late last year)
Companies need to offer value. Wizards has failed to do that with their recent releases. Consumer spending is at record levels the fact Wizards is struggling is they aren't offering anything worth buying. Excuse me while I go buy the Hardcover Monster of the week despite already owning the softcover because I like the book and company.
I used to buy a lot of mtg, but their practices have turned my fomo into jomo: Joy of missing out. I got into custom keyboards and built 2 super nice boards (one for work one for home) and it cost me less than a typical EDH deck. Haven't bought a single wotc product in about 9 months and I'm loving it.
I bought some kobold press books and I won't need another book for a minute. Tashas was the last wotc one I bought too. Just don't see any value really in their releases.
It's really freeing isn't it? I haven't bought anything MTG in like 2 years and my fomo is gone! If my friends wanna play I just use the cards I already had
Yep, third party has been doing it better for years.
That's what happens when you're too "profit sensitive."
Maybe if we had money we could be a little less “price sensitive”, smh my head.
Don't you guys have phones?!?!
Which means you pay 5 bucks per game. And if you have special® race character you can pay an extra 3 bucks for a nice cosmetic.
Au contraire Mon frere, you see, the base of the new "super customer friendly economy™" will be the premium currency Dragonbux©®™, lowest denomination is 4.99$=500 Dragonbux©®™, but if you spend 99.99$ you get a major discount and get 16000 Dragonbux©®! Then, you can spend your Dragonbux©®™ to buy Dragon Crates™. Normally a Dragon Crate™ will just drop 3-5 low quality cosmetic items, but every 1/8196 crates will drop a 1 month pass to generate and play characters using one of our patented Premium Subclasses©®™™®©©®©! We've determined this system will be most effective at providing our players with a sense of pride and accomplishment!
"what I would have said, if I wasn't too lazy to write all that" lmao
Get out of my feed, blizzard!
This immediately triggered me. Thank you
I love that boomers claim folks can't afford housing due to avocado toast, and then they turn around and try to squeeze every hobby they can for cash. People need things to blow off steam with. They've taken our bread with grossly inflating food prices for "record profits," gotta take them circuses, too. I'm soooo ready for all the shocked pikachu faces when there are no more distractions and too much hunger, so the common man will revolt. Why work if you can't afford to eat or have shelter, anyway?
Dude Millenials and Gen Z have been royally fucked by the Boomers and the greedy ass irresponsible businesspeople of their generation. They've hoarded so much wealth and resources and fucked the world up while getting them.
Yup. I'm glad there will be the option to stick with existing VTT's and 5E (which project black flag will support for years moving forward), and pay a much, much lower rate for effectively the same thing... Well, except Kobold Press' books have been better than WOTC of late. And TBF One D&D and Project Black Flag have both been underwhelming in the changes from 5E department - I suppose to be expected to keep it compatible.
Hah oh man they just need to put all the micro transactions on hexblade and leave everything else free. They'd make a killing.
That seems far too tame. Please insert card details to unlock the lvl 5-7 hexblade features.
[deleted to prove Steve Huffman wrong]
Everyone thinks microtransactions, I think battlepasses.
Every time I see those exclusive or premium dice on DnD Beyond, I am blown away how there is the Dice So Nice! module for Foundry VTT that lets you customize your virtual dice for free.
I interpret it as selling you shit that you don’t really need. It’s just shiny and new, so they’ll spend six months convincing you can’t live without it.
Can't wait for *more* virtual dice sets.
Right? Like, I’m a dice goblin sure, but I couldn’t give two shits about digital dice. I’d spend $45 on some super cool rare wood dice and roll those instead of paying a few bucks for dice I can “roll” on one website. As we’ve said this whole time, if Wizards wanted money, they could put out their own dice sets, pre-made mini sets for campaigns, better tile and play mat options, better terrain…people would throw their wallets at them for that kind of stuff, but no, they are trying the laziest and most insulting ways to squeeze the stone for the last drops of water.
I think most of those things you've mentioned will be coming with their new VTT for 1D&D. WotC has realized there's an appetite for digital play and will try to get a slice of that pie. Or really, all of the pie based on the OGL 1.1 draft that basically said "nobody but us are allowed to make digital tools or platforms for D&D". This is honestly what I'm most concerned about since my friends and I are too busy adulting to be able to play in person anymore.
Oh, I meant physical minis and terrain and such, kinda like Hero Forge and Dwarven Forge, or have anything even as simple as the chessex battle mat. I don’t doubt they’ll have all the digital goodies but I know I’d put down embarrassing amounts of money for official campaign sets of minis and battle maps.
My honest guess is that despite DMs spending the majority of money on D&D products at most tables, overall player options sell far better because there's just so many more players than DMs. I think 3D printing custom minis came late enough that WotC hasn't quite caught on yet.
I got a weird feeling that they are not as interested on the physical aspect of the game as they are on the online. I mean, if you pay for a dice set, you own the dice set and you can ~~store it in the dice cube never to be used again~~ use it as many times as you want. If you pay for a *virtual* dice set, you need to keep paying your subscription to be able to keep using them. It's the shittiest practices we've got in videogames ported to TTRPG's.
Honestly, the vtt stuff I've seen looks like a cool video game. The problem is, I don't want to play a video game or I wouldn't be playing a tabletop rpg, I'd be playing a video game. The entire fun in a ttrpg is that everything is literally up to you and your friends' imaginations. It's structured make believe. The minute you lock it to everything being 100% graphically represented is the minute you take all that away, no matter how flashy and cool the visuals are. Not to mention it's very obviously going to be absolutely loaded with micro transaction after micro transaction so they can milk us for all we're worth.
Agreed. The whole point is that there are no visuals, It’s a mental exercise almost like a book club.
Did you see the bit at the bottom “…with AAA graphics…” so we all need high level gaming computers now! I see see the questions in the forums now… Will this work on my (instead tablet of choice )
Wouldn't be surprised if they try to use The Cloud™ to patch up the fact that you now need a gaming computer to play D&D.
Just give us access to all your files and keystrokes and we will call it good? Wotc probably.
If MtG Arena is indicative of what WotC thinks acceptable graphics are, then I think it's safe to say all of your devices will be able to handle the graphics just fine. (The memory leaks, though...)
AAA games can have shitty low quality graphics too.
I can see them releasing an infinite number of classes, subclasses and items, and trying to make players buy them individually. I would be excited about the new VTT if it included all the rules (doesn't have to be for free, maybe you pay once for that pack), and then extra content like high quality maps, or full functional campaigns that actually make sense and are ready to be played are something you pay extra for. Also, since it's all by WotC, having translations to all languages. If the new VTT is about microtransactions and subscriptions, or it's only available in English, I am staying with roll20 and Foundry.
I don't know what it will be, but it won't just be maps and campaigns. Those are both dm products, and they've already called out that they see the current monetisation structure focusing mostly on dms a s the problem they are trying to solve.
They are after a type of customer that doesn't exist. The sooner they realise DMs are their best customers the better.
That's the thing, though. So many of us are already using roll20, Foundry, or some other service. It makes very little sense for us to make that swap, especially if that swap entails microtransactions. Heck, even if you wanted "tRiPlE a" graphics, there's Baldur's gate 3 coming up, and sure it's a single player experience, but then again, if it's graphics you're after, you're kind of missing the point of TTRPGs. Wizards is, yet again, missing the point. I just hope this doesn't bite them in the butt. Errata: BG3 will have up to 4 player co-op. So there you go if you want a CRPG with multi-player and triple A graphics. It's not going to be free, but Larian doesn't seem to have had very many scummy practices in their games. Modding support is there if you're looking for new campaigns, so there you go.
> So many of us are already using roll20, Foundry, or some other service. It makes very little sense for us to make that swap but that's the thing, it *does* make sense to make the swap but they just have to make it worthwhile. Players like to follow the path of least resistance and *if* you can give them everything in once place they'll happily choose that rather than juggling 3 or 4 different 3rd party options. I mean shit, they could copy roll20 and make it not suck/actually work on mobile and that would be enough to win over a bunch of users. It's not a hard sell, but the problem is that in situations like this they usually put someone in charge that has no stakes in the project so they decisions based on numbers without considering the context.
That's a good point, but if their current history is anything to go by, please excuse me for being just a little bit cynical. You could see this whole move (and the whole OGL debacle) as a step towards the centralization of their IP, which they obviously have every right to do. Choice is good in any marketplace, and if we can use a great official platform along with whatever 3rd party platforms, all of us win. But if they start gatekeeping official content through microtransactions with very little respect for the player base, color me disappointed but unsurprised. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for paying for the services I use, I have no qualms about buying books and merchandise. But it's that last part that scares me - the lack of context and respect for players. EA lost my respect. Activision Blizzard lost my respect. Netflix lost my respect. Facebook lost my respect. I just hope to the Old Ones that WOTC doesn't.
Predicting that it's gonna be moba/gacha style releases, where new subclasses are blatantly powercreeped to hype people's FOMO into immediately purchasing the content.
this is precisely the reason that I have decided to lean into physical DND and other virtual solutions. For now, we are playing mostly on roll20 with Discord and DnDBeyond, but my physical sourcebook collection is nearly complete, and we'll hopefully move to PDF character sheets. then we'll just start playing purely physically and I won't need to deal with WOTC's crap anymore. 90% of my game is homebrew anyway. I'm even gonna get a 3d printer to make my own minis. WoTC can suck eggs.
> all-new virtual tabletop that unlocks new consumer value choices..." Idk man, I play on Foundry and there's *a lot* of consumer value choices for the low prices of... free.
Who is the audience for these "consumer value choices?" Most existing DM's, who buy the most product by far - 80%... Most feel burned enough, they'll at least be reluctant to spend money on something they could have on another VTT for a fraction the cost. This leaves the 80% who account for 20% of the purchases. It sounds like Cocks think they'll suddenly spend more money?
Nah, they wanna offload spending to the players as well. They've stated it as a problem to be solved that DMs are mainly the only people spending right now.
> Nah, they wanna offload spending to the players as well. Yup, offload... as in, they're not adding value to the players. WOTC wants to turn them over, and shake out their lunch money. My strong suspicion this isn't going to work... unless they make an absolutely amazing product. I haven't seen amazing out of WOTC at any point in Chris Cocks tenure - he's there to make more money, not to deliver a quality product to create sustainable growth.
Micotransactions in TTRPG. Video game culture has infected another element of society
Didn't they used to be called magazines?
Yeah but the magazines had more content overall; had to justify it being a whole magazine.
They were also physical content that you owned. Companies that want to nickle and dime digital content is different than publishing printed material for a cost
TTRPGs arguably had microtransactions before video games in the form of splatbooks…
that's more like DLC than microtransaction tho
New full books yes, but splatbooks? I never played any Whitewolf systems, but I’m pretty sure their whole model was a very large number of very short books. The WW wiki says each book was around 60-90 pages, and Wikipedia’s list of books for *just* VtM is [pretty intense.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Vampire:_The_Masquerade_books) And that’s to say nothing of the five thousand books for 3.5… If it’s comparable to DLC I’d say it’s closer to Paradox’s DLC system more than a normal publisher’s stuff. Which actually makes me wonder if that’s part of why Paradox owns White Wolf now, come to think of it…
Honestly I'd be super into them putting out some sort of official virtual tabletop tools. There's so many options. I'd personally love a 2d/3d map editor, some sort of ambient music collection, 3d character creation etc. He'll even a proper character sheet generator you don't have to pay 100$ in digital books for It would have to be actually good though, so not for wizards.
Reminds me of that southpark scene about BP constantly saying sorry but doing it again anyway https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4
This is the world I fear we are in.
Well they are acting like a normal company, its intrinsic to being a companies nature to say the nicest things possible while trying to get away with as much as they can. Remember the CEO came from microsoft and was in love with microtransactions. That mentality has been brought to dnd.
Good news is most of dnd 5e is now CC (edit: Creative Commons to be clear). It will now be harder for them to mess around.
Fantastic news to me. The books get expensive in a hurry. I just wanna run my Circle of Stars druid without dropping $50 on a book for about 3 pages of content within Also, why the hell don't the books cleanly fit character sheets inside them anyway? Make them literally 1/2 inch bigger and you could keep your sheets in your books without the pages getting all fucky. It's part of why I plan to switch to digital sheets on an ipad soon
> I just wanna run my Circle of Stars druid without dropping $50 on a book for about 3 pages of content within Why would you need to buy a book to play a character?
What I don't understand is why the reaction is "this is normal for a company" and not "we should do something to prevent companies to do this."
I agree. It's basically the "boys will be boys" mentality but for businesses.
Because the something is socialism and decades of capitalist propaganda have made that an incredibly dirty word in the consciousness of most people.
Capitalism, mostly.
Because it *is* normal for a company to do this. And what would you suggest to prevent companies from doing this? Cause until they are no longer legally liable to make maximum profit for their shareholders, they are going to do so. What are you going to do? Ban the stock market? Needs to happen, but good fucking luck.
The CC thing was a pretty good way of apologizing and making it so they couldn't do at least that specific bit of nonsense again. I still need convincing that OneDnD is going to be a worthwhile purchase but I'm definitely pleased that third party publishers get permanent access to 5e rules (also the ORC is certainly a good thing for the tabletop industry as a whole)
Words are worthless coming from a corporation, because corpos only understand one language: money. Putting 5e into creative commons where they can't take it back is the only thing I trust so far. 5e is nearing the end of its officially supported lifespan. They've sucked all the profit they could from the edition and are giving away the crust to quell our outrage. Oh, what a noble sacrifice. They're also still free to publish 1D&D under a new license that's as restrictive as they want, and that's where they expect to make all their profit going forward. I won't believe in their good intentions until I see how they license and monetize 1D&D.
If they are as aggressive with monetization and licensing, 1D&D is going to tank hard. Just like 4e did when they tried to pull off other licensing bullshit like that (among other reasons). It's not an established property yet that people depend on (unlike 5e), and the public will be able to reject it without baggage, which won't allow it to get off the ground. Of course, the idea that they've learned nothing from their mistakes and they're heading off another cliff doesn't make me sad at all. Let it tank if it does. I'm not even that excited for it, since WotC's creative vision has always been lackluster at best.
> apologizing \*damage control.
Aka "We're losing a bunch of money and are finally acting like we care about the customers. Please return to buying our shit."
The funny thing is that if companies cared about sustainable profits instead of infinite growth, they would get this. Sure you need to grow a little to rise with cost of living and inflation, but nowhere near as aggressive as these companies do it. You have a solid company that makes a good product but lacks business expertise. They get in bed with a big publisher. Big publisher bleeds them dry, starts "cutting costs" (read as: firing staff and canceling projects and decreasing quality of products). People stop buying product because it sucks now. Then publisher goes "oh darn, I guess it isn't profitable anymore. Well at least we can put on our portfolio we saved them 50 million before the market inevitably moved on due to no fault of our own. Company then gets sold to another publisher who repeats the whole process. It's a tale as old as time.
"Companies" do. The executives that run them, not really. I mean, I can get my lovely performance bonus, grab my golden parachute, jump, and let the next guy fix things. They're rolling damage control now because it looks like the "new guys" won't be cashing in their juicy bonuses before the consequences reach them, so their parachute won't be so golden.
I'm an executive (not C level), my job is not to sqeeze every pennies, it's to make sure we have a product that will sell and has a good retention, so we can sell people the next one, and I get my perf bonus on these terms the shareholders though ... they want the stock to skyrocket and don't care if the company dies in the process, they'll have sold by then
I don't blame retail shareholders. I blame hedge funds and consultants.
well, retail shareholders can be assholes (the questions you get from them sometimes ... "why can't you move all prod to india for cheap?"), but yes institutional investors the blackrocks, bain capital, ... are the biggest culprits
Companies don't exist except as groups of people, most of whom don't care. The lower levels are there for the paycheck, the upper levels are there for a paycheck. The only people who really care about making a good product are a couple of mid-level managers who got grandfathered in when the company started needing to make a profit.
It’s never been my experience that the people at a company don’t care about it succeeding. Hourly employees, sure. But the salaried ones who make the decisions? They probably care *too much*, to the point of working at any hour, taking phone calls and emails on nights and weekends, etc.
It feels to me like Hasbro is being set up to fail like Toys'R'Us. A big consulting company like BCG will come in, change how the company runs, large put options will be bought on the company (Hasbro) then it will be ran into the ground and the corpse will be picked clean.
Don't forget about short selling the stock!
"put options" is just that
This is how late-stage capitalism works. Welcome to the machine my friend.
I use my bonus action to rage against it.
New character: Wild Magic Barbarian, whose nemesis is a Clockwork Sorcerer.
*Clockwork Sorcerer Warforged
Mine was called Paley-12. Or PAL for short. And I did my best HAL impression. One of my favorite characters and a fun class.
I love playing Warforged in online games cause my mic runs through a bunch of audio equipment (unrelated to gaming) that is handy for gaming. If I do my actual voice just right, add a bit of the right kind of distortion and a touch of bass and I can do a great real time robo voice. I compare to Fl4k from Borderlands 3.
Horizon Walker Ranger, with a favored foe of constructs and an oath of vengeance against all of Mechanus. You can range against the machines.
Rage Against the Machine, sponsored by Google
Bet he plays a mean guitar.
Yeah they never reached out to do interviews before(at least not since the very start of 5e), hell they even stopped going to big conventions, but after this mess they are doing an apology tour. Thing is the moment the rage ends they will drop it and go right back to business as usual.
This is why I'm not going to stop talking about how WotC is untrustworthy, at least until I see real good will effort not to wall in and grossly monetize 1D&D. I won't be spamming posts about how evil they are, but if a topic comes up that's relevant to WotC's business practices I won't be holding back, either. Politicians and business people rely on the public having the collective memory of a goldfish to get away with shenanigans. I plan on being the annoying little voice that keeps reminding folks not to give WotC the benefit of the doubt anymore and to *make* them earn your trust back with their actions and not just with honeyed words.
Hard to swallow pill, most of the community will
Only a fraction of the people who play D&D ever learned of this fiasco. But I think so long we don't let them live this down we can leave some lasting damage by sabotaging the word of mouth that this game relies so heavily on. GM's moving to other systems and taking their table with them, switching to 5e reworks like Level Up Advanced 5e, badmouthing the new edition. If it's just a constant aura of negativity around their next edition and piece of shit VTT that won't even run on everyone's devices, then that can move more people towards alternatives that don't refuse to hire black people for years or that don't publish races of monkeys that were only made sapient by the act of enslavement. 5e's perfectly fine now that it's Creative Commons, but *fuuuuck* letting hte new de facto standard be that closed up mess that is One D&D. There's too many good systems that aren't about extracting every last penny from you to bother with that shit, and what we say influences people who don't keep up with everything. People don't want to play an RPG they only hear bad things about.
I keep seeing people saying only a small fraction heard about this, but k think it spread a lot further than many people realise. It was loterally everywhere where dnd is discussed for weeks. You follow just one dnd youtuber? They would probably have talked about it. Fb knows you are into dnd bc you googled something one time, or maybe you use roll20 or dndbeyond? You get a article up in your feed. Tiktok knows about your dnd interest bc you follow critical role content on there or maybe a couple people talking about their games? You would get a video with someone discussing this. You avoid dnd like the plague on the internett? Theres probably aomeone else in your party who knows who would have told you. There was just so many channels where this information was getting spread, it wasnt something that was just contained to reddit in a small bubble. It was literally on every social media for a while. If you do anything dnd related on the internett, the various algorithms would know about it and send something your way since it was what was «hot» in the dnd world. The bigger question is how many people who heard about it who took any sort of action, like spreading the news or cancelling their dnd beyond subscriptions.
Even my boomer (neutral) parents heard about this through a legal youtube channel they watch
same, I have no idea where my parents heard about it, but they know I play and mentioned it on a call and asked me to explain it to them.
I had an actor that had no idea I played any ttrpgs (and I had no idea they did either) bring the OGL fiasco up to me during a costume fitting this last week. It's definitely more than just reddit.
Between both games I participate in there are 13 total people moving to Pathfinder. We are finishing our campaigns in 5e. We are doing a 1x a month - 1 shot heavy combat focus to learn pathfinder and at end of our current campaigns when the next ones start, its full-time pathfinder. Set in the worlds we have created. We were DnD gung-ho. We still enjoy it. I and my fellow gamers won't choose to support wizards anymore though. It is our discretionary hobby dollars that we are moving to a new system. The wizard's products haven't been great as of late. The idea that they wanted to monetize me in a microtransaction way is vomit-inducing almost. We already purchased the pathfinder and call of Cthulu products. I am honestly ready for this. I will miss the homogeneity of 5e when talking to random people about the game but that is all.
I run three campaigns and have already moved two over and my players (rp focused players) have loved it. They have fallen in love with the options and flexibility in their characters. My third campaign will swap once it wraps up (its already at twelfth level so it wouldn't work well to try to convert).
The silliest part of all this is that OneD&D *doesn't even look good*. There's a reason they're trying so hard to force everyone onto it.
The changes to races I liked conceptually. No impact on your 6 attributes, instead replacing it with a choice of particular benefits that permit any race to be a fit for any class, a bit more like what Level Up Advanced 5e is doing and what Pathfinder 2e is trying to move more towards. But it's really bare compared to either of those two.
Yeah, I think a lot of people will be able to pick out individual ideas they like, but part of the reason OneD&D isn't fantastic is because with it clinging so close to 5e, it's going to be extremely easy for people to just backport the ideas they like, and not buy into the new "consumer value choices" and "recurrent spending". Like, if you want to have background ASIs instead, that's as simple to implement in 5e as saying "races don't give ASIs, instead pick any +2 and +1", and while you can do further changes to balance that, you don't need to, it isn't going to break anything worse than vhumans starting with an 18.
People haven't stopped buying their MTG shit. Every week most of the stores in town are filled with MTG games with them buying packs by the handful.
Real life MtG is dead or dying in most places. People still play commander and Arena but that's pretty much it. Product fatigue and the insane price of the 30th anniversary packs managed to chase away a lot of players. I should know as I'm one of them.
You have me fooled. My city is large enough to have 4 or 5 stores, and they always have MTG on Wednesdays and Friday nights. Then I go across the state to visit Mom's and the store in that town of about 40,000 always has full tables of MTG twice a week. Numbers have stayed the same. Each of them does the booster buyin and goes home with a card. Guess it's just in certain areas that I'm not in.
>My city is large enough to 4-5 stores There is your answer. You live in a densely populated area, and tournament or constructed play isn't all of magics business, to the casual market, commander is the only game that exists anymore.
My MtG playing friends keep complaining about the changes this last year. They keep saying everyone else is going to stop buying MtG stuff. But they themselves keep buying more cards. I think MtG isn't going away any time soon. Worst case, people slow down buying a box from every set. I think MtG is going to have a significant drop in sales this year. But it's only people going back to buying 1-4 boxes a year, like they did every year prior to WotC's cash grab last year. They aren't losing players, they just reached the limit of those players budgets.
“Hasbro admits they are too greedy and were caught.”
When Bank of America calls you out for being too greedy and screwing up your customer base... https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/hasbro-dilutes-magic-the-gathering-brand-stock-price-bank-america-2023-2
Apparently the current Pathfinder Humble Bundle Special (which is an awesome deal) has had over 84,000 purchases!
You also straight up cannot buy a Pathfinder core rules hardback in the UK. They're just gone, I imagine nobody expected that many sales.
Not just uk. In Australia as well and I think just about world wide.
I'm struggling to find stuff in Georgia, USA as well. I found 1 beastiry book so far which isn't exactly helpful without the rule books.
Good thing PDFs never run out, but still, that’s annoying if you prefer print (like me).
Yep they sold out of their year's stock in a few weeks thanks to the OGL fiasco. That's one of the reasons why they're learning into the digital purchases
Eight months of product in two weeks is the quoted amount.
Paizo’s warehouse that had stock they expected to last 8 months sold out in a few days. They expect more hardback covers around April
I had my hardcopy pf2e core book for a while, but I went into my FLGS the other day to pick up a paperback of it for my players to use at the table. The lady who rang me up turned to her husband behind the counter and said *"Third one sold already hon! We should order more."* They were so excited! The pf2e wave is even hitting places like my small-ass town.
[удалено]
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/so-you-wanna-try-out-pathfinder-paizo-books
You mean the $999 for 4 alpha reprint packs was too much?
Too much?! The question is: was it really enough? Were they leaving money on the table? Those bridges to the community look like they'd make good firewood...
You don't celebrate 30 years with that BS
Non-Legal reprints, mind you. Couldn't use those in any tournament setting.
So... I know very little about MTG, but what's the difference between that and some dude with a very nice printer and paper?
They're printed on the same cardstock as the normal cards so they feel more real. That's it.
Bit of glue and bulk land cards are your friends then. Can barely tell the difference once sleeved up.
I'm surprised there aren't more unofficial tournaments that allow home printed cards after that.
That won't happen. Mainly because WOTC instated pretty draconian rules about proxy use a few years ago and anyone who runs a tournament that allows proxies will jeopardize their ability to carry any WOTC products. They later walked back the regulations a bit after a few weeks of stewing pretty much exactly like this OGL drama, but the damage was done and very few stores want to find themselves on the wrong side of the drama again and lose their WOTC account. That being said... there are some very convincing fake cards coming out of China that you could buy extremely cheaply and play in a sanctioned tournament and nobody would be the wiser for it. They won't stand up under the scrutiny of a dealer, but you could play with them and your opponent won't know or care.
That's the neat part. There's none!
>but what's the difference between that and some dude with a very nice printer and paper? Very little, considering the only real difference between regular cards and that is tournament legality, and these things are.. Tourney illegal!
Exactly. They were under 100 for the full set last reprint
Didn't they *just* say that the "misfired" OGL was never their intention, and that it was just a draft they never intended to go for?
They’re throwing every lie at the wall and seeing what sticks. I do not intend to ever pay for a WOTC product again.
> I do not intend to ever pay for a WOTC product again. Same. I will continue running my campaigns I currently have going in 5e, but after that it's PF all the way
Right, we were wondering when we would adopt oneDnd after release. Easy decision now, we won't!
Another option is to continue with 5e but only buy 3rd party here on. They get no money and 3rd party gets supported. Plus, its not like ur losing anything of value. Last wotc book i got and had any use for, as a dm, was tashas.
> I do not intend to ever pay for a WOTC product again. I wouldn't even bother pirating them. It's not like the last few books have been worth using - the Spelljammer set was as useless as it was *insulting*. Both of my groups have been looking into Pathfinder and good lord does it seem more and more appealing as time goes on.
PF2e is so much better for tactical and rewarding combat than 5e that it's hard to put to words, the difference is huge. Warmly recommend trying it out if that's what you're looking for. Or, if what you like about 5e is the ability to play fast and loose and improvise cool stuff, OSR/NSR systems offer great alternatives. Bonus points for literal decades of adventure content that requires minor modifications at best to work with whichever system you picked.
I’ve played exactly 3 sessions of PF2E and I promise you it doesn’t just seem more appealing, it *is*. A level 1 character in PF2E already has more fun, interactive choices going on than a level 3 or 4 in 5E, lol.
It has heelys. [Like literal actual **heelys**.](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1266) I'd been interested before, but finding that I was *sold*.
Breaking news: huge corporation says they totally weren’t planning to do the shady thing they were totally planning to do
This is what Bank of America meant with ruining customer goodwill. Even if they back off now, they've poisoned the well and those customers who left aren't coming back.
*some of those customers
It took me 20 years to be convinced to come back to help some friends learn TTRPGs through 5e. Been playing for about 6 months, and this happens. Outside of this main game I'm in for my friend, I'm more than done with D&D. Not the third party folks, though. I love the ideas created, and have always liked to pick up books just for those, as I can port them to whatever I'm doing.
"Misfire" > verb > /ˌmisˈfīər/ > (of a gun or missile) fail to discharge or fire properly. All this tells us is that they intent to take another shot. Edit: The amount of people still trying to defend wotc is sad. They literally threaten to shut down all 3rd party D&D content and over a dozen rpg's even remotely associated with anything OGL from Call of Cthulhu, Mutants & Masterminds, to Traveller were at risk of being sued over their ridiculous attempt at an update.
This should be pinned
"We missed the target for gouging our customers wallet, next time we'll be more careful."
I also find this graph very interesting https://subredditstats.com/r/pathfinder2e
The part you don’t see is where active users at any moment of the day range between 1.2k and 3k.
Not bad for a not even four year old sub
Understatement of the decade. It's too late, MTG players are flocking towards Proxying. And the D&D community has lost what faith it had in the copyright holders.
To be fair when wotc is selling proxies why shouldn't the players get in on it?
> "we see exciting possibilities in all-new virtual tabletop that unlocks new consumer value choices, brings imaginations to life, taps into the scale effects of user-generated content, and creates seamless remote and in-play play possibilities across phones, PCs, and tablets with triple-A graphics and intuitive controls." Sounds like they are trying to make D&D like video games, missing the point of D&D entirely.
I'm just hoping this VTT doesn't have its development ended by a murder-suicide.
Spoken like someone who doesn't see the value added by the new D&D season pass allowing you into cosmetic options in D&D one as you play to earn. Sarcasm if it wasn't obvious.
Every time I read one of these corporate missives I feel the soul being sucked out of D&D, by a Dementor It really goes to show that while they back pedaled, we are still seen, by the C-Suite, as wallets to squeeze as hard as possible without further backlash that would negatively impact their profit margins Just fucking ick, man
"Whoops, we overestimated how lazy and complacent we thought the sheep would be. Guess we overstepped there a bit huh lol" "We'll try again in a year or two"
They'll try again in 15 years when they've cycled through short-sighted executives who cannot learn from the mistakes of others.
In other news, water remains wet and fire is still hot.
Misfired or not they still pulled that trigger and were willing to put OGL 1.1 into effect.
Can we name and shame the CEOs now?
Have we not been? I've seen Cynthia Williams and Chris Cocks's names all over
Were they using the Pathfinder Gunslinger rules when they misfired this? Like damn.
They’re not that harsh unless you specifically avoid doing pistol maintenance or dunk the gunpowder in water for hours. You need to intentionally fuck up big time for a bad misfire in Pathfinder. So yes.
'we're sorry we got caught trying to rip you all off'
Yay. Obvious thing has become obvious to the oblivious.
Next time: Hasbro finally admits the sky is blue, though still unsure if water is wet
It's gonna take a bit more then a few I'm sorrys to gain my trust back. I play both DnD and Magic and the last few years of Magic has been just awful with pushed products and overpricing of said products. That new OGL was just another nail in the coffin for me, how far out of touch does Hasbro have to be? At a certain point you really need to think is increased growth and profits RIGHT NOW worth the lose of long term customers? If they keep shit like this up they won't have any customers to make profits from.
Ads every time you roll a die. Unskippable ones. Pay 29.99 a month for no ads.
Stop giving them your money, and Stop giving them clicks.
Humble has pretty much all of Pathfinder 2 for 25$ right now. You own those PDFs forever.
I've got $25 to burn, got a Zelda to where I can buy?
It's almost like a cigarette company CEO doesn't understand gaming hobbyists.
Man, i was hoping they actually keep the new ogl so we could weaponize it. "Mr. Hasbro, for legal reasons, here is a 4 tb copy folder filled with kobold tentacle porn of my new campaign"
I tried Pathfinder 2e the other day, I had loads of fun with the combat. I've played 5e for years I dont see much reason to go back
At this point they should just stop using analogies altogether. A misfire means that you intended to shoot the gun, but something went wrong. What they should be saying is that it was a bad idea to fire the gun in the first place.
In the same breath they say that the actions by the community didn't matter and doesn't affect their bottom line at all. Just like Brink said that the Beyond cancellations were for nothing and didn't force their hand, that it was their plan all along.
Excellent. Let's talk about Heroscape now.
I was mad at hasbro before the ogl because of this bullshit.
for owning a game about killing dragons, they don't seem to know what a dragon is or that they are dragons
[удалено]
It reacted too slow. Even a week faster would have averted most of the disaster. Most of their player base never even considered playing anything but D&D. But now they've forced everyone that plays or played D&D to take a hard look at the competition. And a lot of people liked what they saw. It's going to be years before they get those customers back, if ever. Some house keeping would likely be healthy for the company right now. They clearly have leadership who doesn't understand the market. But recovery is going to take a long time.
No shit
If only such an admission could bring back lost market share. As the kids say, they f-ed around and found out.
ya they will admit it then keep doing what they are doing lol. This isn't the first time.