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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

#261

Post by Filligree »

freilanzer wrote: post #260
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…

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

There’s hundreds, possibly thousands. Don’t Close Your Eyes and Glitch/Nobilis are three of my favourites.

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

#262

Post by mcv »

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…

Yeah, WotC should never have sold themselves to Hasbro. Buying TSR was great, but selling to Hasbro was not. It may have seemed like a good idea at first because they got a lot of freedom in those first 10 years, but Habro has been tightening the screws lately and none of that has been good.

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

#263

Post by dannersy »

freilanzer wrote: post #260
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…

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

It would be hard to mention them all. I'd find a local shop or a TTRPG Discord if you don't have a local spot available.

To give you a small sample, some older non-dnd classics are Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu, but there are even some really awesome niche systems that you should consider like Symbaroum. It depends what you and your eventual group want to play.

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

#264

Post by mcv »

drxzcl wrote: post #249
csydas wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'…

For me the naive part is focussing on player options. I understand that groups generally have one DM and 4 players, do if you include player options you might sell 5 books instead of one. But that's the shallow, cash-in-now-fuck-next-decade mentality. Meanwhile they haven't put out a decent adventure in a decade. The internet is awash with people trying to glue their ramblings back into coherent campaigns and running…

> Meanwhile they haven't put out a decent adventure in a decade.

Lost Mines of Phandelver, the adventure from the intro box, is pretty good (except when it switches to "every room has a monster" later on). It's very big for an intro adventure and there's tons of stuff in it.

But it's quite possible that it's the only good one they made.

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

#265

Post by oliwarner »

mcpackieh wrote: post #63
oliwarner wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those notable titles are pretty old and past development. Same as Transformers. I guess they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business.

> they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business. Isn't that business basically free money? The way I see it, no capital investment is needed. You just need to keep a few accountants and lawyers around to handle occasional licensing paperwork. Am I missing something?

Well consider the recent spate of music artists who've sold their back catalogues. They're selling that future income for a lump sum [while they can enjoy it].

Hasbro is doing the same. Swap fifty years of slow income for instant liquidity. A company with as many steels in the fire as Hasbro should be able to use that to generate a lot more money than through legacy property.

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

#266

Post by Panzer04 »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #49
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…

I prefer having cheap cards. You are paying for the experience not the cards when you draft. What I don’t like is wotc printing new powerful cards in non-standard sets. Modern horizons, commander sets, etc print absolutely must play busted cards but the sets are limited print quantity and artificially scarce. If it was up to me all new cards would be printed in standard sets and supplemental sets are reprints only. 2…

Part of the point is that a lot of these cards would be busted in standard though, so printing straight to modern is a way to still get these kinds of cards out without powercreeping the standard of the day.

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

#267

Post by ddtaylor »

Hasbro is ruining the brand at alarming levels. They think they are doing it "smart" because MTGA and some other plays to try and split the audience of regular players and whales.

There is no "smart" way to destroy your business.

Also as a player right now is one of the worst lore breaking and general worst story related times to care in any way about these characters, assets, places or anything else.

Hasbro blows

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

#268

Post by sidlls »

freilanzer wrote: post #260
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…

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

Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, Harnmaster (my personal favorite--too bad it had such a shitty IP fight/divergence), Warhammer, Amber, Cyberpunk, and hundreds/thousands more. People in this space are incredibly creative.

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

#269

Post by srg0 »

webdoodle wrote: post #130

MtG saw a huge increase in demand while people were mandated to stay at home. Now that the mandates are over, the demand is likely about to implode as people return to previous activities.

> MtG saw a huge increase in demand while people were mandated to stay at home

Did it? If anything, MTG Modern prices were going down until the end of 2020, both in paper and online. And it's one most popular formats.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/modern#paper

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

#270

Post by mcv »

freilanzer wrote: post #260
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…

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

There are literally thousands of other RPG systems.

If you want to stay close to the D&D experience, the big alternative is Pathfinder of course. Pathfinder 1 was basically an expanded/fixed version of D&D 3.5, but Pathfinder 2 is really its own thing and possibly a better direction than D&D5 is. But more importantly, Pathfinder is legendary for its massive thematic campaigns. (There are some duds, and none are perfect, but many are quite good and there are a lot of them to choose from.)

Another option is 13th Age, by Jonathan Tweet, one of the main developers of D&D 3.x, and according to some people, it's the system that D&D should always have strived to be. (I don't know it myself, though.)

Then there are tons of retro-clones trying to bring back the experience of older D&D editions, including:

* Dungeon Crawl Classics

* OSRIC

* Labirynth Lord

* Swords & Wizardry

* Old School Essentials

* Whitehack

And many, many others.

Some modern narrative-style systems:

Dungeon World uses the Apocalypse World system to simulate the D&D experience.

Apocalypse World itself is a post-apocalyptic Mad Max style game, with a very different, light-weight, narrative-focused system that's great at simulating different genres. There are spin-offs for almost every property imaginable, including Cthulhu, Star Wars, Cyberpunk and many others. The game itself is not generic, but specifically tailored for a specific feel, but the same approach can be used to create games tailored to different genres.

Blades in the Dark is a bit like that too, in that it's been modded for all sorts of different genres. It is however specifically tailored for heists. The original is a kind of pseudo-Victorian fantasy.

More traditional RPGs:

Shadowrun is cyberpunk + fantasy. Near future, dragons rule the boardrooms, corporate mages defend their employer's interests. And for plausibly deniable direct action, they hire teams of mercenary criminals (the players) who basically do heists. Violent, rich background, complex system, poorly edited rulebooks.

Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk Red: the system the Cyberpunk 2077 CRPG is based on.

GURPS is a system that's able to handle any genre (or so it claims, at least). Very generic, and if you want to mix cyborgs, wizards and superheroes, in space, this system can do it.

Savage Worlds: also generic, but lighter than GURPS and optimised for mass combat. You can have massive battles in this system while still remaining playable. But it's mostly used for pulpy action.

Star Wars. Of course there are several Star Wars RPGs, but the best ones are the original WEG d6 Star Wars (which created much of the expanded universe lore of Star Wars; Lucas Arts loremaster Pablo Hidalgo got his start there) and FFG Star Wars (Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion and Force and Destiny, uses weird custom dice, but great system).

Traveller -- the original SciFi RPG. Must be up to about a dozen different editions by now. 11,000 worlds, millennia of history, aliens, spaceships, but often ends up focused on trade. In the original edition (and several others) you could die during character generation.

There's hundreds more. I'm not going to list them all; this is just a random sample.

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