# [Updated] Chris Sims & Jennifer Clarke Wilkes Let Go From WotC



## painted_klown (Jan 28, 2015)

WOW! Well, hopefully his credentials and work history will speak for itsself, and he will have a great opportunity come his way. Best of luck to him. 

I will be interested to see how this is going to affect D&D, if it does in a way that we consumers will notice.


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## Barantor (Jan 28, 2015)

Could this be because they are making fewer in-house products? The core books are out and the fiscal year is over....


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## CapnZapp (Jan 28, 2015)

Why is this news?

WotC have ALWAYS repaid the hard work by its contributors with a shove thru the door. After EVERY new edition. 

At least this time they let them spend Christmas in peace.


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## keterys (Jan 28, 2015)

I really hate that WotC does this.


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## Morrus (Jan 28, 2015)

This is the first time in a couple of years.


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## painted_klown (Jan 28, 2015)

Is Jennifer Clarke Wilkes also part of the D&D team, or another area in WOTC?

Either way, it's a bad deal, and hopefully both of them will find something quickly.


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## Roger (Jan 28, 2015)

Is the ex-WotC Chris Sims the same person as the ComicsAlliance Chris Sims?  I've always wondered.


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## Barantor (Jan 28, 2015)

Googling a post here in 2009 it said he was let go then too.


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## Morrus (Jan 28, 2015)

Barantor said:


> Googling a post here in 2009 it said he was let go then too.




Yup. Second time for him.


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## DaveDash (Jan 28, 2015)

Could be a contractor whose contract has run its course.


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## KirayaTiDrekan (Jan 28, 2015)

Edit: Nevermind, my info is out of date.  Nothing to see here.


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## Morrus (Jan 28, 2015)

Kiraya_TiDrekan said:


> Last I knew, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes had moved over to the Magic: The Gathering team and was writing at least a few of the recent Uncharted Realms fiction pieces posted on Wednesdays on the dailymtg site.  That was a few months ago, though.




She came back to D&D.


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## kenmarable (Jan 28, 2015)

Man, just when my opinion of WotC was improving, if these are layoffs as they are likely to be.... ug. Language filters here won't let me give me true opinion. Even if it has been a couple years, that's still far too often to be laying off employees. As a professor of business ethics, in my educated opinion, it's horrible business practice and most every time you can track it back to mismanagement by higher-ups who are decidedly not being laid off. If you have to layoff employees every couple years, you are horrible at business. Seriously. 

Having been through layoffs, I know how much it sucks both as an employee left behind, and even worse as one laid off. It is important enough to me that it drove me from buying WotC products for years when they made this such a regular practice. With the excitement and great system around 5e, I was finally coming around and actually excited about WotC again. Wow.

I hope they manage to find some work again soon that actually appreciates their efforts.


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## Alphastream (Jan 28, 2015)

Morrus said:


> This is the first time in a couple of years.




Layoffs happen for many different reasons at WotC. Often it is a corporate move from up high, where (as in many companies) each group has to make a certain percentage of cuts. Then the managers have to decide whether to let one-two expensive persons go or more lower-cost people go. It's always painful, and everything I hear from WotC over the years is that they have tried to keep it as amicable as possible and as positive as possible for the company. Often the people let go are ones that, by leaving, could allow the group to realign or work in new ways it could not before. In other words, that as painful as it was, the end result could be positive. And, often the person laid off kept working for Wizards as a freelancer. Rich Baker is a good example. He seemed vital to 5E (when I visited WotC back at the very start of 5E), but the edition ended up amazing just the same. And, he contributed to several efforts, including an early 5E Encounters season and very recently through Sasquatch in creating the Princes of Elemental Evil adventure (along with a host of other former WotC employees). People often come back. Chris Sims, let go today and instrumental to monster design in 4E and 5E, had been let go a while back, went to Paizo, then came back to WotC. 

All of that said, layoffs have continued. They just haven't been public, sudden, and involving many people. To me, that suggests that the management of the group has been better, with forward knowledge of changes they needed to make. They made the changes over time and quietly. If we look at the past few years, they have let many people go. They just weren't always front-and-center. The big change has been staff reductions of nearly everyone involved in Editing. The two today continue that path. I can see it from a business perspective, but it also runs the risk of having your editors lose institutional knowledge. Right now, editors are often freelancers who formerly worked at WotC and now work for-hire. Okay, but if we lose that old guard, it could impact the line. We've seen times at TSR and WotC where the way they aligned people, and what those people knew (or, more importantly, what they didn't) resulted in approaches, products, and even entire lines that missed the mark. Maybe it will work out just fine. In recent years, the layoffs have worked. 

These additional layoffs to an already very small team are startling. The model is so drastic a change from 4E and 3E. Is this good? Is it good for RPGs? Wizards and Paizo operate in ways no one else does. The average team at other companies is one where everyone has a second job and can weather low sales. The yearly revenue of nearly every small and medium RPG is lower than what the white box OD&D sold decades ago! Even Monte Cook Games' Numenera is below what large releases for Paizo and WotC bring in... and lower than late 70s sales numbers for D&D! It shows how messed up this hobby is.

A big question is why WotC is choosing such a different approach that Paizo. Paizo continues to increase the size of its staff. Is the revenue backing up that staff increase? Is it the model of subscriptions? In an ideal world we could know more about the complete revenue of these companies so that the hobby could learn and improve. We sadly know very little about revenues and how the models work (or fail). 

On a personal level, I've worked with Chris Sims to know he's amazing. He's talented and dedicated and a tremendously awesome person. I hope he finds a good group. But, I'm also sad that I don't wish this industry on anyone, because it just doesn't provide for the people in it. Outside of a few individuals (maybe just two handfuls?) it doesn't provide enough for employees to take care of themselves and their families. That's a terrible thing and will fundamentally continue to undermine our hobby.


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## guachi (Jan 28, 2015)

I think this move is another sign of an industry (specifically, RPGs) in decline. The decline is likely long-term and permanent, unfortunately.


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## Grainger (Jan 28, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> But, I'm also sad that I don't wish this industry on anyone, because it just doesn't provide for the people in it. Outside of a few individuals (maybe just two handfuls?) it doesn't provide enough for employees to take care of themselves and their families. That's a terrible thing and will fundamentally continue to undermine our hobby.




I don't have much to add to this, except:


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## jamesjhaeck (Jan 28, 2015)

guachi said:


> I think this move is another sign of an industry (specifically, RPGs) in decline. The decline is likely long-term and permanent, unfortunately.




This thought makes me sad, but I don't know enough about the inner workings of the industry to add much. It does, though, make me wonder what can be done to revitalize the RPG industry.


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## ehren37 (Jan 28, 2015)

Unfortunate to hear, but with such a light future product development slate, not a shock. I wouldn't be surprised to see it pared down to a a few staff and the rest freelancers/submissions for Dungeon/Dragon web articles.


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## Paraxis (Jan 28, 2015)

I wonder how many people Paizo has let go since they started publishing Pathfinder?  A company owned and operated solely by people who play and have grown up working in the business, many of whom were themselves let go by Wizards of the Coast at one point vs pretty much Hasbro/WoTC corporation who answer to nameless suits for the most part.

I wish the best of luck for Chris and Jennifer in whatever they go do now.


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## I'm A Banana (Jan 28, 2015)

Interesting that they're both editors. Seems more like an internal re-structuring thing than the hobby failing or other doom-n-gloomery. Possibly post-Edition-cycle stuff, given that one team was hit twice. 

It sucks that this has to happen sometimes, and I hope both of 'em land on their feet. I hear WotC is a better company to get fired from than most. I wish I could do more than spend money on WotC products and evangialize the hobby and support robust financial safety nets for the unemployed....


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## Austerius (Jan 28, 2015)

As Alphastream alluded to, Paizo and WotC are apples and oranges, the key difference being that Hasbro (WotC parent company) is publicly traded vs Paizo being a privately held company.  As such, private companies have much more flexibility as to how to run their business.  They are not beholden to public shareholders, or, more importantly, Wall Street analysts.  This means they can decide to accept lower profits if they feel it benefits the business and they can also ride out tough financial quarters without making knee-jerk reactions.  

I think it goes without saying that tabletop RPG's are a dwindling hobby, although much beloved by those engaging in them.  The writing is on the wall though.  The world is digital.  WotC needs a digital interface for 5e to keep it relevant (beyond MMO's).  Cell phones and tablets will be at the table.  For goodness sake WotC....USE THEM.  

P.S.  Based on their recent offerings, Paizo could use a couple good editors.  ;-)  Just sayin'......


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## Kinak (Jan 28, 2015)

Man. I thought they were good to go because they'd made it past Christmas.

I hope they, and anyone else who's effected by this sort of thing, are able to land on their feet. Getting laid off sucks even if you sort of know it's coming.


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## Kramodlog (Jan 28, 2015)

So, from 15 employees working on D&D to 13? A cancelled splatbook? I smell another financial success. Oh well. 


Out of curiosity. How hard would it be for them to have their books in PDF formats ready for download on Drivethru RPG? Would they need to hire someone or could they potentially do it with what they sent to the printers? 

I'm asking cause if it is not a WotC/Hasbro policy to not have difital books, well it seems like bad allocation of resources. The revenue from PDFs could pay the salary of some employees. I guess. Maybe. If enough people care.


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## mlund (Jan 28, 2015)

If they aren't going to vomit splat-books then it probably makes sense that they downsized their editorial staff after the release of the Big 3.

Does WotC even keep part-timers and freelancers for their core product teams? It seems like the RPG industry status quo outside of Wizards is to have a large stable of part-time / freelance / by-the-word staff on-call and string them along with a widely fluctuating volume of work requests (and thus pay) rather than actually make them salaried staff. I mean, you don't call it a lay-off when you suddenly reduce a contractor's workload to something that wouldn't even bring him over the poverty-level but it happens to artists and writers in creative industries all the time.

Marty Lund


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## Morrus (Jan 28, 2015)

goldomark said:


> So, from 15 employees working on D&D to 13? A cancelled splatbook?




It doesn't sound great.


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## cletusk82 (Jan 28, 2015)

Since no one else is, thought I'd point out that I don't see anywhere were this explicitly says these folks were laid off.  Though that could be the case, it could also be a host of other things which led to the separation.


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## TreChriron (Jan 28, 2015)

This is why we lamented the sale of WOTC to Hasbro in the first place. Corporate America is broken. There is no investment in people anymore. If Paizo can run a private company twice the size of the D&D division without layoffs it's fairly obvious that something is amiss at Hasbro WOTC.

I just jumped into 5e with a warm heart excited about supporting the new edition. I thought they had their  together. Do the Hasbro (like has been bros) understand in this hobby this kind of behavior has a direct impact on the emotional currency of the customers? It's like your local bakery firing the bakers for making tasty cakes. "ooops, we ran out of money, I guess we'll just hire bakers when we need 'em" You mean like everyday? Is there a "Simpson's" cartoon bubble hovering over Hasbro HQ?

My heart goes out to these two. It's even worse to be laid off when you are doing something you love.


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## Morrus (Jan 28, 2015)

cletusk82 said:


> Since no one else is, thought I'd point out that I don't see anywhere were this explicitly says these folks were laid off.  Though that could be the case, it could also be a host of other things which led to the separation.




It could have been a mutual resignation pact, sure. Or aliens. But I wouldn't bet on it.


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## TreChriron (Jan 28, 2015)

IF there is another reason (like sexual harassment, summoning restricted type demons in the office, using the copier to spread viruses to North Korea...), then I take back my disgust with Hasbro. I reserve my general distaste of corporate America however. Our system IS broken.


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## Nergal Pendragon (Jan 28, 2015)

This almost looks like they're trying to purge all of the people involved with editions that has problems.


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## TroyBentonGames (Jan 28, 2015)

Best Wishes Chris and Jennifer. Always sad to see people go.


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## Mistwell (Jan 28, 2015)

That's too bad.  I feel bad for the both of them.

I am not going to assume this was a layoff until someone actually says it was a layoff.  Could be something else, could be a layoff.


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## mlund (Jan 28, 2015)

Note to self, never bother hiring employees to ramp up large projects in case I might have to downsize on a cyclical contraction.

Just send in waves of self-detonating contractors and string along freelancers so I can stop giving them work when I don't need them anymore. Better just assign them numbers so no one can remember the name of anyone who isn't critical to marketing the brand.

Definitely the secret to keeping the gaming community from questioning your personnel practices. 

Marty Lund


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## Sword of Spirit (Jan 28, 2015)

It always irritates me. They're already sailing on a skeleton crew compared to pretty much any point in the game's history.

What bugs me the most is that it is often highly qualified and experienced people. I mean, WotC laid off _Jeff Grubb_. Seriously? Anyone who was around in the 2e days can pull out dozens of books from their shelves with his name on the front cover, and it's probably on the inside credits of the rest of them. That's one step up from firing Gary Gygax.

Don't they realize that this, you know, _looks bad_? And that, amazingly enough, goodwill actually impacts on your financial success? Maybe they need to stop firing and start hiring. Starting with a PR consultant.


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## dd.stevenson (Jan 28, 2015)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Interesting that they're both editors. Seems more like an internal re-structuring thing than the hobby failing or other doom-n-gloomery. (snip)



If they're cutting editors across the board, then we should be hearing about MTG guys going too.


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## GMforPowergamers (Jan 29, 2015)

I feel sorry for the people who lost there jobs (since I have been floating temp work since 2007 I understand), this entire economy (that I keep being told is on an upswing, as I see more temps and layoffs, and less full hires)is pretty bad shape.

I will hold off on tossing rotten fruit WotC way, or Hasbro for that matter.


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## Mistwell (Jan 29, 2015)

I gotta ask...why the assumption by almost everyone in this thread that this was a layoff?

I understand three years ago and prior there were many layoffs...but is that really enough reason to assume, with no evidence beyond them now not working there, that it was a layoff?

I mean, isn't it possible they quit or were fired or had a contract expire?


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## Morrus (Jan 29, 2015)

mlund said:


> Note to self, never bother hiring employees to ramp up large projects in case I might have to downsize on a cyclical contraction.
> 
> Just send in waves of self-detonating contractors and string along freelancers so I can stop giving them work when I don't need them anymore. Better just assign them numbers so no one can remember the name of anyone who isn't critical to marketing the brand.
> 
> ...




While your sarcasm is most amusing, neither of these people were hired to ramp up a big project. JKW has been with WotC for over a decade, and Chris Sims has been with them in and off since 2005. The D&D team is at its smallest ever (a third of Paizo's), and just got cut again.


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## GMforPowergamers (Jan 29, 2015)

Mistwell said:


> I gotta ask...why the assumption by almost everyone in this thread that this was a layoff?
> 
> I understand three years ago and prior there were many layoffs...but is that really enough reason to assume, with no evidence beyond them now not working there, that it was a layoff?
> 
> I mean, isn't it possible they quit or were fired or had a contract expire?




well I would group "Contract expire" with layoff, I know that from personal experience there is little difference between the two.  Most people when quiting already have jobs... so I just choose to belive they were not fired untold told diffret....


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## GMforPowergamers (Jan 29, 2015)

Morrus said:


> While your sarcasm is most amusing, neither of these people were hired to ramp up a big project. JKW has been with WotC for over a decade, and Chris Sims has been with them in and off since 2005. The D&D team is at its smallest ever (a third of Paizo's), and just got cut again.




I think your missing the point Morrus, he is trying to show that we (as in RPG fans) may show a bit of our teeth even when we shouldnt' after all, it's just business... it sucks but it happens.


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## Morrus (Jan 29, 2015)

Mistwell said:


> I gotta ask...why the assumption by almost everyone in this thread that this was a layoff?
> 
> I understand three years ago and prior there were many layoffs...but is that really enough reason to assume, with no evidence beyond them now not working there, that it was a layoff?
> 
> I mean, isn't it possible they quit or were fired or had a contract expire?




A 15 year contract? I guess it's *possible*.  And it's possible they both simultaneously quit or were fired. 

They didn't, though. I don't know, but I'd bet a hell of a lot on it!


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## Kramodlog (Jan 29, 2015)

Morrus said:


> It doesn't sound great.




I wouldn't be surprised if the two (fired editors and cancelled splatbook) are related. From what I gather, even if WotC uses subcontractors to created content, some of it was still edited by WotC for quality/consistency. 

Maybe if the edition benefited from the promotion of the movie that was supposed to come out last year.


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## Evenglare (Jan 29, 2015)

Wasn't the D&D team like ... 7 people or something? These people should have been promoted or given raises not laid off. I mean... people at wizards DO know they have to actually have people working on stuff for it to get done right? Mearls can't do it all himself.


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## mlund (Jan 29, 2015)

Morrus said:


> While your sarcasm is most amusing, neither of these people were hired to ramp up a big project. JKW has been with WotC for over a decade, and Chris Sims has been with them in and off since 2005.




Yes, I'm saying -I- had better never bother hiring (or even retaining staff) for a major push and then have to deal with layoffs after the workload drops off. 

Also, in many cases when you do have a cyclical (or otherwise predictable / scheduled) drop-off followed by layoffs that ax hits non-essential veteran personnel wherever possible because they command higher salaries than newbs (just like it sucks to be "over-qualified" when applying for a position).



> The D&D team is at its smallest ever (a third of Paizo's), and just got cut again.




They just finished delivering a CORE release. In an absence of splat-book glut I think layoffs are inevitable, especially in editorial.

As to Paizo, I'm mildly curious from a business perspective as to what counts as actual headcount for them.

Marty Lund


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## Morrus (Jan 29, 2015)

Evenglare said:


> Wasn't the D&D team like ... 7 people or something?




About 15 people, about half of whom work on the game itself.


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## Morrus (Jan 29, 2015)

mlund said:


> As to Paizo, I'm mildly curious from a business perspective as to what counts as actual headcount for Paizo.




Just shy of 50.


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## TreChriron (Jan 29, 2015)

1) mlund - so you're a typical cold corporate shrill. So? I'm saying your attitude and business approach are bunk. The system is broken. If you're supporting it, you're approach is broken. You can hire freelancers under contract with the idea to ramp up a project without lying to them and giving them full time employment. There is so much nonsense in your snarky remark to rebuttal without writing a paper-long response. There are ways to fine tune a business and keep your creative capital. Why not MAKE MORE MONEY? They have options to make more money. We see them. Why can't Hasbro?

2) GMforPowergamers - it doesn't have to happen. It's they easiest approach. The one of less resistance. When you view people as salaries/expenses attached to an employee ID, it's easy to shuffle them off the budget. Am I showing my teeth? Absolutely. There is no reason we cannot practice business better in corporate America. The whole system is disheartening practice in futility.


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## Jester David (Jan 29, 2015)

I imagine the slower release schedule is a cause. You don't need a full time editor when you're releasing two products a year. And some of that work can be handled by the developers/designers.



Morrus said:


> This is the first time in a couple of years.



Very true. However, they have some voluntary departures, retirements, and contract expirations during that time. That might have taken the place of a layoff.


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## mlund (Jan 29, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Just shy of 50.




Not "how many", but "what" - full time with benefits, part-timer, contractor, paid intern, unpaid intern, subcontractor, freelancer who gets 500 words thrown his way every 2-3 months, etc. That's what I'm actually curious about.

Marty Lund


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## Gecko85 (Jan 29, 2015)

Judging by Chris Sims' Twitter feed, he was taken by surprise. In addition to his initial tweet about needing a job, he also posted this reply to someone who mentioned some available freelance work while he's looking:



> Thanks, Cam. Can we talk as soon as I get my head back together?




That definitely sounds like someone caught off guard, not a contract expiring.


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## Morrus (Jan 29, 2015)

mlund said:


> Not "how many", but "what" - full time with benefits, part-timer, contractor, paid intern, unpaid intern, subcontractor, freelancer who gets 500 words thrown his way every 2-3 months, etc. That's what I'm actually curious about.




Employees, not freelancers or subcontractors.

If you count freelancers, hundreds.


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## mlund (Jan 29, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Employees, not freelancers or subcontractors.




Again, "employees" or actual W2s with 35+ hours (what a "full-time employee" or "employee" means to a publicly-traded company)?

Though maybe that number fits for FTEs. Paizo makes a lot more than just Pathfinder books, after all.

Marty Lund


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## Gundark (Jan 29, 2015)

Ugh....I suppose this means that 5e isn't selling as well as we all thought.


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## Gecko85 (Jan 29, 2015)

Gundark said:


> Ugh....I suppose this means that 5e isn't selling as well as we all thought.



Not necessarily. Could mean any number of things.


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## Morrus (Jan 29, 2015)

mlund said:


> Again, "employees" or actual W2s with 35+ hours (what a "full-time employee" or "employee" means to a publicly-traded company)?




I don't know what "W2" means. But Lisa Stevens says about 20 full time on Pathfinder itself, 5 art department, a bunch of admin/legal/web folks and various warehouse etc.  So sounds like about 25 full time, the rest part time.


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## Nergal Pendragon (Jan 29, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I don't know what "W2" means. But Lisa Stevens says about 20 full time on Pathfinder itself, 5 art department, a bunch of admin/legal/web folks and various warehouse etc.  So sounds like about 25 full time, the rest part time.




A W2 is an income tax form that employers both give to their employees and send to the IRS. It typically reports your earnings, taxes paid, certain benefits, and the like. It's also the most common form that a taxpayer has.

Not intending this to be insulting or anything; just informative.


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## mlund (Jan 29, 2015)

Gundark said:


> Ugh....I suppose this means that 5e isn't selling as well as we all thought.




Well, layoffs have to do with the production of future products. That may or may not have to do with the success of already completed products. It really depends on the business plan.



Morrus said:


> I don't know what "W2" means.




Sorry, W2 is a tax-filing qualification for an employer and employee in the U.S. - distinct from a 1099 which would be an "independent contractor" (considered self-employed under U.S. tax and labor laws). If you are "headcount" in a US company that means you are a full-time W2 on file for the company. Contractors (or "contracted staff") either 1099s or are basically requisitioned from a staffing agency (and their W2 is filed under the agency), who is responsible for employment law compliance (benefits, taxes, etc.). It's all largely Kabuki Theater too, since the agency doesn't keep paying you if the other company just stops giving your work one day and they probably won't place you at a new position before you can find one on your own either (at least that's how it works in IT contracting). In either case Contract Staff can be dismissed at any time and the company that was using them isn't responsible for unemployment insurance, severance, or anything like that.

When a publicly-traded U.S. company officially reports on "employees," that's supposed to mean full-time W2s they are liable for. Contract staffing fees are filed under their balance sheets as a separate expense.

When a privately held company talks about "employees" they can refer to FTEs, interns, part-timers, family, and pets as "employees" if they please. Hence the curiosity.



> But Lisa Stevens says about 20 full time on Pathfinder itself, 5 art department, a bunch of admin/legal/web folks and various warehouse etc.  So sounds like about 25 full time, the rest part time.




Sounds about right. They publish monthly and Paizo doesn't have a larger corporate entity (WotC or Hasbro) that handles its admin, legal, web, publishing, vendor relations, or accounting functions.

Thanks for the info, +Morrus!

- Marty Lund


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## Morrus (Jan 29, 2015)

Nergal Pendragon said:


> A W2 is an income tax form that employers both give to their employees and send to the IRS. It typically reports your earnings, taxes paid, certain benefits, and the like. It's also the most common form that a taxpayer has.
> 
> Not intending this to be insulting or anything; just informative.




I don't really follow American tax forms in great detail. As hobbies go, that's pretty low on my list!


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## Rygar (Jan 29, 2015)

guachi said:


> I think this move is another sign of an industry (specifically, RPGs) in decline. The decline is likely long-term and permanent, unfortunately.




I would argue that there's two possibilities here.  The first as you describe.

The second possibility is that WOTC's business plan is flawed.  WOTC made the decision to remove XP from adventures and put in its place "Level now",  this is an exclusionary change.  If I prefer XP systems,  a product like that means substantial extra work for me,  and makes the product less interesting to me.  If they'd done it the way it had been done for years then its trivial to remove the XP system for those who prefer XP-less systems.  Just ignore the XP and announce levels where you like.

It's indicative of the type of thought that had got them in so much trouble previously,  "You'll all play this way".

Their other self-limiting decision was not bothering with Dragon/Dungeon on release,  and then making it a PDF only thing again.  During a time period when tablet sales are stagnant to tanking and physical books are outselling E-books by a very substantial margin.  Choosing to sell products to only a small fraction of your market never ends in success.  

D&D,  and any RPG,  needs adventures people can buy.  Many people are time-limited and/or imagination limited,  and the only way to acquire them is through purchasable adventures.  If I'm someone who doesn't have much time or isn't very good at coming up with stories the D&D products aren't terribly enticing to me.  Especially if I'm a fan of XP,  there isn't a product on the market that I can use to play D&D and there won't be.

They've made decisions that limit their potential customer base,  possibly to a substantial degree.  Making decisions that exclude customers,  perhaps 70%-80% of your potential customers (Based on E-book penetration) isn't a sign of a market decline,  it's a sign of a company that shot themselves in the foot through what appears to be just laziness.  

I say laziness because their excuse for XP-less modules was primarily "It takes work to balance the critters through the module and instead of doing that work we're going to sell you a story and you can do the work".  Their excuse for PDF only Dungeon/Dragon is even worse,  some meaningless statements about the archaic magazine market while ignoring that all they have to do is direct sales like their competitor who is growing at a rate of 20% a year from what I've heard.

IMO this isn't a sign of a market decline it is a sign of a company who isn't terribly interested in capitalizing on their product.  For it to be a sign of market decline I would argue that WOTC first would've had to have made an effort to acquire customers.


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## Alphastream (Jan 29, 2015)

Paraxis said:


> I wonder how many people Paizo has let go since they started publishing Pathfinder?  A company owned and operated solely by people who play and have grown up working in the business, many of whom were themselves let go by Wizards of the Coast at one point vs pretty much Hasbro/WoTC corporation who answer to nameless suits for the most part.
> 
> I wish the best of luck for Chris and Jennifer in whatever they go do now.




A good number, but it isn't causal. WotC's and TSR's enemy has always been the industry and itself, not other companies. If anything, the track record is that of other companies helping to make D&D much stronger. (As an easy example, what others were doing with D&D pushed TSR to flesh out Greyhawk as a campaign setting and to publish adventures.)

The problem is really everywhere in the industry. Wizards and Paizo have been unusual in hiring a large number of full-time employees. Paizo has clearly been growing each year. Wizards seems to now be shrinking, even as it has a very successful fifth edition. Some of it seems very deliberate: an attempt to escape the classic problems that plague all RPG companies (core books sell well, later supplements show diminishing returns).


----------



## billd91 (Jan 29, 2015)

mlund said:


> Well, layoffs have to do with the production of future products. That may or may not have to do with the success of already completed products. It really depends on the business plan.




Right. And, unfortunately, this seems to fit right in with WotC's Hasbro-era plan. Whether riding high on a recent release or not, they seem to shed higher-paid, longer tenure workers to go into game-maintenance mode. There may be some rational decision-making behind it depending on how you prioritize the bottom line and pick up the nickels. They also frequently pick up new talent in the wake of layoffs. Then the cycle begins again. So, from one perspective, we've got a game company getting rid of higher paid workers in favor of lower paid ones to have a better bottom line. But from another, we've got a game company hiring newer authors, training them, and sending them away once they've got experience under their belts - so they are like a farm team for their own competition.


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## dd.stevenson (Jan 29, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> Wizards seems to now be shrinking, even as it has a very successful fifth edition. Some of it seems very deliberate: an attempt to escape the classic problems that plague all RPG companies (core books sell well, later supplements show diminishing returns).



Yeah. Part of me fears they will become mere IP management specialists, rather than game content creators. The other part of me is just glad that they may find away to reconcile D&D with Hasboro margin and growth targets.

Gary Gygax & friends invented a wonderful game. They did not, however, invent a brilliant business model.


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## YourSwordIsMine (Jan 29, 2015)

The Dread Pirate WoTC strikes again!

"Good night. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill (fire) you in the morning." 

I guess Christmas came late to WoTC this year.


With such a  reputation for employee retention, why would anyone want to work for them? /boggle


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## Evenglare (Jan 29, 2015)

Whatever the reason, it certainly doesn't LOOK good to fans. It gives the impression that the game isn't doing well (whether it is or not). Wizards PR on this kind of stuff is terrible, hopefully we will hear something. I mean... it doesn't really make sense to think "WOOOO 5e is selling GREAT! Better lay off some of the staff!"


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## Nergal Pendragon (Jan 29, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I don't really follow American tax forms in great detail. As hobbies go, that's pretty low on my list!




Be glad! It's like trying to translate a slaad's thoughts using the language of Modrons.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 29, 2015)

Best of luck to Chris and Jennifer.  I'm sure they will find work soon with WotC and D&D (and MtG) on their resumes.

In any event, I am not sure why this still surprises anyone.  I am sure it doesn't surprise anyone who has or does work for WotC.  Cyclical layoffs have clearly been part of the business model since Hasbro bought them.  Just because they don't do the layoffs in a big lump at Christmas every year or two anymore (likely because of the bad PR it engenders) doesn't mean it is going to change.  A new edition has been released and they need fewer people for their in-house projects so in deference to the shareholders they are cutting some of their overhead.

Everyone who works for WotC, particularly in creative positions, knows that WotC is not a company where you work for your whole career.  They've even cut people, IIRC, not long after promoting them.  Maybe that helps both WotC and the employee since that shows up as more off the overhead while giving the laid off employee a better title and salary to show while seeking work, as strange as that may sound.


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## Evenglare (Jan 29, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> Best of luck to Chris and Jennifer.  I'm sure they will find work soon with WotC and D&D (and MtG) on their resumes.
> 
> In any event, I am not sure why this still surprises anyone.




New edition, new players. At least I hope it still surprises people, that means there are new people and our hobby is growing. As for surprising the older people? It doesn't, it just adds onto the mountain of disappointment and reputation that fans of wizards has laying off people of an already small staff. No surprise just really crappy is all.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 29, 2015)

Evenglare said:


> (. . .) I hope it still surprises people, that means there are new people and our hobby is growing. As for surprising the older people? It doesn't (. . .)





So the glass is half full AND half empty, not unlike the offices at WotC.


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## Kramodlog (Jan 29, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> Wizards seems to now be shrinking, even as it has a very successful fifth edition.



How do you know it is very successful? Did they officially announced sells figures and profite margines?


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## Evenglare (Jan 29, 2015)

Speculation gained from pretty much every RPG site on the net, at least that's how I see it. Its much more well recieved than 4e ever was at launch (and i love 4e). It's not really hard to make that jump. Maybe it did bomb but it doesn't seem like it has.


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## Mistwell (Jan 29, 2015)

Ans this is why it bothers me that people act like they know this is a layoff when they do not know that.

In decades as an attorney who dealt with employment matters, roughly half were for reasons other than a layoff.

In a decade as someone who runs a small business of 30 people, roughly half the people I've let go were for reasons other than a layoff.

I get it, WOTC has a reputation for cyclical layoffs.  I understand why that would be the first thing that comes to mind. What I don't understand is why, after it comes to mind, people conclude with certainty that is what happened.  And then they jump to a series of other unsupported conclusions, like it's meaning for sales, it's meaning for business plans, it's meaning for future publishing plans, it's meaning for departments, etc..

If someone who is in the know comes out and says this is a layoff, either one of these two people or someone at WOTC or someone who talks to one of those people, comes out and says this is a layoff, then OK.  But until that happens - I just don't think it's wise to assume you know what happened.

Right now, here is what I know unless someone with better knowledge says different, "The details are unclear, but D&D editor Chris Sims has reported that he is now in need of a job...and Jennifer Clarke Wilkes is in the same boat".

I feel bad for the two of them.  I don't know why they are no longer employed at WOTC, but I know being unemployed is hard.  I wish them luck.


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## Evenglare (Jan 29, 2015)

It doesn't matter WHAT happened, it rarely does. And yeah, it sucks but it's publicity. When bad stuff happens like this and other similar stuff has happened that's what people jump to, whether or not it's the truth. You have to manage this stuff because crap like this spreads like wildfire and the perception of the company is affected, again no matter what is actually happening. Like I said it's easy to jump to conclusions when you start thinking about it. Again it doesn't make sense to say "Wizards did GREAT with 5e, it's selling AMAZINGLY! Let's lay off our staff!". Makes no sense, so whatever DID happen, doesn't matter, it LOOKS bad and that's something that needs to be addressed quickly by the company. Unfortunately if I were to guess what's going to happen, I'd say wizards isn't going to say a damn thing about it if the past is any indication. 

So I agree with you, maybe its something else. Maybe it's not what we think. Sad fact is that it rarely matters in this case. Look at project morning star. We have no idea what happened there, but when they severed connections with wizards and they tried to make a comeback the negative perception had already spread and the nails in the coffin began to be hammered as made evident by their kickstarter. Public relations needs to be made by these companies and few take it seriously from what I have seen. They rather keep quiet than explain what has happened.


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## wrenofwar (Jan 29, 2015)

Evenglare said:


> ...Maybe it did bomb but it doesn't seem like it has.




It did well. They didn't release numbers but in their 10-Q for the quarter ended this September (which means only the PHB and MM had released and not for very long) they cite the brand as one of their revenue makers. 

"In the quarter, higher net revenues from MONOPOLY, MAGIC: THE GATHERING, SIMON, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS and OPERATION products were only partially offset by lower net revenues from other games brands, particularly BOP IT!, DUEL MASTERS and JENGA. In the first nine months of 2014, higher net revenues from MONOPOLY, MAGIC: THE GATHERING, SIMON, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, ELEFUN & FRIENDS and OPERATION products were more than offset by lower net revenues from other games brands, particularly BOP IT!, DUEL MASTERS, JENGA and TWISTER."

and 

"The games category benefited from higher net revenues from MONOPOLY, MAGIC: THE GATHERING, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, SIMON, CONNECT 4 and OPERATION products in both the quarter and nine-month periods ended September 28, 2014."

So now we don't have to speculate on the profitability. I'm a (admittedly young) CPA and tax attorney, but it seems like they just don't need all those employees for the amount of products they are planning on putting out. I would rather any excess talented staff be let go than kept on if they aren't needed. Why? Because I would prefer them to apply their talent where it would most benefit the RPG community instead of staying salaried at WotC where there isn't enough D&D work to go around. Likewise, I would rather WotC allocate their budget to more essential areas (would some money spent on publicity and advertising hurt?) than spend it on staff they don't need. And the poster who mentioned it isn't fair to compare D&D's head count to Piazo's is absolutely right. Not every Piazo staffer is a game designer, they need accountants, management and such that D&D has access to with WotC and Hasbro.

The brand we should be worried about appears to be Jenga. From the financial statements, their revenues seem to be falling. I don't know how long they can stand up to the competition. Jenga's business model is certainly unstable.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 29, 2015)

wrenofwar said:


> The brand we should be worried about appears to be Jenga. From the financial statements, their revenues seem to be falling. I don't know how long they can stand up to the competition. Jenga's business model is certainly unstable.





Too many knock-offs?


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## Mistwell (Jan 29, 2015)

wrenofwar said:


> It did well. They didn't release numbers but in their 10-Q for the quarter ended this September (which means only the PHB and MM had released and not for very long) they cite the brand as one of their revenue makers.
> 
> "In the quarter, higher net revenues from MONOPOLY, MAGIC: THE GATHERING, SIMON, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS and OPERATION products were only partially offset by lower net revenues from other games brands, particularly BOP IT!, DUEL MASTERS and JENGA. In the first nine months of 2014, higher net revenues from MONOPOLY, MAGIC: THE GATHERING, SIMON, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, ELEFUN & FRIENDS and OPERATION products were more than offset by lower net revenues from other games brands, particularly BOP IT!, DUEL MASTERS, JENGA and TWISTER."
> 
> ...




Wow, in all these years of official reports I've never once seen Hasbro credit D&D for increased revenues by name.


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## Scrivener of Doom (Jan 29, 2015)

I wish both Chris and Jennifer all the best.

And in wishing them all the best, I hope they find a job outside this "industry".


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## Grainger (Jan 29, 2015)

It does seem crazy that I can go into the small town near where I live and buy a Starter Box (from a chain book shop), and yet the number of people working in the industry is so tiny. For a product with relatively large distribution/availability, that just seems out of whack to me, but I guess if you spend a lot of time on a forum, the subject you're discussing seems far more popular than it really is.

From the discussion upthread it seems the biggest two RPG companies, Wizards and Paizo, have about 30-50 employees between them (in D&D's case, presumably it shares resources with Wizards as a whole so its staffing numbers would be higher if it just produced RPGs). Presumably, all other RPG companies have much lower staffing levels, if they even have dedicated full-time staff, so the total industry is tiny. I guess Fantasy Flight might have some dedicated people, but AFAIK they work on other games. Steve Jackson Games makes its money from Munchkin, not GURPS...

Pretty depressing that there's no money in our global hobby, and hence next-to-zero chance of making a living in the industry, and that it seems TSR in the 70s and 80s was riding a fad, not something that's repeatable, so even if they hadn't mis-managed it, they were never going to remain at that size. I guess a mega-successful D&D movie could turn things around hugely, but other than that... Maybe another "D&D is evil" type scandal...?


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## chibi graz'zt (Jan 29, 2015)

I believe that White Wolf games (now Onyx Path under CCP) has 2 or 3 staff. I think in their heyday they boasted about 1 or 2 dozen.


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## Erik Mona (Jan 29, 2015)

There is, indeed, money in our tiny industry.


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## Grainger (Jan 29, 2015)

Erik Mona said:


> There is, indeed, money in our tiny industry.




If there's money, why is the industry tiny? That's my question.


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## Scrivener of Doom (Jan 29, 2015)

Grainger said:


> If there's money, why is the industry tiny? That's my question.




I suspect because there are different definitions of "there is money in this industry".

And I further suspect that the "industry" uses a far different definition....


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## Uder (Jan 29, 2015)

Grainger said:


> If there's money, why is the industry tiny? That's my question.




Maybe there's an inherent limit to its popularity. More cynically, maybe every time the "industry" starts to really hit its stride, something comes along and knocks it over in a vain attempt to teach hobbyists to be customers.


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## Kramodlog (Jan 29, 2015)

Evenglare said:


> Speculation gained from pretty much every RPG site on the net, at least that's how I see it. Its much more well recieved than 4e ever was at launch (and i love 4e). It's not really hard to make that jump. Maybe it did bomb but it doesn't seem like it has.




That is just good reviews on the internet. Not sale figures. It could be that a lot of potential clients have moved on and do not care. The field is clear for people who always are loyal to the brand to voice their enthousiasm. I remember people with sigs saying "I'm with D&D not matter which edition" or something. When 5e was announced and no playtest has been done, you already had a few people saying it would be awesome. When some people got their hands one the first books, they wrote 5 stars reviews after just reading a few pages and not testing the game. Some said it was the best edition ever. There is a core of fans who will give the brand a lot positive reviews no matter what. It is the other people we aren't hearing about (maybe).

The financial info Hasbro has made public could corroborate the sentiment that it is doing well, but we shouldn't be surprise with D&D getting "[...] higher net revenues [...]". D&D went from "not far from no revenues" to "we're launching a new edition!". Of course revenues will spike. Will that continue? That is the interesting part.


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## Guang (Jan 29, 2015)

Grainger said:


> Maybe another "D&D is evil" type scandal...?



Please no. That "scandal" never ended in some circles. Circles which I have to deal with. I can only imagine how much I'd have to put up with if it all started up again.


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## pukunui (Jan 29, 2015)

How do we know they weren't just on fixed-term contracts or something? Why does Chris Sims saying he's in need of a job automatically mean he got fired? Maybe he was only being employed until the conclusion of the 5e launch period. I don't think there's any need to turn this into a pity party on his behalf.

Just a thought.


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## MasterTrancer (Jan 29, 2015)

Scrivener of Doom said:


> I suspect because there are different definitions of "there is money in this industry".
> 
> And I further suspect that the "industry" uses a far different definition....




Moreover, would increasing the industry even twofold net an (at least) twofold increase in the market value? Or is it that this specific market actually supports small staffs (Paizo seems like an outlier based on the figures posted above)?

That aside, I wish the best of luck to Chris and Jennifer.


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## Sailor Moon (Jan 29, 2015)

The problem is big business and capitalism.

RPG's thrive when in the hands of a small business who aren't on the ever lasting profit treadmill. Paizo is a perfect example of how you run a gaming business. They are there to make money of course, but they aren't slaves to the ever increasing profit rat race.


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## Kramodlog (Jan 29, 2015)

Sailor Moon said:


> The problem is big business and capitalism.
> 
> RPG's thrive when in the hands of a small business who aren't on the ever lasting profit treadmill. Paizo is a perfect example of how you run a gaming business. They are there to make money of course, but they aren't slaves to the ever increasing profit rat race.




We do not know what are Hasbro expectations of D&D... Unlike with 4e (50 millions revenues). If now they just need a 10% profit margine, it isn't the same game.


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## delericho (Jan 29, 2015)

Good luck to Chris and Jennifer. It always sucks to lose a job - I hope you find something else soon.


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## Alphastream (Jan 29, 2015)

mlund said:


> Does WotC even keep part-timers and freelancers for their core product teams? It seems like the RPG industry status quo outside of Wizards is to have a large stable of part-time / freelance / by-the-word staff on-call and string them along with a widely fluctuating volume of work requests (and thus pay) rather than actually make them salaried staff. I mean, you don't call it a lay-off when you suddenly reduce a contractor's workload to something that wouldn't even bring him over the poverty-level but it happens to artists and writers in creative industries all the time.




Wizards does employ many outside freelancers, and has been increasingly. Look at any recent 5E adventure and you are likely looking at freelancers. Now, there is terrific direction from Wizards as to what should be written (and ideas on how), but even the development and editorial work can be in the hands of a freelancer. (Worth noting that these are very amazing freelancers who have decades of experience.) 

The problem with freelancing is that it will generally pay far less, forcing most freelancers to either seek a different second job or work relentlessly to get enough work to pay bills. Wizards pays top rates... outside of Wizards you can find $.01/word or even less. The hourly rate on that isn't close to minimum wage. A key problem with our industry is that for most companies, our hobby doesn't generate enough revenue. Freelancing as a solution for RPG companies (and it is a solution for pretty much all of them) is also how the industry keeps many poor while never changing its model. 

As Erik Mona says, there can be money in our industry. But it is almost impossible to identify RPG companies that could stay profitable longer than a year or two. Two key issues: 1) Many gamers can and do play without buying stuff and 2) even when we buy stuff we tend to buy less as a product line gets older and more diverse. 

The successful companies, including Paizo, don't share the numbers. We don't know, for example, how much of Paizo's success comes from the subscription model, whether splatbooks decline in revenue for them just as they have for all other RPG companies, or anything about the magnitude of their success (it always sounds lean, but it could just be how they keep costs in check). The few RPG companies that share numbers tend to involve a very small number of employees and have total yearly revenues far below what TSR brought in with OD&D!

It would be great if we could see models that work, such that the hobby could be strengthened. Crowdfunding is clearly helping, but it is still very often hiding a labor of love. There are a few exceptions, such as Numenera, but those numbers are still not amazing compared to major (let alone core) products in the late 70s and early 80s (and perhaps recent - we don't know because we lack data from WotC and Paizo). Even with Kickstarters it is hard to know what drives success - I think we all know the key ingredient to the Exploding Kittens card game currently on Kickstarter, and it isn't the business model (unless you consider Fame to be a business model).



Nergal Pendragon said:


> This almost looks like they're trying to purge all of the people involved with editions that has problems.



Nope. Everything about 5E shows a healthy respect for previous editions. Nearly all staff have experience across several editions and their best freelancers go way back.


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## wedgeski (Jan 29, 2015)

Good luck to Chris and Jennifer.

I stand by my theory that Paizo managed to capture all of the role-players with really deep pockets.


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## Grainger (Jan 29, 2015)

Guang said:


> Please no. That "scandal" never ended in some circles. Circles which I have to deal with. I can only imagine how much I'd have to put up with if it all started up again.




I was just being flippant. It was annoying enough here in the UK, and we didn't have too many problems arising from it; I can't imagine the difficulties experienced in the US by D&D fans with families who believed the nonsense.


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## Kramodlog (Jan 29, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> outside of Wizards you can find $.01/word or even less.




Paizo is at 0.05 a word minimum. Morrus at 0.03 a word of for his online mags. What is WotC's?


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## Grainger (Jan 29, 2015)

Grainger said:


> If there's money, why is the industry tiny? That's my question.




Actually, I rethought that and answered my own question. The Harry Potter books sold millions, but they didn't need a big creative staff. In fact, it was just one - J K Rowling (plus an editor or two, and one or two artists and graphic designers). You can make a lot of money without needing lots of people creating the product*.






*I know lots of people are employed in the printing, distribution and retail etc. of the product, but for RPGs presumably these are third parties, not "part of the industry" per se, and we were really talking about creatives. You certainly don't need 50 writers and editors at every RPG company, working away year in, year out.


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## Eejit (Jan 29, 2015)

goldomark said:


> How do you know it is very successful? Did they officially announced sells figures and profite margines?




The PHB was right up there in Amazon's best seller list for weeks, like in the top 5. That is a very strong sign of good sales. According to other authors' comments on the past  that can mean over 10k copies shifted per day, on US Amazon alone.


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## delericho (Jan 29, 2015)

goldomark said:


> We do not know what are Hasbro expectations of D&D...




I think we kinda do: a movie.

The RPG is little more than a blip, and that only because of the "new edition" spike. Licensing is where the money is (on a Hasbro scale).


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## justmebd (Jan 29, 2015)

In 2004, I was given the good news that I would become a WotC employee for one of their smaller magazines at the time, but they said they didn't have a start date while they "finished a few things." Three weeks later I was told the job no longer existed. Since I would've had to relocate across the country, I'm glad it happened before I moved.


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## GMforPowergamers (Jan 29, 2015)

goldomark said:


> Paizo is at 0.05 a word minimum. Morrus at 0.03 a word of for his online mags. What is WotC's?




as an aspiring writer those numbers scare me a lot. How much do you need to live in a year? lets put it at a modest 25-30k (and to be honest that is still pretty poor living) how many words do you have to sell... well even at 0.05 per word that is 500,000+ words per year 9,615 words per week, or if you assume a 40hr work week 240 words per hour...

to put that in perspective that's 25k per year... that is $12 per hour... and that is just better then min wage (just went up to $10.10 in my area) so I could ask if you want fries with that and make that kind of money....

on the other hand if I understand correctly, WotC pays better then that hourly... by the way, someone asked earlier why someone would work for wotc, it's because if you work for even just a year or two there you do way better then most freelancers.


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## Morrus (Jan 29, 2015)

goldomark said:


> Paizo is at 0.05 a word minimum. Morrus at 0.03 a word of for his online mags. What is WotC's?




Most of it is salaried, not /word.  But back when they had DDI, Dragon, Dungeon, etc. it was about $.06 per word for most people.

I've not seen many examples of $0.01 per word.  Nobody should take work at that rate.


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## Grainger (Jan 29, 2015)

I thought that in general, freelancers earn a lot more than salaried staff per hour. The advantage in hiring them is that you only have to pay for the hours you actually need them, and you often don't have the "hidden" costs of employment (taxes, sick pay, holiday pay, maternity pay, pension contributions, providing equipment, office space, etc.) and it's generally more flexible. I'm not arguing with those of you who know the figures - I'm sure you're right with regard to the "per word" figures - I just find it interesting that the freelancers in this situation actually get less.


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## delericho (Jan 29, 2015)

GMforPowergamers said:


> by the way, someone asked earlier why someone would work for wotc, it's because if you work for even just a year or two there you do way better then most freelancers.




Plus, by all accounts it's a really good place to work - while it lasts.


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## Morrus (Jan 29, 2015)

Grainger said:


> I thought that in general, freelancers earn a lot more than salaried staff per hour. The advantage in hiring them is that you only have to pay for the hours you actually need them, and you often don't have the "hidden" costs of employment (taxes, sick pay, holiday pay, maternity pay, pension contributions, providing equipment, office space, etc.) and it's generally more flexible. I'm not arguing with those of you who know the figures - I'm sure you're right with regard to the "per word" figures - I just find it interesting that the freelancers in this situation actually get less.




This is a tiny little cottage industry, and the average company size is somewhere in the region of 1 person.  WotC, Paizo, etc. - they're exceptions, not the rule.


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## ExploderWizard (Jan 29, 2015)

wrenofwar said:


> Jenga's business model is certainly unstable.




HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Thanks for making my morning!!


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## kenmarable (Jan 29, 2015)

pukunui said:


> How do we know they weren't just on fixed-term contracts or something? Why does Chris Sims saying he's in need of a job automatically mean he got fired? Maybe he was only being employed until the conclusion of the 5e launch period. I don't think there's any need to turn this into a pity party on his behalf.
> 
> Just a thought.



As others have said, Chris Sims's tweets make it quite apparent that he didn't see this coming and was surprised. Plus the fact that Jennifer Clarke Wilkes was employed continuously by WotC for 15 years makes it seem extremely unlikely that this was just end of contracts.

Two people (out of a very small staff) unemployed on the same day, unexpectedly (so at least Sims didn't quit) and despite one of them being there for a long time means they were fired. It is remotely possible it is something else, but the likelihood is pretty absurd. So it's safe to assume they were fired. So either they both did something worthy of firing (I doubt it), or were fired for business reasons - they were laid off. Considering WotC has laid off employees Dec/Jan many, many times in the past, and often around new edition launches, every single sign points to them being laid off.

I'd say the burden of proof is definitely on those who want to argue that they weren't laid off. Because there is so much evidence pointing towards a layoff, that it's safe to assume that's what it is until proven otherwise.

Plus, wishing people well when they find themselves surprisingly without a livelihood isn't a "pity party." Having been through that and not knowing how I'm going to feed my family, calling sympathy for that a "pity party" is awfully rude.


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## DMZ2112 (Jan 29, 2015)

Good fortune to Chris and Jennifer!

It's a shame but not very surprising.  I'm sure their work was exemplary, and I am always sad to hear about a fellow editor being fired (not only for the editor themself but also because it generally means someone thinks writing quality is a safe place to cut corners), but we know -- and have known forever -- that WotC is essentially getting out of the book business.  The DMG is out.  What use is an editor to a company whose current plans include outsourcing of all authoring?  All Wizards needs now is a skeleton crew to maintain content quality and brand identity from their contractors.  I just hope these two were given the courtesy of good notice.

{Also, for the record, I don't /agree/ that Wizards no longer needs editors to watch over their contractors.  I bet you anything we see a further drop in product quality from this point on.  Never fire your editors.  You only think you know how to write.}


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## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

As others have said, this is just corporate America.  If you want to boycott WoTC/Hasbro for layoffs, then I'm assuming you won't buy anything from any company ever?  Because pretty much anything you would buy at the store is owned by a company that does layoffs.

It sucks, but it's part of normal corporate life.  Really, the only way to keep someone on is to have a justifiable workload for them.  And in this case, it would be splatbook treadmills.  WoTC has already said they aren't doing that, so as unfortunate as this is, it should not be a surprise to anyone.  And it doesn't make WoTC/Hasbro some sort of evil overlord or anything.  Not any different than any other publically traded company that is.


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## Morrus (Jan 29, 2015)

Sacrosanct said:


> If you want to boycott WoTC/Hasbro for layoffs, then I'm assuming you won't buy anything from any company ever?




Just curious who you're addressing there?  Who said they wanted to boycott WotC?

(I'm not saying nobody did - I haven't read every post in the thread - but a quote would probably help!)


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## Zaukrie (Jan 29, 2015)

Good luck to both of them. It signals continued small release schedules to me. I may be wrong,  but that is how I read this. That's fine, I feel no need to give Hasbro more money.


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## Alphastream (Jan 29, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Most of it is salaried, not /word.  But back when they had DDI, Dragon, Dungeon, etc. it was about $.06 per word for most people.
> 
> I've not seen many examples of $0.01 per word.  Nobody should take work at that rate.




I turned .01 down last week. It was a well-known RPG company, for an adventure at Gen Con. I am fortunate to be able to write as a hobby, not for income, but I felt responsible for others who do need to earn these assignments to help make ends meet. I turned it down, in part, in hopes it would encourage higher pay next time.


----------



## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Just curious who you're addressing there?  Who said they wanted to boycott WotC?
> 
> (I'm not saying nobody did - I haven't read every post in the thread - but a quote would probably help!)




Not just in this thread specifically.  But over the years in these dicussions we've had lots of people say things like WoTC is the devil and this is why they'll never buy anything from them ever again, etc, etc, etc.

WoTC isn't any different than any other corporation, so it always strikes me odd of the vitriol and passive agressive threats when we don't do the same standard for everything else.  Yeah, I get the geek emotional investment, but hyperbole never solved anything.


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## iwarrior-poet (Jan 29, 2015)

Every time WotC does this, they lose much more than they gain. OK--it is a viable, corporate cost-cutting measure---but D&D loses any long-term stewardship and brand commitment from potential game creators/innovators. 

Both 4E and 5E did not launch well (or at least not as well as anticipated). I believe this could have been avoided if they had retained the creative types who truly loved working on D&D products. I love D&D, but since 3.5 I have lost almost all faith in WoTC's approach to supporting/creating/innovating. If they had truly leveraged one of the newer additions with an excellent digital aide, a top-notch MMORPG (with input/output to the digital aide), and some cross-over multi-media (movie, books, or even an good web-series)----D&D would be back in the spotlight and raking in cash from a variety of revenue streams. 
Yes---I know that some of this would have been very difficult (licensing rights, etc.), but it could have been done if someone had connected the knowledgeable D&D talent with the right resources. 

Instead we have a new edition which looks like it will do even worse biz than the last. Someone with $$$ and vision needs to buy D&D off of WotC if it is going to thrive.


----------



## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

iwarrior-poet said:


> Both 4E and 5E did not launch well (or at least not as well as anticipated).
> 
> 
> Instead we have a new edition which looks like it will do even worse biz than the last.




curious.  What leads you to believe this?  do you have any hard numbers or anything?


----------



## Alphastream (Jan 29, 2015)

Grainger said:


> I thought that in general, freelancers earn a lot more than salaried staff per hour. The advantage in hiring them is that you only have to pay for the hours you actually need them, and you often don't have the "hidden" costs of employment (taxes, sick pay, holiday pay, maternity pay, pension contributions, providing equipment, office space, etc.) and it's generally more flexible. I'm not arguing with those of you who know the figures - I'm sure you're right with regard to the "per word" figures - I just find it interesting that the freelancers in this situation actually get less.




I'm a contractor/freelancer for my real job, and in most fields this is absolutely true. It isn't in publishing and certainly not in RPGs. 

The core issue is a lack of money in RPGs, even at the highest corporate level. An average story goes like this: An individual starts an RPG company, spends tons of unpaid time writing an RPG, borrows money to pay for printing, prints, gets a good amount (hopefully) of initial sales and perhaps can pay off the loans, needs to publish a supplement to keep interest in the line - therefore borrows more money or uses up the profits, the next book sells less because of diminishing returns (each product will be of interest to an increasingly smaller subset of players), now the person is losing money... if they don't publish interest drops and if they do they still lose money. 

A way to lessen that model is to hire freelancers to keep costs way down and also to publish more faster. This is especially important if the company is large enough that the work would require hiring someone. You can imagine how brutal it would be for most RPG companies to pay an actual salary in that model. As an example, Dungeon World has shared some figures. For the first 5 months they had costs of $53,000. They had, at the end of it, $34,000 in the bank, which he says, "will be used to pay taxes for 2012 and then a significant part of it will be split between Adam and I." He also says that this would support one full-time employee living somewhere cheap. I'm not sure about that, but it's regardless really lean... and this is an indie RPG company that absolutely knocked it out of the park. We can also look at Evil Hat's numbers, which reflect a mature company that has built up support and following over a decade or so... and they still would have trouble employing a number of people. It is a brutal industry and it leads to hiring cheap freelancers instead of hiring. 



delericho said:


> Plus, by all accounts it's a really good place to work - while it lasts.



Absolutely. Even the people that leave Wizards speak fondly of it, almost without exception. Every time I interact with Wizards employees, they have a great comaraderie and the workplace is better than most places I've worked with by far. (I have visited more than 100 different corporate work places since 1996.)



DMZ2112 said:


> {Also, for the record, I don't /agree/ that Wizards no longer needs editors to watch over their contractors.  I bet you anything we see a further drop in product quality from this point on.  Never fire your editors.  You only think you know how to write.}



Absolutely. From all accounts, the first published outsourced adventure required heavy editing/adjustment, and that's with it coming from an outside company with deep D&D setting knowledge, adventure writing expertise, and 5E experience. As a freelancer, I've always been blown away by the quality of WotC's development and editing staff. They have added incredible value to all of my projects.


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## iwarrior-poet (Jan 29, 2015)

No hard numbers, just my anecdotal observations. The build-up to the last two editions was considerable---to what I perceived as a tepid response. I don't see the newer edition books on shelves of major booksellers. The gaming store in my area went out of biz because no one was buying 4e. The 4e digital aide role out was terrible, and the 5e digital aide is now non-existent. 

There doesn't seem to be anyone with the will, commitment and foresight at the helm of D&D to push it into popularity.

As a gauge---I played Advanced D&D in the early/mid '80s--when EVERYONE played---and I believe if D&D was handled well it could be there again.


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## iwarrior-poet (Jan 29, 2015)

Sacrosanct said:


> curious.  What leads you to believe this?  do you have any hard numbers or anything?




No hard numbers, just my anecdotal observations. The build-up to the last two editions was considerable---to what I perceived as a tepid response. I don't see the newer edition books on shelves of major booksellers. The gaming store in my area went out of biz because no one was buying 4e. The 4e digital aide role out was terrible, and the 5e digital aide is now non-existent.

There doesn't seem to be anyone with the will, commitment and foresight at the helm of D&D to push it into popularity.

As a gauge---I played Advanced D&D in the early/mid '80s--when EVERYONE played---and I believe if D&D was handled well it could be there again.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-Wilkes-Let-Go-From-WotC/page12#ixzz3QE2zwosE


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## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

iwarrior-poet said:


> No hard numbers, just my anecdotal observations. The build-up to the last two editions was considerable---to what I perceived as a tepid response. I don't see the newer edition books on shelves of major booksellers. The gaming store in my area went out of biz because no one was buying 4e. The 4e digital aide role out was terrible, and the 5e digital aide is now non-existent.





I think the death of FLGS has more to do with everyone buying their stuff online, like Amazon.  Not that the books are not popular.  In fact, D&D 5e is listed as a best seller, and had a huge response for online retail.  That's why your comments threw me off.  I've had the opposite impression for 5e.


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## Alphastream (Jan 29, 2015)

iwarrior-poet said:


> Both 4E and 5E did not launch well




This is completely incorrect. By several accounts (including Ryan Dancey), 4E exceeded 3E in initial launch numbers. 5E has been off-the-charts (or should we say, "on the Amazon charts") in its success - it is unlikely anything other than the first Red Boxed set has done as well, and I would bet that 5E's PH has beaten that as well. 

Some data points:

- Ryan on 2E and 3E sales: (3E released in 2000)
"The one thing I can tell you is that when TSR did the transition from 1e to 2e in 1998, they sold 289,000 Player's Handbooks in 1998. We sold 300,000 3e Players Handbooks in about 30 days. And the trajectory of the rest of the product line mimicked the PHB."

Escapist Magazine, Dec 2011:
- "[3rd edition] was the most successful RPG published since the early years of 1st edition AD&D," Dancey said. "It outsold the core books of 2nd edition AD&D by a wide margin. 
- Preorders for the core books of 4th edition of D&D in June 2008 were extremely strong and - without any hard sales numbers released by WoTC - anecdotal evidence from local game stores supported the claim that it sold much better than 3rd at launch.

- Acaeum with a former TSR soure:
Adventures sell far less than rulebooks do (which is why we stopped doing them.)  Rulebooks are a whole different matter.  In 1989, TSR sold something like 1,000,000 copies of the D&D boxed set in one year.  It was amazing.
(That's the Red Box)

Ryan Dancey in 2014 Gen Con EN World interview on YouTube:
- Not official numbers for 3E, but in 1989 transitioning from 1E to 2E sold 286,000 copies of PH. When went from 2E to 3E, "sold 300,000 copies of PH in one month and got better from there."

5E's stay on the top Amazon charts is unprecedented and alone indicates a higher rate of sales than 300,000 in one month... and you add retail stores to that! The mention in the Hasbro quarterly report backs the success up further. My guess is the PH will be more successful than the Red Box across a full calendar year.

I'll close with an interesting Dancey quote. (Dancey is a great source of data, though I don't usually agree with his conclusions, such as his prediction that the hobby is dying.)
- Ryan on desired WotC annual revenue:
"Success for 4e was defined (by Wizards) as generating annual revenues between $50 and $100 million. By that (self-imposed) definition, it is a failure."
"Wizard's cost basis is several orders of magnitude higher than Paizos. They have more, higher paid staff. They pay more for art. They pay more for production. They have more overhead costs (rent, legal, etc.) And worse, due to the way Hasbro structures itself, they don't get to claim any credit for the royalties earned by D&D licensing. So the money Wizards gets to use to offset its costs is just from product sales and DDI.
4e is also exclusively sold through middlemen. You can't buy D&D from Wizards of the Coast. Whereas Paizo earns 100% of many of its sales, Wizards only earns 40% on all of the stuff it sells. So Wizards has to sell 2.5 times as many units just to generate the same revenue as 1 unit of a Paizo product sold direct to a consumer."


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## Mark CMG (Jan 29, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> This is completely incorrect. By several accounts (including Ryan Dancey), 4E exceeded 3E in initial launch numbers. 5E has been off-the-charts (or should we say, "on the Amazon charts") in its success - it is unlikely anything other than the first Red Boxed set has done as well, and I would bet that 5E's PH has beaten that as well.





Just looking at the rest of your post, it appears there is quite a bit of semantic gymnastics and assumption being used to back up this hyperbole.  3E launched a single book out of the gate, not the whole set, during a time when the Internet was just beginning to be leveraged for such things.  Ryan Dancey clearly says he has no numbers for 4E while you imply he is speaking to the numbers in your opening paragraph.  As to 5E, I hope it is doing well but I honestly see no evidence it is the off-the-charts success you claim it is.

If I saw huge swaths of PF folks moving back over to 5E, I'd agree in a heartbeat that 5E must be doing very well indeed.  If I saw a huge drop in OSR movements rather than growth, with folks saying they were moving toward 5E I would consider these hyperbolic claims.  Maybe the bigger conventions are having strong turnouts for D&D 5E events but among the smaller conventions and gamedays I am only seeing a smattering of D&D events listed.  The PF events seem very prevalent and popular.

If 5E sales figures are as astronomical as you say, folks don't seem to be making anywhere near the appearances at events that I would expect to see after such claims.  Gen Con?  Of course.  Winter Fantasy?  Seems to be doing well with 5E stuff.  But is this spreading naturally out to other events like the virus it should be for what you say is "off-the-charts?"  I'm just not seeing it.

And let me say that I think 5E is a good RPG.  I think it has some issues as all of them do but it is solid and the production values are huge.  I think they oversold it as an OSR replacement, as there are just too many modern RPGisms that regularly pop up in gameplay to keep it feeling OS.  But combats are quick and the Advantage / Disadvantage mechanic is a clever one to add into the game.

I hope it continues to do well but, dude, dial it back a bit on the hype already.  Anyone with eyes can look around at what is happening at stores and events (though some will see only what is happening at their one or two local places).  I get to a lot of events and whenever I put together a monthly roundup for upcoming ones, I look through the events listings.  I should be seeing a heck of a lot more for D&D for your hype to be correct.  Mind you, they are doing decently but, as said, it's not cutting into anything else.  There are no system mass migrations happening.


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## Gecko85 (Jan 29, 2015)

iwarrior-poet said:


> Both 4E and 5E did not launch well (or at least not as well as anticipated).



And you know this how? All three of the core rulebooks have been in the Amazon top 100 at one point, with the PHB still there 5 months after launch. They also sold out for a period at all local shops around here, and I've heard that was true most places. No official numbers, but everything points to a successful 5e launch.


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## Chocolategravy (Jan 29, 2015)

This is how companies reward you for a highly successful product launch.


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## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

Chocolategravy said:


> This is how companies reward you for a highly successful product launch.




How many 5e products have you bought?


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## Mistwell (Jan 29, 2015)

I've gotten confirmation now from at least one former WOTC employee that this was a layoff.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 29, 2015)

These things happen.  Hopefully they can find stable work.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 29, 2015)

Chase Freedom MC said:


> And you know this how? All three of the core rulebooks have been in the Amazon top 100 at one point, with the PHB still there 5 months after launch. They also sold out for a period at all local shops around here, and I've heard that was true most places. No official numbers, but everything points to a successful 5e launch.





Yeah, I think every D&D edition launch has been a success.  I don't think the brand owner is ever satisfied with the numbers and I don't think anyone associated with the brand would ever say it wasn't a great success.  But what are the particulars leading any one person to see something as a success, or not as successful as expected?  I'm going by the events listings at conventions and gamedays I monitor, mostly around the US but some abroad.  Nothing compiled but it is simple enough for anyone to go to a handful of sites (like Warhorn.net), look around and come to their own conclusions.

I was talking to a gamestore guy this last week that told me he was having trouble moving 5E though PF was still doing brisk business (and he clearly keeps the doors open and lights on due to MtG).  He told me the PF Starter still does better than the 5E Starter.  I told him to push the price difference if he wanted to sell more of one than the other.

I don't know that we can judge 5E as a success or not overall until we see how it is doing one year in or so.  PF continues to be successful because it has tons of support from all quarters, in-house and out, lots of oars rowing in the same direction.  Thus far, 5E has very limited support, even from WotC.  Unless that changes a great deal, more 5E products from somewhere and a more extensive presence for the Adventurer's League, and a lot more grassroots games being run at conventions and gamedays by fans, I'm not sure this will rise to the level where it can be called much of a success.  

A success, but not much of one, is still a success.  But then we start to look at other things.  Is WotC still the undisputed industry leader?  (I think so for now.)  Is 5E's limited success a sign of industry wide failure?  (Naw.  All signs are that the RPG industry is doing very well with no slowing down.)


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## Sir Brennen (Jan 29, 2015)

GMforPowergamers said:


> as an aspiring writer those numbers scare me a lot. How much do you need to live in a year? lets put it at a modest 25-30k (and to be honest that is still pretty poor living) how many words do you have to sell... well even at 0.05 per word that is 500,000+ words per year 9,615 words per week, or if you assume a 40hr work week 240 words per hour...



There's a quote (I think it was Stephen King) who said something like the number of writers in America who make a living off of just writing would all fit on a couch.


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## Gecko85 (Jan 29, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> I was talking to a gamestore guy this last week that told me he was having trouble moving 5E though PF was still doing brisk business (and he clearly keeps the doors open and lights on due to MtG).  He told me the PF Starter still does better than the 5E Starter.  I told him to push the price difference if he wanted to sell more of one than the other.




Fair enough, but my experiences have been different. My local shops sold out of both the PHB and DMG in quick order, and their restock is now getting low as well.

And like I said before, online sales have been huge. The PHB has been in or around the top 100 on Amazon for 5 months. That's huge. That's top 100 books sold...any books. Children's books, cook books, self-help books, thrillers, you name it. And the PHB has been among the top. The DMB and MM have also done quite well.

As of right this moment, on Amazon:

PHB:


> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)




Starter Set:


> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #644 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)




DMG:


> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)




MM:


> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)




DM Screen:


> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #196 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)




Amazon sells a LOT of books. For these books to be in and around the top 250 for months means a lot. I don't think the PHB has been out of the top 100 much at all (unless it was sold out for a short period, as the DMG was very recently) in the 5 months since it launched. That's huge.

Here are the current Amazon numbers for Pathfinder:

Pathfinder Core Rulebook:


> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,429 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)




Pathfinder Beginner Box:


> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)




Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide:


> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #49,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)




Pathfinder GameMastery Guide:


> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #38,224 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)




This is not posted to start an edition war, just to show that even though one brick and mortar store owner might say that Pathfinder is selling well, but 5e is not, doesn't mean it's that way everywhere.

The one Pathfinder campaign I'm still in is winding down. We have one session left. Almost all have moved on to 5e, so that group will not be starting up another Pathfinder campaign. (Two people in the group are already in another 5e campaign...) I think a lot of people who may be thinking about trying 5e are waiting until existing campaigns wind down. That's not going to happen overnight.


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## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

Sir Brennen said:


> There's a quote (I think it was Stephen King) who said something like the number of writers in America who make a living off of just writing would all fit on a couch.




Yeah, you've got to view writing as one of those jobs like a professional athlete or entertainer.  99.9% of the people who want to do that barely squeak by, if that.

It's one of those jobs you do because you love it, not because you want to make a good living at it.  I'm speaking of very niche writing, like RPGs.  It's true in general, but for niche writing, it's especially true.


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## Sailor Moon (Jan 29, 2015)

Chase Freedom MC said:


> Fair enough, but my experiences have been different. My local shops sold out of both the PHB and DMG in quick order, and their restock is now getting low as well.
> 
> And like I said before, online sales have been huge. The PHB has been in or around the top 100 on Amazon for 5 months. That's huge. That's top 100 books sold...any books. Children's books, cook books, self-help books, thrillers, you name it. And the PHB has been among the top. The DMB and MM have also done quite well.
> 
> ...




You seem to forget that a lot of people buy directly from Paizo in the form of books and PDF's.

Amazon is not a "success" measuring tool.


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## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

Sailor Moon said:


> You seem to forget that a lot of people buy directly from Paizo in the form of books and PDF's.
> 
> Amazon is not a "success" measuring tool.




Well, it is, just not so much when making this particular comparison, for reasons you point out.



But back on topic, I think it's also worth pointing that in most businesses, you get paid for the work you're doing, not the work you did.  So while 5e seems to have a had a really good release, it makes zero sense to retain all of the employees now that the work is done.  You "reward" the employees by paying them a good wage and benefits for the work they are doing.  But they aren't on a royalty contract to my knowledge, so if there's no work for them to do now, it doesn't make sense to keep everyone.

Anyone who's worked for a corporation usually can see this stuff coming a mile away.  I work in banking, and when the market crashed in 2008, everyone knew that new applications were dropping significantly and thus there was no need to keep a huge staff of underwriters and loan processors.  The work simply wasn't there.  Can't blame the company for that, nor the inevitable layoffs that occured.  It's no secret that WoTC was going to a light release schedule, so after the big 3 books were done, it should have been pretty clear to the WoTC employees that there would be a restructure.  Especially since it appears they are outsourcing much of their adventure path stuff.

Not taking away or belittling how much it sucks for the employee, of course.  Just trying to keep things in the proper perspective.


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## DMZ2112 (Jan 29, 2015)

Sir Brennen said:


> There's a quote (I think it was Stephen King) who said something like the number of writers in America who make a living off of just writing would all fit on a couch.




But take heart -- their egos could fill the Superdome.  



Sailor Moon said:


> You seem to forget that a lot of people buy directly from Paizo in the form of books and PDF's.
> Amazon is not a "success" measuring tool.




View attachment 66572

Clearly not.


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## Zil (Jan 29, 2015)

Chase Freedom MC said:


> Fair enough, but my experiences have been different. My local shops sold out of both the PHB and DMG in quick order, and their restock is now getting low as well.




In my local gaming store, the 5E books have certainly been edging out Pathfinder in terms of shelf space, but I'm not sure how well they have been moving.  I keep seeing the same number of books, most of which are the Tiamat adventures and starter sets, every week so unless he's restocking constantly, it does not seem to be moving that briskly. 

I also stumbled on this recent blog post over at Black Diamond Games which states that his 5E sales are going very well, but he expresses some interesting concerns from the game store owner perspective:

http://blackdiamondgames.blogspot.ca/2015/01/dungeons-dragons-dilemma-tradecraft.html


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## PaizoCEO (Jan 29, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I don't know what "W2" means. But Lisa Stevens says about 20 full time on Pathfinder itself, 5 art department, a bunch of admin/legal/web folks and various warehouse etc.  So sounds like about 25 full time, the rest part time.




We don't have any part time employees.  The 25 full-time were folks that worked directly on Pathfinder products in design, development, editing and art.  Currently, we are pushing 60 employees in the company and growing.  In the next few months, we will be hiring more editors and developers to support Pathfinder.  2014 was our best year ever in both sales and profits.  Still going up!

-Lisa


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## Mark CMG (Jan 29, 2015)

Chase Freedom MC said:


> Fair enough, but my experiences have been different. My local shops sold out of both the PHB and DMG in quick order, and their restock is now getting low as well.





Right, so clearly there are mixed reports and D&D isn't some sort of runaway success in all quarters.  Not everyone is playing or even thinking about making 5E their one and only RPG.  We collectively established that as fact.




Chase Freedom MC said:


> And like I said before, online sales have been huge.





Sorry, man, but those lists are relative.  Does that mean 5E did better than PF on Amazon in the quoted period?  Of course.  Does it give overall numbers?  Naw.  There's no real way to look at Amazon ranking lists and call something particularly huge except in relative terms in comparison to what else is on the list.  I fully expect a new edition of D&D to be high on ranking lists for the first year of its release.  As I have said, a success but as successful as expected?  We won't know for some time and there are signs of trouble in some stores and definitely in the area of events, conventions, gamedays, etc.




Chase Freedom MC said:


> This is not posted to start an edition war (. . .)





Oh, you had to go there, eh?  (sigh) There's no need to suggest anyone might start an edition war.  I clearly am not tied to any one RPG or edition nor do I care if you are.




Chase Freedom MC said:


> (. . .) just to show that even though one brick and mortar store owner might say that Pathfinder is selling well, but 5e is not, doesn't mean it's that way everywhere.





You do understand that you are precisely making my point, right?  I specifically said that my measure is by events at conventions and anyone can look for themselves.  Other folks mention their own local experience and I added mine as a way to remind folks that local experience IS NOT a gauge for how successful 5E might or might not be.




Chase Freedom MC said:


> [snip]




We've agreed the anecdotal stuff means nothing in the big picture.


----------



## Gecko85 (Jan 29, 2015)

Zil said:


> In my local gaming store, the 5E books have certainly been edging out Pathfinder in terms of shelf space, but I'm not sure how well they have been moving.  I keep seeing the same number of books, most of which are the Tiamat adventures and starter sets, every week so unless he's restocking constantly, it does not seem to be moving that briskly.
> 
> I also stumbled on this recent blog post over at Black Diamond Games which states that his 5E sales are going very well, but he expresses some interesting concerns from the game store owner perspective:
> 
> http://blackdiamondgames.blogspot.ca/2015/01/dungeons-dragons-dilemma-tradecraft.html




I've noticed the  adventures (Hoard and Tiamat) have been on the shelves a while, too. But not the PHB and DMG. Both sold out and were restocked, and both are now low again. MM not as much. I think they're still on their first stock of the MM...


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## Alphastream (Jan 29, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> Just looking at the rest of your post, it appears there is quite a bit of semantic gymnastics and assumption being used to back up this hyperbole.



We have very few data points. The data points we have, they tell a story of each edition outselling the previous one, in terms of core book sales. The Red Box in 1989 seems the one anomaly. I can say that the Wizards folks I know well with whom I've talked to (employees who have no reason to blow smoke) have been blown away by the 5E numbers. I could not share specifics, even if I have them.



Mark CMG said:


> If I saw huge swaths of PF folks moving back over to 5E, I'd agree in a heartbeat that 5E must be doing very well indeed.  If I saw a huge drop in OSR movements rather than growth



In all honesty and with respect, I think that's an erroneous line of thinking. Wizards doesn't need to convert a Pathfinder person over to 5E. They don't need to get that Shadowrun player, Numenera player, etc. What they need is to consistently bring in new players as customers and to grow the overall hobby. Most gamers play several games. The edition war concept of Pathfinder vs D&D is mainly false. Tons of gamers play both games. It happens even more when we get to different genres, where gamers often gravitate between 5E and other RPGs (Eclipse Phase for sci-fi, L5R for Asian fantasy, Shadowrun for cyberpunk, Spycraft and Gumshoe for espionage, etc.). Wizards would be making a huge mistake if they were to focus on winning those people solely over to their game. Instead, they should focus on making the game accessible and desirable for a wide variety of gamers and especially for new gamers. As the CEO said, the competition is other forms of entertainment, not other RPGs. 

When I travel for work I always visit stores. I do see people who play Pathfinder trying and liking 5E. But, I don't think it is about a switch. Many may very well do that to some extent (playing 5E most of the time - I see plenty of that), but these people are clearly still huge fans of Paizo and still buying plenty of product from them. That's absolutely excellent. The OSR crowd should not decrease because of 5E. In a healthy hobby, both will grow and both will invigorate each other. Look at Gen Con: Paizo and D&D both had their largest organized play attendance ever, in the same year. That's absolutely what we want. It's even what both companies should want! There is no reason why Paizo has to drop in sales for 5E to succeed and no reason why OSR must shrink for any other fantasy RPG to do well. 

The store I've started to gravitate to when I travel on my current project has 4 8-person tables of 5E on Wednesdays (and many more on weekends). My DM is a relatively new DM. She began with Pathfinder and is a huge fan, but is enjoying 5E. She's an excellent judge. The combination of PFS and 5E has given her incredible tools and experience to become the judge she is. She's better for the existence of both games. If she ends up digging into classic adventures, whose to say she won't play some OSR and learn even more about that style of play - further benefiting her 5E tables? This is how the hobby should work.


----------



## fjw70 (Jan 29, 2015)

Even though I am a strong 5e fan and don't care for PF much (the 3.x D&D games are my least favorite but they are still D&D so they aren't terribel) I am not surprised to see PF continue to do well. If you like that game it is supported more than any other with official adventures and APs and splats on a regular basis. I really wish 5e (and 4e before it) were suported like this.

But WotC has decided to go a different direction. I don't see financial numbers for any of these games so I can't say whether WotC or Paizo are making good or bad decisions for themselves.

Us 5e fans will just need to create our own support or convert from another source,.


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## Sailor Moon (Jan 29, 2015)

DMZ2112 said:


> But take heart -- their egos could fill the Superdome.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



What do you mean clearly not and what does that photo have to do with people buying Pathfinder products directly from Paizo?


----------



## Alphastream (Jan 29, 2015)

PaizoCEO said:


> We don't have any part time employees.  The 25 full-time were folks that worked directly on Pathfinder products in design, development, editing and art.  Currently, we are pushing 60 employees in the company and growing.  In the next few months, we will be hiring more editors and developers to support Pathfinder.  2014 was our best year ever in both sales and profits.  Still going up!
> 
> -Lisa



That's fantastic, Lisa! Paizo is amazing and great for the hobby!

How vital is having your own (online) store front? Do you agree with Ryan that this is a key for you?


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## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

PaizoCEO said:


> In the next few months, we will be hiring more editors and developers-Lisa




Good news!  A couple just hit the market looking for work!


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## Sailor Moon (Jan 29, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> We have very few data points. The data points we have, they tell a story of each edition outselling the previous one, in terms of core book sales. The Red Box in 1989 seems the one anomaly. I can say that the Wizards folks I know well with whom I've talked to (employees who have no reason to blow smoke) have been blown away by the 5E numbers. I could not share specifics, even if I have them.
> 
> 
> In all honesty and with respect, I think that's an erroneous line of thinking. Wizards doesn't need to convert a Pathfinder person over to 5E. They don't need to get that Shadowrun player, Numenera player, etc. What they need is to consistently bring in new players as customers and to grow the overall hobby. Most gamers play several games. The edition war concept of Pathfinder vs D&D is mainly false. Tons of gamers play both games. It happens even more when we get to different genres, where gamers often gravitate between 5E and other RPGs (Eclipse Phase for sci-fi, L5R for Asian fantasy, Shadowrun for cyberpunk, Spycraft and Gumshoe for espionage, etc.). Wizards would be making a huge mistake if they were to focus on winning those people solely over to their game. Instead, they should focus on making the game accessible and desirable for a wide variety of gamers and especially for new gamers. As the CEO said, the competition is other forms of entertainment, not other RPGs.
> ...




Can I just point out that going for the "brand new fan base" was tried last edition and it doesn't seem to have worked out so well. 

Existing gamers are where your customers are. RPG's are a unique hobby and you would think Wizards would know this by now. There isn't a whole flock of new players out there that are going to bullrush their way to buying D&D. It's your present and past fans that you should worry about, especially the middle to older crowd because they have jobs which produce the spending money. Also, since they have jobs then that means less time to game, so they are going to pick the game that appeals to them the most. So yes, you want to target those guys that play Numenara, or PF, or Shadowrun.


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## delericho (Jan 29, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> 3E launched a single book out of the gate, not the whole set, during a time when the Internet was just beginning to be leveraged for such things.  Ryan Dancey clearly says he has no numbers for 4E while you imply he is speaking to the numbers in your opening paragraph.  As to 5E, I hope it is doing well but I honestly see no evidence it is the off-the-charts success you claim it is.




I can't remember where, but I'm certain I saw a quote from Mike Mearls to the effect that the first 4e PHB print run was bigger than the first 3.5e one, which in turn was bigger than the first 3e one.

This was before 5e was a thing, so there's no telling how the numbers for that one compare. But it's also worth noting that Chris Perkins was quoted on this site that they've gone through "a few printings so far" and "There isn't a New York publisher that wouldn't pass out if you told them the number - it's impressive."

The evidence really does suggest that 5e has launched very, very well. What is less clear is whether it will continue to do well, or if it's a spike followed by silence.


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## mlund (Jan 29, 2015)

PaizoCEO said:


> Currently, we are pushing 60 employees in the company and growing.




Oh no. They did the *thing*. The thing were you aren't considered a small business operator anymore and the Fed and Washington State dispatch their horde of micro-managers to bring your HR department to its knees. 

(For non-US readers: when you cross beyond the 50 employee (non-1099) line you aren't considered a "small business" anymore and are sentenced to Compliance Hell by the government for all eternity.)

Marty Lund

#firstworldproblems
#successproblemsarethebestproblems


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## DMZ2112 (Jan 29, 2015)

Sailor Moon said:


> What do you mean clearly not and what does that photo have to do with people buying Pathfinder products directly from Paizo?




This is what I mean:



Sailor Moon said:


> Existing gamers are where your customers are.




Yes.  And they all bought a Players Handbook.



> There isn't a whole flock of new players out there that are going to bullrush their way to buying D&D.




Actually, they all bought Players Handbooks, too.



> It's your present and past fans that you should worry about, especially the middle to older crowd because they have jobs which produce the spending money.




Which they used to buy Players Handbooks.



> Also, since they have jobs then that means less time to game, so they are going to pick the game that appeals to them the most.




And buy its Players Handbook.



> So yes, you want to target those guys that play Numenara, or PF, or Shadowrun.




And also D&D5, because they bought the Players Handbook.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 29, 2015)

Of course they want to get PF players playing it, but if you like the style of gaming that PF/3.5 does you probably are going to find 5e lacking.  I'd rather not game than play PF but I'm looking for something different than what it offers.


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## Mistwell (Jan 29, 2015)

Sailor Moon said:


> What do you mean clearly not and what does that photo have to do with people buying Pathfinder products directly from Paizo?




SM, you know both PF and 5e can do well simultaneously, right? One does not have to do poorly for the other to do well.  Nobody is arguing 5e is doing well and therefore PF must not be doing well.  And if there is any question about my thoughts on that topic, I will say outright both appear to be doing quite well right now.

And all this seems a bit unseemly in light of the fact this is a thread that's supposed to be about two people who just lost their jobs.  I created another thread about the recent news that Hasbro mentioned D&D as a net revenue gain for Hasbro - perhaps this discussion of "how well are they selling" best belongs there?


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## billd91 (Jan 29, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> In all honesty and with respect, I think that's an erroneous line of thinking. Wizards doesn't need to convert a Pathfinder person over to 5E. They don't need to get that Shadowrun player, Numenera player, etc. What they need is to consistently bring in new players as customers and to grow the overall hobby. Most gamers play several games. The edition war concept of Pathfinder vs D&D is mainly false. Tons of gamers play both games. It happens even more when we get to different genres, where gamers often gravitate between 5E and other RPGs (Eclipse Phase for sci-fi, L5R for Asian fantasy, Shadowrun for cyberpunk, Spycraft and Gumshoe for espionage, etc.). Wizards would be making a huge mistake if they were to focus on winning those people solely over to their game. Instead, they should focus on making the game accessible and desirable for a wide variety of gamers and especially for new gamers. As the CEO said, the competition is other forms of entertainment, not other RPGs.
> <snip>
> 
> The store I've started to gravitate to when I travel on my current project has 4 8-person tables of 5E on Wednesdays (and many more on weekends). My DM is a relatively new DM. She began with Pathfinder and is a huge fan, but is enjoying 5E. She's an excellent judge. The combination of PFS and 5E has given her incredible tools and experience to become the judge she is. She's better for the existence of both games. If she ends up digging into classic adventures, whose to say she won't play some OSR and learn even more about that style of play - further benefiting her 5E tables? This is how the hobby should work.




Sure, tons of players play both PF and 5e (I'm part of that group), but I strongly suspect there are also tons who don't and won't play both and I suspect that group's even larger than the group who plays both. There are lots of gaming groups out there with players who don't have a lot of time for multiple games, much less multiple versions of D&D. And even among gamers who play both, the dollars spent on one can't be spent on the other. So Paizo and WotC are most definitely in competition with each other and have been since Paizo was no longer able to act as a network multiplier for D&D. The facts that the competition isn't particularly rancorous (although you do sometimes see a sarcastic comment or two) and isn't a zero-sum two-player game doesn't mean they aren't in competition with each other. In truth, I figure their relationship is pretty complex with both competition and cooperation (as in both growing and serving a market that both can benefit from ) occurring overall. That too is how the hobby works.


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## wedgeski (Jan 29, 2015)

Please god let this thread die. Every time someone at WotC loses their job, we get the same twenty pages of crap.


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## PaizoCEO (Jan 29, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> How vital is having your own (online) store front? Do you agree with Ryan that this is a key for you?




All channels of sales are important to us.  The hobby stores, comic book stores, book stores, online stores (both our own and others like Amazon), PDF sales, convention sales.  They all come together to make the company successful.  You couldn't base a business on having one of those channels only and ignoring the rest.  Even leaving out one or two of those channels would have a big negative repercussion.  

The one thing I will say about having our own webstore is that we can control availability, customer service, presentation of the products, and the community around the product much more than we can through any of the other channels.  And knowing that you have a place like that to sell your products is important. In all the other channels, we don't control those pieces of the puzzle.

-Lisa


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## Morrus (Jan 29, 2015)

wedgeski said:


> Please god let this thread die. Every time someone at WotC loses their job, we get the same twenty pages of crap.




Then don't read it. Just because you've had a conversation before doesn't mean everybody else has.


----------



## billd91 (Jan 29, 2015)

Sacrosanct said:


> Good news!  A couple just hit the market looking for work!




If if Paizo does pick them up (did I see correctly that with Chris Sims that would be a *re*-pick up?), you'll see what I mean about WotC being a farm team for the industry.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 29, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> The data points we have, they tell a story of each edition outselling the previous one, in terms of core book sales.





Nope.  That seems to be based on your assumptions.




Alphastream said:


> Wizards doesn't need to convert a Pathfinder person over to 5E. (. . .) What they need is to consistently bring in new players as customers and to grow the overall hobby.





They need to do both.  By all accounts, they lost a huge chunk of the market to PF.  They need to recover at least some of that to rival how well things were in 3.XE times, market share wise.  They are also the company in the best position to grow the market.  If they don't do it, they cannot count on anyone else being able to do it so significantly that WotC will benefit.


This isn't tough to figure out.  If WotC had, let's say, 80% of the RPG market as customers (not necessarily customers who eschewed all others) and lost half of that to Paizo / PF, the overall market will have to have grown market with new customers by what percentage to make up for that loss and have 4E be more successful than 3.XE?  No one, anywhere, is saying the market has grown that much overall.  The RPG market is doing well but it hasn't grown by 100% overall or anywhere near that for a former 40% RPG market share to be the same in hard numbers as what a former 80% market share would have been.  To be clear, if you lose half your market share, the market needs to double in size for you to have the same number of customers at your adjusted percentage of share.  Even if everyone joining the market is a new customer for WotC, the market would need to grow by 40% to match your adjusted share.  That's a secret no one could keep.  We'd know if that had happened.

Now imagine WotC lost some folks over the course of 4E, or even stayed even, or even grew a little bit.  So, are we now saying that, if 4E did not, 5E has brought back everyone who left to PF or a like number of new customers?  Naw, even you aren't saying that.  Are there new players?  Sure.  I could believe someone who estimated the market has grown overall by a couple / few percent.  I might even be convinced it is somewhere north of that by a bit with the right argument.  But the market growing by as much as it would have needed to grow for anything after 3.XE to have as many folks playing as then would be impossible to not see.


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## Sailor Moon (Jan 29, 2015)

Mistwell said:


> SM, you know both PF and 5e can do well simultaneously, right? One does not have to do poorly for the other to do well.  Nobody is arguing 5e is doing well and therefore PF must not be doing well.  And if there is any question about my thoughts on that topic, I will say outright both appear to be doing quite well right now.
> 
> And all this seems a bit unseemly in light of the fact this is a thread that's supposed to be about two people who just lost their jobs.  I created another thread about the recent news that Hasbro mentioned D&D as a net revenue gain for Hasbro - perhaps this discussion of "how well are they selling" best belongs there?



I don't think you are getting my post. 

Paizo does a massive amount of business on their website. Someone posted Amazon rankings for Pathfinder and I hinted that lots of people bought directly from Paizo instead of Amazon. That is why you see PF's rankings a lot lower.


----------



## Mark CMG (Jan 29, 2015)

delericho said:


> I can't remember where, but I'm certain I saw a quote from Mike Mearls to the effect that the first 4e PHB print run was bigger than the first 3.5e one, which in turn was bigger than the first 3e one.
> 
> This was before 5e was a thing, so there's no telling how the numbers for that one compare. But it's also worth noting that Chris Perkins was quoted on this site that they've gone through "a few printings so far" and "There isn't a New York publisher that wouldn't pass out if you told them the number - it's impressive."





I heard and read a lot of things during the run up to, the release, and the run of 4E.  I think even the most hardcore of 4E fans would agree that much of the press / hype regarding how well 4E was doing is obviously untrue.  As posted elsewhere, you cannot lose half your market share then claim you're doing better than before unless you more than double your own market share again or the overall market happens to double and more in size.  Since neither of those things happened, the only conclusion is that the information of the success is incorrect.  No one needs exact numbers to understand this reality.




delericho said:


> The evidence really does suggest that 5e has launched very, very well. What is less clear is whether it will continue to do well, or if it's a spike followed by silence.





I don't see the asses in seats I should be seeing at conventions and gamedays to surmise that 5E has yet regained much, if any, market share nor that the overall market has grown significantly enough to warrant such a conclusion.  I do think it is doing well, and think it can continue to do well.  Very, very well?  Not yet, not without a lot more support, and not convincingly unless we see much more action in the visible meat-space community.


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## Gecko85 (Jan 29, 2015)

Sailor Moon said:


> I don't think you are getting my post.
> 
> Paizo does a massive amount of business on their website. Someone posted Amazon rankings for Pathfinder and I hinted that lots of people bought directly from Paizo instead of Amazon. That is why you see PF's rankings a lot lower.




As the someone who posted the amazon rankings, I don't think you got my post. It was a direct response to a post with an anecdote from a store owner about how PF was outselling 5e, therefore 5e launch hasn't been successful. My point was, that's not the case everywhere. It's great that Paizo sells a lot from their own website. That doesn't change the fact that WotC has sold a ton of books on Amazon over the past several months. If the core books had popped up on the rankings for a week then dropped off, it wouldn't mean much. But to stay in the top rankings for months does. It means they've sold a lot of books.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 29, 2015)

Chase Freedom MC said:


> It was a direct response to a post with an anecdote from a store owner about how PF was outselling 5e, therefore 5e launch hasn't been successful.





Um, nope.  As the person who posted what you (also?) already misunderstood, I've explained that the showing of anecdotal evidence was by way of saying the no one's anecdotal evidence is necessarily valid.  My post was about the actual events listings evidence that anyone can gather or see by visiting any number of convention, gameday, and events organizing websites.


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## billd91 (Jan 29, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> Um, nope.  As the person who posted what you (also?) already misunderstood, I've explained that the showing of anecdotal evidence was by way of saying the no one's anecdotal evidence is necessarily valid.  My post was about the actual events listings evidence that anyone can gather or see by visiting any number of convention, gameday, and events organizing websites.




...which is an anecdote comparing events for a fledgling edition of a game with a game on the market for 5 years and building a network of organized play that whole time. Which would you expect to have more events on the schedule? Perhaps we should revisit this anecdotal evidence in another 6 months to a year?


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## Mark CMG (Jan 29, 2015)

billd91 said:


> ...which is an anecdote comparing events for a fledgling edition of a game with a game on the market for 5 years and building a network of organized play that whole time. Which would you expect to have more events on the schedule? Perhaps we should revisit this anecdotal evidence in another 6 months to a year?




Oh, PF should have lots more, based on your expectations.  I'm not saying 5E should have more, I am using PF events as a yardstick for what is possible for a second tier game company like Paizo.  Granted, WotC has huge amounts of money compared to Paizo, so don't think I am comparing the potential of 5E to be as limited as PF is.  PF just happens to be a convenient also-ran, second tier company that hasn't yet been beaten by the top company in the RPG industry in regard to organized play.  Top by many orders of magnitude (pop pop).   Sorry, if using them as a yardstick caused any confusion.  I don't personally care who does better.  I will be looking every month at this evidence when I write up my convention and gameday round up.  You should do the same and revisit it any time you like.


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## Dausuul (Jan 29, 2015)

I think what we are seeing here is the fate 4E was trying to avoid. By Ryan Dancey's account*, Hasbro presented WotC with an ultimatum: The D&D brand must be brought up to the $50 million mark with a path toward $100M, or else we're going to cut most of the staff and "mothball" the brand. The D&D team gave it a hard try. DDI and the virtual tabletop, combined with a rules system engineered to mesh well with electronic tools, were supposed to bring the game up to Hasbro's demands by creating an MMO-style subscriber base.

As we know, it failed. Whatever you may think of 4E the rules system, 4E the digital offering was a disaster. They weren't ready for launch, the VTT never happened, and the few digital tools they finally cobbled together were clunky and barely functional**. So (I'm guessing now, obviously) Hasbro brought down the axe. That's why the D&D team has shrunk so radically, and why it's still shrinking even now in the wake of 5E's successful launch. That's why WotC is relying on partnerships with other companies to write their adventures, create their e-tools, and so forth. That's why their release schedule is so sparse. Hasbro has cut their budget down to almost nothing, and so they have to rely on outside partnerships to do the things they no longer have the money to do in-house.

If this is correct, we can expect D&D to remain pretty lean for some time to come. On the plus side, it means we can hope for a pretty generous OGL. It's the only way for Wizards to generate enough product to drive sales of the core books.

[SIZE=-2]*I hate having to lean so heavily on Ryan Dancey for these things, but he's just about the only firsthand source we've got on the internal workings of WotC.

**Silverlight, for God's sake![/SIZE]


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## Nergal Pendragon (Jan 29, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> Nope. Everything about 5E shows a healthy respect for previous editions. Nearly all staff have experience across several editions and their best freelancers go way back.




Ah! Okay!

Thank you for assuaging that fear.


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## fjw70 (Jan 29, 2015)

If 5e is only going to release a single book every few months then I don't expect to see 5e to retake the top retail sales spot, and from what Mike was saying prior to the release it doesn't sound like they care.


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## Sir Brennen (Jan 29, 2015)

On the subject of authors making a living by writing, here's a timely blog post by a Hugo-winning author that just went up yesterday:

http://www.kameronhurley.com/?p=14582


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 29, 2015)

fjw70 said:


> If 5e is only going to release a single book every few months then I don't expect to see 5e to retake the top retail sales spot, and from what Mike was saying prior to the release it doesn't sound like they care.




Which is fine with me to be honest.  I don't approach a RPG like a CCG where you need to keep buying boosters or anything like that.  For me there is enough in the 3 core books to game until the cows come home.


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## fjw70 (Jan 29, 2015)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Which is fine with me to be honest.  I don't approach an RPG like a CCG where you need to keep buying boosters or anything like that.  For me there is enough in the 3 core books to game until the cows come home.




I agree.  I would like to see more adventure support but I guess I can convert for now.


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## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

fjw70 said:


> If 5e is only going to release a single book every few months then I don't expect to see 5e to retake the top retail sales spot, and from what Mike was saying prior to the release it doesn't sound like they care.




It's not so much that 5e will only release a single book every few months.  It's that WoTC will only release a book ever few months.  It seems clear official 5e products will be released regularly, just with different outsourced companies like Kobold.


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## fjw70 (Jan 29, 2015)

Sacrosanct said:


> It's not so much that 5e will only release a single book every few months.  It's that WoTC will only release a book ever few months.  It seems clear official 5e products will be released regularly, just with different outsourced companies like Kobold.




Yes I meant offical 5e products by WotC.


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## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

fjw70 said:


> Yes I meant offical 5e products by WotC.




And I'm saying it doesn't need to come from WotC themselves in order to take the top sales spot.  Consumers largely don't give a  where the books are coming from, as long as they are there.  Look at the spell cards.  And the giant ass monster manual that Frog God did.  Those are all 5e products that help the edition as a whole, but aren't put out by WoTC


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## fjw70 (Jan 29, 2015)

Sacrosanct said:


> And I'm saying it doesn't need to come from WotC themselves in order to take the top sales spot.  Consumers largely don't give a  where the books are coming from, as long as they are there.  Look at the spell cards.  And the giant ass monster manual that Frog God did.  Those are all 5e products that help the edition as a whole, but aren't put out by WoTC




Do the retail rankings take 3rd party products into account? I hadn't really thought about that and just assumed it was just official products.


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## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

I guess that's the magic question then.  Because if they only take official WoTC products into account, you'd be technically right.  But it would be an awfully silly way to measure the success of a product.


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## fjw70 (Jan 29, 2015)

Sacrosanct said:


> I guess that's the magic question then.  Because if they only take official WoTC products into account, you'd be technically right.  But it would be an awfully silly way to measure the success of a product.




I guess the next question is are the 3rd party products able to significantly influence the ratings? I don't know. I have never been much of a consumer of third party stuff and haven't paid much attention to them.


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## Gecko85 (Jan 29, 2015)

Here's another way to measure success of a product. Sure, it's only one of many virtual tabletops, and many people don't use virtual tabletops, but it's also one of the largest (might be *the* largest, but I don't know for sure) virtual tabletops out there with lots of games going on:

http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/the-orr-group-reports-on-most-played-rpgs-on-roll20-for-q4/


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 29, 2015)

fjw70 said:


> I agree.  I would like to see more adventure support but I guess I can convert for now.




Sure, but adventures are a different thing.  Tons of stand alone adventures would be good. I just hope WOTC avoid their old model and Paizo's.  "Complete Book of stuff IV coming soon!"  Some new books are cool, but in moderation and only when they aren't just a power up.  We played 1e for a decade with only one real expansion, Unearthed Arcana, which was a prime example of power bloat when I think back on it.


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## Morrus (Jan 29, 2015)

Chase Freedom MC said:


> Here's another way to measure success of a product. Sure, it's only one of many virtual tabletops, and many people don't use virtual tabletops, but it's also one of the largest (might be *the* largest, but I don't know for sure) virtual tabletops out there with lots of games going on:
> 
> http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/the-orr-group-reports-on-most-played-rpgs-on-roll20-for-q4/




You know I report that stuff each quarter right here, right?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?2265-5E-Rises-But-Still-Trails-Pathinder-For-Online-Games


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## Gecko85 (Jan 29, 2015)

Morrus said:


> You know I report that stuff each quarter right here, right?
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?2265-5E-Rises-But-Still-Trails-Pathinder-For-Online-Games



Sorry, missed that. Did a Google search and the other one popped up.


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## Mirtek (Jan 29, 2015)

Sacrosanct said:


> I guess that's the magic question then.  Because if they only take official WoTC products into account, you'd be technically right.  But it would be an awfully silly way to measure the success of a product.



Not really. Frog God's and Co sales are so little compared to official WotC sales, that it had to be a really, really, really close tie for them to matter as far as the ranking is concerned.


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## Staffan (Jan 29, 2015)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Sure, but adventures are a different thing.  Tons of stand alone adventures would be good. I just hope WOTC avoid their old model and Paizo's.  "Complete Book of stuff IV coming soon!"  Some new books are cool, but in moderation and only when they aren't just a power up.  We played 1e for a decade with only one real expansion, Unearthed Arcana, which was a prime example of power bloat when I think back on it.



That's why I think one or two "player option" books per year are right. One should be a "grab-bag" of stuff a la Unearthed Arcana - or the old-school Rolemaster Companions. I think it's a lot easier to make a high-quality player-focused book when you can make it with whatever ideas you fancy, rather than only those on a specific topic. I mean, if you'd take the actually useful and balanced spells, feats, and prestige classes from the four first Complete X books for 3.5e, that'd probably make one really amazing hardback.

The second, which maybe should only be made every two or three years, should expand the game in new directions. This is the slot I'd put things like Psionics in.


----------



## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

Mirtek said:


> Not really. Frog God's and Co sales are so little compared to official WotC sales, that it had to be a really, really, really close tie for them to matter as far as the ranking is concerned.




Hoard of the Dragon Queen seems to be pretty big, and it's not a product that was written in house, but by Kobold Press.


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## Mirtek (Jan 29, 2015)

Sacrosanct said:


> Hoard of the Dragon Queen seems to be pretty big, and it's not a product that was written in house, but by Kobold Press.



It's an official WotC D&D product, no matter who they hire to write it. These outsourced books seem to be the only official WotC D&D products we'll be getting for a long time.


----------



## Sacrosanct (Jan 29, 2015)

Mirtek said:


> It's an official WotC D&D product, no matter who they hire to write it. These outsourced books seem to be the only official WotC D&D products we'll be getting for a long time.




But I thought the context of this discussion was around WoTC laying people off.  So WoTC doesn't need to retain staff if they outsourced their work.


----------



## Sailor Moon (Jan 29, 2015)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Which is fine with me to be honest.  I don't approach an RPG like a CCG where you need to keep buying boosters or anything like that.  For me there is enough in the 3 core books to game until the cows come home.




I don't like bloat, but I do like to have books that I can plunder through and take bits and pieces to use in my games. I'm the kind of person that doesn't become paralyzed with fear when I see books.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 29, 2015)

Sailor Moon said:


> I don't like bloat, but I do like to have books that I can plunder through and take bits and pieces to use in my games. I'm the kind of person that doesn't become paralyzed with fear when I see books.




We can only hope to channel your strength.


----------



## kenmarable (Jan 30, 2015)

Dausuul said:


> I think what we are seeing here is the fate 4E was trying to avoid. By Ryan Dancey's account*, Hasbro presented WotC with an ultimatum: The D&D brand must be brought up to the $50 million mark with a path toward $100M, or else we're going to cut most of the staff and "mothball" the brand. The D&D team gave it a hard try. DDI and the virtual tabletop, combined with a rules system engineered to mesh well with electronic tools, were supposed to bring the game up to Hasbro's demands by creating an MMO-style subscriber base.
> 
> (snip)
> 
> ...



Definitely be careful relying on Ryan Dancey for too much insight into 4e, He was gone from WotC before even 3.5 was released. (In fact, I believe he was among the 2002 layoffs - 6 years before the 4e release and DDI.) So he really has little more insight into the internal workings of WotC during 4e than the rest of us. He was internal to them years before, but even the management had significant turn over since he was laid off.


Oh, and I totally agree on Silverlight. WHY????


----------



## mlund (Jan 30, 2015)

kenmarable said:


> Oh, and I totally agree on Silverlight. WHY????




Pirates, and maybe some sort of weird enterprise software licensing deals with the mothership, I suppose.

Seriously, even hackers don't want to touch Silverlight code. Your content is safer in that medium because people would rather gouge out their eyes with a melon-bowler than look at how that sausage is made. It's like the H.P. Lovecraft take on "security through obscurity." 

Marty Lund


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## DaveDash (Jan 30, 2015)

Bah way too off-topic.


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## mflayermonk (Jan 30, 2015)

I'm sorry to hear about that. I guess the lesson here is never, ever move off of Magic The Gathering.
I'm guessing more layoffs are coming.


----------



## dd.stevenson (Jan 30, 2015)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Interesting that they're both editors. Seems more like an internal re-structuring thing than the hobby failing or other doom-n-gloomery. Possibly post-Edition-cycle stuff, given that one team was hit twice.




You know, I tweeted Simms some well wishes this morning, and as I was doing so a thought occurred to me.

Recent WotC releases have NOT (IMO) been very well edited. Not by any means saying that any individual is responsible--far from it--but if mearls (or the vp) decided there was a workflow-level problem with their current editing practices, it does make sense that D&D editing jobs were cut in favor of some other solution.

This is pure speculation, of course.


----------



## mouselim (Jan 30, 2015)

Mistwell said:


> Ans this is why it bothers me that people act like they know this is a layoff when they do not know that.
> 
> In decades as an attorney who dealt with employment matters, roughly half were for reasons other than a layoff.
> 
> ...




As an attorney, you should know that corporations normally give politically correct reasons other than layoffs (e.g. restructuring) - yet it amounts up to the same for folks who were let off the payroll, a layoff.

Honestly, I get really peeved that few bother to see things as it is - business corporations main concern (and maybe sole concern) is profit - that's what they exist in the first place.

Otherwise, don't make my toes laugh...


----------



## Mistwell (Jan 30, 2015)

mouselim said:


> As an attorney, you should know that corporations normally give politically correct reasons other than layoffs (e.g. restructuring) - yet it amounts up to the same for folks who were let off the payroll, a layoff.




If they had given ANY reason you'd have a point...but they had not.  People get fired for cause you know, for instance (which it turns out did not happen here).  Which was my point, I wanted to wait for confirmation from someone, of anything.  We had literally no information at the time other than "suddenly not working there, no details".

Now we know however that it was a layoff.


----------



## Gecko85 (Jan 30, 2015)

At least it sounds like Chris Sims is taking it in stride. He's been a little more active on Twitter today. A few samples:



> I also want to say that I love D&D and the colleagues I've worked with on it. It's hard to move on, sometimes, but it was a great time.






> Meh. Corp decisions are not worth taking personally. My colleagues are awesome.






> Reiterating: You guys rock. Thanks for your support. Continue to support D&D.


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## Alphastream (Jan 30, 2015)

It's a good reminder that it really matters to those in the industry when we thank them. If you were a fan of what these two did, thank them! That favorite book? Find the people who made it and thank them.


----------



## Sunseeker (Jan 30, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Yup. Second time for him.




Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.

Fool me twice...three times a lady.

Especially in this situation this feels appropriate.


----------



## Alphastream (Jan 30, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> Naw, even you aren't saying that.  Are there new players?  Sure.  I could believe someone who estimated the market has grown overall by a couple / few percent.  I might even be convinced it is somewhere north of that by a bit with the right argument.  But the market growing by as much as it would have needed to grow for anything after 3.XE to have as many folks playing as then would be impossible to not see.



I won't speculate on the speculations, but on the above, I've been surprised many times by the size of the market in terms of players... as opposed to $. For example, when I played Living Greyhawk it was very clearly the most successful organized play campaign ever, and it felt like it. It felt like a huge extended family, and you felt like you knew everyone, if only by screen name or face at a con. When I moved to the Portland area it wasn't hard to find the local crowd and get to know them. There were about 80 frequent players, as it was a fairly quiet city in terms of gaming. Or, so I thought. LG ends and I start helping to organize D&D Encounters. In many ways, it felt like a far less successful program. People weren't active on forums, it didn't feel like there was that much excitement, and it wasn't at all like a big family... more like a little one.

And yet, when I organized the second season of Encounters we drew more than 300 different players in just a few months! Of those players, only something like 5 of them were LG players! It was insane. I had no idea the city had that many people interested, even casually, in D&D. This is just at one store. There were about 6 other stores in the city running Encounters at that time. Play is even bigger now, for what that's worth. 

Now, what is really interesting is that these weren't 300 customers. The majority of these people didn't give any dime to the store or to Wizards. Many had a PH, but most didn't. For the Dark Sun season that I oversaw many did buy the campaign book, because the world was different and interesting enough to fuel that purchase. But many of the 300 came in, tried it out, came a couple of more times, and faded away. 

This all reinforces the problem with the industry, but it also shows how enormous the market could be. Encounters is bigger today - are more of those people becoming customers and staying customers? I think so. I'm seeing far more stores that charge money for just playing, which sends a message. I'm seeing far more players sit down at my tables with product they just finished purchasing. And, I'm hearing stores say that 5E Encounters is very good for business. So, yeah, I do buy that Wizards can focus on new players, still retain old players, and not focus on competitors.

(It's also worth mentioning that I see lots of new and potential players at PAX and other non-typical events. The vast majority of PAX attendees are video gamers, but thousands of them come to try D&D each year and leave enthusiastic. Our local museum had a game night and tons of new players had the same experience. On the Neverwinter MMO the chat often has actual (positive) discussion of the 5E edition, which suggests a nice gateway.)


----------



## Alphastream (Jan 30, 2015)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Which is fine with me to be honest.  I don't approach a RPG like a CCG where you need to keep buying boosters or anything like that.  For me there is enough in the 3 core books to game until the cows come home.




It is probably more than most gamers buy. So, maybe that is the right approach... especially if the real money is licensing to MMOs, MMOs, and the like. I want my D&D TV series!


----------



## DaveDash (Jan 30, 2015)

Seems the opposite here (Aus). I can't find players for an online 5e game. When 3.5 was out it seemed a lot easier to snap up players.

Ultimately though there could be multiple reasons for that, but it feels much harder trying to get a group together for 5e.


----------



## Plaguescarred (Jan 30, 2015)

That's never good news. Best wishes Chris and Jennifer.


----------



## Zaran (Jan 30, 2015)

dd.stevenson said:


> You know, I tweeted Simms some well wishes this morning, and as I was doing so a thought occurred to me.
> 
> Recent WotC releases have NOT (IMO) been very well edited. Not by any means saying that any individual is responsible--far from it--but if mearls (or the vp) decided there was a workflow-level problem with their current editing practices, it does make sense that D&D editing jobs were cut in favor of some other solution.
> 
> This is pure speculation, of course.




I disagree.  I think all three core books are well edited.   The layout of the DMG might be bad that I don't know if that's really their job.  Plus it seemed like they hadn't even started to work on the DMG until after the MM was made.  When I look at books like Shadowrun's last core book I am happy that D&D's books are as well made as they are.


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## Charles Wright (Jan 30, 2015)

goldomark said:


> Out of curiosity. How hard would it be for them to have their books in PDF formats ready for download on Drivethru RPG? Would they need to hire someone or could they potentially do it with what they sent to the printers?
> 
> I'm asking cause if it is not a WotC/Hasbro policy to not have difital books, well it seems like bad allocation of resources. The revenue from PDFs could pay the salary of some employees. I guess. Maybe. If enough people care.




Two to three hours work per book, tops. And most of that would be bookmarking.


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## Charles Wright (Jan 30, 2015)

Erik Mona said:


> There is, indeed, money in our tiny industry.




I would like to see more of it.


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## Sadras (Jan 30, 2015)

shidaku said:


> Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.
> 
> Fool me twice...three times a lady.




The above aphorism is incorrect in so far that it is archaic and was publicly modernised succinctly and eloquently by George Bush (junior)   

"There's an old saying in Tennessee," (followed by a few awkward pauses), "I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee that says, Fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. Fool me... You can't get fooled again!"


----------



## Mark CMG (Jan 30, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> So, yeah, I do buy that Wizards can focus on new players, still retain old players, and not focus on competitors.





See, that's you seemingly arguing with my point by acting as if what you are arguing against is actually what I said, and yet it's not.  Perhaps it is just that you aren't quite following what I am posting.  Everyone agrees WotC should and can recruit new players and retain old ones and, in all fairness, draw from other companies' market share if they can.  The point is that there is no way that they have done as much of that as it would have taken to be where they were when the wheels came off, let alone be better off.

Hypothetically, with no new customers, they would have had to bring back everyone who left to play PF.  We know for a fact that did not happen because people still play PF in huge numbers (maybe more than originally did, judging by Paizo growth).  So, once again, hypothetically, just to pick a fraction to get one's head around (could be a little smaller or not), if WotC lost half their market share to PF and needed to replace all of them with totally new RPG customers just to get back to where they were, the overall market would have to double.  That's the overall market doubling to allow for WotC's halved share to double just to get back to where they were.

All right, those are just the extreme case scenarios for how it would have had to happen.  We know it didn't.  People still play PF.  The overall market did not double.  No way possible the market doubled without everyone (not just you) finding out about it.  No one with any sense would try to make that argument.  Would someone like to see the RPG market double?  Gods, yes!  Everyone would love that.  New players for all.  New customers for publishers.  It would be fantastic.  But it hasn't happened.

Where does that leave WotC?  To get back to where they were, just where they were not better than they were, they need to get folks from somewhere.  They need to come from somewhere other than Paizo, judging by PF success.  They need to come from more than just overall market growth, since we know that hasn't covered things even if it has grown a little.

Is it possible that WotC's market share in the 3.XE period wasn't the majority of the RPG market?  Some might argue that but I would not.  But, hypothetically, let's say WotC had a 50% share, lost 25% to PF that they haven't gotten back and the market didn't grow.  To get back to where they were they'd have had to take over half of the entire rest of the market.  Again, another extreme scenario just to understand the outside parameters of the problem.

But we know other RPG companies are doing quite well.  Green Ronin hasn't shuttered its windows.  Did companies that no longer exist or do less with RPGs even have half of the rest of the market to fill in the hole in WotC share?  Did all other RPG publishers go away and their combined share fill the hole?  I don't believe that has happened nor do I think anyone else does.  For that to have happened we would have had to see an extensive collapse for the non-Wotc / non-Paizo RPG market such that half the companies who weren't Paizo or WotC withered and died.

So, here we are.  The extremes of how to regain that market share have been defined.  Despite the cries of some who like to squelch any speculation that might trouble them, we don't actually need hard numbers to get some sense of how things have been going for WotC since walking away from the OGL.  No one with a lick of sense could believe they've cobbled together the the kind of numbers they would need to make up for the huge loss they experienced (PF growing, the rest of the market doing well, overall market growth relatively good but not crazy good).

I'm pretty sure that even you, Alphastream, can see what WotC was up against and how impossible it would have been for them to come back from that without absolutely EVERYONE (not just you) being able to see it and unable to refute it.  But it didn't happen.  I wish it had.  It would have been the success story of the decade and GREAT for the RPG industry.


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## Laeknir (Jan 30, 2015)

Something I have never really understood (perhaps someone can help clarify), why does WotC put so much emphasis on making products for tournament and gaming-store play rather than straight-up modules and sourcebooks?  Does the tournament/store material actually bring in money?  At gaming stores, I understand the encounters are often just handed out free - so I just don't get it.  Why not have their editors make modules and sourcebooks that can be advertised and sold much more widely and publicly?  

I don't have time or really the inclination to hang out in gaming stores and I haven't been to a tournament event in years.  It makes it very difficult to even FIND any WotC adventures, since they're event-restricted or not publicly sold.  With Paizo, I can go to their web store, or even find their stuff easily on Amazon and just buy it.  Easy.  So what's the deal?  Am I wrong in thinking part of the problem is WotC's focus on making materials for a fraction of the gaming community?  I know more gamers who DON'T do store events and tournaments than those who do.


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## Morrus (Jan 30, 2015)

Laeknir said:


> Something I have never really understood (perhaps someone can help clarify), why does WotC put so much emphasis on making products for tournament and gaming-store play rather than straight-up modules and sourcebooks?  Does the tournament/store material actually bring in money?  At gaming stores, I understand the encounters are often just handed out free - so I just don't get it.




They bring in new players.  They're part of WotC commitment to grow the hobby. Those players then buy things in the store.



> Why not have their editors make modules and sourcebooks that can be advertised much more widely?




The Organized Play events _are_ the advertising.


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## Laeknir (Jan 30, 2015)

Morrus said:


> They bring in new players.  They're part of WotC commitment to grow the hobby. Those players then buy things in the store.
> 
> The Organized Play events _are_ the advertising.




Does it actually work, though?  Bringing someone into a store is all well and good, but there's no guarantee that they'll buy WotC products while they're there.  Does Paizo have their editors spend a lot of time making store event or tournament material?  I honestly don't know.

I mean, I can understand this strategy with something like Magic the Gathering.  Bring people in, let them see new cards, whatever, and they're more likely to buy card packs.  But card packs are relatively low priced (impulse buying is best when cheap), where gaming manuals, sourcebooks and adventure modules are much bigger ticket items.   Plus, why spend money on adventures and sourcebooks when you're just going to come back next week or whenever to get another free set of encounters?  The DM is in the store, so there's no need for my kid to shell out $40-50 for a monster manual or a player's guide.

Don't get me wrong, it's nice and all to have a commitment to in-store gamers.  I just don't see other companies having their editors spend a lot of time on materials that are going to be handed out for free.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 30, 2015)

Laeknir said:


> Does it actually work, though?  Bringing someone into a store is all well and good, but there's no guarantee that they'll buy WotC products while they're there.





Or at all but it seems to work fairly well.  Putting something in someone's hands or showing them how it works directly, one-on-one, is the best way to sell something.  If they don't get it there and then, they might just come back.  Anyone who actually tries something is a potential customer.  Plus, it helps your situation with existing players as they can enjoy it as well.  And, you're doing something for the folks who are your best customers, your GMs, by giving them something to use at the table.  It's really the best targeted advertising that any RPG company can do.  It probably shouldn't be the only thing they do but if they did nothing else, this is what I agree they should be doing.


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## Laeknir (Jan 30, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> Or at all but it seems to work fairly well.  Putting something in someone's hands or showing them how it works directly, one-on-one, is the best way to sell something.  If they don't get it there and then, they might just come back.  Anyone who actually tries something is a potential customer.  Plus, it helps your situation with existing players as they can enjoy it as well.  And, you're doing something for the folks who are your best customers, your GMs, by giving them something to use at the table.  It's really the best targeted advertising that any RPG company can do.  It probably shouldn't be the only thing they do but if they did nothing else, this is what I agree they should be doing.




Do other gaming companies, like Paizo, do this?  I don't often go to gaming stores, perhaps once a year, so I don't know.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 30, 2015)

Laeknir said:


> Do other gaming companies, like Paizo, do this?  I don't often go to gaming stores, perhaps once a year, so I don't know.




Oh, yes, Paizo does it extensively and a number of other companies who aren't as big.  Of course, many companies who go to conventions do a version of this just by have game demos but also by running events.  But WotC, Paizo, Pelgrane Press, Crafty Games, and others do or have offered Organized Play programs.


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## Parmandur (Jan 30, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> See, that's you seemingly arguing with my point by acting as if what you are arguing against is actually what I said, and yet it's not.  Perhaps it is just that you aren't quite following what I am posting.  Everyone agrees WotC should and can recruit new players and retain old ones and, in all fairness, draw from other companies' market share if they can.  The point is that there is no way that they have done as much of that as it would have taken to be where they were when the wheels came off, let alone be better off.
> 
> 
> 
> ...





There is a zero-sum assumption about market share here that doesn't apply to games...


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## Laeknir (Jan 30, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> Oh, yes, Paizo does it extensively and a number of other companies who aren't as big.  Of course, many companies who go to conventions do a version of this just by have game demos but also by running events.  But WotC, Paizo, Pelgrane Press, Crafty Games, and others do or have offered Organized Play programs.




Interesting.  I guess since I'm out of the organized play "loop" it never occurred to me that Paizo and others would offer free material, adventures and such, at gaming stores.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 30, 2015)

Parmandur said:


> There is a zero-sum assumption about market share here that doesn't apply to games...





Agreed, the assumption is used in my hypothetical only to show the extreme scenarios.  It doesn't factor into actual case scenarios.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 30, 2015)

Laeknir said:


> Interesting.  I guess since I'm out of the organized play "loop" it never occurred to me that Paizo and others would offer free material, adventures and such, at gaming stores.





Well, these programs are of varying kinds.  Some offered free to stores some cost money to stores but are presented to the store as a marketing tool for them.  Some go to GMs and players more directly and organize them for the stores.  It's probably not best to think of it as the companies giving away free products.


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## Laeknir (Jan 30, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> Well, these programs are of varying kinds.  Some offered free to stores some cost money to stores but are presented to the store as a marketing tool for them.  Some go to GMs and players more directly and organize them for the stores.  It's probably not best to think of it as the companies giving away free products.




Perhaps.  I suppose it really comes down to whether or not it results in profit.  I'm still not exactly convinced it wouldn't be better to just have your editors work on products that can sell widely, and be put into online stores like Paizo's and Amazon's.  Being a niche community, advertising within gaming stores seems like a rather old model that is probably only reaching younger kids and people who have the time to sit and play in gaming stores and tournaments.   I do think the strategy probably works well for cheaper card packs and figurines - but does it for items that cost $45 or more? I just don't see that.

If I do a Google-shopping or Amazon search for D&D adventures or sourcebooks to buy, it's certainly not going to show me any of those encounters and modules available only at the stores or tournaments... or if I do have good Google-fu, I'll end up seeing a lot of things I can't obtain.  If I do the same thing looking for Paizo products, or Green Ronin, or even Iron Crown or whatever, I've got a ready-list to buy.  Relying on mostly "niche within a niche" people to buy everything seems a lot like the comic book store model:  get your regulars to buy every comic line, and have shelf boxes for their stuff.  Seems to me that they could be targeting a much wider and larger group for sales.


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## M.L. Martin (Jan 30, 2015)

Organized Play is a very popular and productive thing, but I think Laeknir has a point in that WotC seems to be putting almost all their eggs into that basket. Perhaps it's just my own tendency to really dislike 'exclusivity' or things that make it harder for people to acquire material. 

  I think the fact that so much of the company is built on Organized Play in other arenas is why they emphasize it so much for D&D.


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## Anthony Terry (Jan 30, 2015)

Matthew L. Martin said:


> I think the fact that so much of the company is built on Organized Play in other arenas is why they emphasize it so much for D&D.




This. At the end of the day Hasbos only remotely comparable product line is magic the gathering and a few other board games and the such, all of which are designed for and revolve around organised play and competition. They don't have the marketing departments to do it any other way, and see no reason to develop a better one for what is probably (I actually have no idea now perhaps some can chime in) still their least profitable product even with the launch of 5ED.

One of the staff memebers in this very thread was brought over from MTG and this is very common practise in large game companies, if only HASBO could realise the uniqness of dungeons and dragons, its not a competitive game, nor a game where large scale groups of people will ever play the same way. I can honestly say i have yet to meet 1 person that can even read the 5ED Players Handbook exactly the same as another, the same can not be said for the rules of MTG.


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## Laeknir (Jan 30, 2015)

Matthew L. Martin said:


> Organized Play is a very popular and productive thing, but I think Laeknir has a point in that WotC seems to be putting almost all their eggs into that basket. Perhaps it's just my own tendency to really dislike 'exclusivity' or things that make it harder for people to acquire material.
> 
> I think the fact that so much of the company is built on Organized Play in other arenas is why they emphasize it so much for D&D.




Yep, the "exclusivity" thing really kind of puzzles/irks me too.  Back when they originally released Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle only as a GenCon exclusive, I kept wondering what was up with WotC such that they didn't want my money.  Much later, now, it's available at d&dclassics, but it's old... they missed their window for me.  Having all of these encounters adventures must take a great deal of time to develop and playtest before release to gaming stores, but I can't get those either without spending a lot of time hanging around gaming stores.  It's one thing to be 35 years old and go with your kid once in a while to buy them something, but there's no way I'm going to go regularly.  And 99% of my friends never go to gaming stores either - we just didn't, even in our twenties.  But we played D&D and other things frequently.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 30, 2015)

Organized play is useless to me and my gaming group but if it does well for them that's great as long as its not the only focus.


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## Grand DM (Jan 30, 2015)

The FLGS environment is really hit or miss in terms of plausibility for organized play. Most have a very established set of regulars which for good or bad form cliques making it hard for new gamers. Additionally as much as I hate stereotypes one socially awkward encounter at a FLGS with either the staff or some players will send a new customer away for good. Therefore the FLGS has a huge responsibility to make sure the former does not occur and the environment is welcoming to newbies.

The M:TG organized play model works because players have to purchase cards every release to stay tournament legal. WOTC basically created a perishable product which must constantly be renewed in order to stay relevant. I just don’t see that model viable when it comes to RPG games which are much more expensive and involved in terms of play.


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## Gecko85 (Jan 30, 2015)

The in-store games are going to be great for me soon. I bought my nephew the Starter Set for Christmas, but he has only one other friend interested in playing. So, I'll be bringing him (them?) to an in-store game. If they get really into it, hopefully they can convice another couple friends to play, then can start their own games as home.

But, I fully agree with others that all the adventures should be made available for purchase, even if it's only downloads. Once an in-store game (or convention game) is wrapped up, make it available online. They're no longer running Defiance in Phlan, for example, yet there's no way to legally acquire it for home play. That's just plain short-sighted.


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## Anthony Terry (Jan 30, 2015)

Grand DM said:


> The M:TG organized play model works because players have to purchase cards every release to stay tournament legal. WOTC basically created a perishable product which must constantly be renewed in order to stay relevant. I just don’t see that model viable when it comes to RPG games which are much more expensive and involved in terms of play.




And yet since leaving TSR, if not perhaps since 2 ED this is the exact model employed by the people behind Dungeons and Dragons. With the current hatred towards splat material there is a chance of a brief step away from this style with 5ed but i promise you it will just lead to a "5.5" type of scenario soon enough.

They do not understand what material it is they need to sell to gamers because in a RPG genre no two gamers will want the same thing. Their only way of remotley guarenteed revnue is by making more material required e.g more rules, 1 global setting and organised play forces both of these.


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## Laeknir (Jan 30, 2015)

Grand DM said:


> The FLGS environment is really hit or miss in terms of plausibility for organized play. Most have a very established set of regulars which for good or bad form cliques making it hard for new gamers. Additionally as much as I hate stereotypes one socially awkward encounter at a FLGS with either the staff or some players will send a new customer away for good. Therefore the FLGS has a huge responsibility to make sure the former does not occur and the environment is welcoming to newbies.
> 
> The M:TG organized play model works because players have to purchase cards every release to stay tournament legal. WOTC basically created a perishable product which must constantly be renewed in order to stay relevant. I just don’t see that model viable when it comes to RPG games which are much more expensive and involved in terms of play.




I hate pointing to stereotypes too, but that is exactly what happened with us.  In our teens, we sometimes played at the gaming store.  But running into a couple of those stereotypical socially awkward gamers pushed us away and we never looked back.  Even watching the occasional "let's play" on youtube, there's enough social oddity there to keep me away.  I'm not talking about generic nerdy types who show love for their hobby, but people who suddenly think you're their BFF because you showed up and then proceed to talk about how they've rolled up their favorite Japanese anime character in D&D and "not to worry" because they don't use their tentacles for ERP.  Stuff like that makes me never want to go back.


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## Morrus (Jan 30, 2015)

Laeknir said:


> Does it actually work, though?  Bringing someone into a store is all well and good, but there's no guarantee that they'll buy WotC products while they're there.




I assume so or they wouldn't keep doing it.



> Don't get me wrong, it's nice and all to have a commitment to in-store gamers.  I just don't see other companies having their editors spend a lot of time on materials that are going to be handed out for free.




Only a couple of companies _could_ devote resources to bringing in new gamers.


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## billd91 (Jan 30, 2015)

Laeknir said:


> Interesting.  I guess since I'm out of the organized play "loop" it never occurred to me that Paizo and others would offer free material, adventures and such, at gaming stores.




Not necessarily free, but generally pretty low cost. The Pathfinder Society (Paizo's main organized play program) adventures are inexpensive and only the GM has to buy it. The players coming up to the table can participate for free*.

* Free as far as PFS is concerned. Some game stores may charge for play space, as may game conventions. But, again, the cost is generally low if there is one.


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## billd91 (Jan 30, 2015)

Chase Freedom MC said:


> But, I fully agree with others that all the adventures should be made available for purchase, even if it's only downloads. Once an in-store game (or convention game) is wrapped up, make it available online. They're no longer running Defiance in Phlan, for example, yet there's no way to legally acquire it for home play. That's just plain short-sighted.




I agree. I think the various wrangling around licenses and copyrights have bogged this down. For example, all of the Living Greyhawk adventures (and there are a lot of them) are unavailable. Many were written through the volunteer regional organizations rather than your standard, contracted free lancer. But they were allowed to use Greyhawk IP for the campaign. The trouble is, without a specifically negotiated license or contract specifying rights, we're now in a space where nobody has the legal right to distribute the LG adventures - at least that's my understanding. And that's too bad because I'm sure there would be a modest market for them. Who wouldn't want a bunch of relatively short modules to draw from? If they aren't your main campaign, they sure make up good side treks to switch up the campaign focus.


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## billd91 (Jan 30, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Only a couple of companies _could_ devote resources to bringing in new gamers.




I'd say more than a couple - but the effort is usually borne by volunteers rather than professional employees or people devoting their own time. Local game stores around here often showcase specific games with volunteers, arranged by the publisher, teaching people the rules. And, from time to time, one of the game's own developers has been involved. But that's more a feature of that person living in the local area.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 30, 2015)

Chase Freedom MC said:


> But, I fully agree with others that all the adventures should be made available for purchase, even if it's only downloads. Once an in-store game (or convention game) is wrapped up, make it available online.





As part of D&D Adventure League play, you already can get the scenarios and run them at home, IIRC.  Look into it more closely and I think you'll find them available.  Of course, you're approaching it just the right way, trying it at the store, maybe getting some more friends of the family involved, moving the game to home or at another game store table if they have a large enough game room.  That's just what they'd be happy to see happen and the system is set up for exactly that.  Plus, with Adventure League ID numbers, all of the players with PCs can use their characters at gamedays or conventions where League events are organized.  One of the guys in my weekly game goes to another store and runs Encounters on one evening then Saturday runs Expeditions.  You'll likely start by trying Encounters but you could also try at the store and later run Expeditions at home.  It's quite well done.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/for...ns-Dragons-Details-New-Organized-Play-Program


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## Gecko85 (Jan 30, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> As part of D&D Adventure League play, you already can get the scenarios and run them at home, IIRC.  Look into it more closely and I think you'll find them available.




I was under the impression the Expeditions adventures were only available for download if you sign up to host a session.



> Will D&D Adventurers League adventures be available for home play?
> 
> Home play will be supported though the initial adventure released for sale each season. For the first season, Tyranny of Dragons, Hoard of the Dragon Queen is the adventure that coincides with D&D Encounters and can be played at home. Future articles will talk about  D&D Adventurers League character creation for at home and public play.
> 
> ...




So, the Encounters adventures (ex: Hoard of the Dragon Queen) can be purchased and played in-home. Expeditions (ex: Defiance in Phlan, Secrets of Sokol Keep, etc.) are for *public play*, which means either in-store, or if you register a public play event at a club or something. In other words, it has to be publicly open to anyone who wants to attend, and you have to register your event before you can download. Am I understanding it incorrectly?


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## graypariah (Jan 30, 2015)

I am sorry to see WotC shrink their small staff, but to be truthful I would be ok if they never released another book in 5th edition as long as they did OGL. The way the three core books are set up with a OGL fan creations would support my needs entirely. 

I also think that we put too much on the publishers to grow the hobby. As a DM I am always working towards recruiting new players into the hobby and would continue to do so if tomorrow both Paizo and WotC closed up shop.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 30, 2015)

Chase Freedom MC said:


> I was under the impression the Expeditions adventures were only available for download if you sign up to host a session.
> 
> 
> 
> So, the Encounters adventures (ex: Hoard of the Dragon Queen) can be purchased and played in-home. Expeditions (ex: Defiance in Phlan, Secrets of Sokol Keep, etc.) are for *public play*, which means either in-store, or if you register a public play event at a club or something. In other words, it has to be publicly open to anyone who wants to attend, and you have to register your event before you can download. Am I understanding it incorrectly?





Hmm.  I'm not sure that is quite right but maybe ask a League guy?  I was of the understanding that you could organize a game and just invite who you want, as long as a certain number of them had League IDs.  If you have Facebook, maybe ask in this group here -

https://www.facebook.com/groups/adventurersleague/

Ping me again here if you find out I am way off base, please.  I'd hate to spread any misinformation.  Good luck!


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## Steven Winter (Jan 30, 2015)

Wizards' crippling disadvantage is that it can't come to grips with the digital age. The company is terrified of digital piracy -- and not without good reason. Digital piracy of D&D products during the 4E years hit staggering, mind-boggling levels. WotC doesn't buy the standard arguments that piracy is a victimless crime or that it doesn't equate to a huge loss of revenue. Neither do I, for that matter, and neither should you. It comes down to a question of how much theft you're willing to live with in return for the gain; or in more practical terms, at what point does rampant piracy not only wipe out your electronic profit but start cutting into physical sales? Wizards made a decision a few years ago to set the bar pretty high on that question. That decision definitely hurts them in terms of online market presence. Whether it hurts or helps their bottom line, I'm in no position to say.

The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store. The fact that you can't buy D&D products at the D&D website -- can't, in fact, even find a link to a third-party online store -- is an outgrowth of Wizards' devotion to 20th-century distribution methods and brick-and-mortar stores. Wizards.com will direct you to a "nearby" store where you probably (maybe) can buy whatever books they happen to have in stock, assuming you have access to transportation and the place isn't 200 miles away. Organized Play is another effort to get people into stores. It's a well run, laudable program, but it's still battling upstream against the prevailing current of online shopping, a trend that Wizards seems intent on dealing with by sticking its fingers in its ears and singing "Summer of '69" at the top of its lungs. 

OK, that's not really fair. I know there are people inside Wizards who struggle with this issue, who've been working toward a new approach to digital products for 5E for years. But until we see it, and see it work, 5E will be stuck behind the 8-Ball. 

Steve


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## Gecko85 (Jan 30, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> Hmm.  I'm not sure that is quite right but maybe ask a League guy?  I was of the understanding that you could organize a game and just invite who you want, as long as a certain number of them had League IDs.  If you have Facebook, maybe ask in this group here -
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/adventurersleague/
> 
> Ping me again here if you find out I am way off base, please.  I'd hate to spread any misinformation.  Good luck!



Ok, I joined then posted to the FB group...confirmed that Expeditions are not available for home play, only public play. There was discussion of what constitutes public play in an earlier thread, and it was basically in-store, at a convention, special event, etc., as long as it's public.


----------



## Morrus (Jan 30, 2015)

Huscarl said:


> Wizards' crippling disadvantage is that it can't come to grips with the digital age. The company is terrified of digital piracy -- and not without good reason. Digital piracy of D&D products during the 4E years hit staggering, mind-boggling levels. WotC doesn't buy the standard arguments that piracy is a victimless crime or that it doesn't equate to a huge loss of revenue. Neither do I, for that matter, and neither should you. It comes down to a question of how much theft you're willing to live with in return for the gain; or in more practical terms, at what point does rampant piracy not only wipe out your electronic profit but start cutting into physical sales? Wizards made a decision a few years ago to set the bar pretty high on that question. That decision definitely hurts them in terms of online market presence. Whether it hurts or helps their bottom line, I'm in no position to say.
> 
> The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store. The fact that you can't buy D&D products at the D&D website -- can't, in fact, even find a link to a third-party online store -- is an outgrowth of Wizards' devotion to 20th-century distribution methods and brick-and-mortar stores. Wizards.com will direct you to a "nearby" store where you probably (maybe) can buy whatever books they happen to have in stock, assuming you have access to transportation and the place isn't 200 miles away. Organized Play is another effort to get people into stores. It's a well run, laudable program, but it's still battling upstream against the prevailing current of online shopping, a trend that Wizards seems intent on dealing with by sticking its fingers in its ears and singing "Summer of '69" at the top of its lungs.
> 
> ...




They're not afraid of piracy. And they're very competent at digital distribution. 

They have tens of thousands of DDI subscribers, and sell thousands of products in PDF format at dndclassics.com. They successfully turned two magazines into a digital platform. DDI was making them hundreds of thousands every month at one point. They have digital well in hand.

They're very clearly not "afraid of piracy". That may have been true a decade ago when they cited it as a reason for pulling PDFs, but they've been selling PDFs again and DDI subscriptions for years now.  Whoever made that call way back then clearly isn't calling the shots now. They're perfectly comfortable with it.

The only possible reason I can think of that might cause someone to think they're afraid of digital (they're very clearly not; they embrace it) is that they haven't figured out the 5E digital stuff yet. But that fact alone doesn't support all those assertions. It only shows that their digital strategy for 5E is lacking so far.


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## Jeremy E Grenemyer (Jan 30, 2015)

Disappointed by the news, but not surprised.

Here's to Chris and Jennifer both landing on their feet.


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## Mistwell (Jan 30, 2015)

Huscarl said:


> The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store.




Allow me to introduce you to dndclassics.com.  You are now caught up to two years ago.  WOTC only paused selling PDFs for a period of 3.5 years total.  Aside from that, they've always sold PDFs essentially since I think 2005 (?).  You're behind the times.

I will give you an example.  Search for Scourge of the Sword Coast on the WOTC site, which was an excellent adventure for D&D Next.  I will save you time, here it is.  See the first sentence which includes a link to "www.dndclassics.com"?  Click the link, which takes you to their online store to buy it.  You will find a similar link on many many many WOTC product pages.

They add new stuff quite often.  You should check it out.


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## Steven Winter (Jan 30, 2015)

I'm well aware of dndclassics. Send me another link when you can buy the 5E PHB, DMG, or MM there.

I'm also well aware of how successful D&D Insider was. I was part of the DDI team from the beginning, and I'm quite proud of the fact that we made it one of the few successful subscription services of its type. Despite its success, it never met the laughably unrealistic goals that were promised for it before the project got off the ground, and that "failure" always tainted DDI and digital publishing inside the company. Plenty of people there understand that DDI succeeded and how it could be improved, but they're fighting an uphill battle against a block of institutionalized myth that it failed to deliver the subscribers and the revenue it promised.

Steve


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## kenmarable (Jan 30, 2015)

Mistwell said:


> Allow me to introduce you to dndclassics.com.  You are now caught up to two years ago.  WOTC only paused selling PDFs for a period of 3.5 years total.  Aside from that, they've always sold PDFs essentially since I think 2005 (?).  You're behind the times.
> 
> I will give you an example.  Search for Scourge of the Sword Coast on the WOTC site, which was an excellent adventure for D&D Next.  I will save you time, here it is.  See the first sentence which includes a link to "www.dndclassics.com"?  Click the link, which takes you to their online store to buy it.  You will find a similar link on many many many WOTC product pages.
> 
> They add new stuff quite often.  You should check it out.




There's several issues there:

#1) Dndclassics.com is NOT WotC's storefront. It's part of OneBookShelf just branded for D&D. So they are still giving money to a separate distributor.

#2) That link in the first line of the Scourge of the Sword Coast entry? Where does it point? To the home page of dndclassics.com, not the actual product page, making you have to search for it all over again. That's failing ecommerce 101.

#3) It's also all PDFs. I think it's a safe assumption that WotC is trying to make money off of physical books, and even if it was owned by WotC and not OnebookShelf, it's still digital only. WotC lacks any online store front for physical books.

#4) It doesn't even have their current releases for the current edition. The latest it has are transition/playtest adventures.


So claiming that WotC lacks any online store front for directly selling their products, is actually 100% accurate on several levels. Maybe I'm reading into comments, but I think it is a safe assumption that "wanting to buy products directly from WotC" would imply wanting to buy *current* products including the more popular *physical* versions. Even aside from that, OneBookShelf has an online store front for previous edition PDFs, WotC does not.

*ETA:* Also, taking a quick look at the other D&D Next playtest/transition adventures... it looks like Scourge of the Sword Coast is the ONLY one that links to dndclassics.com. Murder in Baldur's Gate? Nope. Legacy of the Crystal Shard? Nope. Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle? Links to Gale Force 9 in order to *pre-order a product from 2013!!* Methinks Scourge of the Sword Coast is the rare exception, not the rule.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 31, 2015)

Chase Freedom MC said:


> Ok, I joined then posted to the FB group...confirmed that Expeditions are not available for home play, only public play. There was discussion of what constitutes public play in an earlier thread, and it was basically in-store, at a convention, special event, etc., as long as it's public.





Interesting.  I suppose once you get a group together, you can limit how many seats are available to how many players you have in your group and call the game as public no matter where you play, no?  Special event at my house, five seats filled by my son and his five friends?


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## Mistwell (Jan 31, 2015)

Huscarl said:


> I'm well aware of dndclassics. Send me another link when you can buy the 5E PHB, DMG, or MM there.




If you are well aware of it, then why did you say, "The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store."

In what way is dndclassics.com not an online store? Other than the 3 and 1/2 years they did not sell PDFs, since around 2005 they've sold PDFs online for most of their product back catalog.  How have they not had an online store for two decades, given that fact?  Are you saying if they fail to sell *all* their products at *all* times in that online store it's the equivalent of not ever having an online store at all? Because that doesn't make sense to me.  They sell most of their products in an online store - that has some meaning, and it runs contrary to your claim.


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## Mistwell (Jan 31, 2015)

kenmarable said:


> There's several issues there:
> 
> #1) Dndclassics.com is NOT WotC's storefront. It's part of OneBookShelf just branded for D&D. So they are still giving money to a separate distributor.




Everyone uses someone else's platform(s) in some ways.  Even if it's just a credit card processing agent, or a web development company that fits the shopping cart into their main site.  There is no issue I know of with using OneBookShelf as the back-end with D&D branding on the front-end. What, you think changing the url to "wizards.com/purchase" would be a meaningfully different? I don't. In fact I'd say the security and design elements are far superior than what WOTC would end up doing if they hired someone to program it in-house.  And I think it's better than Paizo's shopping cart system in many ways as well.  What do you see as the issue with using OneBookShelf as the back-end?



> #3) It's also all PDFs. I think it's a safe assumption that WotC is trying to make money off of physical books, and even if it was owned by WotC and not OnebookShelf, it's still digital only. WotC lacks any online store front for physical books.




Because there are very substantial issues with developing an in-house distribution system, which was one of the many things TSR did which took their focus off their core specialties.  I think it's wise that the only time WOTC sells direct to customers is at a few conventions.  Better for their retail stores, and better for their own internal focus.  This is also one reason they sold off their Wizards retail shops.



> So claiming that WotC lacks any online store front for directly selling their products, is actually 100% accurate on several levels




No it's not.  There is no "100%" about it.  They have an online store.  It sells their products.  It does not sell all their products, but that's not the claim I was responding to.  It shares a very small portion of their revenue with a back-end designer, but that's not the claim I was responding to.  I was responding to the claim they have no online store - which isn't accurate.  No matter how you try and spin it, they do have an online store.



> Maybe I'm reading into comments, but I think it is a safe assumption that "wanting to buy products directly from WotC" would imply wanting to buy *current* products including the more popular *physical* versions.




The stuff dndclassics is selling is in pretty good demand.  Look around EnWorld and you will see plenty of discussion of it.  Much of it has never seen PDF distribution before.  A lot of it is evergreen stuff, like settings.  Just because it does not interest you, that does not mean it doesn't interest plenty of other people who are clamoring to buy the first time digital release of settings and adventures they love.

As for physical stuff - I don't but that for a second.  If you want to buy a physical copy *online*, you buy it at discount at Barnes and Nobel or Amazon or one of the other online companies.  Why would you want to buy it direct from Wizards at full price instead of 30-40% off at another site? They're both online shopping carts selling you the identical product.  Companies that sell direct, do it because they make more money by charging closer to or at full retail price and making sure B&N and Amazon and such either don't get it, or don't get it at the same discounts that Wizards is able to give those stores.


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## Torg Smith (Jan 31, 2015)

Mistwell said:


> Allow me to introduce you to dndclassics.com.  You are now caught up to two years ago.  WOTC only paused selling PDFs for a period of 3.5 years total.  Aside from that, they've always sold PDFs essentially since I think 2005 (?).  You're behind the times.
> 
> I will give you an example.  Search for Scourge of the Sword Coast on the WOTC site, which was an excellent adventure for D&D Next.  I will save you time, here it is.  See the first sentence which includes a link to "www.dndclassics.com"?  Click the link, which takes you to their online store to buy it.  You will find a similar link on many many many WOTC product pages.
> 
> They add new stuff quite often.  You should check it out.




And, before they started selling the PDFs back then, they were giving a bunch of stuff away free in PDF and RTF.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 31, 2015)

Torg Smith said:


> And, before they started selling the PDFs back then, they were giving a bunch of stuff away free in PDF and RTF.





How many of these links are still good?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?154448-Free-Adventure-Path

But be sure to understand this much, FWIW -

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...e-Path/page4&p=6150502&viewfull=1#post6150502


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## Torg Smith (Jan 31, 2015)

kenmarable said:


> There's several issues there:
> 
> #1) Dndclassics.com is NOT WotC's storefront. It's part of OneBookShelf just branded for D&D. So they are still giving money to a separate distributor.
> 
> ...




If they don't want to deal with that part of business, they can contract it out. It removes a bunch of liabilities they have to concern themselves with. Remember, they use Digital River for their DDI. Not every producer operates their own store. Just because they don't want to be bogged down by maintaining a storefront doesn't make them any less a producer.


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## Torg Smith (Jan 31, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> How many of these links are still good?
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?154448-Free-Adventure-Path
> 
> ...




The files I was referring to had been taken down quite some time before. They included the adventure in the A, U and a number of other series. The Volo Guides and a bunch of stuff they are selling now. I have purchased the new ones as the quality is so much better then they had done back then.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 31, 2015)

Torg Smith said:


> The files I was referring to had been taken down quite some time before. They included the adventure in the A, U and a number of other series. The Volo Guide's and a bunch of stuff they are selling now. I have purchased the new ones as the quality is so much better then they had done back then.





Indeed.  Still, there was a ton of free stuff from the 3.XE era that they have made unavailable that could help fuel their customers' campaigns.


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## Staffan (Jan 31, 2015)

Mistwell said:


> In what way is dndclassics.com not an online store? Other than the 3 and 1/2 years they did not sell PDFs, since around 2005 they've sold PDFs online for most of their product back catalog.



I don't recall the exact year, but Wizards selling PDFs go back farther than that - pre-3e, even.

Way back when, on the heels of the success of the Core Rules II and Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas CD-ROMs, Wizards decided to launch an ambitions project - they were going to make a CD-ROM with PDFs of all the FR books on it, and asked people for copies of books they could scan (apparently, they didn't have books themselves in good enough condition). The process started, but after a while someone in charge pulled the plug - the thing was getting way too expensive. They decided to instead offer the scanned books for sale as individual downloads, for something like $3 each. These books were amazing quality - they didn't just scan images of the pages, but rather OCRed all the content and put it into the original layout as text. They weren't quite as good as having the original files from the publisher, but very close to it. Eventually, other product lines were covered by it, but at some point they decided to skimp on the quality (Forgotten Realms, Al-Qadim, Dark Sun, and maybe Dragonlance were released as "good" PDFs, but Planescape as not-so-good).


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## Mark CMG (Jan 31, 2015)

WotC halts sale of pdf's through RPGNow/DriveThruRPG in April of 2009 -

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2jhqs?WotC-halts-PDF-sales

D&D Classics went live Jan 22, 2013

http://garycon.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1003&start=0


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## kenmarable (Jan 31, 2015)

Mistwell said:


> Everyone uses someone else's platform(s) in some ways.  Even if it's just a credit card processing agent, or a web development company that fits the shopping cart into their main site.  There is no issue I know of with using OneBookShelf as the back-end with D&D branding on the front-end. What, you think changing the url to "wizards.com/purchase" would be a meaningfully different? I don't. In fact I'd say the security and design elements are far superior than what WOTC would end up doing if they hired someone to program it in-house.  And I think it's better than Paizo's shopping cart system in many ways as well.  What do you see as the issue with using OneBookShelf as the back-end?




I think you misunderstand me. I have no problem with WotC using other companies as distributors. Whether it is a good idea or not is a numbers game of costs and benefit and it makes sense to do it in house or allow someone else to doesn't matter to me. I was just pointing out that WotC does not have an online store front of their own at all. 

OneBookShelf isn't just some back end designer. It is a completely separate business. They are DriveThruRPG, RPGNow, etc. Just as Amazon. Barnes & Noble, and your FLGS are separate from WotC. WotC simply sells through retailers. 

I just saw in this thread someone claimed WotC would be better off selling direct (debatable - it's working great for Paizo, but it took time and investment to build that up), but your response wasn't just that it would be a bad idea (I agree, it likely would be especially if they won't even invest in having editors on staff) but your response was that they do in fact have an online store front with dndclassics.com.  

My point is that saying WotC has their own online store front is analogous to saying Kleenex has 11,000 stores worldwide because they are sold at Wal Mart. Best Buys aren't counted as Apple-owned stores just because they have a special section of the store branded with Apple logos. The manufacturer and retailer are separate businesses. WotC is letting OneBookShelf use their name and branding, but WotC does not have their own store front.

Check their "About Us". WotC wasn't started in 2001 by James Mathe.


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## Mistwell (Jan 31, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> WotC halts sale of pdf's through RPGNow/DriveThruRPG in April of 2009 -
> 
> http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2jhqs?WotC-halts-PDF-sales
> 
> ...




Are you arguing 3 years 8 months (or is it 9?) is a meaningful difference than the rounding I did of 3 years 6 months?   OK Mark...I was off by 2-3 months.


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## Mistwell (Jan 31, 2015)

kenmarable said:


> I think you misunderstand me. I have no problem with WotC using other companies as distributors. Whether it is a good idea or not is a numbers game of costs and benefit and it makes sense to do it in house or allow someone else to doesn't matter to me. I was just pointing out that WotC does not have an online store front of their own at all.




Yes.  They do.  See all the branding on dndclassics? That's all WOTC stuff.  Nobody else's stuff is sold on dndclassics.



> OneBookShelf isn't just some back end designer. It is a completely separate business.




How can you claim something is completely separate when all the branding is the same?



> They are DriveThruRPG, RPGNow, etc. Just as Amazon. Barnes & Noble, and your FLGS are separate from WotC. WotC simply sells through retailers.




Bad comparison.  It's an exclusive joint venture, with just WOTC products, with the product listings controlled by WOTC and only WOTC.  All those other companies sell everything, not just one company's stuff.





> My point is that saying WotC has their own online store front is analogous to saying Kleenex has 11,000 stores worldwide because they are sold at Wal Mart.




Does Wal Mart sell only kleenex products and nothing else? No.  Because it's a bad analogy.  This is WOTC products, with listings controlled by WOTC. 



> Best Buys aren't counted as Apple-owned stores just because they have a special section of the store branded with Apple logos. The manufacturer and retailer are separate businesses. WotC is letting OneBookShelf use their name and branding, but WotC does not have their own store front.




They are not "letting" them do it, it's a jointventure with them, and it's WOTC sending it over for exclusive listings, with WOTC controlling it, as a WOTC storefront carrying only WOTC branding and products.



> Check their "About Us". WotC wasn't started in 2001 by James Mathe.




Yes they have their normal iframe over it because WOTC hasn't put their frame on it...doesn't change anything about it being totally not analogous to a store that sells everyone's products with their own branding and with listings and control by that store as opposed to the brand owner.


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## kenmarable (Jan 31, 2015)

Mistwell said:


> They are not "letting" them do it, it's a jointventure with them, and it's WOTC sending it over for exclusive listings, with WOTC controlling it, as a WOTC storefront carrying only WOTC branding and products.
> 
> Yes they have their normal iframe over it because WOTC hasn't put their frame on it...doesn't change anything about it being totally not analogous to a store that sells everyone's products with their own branding and with listings and control by that store as opposed to the brand owner.




This is pretty far off on a tangent and probably going to just wind up arguing semantics of what it means for a business to "have" a site, but this:

http://www.dndclassics.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e?it=1

and this:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e?it=1

and this:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e?it=1

are all the same business. In fact it is the exact same database, same product IDs, and looking at the page source, same exact code, just referencing "themes/dnd/" "themes/dtrpg/" and "themes/rpgnow/".

WotC may be sending them content, but they are not running anything over there since it is *all one site*. Different URLs just display different themes.There are no iframes for WotC to replace, because there's likely only 1 about us page that exists on that server. Only 1 home page for dndclassics, DriveThruRPG, DriveThruComics, DriveThruCards, DriveThruFiction, WargameVault - all of which are listed and accessible on the left side of every page of dndclassics. 

Heck, go to dndclassics.com and click "My Library". Every RPGNow or DriveThruRPG product you ever bought is listed there. Same thing with "Account" listing every non-WotC order, "My Wishlist" including every non-WotC item. 

It is all OneBookShelf. WotC does not own nor run it. Instead, OneBookShelf is taking I'm sure much more than "a very small portion" of the revenue, just as Amazon, B&N, etc. etc. all take their portion of the revenue as retailers for WotC products.

When I say that WotC does not have their own store front, I only mean that it does not own and operate their own store front in the way that Paizo owns and operates their own store front. WotC does not sell anything, they let others do it for them. That's all I'm saying.


P.S. Oh, and what is this campaign setting?!! They are also bringing back all the classics! Wow! 

Sorry, it's late here and I'm getting silly.


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## Steven Winter (Jan 31, 2015)

All this dickering over semantics is really dragging discussion away from the point I hoped to make. OK, let's say I formulated my thoughts badly. What I should have typed was "The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store where the publisher sells the latest editions of the game books direct to consumers." I thought that was clear from context, but it's apparent I was wrong. 

Steve


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## R_Chance (Jan 31, 2015)

Huscarl said:


> All this dickering over semantics is really dragging discussion away from the point I hoped to make. OK, let's say I formulated my thoughts badly. What I should have typed was "The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store where the publisher sells the latest editions of the game books direct to consumers." I thought that was clear from context, but it's apparent I was wrong.
> 
> Steve




I thought that was obvious, but maybe that's just me... selling PDFs of out of print older material is what D&D Classics does (and I'm not knocking that). Paizo sells their dead tree books directly as well as through both hobby and book channels. And of course they have subscriptions to a number of their product lines available although you need a certain amount of material to make that viable.


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## Sunseeker (Jan 31, 2015)

Huscarl said:


> All this dickering over semantics is really dragging discussion away from the point I hoped to make. OK, let's say I formulated my thoughts badly. What I should have typed was "The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store where the publisher sells the latest editions of the game books direct to consumers." I thought that was clear from context, but it's apparent I was wrong.
> 
> Steve




One of the reasons larger companies do not have direct sales is because of the deals they strike with outlets.  IE: Barnes & Noble buys 10,000 copies in exchange for Wizards not selling direct, etc.  Smaller publishers (Paizo included) can't strike these deals with distributors and outlets.  I mean when the Monster Manual came out every Barnes and Noble I went into had 7+ copies on the shelves and a couple out front in the new releases section.  

Small companies sell direct simply because they don't have a large enough market to warrant producing a million books to send 100 copies to 10,000 stores.  

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a major company that sells direct, and also has deals with major retailers across the country/world.


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## Alphastream (Jan 31, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> The overall market did not double. No way possible the market doubled without everyone (not just you) finding out about it.  No one with any sense would try to make that argument.



No, I don't think anyone would say that. But, we don't know by how much Wizards "needs" the market to increase. We do know that Gen Con more than doubled in attendance since 2005, PAX doubled in attendance almost every year... basically until it couldn't grow and now they just add more conventions in other cities. Most of us seem to see it very clear that 5E is selling beyond expectations in the same year that Paizo had its strongest year ever, and while we at the same time likely had the strongest year for Kickstarters and indie games. We see the ICv2 report on a growing hobby industry and possibly (finally) a growing RPG market. We see Hasbro's report. I'm having trouble adopting your pessimism about Wizard's growth prospects.

But, 5E being a success as an RPG isn't likely the issue, which is why competition within the industry isn't a primary concern and why Wizards doesn't need to somehow beat out the RPG competition. Wizards likely needs instead to build a strong RPG core to establish brand presence and launch far more lucrative ventures. That sounds all cold and business-like, but its the same reason why Paizo launches an MMO, why FFG is purchased, etc. This industry has a serious problem, even with the growth. Even with 5E doing great, it is highly likely that it can't produce the numbers an RPG company should want. That's why it isn't about beating out other RPG competitors - doing so (even if you could) doesn't change anything. If Wizards were to acquire all the other RPGs other than Paizo, for free, it still wouldn't change the problems they face with the industry. I'm not sure Wizards and Paizo combining revenues would fundamentally change anything either. The industry is still there, with its same problems that lead to layoffs.


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## Alphastream (Jan 31, 2015)

Laeknir said:


> Something I have never really understood (perhaps someone can help clarify), why does WotC put so much emphasis on making products for tournament and gaming-store play rather than straight-up modules and sourcebooks?  Does the tournament/store material actually bring in money?



As others have said, this is widely done. There are now so many organized play programs that good active stores have several events running nearly every day (often for different programs). A store might have Friday Night Magic, Wednesday Adventurers League, Pathfinder Society, Attack Wing through WizKids, FFG events, 13th Age, etc. Many of the programs are more expensive to run than small RPG companies make! In the 90's (I forget the year) the RPGA said it needed $2 million to run well.

It is advertising, and it can be effective. There haven't been 'scientific' studies done publicly, but I know of one private one during the Living Greyhawk days that seemed to suggest a huge correlation between sales and organized play. I also tend to think that the success of the Dark Sun line (as the best selling setting for 4E, beating out FR handily) was tied to an almost perfectly planned organized play program (and the absolute least of that was Ashes of Athas). 

Friday Night Magic is the model every company can look to. With Wizards support, that program alone carries tons of stores that would otherwise not be profitable. It literally keeps the doors open and feeds tremendous revenue back to Wizards. Every RPG company would like to figure out how to mine that model for RPGs and go beyond advertising and solidly into generating revenue. 

Exclusivity sounds bad, especially to those that don't take the steps (or can't) to get the exclusive thing, but it is a huge motivator for many. Exclusivity can be fantastic for driving interest. 

Every organized play program tries to balance different factors: exclusivity (Adventurers League's Wednesday Encounters program now uses the same adventure stores sell on shelves, but Expeditions requires a commitment to run a game in public), advertising and direct revenue (often tying organized play to new releases), accessibility/flexibility (home vs convention vs store), etc.



Chase Freedom MC said:


> confirmed that Expeditions are not available for home play, only public play. There was discussion of what constitutes public play in an earlier thread, and it was basically in-store, at a convention, special event, etc., as long as it's public.



You are correct. Expeditions adventures (such as Defiance in Phlan) require that you contact Wizards through the support page and tell them the public location where you will run them (instructions are on the AL web site). It can be a store, a library, a school, but it has to be public. The point of the program is to grow the player base. If you want to just play through 20 levels of D&D with your friends at home, you can run the official published adventure and still be part of the Adventurers League. Encounters uses the very same published adventure, but it is run in phases each Wednesday at a store. This allows anyone to go to the Wizards site and use the Locator to find a store running the program and jump into a D&D game. It keeps support strong for the stores.


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## Alphastream (Jan 31, 2015)

Huscarl said:


> The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store where the publisher sells the latest editions of the game books direct to consumers.




Practically everyone in the industry keeps saying the physical store and physical shelf is vital and the key to the industry. I don't know, but that's what we keep hearing from everyone. I've heard stores say how critical this is for them in order to keep backing and pushing RPGs.

There is probably some balance there, and I suspect Paizo has found it - having their own store and still working hard to put product physically in stores in a way that pleases those stores - even if they too have so far failed at their digital tabletop plans. But, Paizo isn't just about digital distribution. The printing portion seems to still be critical. 

I also think that D&D has continued to have very large plans about what they would like to do... and that leads them to then back off of digital delivery for the latest core rules. I think fear of piracy is a factor, but the biggest issue has been sever missteps around their big plans. Maybe one day the big plans will happen. DDI's dream of every adventure being delivered into an online tabletop and creating a hugely popular online gaming space with digital collectible miniatures and digital for-pay organized play adventures didn't come close to becoming real. It was a massive failure. 

D&D 5E was headed towards digital core books, but the deal with the third party provider fell through. My guess, easily wrong, is that the particulars were too close to "and anyone can do whatever they want, and we the provider can make all the money off of what people create and you won't and your DnDClassics won't be that awesome anymore." Wizard probably wants, and should want, a different model. Creating a sound model hasn't been easy, despite several attempts.


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## Mark CMG (Jan 31, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> _Most of us seem to see it very clear that *5E is selling beyond expectations*_ in the same year that Paizo had its strongest year ever, and while we at the same time likely had the strongest year for Kickstarters and indie games.





I'm afraid you've dropped a couple of turds in an otherwise fine punch bowl of ideas.  First off, D&D can't sell beyond expectations and if selling well isn't expected by the employees and us fans of D&D then the brand is in a ton more trouble than we've suspected.  Second, "most of us seem to see it very clear" is a false qualifier unless you're living in a bubble since most RPGers don't even play D&D as their primary RPG or follow how it is doing.  It's absolutely silly for you to ruin an insightful post with that sort of thing.  You have some great stuff to say about a way forward for WotC that looks more honestly at their current predicament but it's these sort of empty phrases that just crap all over the rest of what you are saying.  Dude, we all want to see WotC do well but slipping this sort of double talk into the conversation makes it seem like you think your readers are idiots.  It's also a large part of the problem WotC has with its PR, like Mike Mearls tap dancing around a question from Morrus the other day on the difference between "planned" and "announced."  When people spot this sort of disingenuousness it harpoons anything else you might be saying of real value.




Alphastream said:


> Wizards likely needs instead to build a strong RPG core to establish brand presence and launch far more lucrative ventures.





You're right.  The stronger the brand overall, the better the novels do.  I wonder how much it does for the board games but it must be helpful for crossover sales.  They also need to get the movie right back.


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## mflayermonk (Jan 31, 2015)

Reading through some of these posts, as a business, I think it is time to bring in some new people with new ideas and cut ties with more current employees.


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## dd.stevenson (Jan 31, 2015)

Zaran said:


> I disagree.  I think all three core books are well edited.




I wasn't talking about the three core books, primarily. I'm talking about the subsequent releases--these were very much in need of further developmental editing, and were almost certainly pilot runs of what is to come. Yes, these editing problems were probably for reasons beyond the individuals' control. But that's my point: wotc may have (had) a workflow problem.

Again, I'm speculating.


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## Mistwell (Feb 1, 2015)

kenmarable said:


> This is pretty far off on a tangent and probably going to just wind up arguing semantics of what it means for a business to "have" a site, but this:
> 
> http://www.dndclassics.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e?it=1
> 
> ...




And? 95% if all online commerce sites are using someone else's proprietary back end.  My company for instance uses OsCommerce.  The branding is D&D, the control is with WOTC, there is no functional difference to the consumer between calling this WOTC's online commerce site and it being on their actual website, other than the url.


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## Umbran (Feb 1, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> I'm afraid you've dropped a couple of turds in an otherwise fine punch bowl of ideas.




Mark, can we avoid the scatological style, please?  Thanks.



> First off, D&D can't sell beyond expectations..




How is that?  The only ways for it to be unable to sell beyond them is for the expectation be infinite (or, well, I suppose the human population of the planet Earth, or slightly higher if they figure they can teach chimps or dolphins to read) or if they have no expectations.  WotC is too successful to try a major business endeavor without any expectations, and not quite so foolish as to set them at infinity.  So, well, I think this statement is just plain wrong - which is ironic, given what you said in the first line of the post.

Now, I don't know of any quote by a WotC employee that sales have been beyond expectations, so I'd agree that we do not currently know the status in that sense.  But it isn't impossible.


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## Mark CMG (Feb 1, 2015)

Umbran said:


> Mark, can we avoid the scatological style, please?  Thanks.





Sure.  I was trying to coin a new phrase that isn't in common usage and made a mess of it. 




Umbran said:


> How is that?  The only ways for it to be unable to sell beyond them is for the expectation be infinite (. . .)





Sure.  That's the only way I can think of as well.


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## delericho (Feb 2, 2015)

dd.stevenson said:


> I wasn't talking about the three core books, primarily. I'm talking about the subsequent releases--these were very much in need of further developmental editing, and were almost certainly pilot runs of what is to come. Yes, these editing problems were probably for reasons beyond the individuals' control.




The credits for editing for HotDQ and RoT are listed under Kobold Press, not Wizards. So it appears that that wasn't done in-house.

Of course, if that is the way of things going forward - that future products will be handled by licensees, including editing - then WotC don't need in-house editors and can eliminate the positions.

Odd that...


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## aramis erak (Feb 3, 2015)

delericho said:


> The credits for editing for HotDQ and RoT are listed under Kobold Press, not Wizards. So it appears that that wasn't done in-house.
> 
> Of course, if that is the way of things going forward - that future products will be handled by licensees, including editing - then WotC don't need in-house editors and can eliminate the positions.
> 
> Odd that...



The editing quality on HotDQ are a couple notches below industry standard.

WotC needs an editor... and needs that editor to oversee the licensees.


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## Alphastream (Feb 3, 2015)

Mark CMG said:


> I'm afraid you've dropped a couple of <rude stuff>



Okay, then. 

Let's just agree to disagree.


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## Mark CMG (Feb 3, 2015)

Alphastream said:


> Okay, then.
> 
> Let's just agree to disagree.





Sure, but Umbran would rather you not quote that word and I'd prefer you only quote it in its well-known, full idiom, but whatever floats your boat.


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## Kenomi (Feb 6, 2015)

They killed a strong fan base when they droped RPGA greyhawk. They killed a strong Fan base when they released 4e and started the edition wars. They killed 5e because they are not able to bring digital stuff like pdf or character Generator. They give us no open gaming licence. This is unbelievable because the worse Adventures came from 3rd Party publishers. They Developed a superior format and layout for adventures at the end of 3.5 (Web of the spider  Queen). If i Look at horde of the dragon Queen its awfull against the Layout and encounter presentation of spider Queen. In my Opinion they made a good new Edition, but everything other than this they Do a totaly Word way.
Sorry for the english, its not my native Language.


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## aramis erak (Feb 7, 2015)

Kenomi said:


> They killed a strong fan base when they droped RPGA greyhawk. They killed a strong Fan base when they released 4e and started the edition wars. They killed 5e because they are not able to bring digital stuff like pdf or character Generator. They give us no open gaming licence. This is unbelievable because the worse Adventures came from 3rd Party publishers. They Developed a superior format and layout for adventures at the end of 3.5 (Web of the spider  Queen). If i Look at horde of the dragon Queen its awfull against the Layout and encounter presentation of spider Queen. In my Opinion they made a good new Edition, but everything other than this they Do a totaly Word way.
> Sorry for the english, its not my native Language.




The edition wars started back in about 1983 when Mentzer Basic replaced Moldvay. They actually got heated in about 1987 with AD&D 2E coming out. The BBS scene was rife with contentiousness. Later, with the rise of WWIVnet, AD&D 2E vs Mentzer D&D vs AD&D 1E was quite the raging flamebait. It only got worse in the mid 90's with the release of the Player's Option books and the Internet. And then the massive explosion when 3E came out and didn't look much like AD&D at all.

 What rock were you hiding under during _those_ eras?


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## ren1999 (Feb 8, 2015)

It is one thing to fire someone because they failed to do what they were paid to do. It is another thing to fire someone just because you want to maximize your personal profits from all the hard work they did on what you are selling. This kind of cutthroat streamlining of business is why the world economy is failing and why people boycott.　In summary, gaming companies need to stop letting people go. I don't know the details of this story so I am just speaking generally. I've seen this routine time and time again. There are so many things that need done by this particular gaming company I am complaining about. How about online tools. How about detailed spreadsheets of the gaming system, the class features, the spells. How about doing officially what all the fans of this game are already doing for free? DO BETTER!


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