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Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

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Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#251

Post by drxzcl »

whythre wrote: post #66
getwiththeprog wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"D&D is, for lack of a better term than I have used previously, a culture. Serving that culture is such an honor. Does such a culture survive, truly survive, lodged within a pair of digital, aggressively monetized parentheses?" (Penny Arcade) D&D is the ony common RPG available these days is most of Australia - it certainly has the largest market share. As cultures go, RPG can easily rebuild itself from a fan-base. I…

…what? Dnd is the market leader but we have the internet, availability shouldn’t be an issue. You can download almost anything from drivethru rpg, and I ran a multi year World of Darkness game with pdfs and online resources. You might not be able to wander into a store and play with randos, but if you have some open minded friends, just about any tabletop game is an option.

BTW, I detest PDF for online use. It looks great, but the typesetting never matches whatever screen I'm using. If it's going to go paperless, the RPG industry needs to evolve beyond "let's pretend this is paper".

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#252

Post by HenryBemis »

csydas wrote: post #93
solardev wrote: post #84

This is the same Hasbro that tried to retroactively close off the D&D Open Game License (and thus the third party ecosystem). It was a massive betrayal that caused a ton of pushback: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/jan/12/dungeons-and-d... They also sell so many overpriced kits with not much going on in them (just a few pieces of paper, not enough dice, sub par instructions ). Or really expensive character toy…

> They also sell so many overpriced kits with not much going on in them (just a few pieces of paper, not enough dice, sub par instructions ). Or really expensive character toys. For me this is the most telling part that Hasbro doesn't quite get what you're actually selling if you have a tabletop company; it's not the ruleset, that will be leaked as soon as you sell a single copy and people actually play the game. It'…

> It's instead ideas and world building visions from the people who were directly involved in creating the world

Yes, but someone needs to impress their boss/shareholders this very Quarter, and then the next, and then the next. Planning for the long haul requires a vision and patience that is not on the table. Hasbro mentality is (probably) "release the game mid-December, let it sell tons for Xmas, rake it in, start planning for next Xmas release".

I don't know if 'slow burn' is in their scope. It would be interesting to hear from them on this.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#253

Post by Sander_Marechal »

solardev wrote: post #89
dumpsterlid wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just need to move on from DnD to other IPs at this point, it is absurdly clear that everyone putting all their eggs in the basket with wizards of the coast and it is just a bad idea. There are plenty of fantastic alternatives, we really don’t need the DnD universe. I mean, as highly acclaimed as BG3 is, people in general seem to feel that the dev’s previous game Divinity Original Sin 2 has better combat mechanics……

I think Forgotten Realms has a special place in many people's hearts (especially the millennials and around them), being a formative part of our childhoods: Minsc and Boo, Drizzt, beholders, mimics, etc. It's like Star Wars or LOTR, people get attached and emotionally invested and it's not so easy to let go overnight. I enjoyed the Original Sin series and played them for many hours,but never finished either one. The…

> The characters and stories weren't their strong suit IMO (they were kinda cheesy, honestly)

Yes, but so are D&D characters like Drizzt and Minsc. But they come with added feel-good nostalgia.

> I agree new IPs would be great, but those are rare!

I am really enjoying "The Timescape" at the moment. It's the setting from Matt Colville / MCDM. It's used in a range of D&D supplements, streams, literature books, videos and more. And soon in a new TTRPG as well. It is more concise and less "out there" that the Forgotten Realms. And it doesn't carry 40+ years of inconsistent lore baggage.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#254

Post by ZiiS »

concordDance wrote: post #247
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people are still going to pay money for D&D then they truly do not care about the hobby. I must admit before the OGL fiasco I didn't see much of the allure of other systems, but that really pushed me away and the world of TTRPGs is so much brighter and better than crappy D&D. I still play in one D&D campaign, but it was started before the fiasco, but I have already decided that at least I won't be running another…

What system would you recommend?

Pathfinder is DnD but better; most others focus on different settings so it depends on your interests I have always liked Cyberpunk 2020.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#255

Post by dimask »

apstats wrote: post #43

I don’t think it’s possible to determine if a decision like this is a good one without working at the company. News articles like this are useless.

Good and bad itself depends on the perspective. Good for Hasbro? Can be argued I guess, depends also on its current economic situation and a lot of things other people may indeed not have the best knowledge about. Good for the players and fans of DnD? Good for those who actually work in the company and got laid off, or the remaining staff there? Almost surely not. This decision is not taken on their behalf and does not serve them in any way. And considering the popularity of DnD there is no surprise that the issue is going to be approached from an employee or player perspective rather than an investor or manager one.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#256

Post by hiddevb »

solardev wrote: post #136
dragontamer wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It wasn't super clear to me from that article, but does this mean everyone drafts from the same cube (like you combine cards and then everyone draws from them)? Or does everyone make their own cubes? A cube is 360 (total) cards that you tell all your friends about. Some of these cards are repeats (ex: 4x Elite Vanguards). You bring those cards, you shuffle them up, deal out 15-to-each-person, and then start draftin…

> Then keep to the same cube. The "owner" of the Cube is responsible for "balance patches" (Hmmm... Red is too strong. I'll replace some of these powerful Red cards with weaker ones). So its not completely static. But the general plan is to build a set that your group can "recycle" and grow to become experts in. Thanks for explaining this! I actually really like this. I will suggest it to our Magic group next time :)…

There's a large crossover between magic players and software developers, so there are a huge amount of great tools. The ones I currently use are:

- https://cubecobra.com for inspiration. There are draftbots but they are not very good. - https://draftmancer.com the ideal way to draft online or against bots

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#257

Post by kuschku »

paulddraper wrote: post #200
solardev wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kidding, but sometimes it feels like that. Javascript is never just Javascript. It depends on whether you use Typescript (with tsc or tsx or esrun?). It depends whether you use V8 or Node or Deno or Bun. It depends whether you're using AWS Lambda or the Serverless framework or a Cloudflare Worker or a Vercel or Fastly edge function. It depends whether you use vanilla or HTMX or React or Next or Vue or Nuxt or Sve…

> I've never seen two Javascript codebases that looked the same I think you may have described every programming language. Except maybe Go

True, but Go codebases only look the same because there's only so many ways to make a neolithic handaxe.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#258

Post by j4yav »

bart_spoon wrote: post #149
THENATHE wrote: post #48

I really miss 2016 MtG. I remember when full art lands and full art promos were RARE and with money for no reason other than their collectability. I really liked when cards were rare because of the fact that they were good and uncommon and maybe because they were the same as the regular card but foil, not because they were arbitrarily a different type of shiny, or like when that one card from Kamigawa had a different…

There’s only two camps, investors and gamers. I think that anyone who wants to “have cards that have relative value” are investors, whether they realize it or not. Its one thing to collect because you like something inherent about the cards themselves (I recall a recent Reddit post where the user was trying to collect every single Magic card that depicted an owl in any way). But if your concern is about the monetary…

I think you can not be an investor and like the gambling aspect. And I personally wouldn't consider gamblers investors.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#259

Post by cxr »

realusername wrote: post #171
sublinear wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> controlled by an evil older than Oracle itself (Microsoft and Typescript) Who still uses typescript? It's not the mid-2010s anymore. Plain javascript is everywhere and I'd argue using a framework implies an immature project or team.

I've never seen a large js codebase without typescript and I'm not even sure how you could realistically manage one without.

> I've never seen a large js codebase without typescript

So you're explicitly identifying yourself as a non-authority (but in a weird tone that tries to suggest the opposite?).

https://searchfox.org/>

> I'm not even sure how you could realistically manage one without

Pretty simple: write boring code.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#260

Post by freilanzer »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #229
solardev wrote: post #84

This is the same Hasbro that tried to retroactively close off the D&D Open Game License (and thus the third party ecosystem). It was a massive betrayal that caused a ton of pushback: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/jan/12/dungeons-and-d... They also sell so many overpriced kits with not much going on in them (just a few pieces of paper, not enough dice, sub par instructions ). Or really expensive character toy…

If people are still going to pay money for D&D then they truly do not care about the hobby. I must admit before the OGL fiasco I didn't see much of the allure of other systems, but that really pushed me away and the world of TTRPGs is so much brighter and better than crappy D&D. I still play in one D&D campaign, but it was started before the fiasco, but I have already decided that at least I won't be running another…

As someone thinking about getting into Pen and Paper games, I'm surprised to read all this. What are the alternatives?
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