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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

#351

Post by THENATHE »

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…

This happens in every industry once that business is opened to the stock market. Larian is great because its private. Steam is great because it's private. Facebook used to be great then it went public and went downhill fast. Same with basically any company that doesnt have 2 vectors of VERY solid competition (AMD v Intel v ARM, nvidia v AMD v Intel, Micro v Samsung v hynix, Ford v GM v Dodge, etc). Companies that exist only to drive profits will do shit to ruin their brand in the name of profits, because stock profits make more money than being a good company.

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

#352

Post by mdhb »

phpisthebest wrote: post #188
criddell wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's generally true. A recent example: the WGA just ended a strike against the movie and television studios and from what I've read about it, the resolution was not determined by the loudest minority. A deal was worked out, the membership voted, and 99% voted to accept the agreement. That seems like a success.

Lets survey the membership, what is left of them, in a year or less and see if they still feel it was a "success"... I have a feeling a large % of them will not be in WGA jobs in 18 mos

So you’re just making things up and expecting people to pretend that it’s some kind of serious analysis?

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

#353

Post by busterarm »

isk517 wrote: post #339
busterarm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not have worked in the comic book industry but the same tactic has proved an enormous boon to the sports card industry in the last decade and that's absolutely booming.

It works in the sports card industry because owning the rare card is the entire point of the hobby. The vast majority of people buying comic books plan to read them and the majority of the people buying WotC products want to be able to use them to play some sort of game.

Except not true. Every trading card game where the cards are just game pieces and there's no secondary market around the game has died hard. The mystique and value in the cards is necessary to keep the game alive.

I say this to you as somebody with hundreds of thousands of dollars in MtG cards in his collection and I still consider myself a player first.

Comics are a complicated mess but in the 90s it was largely gimmick variants that nobody wanted -- the industry has done better in recent years with variant covers by desirable artists but in general nobody is reading comics anymore and the trade paperbacks are doing even worse. Marvel and DC just aren't connecting with their customers anymore and imported & translated manga is eating their lunch.

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

#354

Post by vintermann »

klodolph wrote: post #320
zztop44 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a problem in 3 and 3.5 era too and was only exacerbated by the rise of forums and wikis. I don’t think it’s possible to release one-size-fits-all-the-crap-that’s-out-there campaigns that are going to be actually interesting. At some point the DMs job is to make decisions about what fits and what doesn’t, and to help cultivate a culture of collaborative storytelling.

Yes, 100%. I DMed during the 3 and 3.5 era, and the “bullshit player option supplements” were a major problem. Players want to ask for the most out of pocket stuff they pick up from the splatbooks. It was beyond difficult to build a coherent party of players when everyone was using radically different concepts to build their characters. Game balance went out the window. 3 and 3.5 had terrible game balance to begin wi…

I DM'd during the 2nd edition era, and yeah... Some player's option supplements had decent things going for them. Others were pure munchkin galore (looking at you, Bard's handbook).

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

#355

Post by mnky9800n »

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'…

This is where I always thought the vampire the masquerade games excelled. In fact, they seemed to have so much content that the game itself was less important. I spent way more time reading vtm books then DND books. But I played way more dnd. But maybe it's because it's a lot harder to convince people to play vampire.

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

#356

Post by larksimian »

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…

This sounds good but doesn't actually make sense, like most corporate money-grabs. If cards accumulate in value, everyone is essentially playing for free(or indeed being paid to collect cards since generally the market rose faster than inflation). Everyone can sell their collection and if the secondary market is healthy they can get back what they spent on it and more.

This is the fundamental scam of the game-piece idea: it kills the secondary market and basically means instead of having the option to recycle your old decks into new ones you have to always pay $50/deck or whatever Hasbro is selling decks for.

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

#357

Post by rankovic »

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?

Been playing Kult: Divinity Lost since the pandemic and have never looked back. It's personal horror, similar to Call of Cthulhu and some World of Darkness titles, while being quite different from D&D, which always felt like roleplaying Excel spreadsheets to me. There's focus on flawed characters, improv and failing-forward. Requires really mature players and GM, and trust between them. Safety tools are front and center in the source material, due to the nature of personal horror and topics you may explore.

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

#358

Post by musicale »

mcv wrote: post #264
drxzcl wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lost Mines was a terrific pack-in adventure - I got so much mileage out of it.

I would love to see WotC publish more adventure booklets of comparable quality.

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

#359

Post by musicale »

imetatroll wrote: post #342
freilanzer wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I always wondered if anyone ever really plays Hackmaster? I'm guessing no. It seems to be a very intricate, rule heavy game.

As I understand it (parody RPG elements notwithstanding) HM was originally (and appropriately) based on 1e/2e and is actually playable (as much as those games were. I imagine enthusiasts of those games might prefer the originals for historical authenticity, but HM sounds entertaining and fun! And a sort of 2.6e, which is interesting (much as PathFinder 1 was a sort of 3.6.)

Hmm, according to wikipedia Hackmaster 5 was rewritten and is a "serious" game - which sounds like much less fun, even if it is more playable!

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

#360

Post by Templa »

flerchin wrote: post #310

Hasbro laid off 1100, of which 20 are at WoTC. But how many folks are at WoTC? Are those 20 involved in the actual money printer they have with WoTC?

Apparently (don't quote me on that, that's something I was told and I am not sure of) someone that designed the Universes Beyond sets was fired.
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