# WotC's Annual Xmas Layoffs



## Morrus

Wizards of the Coast's annual Christmas layoffs appear to have begun.  So far, casualties appear to include *Rich Baker* and *Steve Winter*.  More as we hear more.

Rich Baker has posted his farewell on WotC's forums.

Today, Wizards of the Coast eliminated my position. I have unfortunately been let go, after more than 20 years of employment with TSR/WotC.

I still hope to write for the Forgotten Realms novel line as time and opportunity permit. In fact, I'm going to go home tonight and finish my second draft of Prince of Ravens. There may be some more opportunities down the road.

D&D fans... thanks for a great run. I hope I've given you some good gaming over the years. Your game is in good hands with Mike and Monte.

For fans of the A&A minis games, I would like to say that this does not signal the cancellation of any miniatures lines. I hope I can take on some of the design work on a freelance basis, but we'll have to see.

Time to splice the main brace, as they say. Good gaming, all!​Interestingly, it seems this must have come as a sudden surprise because just yesterday (the 13th) he was posting about the work he'd be doing in the New Year.


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## _NewbieDM_

*Layoff rumors at WOTC*

Author Phil Athans just tweeted that Rick baker has been laid off at WOTC.

If this is true it sucks, Baker's one of the good guys there.

Lets hope that the "layoffs during christmas" tradition has died.

https://twitter.com/#!/PhilAthans


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## Matt James

Edit: Both are confirmed. Rich Baker and Steve Winter.


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## Richards

_NewbieDM_ said:


> Let's hope that the "layoffs during Christmas" tradition has died.



Hope all you want, but I wouldn't put any money on them suddenly breaking this tradition.

Johnathan


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## _NewbieDM_

[MENTION=1958]matt[/MENTION] - 

Two long time guys. This sucks.


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## darjr

that sucks


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## Matt James

Yeah, I knew Rich well. Good guy and will sorely be missed. He also did a lot of non D&D work, such as Axis & Allies and the recent Conquest of Nerath. Another fun fact is that he was one of the creators of the late-90s sci-fi RPG _Alternity_. To top it all off, he is an award winning author of many Forgotten Realms novels.


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## Dausuul

Matt James said:


> Yeah, I knew Rich well. Good guy and will sorely be missed. He also did a lot of non D&D work, such as Axis & Allies and the recent Conquest of Nerath. Another fun fact is that he was one of the creators of the late-90s sci-fi RPG _Alternity_. To top it all off, he is an award winning author of many Forgotten Realms novels.




Don't forget the Birthright setting.


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## I'm A Banana

That's sad. I've got fond memories of both of their work...especially Baker!

PnP Game Design: You can make it your life, but it'll only pay you to be awesome for a few years. And then: well, yer on yer own, soldier.


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## Mouseferatu

Oh, jeez. What the hell, guys?


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## Piratecat

That just sucks. I don't ever think I'll understand their criteria for who gets laid off.


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## Holy Bovine

Matt James said:


> Yeah, I knew Rich well. Good guy and will sorely be missed. He also did a lot of non D&D work, such as Axis & Allies and the recent *Conquest of Nerath*. Another fun fact is that he was one of the creators of the late-90s sci-fi RPG _Alternity_. To top it all off, he is an award winning author of many Forgotten Realms novels.




What?!  I was under the impression CoN was doing very well - it is favourably reviewed even on Eurogame loving boardgamegeek for gawd's sake!  Talk about a case of 'what have you done for me lately'...


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## Shemeska

Damn. Rich Baker was one of the few guys left doing D&D stuff over there that I could name off a dozen things he'd worked on and still be left with dozens upon dozens more that I owned copies of, still used, and really enjoyed. He did some good stuff. He also wrote the PSMC II with the guardinals and eladrin (and others) back in 2e. Good stuff.

I don't know what WotC is thinking here. *sigh and shakes head*


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## _NewbieDM_

Rick posted his goodbye at the Wizards' community site.  

Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible


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## Stormonu

'Tis a sad, sad day.  Two gentlemen of many credits on the things I liked.


I have to wonder if Paizo would be able to pick them up - if they still wanted to be involved in the RPG business?


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## Lancelot

Rich Baker's departure hurts me more than any other WotC departure in recent memory. Other than his tenure with company (massive contribution to the D&D line), I'm a huge fan of his work on Axis & Allies. Axis & Allies War at Sea is my favorite collectible minis game. Rich was the lead designer, and also a friendly community supporter. And Conquest of Nerath is an excellent game - was playing it with friends only a couple days ago.

Best wishes to him... but this really sucks. I would have been less upset to read an announcement that 5e is coming out next month, and the only playable races will be glitter-vampires and shirtless werewolves.


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## Mythous

I wasn't sure who Steve Winter was but I was familier with Rich Baker. Either way, it sucks to lose a job especially just before Christmas. 

I agree with another poster in this thread, Paizo would do good to pick them up, having followed Rich Baker and his work, he would be a great addition to their team.


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## Mark CMG

Here's hoping they both (and whoever else gets laid off) land on their feet soon.


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## Mark CMG

Mythous said:


> I wasn't sure who Steve Winter was (. . .)




Steve Winter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Pour

All the best Rich and Steve. It's a deep wound to be laid off, but I'm certain your credentials will land you in good places- PnP, video games, or full-time freelancing. 

Suckily enough, I find out tomorrow if I'm in something of the same boat. 

Could someone link the current roster as it stands now? And does this mean they're not gearing up for 5e yet, given the supposed tendency of hiring for the initiative rather than firing? I'm curious what people read of the implications, but maybe that deserves another thread.

Again, condolences and best wishes to those affected.


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## kitsune9

Words cannot describe how cold this feels when a business makes this decision around this time of year and does it year after year.

Good luck to Mr. Baker and Winter and to the others who have been let go.


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## Mark CMG

Pour said:


> And does this mean they're not gearing up for 5e yet, given the supposed tendency of hiring for the initiative rather than firing?





Cutting some higher salaried employees is fairly typical when a company moves in a new direction (5E is already underway according to some sources since bringing Monte Cook on board, who also just recently moved back out to Renton from Milwaukee).  I'm sure they'll hire on some young talent from the freelancing community into regular positions for lower wages as the heavy lifting begins beyond initial design then, after the release of the new edition, we'll see more layoffs again.  It's the nature of the beast/business model they have.


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## Klaus

This sucks. A lot.

Best of luck to Rich and Steve. I've always admired your work and I hope we can work together at some point.


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## Mark CMG

Sad news. 

Best of luck to Steve Winter, Rich Baker, and any others we have yet to hear have also been laid off.


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## jaerdaph

That's too bad. I wish both gentlemen the best of luck in their future endeavors. Rich Baker did some excellent work for TSR and WotC on D&D, Alternity and the Forgotten Realms during the 2e and 3e eras - I hope we do see him over at Paizo soon.


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## francisca

Steve Winter edited some of my favorite early 80's TSR stuff, including the 1983 Greyhawk boxed set, which next to the AD&D DMG, may be my favorite RPG product of all time.  

Hope you land on your feet, Steve, wherever you are.


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## Sir Robilar

This sucks. Best of wishes to Steve and Rich! 

After many years of exactly this, I  have to say that I despise this business model. It must lead to constant fear among the employers of losing their jobs. In such an atmosphere, how are you supposed to create top standard creative work?


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## Sir Robilar

This saddens me deeply. Best of wishes to Steve and Rich.


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## Jeffrey

Sorry to hear this. Best of luck to these two talents.


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## Roland55

Piratecat said:


> That just sucks. I don't ever think I'll understand their criteria for who gets laid off.




Oh, but you do ... you really do.

Whoever their bean counters believe will improve 'the bottom line.'

It's no different in any business.  But only a few choice companies practice such Nietzschean pragmatism at Christmas.


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## The Little Raven

Piratecat said:


> That just sucks. I don't ever think I'll understand their criteria for who gets laid off.




I would guess that it's based on what will save the company more money. Rich Baker was probably one of the more highly paid employees due to his long history with the company and his position near the top of the D&D hierarchy.

Add to that the fact that the economy is still crap and some predictions show a far grimmer future than previous ones, and I'm actually surprised its only two this time around.

This makes me quite sad, as Rich Baker has been a favorite of mine since I got him to sign my Birthright boxed set over ten years ago.


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## tuxgeo

Admired both gentlemen; I'll leave off the expression of degree to save space.

Didn't Steve Winter hire, or at least help train, Chris Perkins? 
They can't let Perkins go _yet_, though, can they? WotC still needs him to run the next adventure of Acquisitions Incorporated at GenCon PAX Prime 2012; *then* they could lay him off in time for the following Christmas, if they wanted to -- after he wraps up his Epic-level Iomandra campaigns. 

(Brrr. This puts Perkins' publishing of his 4E rewrites of the "Giants" adventures in a chilling new light -- does he have greater ability to get them published in _Dungeon_ while he's still working there?)

Edit: Acquisitions Incorporated at "PAX Prime," of course; not at GenCon.


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## William Ronald

Best wishes to Steve Winter, Rich Baker, and the other WotC employees who lost their jobs.  I wish them success in their future endeavors.


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## Janx

The Little Raven said:


> I would guess that it's based on what will save the company more money. Rich Baker was probably one of the more highly paid employees due to his long history with the company and his position near the top of the D&D hierarchy.
> 
> Add to that the fact that the economy is still crap and some predictions show a far grimmer future than previous ones, and I'm actually surprised its only two this time around.
> 
> This makes me quite sad, as Rich Baker has been a favorite of mine since I got him to sign my Birthright boxed set over ten years ago.




there's a lot of factors, many of them social.

When times are tight, lay-offs are a regular thing.  This in turn gets used by management to clean house.

initially, you dump the low performers or older, pricier employees

after a few rounds of that, there's really nobody who sucks.

At that point, it gets political and personal.

then you identify somebody you don't like and assign them impossible tasks, flag every time they miss a deadline and ignore any successes they had that year.  By the time reviews come around, you give the guy a bad grade, and he's the one identified by upper management for the next cuts.

Wotc is a habitual christmas time layer-offer.  I think overall, they set a bad trend as an employer.


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## Remus Lupin

I don't think I'll ever understand the idea that a) you should lay people off right before the holidays, thus ruining them, and b) laying off your best and most experienced employees. And don't explain why it makes economic sense. I'm not talking about the economics here.


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## 3catcircus

Remus Lupin said:


> And don't explain why it makes economic sense. I'm not talking about the economics here.




It actually, doesn't make any economic sense, in the long run.  

When you let experienced people go and end up hiring them back as freelancers, you can save a few bucks.  Eventually, though, they'll likely re-hire some of them as full-time employees, at which point any savings realized from letting them go are wiped out by the larger salary you have to pay them when you re-hire them.  Not to mention all the extra overhead of processing them back into your HR systems.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots

I understand the tax reasons for laying someone off in December, but this was not a decision reached this month, and to lay someone off now is reprehensible. Making a habit of it is outright offensive.


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## darjr

Yea. It turns my stomach. I mean there isn't a good time to lay someone off, but this certainly is one of the worst if not THE worst time.


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## William Ronald

Mark CMG said:


> Here's hoping they both (and whoever else gets laid off) land on their feet soon.




I hope so, Mark.  They have done a lot of great work over the years and I am sure that their experience and contacts will help them out.  Still, it must be painful to leave WotC considering everything that they have seen over several  years with them and TSR.


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## IronWolf

Best wishes to Rich Baker and Steve Winter. Not real sure what WotC is thinking. I agree letting experience walk out the door can be a difficult position for a company. 

I just don't understand why WotC does this every year at Christmas. I mean if it happens once, I can see. But every year this happens. Can't they work their books a bit to push this off to a different time. Layoffs are never good, but the feeling of animosity towards WotC seems much higher when they insist on doing this just before the holidays. 

We are in a small niche hobby, it doesn't help to look like Ebenezer Scrooge during the holidays - every year.


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## Jacob Marley

IronWolf said:


> I just don't understand why WotC does this every year at Christmas.




Hasbro's fiscal year-end is December 26th, IIRC. It has everything to do with budgeting for the next fiscal year.

On the off-chance that either Rich or Steve read this, I hope everything works out for you two!


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## Auraword

I've always admired and respected your work, Rich.  I wish you well in all your future endeavors.


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## I'm A Banana

3catcircus said:
			
		

> It actually, doesn't make any economic sense, in the long run.
> 
> When you let experienced people go and end up hiring them back as freelancers, you can save a few bucks. Eventually, though, they'll likely re-hire some of them as full-time employees, at which point any savings realized from letting them go are wiped out by the larger salary you have to pay them when you re-hire them. Not to mention all the extra overhead of processing them back into your HR systems.




More than that, actually. It's a very short-sighted practice. It only makes economic sense for one year. In the long term, it actually costs you significantly.

Because the value of an older, more experienced employee is that the 10 years or so experience they have in the industry has granted them a deep, longitudinal, experiential knowledge that cannot be matched. They know game design. They live and breathe it. It has made up their livelihood for a big chunk of their existence on this planet. It saves you money by doing things like avoiding newbie mistakes and by thwarting attempts by the marketing department to take over everything and by giving you a grounding in the work that you do, day in and day out. Older employees provide leadership, guidance, and skills that come from simply having more years of experience. 

Those benefits are difficult to quantify in absolute dollar terms (the benefits are more social, quantum, and structural, and though they result in absolute dollar savings, it is an indirect influence), so as far as the bean-counters are concerned, they're worthless. 

I get that when the axe drops, someone's head has to roll, and better it be a well-paid dude with good connections and a solid resume then someone in a more precarious position.

But if I were a WotC employee, I might want to start asking why the axe has to drop so often, why so many heads have to roll, and where the head of this hydra lies, because it's not like Rich Baker or Steve Winter were _poor performers_. If D&D wasn't meeting expectations, I can't imagine the blame lays at their feet. It's higher up and deeper in. The problem appears to be systemic within WotC. It's not like Paizo has to lay off a handful of old hats right before the holidays every year, and while Pathfinder is doing swimmingly, I'm confident WotC still pulls in a bigger profit at the end of the year, with or without the yearly firings.

It is as if the very organization of the company is hostile toward the concept of an employee working there until they retire. 

But lets hear Greg Leeds spin this news circa three months ago: 


			
				ICv2 said:
			
		

> *This year there have been some new developments in Dungeons & Dragons, and people are trying to read between the lines.  There have been some reductions in staff (a couple of long time people have left the D&D team), and also there has been a cutback in releases at the beginning of the year for D&D.  Are you reducing your emphasis on the role-playing game exploitation of the D&D property?*
> No, we are not reducing the emphasis on the roleplaying game property for D&D.  I need to correct you.  We have had some long time staff leave, a couple of people, but we haven’t reduced the overall number of people working on D&D.  We are constantly adjusting and tweaking our organization.  I think that any healthy organization has some amount of movement.  With Dungeons & Dragons, because of that direct personal relationship that our staff has with the gaming community, our ultimate customers, when someone changes it’s far more noticeable than it is in many other businesses.  But, I can tell you that in my 20 years of management experience I don’t think that I have seen an organization more stable over a period of 15 years than we have had in Wizards of the Coast or D&D.  You take the average tenure of our employees working on D&D and it’s extremely high.  We will have and have had occasional turnover, but D&D is a healthy, thriving business on the role-playing side and will continue to be.




When I think of "stability," I generally don't think of the last 15 years of D&D, honestly...from TSR to WotC to 3e to 3.5e to 4e to Essentials to now maybe 5e, and with christmas firings on a yearly basis, "stability" isn't really the word I think of.


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## Kzach

They had to fire those guys. How else could they afford Monte Cook's asking price?


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## Incenjucar

I wonder what the chances are of the various layoffs getting together and founding their own game company...


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## Dice4Hire

Piratecat said:


> That just sucks. I don't ever think I'll understand their criteria for who gets laid off.




Well, if Enworld used the same criteria, all you mods would be long gone.


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## Windjammer

Sad news indeed - and it's not simply that they fired someone, or that they fired someone at this time of the year. No, I'm astounded who they chose to send off.

Steve Winter, I think, has been working on and off WotC for several years now. I've always appreciated him for his "D&D Alumni" columns which at times seemed the only historical perspective left at WotC. For instance, his write-up on the use of miniatures in D&D's early to later incarnations was really well researched, thought out, and presented. It helped clear a lot of bickering around the topic in several RPG forums. It's rare that a WotC writer can do that - write something so well that he stands heads and shoulders above what you can retrieve online in fan blogs, and find a fairly conclusive and definitive statement.

That brings me to Rich Baker:



Morrus said:


> Rich Baker has posted his farewell on WotC's forums.
> D&D fans... thanks for a great run. I hope I've given you some good gaming over the years. Your game is in good hands with Mike and Monte.​



​ Hi Rich! I appreciate the courtesy you express towards your remaining colleagues, but I would be surprised if you think your last line is actually true. Monte's columns have been pretty much the opposite of what Steve's have always been. They border on the pedestrian, are very unclear as to their actual content, and few people should have difficulty finding something more intelligent or coherent at a random fan's blog posts. 

Since his hiring in 2005 with the knight class for PHB 2 class, Mike has not exactly encouraged us to believe he can deliver a finished design. It seems he is better at describing an idea than designing it.

Next to Chris Perkins you were, to me at least, one of the two designers left at WotC who could actually design. I still think your Cormyr adventure for 3.x was one of the finest adventures of that era, and unlike other colleagues of yours (*cough* Bruce Cordell *cough*) putting your time to novels has not brought about a quality deterioriation in your RPG work. 4E's version of Dark Sun was an impressive piece of work, it was arguably the only campaign setting for 4E that met universal acclaim. Be proud of it, and know that your work will continue to be appreciated, especially in times when the future of game and the existence of quality products for it is not assured at all. 

Best of luck, Rich and Steve!


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## Kzach

Dice4Hire said:


> Well, if Enworld used the same criteria, all you mods would be long gone.




Suddenly I see the wisdom in WotC's tactics


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## Evenglare

Thats a  thing to do. I see this every year , eventually I forget about it but then it comes up again. It's uncalled for to do this right before christmas or whatever holiday.


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## S'mon

I get the impression that US suits go to business school and get taught that laying off random employees is somehow good for business - 'creative destruction' or somesuch.  To me it seems like a terrible idea, guaranteed to ensure that nobody has any loyalty to or emotional investment in your company.   It's particularly stupid when dealing with creative types.

I may be wrong; the guys who get laid off may not take it personally, again there's probably a cultural difference from the UK.  Here being made redundant is a huge kick in the teeth, you can definitely forget about trying to hire them back again, even if they're not suing you for wrongful dismissal.


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## Incenjucar

I expect that, in the US, we take it much worse. Keep in mind that we have a terrible support structure, and little respect for our artists in many circles.


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## S'mon

Incenjucar said:


> I expect that, in the US, we take it much worse. Keep in mind that we have a terrible support structure, and little respect for our artists in many circles.




Reading "State of the Mongoose", I saw Matt Sprange does the typical thing for UK companies in bad times and boasts of their efforts to *avoid* redundancies.  It seems like (many) US companies measure their virility by how many employees they've laid off.


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## delericho

Well, that sucks. Best of luck to those who were let go - hopefully they will quickly find themselves with better employment.


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## delericho

This sucks.

I hope those affected are able to find new, and better, employment in the near future. Good luck!


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## 3catcircus

S'mon said:


> Reading "State of the Mongoose", I saw Matt Sprange does the typical thing for UK companies in bad times and boasts of their efforts to *avoid* redundancies.  It seems like (many) US companies measure their virility by how many employees they've laid off.




Not really - its just the short-sighted "we're focused on next quarter's profits" mentality amongst the MBA set entrenched in middle and upper management at many US companies.

Letting people go to eliminate redundancies as part of a long-range plan is one thing, but artificially making your performance appear better at the end of the year by letting go people who are necessary for the long-term performance of your business is, and always has been, just plain stupid.

The best way to go about setting the number of positions within the company is to use a combination of attrition (not filling positions as they are vacated by employees retiring, quitting, promoting, or laterally moving within the company) and targeted shuffling of positions from one department (with an excess) to another (with an unfilled position).


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## Mustrum_Ridcully

Evenglare said:


> Thats a  thing to do. I see this every year , eventually I forget about it but then it comes up again. It's uncalled for to do this right before christmas or whatever holiday.



I am sure there is some perfectly logical and totally cold-hearted accounting reason why it has to be Christmas.


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## IronWolf

Jacob Marley said:


> Hasbro's fiscal year-end is December 26th, IIRC. It has everything to do with budgeting for the next fiscal year.




This happens every year. They can adjust the budget as necessary to do layoffs they deem necessary at a time of year that doesn't seem so ruthless. No one likes layoffs. For some reason WotC feels they need to do them annually. There is no magic even to the end of a fiscal year that prevents them from budgeting appropriately and doing annual layoffs in the spring.


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## Aberzanzorax

Sorry to see both layoffs.


Can anyone explain what the advantage is to the company to lay people off riiiiiight before the end of the company's fisal year?

I mean, as much as I dislike what happens on an emotional level with layoffs, if the positions need to be eliminated, why isn't that known in, say August?

Is it a balancing of the books that makes it apparent at this time of year that positions must be eliminated? Is it just looking good at the year end report?



I guess what I don't understand is the monetary motivation for doing so on a regular basis, with multiple employees, and always at this time of year...rather than on a more "as needed" or "this position has just become unneeded" basis wherein people are laid off one at a time (or more ideally, moved to other positions within the company/given new projects to use their considerable talents on).


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## Remus Lupin

IronWolf said:


> This happens every year. They can adjust the budget as necessary to do layoffs they deem necessary at a time of year that doesn't seem so ruthless. No one likes layoffs. For some reason WotC feels they need to do them annually. There is no magic even to the end of a fiscal year that prevents them from budgeting appropriately and doing annual layoffs in the spring.




Or hey, here's a thought: How about coming up with a business model that allows you to sustain roughly the same level of employment for multiple years in a row, thus making layoffs a relative rarity instead of your special holiday gift to your employees.

Crazy, I know.


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## talok55

3catcircus said:


> It actually, doesn't make any economic sense, in the long run.
> 
> When you let experienced people go and end up hiring them back as freelancers, you can save a few bucks.  Eventually, though, they'll likely re-hire some of them as full-time employees, at which point any savings realized from letting them go are wiped out by the larger salary you have to pay them when you re-hire them.  Not to mention all the extra overhead of processing them back into your HR systems.




They don't generally hire people back. They just keep laying people off continuously.  Monte Cook is the only one I know of that they hired back.  I don't know how they have enough people to do anything anymore.  They must rely almost entirely on freelancers.  I think labeling WotC as an evil corporation is not at all out of line.  I hope karma comes back and smacks them down big time.


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## DaveMage

IronWolf said:


> Best wishes to Rich Baker and Steve Winter. Not real sure what WotC is thinking. I agree letting experience walk out the door can be a difficult position for a company.
> 
> I just don't understand why WotC does this every year at Christmas. I mean if it happens once, I can see. But every year this happens. Can't they work their books a bit to push this off to a different time. Layoffs are never good, but the feeling of animosity towards WotC seems much higher when they insist on doing this just before the holidays.
> 
> We are in a small niche hobby, it doesn't help to look like Ebenezer Scrooge during the holidays - every year.




If I recall correctly (unless things have changed), WotC has a generous severance package.  Therefore, doing so before the holidays is not so bad as they will essentially have paid time off for several weeks.  A perfect time to go visit family and recharge one's batteries before finding a new job.

(And, of course, there really isn't any *good* time to be laid off.)


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## scruffygrognard

They are nuts to be getting rid of such talent... and crapulent for doing so just before Christmas.  Paizo would be wise to snap them up.

Best of luck to Steve and Rich!


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## D'karr

talok55 said:


> They don't generally hire people back. They just keep laying people off continuously.  Monte Cook is the only one I know of that they hired back.




Monte Cook was not fired.  He left on his own to seek better opportunities. Maybe he saw the writing on the wall, and preempted the firing, which I doubt by the way he mentioned his departure.  Some of the people that have been laid off over the years are still working as free-lancers with the company.

By hiring them as freelancers the company retains the expertise/experience but lowers the overall costs in senior employee salaries and benefits, which are the real costs to the business.

I don't like the practice, but I can understand it from an business/economics standpoint.

I wish both of them the best of luck, and holiday blessings.  May they both land on their feet soon.


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## Wednesday Boy

IronWolf said:


> I just don't understand why WotC does this every year at Christmas. I mean if it happens once, I can see. But every year this happens. Can't they work their books a bit to push this off to a different time. Layoffs are never good, but the feeling of animosity towards WotC seems much higher when they insist on doing this just before the holidays.




That's a good question and one that I've seen crop up often.  I just sent Rule of Three a similar question.  They may be unwilling or unable to discuss it but it would be helpful to hear WotC's rationale.


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## D'karr

Wednesday Boy said:


> That's a good question and one that I've seen crop up often.  I just sent Rule of Three a similar question.  They may be unwilling or unable to discuss it but it would be helpful to hear WotC's rationale.




I guess it will be a little "hard" for Rich Baker to answer this rule of three question.

Businesses are rarely going to discuss their business practices outside of their own walls.


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## TerraDave

This is harsh.

Steve Winters was one of the last true old timers and Baker had my favorite DDI column and has done all kinds of stuff.

As for the quote about D&D staffing levels...I guess you can read my XP comment above.


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## Wednesday Boy

D'karr said:


> Businesses are rarely going to discuss their business practices outside of their own walls.




Even so, it doesn't hurt to ask.


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## Azgulor

Gah!  This sucks.  I admire the work both of those gents have done over the years.  I wish them both continued success in future endeavors.

And generous severance or no, it's still a douche move to fire staff before the holidays.  Couple that with a crappy job market where it can be a long time before you find another job -- extra douchey.

Yet somehow I think that if 5E were released in January, it'd still be lapped up like an addict let loose in a crackhouse.  You want to know why some companies pull crap like this?  It's because they know that their customers will buy their goods anyway.


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## D'karr

Wednesday Boy said:


> Even so, it doesn't hurt to ask.




Sure, I just found it ironic to be asking it as a rule of three question, which was Rich Baker's column.


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## OpsKT

Windjammer said:


> I appreciate the courtesy you express towards your remaining colleagues, but I would be surprised if you think your last line is actually true. Monte's columns have been pretty much the opposite of what Steve's have always been. They border on the pedestrian, are very unclear as to their actual content, and few people should have difficulty finding something more intelligent or coherent at a random fan's blog posts.
> 
> Since his hiring in 2005 with the knight class for PHB 2 class, Mike has not exactly encouraged us to believe he can deliver a finished design. It seems he is better at describing an idea than designing it.




I firmly believe that Cook was brought back just to make a last ditch attempt to regain ground in the edition wars, by taking 5th Edition back to the rules-laywer mess that was v3.5. If they do that, I will not be buying it, and I will do my fantasy games with Savage Worlds and BRP. 

I also want to point out, that there is a lot of people out there, every day, fighting their little battles in the edition wars, clamoring for WotC to fail. Then they have the nerve to act upset when WotC lays people off. That's like people feeling bad for the Michigan Auto Industry that have spent the last 20 years telling people to buy Toyota! And it's either hypocritical, or the result of a huge intellectual disconnect. 

If Pathfinder 'wins' and D&D goes down as a game, it's not that Paizo will be able to buy the rights and re-publish D&D 'the right way' like people keep hoping, it's that there will be NO D&D RPG. As I have told many people, Hasbro did not really buy D&D for D&D, they bought it for Drizzit, and Elminister, and the like. The novel sales have always been a more reliable revenue stream than the RPG, as well as video game rights and now, Board Games. If D&D falls, outside of novels and video games, the only D&D you'll see are more of those board games.

The poor sales response to Essentials has led to this in part, which comes in part from the edition war I see on every forum and hear in every game store. All these people complain about Hasbro laying WotC people off, but then keep trying to put D&D out of business. 

If D&D was selling like it did before the edition wars, before Paizo essentially re-sold WotC's v3.5 rules under a new name (which Paizo admits because they needed it in print to support their bread and butter, Adventure Paths), these layoffs would not happen. But when Hasbro shuts down D&D, if the upcoming edition (they will not admit to using Monte Cook in an attempt to go back to something more like 3ed edition but different enough to call it 5th) does not meet sales quotas, then D&D will become an IP used only for video games, novels, and board games. Hasbro will never sell the IP because to sell it would be selling Drizzit.

And if that happens, Future Generations will never know D&D, only it's clones and retro refits. And that would be sad for gaming.


----------



## Umbran

IronWolf said:


> Can't they work their books a bit to push this off to a different time.




The fact that they do it every year at about the same time suggests that it is linked to their fiscal year. WotC's owned by Hasbro, and how WotC gets to manage its fiscal year may depend upon Hasbro's financial practices.  If they have some need to clear the debits and credits lines at the end of the year, they may not have much control over the timing.

It would be interesting to see someone with the proper marketing and financial savvy do a workup - in these days of the internet, what's the damage done to their corporate reputation by doing a regular round of firing every holiday season?


----------



## Harley Stroh

Piratecat said:


> That just sucks. I don't ever think I'll understand their criteria for who gets laid off.




Agreed.

On the 13th he's announcing plans for after the New Year: 
Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible

On the 14th he's fired. 
Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible

Lame.   

//H


----------



## IronWolf

Umbran said:


> The fact that they do it every year at about the same time suggests that it is linked to their fiscal year. WotC's owned by Hasbro, and how WotC gets to manage its fiscal year may depend upon Hasbro's financial practices.  If they have some need to clear the debits and credits lines at the end of the year, they may not have much control over the timing.




Yeah, I definitely suspect it lines up with a fiscal year. But surely the company operates with a budget that was planned quite far out in advance. Use that budget to figure out how to *not* do this just before the holidays. This is an annual event for WotC, not a surprise mid-budgeting error.



			
				Umbran said:
			
		

> It would be interesting to see someone with the proper marketing and financial savvy do a workup - in these days of the internet, what's the damage done to their corporate reputation by doing a regular round of firing every holiday season?




I agree. Granted we are a small subset within an already small niche that probably pay any attention to the people actually working at WotC. But I would have to think it isn't good to look like Ebenezer Scrooge every holiday season on some level. 

I don't think anyone likes layoffs and there probably isn't really a good time for them for those impacted. But in the run up to the holiday season just seems especially a worse than usual choice, especially as an annual event.


----------



## Dausuul

3catcircus said:


> Not really - its just the short-sighted "we're focused on next quarter's profits" mentality amongst the MBA set entrenched in middle and upper management at many US companies.
> 
> Letting people go to eliminate redundancies as part of a long-range plan is one thing, but artificially making your performance appear better at the end of the year by letting go people who are necessary for the long-term performance of your business is, and always has been, just plain stupid.




Agreed. Sometimes you have to lay people off; that's the reality of business. And if somebody's not doing their job, of course you fire them. But annual layoffs, in good times and in bad, are a sign that somebody in management is doing a crappy job.

I suspect the impetus here is coming from Hasbro rather than WotC. Not to say Wizards isn't capable of making bad choices, but this smells like some exec trying to make next quarter's share price look shinier, which is mostly a pathology of big publicly traded companies rather than small tight-knit ones.


----------



## bdogtrdr

OpsKT said:


> I firmly believe that Cook was brought back just to make a last ditch attempt to regain ground in the edition wars, by taking 5th Edition back to the rules-laywer mess that was v3.5. If they do that, I will not be buying it, and I will do my fantasy games with Savage Worlds and BRP.
> 
> I also want to point out, that there is a lot of people out there, every day, fighting their little battles in the edition wars, clamoring for WotC to fail. Then they have the nerve to act upset when WotC lays people off. That's like people feeling bad for the Michigan Auto Industry that have spent the last 20 years telling people to buy Toyota! And it's either hypocritical, or the result of a huge intellectual disconnect.
> 
> If Pathfinder 'wins' and D&D goes down as a game, it's not that Paizo will be able to buy the rights and re-publish D&D 'the right way' like people keep hoping, it's that there will be NO D&D RPG. As I have told many people, Hasbro did not really buy D&D for D&D, they bought it for Drizzit, and Elminister, and the like. The novel sales have always been a more reliable revenue stream than the RPG, as well as video game rights and now, Board Games. If D&D falls, outside of novels and video games, the only D&D you'll see are more of those board games.
> 
> The poor sales response to Essentials has led to this in part, which comes in part from the edition war I see on every forum and hear in every game store. All these people complain about Hasbro laying WotC people off, but then keep trying to put D&D out of business.
> 
> If D&D was selling like it did before the edition wars, before Paizo essentially re-sold WotC's v3.5 rules under a new name (which Paizo admits because they needed it in print to support their bread and butter, Adventure Paths), these layoffs would not happen. But when Hasbro shuts down D&D, if the upcoming edition (they will not admit to using Monte Cook in an attempt to go back to something more like 3ed edition but different enough to call it 5th) does not meet sales quotas, then D&D will become an IP used only for video games, novels, and board games. Hasbro will never sell the IP because to sell it would be selling Drizzit.
> 
> And if that happens, Future Generations will never know D&D, only it's clones and retro refits. And that would be sad for gaming.





Echoes my thoughts from the last two years. While Magic has enjoyed a recent resurgence, its clear that the need for shareholder satisfaction is beating the drum at Hasbro. The layoffs of their game division in East Longmeadow, MA earlier in the Spring were a heavy blow. 

I think 4th edition was a good move in the right direction, but trying to pitch it and Red Box to a crowd of existing D&D players was relatively pointless. WOTC needs to aggressively pursue new customers with these products. Its a marketing issue, not a design issue.


----------



## OpsKT

OpsKT said:


> I firmly believe that Cook was brought back just to make a last ditch attempt to regain ground in the edition wars, by taking 5th Edition back to the rules-laywer mess that was v3.5. If they do that, I will not be buying it, and I will do my fantasy games with Savage Worlds and BRP.




Actually, I just had the thought that Hasbro CAN'T let Cook take it back to something like v3.5, so they'll have to do something new and different. Which makes me fear something like a Monte Cook's World of Darkness for D&D, which will be as far removed from D&D as that book was from the World of Darkness. 

Crap.


----------



## DimitriX

I can add WotC's cold-hearted treatment of its employees, even the ones with 20+ years experience at the company, to the big pile of reasons of why I won't buy any more WotC products.


----------



## talok55

D'karr said:


> Monte Cook was not fired.  He left on his own to seek better opportunities. Maybe he saw the writing on the wall, and preempted the firing, which I doubt by the way he mentioned his departure.  Some of the people that have been laid off over the years are still working as free-lancers with the company.
> 
> I never said that Monte was fired, just that he was hired back.  Anyway, I think we all can agree that this practice of firing people every six months (I think they've done a bunch of May/June layoffs in the past several years) is pretty despicable.


----------



## OpsKT

DimitriX said:


> I can add WotC's cold-hearted treatment of its employees, even the ones with 20+ years experience at the company, to the big pile of reasons of why I won't buy any more WotC products.




So they can use poor sales as a reason to lay off more of them? Did you not read my post?


----------



## Umbran

IronWolf said:


> Yeah, I definitely suspect it lines up with a fiscal year. But surely the company operates with a budget that was planned quite far out in advance. Use that budget to figure out how to *not* do this just before the holidays. This is an annual event for WotC, not a surprise mid-budgeting error.




Large companies these days often don't allow employees to carry vacation over from one year to the next.  That vacation, which would have to be paid to the employee if they decided to leave, technically counts as a debit on the corporate balance books.  When you have many employees, the sum total of that debit is no small thing, and it makes the overall balance sheet look more crappy.

Is it actually a financial issue for the company?  Not generally.  Unless everybody decided to leave (or had to be let go) at once and take that vacation as cash, it wouldn't actually have a major impact on the financial stability of the company.

But, how it looks on paper sometimes matters.  Maybe how things look on paper matters, so that they really don't want to hold onto people into the new year.  However, they don't want to let them go early, either, as then you lose their productivity.

I wont be surprised if, actually, they understand the issue, and are working to reduce it:  Note how Monte Cook is working for WotC now, but he's freelance/consulting rather than a full-time employee?  I'm now suspecting both WotC and Monte got it - letting a freelancer go when his assignment is done is not the same thing as letting a permanent employee go.  

None of which makes this any better for Mr. Baker.  I hope he finds something good, as some of his work has been excellent.


----------



## Pickles JG

I have no memories of Rich Baker fond or otherwise but I thought his "Rule of 3 Column" was excellent. 

I wish them both well!


----------



## ExploderWizard

Sadly, the holiday season brings with it two more victims of the Dread Pirate WOTC.


----------



## OnlineDM

Sigh. This is sad.

Folks have been talking in this thread about WotC doing these Christmas layoffs every year; I seem to remember some unpleasant discussion in 2010 with people predicting the layoffs, but that there actually weren't any layoffs at Christmas 2010. Am I misremembering? That doesn't make these layoffs any better, but I thought it was worth clarifying if there weren't layoffs last year that it isn't literally an "every year" occurrence.

So, who works on D&D now? I don't know much about the inner workings of the company. Only a few names come to mind for me (Mike Mearls, James Wyatt, Monte Cook, Chris Perkins, Rodney Thompson), but I know that there are more folks involved. Does anyone know how many people actively work on D&D in design and development? What about editing? Other D&D-related departments?

Did they just lay off 20% of their D&D staff? 10%? 5%? 2%?


----------



## Aegeri

You know I can take the poor, neglectful and sometimes just plain bizarre design of 4E since essentials because ultimately the game still works. Yeah, Wizards have dropped the ball on a lot of things for me - epic tier especially - but even with my computer dead (and my campaigns on hiatus as a result for various reasons relating or tangentially related to that) I was always planning to "come back". 

But this? Firing one of the best designers at Wizards? The guy who was largely responsible for the best designed campaign setting in 4E _by miles_? This is beyond idiotic as a decision and shows the intense hubris and disregard for 4E that Wizards has now. I will really miss him and his contributions to 4E are among the best that were made. I really hope he has a good future elsewhere designing awesome content. 

As for 4E, I think with this it just confirms for me the sinking quality and definite "5E is coming, who cares" vibe for it that Wizards has. I believe that if I wasn't sure before if I was done with it or not, this will absolutely seal the deal.


----------



## talok55

If D&D was selling like it did before the edition wars, before Paizo essentially re-sold WotC's v3.5 rules under a new name (which Paizo admits because they needed it in print to support their bread and butter, Adventure Paths), these layoffs would not happen. But when Hasbro shuts down D&D, if the upcoming edition (they will not admit to using Monte Cook in an attempt to go back to something more like 3ed edition but different enough to call it 5th) does not meet sales quotas, then D&D will become an IP used only for video games, novels, and board games. Hasbro will never sell the IP because to sell it would be selling Drizzit.

And if that happens, Future Generations will never know D&D, only it's clones and retro refits. And that would be sad for gaming.[/QUOTE]

I'm pretty sure they have been laying people off like clockwork since before the edition wars started.  I think they've been doing it since shortly after 3.0 was released, so I don't think that the edition wars or Pathfinder, or the poor reception of Essentials can be blamed for it.  They may be a factor, but it really seems like that's just the way WotC does business, which really makes you not want to support WotC anymore.  I'm almost of the mindset that I would rather D&D die than continue to mismanaged by WotC.  I have Pathfinder, I don't need to play an RPG just because it has the D&D logo on the cover of the books.


----------



## I'm A Banana

S'mon said:
			
		

> Reading "State of the Mongoose", I saw Matt Sprange does the typical thing for UK companies in bad times and boasts of their efforts to *avoid* redundancies. It seems like (many) US companies measure their virility by how many employees they've laid off.




I'm fairly confident in making an educated guess that, for all the layoffs, Greg Leeds isn't taking a significant pay cut or benefits reduction any time soon.

How about we have an airline CEO demonstrate what responsible corporate leadership in tough economic times looks like:

JAL CEO Cuts Pay - YouTube

It strikes me that laying off your senior creative staff, while the management that brought the company to the point of having to lay off people sit rather comfortably in their jobs, smacks of a moral hollowness. Not on the part of the company, of course -- WotC is a construct, not an entity that can have a morality. But on the part of the _people_ in management who make these decisions, for whatever justification they see for themselves. 

I dunno. Maybe I've just been spending too much time at Occupy and reading 99 Percenter stories.

I do get that sometimes layoffs are inevitable, that companies exist to make money, and that staff goes through changes. And WotC hasn't laid off people EVERY year. And there are good folks still working there (I'm fond of Mike and Monte, and Rodney Thompson is a good mind). But it is a bad habit, and one that certainly doesn't bring to mind anything like stability or confidence. 

It's not like not buying their product will help, y'know? The middle-to-upper management that makes these decisions are well insulated from the consequences of their actions. Ultimately, the weight falls on the shoulders of the worker who puts in an honest day's labor for an honest living wage in something they love for decades of their life. They are the ones who get let go. It is rarely the senators or emperors who face the barbarians at the gates. It is the farmers and the soldiers.


----------



## smug

Dausuul said:


> Agreed. Sometimes you have to lay people off; that's the reality of business. And if somebody's not doing their job, of course you fire them. But annual layoffs, in good times and in bad, are a sign that somebody in management is doing a crappy job.
> 
> I suspect the impetus here is coming from Hasbro rather than WotC. Not to say Wizards isn't capable of making bad choices, but this smells like some exec trying to make next quarter's share price look shinier, which is mostly a pathology of big publicly traded companies rather than small tight-knit ones.





I doubt any Hasbro execs know who Rich Baker is and I highly doubt they're picking out individuals at their WotC subsidiary and saying "fire that guy". Wizards lays people off, it has done for years.


----------



## mudbunny

Kamikaze Midget said:


> I'm fairly confident in making an educated guess that, for all the layoffs, Greg Leeds isn't taking a significant pay cut or benefits reduction any time soon.




But do you know if Greg Leeds' salary/benefits are so significantly higher than those of Steve and Rich that they would have a substantial effect were he to cut them?



> It strikes me that laying off your senior creative staff, while the management that brought the company to the point of having to lay off people sit rather comfortably in their jobs, smacks of a moral hollowness. Not on the part of the company, of course -- WotC is a construct, not an entity that can have a morality. But on the part of the _people_ in management who make these decisions, for whatever justification they see for themselves.




As mentioned upthread, WotC has been doing layoffs like this for quite a few years, since well before Greg Leeds entered the picture. There are quote a number of reasons why Rich and Steve could have been laid off:


Salaries/benefits too high to allow the D&D group to hire more people.
They do not agree with the editorial direction that 4E has been given for the medium/long term.
Steve/Rich decided to take the hit as opposed to allowing more numerous younger staff members to get laid off.

Does it suck, yes, but, as is mentioned every time this happens, people who work at WotC would have to be going through their career there wilfully ignorant of the hiring/firing practices of the company.


----------



## smug

talok55 said:


> If D&D was selling like it did before the edition wars, before Paizo essentially re-sold WotC's v3.5 rules under a new name (which Paizo admits because they needed it in print to support their bread and butter, Adventure Paths)...




"Admits"? "Announced" is more accurate, it was the whole point (at least at the time; it might be that RPG sales have been pretty profitable in and of themselves since that).


----------



## I'm A Banana

mudbunny said:
			
		

> But do you know if Greg Leeds' salary/benefits are so significantly higher than those of Steve and Rich that they would have a substantial effect were he to cut them?




Oh, it would have a substantial effect. In purely psychological terms, people work harder for a cause they feel worth supporting, and for a leader they feel is sympathetic, so a cut in management pay/benefits, to put them at a level equivalent with or even lower than the design/creative staff, would give a pretty hefty boost to productivity. Self-sacrifice is a brilliant leadership tactic that everyone from cult leaders to military leaders to philanthropists to rock stars to political icons have used to get people motivated to do remarkable things. It may be temporary, but there are few moments when one could use a temporary boost in morale and productivity than in the heart of a rough economic climate, when the company isn't doing so hot.

It might not have saved Rich's job, but it certainly would have skewed the odds in favor of not having to fire Rodney Thompson and James Wyatt (or whatever) next year.



			
				mudbunny said:
			
		

> As mentioned upthread, WotC has been doing layoffs like this for quite a few years, since well before Greg Leeds entered the picture. There are quote a number of reasons why Rich and Steve could have been laid off:




I'm not blaming Greg Leeds alone. I did say "people." It's a systemic problem that Greg Leeds did not create, but has inherited, and has, apparently, not fixed (though her certainly may have tried to fix it!). I'm also not exempting him, though. Rich and Steve lost their job on his watch. He can justify it however he needs to, and he probably doesn't stand alone (remember, insulated from the consequences of the actions), but he has been at least partially responsible for hitting two families with a not-insignificant sudden financial burden. 

The ultimate problem is that this is habitual. When layoffs happen once in a while, it's a sad state of affairs, and can be explained by things like a change in direction, or making room for new employees. When they happen year after year for a decade or more, through success and struggle, it is no longer just a sad state of affairs. It is a systemic failure of management and leadership. The problem pretty clearly isn't with Rich and Steve. The problem is deeper.


----------



## Morrus

I wonder how much folks at WotC worry as Christmas approaches?  Presumably they're very well aware of the trend, although the fact that Rich posted the day before about the work he'd be doing in the New Year shows that it was a complete surprise to him.


----------



## Zaran

"Thanks for this week's Rule-of-Three.  Oh... and could you clean out your desk we won't be needing you anymore.  And let's go ahead and take this stapler. Yeah.  Merry Christmas"


----------



## qstor

I'm sad to see them go and wish them well. I hope Paizo picks them up.

Mike


----------



## ShinHakkaider

talok55 said:


> If D&D was selling like it did before the edition wars, before Paizo essentially re-sold WotC's v3.5 rules under a new name (which Paizo admits because they needed it in print to support their bread and butter, Adventure Paths), these layoffs would not happen. But when Hasbro shuts down D&D, if the upcoming edition (they will not admit to using Monte Cook in an attempt to go back to something more like 3ed edition but different enough to call it 5th) does not meet sales quotas, then D&D will become an IP used only for video games, novels, and board games. Hasbro will never sell the IP because to sell it would be selling Drizzit.
> 
> And if that happens, Future Generations will never know D&D, only it's clones and retro refits. And that would be sad for gaming.




I'm pretty sure they have been laying people off like clockwork since before the edition wars started.  I think they've been doing it since shortly after 3.0 was released, so I don't think that the edition wars or Pathfinder, or the poor reception of Essentials can be blamed for it.  They may be a factor, but it really seems like that's just the way WotC does business, which really makes you not want to support WotC anymore.  I'm almost of the mindset that I would rather D&D die than continue to mismanaged by WotC.  I have Pathfinder, I don't need to play an RPG just because it has the D&D logo on the cover of the books.[/QUOTE]

Exactly. Being that I dont support WOTC any more it doesn't really effect me in the least except that I did like Rich Baker's work (prior to 4E of course. I didn't really follow his work in that edition) and feel pretty bad about him being let go. He's good at what he does though so here's hoping that he'll land on his feet all cat like.


----------



## DaveMage

So who's left that created 4E besides Mearls, Cordell, and Thompson?


----------



## TerraDave

Just a clarification to some of the above (and very much cold comfort).

Regular layoffs by the company that makes D&D go back to 83 or 84 (the golden age, ironically, when hundreds were working at TSR). The annual Xmass layoff started with Hasbro, in the 3E era.


----------



## Dannager

Zaran said:


> "Thanks for this week's Rule-of-Three.  Oh... and could you clean out your desk we won't be needing you anymore.  And let's go ahead and take this stapler. Yeah.  Merry Christmas"




Not to put a damper on the poo flinging, but the severance packages offered by WotC/Hasbro to their laid-off employees are reportedly very nice.

"Take this stapler," might be low-balling it a little.


----------



## talok55

[
It might not have saved Rich's job, but it certainly would have skewed the odds in favor of not having to fire Rodney Thompson and James Wyatt (or whatever) next year.




Wasn't Wyatt laid off earlier this year, or am I misremembering that?


----------



## Agamon

Zaran said:


> "Thanks for this week's Rule-of-Three.  Oh... and could you clean out your desk we won't be needing you anymore.  And let's go ahead and take this stapler. Yeah.  Merry Christmas"




Heh.  Those who didn't get fired get to hear, "I'm gonna have to ask you to come in on Christmas... so if you could just get here around 9:00, that would be great...."


----------



## Remus Lupin

Dannager said:


> Not to put a damper on the poo flinging, but the severance packages offered by WotC/Hasbro to their laid-off employees are reportedly very nice.
> 
> "Take this stapler," might be low-balling it a little.




I believe that is an "Office Space" reference, and the stapler is being taken FROM  the person being fired, not being given TO them as severance.


----------



## Dannager

Remus Lupin said:


> I believe that is an "Office Space" reference, and the stapler is being taken FROM  the person being fired, not being given TO them as severance.




Oh. Hey. Yeah.

Let's pretend that I never posted anything.


----------



## Erdrick Dragin

Sucks you got laid off. But then again, this is by the same company that "laid off" D&D with their 4th Edition crap which you had no choice but to deal with. Don't worry about whether you can do Forgotten Realms novels or not, the Forgotten Realms died when it was jammed with 4E. There's not many fans left.

~ let's not bring edition war preferences into this, OK? Plane Sailing, ENworld admin ~


----------



## Pour

Erdrick Dragin said:


> Sucks you got laid off. But then again, this is by the same company that "laid off" D&D with their 4th Edition crap which you had no choice but to deal with. Don't worry about whether you can do Forgotten Realms novels or not, the Forgotten Realms died when it was jammed with 4E. There's not many fans left.




I almost gave you experience points for making me roll my eyes and laugh. Cheers!


----------



## Dannager

Erdrick Dragin said:


> Sucks you got laid off. But then again, this is by the same company that "laid off" D&D with their 4th Edition crap which you had no choice but to deal with. Don't worry about whether you can do Forgotten Realms novels or not, the Forgotten Realms died when it was jammed with 4E. There's not many fans left.




notsureifserious.jpg


----------



## Moovanian

TerraDave said:


> Just a clarification to some of the above (and very much cold comfort).
> 
> Regular layoffs by the company that makes D&D go back to 83 or 84 (the golden age, ironically, when hundreds were working at TSR). The annual Xmass layoff started with Hasbro, in the 3E era.




There were actually 2 big layoffs during TSR era.  You mentioned the first, the 2nd happened about 6 months before WotC bought TSR, before X-mas of 1996 (which I was part of).

I do hope Rich and Steve both land on their feet after this sad day.

Michael Huebbe
aka The OGRE
Head Spellfire Geek


----------



## Alzrius

Moovanian said:


> There were actually 2 big layoffs during TSR era.  You mentioned the first, the 2nd happened about 6 months before WotC bought TSR, before X-mas of 1996 (which I was part of).
> 
> I do hope Rich and Steve both land on their feet after this sad day.
> 
> Michael Huebbe
> aka The OGRE
> Head Spellfire Geek




I don't mean to threadjack, but I was wondering if you knew of anything happening with Spellfire lately. The official home of Spellfire online - Welcome to the Official Spellfire Website! - seems to have died after the release of Conquest.

[/threadjack]

It's really sad to hear that Rich and Steve were let go. Rich's been a name I've seen in many of my favorite D&D products ever since I started playing the game, and I have fond memories of Steve's work as well. Best of luck to both of them!


----------



## Windjammer

DaveMage said:


> So who's left that created 4E besides Mearls, Cordell, and Thompson?




James Wyatt. Mearls and Cordell weren't on the core 4E design team. Here's the PHB 1 design credits. Those who haven't been sacked yet are in white. *Corrections welcome [Update: first corrections now incorporated. Thanks to Chris Pramas and Logan Bonner!]*

D&D® 4th Edition Design Team
Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, James Wyatt

D&D 4th Edition Final Development Strike Team
Bill Slavicsek, Mike Mearls, James Wyatt

Player’s Handbook Design
Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, James Wyatt

Player’s Handbook Development
Andy Collins, Mike Mearls, Stephen Radney-MacFarland,
Peter Schaefer, Stephen Schubert

Player’s Handbook Editing
Michele Carter, Jeremy Crawford

Player’s Handbook Managing Editing
Kim Mohan

Additional Design and Development
Richard Baker, Greg Bilsland, Logan Bonner, Bart Carroll,
Michele Carter, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, Bruce R. Cordell,
Jeremy Crawford, Jesse Decker, Michael Donais, Robert
Gutschera, Gwendolyn F. M. Kestrel, Peter Lee, Julia
Martin, Kim Mohan, David Noonan, Christopher Perkins,
Matthew Sernett, Chris Sims_ [fired, but back on contract-basis]_
Ed Stark, Rodney Thompson, Rob Watkins, Steve Winter, Chris Youngs

Director of R&D, Roleplaying Games/Book Publishing
Bill Slavicsek

D&D Story Design and Development Manager
Christopher Perkins

D&D System Design and Development Manager
Andy Collins

D&D Senior Art Director
Stacy Longstreet

D&D Brand Team
Liz Schuh (?), Scott Rouse, Sara Girard, Kierin Chase (?),
Martin Durham (?), Linae Foster

...

PS. And oh, New Staff:
Tom Lapill, (_possibly_) Monte Cook

Inclined me to give this comment.


----------



## Remus Lupin

That actually adds a good bit of very disturbing perspective of what these layoffs have meant.


----------



## Morrus

Windjammer said:


> James Wyatt. Mearls and Cordell weren't on the core 4E design team. Here's the PHB 1 design credits. Those who haven't been sacked yet are in white. *Corrections welcome.*
> 
> D&D® 4th Edition Design Team
> Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, James Wyatt
> 
> D&D 4th Edition Final Development Strike Team
> Bill Slavicsek, Mike Mearls, James Wyatt
> 
> Player’s Handbook Design
> Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, James Wyatt
> 
> Player’s Handbook Development
> Andy Collins, Mike Mearls, Stephen Radney-MacFarland,
> Peter Schaefer, Stephen Schubert
> 
> Player’s Handbook Editing
> Michele Carter, Jeremy Crawford
> 
> Player’s Handbook Managing Editing
> Kim Mohan
> 
> Additional Design and Development
> Richard Baker, Greg Bilsland, Logan Bonner, Bart Carroll,
> Michele Carter, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, Bruce R. Cordell,
> Jeremy Crawford, Jesse Decker, Michael Donais, Robert
> Gutschera, Gwendolyn F. M. Kestrel, Peter Lee, Julia
> Martin, Kim Mohan, David Noonan, Christopher Perkins,
> Matthew Sernett, Chris Sims, Ed Stark, Rodney Thompson,
> Rob Watkins, Steve Winter, Chris Youngs
> 
> Director of R&D, Roleplaying Games/Book Publishing
> Bill Slavicsek
> 
> D&D Story Design and Development Manager
> Christopher Perkins
> 
> D&D System Design and Development Manager
> Andy Collins
> 
> D&D Senior Art Director
> Stacy Longstreet
> 
> ...
> 
> PS. And oh, New Staff
> Tom Lapill, (_possibly_) Monte Cook
> 
> Inclined me to give this comment.




I might have to steal this as its own news item!


----------



## Logan_Bonner

Also still there (AFAIK): Jeremy Crawford, Kim Mohan, Greg Bilsland, Jennifer Clarke-Wilkes, Peter Lee, Matthew Sernett.

Fired, but now working there again as a contractor: Chris Sims

Plus there's more new staff than that, but that's not really useful as a comparison. Also, some of those departures were voluntary (Ed Start and Gwen Kestrel, for example).


----------



## Pramas

Not quite accurate.

Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, Jeremy Crawford, Kim Mohan, and Matt Sernett are still at WotC. Chris Sims was let go but recently came back. Ed Stark left WotC on his own initiative to move into the video game industry (I spent 10 months working with him at Vigil Games on the Warhammer 40K MMO). I believe Michelle Carter quit after Bill Slavicsek was laid off but I'm not 100% sure of that.


----------



## Logan_Bonner

JINX! Dammit, Pramas!


----------



## mcmillan

Windjammer said:


> Additional Design and Development
> Greg Bilsland,




Greg is still at WOTC unless you're breaking more news


----------



## Pour

Not to take this even further off course, but given the current skeletal staff and the idea new, affordable talent will be replacing more expensive, veteran designers, any ideas whose getting the invite? My guesses, and feel free to confirm or deny guys, Claudio Posaz, Matt James, and Ari Marmell going full time within the next few months.


----------



## Nemesis Destiny

That anyone is willing to work in this industry given the staffing practises of its juggernaut employer tells you something of the dedication these people bring to their work - a fact that escapes corporate management year after year, but hey, they'll get their bonuses for making the bottom line look good, so "who cares?" - right?

Fail.


----------



## Morrus

Pour said:


> Not to take this even further off course, but given the current skeletal staff and the idea new, affordable talent will be replacing more expensive, veteran designers, any ideas whose getting the invite? My guesses, and feel free to confirm or deny guys, Claudio Posaz, Matt James, and Ari Marmell going full time within the next few months.




Well, I dunno how that works legally, but Claudio lives in Brazil with his family.  I can't imagine a risky move to the US which could end at any moment would tempt him.  But I could be wrong - hey, [MENTION=607]Klaus[/MENTION], whaddya say?


----------



## Klaus

Morrus said:


> Well, I dunno how that works legally, but Claudio lives in Brazil with his family.  I can't imagine a risky move to the US which could end at any moment would tempt him.  But I could be wrong - hey, [MENTION=607]Klaus[/MENTION], whaddya say?



I'd be tempted. Not sure if my B1/B2 visa would cover it, though.

But no invites, guys, sorry.


----------



## ColinMcComb

From a purely business perspective, I can understand why WotC is doing this. It makes sense from a short-term financial perspective, it makes shareholders happy to see the productivity gains and immediate savings, and it frees up salaries from a 20-year veteran and someone with an even longer pedigree.

From a personal standpoint, it's pure garbage. Rich was hired at TSR a couple of months after me, and from Day 1 he established himself as a strong, creative designer, and he only became more knowledgeable thereafter. As for Steve Winter: he has always been a deeply intelligent, generous man, and he was the last real bastion of historical perspective for D&D at Hasbro. This is, in other words, a damn shame, and more importantly, a long-term loss for the company.


----------



## jffdougan

*on shareholder value*

Many people have pointed out that this probably relates to the end of the Hasbro fiscal year and the need to please shareholders.

Why don't we become shareholders? It would certainly give an additional edge to any letters that may be directed toward the WotC/Hasbro management (and I was at one point contemplating sending a letter to Hasbro's CEO addressing the degree to which some failures in the PR department were harming one of their brands), and actually give us some clout in making our opinions known.

Hey, maybe it's a pipe dream, but....

(Incidentally, HAS closed today at $34.30.)


----------



## ggroy

jffdougan said:


> Why don't we become shareholders? It would certainly give an additional edge to any letters that may be directed toward the WotC/Hasbro management (and I was at one point contemplating sending a letter to Hasbro's CEO addressing the degree to which some failures in the PR department were harming one of their brands), and actually give us some clout in making our opinions known.




They will certainly listen to anybody (or a block of shareholders) who owns more than 50% of the outstanding shares.

There's around 128.98 million HAS shares outstanding and a float of around 114.81 million HAS shares.

HAS Key Statistics | Hasbro, Inc. Stock - Yahoo! Finance

Anybody have $2.3 billion laying around to buy up more than 50% of HAS shares?


----------



## jffdougan

ggroy said:


> They will certainly listen to anybody (or a block of shareholders) who owns more than 50% of the outstanding shares.
> 
> There's around 128.98 million HAS shares outstanding and a float of around 114.81 million HAS shares.
> 
> HAS Key Statistics | Hasbro, Inc. Stock - Yahoo! Finance
> 
> Anybody have $2.3 billion laying around to buy up more than 50% of HAS shares?



Shareholder activism doesn't necessarily have to come from 50%+ stockholders. Squeaky wheel theory.


----------



## Derulbaskul

Rich Baker?

I always thought that if Rich Baker was terminated in one of these mass lay-offs that WotC is so fond of that it would be the beginning of the end of WotC. Perhaps that opinion is a bit extreme but he is genuinely talented.

He's the only RPG designer who writes good novels and the few WotC adventures that are considered well-designed generally bear his name (as was the case with Bruce Cordell in the 2E era [but now his name seems to be the kiss of death]).

Very disappointing. Rich was a good guy, he communicated with the customer/fan base and he was (and is) genuinely talented. I hope he lands a really great job ASAP.


----------



## Nemesis Destiny

Still, you would need 40 grand to buy up even 1000 shares, and honestly, they aren't going to give a rat's tail about some clowns with 1000 shares whining about the poor workers at the company. This is a corporation. They exist to crush the needs of the many under the desire for profits by the few.

If I'm not mistaken, it's actually unlawful for them to proceed in any way which runs contrary to the best interests of the shareholders as a whole, i.e. maximizing profit.

That's why everything is outsourced and why you practically can't buy quality products these days, even if you shell out big bucks for them.


----------



## WotC_Huscarl

Thanks for all the well-wishes, everyone. It's heartening to see so many encouraging responses. This will be my last post here with "WotC_" in my username--from here on, I'll just be Huscarl--but I don't intend to disappear, and I'm sure Rich doesn't, either. 

Steve


----------



## jaerdaph

WotC_Huscarl said:


> Thanks for all the well-wishes, everyone. It's heartening to see so many encouraging responses. I've removed "WotC_" from my username, but I don't intend to disappear, and I'm sure Rich doesn't, either.




Thank you Steve for all the work you did on great products I've truly enjoyed and treasured over the years. Cheers and here's to the next great adventure!


----------



## Incenjucar

WotC_Huscarl said:


> Thanks for all the well-wishes, everyone. It's heartening to see so many encouraging responses. This will be my last post here with "WotC_" in my username--from here on, I'll just be Huscarl--but I don't intend to disappear, and I'm sure Rich doesn't, either.
> 
> Steve




We all look forward to your future success in whatever direction life takes you.


----------



## Noumenon

Windjammer said:


> PS. And oh, New Staff
> Tom Lapill, (_possibly_) Monte Cook
> 
> Inclined me to give this comment.




Great post, the link did not lead to a Windjammer comment for me though.


----------



## Kzach

WotC_Huscarl said:


> Thanks for all the well-wishes, everyone. It's heartening to see so many encouraging responses. This will be my last post here with "WotC_" in my username--from here on, I'll just be Huscarl--but I don't intend to disappear, and I'm sure Rich doesn't, either.
> 
> Steve




9 posts under your WotC nick... well at least now you'll have time to bump that post count.






Too soon?

*Mod Edit:* Yeah, too soon.  Poor form.  How about we not try to wring enjoyment out of the misfortune of others for a while, hm?  ~Umbran


----------



## Atlemar

Nemesis Destiny said:


> If I'm not mistaken, it's actually unlawful for them to proceed in any way which runs contrary to the best interests of the shareholders as a whole, i.e. maximizing profit.




It's not that simple. Yes, they have to act in the best interest of the shareholders, but they historically have had great leeway in determining how to do that. It doesn't necessarily mean (as in this case) releasing your most-experienced but highest-paid employees in order to drive down costs. Note especially that keeping costs down never comes up in discussions of executive compensation or how much lawyers get paid.

It's actually been only the last few decades that there's been a push to define corporate responsibility as exclusively toward shareholders as opposed to other stakeholders including the employees and surrounding community.


----------



## OnlineDM

Atlemar said:


> It's not that simple. Yes, they have to act in the best interest of the shareholders, but they historically have had great leeway in determining how to do that. It doesn't necessarily mean (as in this case) releasing your most-experienced but highest-paid employees in order to drive down costs. Note especially that keeping costs down never comes up in discussions of executive compensation or how much lawyers get paid.
> 
> It's actually been only the last few decades that there's been a push to define corporate responsibility as exclusively toward shareholders as opposed to other stakeholders including the employees and surrounding community.




I agree with this. I personally work for a large, publicly-traded company, and I found it very enlightening a few years ago when senior management described having three groups whose interests the company needed to keep in mind: customers, employees and shareholders. That's a very useful way to think about companies in general.

Some companies put customers first. Zappos is a frequently-cited example here, and I'm sure there are others.

Some companies put employees first. Google gets this reputation, as does SAS. Tech companies do this a lot, especially when employees are also shareholders.

Some companies put shareholders first. Frankly, I think this is probably most companies, and it's understandable.

A well-run company will find the right balance of the three interest groups. You certainly have to take care of shareholders, but if you screw employees that will be bad for shareholders in the long run. The same goes for screwing customers. One argument I've heard is that it's rare to have long-term (as in decades) shareholders of companies any more, which means that shareholders tend to think in the very short term (since they don't plan to still be shareholders in six months' time). That's bad for the business in the long run, but if the current owners don't care about the long run, well, it's understandable.

Management is hard. It's possible that WotC is leaning too far toward shareholders and not far enough toward employees; I honestly don't know.


----------



## Windjammer

Logan_Bonner said:


> Also still there (AFAIK))






Pramas said:


> Not quite accurate.




Thanks for your feedback, I've now incorporated it above. In light of Morrus' XP comment I also inserted an entry for the brand team - out of 5 names I recognise 2 as fired and the other 3 as uncertain. 

But by all means, this would make for an interesting news column, Morrus, especially when conjoined to Greg Leeds' statement (quoted earlier in this thread) that WotC stands for constancy!


----------



## Windjammer

Noumenon said:


> Great post, the link did not lead to a Windjammer comment for me though.




Sorry, Enworld links to other posts only work if users have the same display choices on how many posts are portrayed per page. On my display choice, that post appears on page 2, on yours probably only much later. In any case, it's post *#70*. I simply state that if we look at how much talent was let go (referencing the PHB 1 credits), I wonder if _WotC _is ready for a new edition, and still has the manpower it used to have previously. It's not clear from the data we have how many of these positions were filled later on by equally qualified people, if they were filled at all.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully

Nemesis Destiny said:


> Still, you would need 40 grand to buy up even 1000 shares, and honestly, they aren't going to give a rat's tail about some clowns with 1000 shares whining about the poor workers at the company. This is a corporation. They exist to crush the needs of the many under the desire for profits by the few.
> 
> If I'm not mistaken, it's actually unlawful for them to proceed in any way which runs contrary to the best interests of the shareholders as a whole, i.e. maximizing profit.



While you are not allowed to act direclty against the shareholder's interest, you are not forced to maximize your profits for only their sake. The clause basically exists to make people deal responsible with their shareholder's investment. It is often used as an excuse to maximize profits, but that is just a misinterpretation - maybe one that has become very convenient for managers (and certainly for short-term investors that want to see quick money and don't require long, stable investments as they will be long gone when all the long-term effects of earlier decisions hit them).


Edit: Oh, well, OnlineDM said it much better than me. 
If the stock market "rules"/laws/regulations would provide less incentives for short term investments and more for long-term investments, we could actually see a change in the practicies and priorities. (Primarily because at some point, shareholder interest will line up with employee and customer interest) But in times of High Frequency Trading... not so likely.


----------



## OnlineDM

While this isn't quite the same as actual WotC employees being laid off, it looks like Stephen Radney-MacFarland has also lost his freelance gig writing the Save My Game column.

I remember listening to a recent episode of The Tome Show where SRM was interviewed, and I remember thinking, "Wow, this is cool. Someone who works for Paizo still has a gig writing for WotC. I like the anti-edition war vibe."

Sigh.


----------



## Windjammer

OpsKT said:


> I also want to point out, that there is a lot of people out there, every day, fighting their little battles in the edition wars, clamoring for WotC to fail. Then they have the nerve to act upset when WotC lays people off. That's like people feeling bad for the Michigan Auto Industry that have spent the last 20 years telling people to buy Toyota! And it's either hypocritical, or the result of a huge intellectual disconnect.




I forgot to answer to that earlier. Thanks for the reply to my post, and for a lot of food for thought. I agree with nearly all of it, except for the bit I quoted here (though I don't personally see myself in the camp of 'wanting WotC to fail'). 

The people fired this year have a long history with D&D, one that goes way back even before WotC took over D&D or Hasbro took over WotC. 

As others have pointed out, Steve has written for early Greyhawk material, and Rich was very active in 2nd edition - indeed, without him, things like Birthright would not exist. These are people who've shaped our game for the better part of 20 years.

It's fair to say that both authors have garnered support and fandom above and beyond whatever happens to be the _currently _favoured design directive at the company they're working at. This also explains why people with little brand loyalty left for D&D feel sad Steve and Rich are leaving. There's no disconnect at all. 

People with Rich and Steve's historical perspective and design talent could have helped to make (what's left of) 4E and (what's yet to come of) 5E a better game. Only time will tell.



OnlineDM said:


> While this isn't quite the same as actual WotC  employees being laid off, it looks like Stephen Radney-MacFarland has  also lost his freelance gig writing the Save My Game column.




Interesting development. While I'm sorry SRM will lose some extra income on the side, I always thought his blog (NeoGrognard) to contain much better content on 4E than what he wrote in 'Save my Game'. For instance, check out this column and his one on rituals and item creatino - these helped my game more than anything on rituals I ever chanced across in DDI. And they're free! 

So letting his gig go comes across to me as...
 a great loss to WotC, 
 a small loss to Stephen, and 
_hardly any loss at all_ to his faithful readers.


----------



## Ydars

WoTC's decision makes perfect sense; in the mad-as-a-hatter, through-the-looking-glass world that is modern business practice. Remember, this is the same genius mentality that has brought us climate change and the credit crunch, and it is all summed up in one phrase;

False accounting!

It is false accounting to pretend that laying off Rich Baker will only result in
his salary and benefits being recovered; yet that is all the balance sheet will show. It will not show that debacles like 4E are a direct result of pushing everyone out of the door who really understood the 'soul' of D&D.  But 'talent' and 'wisdom' cannot be measured and therefore cannot be real can they?

It is also false accounting to say that burning fossils fuels is cheaper than alternative energy sources; this ignores that damage that will be done to the economy of the world by climate change; damage that is now estimated to be 100s of trillions of dollars at the very least. And this is without even considering the harm done to animals and plants.

The sad fact is that we live in a world that allows the greedy to ignore or destroy anything real that cannot easily be measured just so they can get rich. We also allow these crooks to move around so much that they are never around when payback time comes; that's why we have the current financial meltdown because bankers realised they could sell loans they KNEW would go bad but which made them so much money that they knew they would be on their yacht in the Bahamas before the smelly stuff hit the fan.

That is the 'logic' of our world; it is ugly, cruel and mad so don't even try to tell me it makes sense.


----------



## ggroy

OnlineDM said:


> One argument I've heard is that it's rare to have long-term (as in decades) shareholders of companies any more, which means that shareholders tend to think in the very short term (since they don't plan to still be shareholders in six months' time). That's bad for the business in the long run, *but if the current owners don't care about the long run, well, it's understandable*.




One just has to examine who the largest shareholders of HAS stock are.

HAS Major Holders | Hasbro, Inc. Stock - Yahoo! Finance

It turns out, it is mostly institutional and mutual funds who are the largest holders of HAS stock.  No big surprise that they only care about the value of the stock in the short to medium term.


----------



## TerraDave

....


----------



## Walking Dad

Piratecat said:


> That just sucks. I don't ever think I'll understand their criteria for who gets laid off.




If it is about received payment, I hope Monte Cook is drastically cheaper, or this was a very bad decision IMHO. This is not against the person Monte Cook, but my judgment of their recent work I have seen.

A much criticized column vs an acclaimed one & a good selling board game


----------



## TerraDave

Moovanian said:


> There were actually 2 big layoffs during TSR era.  You mentioned the first, the 2nd happened about 6 months before WotC bought TSR, before X-mas of 1996 (which I was part of).
> 
> I do hope Rich and Steve both land on their feet after this sad day.
> 
> Michael Huebbe
> aka The OGRE
> Head Spellfire Geek



There were multiple rounds of layoffs in 83 and 84 and another big round in 96.

But I don't think those were the only ones. It seems like everyone who is anyone in the RPG biz worked for TSR or WotC at some point.


----------



## ggroy

81% of HAS shares are held by institutional & mutual funds.  (90% of the HAS shares float is held by institutional & mutual funds).

All it takes is a voting block of funds which collectively own more than 50% of HAS shares, to veto or vote down anything they don't like.  They can even vote to kick out the management and replace them.


----------



## Azgulor

jffdougan said:


> Many people have pointed out that this probably relates to the end of the Hasbro fiscal year and the need to please shareholders.




And they would be wrong.

WotC is a division of Hasbro.  There are no publicly-traded shares of WotC stock.  Layoffs at WotC might be a short-term fix/attempt to drawing WotC expenses in line, but the fact that this happens almost every year would point to a poorly run division, one that is not as profitable as it should be in the eyes of WotC execs or Hasbro execs, or both.  D&D is a small slice of a division, which is a small slice of the parent company.  WotC layoffs likely equate to a rounding a decimal from a Hasbro point of view.

In the limited ability for an outsider to perform an analysis of what's going on & why, it would be relevant to know the following:

1. Do the (mostly) annual WotC layoffs extend to other product lines or just D&D?  If it's across the board, then it's a managerial practice.  If it's just specific product lines, then someone's turning a critical eye towards that line.

2. Does Hasbro have similiar annual layoffs across other divisions & product lines?  If so, then this is likely a practice that originated with Hasbro.  While reducing expenses may result in greater profits (sales have to stay consistent or increase, however), they'd have to be sizeable cuts to increase profitablility and result in a better stock price and return to shareholders.


This far into the cycle, however, the fantasy of the evil overlord of Hasbro forcing WotC to do things rings false.  If Hasbro was this heavy-handed and was doing this solely to reduce expenses, then they should wipe out the WotC execs as the execs presumably make more than designers, etc.  Since this hasn't happened, and since WotC continues to have its own executive & managerial staff, I contend that these are WotC decisions.  

If the theory cited in #2 above turns out to be true, then the WotC execs are toeing the company line.  But they're still picking who's getting the axe.

I know many gamers like to think of Hasbro as the corporate suits & WotC as "gamers like us", but it's a business first folks.  Fantasies you tell yourself so you can feel better about supporting the brand doesn't change that.


----------



## ggroy

Azgulor said:


> 2. Does Hasbro have similiar annual layoffs across other divisions & product lines?  If so, then this is likely a practice that originated with Hasbro.  While reducing expenses may result in greater profits (sales have to stay consistent or increase, however), they'd have to be sizeable cuts to increase profitablility and result in a better stock price and return to shareholders.




Here's a recent non-WotC Hasbro layoff from October.

Hasbro to temporarily cut 180 manufacturing employees at East Longmeadow plant | masslive.com


----------



## Azgulor

ggroy said:


> Here's a recent non-WotC Hasbro layoff from October.
> 
> Hasbro to temporarily cut 180 manufacturing employees at East Longmeadow plant | masslive.com




Interesting.  Although the 180 are cited as "temporary layoffs" (we'll see) and represent about 3% of Hasbro's workforce is Hoover's is correct.


----------



## Klaus

ggroy said:


> Here's a recent non-WotC Hasbro layoff from October.
> 
> Hasbro to temporarily cut 180 manufacturing employees at East Longmeadow plant | masslive.com



And May: Hasbro to move 70 jobs from Mass. to R.I., lay off 75


----------



## Nemesis Destiny

Atlemar said:


> It's actually been only the last few decades that there's been a push to define corporate responsibility as exclusively toward shareholders as opposed to other stakeholders including the employees and surrounding community.



You mean the same few decades that have seen executive pay get launched into the stratosphere compared to that of a typical employee?

The push to define corporate responsibility is nothing more than lip service. One thing drives the corporate machine: greed.

I don't want to further derail this thread though. If you want to take it elsewhere, I'll be happy to oblige.


----------



## OnlineDM

Ydars said:


> WoTC's decision makes perfect sense; in the mad-as-a-hatter, through-the-looking-glass world that is modern business practice. Remember, this is the same genius mentality that has brought us climate change and the credit crunch, and it is all summed up in one phrase;
> 
> False accounting!
> 
> It is false accounting to pretend that laying off Rich Baker will only result in
> his salary and benefits being recovered; yet that is all the balance sheet will show. It will not show that debacles like 4E are a direct result of pushing everyone out of the door who really understood the 'soul' of D&D.  But 'talent' and 'wisdom' cannot be measured and therefore cannot be real can they?
> 
> It is also false accounting to say that burning fossils fuels is cheaper than alternative energy sources; this ignores that damage that will be done to the economy of the world by climate change; damage that is now estimated to be 100s of trillions of dollars at the very least. And this is without even considering the harm done to animals and plants.
> 
> The sad fact is that we live in a world that allows the greedy to ignore or destroy anything real that cannot easily be measured just so they can get rich. We also allow these crooks to move around so much that they are never around when payback time comes; that's why we have the current financial meltdown because bankers realised they could sell loans they KNEW would go bad but which made them so much money that they knew they would be on their yacht in the Bahamas before the smelly stuff hit the fan.
> 
> That is the 'logic' of our world; it is ugly, cruel and mad so don't even try to tell me it makes sense.




It's not false accounting; I have no reason to believe that there's anything shady or non-GAAP going on with Hasbro's or WotC's books.

It may be, however, short-sighted management. If it's the case that the product line will suffer in the long term from getting rid of these employees, then the business will eventually do more poorly than it would have had those employees been retained.

There's nothing incorrect or false with the accounting, but it's totally legitimate to argue against the business decision.


----------



## Ydars

You misunderstand me; I am saying that all business accounting is false accounting because it takes notice only of $ and only in a very narrow time slot. 

This is obviously wrong but things are set up this way to allow bad practices to continue in the name of 'commerce'.

To be a true accounting, all activity should be audited based on its effect on society and on the environment. This can and has been quantified in monetary terms but business doesn't want to know because then they would be forced to act responsibly.

I was just setting WoTC's practices in context.


----------



## ggroy

Ydars said:


> To be a true accounting, all activity should be audited based on its effect on society and on the environment. This can and has been quantified in monetary terms but business doesn't want to know because then they would be forced to act responsibly.




In practice, this would be very difficult to do with any mathematical precision.

Even if there existed some precise mathematical formulas, such formulas can be gamed and will be misused to the max.  A tangential recent example of this, is the abuse and misuse of the Gaussian Copula in the mortgages financial market.

Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street


----------



## Umbran

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This thread, and EN World in general, is not a suitable place to attempt to indict or defend general economic policy, or large scale corporate behavior.  We've got a "no politics" rule, and it applies in this case.

Thanks, all, for your time and understanding.


----------



## AdmundfortGeographer

Windjammer said:


> D&D® 4th Edition Design Team
> Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, James Wyatt
> 
> D&D 4th Edition Final Development Strike Team
> Bill Slavicsek, Mike Mearls, James Wyatt



James in red *AND* in white?


----------



## I'm A Banana

Windjammer said:
			
		

> James Wyatt




Innnnnnteresting. If I remember correctly (and I may not), he's working more with the board game side of WotC at the moment? At any rate, he wrote some of the most...polemical...words in 4e. 

Words like...



			
				James Wyatt said:
			
		

> An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun. Tell the players they get through the gate without much trouble and move on to the fun. Niggling details of food supplies and encumbrance usually aren’t fun, so don’t sweat them, and let the players get to the adventure and on to the fun. Long treks through endless corridors in the ancient dwarven stronghold beneath the mountains aren’t fun. Move the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter, and on to the fun!



and


			
				James Wyatt said:
			
		

> D&D is a game about slaying horrible monsters, not a game about traipsing off through fairy rings and interacting with the little people




IIRC, he moved to board games in last year's little shake-up, when Mearls got promoted. 

Curious.


----------



## Kzach

Ydars said:


> It is false accounting to pretend that laying off Rich Baker will only result in his salary and benefits being recovered; yet that is all the balance sheet will show. It will not show that debacles like 4E are a direct result of pushing everyone out of the door who really understood the 'soul' of D&D.  But 'talent' and 'wisdom' cannot be measured and therefore cannot be real can they?




I love this.

In the same breath you praise Rich Baker and yet denounce one of the products he worked on. Is he sinner or saint? Or are you just mad, bro?


----------



## jffdougan

ggroy said:


> One just has to examine who the largest shareholders of HAS stock are.
> 
> HAS Major Holders | Hasbro, Inc. Stock - Yahoo! Finance
> 
> It turns out, it is mostly institutional and mutual funds who are the largest holders of HAS stock.  No big surprise that they only care about the value of the stock in the short to medium term.




True, although I suspect that's true of a significant population of publicly traded corporations.

My general point is simply this: If everybody who is currently involved with any sort of d20 game (yes, Pathfinder folks, this includes you -- you are playing something which is WotC-derived, after all) picked up some HAS stock AND then chose to make noise about the holiday layoff practice (either in person at the annual meeting, or via proxy), we might stand a chance of causing them to do something about it.


----------



## GrayLinnorm

They had to let them go.  They need the money to hire Lorraine Williams back.


----------



## Matt James

GrayLinnorm said:


> They had to let them go.  They need the money to hire Lorraine Williams back.




I haven't actually laughed out loud in a long time while reading something. Dude, you have earned a free sourcebook (or something). Come find me at Gen Con or DDXP.


----------



## Ydars

Kzach said:


> I love this.
> 
> In the same breath you praise Rich Baker and yet denounce one of the products he worked on. Is he sinner or saint? Or are you just mad, bro?




Need you ask (madness is never far away in my case).

Seriously though, just because he worked on 4E does not mean Baker backed every single thing it represents; I blame Mearls, Wyatt and Slavisek for the problems in the 'design philosophy' of 4E that turned me off it.

Baker did so many good things in the 3.5E era that he is excused in my book.

Oh and sorry for starting the corporate greed firestorm Umbran.


----------



## S'mon

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Innnnnnteresting. If I remember correctly (and I may not), he's working more with the board game side of WotC at the moment? At any rate, he wrote some of the most...polemical...words in 4e.
> 
> Words like...
> 
> "Originally Posted by James Wyatt, 4e DMG
> An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun. Tell the players they get through the gate without much trouble and move on to the fun. Niggling details of food supplies and encumbrance usually aren’t fun, so don’t sweat them, and let the players get to the adventure and on to the fun. Long treks through endless corridors in the ancient dwarven stronghold beneath the mountains aren’t fun. Move the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter, and on to the fun!"




Ah, the tyranny of fun.  One of the silliest paragraphs ever written in a D&D book.  Ironically I was just looking through the DMG2 the other day, and came across an example of a good roleplaying encounter, I think in the skill challenge section: negotiating with gate guards to get into a city.    I don't know if that was a deliberate riposte to Wyatt from another (better) designer, but I thought it was funny.

I think it's possible to extract good advice from Wyatt's paragraph:  You don't _always_ need to have the PCs negotiate with every gate guard, you don't always need to track food and encumbrance.  Sometimes it's fine to skip through the process of moving through the ruined dwarf fortress and focus on critical decision points & encounters.  I found for instance with PBEM play, that's a much better approach than the traditional dungeon crawl.  But taken 
in isolation as a hard warning against any sort of exploratory play, as advice to new DMs it's terrible, and has resulted in major problems with 4e adventure design.


----------



## S'mon

Ydars said:


> Need you ask (madness is never far away in my case).
> 
> Seriously though, just because he worked on 4E does not mean Baker backed every single thing it represents; I blame Mearls, Wyatt and Slavisek for the problems in the 'design philosophy' of 4E that turned me off it.




The original 4e design philosophy (PHB-DMG-MM) seems to have been Wyatt/Slavicsek/Heinsoo, but not Mearls.  Mearls seems to prefer an older aesthetic and was responsible for the change of direction with Essentials, which garnered a lot of criticism from fans of the 4e approach.  I was initially enthusiastic about what Mearls was trying to do, but as time has gone on the original 4e approach has really grown on me (I've grown adept at working around the problems while getting the most out of the new, good stuff), whereas I've found that IME Essentials didn't really achieve its design goals, other than to give me a great monster resource with Monster Vault.  Although a big problem with Essentials is the terrible online character builder; if they had updated the much better offline charbuilder with Essentials stuff then the E-classes would come over a lot better I think.


----------



## Matt James

Chris Youngs is still around. Not sure why he got put in red (??)


----------



## I'm A Banana

S'mon said:
			
		

> Ah, the tyranny of fun. One of the silliest paragraphs ever written in a D&D book.




It's interesting to me because Wyatt, old hat that he is, probably doesn't follow this advice in his own games. I've got every confidence that he's quite the fine DM. And, the paragraph comes from the core of a good idea (namely, you don't have to spend time on things your group doesn't like). 

But to any newbie DM encountering that paragraph, it's like he's saying that the only thing worth doing in D&D is a linear chain of combat encounters. 

I think Wyatt's lines earned 4e more enemies than it probably deserves, just because it was evident from what he wrote that a game focused more on exploration or roleplay wasn't "D&D" anymore. D&D was a combat game, and if you were talking to guards and faeries and exploring dwarven strongholds, you weren't doing it right, since that is "not fun." 

That isn't really true in 4e, though, especially as the game develops. I think this attitude is partially what's responsible for early 4e having noncombat elements that were so malformed. The first appearances of Skill Challenges and Rituals, the two things that handle all the noncombat elements in 4e, have problems that plague the edition to this day. 

Anyway, that's a different thread. And if Wyatt really does believe a linear chain of combat encounters is the best way to play D&D, it might be good that he's working on board games, and not on the RPG.  But it is curious that the only person helming 4e still employed by WotC is not even working with the RPG division anymore...


----------



## Balesir

S'mon said:


> The original 4e design philosophy (PHB-DMG-MM) seems to have been Wyatt/Slavicsek/Heinsoo, but not Mearls.  Mearls seems to prefer an older aesthetic and was responsible for the change of direction with Essentials, which garnered a lot of criticism from fans of the 4e approach.  I was initially enthusiastic about what Mearls was trying to do, but as time has gone on the original 4e approach has really grown on me (I've grown adept at working around the problems while getting the most out of the new, good stuff), whereas I've found that IME Essentials didn't really achieve its design goals, other than to give me a great monster resource with Monster Vault.  Although a big problem with Essentials is the terrible online character builder; if they had updated the much better offline charbuilder with Essentials stuff then the E-classes would come over a lot better I think.



I have to spread XP, but this post hit seveal "I agree" buttons, for me.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> It's interesting to me because Wyatt, old hat that he is, probably doesn't follow this advice in his own games. I've got every confidence that he's quite the fine DM. And, the paragraph comes from the core of a good idea (namely, you don't have to spend time on things your group doesn't like).



Yeah - I find it especially ironic that this topic is very much one that would be/would have been far better handled in the way Monte Cook is advocating in this week's Legends & Lore column. Change that quote to:
"*If* an encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun, tell the players they get through the gate without much trouble and move on to the fun. *If* niggling details of food supplies and encumbrance usually aren’t fun, don’t sweat them, and let the players get to the adventure and on to the fun. *If* long treks through endless corridors in the ancient dwarven stronghold beneath the mountains aren’t fun, move the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter, and on to the fun!"
...and you might get many more folks to agree. Lay out several approaches to play, including this one, and indicate what sort of play each will favour and you get an even better response, I'll wager.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> I think Wyatt's lines earned 4e more enemies than it probably deserves, just because it was evident from what he wrote that a game focused more on exploration or roleplay wasn't "D&D" anymore. D&D was a combat game, and if you were talking to guards and faeries and exploring dwarven strongholds, you weren't doing it right, since that is "not fun."



Indeed - especially as I read his "talk to fairies" as trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to get accross a rather nuanced point: if _all_ you are doing is "talking to fairies" with little aim or consequence, that _is_ a fairly marginal activity; if, on the other hand, you are talking to fairies to try to find out what the fairy queen knows of the evil wizard who is plotting to steal Springtime, that is a whole 'nother kettle of fish!



Kamikaze Midget said:


> That isn't really true in 4e, though, especially as the game develops. I think this attitude is partially what's responsible for early 4e having noncombat elements that were so malformed. The first appearances of Skill Challenges and Rituals, the two things that handle all the noncombat elements in 4e, have problems that plague the edition to this day.



Yep - 4E _still_ desperately needs a more cohesive approach to non-combat challenges.


----------



## zoroaster100

Has anyone started a Change.org or other online petition urging WOTC to stop laying off employees at Christmas?  I mean, even if I disagree with a particular person being laid off, I understand it's a business and we are not going to be able to get them to stop laying people off from time to time.  But we might be able to collectively put pressure for them to at least be more humane in how they handle these layoffs by not doing it before the holidays.


----------



## Blastin

Wow...really sad to see Rich let go like this. I met him at GenCon back in the day while helping at the Birthright game in the TSR castle, and had many a good exchange on the AOL TSR boards about Birthright. Birthright is still my favorite campaign world and I have always enjoyed his work. 
Rich, if you're reading this, I wish ya the best and am confidant you'll land on your feet.


----------



## Wiseblood

I'm disappointed WotC.


----------



## TheAuldGrump

Kamikaze Midget;5751984Curious.[/quote said:
			
		

> Windjammer said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> James Wyatt
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Innnnnnteresting. If I remember correctly (and I may not), he's working more with the board game side of WotC at the moment? At any rate, he wrote some of the most...polemical...words in 4e.
> 
> Words like...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> James Wyatt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun. Tell the players they get through the gate without much trouble and move on to the fun. Niggling details of food supplies and encumbrance usually aren’t fun, so don’t sweat them, and let the players get to the adventure and on to the fun. Long treks through endless corridors in the ancient dwarven stronghold beneath the mountains aren’t fun. Move the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter, and on to the fun!
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> and
> 
> 
> 
> 
> James Wyatt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> D&D is a game about slaying horrible monsters, not a game about traipsing off through fairy rings and interacting with the little people.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> IIRC, he moved to board games in last year's little shake-up, when Mearls got promoted.
> 
> Curious.
Click to expand...



Ye gods, reading those made me growl again, just like the first time....  He had me hating 4e even before it hit the shelves... then add the GSL, and I felt like a kid getting a dead puppy for Christmas. 

The Auld Grump, not freshly dead, neither, things was a movin' under the fur....


----------



## TheAuldGrump

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Innnnnnteresting. If I remember correctly (and I may not), he's working more with the board game side of WotC at the moment? At any rate, he wrote some of the most...polemical...words in 4e.
> 
> Words like...
> 
> 
> and
> 
> 
> IIRC, he moved to board games in last year's little shake-up, when Mearls got promoted.
> 
> Curious.






Balesir said:


> I have to spread XP, but this post hit seveal "I agree" buttons, for me.
> 
> Yeah - I find it especially ironic that this topic is very much one that would be/would have been far better handled in the way Monte Cook is advocating in this week's Legends & Lore column. Change that quote to:
> "*If* an encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun, tell the players they get through the gate without much trouble and move on to the fun. *If* niggling details of food supplies and encumbrance usually aren’t fun, don’t sweat them, and let the players get to the adventure and on to the fun. *If* long treks through endless corridors in the ancient dwarven stronghold beneath the mountains aren’t fun, move the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter, and on to the fun!"
> ...and you might get many more folks to agree. Lay out several approaches to play, including this one, and indicate what sort of play each will favour and you get an even better response, I'll wager.
> 
> Indeed - especially as I read his "talk to fairies" as trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to get accross a rather nuanced point: if _all_ you are doing is "talking to fairies" with little aim or consequence, that _is_ a fairly marginal activity; if, on the other hand, you are talking to fairies to try to find out what the fairy queen knows of the evil wizard who is plotting to steal Springtime, that is a whole 'nother kettle of fish!
> 
> Yep - 4E _still_ desperately needs a more cohesive approach to non-combat challenges.



Those '*If*'s would have made a difference - But he did not use any 'if's. Instead he made blanket statements, and his statements did not get curbed before seeing print, and formed the basis for many people's belief that 4e was not going to be the game for them.

I think that Wyatt, more than any other, was the source of the 'bad-wrong-fun' description that a lot of folks felt that WotC was trying to place on 3.X. 

And I will be honest - I think that he said exactly what he wanted to say. He said the same things too many times for it to be otherwise - that he really did view 4e as being all about the combat encounter. 

He was trying to limit the game to those things that 4e does handle well, and trying to play down what it did not handle well. He was not misplacing nuances, he _was_ trying to tear down 3.X in the hopes that by doing so he would promote 4e. If so, then he was very wrong.

Mind, 4e itself would likely have turned off some of those same people that were angered by his statements, but adding what many saw, and still see, as needless insults really did not help matters. Insulting your customer base is not the best way to start things off.

And I think that there is little doubt that folks _are_ using 4e for things far beyond just combat encounters, those statements weren't _necessary_. He would have been better served showing how those things can be done with 4e than by saying that they 'aren't fun' and that you were better off just not doing them.

Yet Mr. Baker is leaving and Mr. Wyatt is still there.... 

The Auld Grump, but at the rate WotC goes through people....


----------



## Bedrockgames

Auldgrump, I agree. Wyatt's statement was a major turn off for anyone who  prefered less combat and gamey styles of play. Right or wrong it came off as an offifial statement on badwrongfun. It felt like we were being told for the very first time by the makers of D&D that some styles were welcome and others weren't. And it wasn't just the substance of the statement, it was also the insulting tone.


----------



## Jan van Leyden

TheAuldGrump said:


> He was trying to limit the game to those things that 4e does handle well, and trying to play down what it did not handle well. He was not misplacing nuances, he _was_ trying to tear down 3.X in the hopes that by doing so he would promote 4e. If so, then he was very wrong.




So you assume to know his intent? Sorry, but in conjunction with statements regarding the effect of these sentences I feel witness to the birth of a Conspiracy Theory.


----------



## BryonD

Heh

There is no "conspiracy" nor is there any "theory".

James wrote those words.  That is fact, not theory.
They had the described effect all on their own.  No conspiracy support was needed.

You can debate intent all you want.  But, frankly, in the context of "who has WotC kept so far", the best case scenario is that they kept a guy who meant something different than what he said but both did an amazingly poor job of saying what he meant and ALSO didn't have the awareness to realize what the words actually meant when presented on their own.  The worst case scenario is that he actually meant it.  

Either way, if someone wants to not only try to say that debacle was not a problem but go further and try to point the finger at those who honestly observe that it happened, then that is just funny.


----------



## Therise

Xmas-time layoffs at WotC?  Completely unsurprised, it's their typical pattern.

Why not Cordell, though?  Is he working on something that protects him for a while?  Or does he still fit their upcoming vision, whatever it is?


----------



## billd91

TheAuldGrump said:


> I think that Wyatt, more than any other, was the source of the 'bad-wrong-fun' description that a lot of folks felt that WotC was trying to place on 3.X.
> 
> And I will be honest - I think that he said exactly what he wanted to say. He said the same things too many times for it to be otherwise - that he really did view 4e as being all about the combat encounter.




You know, it's all fun and games to rip on James, but you don't know how much of what made it on the printed page was modified by an editor nor how much of it was the corporate policy rather than what an individual author wanted to say.

It's no secret that a lot of people view D&D as a combat game. You see that all the time around here as well, and that's before any statements by James made it into 4e promotional material. It informed a substantial portion of 3.5's changes compared to 3.0. So I have a hard time seeing James's statements outside of the already ongoing context of treating D&D increasingly like a skirmish game.


----------



## I'm A Banana

billd91 said:
			
		

> you don't know how much of what made it on the printed page was modified by an editor nor how much of it was the corporate policy rather than what an individual author wanted to say.




Yeah, the intent here wasn't so much to criticize James (there's other threads for that.  ), but to present the "who is still at WotC?" in some context. It looks like none of the folks who helmed 4e are still at the helm of the RPG, either because they're laid off, or because they've jumped divisions (My brain registers the memory of him moving off to Board Games right about when Mearls was promoted, but I can't for the life of me find a reference to that, so maybe he's just been really quiet?).

This, and Monte's hire, and Pathfinder's continued success...

Curiouser and curiouser.


----------



## pemerton

Kamikaze Midget said:


> he wrote some of the most...polemical...words in 4e.
> 
> Words like...



As far as I know, "D&D is a game about slaying horrible monsters, not a game about traipsing off through fairy rings and interacting with the little people" is not from Worlds and Monsters. I think it is from Races and Classes.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> the paragraph comes from the core of a good idea (namely, you don't have to spend time on things your group doesn't like).
> 
> But to any newbie DM encountering that paragraph, it's like he's saying that the only thing worth doing in D&D is a linear chain of combat encounters.



Do we have any evidence for this? After all, this is the same ruleset that, in the PHB, defines "encounter" as both combat and non-combat, and in the DMG has a chapter on non-combat encounters.



Bedrockgames said:


> Wyatt's statement was a major turn off for anyone who  prefered less combat and gamey styles of play.



Not everyone who prefers a character-driven, story-heavy game was turned off by Wyatt's comments. To me, they suggested that the focus of the game is primarily the situation (encounter), rather than exploration of the GM's imaginary world. That's an approach to RPGing that is completely orthogonal to combat vs non-combat, and to "gamey" styles of play.


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> Not everyone who prefers a character-driven, story-heavy game was turned off by Wyatt's comments. To me, they suggested that the focus of the game is primarily the situation (encounter), rather than exploration of the GM's imaginary world. That's an approach to RPGing that is completely orthogonal to combat vs non-combat, and to "gamey" styles of play.



Really???!!!???

Obviously I don't for a second dispute that 4E works that way for you.
But can you explain how this is the obvious intent of the words in question as you read them?

I mean, seriously, he didn't say anything that remotely touched on the idea of "the GM's" imaginary world, and his whole focus was on pointing out situations that game was NOT about.  

I think your interpretation here is rather orthogonal to a simple reading of the words as stated.  And I'll even preemptively concede that painting the merits 4E as a game based on a few lines by one contributor is lame.* But setting  aside game loyalty, these was just a really weak statement.  I'm certainly a PF fanboy.  But there are some lame things here and there and I've said so.




* - I'd also say that in hindsight the painting provided by those words does turn out to resemble the larger tapestry of 4E.  But that comes from vastly more evidence with those words simply being a bit of omen.


----------



## Jan van Leyden

BryonD said:


> James wrote those words.  That is fact, not theory.




Of course, and I didn't write anything to the contrary.



BryonD said:


> They had the described effect all on their own.  No conspiracy support was needed.




I beg to differ somewhat. They had an effect, indeed, as any written word read by someone has. But to tell that they would have the effect to actually drive away people from 4e? Come on, guys. I expect roleplayers to be mature enough to evaluate the written word and decide what to use for their own game.



BryonD said:


> You can debate intent all you want.  But, frankly, in the context of "who has WotC kept so far", the best case scenario is that they kept a guy who meant something different than what he said but both did an amazingly poor job of saying what he meant and ALSO didn't have the awareness to realize what the words actually meant when presented on their own.  The worst case scenario is that he actually meant it.




So what? I feel free to run and play a 4e game different from the scenario James prescribes in these sentences. I don't feel obliged to remove roleplaying from th equation, though I have to admit  that we have preempted the removal of shopping list gaming a long time before those words were typed. 

But I felt free to run and play the original AD&D game completely different from what Gary Gygax envisioned and hinted at in many places. Frankly, we did give a damn about all that "official" remarks, the insinuations that to play non-official was bad.

Pray tell me, where's the difference?



BryonD said:


> Either way, if someone wants to not only try to say that debacle was not a problem but go further and try to point the finger at those who honestly observe that it happened, then that is just funny.




I fail to see a debacle, but it doesn't give me a headache to see other people seeing it differently. Fine that you find my stance funny, maybe I can give aou a laugh with my reply.


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> But can you explain how this is the obvious intent of the words in question as you read them?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think your interpretation here is rather orthogonal to a simple reading of the words as stated.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But setting  aside game loyalty, these was just a really weak statement.



There is a well-known approach to RPG design and play that focuses on the situation as the focus of play, and that relies on (by traditional D&D standards) fairly robust scene framing as part of that.

There were pre-publication comments by WotC designers that 4e was influenced by those games. See here, for example, where Rob Heinsoo said:

No other RPG’s are in this boat. There might not be anyone else out there who would publish this kind of game. They usually get entrenched in the simulation aspect.

Indie games are similar in that they emphasize the gameplay aspect, but they’re super-focused, like a narrow laser. D&D has to be more general to accommodate a wide range of play.​
Here is the Wyatt comment from p 105 of the DMG:

Every encounter in an adventure should be fun. As much as possible, fast-forward through the parts of an adventure that aren’t fun. An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun. Tell the players they get through the gate without much trouble and move on to the fun. Niggling details of food supplies and encumbrance usually aren’t fun, so don’t sweat them, and let the players get to the adventure and on to the fun. Long treks through endless corridors in the ancient dwarven stronghold beneath the mountains aren’t fun. Move the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter, and on to the fun!​
To me, the most natural reading of this - given that it is instructional text for GMing a fantasy RPG - is that it tells the GM to be fairly robust in framing scenes ("fast foward through the parts of an adventure that aren't fun" and "[m]ove the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter"). It also suggests that some scenes are likely to be less gripping than others - those that involve entering a city's gates and paying a toll to the guards, for example, or those that involve eating food and stowing gear.

It fits fairly well with the following passages from the PHB p 9:

Each adventure is made up of encounters - challenges of some sort that your characters face.

Encounters come in two types.

*Combat encounters* are battles against nefarious foes. . .

*Noncombat encounters* include deadly traps, difficult puzzles, and other obstacles to overcome. . . Noncombat encounters also include social interactions, such as attempts to persuade, bargain with, or obtain information from a nonplayer character (NPC) controlled by the DM. Whenever you decide that your character wants to talk to a person or monster, it’s a noncombat encounter. . .

Between encounters, your characters explore the world. . .​
And also PHB pp 258-60:

Encounters are where the action of the D&D game takes place, whether the encounter is a life-or-death battle against monstrous foes, a high-stakes negotiation with a duke and his vizier, or a death-defying climb up the Cliffs of Desolation. . .

In an encounter, either you succeed in overcoming a challenge or you fail and have to face the consequences. . .

Two kinds of encounters occur in most D&D adventures: combat and noncombat encounters. . .

A significant part of D&D adventures is exploration, which takes place between encounters.​
I don't think that this is, by any means, the best-written RPGing advice ever. The treatment of similar issues in the Burning Wheel Adventure Burner, for example, is in my view a lot better. But I think the general intent is fairly clear. I also think it's pretty obvious that if (for example) the conversation with the two guards at the city gate isn't just the GM making the players play out the scene for the sake of it, but in order (let's say) to discover whether the PCs' enemy already entered the town, then Wyatt (and the game rules) have no objection to playing out the scene - it would be a non-combat encounter of the sort described on page 9 of the PHB. (The game even has a suggested mechanic - skill challenges - although it doesn't give very much advice on how to use it, or when to rely instead on a simple skill check.)

For me, at least, given WotC's access to extensive market research compared to most other RPG publishers past and present, Wyatt's coments give rise to a question: did Wyatt (or WotC) have reason to think that potential players of D&D were being put off by GMs who insisted on resolving every single piece of exploration via a full application of the action resolution mechanics? (Adventure Paths also depend upon hard scene-framing - they just go about it in a slightly different way from that suggested by Wyatt.)

Of course, there's a further question of whether this "fast forwarding" advice is _good_ advice. Trying to change D&D from a "continuous exploration" style of game (as envisaged eg in the discussion of dungeon expeditions in Gygax's PHB and of measuring campaign time in his DMG) into a scene-framing style of game is a major change, and apparently unpopular in some quarters. But if you _do_ want to make that change, then cutting down on pointless encounters with guards, with campsites, with backpacks, etc is one fairly obvious path to take. The general contrast in playstyles is expressed by Ron Edwards here, in a discussion of "step-on-up" attitudes towards situations:

Most Simulationist-oriented players won't Step Up - they get no gleam in their eye when the Challenge hits, and some are even happy just to piddle about and "be."​
Wyatt is gesturing - however inadequately - at techniques to move away from "piddling about" and "being", to instead make the situation - the challenge - the focus of play. Regardless of how many people want to play that way, I was surprised that Wyatt's comment drew such ire back when it was first published, and I remain surprised. I think that there are many reasons - overwhelmingly mechanical - that 4e is not a very good game for those of simulationist tastes. But I put Wyatt's suggestion that "just piddling around and being" is not fun in the same camp as Gygax's discussions in the AD&D rulebooks of what makes for "skilled play": a designer's expression of preference for how their game is to be played. If I don't like the advice, I don't take it - but I don't get affronted by it. If I think that my preferences are different, I'll just consider it a possible reason to look for a different game engine.


----------



## Sonny

Ydars said:


> Need you ask (madness is never far away in my case).
> 
> Seriously though, just because he worked on 4E does not mean Baker backed every single thing it represents; I blame Mearls, Wyatt and Slavisek for the problems in the 'design philosophy' of 4E that turned me off it.
> 
> Baker did so many good things in the 3.5E era that he is excused in my book.
> 
> Oh and sorry for starting the corporate greed firestorm Umbran.




Rich Baker was one of the people behind the 4E Forgotten Realms revision. In fact, him, along with the Phil Athans and Bruce Cordell did the initial draft of the 4e Story Bible, which contained the much maligned Spellplague idea.

So yeah, he may not have backed everything 4E, but he was definitely one of those responsible for one of Fourth Edition's largest (perceived) failures.

That being said, I think the recently ended Nerathi Legends, has been one of the best series to appear in Dragon Magazine in the last few years. He's done a lot of great work, and deserved better. I hope he lands on his feet, and continues to work in this industry. 

As for WoTC, they should consider that this god awful practice of theirs has actually given one of their biggest competitors, Paizo, a very talented and experienced stable of writers and designers to call on as needed. 

Way to (continuously) shoot yourself in foot, Wizards!


----------



## Bedrockgames

Pemerton I don't disagree 4e can be played tgat way and I like GMing situationally as defined by Clash Bowley but I really think you are reaching here. He says point blank an encounter with two guards isn't fun. Doesn't qualify the statement at all. The big problem I have with the advice is it fails to acknowledge and describe the range of styles out there. It settles on a narrow approach to the game. Personally I think Wyatts words stand as some of the worst ever written for D&D.

That said I do realize there could have been an editor behind the final product. I know from experience a lot of people in the industry dislike cautious writing that includes lots of "ifs" and "thens". But all we have to go on is what is on the page.


----------



## Tuft

TheAuldGrump said:


> Ye gods, reading those made me growl again, just like the first time....  He had me hating 4e even before it hit the shelves...
> 
> The Auld Grump, not freshly dead, neither, things was a movin' under the fur....




Yes, it really makes the blood pressure rise again.

It really was the first major warning flag, and it was a red flag indeed...

Then when the PHB appeared and Skill Challenges was nothing at all like what had been in the prerelease books, but only some kind of Yazee, and rituals just an embarrasing afterthought - well, when my GM indicated that he was pressing on with 4E anyway, the pit could not have been darker...


----------



## darjr

I must admit that the two guards quote cased a double take for me. One of the best 'encounters' I have had the priveldge to game in was the guards at the gate of the keep on the border lands.

I almost thought that 'encounter' was almost iconic. I must have been wrong.


----------



## Ydars

darjr said:


> I must admit that the two guards quote cased a double take for me. One of the best 'encounters' I have had the priveldge to game in was the guards at the gate of the keep on the border lands.
> 
> I almost thought that 'encounter' was almost iconic. I must have been wrong.




Oh you were wrong; BadFunWrong!! (joke)

Honestly; I had forgotten it was Wyatt who said that stuff online and in the DMG. It is certainly the statement that crystallised for me how far WoTC had taken D&D away from what I thought it was.

And yet he is still at WoTC!

Do Monte's ramblings worry anyone else? The noises coming out of WoTC about 5E seem to me to be just as confused and off base as some of the stuff that was said during the pre4E era,


----------



## Nemesis Destiny

For what its worth (i.e. not much), I agree with what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said on the subject. The problem is, most folks clearly won't think to that level on the topic, as evidenced by all the "all we have to go on is what's written" comments I've seen on the subject. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that most of the comments to that effect came from people who _don't want to_ think to that level on it. They had already made up their minds about 4e, and this was just fuel for the fires of their growing ire for the product.

I think that's honestly a lot closer to the truth.

Most of us don't play the Gygaxian Way, and yet what he wrote didn't deter us. I don't share the opinions of Wyatt (if that's really his opinion, and not something he was told to write or the words of an editor). I do whatever feels right for my players, and whatever works for the type of game I want to run, and sometimes those things change from session to session, let alone campaign to campaign or even game system to game system.

So yeah, I tend to run 4e against the written advice, and so do the other DMs in my gaming group; what of it? It still works, it's still a great game to play (for us), and for the most part, my players seem to agree. I don't buy into that crap about 4e being a "bad choice" for some styles of play. The game is what you make it, and that applies to pretty much any game.


----------



## Therise

TheAuldGrump said:


> ...I think that Wyatt, more than any other, was the source of the 'bad-wrong-fun' description that a lot of folks felt that WotC was trying to place on 3.X.
> 
> And I will be honest - I think that he said exactly what he wanted to say. He said the same things too many times for it to be otherwise - that he really did view 4e as being all about the combat encounter.
> 
> He was trying to limit the game to those things that 4e does handle well, and trying to play down what it did not handle well. He was not misplacing nuances, he _was_ trying to tear down 3.X in the hopes that by doing so he would promote 4e. If so, then he was very wrong.
> 
> Mind, 4e itself would likely have turned off some of those same people that were angered by his statements, but adding what many saw, and still see, as needless insults really did not help matters. Insulting your customer base is not the best way to start things off.
> 
> And I think that there is little doubt that folks _are_ using 4e for things far beyond just combat encounters, those statements weren't _necessary_. He would have been better served showing how those things can be done with 4e than by saying that they 'aren't fun' and that you were better off just not doing them.
> 
> Yet Mr. Baker is leaving and Mr. Wyatt is still there....
> 
> The Auld Grump, but at the rate WotC goes through people....



After a period of being intensely angry at how WotC nuclear-bombed the Forgotten Realms, reading words like this from Wyatt, and then hearing the uppity marketing messages of "4E is better in ways you can't possibly imagine, it's more fun than any previous edition... awesome, awesome, awesome!", I finally came to the conclusion that WotC was making a game that catered to their in-house tastes rather than anything that the community was begging for.  The drastic gutting of the Realms?  Primarily to make things easier for their in-house authors.

Initially, I was turned off from even trying 4E.  Two years after release, I'd played it a couple times, but it never really stood out as being "awesome" as they'd claimed.  It was okay, and a fine game for encounters, but not terribly memorable and nothing that made me want to invest in it.  Beyond that, I don't think I'll ever forgive them for turning the Realms into a smoking husk of what it once was.  There is no fixing possible of that grand mess, even if they pull off another RSE for 5E... and they will, because it's what they do.  Adding more frosting to a bland cake, particularly when it's bad frosting, never actually improves the cake.

So to me, the WotC staffers ultimately made themselves a game that they loved.  They changed the Realms to serve their own interests and to appeal to prior Realms-haters who didn't like all the complex "fluff".  They left me and mine behind.  Companies often change direction, and push toward newer visions, but usually companies try to go in directions that don't intentionally alienate the existing fanbase.  I'd think that everyone in the gaming industry would want to broaden their customer base.  WotC likes to do PR events and make announcements, but they're really awful in their PR delivery.  Badwrongfun and "your old game cannot compare to the new awesomeness!" are perfect examples.

Add to this the fact that nothing -really- new has come out of WotC in terms of creative content... we're talking decades of rehashed older Realms sourcebooks... how many times do I need to see yet another version of Waterdeep, Menzoberranzan or Cormyr, just with a few "updated touches" to make it seem new?  And I really have no faith in WotC's supposed creativity any longer.  And Amazon just posted -another- Menzoberranzan from WotC for Aug 2012.  I'm sure it'll have 90% recycled old content, and they'll throw in a few spellplagued and spellscarred things.

No thanks, WotC.


----------



## Tilenas

Ydars said:


> Do Monte's ramblings worry anyone else? The noises coming out of WoTC about 5E seem to me to be just as confused and off base as some of the stuff that was said during the pre4E era,




 Do you mean "people want to play wizards because they blow things up" (paraphrased)?  Other than that, most of their announcements had me very much looking forward to 4e: unified and balanced classes, restricted multiclassing, skill challenges, you name it. Seeing the final result left me really disappointed. Now, again, I am mostly in favour of Monte's musings on game design, and I believe he is actually capable of delivering.


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> There is a well-known approach to RPG design and play that focuses on the situation as the focus of play, and that relies on (by traditional D&D standards) fairly robust scene framing as part of that.
> 
> <snip a bunch of stuff>



You said a lot.   And I really don't have any dispute with what you said here.
But you seem to have gone to a lot of words to not actually answer the question that was asked.

If anything, you seem to be somewhat backpedaling with comments about how the statement was NOT well made.  And you also strongly base your case on the implication that the previously discussed "if" qualifiers are understood.  But from a straight reading that requires a very favorable spin.  Which comes back to my point, the BEST case scenario is that it was written very poorly and neither James nor anyone else read back over and realized how poorly it was written.

You description of what makes for a good game is all well and good.  Take the words in question and put them in front of 1,000 random people and then have a poll.  Your interpretation won't come close to being the conclusion of what was said.


And, again, I don't consider it fair to judge 4E based on a few lines of advice.  And I ABSOLUTELY concede your playing style and success with the system.

But I also consider the overall context to support that the implications of this text hits closer to the heart of 4E than your personal spin on 4E does.  I think the qualities you create say more about you than they do about the 4E mechanics. (that is intended to be read a a compliment to you, just in case the tone was lost...)


----------



## BryonD

Jan van Leyden said:


> Of course, and I didn't write anything to the contrary.



OK, shrug.

You called "conspiracy theory".  I dispute that claim.



> I beg to differ somewhat. They had an effect, indeed, as any written word read by someone has. But to tell that they would have the effect to actually drive away people from 4e? Come on, guys. I expect roleplayers to be mature enough to evaluate the written word and decide what to use for their own game.



It isn't about "mature".  It is about making value judgments.
And it is about doing EXACTLY what you said.  A lot of people read that (and, very importantly, the mechanics and a lot of other comments for context) and concluded that the best thing to use for their own game was a system without that baggage.  




> So what? I feel free to run and play a 4e game different from the scenario James prescribes in these sentences. I don't feel obliged to remove roleplaying from th equation, though I have to admit  that we have preempted the removal of shopping list gaming a long time before those words were typed.
> 
> But I felt free to run and play the original AD&D game completely different from what Gary Gygax envisioned and hinted at in many places. Frankly, we did give a damn about all that "official" remarks, the insinuations that to play non-official was bad.
> 
> Pray tell me, where's the difference?



That this is all a red herring?

I don't recall any AD&D advice saying that talking to the guards "is not fun".  That is the issue being dodged here.




> I fail to see a debacle, but it doesn't give me a headache to see other people seeing it differently. Fine that you find my stance funny, maybe I can give aou a laugh with my reply.



Ok, so you agree that other see it differently.  

Wouldn't you agree that the specifics of exactly what it is that people are seeing differently is very significant to them and should to people who want to make customers of those people.

You seem to be making this about you and/or 4E fans.  That completely misses the point.  If I, or anyone, was saying that liking 4E or not caring one way or the other about these words was a personal failing, then I would be deeply wrong and your rebuttal would be sound.  

But that wasn't what it was about.    And, frankly, when you suggest that not moving to game that advertises itself this way is a marker of "maturity", then that challenges your claim of being ok with other points of view.


----------



## Azgulor

Jan van Leyden said:


> I beg to differ somewhat. They had an effect, indeed, as any written word read by someone has. But to tell that they would have the effect to actually drive away people from 4e? Come on, guys. I expect roleplayers to be mature enough to evaluate the written word and decide what to use for their own game.





Well, in this gamer, and former WotC's customer's case, it certainly helped drive me away.  Would a single WotC employee's comments do that?  No, but combined with the whole, it was pretty clear that what WotC envisioned for the game was not where my players and I wanted to be.

Yeah, I looked at the books when they came out and made up my mind.  But in editions past, I probably would have bought the book to read at my leisure.  Between the design previews & tidbits, the condescending marketing, and comments like James' that had the tone of "get onboard or you're doing it wrong", I wasn't willing to give WotC my money.

When you're spouting off with friends, you can say what you want.  When you're speaking as a representative of your employer, it helps to either A) ask yourself if it's wise to word things a certain way, B) know your audience & what they'll tolerate, or C) do both.


----------



## MrMyth

Kamikaze Midget said:


> It's interesting to me because Wyatt, old hat that he is, probably doesn't follow this advice in his own games. I've got every confidence that he's quite the fine DM. And, the paragraph comes from the core of a good idea (namely, you don't have to spend time on things your group doesn't like).




I've always gotten the sense that that point that was _trying _to be made was more, "Bypass mundane encounters. This doesn't mean you can't _have _an engaging discussion with gate guards or the like, but if you have a scene _without _any conflict and with the players not interested in it, its ok to fast-forward through it."

But that point wasn't exactly elegantly expressed and produced a lot of lines that sounded all the worse out of context.


----------



## MrMyth

Bedrockgames said:


> Pemerton I don't disagree 4e can be played tgat way and I like GMing situationally as defined by Clash Bowley but I really think you are reaching here. He says point blank an encounter with two guards isn't fun. Doesn't qualify the statement at all. The big problem I have with the advice is it fails to acknowledge and describe the range of styles out there. It settles on a narrow approach to the game. Personally I think Wyatts words stand as some of the worst ever written for D&D.




Sure, but I think putting so much focus on two specific sentences, and ignoring dozens of other pages of advice in the book - and other sources - is a bit much. Short of him hopping in here and giving his own explanation, we aren't going to be able to know exactly what he meant. For my money, given the context of the statement and the rest of the book, I took the intent of it to not being saying, "Never run an encounter with two gate guards", and instead to mean, "Don't bother with a _meaningless _encounter with two gate guards."

Again, his wording was definitely poor and problematic. But the folks taking that as somehow defining his approach to the game - or extrapolating that as a summary of 4E in general, in defiance of every other aspect of the books - are putting way too much focus on a single line.


----------



## Jan van Leyden

I'll let this argument rest in peace, as we obviously have differing views of the matter and nobody is like to persuade the other side.

Only that your last paragraph shows that I apparently didn't express myself clear enough:



BryonD said:


> But that wasn't what it was about.    And, frankly, when you suggest that not moving to game that advertises itself this way is a marker of "maturity", then that challenges your claim of being ok with other points of view.




I wanted to say that I _assume_ roleplayers to be mature or maybe educated enough (being a non-native speaker I might have picked the wrong word) to see beyond the printed words, to not transfer the expression "... isn't fun ..." to "you aren't allowed to have fun", and to transgress any perceived limitation. Thus, I can't imagine Wyatt's words to abhor the average roleplayer so much.

If any single roleplayer decides to let him be influenced in such a way or react by turning away from 4e for good, I won't understand it, but I never would call him immature for it. My intention was to underline my doubts that those words would have such an effect on a large scale.


----------



## Bedrockgames

It wasn't just those specific words it was also all the other words in the DMG and the overall system. It just seemed like a game built around encounters with GM advice that focused on a more narrow style of play. In my opinion this started during 3e. I definitely remember structuring adventures around encounters being present in that edition as well.


----------



## Blastin

guys....I thought I clicked on the "WotC layoff" thread....not the "what I see wrong with 4e" Thread. I get that the veer into 4e complaints started from the observation that James is still employed while others have been let go. But I think that point has been made and has now...been expanded.
 Not that I don't enjoy parsing quotes for perceived insults as much as anyone on the internet, but can we move past it or at least take it to another thread?


----------



## Nemesis Destiny

Blastin said:


> guys....I thought I clicked on the "WotC layoff" thread....not the "what I see wrong with 4e" Thread. I get that the veer into 4e complaints started from the observation that James is still employed while others have been let go. But I think that point has been made and has now...been expanded.
> Not that I don't enjoy parsing quotes for perceived insults as much as anyone on the internet, but can we move past it or at least take it to another thread?



You've been around here long enough that you should know by now any discussion in 'General' relating to WotC and what they're up to these days will inevitably degenerate into folks with a bone to pick against Wizards or 4e taking a shot at tearing them down. It's like a sport, but less productive.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I really think you are reaching here. He says point blank an encounter with two guards isn't fun.



He says "An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun." I think the intention of this is pretty clear - don't make the players roleplay through every piece of minutiae their PCs are engaged in.

You may or may not like the advice, for RPGing in general or for D&D in particular, but I think the advice is pretty clear. And my personal view is that RPGing wouldn't be ruined if no more GMs made their players play through these sorts of non-dramatic scenes.



Bedrockgames said:


> Doesn't qualify the statement at all.



The qualification is on page 9 of the PHB, as I quoted upthread. If the players _want_ to talk to the guards, then we have a noncombat encounter. The GM isn't given especially good advice on how to handle it (ie the skill challenge guidelines are poorly written, inexcusably so in my view given that the Maelstrom rulebooks, to give one example, predates 4e by 10 years or so), but that's a different matter.



Bedrockgames said:


> The big problem I have with the advice is it fails to acknowledge and describe the range of styles out there. It settles on a narrow approach to the game. Personally I think Wyatts words stand as some of the worst ever written for D&D.



I'm happy to put up some other entrants in that race: most of Gygax's advice about alignment and clerics in the DMG, for example; also, his advice on dealing with troublesome players (ethereal mummies, bolts of lightning from the heavens); also, his discussion of managing ingame time in the DMG; also, his characterisation of skilled play in the DMG and PHB, which sees its apotheosis in "flying thief on a rope, bomb-disposal-squad" play of the sort currently being discussed in the Tomb of Horrors thread; and various monsters in the Fiend Folio (Hound of Ill Omen, Aleax) which are essentially ingame sublimations of metagame disputes between GMs and players over alignment.

These all (i) fail to acknowledge a range of styles, (ii) settle on narrow (and, as far as alignment is concerned, in my view dysfunctional) approaches to the game, and (iii) in my experience have done far more damage to RPGing over the years than has what Wyatt said in his DMG.


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> I don't recall any AD&D advice saying that talking to the guards "is not fun".  That is the issue being dodged here.



No. It had advice talking about what "skilled players" do: for example, they plan their mission in advance of the session, organise the equipment they will need in advance of the session, choose suitable PCs out of a stable of PCs in advance of the session, and then actually undertake the session in "operational" fashion, with a caller, a main mapper with a couple of backup mappers, etc.

I've GMed and played a lot of AD&D, but never a session in which these things were done. The implication being, I guess, that I and those I played with are not skilled.

AD&D may have been a broad church in play. It is not a very broad church in its text.



Bedrockgames said:


> It wasn't just those specific words it was also all the other words in the DMG and the overall system. It just seemed like a game built around encounters with GM advice that focused on a more narrow style of play.



Yes. It is a game built around encounters. It doesn't hide that fact, it advertises it.

AD&D has equally narrow advice, for a game built around operational play focused on the "skillful" exploration and looting of dungeons. If you want to run a situation-based, player-driven, story-generating game (say of the sort that Burning Wheel might be expected to generate if played in its default style), you won't find helpful advice in the AD&D books.

This isn't a criticism of AD&D. It's just a fairly basic point - that 4e is not unique in D&D editions in presenting a certain way of playing the game. It's just different from much of what came before.



MrMyth said:


> I've always gotten the sense that that point that was _trying _to be made was more, "Bypass mundane encounters. This doesn't mean you can't _have _an engaging discussion with gate guards or the like, but if you have a scene _without _any conflict and with the players not interested in it, its ok to fast-forward through it."
> 
> But that point wasn't exactly elegantly expressed and produced a lot of lines that sounded all the worse out of context.





MrMyth said:


> I think putting so much focus on two specific sentences, and ignoring dozens of other pages of advice in the book - and other sources - is a bit much.



Agreed (but can't XP you at this time). The rest of the DMG, plus the PHB, provide plenty of context to (in my view) make the meaning clear.



BryonD said:


> You description of what makes for a good game is all well and good.  Take the words in question and put them in front of 1,000 random people and then have a poll.  Your interpretation won't come close to being the conclusion of what was said.



Perhaps. Although the relevant sample wouldn't be 1,000 random people, would it, but 1,000 actual or potential players of D&D.

Here is another quote from Wyatt's DMG (p 103):

You should allow and even encourage players to come up with their own quests that are tied to their individual goals or specific circumstances in the adventure. Evaluate the proposed quest and assign it a level. Remember to say yes as often as possible!​
Again, there are criticisms to be made. For example, player-designed quests are likely to produce the need for improvised encounters, and while I think 4e can handle these fine there is little advice in the DMG on how to do this.

Nevertheless, when _I_ look at 4e vs PF and it's adventure paths, I don't think "How could WotC have made such outrageous suggestions about how to play the game!"

Instead, I think "Who would have thought that pre-packaged plots, in which the main way players can introduce their own priorities (mostly colour) into the game is by having essentially meaningless interactions with bit NPCs like two guards at the city gate, would turn out to be more popular than a game aimed at player-driven, situation-focused play, where the players don't need to introduce colour through meaningless interactions because they are driving the encounters which are dripping with colour as well as meaning?"

I'm happy to accept that WotC, with its access to market research, should have known better than just to follow along with Ron Edwards' intuitions. But I nevertheless feel the force of the intuitions, and find their refutation by experience fairly surprising. 

Maybe if WotC had produced better advice in the DMG (drawing on the available examples like Maesltrom, HeroWars etc) or produced adventure supplements that exemplified, rather than contradicted, their own advice (like player-driven quests and avoiding meaningless encounters), 4e would have been more popular. But my overall impression of the response to the game, reinforced by what some posters in this thread are saying, is that those sorts of improvements wouldn't have addressed the underlying issue.


----------



## Bedrockgames

We give Gygax slack because he was the first (and despite the bad advice there are gems in the original DMG). But IMO D&D isn't all about going from one encounter to the next. Do I want them to include obscure things like GNS theory ? No. But I do want them to talk about investigation, roleplay heavy adventures, combat light campaigns, political intrigue campaigns, etc. 

On Wyatt I still think your reaching, you are contextualizing his statement by bringing in text from the PHB.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Blastin said:


> guys....I thought I clicked on the "WotC layoff" thread....not the "what I see wrong with 4e" Thread. I get that the veer into 4e complaints started from the observation that James is still employed while others have been let go. But I think that point has been made and has now...been expanded.
> Not that I don't enjoy parsing quotes for perceived insults as much as anyone on the internet, but can we move past it or at least take it to another thread?




You know what, you are 100% right. Not sure how we got here but there must be at least five active threads better suited to this topic.


----------



## S'mon

Azgulor said:


> Well, in this gamer, and former WotC's customer's case, it certainly helped drive me away.  Would a single WotC employee's comments do that?  No, but combined with the whole, it was pretty clear that what WotC envisioned for the game was not where my players and I wanted to be.




AIR Wyatt's on 'fun' was one of the factors that deterred me from running or playing 4e between my purchase of the core books in June 2008 and my first playing 4e in June 2009.  My finding the 4e PHB indecipherable was a bigger factor, though.

Ironically, I now prefer the PHB to Essentials format - as a reference book, it's well done.  As an instruction manual though I found it terrible.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> ... his discussion of managing ingame time in the DMG...




What's wrong with Gygax's advice on time management?


----------



## IronWolf

No need to panic folks, it seems WotC has everything under control.... Oh, wait, they are looking for a new VP of Finance?


----------



## BryonD

Jan van Leyden said:


> I wanted to say that I _assume_ roleplayers to be mature or maybe educated enough (being a non-native speaker I might have picked the wrong word) to see beyond the printed words, to not transfer the expression "... isn't fun ..." to "you aren't allowed to have fun", and to transgress any perceived limitation. Thus, I can't imagine Wyatt's words to abhor the average roleplayer so much.
> 
> If any single roleplayer decides to let him be influenced in such a way or react by turning away from 4e for good, I won't understand it, but I never would call him immature for it. My intention was to underline my doubts that those words would have such an effect on a large scale.



But you are missing the point.

I can absolutely understand that and I think that I've stated multiple times now that 4E shouldn't be judged on those words.

But a "mature" and "educated" person can also take that such a stupid thing was said as a valid point of consideration.  To take your comments one is lead to conclude that WotC or anyone else can make any comment they want and the good ones should be praised and the dumb ones treated as if they don't exist.  

And, the second key point is that the tone of those words DOES reflect in the mechanics of the game.  I firmly believe that if it didn't, then that quote would have faded into history.  But instead it is kept alive as a easy icon for the very real issues in the game (to many "mature" "educated" people.)


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> No. It had advice talking about what "skilled players" do: for example, they plan their mission in advance of the session, organise the equipment they will need in advance of the session, choose suitable PCs out of a stable of PCs in advance of the session, and then actually undertake the session in "operational" fashion, with a caller, a main mapper with a couple of backup mappers, etc.
> 
> I've GMed and played a lot of AD&D, but never a session in which these things were done. The implication being, I guess, that I and those I played with are not skilled.
> 
> AD&D may have been a broad church in play. It is not a very broad church in its text.
> 
> Yes. It is a game built around encounters. It doesn't hide that fact, it advertises it.
> 
> AD&D has equally narrow advice, for a game built around operational play focused on the "skillful" exploration and looting of dungeons. If you want to run a situation-based, player-driven, story-generating game (say of the sort that Burning Wheel might be expected to generate if played in its default style), you won't find helpful advice in the AD&D books.
> 
> This isn't a criticism of AD&D. It's just a fairly basic point - that 4e is not unique in D&D editions in presenting a certain way of playing the game. It's just different from much of what came before.



I left AD&D for better games.  I didn't go to 4E because there are better games.
Equating flaws in 4E with related but different flaws in AD&D doesn't change either of those points.



> Perhaps. Although the relevant sample wouldn't be 1,000 random people, would it, but 1,000 actual or potential players of D&D.



At the time those words were printed, 4E was be praised because it was going to vastly increase the fan base and create new gamers.  So if you are correct then that poor choice of words is doubly problematic.


----------



## Nemesis Destiny

BryonD said:


> I left AD&D for better games.  I didn't go to 4E because there are better games.



_For you. _Opinions are not universal. One man's treasure is another man's trash.


----------



## Desdichado

Ydars said:


> You misunderstand me; I am saying that all business accounting is false accounting because it takes notice only of $ and only in a very narrow time slot.
> 
> This is obviously wrong but things are set up this way to allow bad practices to continue in the name of 'commerce'.
> 
> To be a true accounting, all activity should be audited based on its effect on society and on the environment. This can and has been quantified in monetary terms but business doesn't want to know because then they would be forced to act responsibly.
> 
> I was just setting WoTC's practices in context.



You're just posting a harshly political anti-capitalist screed.  I'm surprised it hasn't been deleted by the moderators yet, if their "no politics" rule is applied fairly.


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## Nemesis Destiny

Hobo said:


> You're just posting a harshly political anti-capitalist screed.  I'm surprised it hasn't been deleted by the moderators yet, if their "no politics" rule is applied fairly.



The "no politics" rule was specifically relaxed for this thread. As an experiment.


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## RangerWickett

Hobes, economics and philosophy aren't the same as politics.


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## Remus Lupin

If saying that business requires some moral basis is overly political, than I should change my department to Political Science, since I teach business ethics regularly.


----------



## Desdichado

RangerWickett said:


> Hobes, economics and philosophy aren't the same as politics.



You're right.  But they also don't exist in a vaccuum and they frequently overlap--as they very clearly did in this case.  So, although right, your point is also irrelevent.


Remus Lupin said:


> If saying that business requires some moral basis is overly political, than I should change my department to Political Science, since I teach business ethics regularly.



That has nothing to do with what Ydars said, though.

Of course, what do I know.  I'm just another one of those evil MBAs that this thread has spent page after page villifying in general terms.


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## Remus Lupin

I think you're seeing something that isn't there. It's not necessarily anti-capitalist to critique a business for not taking the needs of its workers into account. There can be be legitimate differences about how to do that or what it entails, but nothing in what was said amounted even remotely to an "anti-capitalist screed"


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## Stoat

Hobo said:


> Of course, what do I know.  I'm just another one of those evil MBAs that this thread has spent page after page villifying in general terms.




It could be worse, I'm one of those nefarious lawyers who pull the strings from behind the scenes.  But for my kind, there would be free .pdf's and candy for all!


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## Nemesis Destiny

Hobo said:


> Of course, what do I know.  I'm just another one of those evil MBAs that this thread has spent page after page villifying in general terms.



Not that I necessarily agree with your assessment of the situation in this thread, but to be fair, "those evil MBAs" have provided plenty of fodder for villifying in this situation.

EDIT: Forgot which thread this was - specific political and economic comments removed!


----------



## TheAuldGrump

Nemesis Destiny said:


> _For you. _Opinions are not universal. One man's treasure is another man's trash.



However, there enough folks that _do_ think that 4e is 'trash' (or at least 'not the game for me') that D&D is no longer the uncontested leader in the industry.

Which leads to an unhappy parent company.

Which leads to layoffs.

At least it does not seem to be a mass layoff this time.

Part _is_ the economy, sales are down. The rest...?

The Auld Grump


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## BryonD

Nemesis Destiny said:


> _For you. _Opinions are not universal. One man's treasure is another man's trash.



Did I say anything to imply otherwise?

I certainly don't expect you to have any duty to follow my postings.  But if you got bored and dug around you would learn that while I am consistently highly critical of 4E's inability to compete with other system at delivering the game experience *I* enjoy, I've readily agreed on many events that it works great for people seeking a different experience.

And, honestly, I believe it required a bit of a chip on the shoulder to find that I was remotely suggesting anything universal in my post.  Like maybe I hit a raw nerve since it *IS* true that love of 4E ain't anywhere near a universal opinion either.  And really the point here isn't what do *you* like or what do *I* like but instead, what makes the biggest market appeal possible.


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## Balesir

BryonD said:


> I am consistently highly critical of 4E's inability to compete with other system at delivering the game experience *I* enjoy, I've readily agreed on many events that it works great for people seeking a different experience.



I acknowledge this, but one thing does puzzle me slightly; why do you restrict your criticism to 4E D&D?

I mean, I would expect that neither HeroQuest nor Burning Wheel - nor the Riddle of Steel nor Sorceror, for that matter - would be competent at delivering the game experience you want, either, and yet I don't see you crtitcising them at length?


----------



## BryonD

Balesir said:


> I acknowledge this, but one thing does puzzle me slightly; why do you restrict your criticism to 4E D&D?
> 
> I mean, I would expect that neither HeroQuest nor Burning Wheel - nor the Riddle of Steel nor Sorceror, for that matter - would be competent at delivering the game experience you want, either, and yet I don't see you crtitcising them at length?



No one is telling me that those games were supposed to replace the game I was playing.

I've been told, many times, that the only reason I didn't move from 3E to 4E was because I was "closed minded", or I feared change, or some very similar thing.  I've also had people absolutely insist that 4E delivers an identical experience as 3E.  As I've described in more detail several time in other threads, that is only true for a fraction of the gaming styles 3E supported.  

Also

Because D&D is the flagship brand.  (or at least it was)  I've never talked about those other games in any context for any extended amount of time.

Also

This is a D&D website

Also

I like to argue.  It's fun.


----------



## Nemesis Destiny

BryonD said:


> Did I say anything to imply otherwise?



It's all about the tone and delivery. Everything we say here is pretty much all opinion, but some posts come off stating opinion-as-fact, which is a little hard to interpret through a message board.



> I certainly don't expect you to have any duty to follow my postings.  But if you got bored and dug around you would learn that while I am consistently highly critical of 4E's inability to compete with other system at delivering the game experience *I* enjoy, I've readily agreed on many events that it works great for people seeking a different experience.



 That something I don't get - this idea that playing 4e somehow means you are after a different experience than others who enjoy the hobby. I mean, sure, that is possible, but switching editions has not really affected how we (my group and I) play or approach the game. We still get the same experience we always did with story and roleplaying. The biggest difference, as most people are keen to point out, are the mechanics, and if anything, it's only served to magnify the other elements that we generally prefer to dungeon crawls and looting. I'm not sure what I'm missing here, since most of the folks with ideas about what people that like 4e are into, usually assumes that we're after a more gamist, dungeon-delve feel, and at least in all my (and a lot of the frequent posters in the 4e subforum) experience, that isn't the case at all. Maybe my group is just weird.



> And, honestly, I believe it required a bit of a chip on the shoulder to find that I was remotely suggesting anything universal in my post.  Like maybe I hit a raw nerve since it *IS* true that love of 4E ain't anywhere near a universal opinion either.  And really the point here isn't what do *you* like or what do *I* like but instead, what makes the biggest market appeal possible.



I maybe do have a chip on my shoulder, but it has less or nothing to do what what you're saying - more like how you say it. Doesn't matter what the topic, I find the opinion-stated-as-fact approach annoying, I'll be honest.

As for 4e and market share/mass appeal, I couldn't care less what others think, so long as they don't suggest that things I like shouldn't exist (I am not saying you did, but others have implied this or downright stated it).

In the end, too, I am a firm believer that good=/= popular and popular =/= good. Mass appeal is not an endorsement of anything, in my book. I do get that it affects the bottom line, so I care insofar as whoever produces things I like has enough incentive to continue.


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## Azgulor

Remus Lupin said:


> I think you're seeing something that isn't there. It's not necessarily anti-capitalist to critique a business for not taking the needs of its workers into account. There can be be legitimate differences about how to do that or what it entails, but nothing in what was said amounted even remotely to an "anti-capitalist screed"




I think you might want to read it again.  It sure as hell sounded like anti-capitalist crap to me.


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## BryonD

Nemesis Destiny said:


> It's all about the tone and delivery. Everything we say here is pretty much all opinion, but some posts come off stating opinion-as-fact, which is a little hard to interpret through a message board.



Again, the problem here is the chip on your shoulder.

Let me state again, very clearly:

I left AD&D for better games. I didn't go to 4E because there are better games.

Now, if you can't get past the two Is is that and find the opinion implicit in the statement then you are being touchy.



> That something I don't get - this idea that playing 4e somehow means you are after a different experience than others who enjoy the hobby. I mean, sure, that is possible, but switching editions has not really affected how we (my group and I) play or approach the game. We still get the same experience we always did with story and roleplaying. The biggest difference, as most people are keen to point out, are the mechanics, and if anything, it's only served to magnify the other elements that we generally prefer to dungeon crawls and looting. I'm not sure what I'm missing here, since most of the folks with ideas about what people that like 4e are into, usually assumes that we're after a more gamist, dungeon-delve feel, and at least in all my (and a lot of the frequent posters in the 4e subforum) experience, that isn't the case at all. Maybe my group is just weird.



HA!!!

First, I think I ninja'ed your comments nicely.  Thanks for the support there.

Second, you JUST said opinions are not universal and yet now you are expressing frustration that the gaming experience of everyone is not universal.  I mean, seriously, is even trying to prove my position to you relevant?

How do you know that your 3E experiences and mine were the same?  I'll readily agree that YOU may very well get the same experience from 4E that you did from 3E.  But do you now claim that opinion as universal or do you agree that it is not?



> I maybe do have a chip on my shoulder, but it has less or nothing to do what what you're saying - more like how you say it. Doesn't matter what the topic, I find the opinion-stated-as-fact approach annoying, I'll be honest.



Please show me where I stated an opinion-as-fact.  Again, if you remove the chip from your shoulder you will find that stating one of a variety of things is "better" than related alternative to that thing is a very natural expression *of opinion*.  Forcing an "as fact" reading into that statement with no basis for that twisting of statement is the fault of no one but you.



> As for 4e and market share/mass appeal, I couldn't care less what others think, so long as they don't suggest that things I like shouldn't exist (I am not saying you did, but others have implied this or downright stated it).



And, again, that is *YOUR OPINION*, which I respect.  But I wasn't even talking to you, so what does your opinion have to do with anything.  This thread isn't about you.  



> In the end, too, I am a firm believer that good=/= popular and popular =/= good. Mass appeal is not an endorsement of anything, in my book. I do get that it affects the bottom line, so I care insofar as whoever produces things I like has enough incentive to continue.



I think making 10 people happy tends to be better than making 3 people happy.  At least in the context of talking about a freaking GAME.  

Also, there really is such thing as market forces, even when they prevail against you personally.  Now, you could spend a very large pile of money and WotC would probably sell the design control of 5E to you personally.   Then you opinion would actually BE the universe for this question.

Though I am more and more frequently gratified to see 4E fans making comments of this nature.  The implications are amusing and they tend to validate statements I've been making for years.  (fyi, just my opinion)


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## Nemesis Destiny

BryonD said:


> Again, the problem here is the chip on your shoulder.
> 
> Let me state again, very clearly:
> 
> I left AD&D for better games. I didn't go to 4E because there are better games.



Yes, better - for you. The way this is stated does not reflect that at all.



> Now, if you can't get past the two Is is that and find the opinion implicit in the statement then you are being touchy.



I think you're being deliberately provocative, then telling everyone else that it's THEiR problem when they call you on it. You said so yourself, you like to argue.




> HA!!!
> 
> First, I think I ninja'ed your comments nicely.  Thanks for the support there.
> 
> Second, you JUST said opinions are not universal and yet now you are expressing frustration that the gaming experience of everyone is not universal.  I mean, seriously, is even trying to prove my position to you relevant?



I wouldn't call it frustration. I am just trying to understand what folks are referring to when they use statements like "delivering the game experience I want." Almost invariably, with no effort to explain just what that is. We could be talking about apples and oranges for all I know.



> How do you know that your 3E experiences and mine were the same?  I'll readily agree that YOU may very well get the same experience from 4E that you did from 3E.  But do you now claim that opinion as universal or do you agree that it is not?



I don't and have never claimed it to be universal, but I did explain where I'm coming from WRT to the experience I've gotten from D&D from the beginning. Tell me what I'm missing from yours. I'm just trying to understand.

[quote[Please show me where I stated an opinion-as-fact.  Again, if you remove the chip from your shoulder you will find that stating one of a variety of things is "better" than related alternative to that thing is a very natural expression *of opinion*.  Forcing an "as fact" reading into that statement with no basis for that twisting of statement is the fault of no one but you.[/quote]Respectfully, I disagree. That said, you aren't likely to alter your manner of speaking/writing on my account, nor to avoid argument in the future (since, as you said, you enjoy it), so I'll just have to do a better job of tuning it out.



> And, again, that is *YOUR OPINION*, which I respect.  But I wasn't even talking to you, so what does your opinion have to do with anything.  This thread isn't about you.



No one claims it is. It doesn't matter if you were talking to me or not - this is a public discussion where comment is open to all who wish to participate, which at that moment happened to include me.



> I think making 10 people happy tends to be better than making 3 people happy.  At least in the context of talking about a freaking GAME.
> 
> Also, there really is such thing as market forces, even when they prevail against you personally.  Now, you could spend a very large pile of money and WotC would probably sell the design control of 5E to you personally.   Then you opinion would actually BE the universe for this question.



Which, as I said, means nothing to me. Regardless of how many people line up on either side, that continues to tell me nothing of merit, certainly not how I will receive it, be it a game, or anything else for that matter.



> Though I am more and more frequently gratified to see 4E fans making comments of this nature.  The implications are amusing and they tend to validate statements I've been making for years.  (fyi, just my opinion)



What statements would those be? Perhaps you could play some connect-the-dots for me? No obligation, of course, but without context it is s pretty meaningless statement. I'm bored, but I'm not THAT bnored.


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## Umbran

Gents, I advise you to stop making it personal.  Address the logic of the post, not the person of the poster, please.


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## Balesir

BryonD said:


> I think making 10 people happy tends to be better than making 3 people happy.  At least in the context of talking about a freaking GAME.



I would say it's circumstantial. All other things being equal, making the 10 happy could be considered better, but, if the 10 already have 6 suitable games to make themselves happy with and the 3 people have none, then I would say that making the three happy is very distinctly superior. Making the 10 happy might be "better business" (assuming they all still have money left in the budget after buying the previous six games), but I don't take profit as the *only* criterion for "better".

Edit: Oh, and "better" is neither opinion nor fact - but it can be claimed as either. Saying the use of the word "better" clearly marks a statement out as "opinion" is, well, just incorrect.


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## BryonD

Balesir said:


> I would say it's circumstantial. All other things being equal, making the 10 happy could be considered better, but, if the 10 already have 6 suitable games to make themselves happy with and the 3 people have none, then I would say that making the three happy is very distinctly superior. Making the 10 happy might be "better business" (assuming they all still have money left in the budget after buying the previous six games), but I don't take profit as the *only* criterion for "better".



Um, ok.  I'm not sure that your hypotheticals here really have much relevance.  But ok.

I'm not in any way limiting my position to profit.  Yes, that adds to it.  But I'll still stick to making 10 people happy is better than making 3 people happy.  It probably makes more money *ALSO*.  But for the topic of a GAME, making a little money on 10 people could easily be called "better" than making a boatload on 3 rich people.  



> Edit: Oh, and "better" is neither opinion nor fact - but it can be claimed as either. Saying the use of the word "better" clearly marks a statement out as "opinion" is, well, just incorrect.



As you said "it's circumstantial".  If you want to join in imposing words I didn't say into my comments, then there is nothing I can do about it.  But if you would simply stop and consider both the larger context AND the entirety of the two sentences, you would see that my position is entirely reasonable.

There is one sentence about 4E that seems to be hitting raw nerves.  But there was an IDENTICAL sentence about AD&D.  When I left AD&D for "better" games, AD&D was THE ONE AND ONLY gold standard of RPGs.  Whether you are counting profits or counting happy fans or counting pretty much any other objective quantifiable measure, AD&D would easily come down as better.  Thus the only possible rational way for me to say other games were "better" is the obvious context of "in my own, personal, subjective opinion."  

So, bottom line there is no basis for concluding I meant objective truth and to conclude that demands a biased reading.  One could state that the comments were ambiguous if they read it briefly and didn't really consider either context or the full statement.  But I'd think that a sense of fairness would expect benefit of the doubt in that case.  Or a thoughtful reading would conclude the correct response.  It is up the the individual to choose which of those stands they will embrace.

It is also interesting that even having clarified the intended point multiple times, the ability to accept that explanation is not forthcoming.  Which, to me is simply further evidence that it is more of a raw nerve, knee-jerk situation than a thoughtful one.


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## BryonD

Nemesis Destiny said:


> Yes, better - for you. The way this is stated does not reflect that at all.



Yes it does,



> I don't and have never claimed it to be universal,




You said:


> That something I don't get - this idea that playing 4e somehow means you are after a different experience than others who enjoy the hobby.




That pretty much exactly says that the 4E experience is not different than the experience of any others who enjoy the hobby.  When you reject that other could enjoy the hobby without sharing the same experience as your 4E experience, you are proclaiming your experience to be universal.



> No one claims it is. It doesn't matter if you were talking to me or not - this is a public discussion where comment is open to all who wish to participate, which at that moment happened to include me.



I'm not saying you are not welcome to respond.  I'm thrilled.  How else can I enjoy the arguing if no one else plays along.  But you put your response in terms as if my comments had been directly to you personally.  I was simply commenting on that.



> Which, as I said, means nothing to me. Regardless of how many people line up on either side, that continues to tell me nothing of merit, certainly not how I will receive it, be it a game, or anything else for that matter.



To which I, obviously, agree 100%.



> What statements would those be? Perhaps you could play some connect-the-dots for me? No obligation, of course, but without context it is s pretty meaningless statement. I'm bored, but I'm not THAT bnored.



Just that you are simply the next in a line of 4E fans that have been making comments about popularity not being important.  Not that I'm putting words in your mouth.  You absolutely have made no concession of 4E's popularity or anything of that nature.  But the frequency that I keep seeing this mindset lately just amuses me.


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## Nemesis Destiny

BryonD said:


> <snip>



Cool post, bro.


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## Umbran

BryonD said:


> It is also interesting that even having clarified the intended point multiple times, the ability to accept that explanation is not forthcoming.  Which, to me is simply further evidence that it is more of a raw nerve, knee-jerk situation than a thoughtful one.





It is also interesting that even having clarified that folks should not continue making the discussion personal, you continue to refer to persons and their motivations.  To me, this is further evidence that you should be removed from this conversation.

Folks, this thread has some facets that can make it contentious.  I ask you all, then, to be extra careful to keep yourselves in-bounds.


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## Remus Lupin

Azgulor said:


> I think you might want to read it again.  It sure as hell sounded like anti-capitalist crap to me.




Well I just went back and re-read it. I stand by my original statement that there is nothing anti-capitalist in it per se, unless you insist that any criticism of the tendency within modern business to reduce everything to the bottom line and quarterly earnings statements is necessarily anti-capitalist, in which case we simply have a fundamental disagreement on terms. Unless capitalism is subject to critique, it can't be improved as a social and economic system.

I try to remember that Adam Smith insisted that capitalism was only possible in a world where people were motivated first by virtue. I fears we're far from that position today.


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## Azgulor

Remus Lupin said:


> Well I just went back and re-read it. I stand by my original statement that there is nothing anti-capitalist in it per se, unless you insist that any criticism of the tendency within modern business to reduce everything to the bottom line and quarterly earnings statements is necessarily anti-capitalist, in which case we simply have a fundamental disagreement on terms. Unless capitalism is subject to critique, it can't be improved as a social and economic system.
> 
> I try to remember that Adam Smith insisted that capitalism was only possible in a world where people were motivated first by virtue. I fears we're far from that position today.




Yeah, "all business accounting is false accounting" is just a criticism of a tendency...

And out of curiosity, with respect to "all activity should be audited based on its effect on society and on the environment", no, nothing anti-capitalist about that.  After all, folks like Marx knew how to put business (& prosperity, & economic mobility, & freedom, etc...) it its place.

And I'm pretty sure I just hit the wall on politcal limits for ENWorld, so we'll just agree to disagree.

I'm all for virtue first leading to better business principles & practices.  But the statements I quoted above were talking in absolutes (see "all business" above) & positing anti-capitalist fantasy as the solution.


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## Remus Lupin

Azgulor said:


> Yeah, "all business accounting is false accounting" is just a criticism of a tendency...
> 
> And out of curiosity, with respect to "all activity should be audited based on its effect on society and on the environment", no, nothing anti-capitalist about that.  After all, folks like Marx knew how to put business (& prosperity, & economic mobility, & freedom, etc...) it its place.
> 
> And I'm pretty sure I just hit the wall on politcal limits for ENWorld, so we'll just agree to disagree.
> 
> I'm all for virtue first leading to better business principles & practices.  But the statements I quoted above were talking in absolutes (see "all business" above) & positing anti-capitalist fantasy as the solution.




Yeah, let's just leave it there. I think you're reading too much into the rhetoric in the first case, and misreading what's being proposed in the second, but it's a conversation for another forum, I'm sure.


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## waxbanks

*easier?*



Therise said:


> After a period of being intensely angry at how WotC nuclear-bombed the Forgotten Realms, reading words like this from Wyatt, and then hearing the uppity marketing messages of "4E is better in ways you can't possibly imagine, it's more fun than any previous edition... awesome, awesome, awesome!", I finally came to the conclusion that WotC was making a game that catered to their in-house tastes rather than anything that the community was begging for.  The drastic gutting of the Realms?  Primarily to make things easier for their in-house authors.






Yeah, heavens forfend that the writing be easier for the damned WRITERS!

And [MENTION=6683949]Therise[/MENTION], it actually is important (within the narrow band of very low universal importance that this whole thread occupies!) to recognize that 4e _was_ misunderstood and ignorantly slagged off by an enormous number of fan-nerds, mainly for being 'not really D&D,' whatever that means -- and a whole lot of D&D players have since come around to evaluating the game on its own merits, for good or ill.

There's more design innovation in 4e than D&D had seen in a long long time. You don't have to like its direction to see that it was purposeful and (arguably) admirable.

It's good, too, to remember that the Realms weren't revised to cater to older players. Those players, after all, could _trivially_ convert old material to the new system if they wanted. The new Realms were for new work and new players. You were one of those, once.

As for James Wyatt's comments -- they poorly make a vitally important, should-be-obvious point that a hell of a lot of gamers don't get. He needed to write adult advice (figure out what's important in the game and stick to it; the _world_ isn't important except insofar as it supports actual game activity; the rules engine doesn't do everything well, so be aware of where its borders lie and strengthen or speed yourself accordingly to deal with its limitations; etc.) for children. He could've done better, as others in this thread have pointed out. But his words certainly had impact. Ho hum.


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## Therise

waxbanks said:


> Yeah, heavens forfend that the writing be easier for the damned WRITERS!
> 
> And <!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: dbtech_usertag_mention --> @Therise <!-- END TEMPLATE: dbtech_usertag_mention -->, it actually is important (within the narrow band of very low universal importance that this whole thread occupies!) to recognize that 4e _was_ misunderstood and ignorantly slagged off by an enormous number of fan-nerds, mainly for being 'not really D&D,' whatever that means -- and a whole lot of D&D players have since come around to evaluating the game on its own merits, for good or ill.



Let me be more clear.  They destroyed the Realms to make the writing easier for a set of newbie freelance authors.  Elaine Cunningham, an experienced, long-time and much loved Realms author, had difficulty with the new setting such that she couldn't complete the final book in one of her trilogies.  Other longtime Realms authors, like Salvatore, had to deal with their characters in ways they didn't like.

So in a world setting built on detail and deep relationships, history and lore, it's clumsily advanced 100 years and given a couple cataclysmic events, just to make things easier for new novelists.  Because, presumably, they're cheaper.  And quite a few of these new novels in 4E are terrible.  So was it worth it?



> There's more design innovation in 4e than D&D had seen in a long long time. You don't have to like its direction to see that it was purposeful and (arguably) admirable.
> 
> It's good, too, to remember that the Realms weren't revised to cater to older players. Those players, after all, could _trivially_ convert old material to the new system if they wanted. The new Realms were for new work and new players. You were one of those, once.
> 
> As for James Wyatt's comments -- they poorly make a vitally important, should-be-obvious point that a hell of a lot of gamers don't get. He needed to write adult advice (figure out what's important in the game and stick to it; the _world_ isn't important except insofar as it supports actual game activity; the rules engine doesn't do everything well, so be aware of where its borders lie and strengthen or speed yourself accordingly to deal with its limitations; etc.) for children. He could've done better, as others in this thread have pointed out. But his words certainly had impact. Ho hum.



Again, let my clarify my position.  WotC's (Wyatt's and others') remarks just prior to the time of 4E's release were a major factor in pushing me away from 4E initially.  The entire pre-release PR was handled badly.  I have, years later, played 4E rules and found them NOT to be "admirable" or even all that memorable.  They're good for encounters, and they have some good points.  But innovative?  Admirable?  Not really.

As to the new 4E Realms being "for new players", I'll grant that it was certainly the intent of WotC to try and pull in new players.  Any gaming company should continually try to pull in newer players and get them interested in world settings.  But I'd argue that this shouldn't be done in such a way that it completely divides the fanbase for said intellectual property / setting.  Eberron was untouched for the most part by 4E.  Yet the Realms were gutted and completely reframed, down to its cosmology.  Look at places like Candlekeep or similar sites, and the divide is still strong.  By catering to Realms detractors, I suspect that the people who hated the Realms in 2E and 3E might have tried out the new Realms for a short while, but there is very, very little active discussion left on the WotC Realms forums.  It's practically dead.

Any totally new D&D players probably would've been satisfied by the new "Points of Light" setting with Nentir Vale and all that.  So with the older Realms authors disconnected, and old Realms detractors having fizzled out after trying it, and the older fanbase chased off at launch (for the most part), who was really served here?  Only their corral of new authors.


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## talok55

I agree. They blew up the Realms and almost everyone lost.  I say almost because Paizo clearly benefitted from it.  WotC destroyed their flagship campaign setting, and it clearly didn't bring in droves of new players like it was supposed to. 4E Forgotten Realms is a terrible, bland setting for both campaigns and novels. It did, however, drive many FR fans away to Pathfinder and Golarion.  I wonder if WotC will aknowledge the failure of this debacle and change their plans going forward.  My guess is no.


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## talok55

I wonder how much the trashing of one of their most popular campaign settings aided in the failure of 4E?


----------

