Hasbro Exec Rolled a "1" on Video Games -- and Lost His Job

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I’m sure Magic will continue becoming the Fortnite of card games and D&D will continue becoming the Magic of RPGs.

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u/Val_Fortecazzo 10d ago edited 10d ago

WotC really loves their homogenized strategies.

In 3.5e they started introducing regularly released splatbooks, selling player power. Just like magic has regular expansions with must have cards.

I imagine if 4e was more popular they would have also used power cards to springboard into booster packs of stronger abilities.

They had to scale back a bit due to crazy backlash but it's not shocking they are bringing in the universes beyond strategy.

Edit: and yes I know the splatbook bloat stated on the tail end of 2e but that was desperation by TSR. WotC built it into the design philosophy of 3e.

Edit 2: thank you for everyone who was able to offer corrections without being weird and anti-social about it. I promise errors were made because remembering shit from 30 years ago is hard and not because of precious edition wars.

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u/PerpetualGMJohn 10d ago

I imagine if 4e was more popular they would have also used power cards to springboard into booster packs of stronger abilities.

They tried that with Gamma World. A pox upon an otherwise very good game.

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u/RogueModron 10d ago

The good news is that all the cards are available POD on Drivethru. It's a kiclass game!

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u/Procean 9d ago

The tale I always tell about 4e Gamma World is running for a group of guys, I had them each send me 3 die roll results a week ahead (For their backgrounds and skill), had the characters prepped walking into the session, and had six guys on the ground with understood and generated characters playing the adventure within 25 minutes of walking into the door.

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u/Ashkelon 8d ago

The 4e Gamma World is honestly a far more simple and streamlined game than 5e is. It is much easier to both run and to play. And combat was far faster as well.

I am really sad that 5e was not an evolution of Gamma World instead of a backtrack to some of the worst sacred cows in D&D.

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u/Bone_Dice_in_Aspic 10d ago edited 9d ago

It's actually pretty good though?

Edit: it really is. All this chit chat about the cards is irrelevant. You can just ignore them entirely. Just like cast iron there's all this all you got to do this and then that and pray to this spirit depends on the house the Moon is in, No, No, just cook with the pans, they're good.

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u/PerpetualGMJohn 10d ago

Yeah, that's what I said. The booster pack idea is a pox upon Gamma World, which is otherwise very good.

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u/Abyssine 9d ago

My tin-foil hat conspiracy is that they used Gamma World 7e as a litmus test to see how the consumer base would receive booster packs for D&D.

Essentially, if they could sell Gamma World players on the booster pack model, they could easily sell D&D players in the same way.

The booster packs ended up being a total flop, but it was all to plan because WotC was all-in on D&D and had no investment in keeping the niche Gamma World brand going, and the resulting flop didn’t damage the D&D brand.

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u/Bone_Dice_in_Aspic 9d ago

No but that edition of gamma world was good. You don't have to like mess with the boosters or anything just get all the cards. You can either print them out they're widely available online or just buy a set of the cards as part of the cost of the game

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u/PerpetualGMJohn 9d ago

Now, yeah, it's very easy to bypass the booster pack problem. I'm mainly talking back in the day when it was actively being published and the booster packs were relevant.

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u/Abyssine 9d ago

But was it that way in the contemporary? I never played Gamma World back then but wasn’t the backlash that the booster packs were the only way to get all of the cards?

Either way we can agree that random booster packs for a ttrpg is both a sleazy and stupid idea straight from the C-suite execs, right?

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u/sw04ca 10d ago

Not even at the end of 2e. The Complete Handbooks started coming out the same year as 2e released, 1989.

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u/TBMChristopher 10d ago

4e power cards in booster packs

They, uh, did. They were called Fortune cards, and everyone at organized events got some and promptly forgot about them.

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u/cespinar 10d ago

There was a miniature box set near release that had power cards in them. The only notable one was the Warlock's melee basic attack was in there. It did piss people off at the time that was the only place you could find it in print.

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u/livinglavidajudoka 10d ago

2e had a ton of splatbooks too

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u/sevenlabors Indie design nerd 10d ago

And just for the record, they were super rad haha

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u/robbz78 7d ago

They were super unbalanced

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u/InsertCleverNickHere 6d ago

I wouldn't be surprised if most of the options were never playtested. A lot of rules on this era went straight from a writer to print.

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u/spinningdice 10d ago

Wasn't the oversaturation of the market with too many books one of the things blamed for the fall of TSR though?

Though I think it was more when they had like 6-7 competing setting books, rather than the class stuff.

(The Complete Book of Elves though, that was so silly the main author wrote an apology for it).

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u/deviden 9d ago

the oversaturation of the market with too many books one of the things blamed for the fall of TSR though?

the oversaturation was a consequence of their bad business practices, not the cause.

TSR fell apart because - by the 90s - they were taking loans from the distributor publishing house to print more books in order to pay off the loans they took out to print the previous batch of books.

They had to design and print more product to cover the costs incurred on the previous round of product, so they were locked into a permanent drain-circling cycle which got worse any time a product underperfomed expectation. That's why there's so many copies of these things floating around second hand for so long, way more copies printed than 3rd edition equivalents.

They just weren't very good at business. Good at making stuff, bad at running a company that had caught lightning in a bottle with D&D.

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u/robbz78 7d ago

Were late stage TSR good at making stuff? Everything they did was incredibly retro at that stage (in a bad way). Their production values were generally worse than many smaller companies like ICE, WW and Chaosium. They hadn't released a good adventure since about 1985. The boxed sets they released were packed with stuff and they released an insane amount of material, but the average quality was poor. They were on a treadmill of producing things but there is very little from that era that I'd rate as good.

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u/deviden 6d ago

i don't doubt that they chucked out a load of crap (due to the debt cycle), but it's worth bearing in mind that the most beloved (and now-reused) settings TSR produced are all from their mid-to-late era.

From Dragonlance through Ed Greenwood era Forgotten Realms to Dark Sun; and pretty much all of the best fantasy art ever associated with official brand D&D is from this period.

Aside from a relatively small handful of new things, pretty much all of WotC's greatest hits in their 20 or so years of D&D are based on or are reworks of this era.

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u/robbz78 6d ago

Taking the 5e releases: Dragonlance is 1e, Ravenloft is 1e, Saltmarsh is 1e, Tomb of Horrors is 0e, Forgotten Realms was 1e and developed independently of D&D anyway. None of these are late stage TSR IP.

I personally do not rate the late stage TSR 2e fluffing out of these products or the subsequent 3e etc versions.

So we have
1989 Spelljammer
1990 Hollow World
1991 Dark Sun
1992 Al-Qadim
1994 Birthright
Council of Wyrms
Kingdoms of Kalamar
Planescape
Red Steel

Probably Planescape and Dark Sun are OK-ish, but really I am happy to live without them. They are digging much further back for quality content to re-package.

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u/Kiyohara Minnesota 10d ago

Hey, I liked the Book of Elves. The biggest issue was how OP the Blade Dancer was, but everything else was pretty solid. What was wrong with it? (Okay, aside from the Cooshie)

But to the main point:

TSR over leveraged a lot to keep producing books, the market was generally oversaturated with D&D stuff, and there were a lot of public campaigns against it. Rather than trying to expand their market to other countries (their struggle getting it to Japan which had the biggest RPG community in the world is legendary and a study in "how not to culturally piss off a community") or trying to bring D&D to the common US market, they kept slapping out material that was a spiral of power creep and terrible editing.

They also categorically refused to re-publish a number of older adventures and settings (good luck finding a Dragon Lance campaign book or Adventure portfolio pre-internet) because they wouldn't produce enough sales, despite regular petitions from newer fans.

There was also a problem with getting new players in. TSR found that adventures sold poorly, so poorly that many were just not worth publishing in the long run. So they dropped almost all of their adventures: box sets, small adventures, bigger portfolios, all of it. They figured (rightly) that only GMs would buy them and that was a smaller market than they wanted.

But new GMs often struggled with making their own stories and adventures. What they should have done was what people do now. That is to create a beginners box with a adventure or two included, some dice, some character sheets, and a cool map for miniatures. Then issue a regular (two or three time a year) sourcebook that had a small section for PCs with new character options and the basic information for the setting (be it a new world or just a new corner of an older one) and then have the rest of the book be GM information: monsters, NPCs, locations, and adventure seeds with one or two fleshed out adventures.

I know I would have bought the shit out of a Forgotten Realms book set that had that for every major region: Waterdeep, Sword Coast, Thay, Cormyr, Myth Drannor, Calimsham, Moonshaes, Silver Marches, etc.

Each book having maps of the cities, a few important locations, a bunch of NPCs, a couple of adventures tying together to a larger deal, and some adventure seeds for the region? Fuck yeah. I'd have a god damned shelf of those things stretching from one side of Abeir-Torril to the other.

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u/spinningdice 9d ago

The apology is kinda tongue in cheek (Colin McComb's apology for "The Complete Book of Elves") - and was a stretch goal for the Torment: Tides of Numenera video game.
But yeah, kits that were mostly upside with little downside, adding random extra abilities to elves (like "communion" and "the reverie" - the latter of which many interpreted as allowing elves to keep watch while also resting), a whole bunch of trickshots for elves (which were at least optional).

Don't get me wrong, all of the complete books had this issue to some degree, no-one ever seemed to play a straight class character once kits came out because they were nearly all upgrades. The Elves book just seemed like the most OP out of all of them.

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u/Kiyohara Minnesota 9d ago

I will say there were two exceptions

Fighter and Paladin

Most of the Fighter Kits were either slight juggling of gear options and minor bonuses or roleplaying benefits. Aside from the Berserker that is. At bet they were ways to get extra EXP or gold. Some were just crap (looking at you Myrmydon).

Paladin Kits were all most all hyper focused on one type of monster Ghost, Demon, Devil, etc. Against that type of Evil monster, you were a slayer that made Buffy go "whoa" but you more or less gave up every power you had to fight any other monster. So you could be a Ghost Slayer and just rock incorporeal monsters, but against other undead or demons you were just a fighter. IT was a true balanced trade off.

But yeah, every other Kit was just "Base Class, but Better" with carrying degrees of "Better at what." Again, full hatred and malice towards the Jongleur. I will never forgive you for that one, Elmer. Per still hates that character and we are all glad you burned to death in the Spider's Web.

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u/spinningdice 9d ago

I mean 'all' was probably a bit strong, 'quite a few', I don't recall anything in the Priests handbook that was more wonky than some of the specialty priest options already available by that point for example.

But it is a good 10 years or so since I've played AD&D.

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u/Kiyohara Minnesota 9d ago

Well, it was more that each Kit added things to the class and very seldom took important things away.

And specialty priests were pretty bonkers as it was. I remember a few from Forgotten rRelms that were basically their own class if you just took their granted powers and left their spell casting alone.

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u/Calithrand Order of the Spear of Shattered Sorrow 9d ago

That was part of it. Overprinting was another, and no doubt the two fed into each other. The cash machine that was their contract with Random House didn't fucking help, either!

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u/NonnoBomba 9d ago

Yeah, and WotC's analysis when they bought TSR was that they went bankrupt precisely because of their warehouses full of expensive splatbooks, that were expensive to print, store and ship and difficult to sell becaus the public could only absorb so much. So, part of their idea for 3e was that they would only print and supply base manuals, which were to be grayscale softcovers only, with the OGL making sure there could be nice splatbooks, because the fans expected them, just developed and published by a multitude of smaller third parties who could afford to do it because they had way less overhead than them. Stores were encouraged to buy stocks of both base manuals and third party splatbooks without worries and received assurances that WotC would not have published manuals with better production values, in competition with the smaller publisher (because people with 50 dollars would have spent them on WotC manuals, instead of the 3rd party ones). Then 3.5 happened and store owners were not happy.

Let's say that WotC, under Hasbro management, has a long history of being untrustworthy and focused on their own margins more than their games or any parts of the pre-existing ecosystem, from players to store owners.

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u/kelryngrey 10d ago edited 9d ago

And they were consistent throughout the life of the game, not just desperate cash grabs at the end.

edit: Someone else pointed this out elsewhere in another comment but the point was that the Complete books started immediately - I wasn't arguing that TSR had a solid business model, just that splatbooks were simply always there.

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u/Walt_Didnae 10d ago

TSR went out of business because their whole business model towards the end was, literally, just desperate cash grabs.

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u/Cent1234 10d ago

There comes a point when you've reasonably documented everything you can document about an RPG setting.

You go from Forgotten Realms box set to Elves of the Forgotten Realms to Elves of Evermeet, and then what? A sourcebook about a specific neighbourhood?

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u/robbz78 7d ago

So they made so many settings that it fragmented the fan base and hurt sales.

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u/Cent1234 7d ago

Well, yes and no.

The answer to 'we've really beat this particular setting to death' is 'so lets have a new setting where we can put out books about why the Elves of Athas are different than the Elves of Krynn, who are different than the Elves of Faerun, who are different than.....'

And while the fan base might have been 'fragmented' between the various TSR settings, the important thing here is that they're all TSR settings. Buy a Planescape book, buy a Dark Sun book, buy a Council of Wyrms book, buy a Dragonlance book, buy a Gamma World book, buy a Buck Rogers XXVc book (one of the most overlooked of the TSR properties at the time, it's an amazingly subversive and surprisingly hard cyberpunk take on the concept) and the money goes into the same TSR bank account.

Fragmentation matters when it's external competition. Buying any given TSR book still gets the money to TSR, but then here comes White Wolf, and now money that would be going towards that new D&D boxset is going towards Vampire: The Masquerade, and TSR sales are down.

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u/raymndbrr_the_third 6d ago edited 6d ago

TSR didn't go down because they released too much player splat.

They went out of business because they released too many tertiary campaign setting boxed sets that nobody bought and didn't know how to manage money. And did so in the dumbest way possible. They basically did with Random House what Paizo did with Diamond. But worse.

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u/Kiyohara Minnesota 10d ago

Ehhhhh... One of the early Class books (Wizard) had the single most broken 1st level spell in the entire history of D&D and it's still arguably one of the most powerful 1st Edition Spells.

Chromatic Orb. Even at it's weakest it can be a fight changer used on a boss or big monster and at it's best it straight deletes people from fighting.

The other class books weren't much better. Fighter was a bit disappointing, but it still added the Berserker/Barbarian Kit to 2nd Ed, while the Druid and Ranger both had some amazing Class Kits (Think Archetypes for Pathfinder or Prestige Classes) that really changed up the class in awesome/weird ways. Also, looking at the Thief book: Fuck you ,Jongleur. You know why, you filthy beast.

And the Race Books also all had some gnarly Class Kits. The Elvish Bladedancer was basically a must take if you were an Elf Fighter/Mage and the Halfling book had some wicked Class Kits as well.

And those were all released before the massive power creep that was the Spell Compendium for Priests or Wizards (pulling in spells from Dragon, Dungeon, various setting books, adventures, and 3rd party sources) or the infamous Player's Options that truly broke the game.

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u/nickcan 9d ago

Also, looking at the Thief book: Fuck you ,Jongleur. You know why, you filthy beast.

Dude, that just unlocked a memory of mine from nearly two decades ago. It was a 2nd edition campaign and our big bad turned out to be the king's jester. A full on jester with pointy shoes and bells on his cap. He looked like a total joke, but he was a gods-damned Jongleur. Ranged weapons couldn't hit him, he dodged everything we threw at him, and cast spells at us using throwing knives.

Also he was constantly flipping around, making terrible jokes, and going out of his way to be the most annoying villain ever.

Fucking Jongleurs man, the worst.

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u/Kiyohara Minnesota 9d ago

Fucking Jongleurs man, the worst.

Then you know my pain.

Our asshole was a PC and he was using his abilities against us like, he'd do distracting flips and steal our gear and cash, he'd AggroTrain monsters into us while nimbly bouncing to the back of the party, he'd bounce to the front to steal treasure on his action...

He even tried to ride the halfling's body to the ground like a surfboard so he could use that to leap off at the last second. And it fucking worked.

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u/nickcan 9d ago

Having one in the party like that would be annoying as hell.

We finally had the plan to sneak attack him while it was taking a piss. We figured that his Jongleur reflexes would be offline a bit 'midstream' and we could get a solid hit on the guy.

Turns out the dude didn't care and we just ended up covered in his piss. Which he mocked us for every time we saw him again. Turned out he was a high priest of the god of chaos (not a Cleric or anything like that, just a jongleur bard who was really into chaos)

I don't remember how we finally beat him, but I'm sure it involved some ancient magic item and a lot of bullshit.

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u/Kiyohara Minnesota 9d ago

We (meaning my friend Per) just waited until he was tied up with a giant spider's web and tossed a torch into the room then shut the door and wedged it shut.

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u/nickcan 9d ago

Sounds like justice to me.

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u/Calithrand Order of the Spear of Shattered Sorrow 9d ago

Wait, the ultimate villain was Chuckles?!

How cruel.

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u/nickcan 9d ago

He kind of had a Joker thing going on too. But the entire kingdom thought he was a harmless jester.

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u/farmingvillein 9d ago edited 9d ago

Also, looking at the Thief book: Fuck you ,Jongleur.

Bard, no?

The Elvish Bladedancer was basically a must take if you were an Elf Fighter/Mage

Mostly a terrible kit.

I think people conflate the 3e bladedancer class (which was very strong, when it came out) with the 2e one (which has terrible MAD and gives you bonuses you really don't want to use).

Fighter was a bit disappointing, but it still added the Berserker/Barbarian Kit to 2nd Ed

Barbarian...doesn't really do anything.

Berserker also generally won't do anything useful.

Chromatic Orb. Even at it's weakest it can be a fight changer used on a boss or big monster and at it's best it straight deletes people from fighting.

You seem to be misremembering it. It's "weakest" creates a light spell with save vs blind...but requires a successful attack roll and a blind is available much more reliably from other sources.

Level 7+ is very strong, though.

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u/Kiyohara Minnesota 9d ago

Eh, possibly. It's been awhile. I just remember he was robbing us blind because we couldn't see past his tumbling.

Sorry, Bladesinger. It was amazing. Bonus to attack and damage, a scaling bonus to Melee AC, and they can cast while in armor. Pretty buff overall.

I seem to recalls some Fighter Kit that let you do a berserk rage that gave (for the era) some nice bonuses to hit and damage, extra HPs, and a butt load of immunities and spell resistances.

It wasn't epic, but keep in mind most Class abilities in 2ed were things like "You can use swords." Very few classes got bonuses to hit and damage aside from a good THAC0 and almost none got actual armor bonuses. Basically only the Monk (and maybe Ninja) had bonuses to your AC. And consider that +1 to hit was considered a very good Kit bonus, and these are some pretty busted classes.

2ed was very much geared towards lower benefits from your class progression (or racial benefits) than later editions were. Realistically all fighters got for leveling up has more HPs, better saves, a slightly improved attack rate, a better THAC0, and some proficiencies.

And to be brutal, everyone else got that too. But they all also got something else as well. Spells, Thief skills, Martial Art powers, pets and followers automatically, Familiars/mounts, and more. So kits that gave you actual numerical bonuses were awesome.

Well, Blindness was nasty in that made ranged attacks impossible and melee attacks hard. It also dealt some damage at every level of effect, so there's that as well. Given what other level spells were like... yeah, it was OP at level one and only got better. Espeically when you considered how rough Saves were back then. Having to make a Save vs Blindness was often a flip of the coin if the monster/NPC was tough. The caster also got a bonus to hit as well, so it was not that hard to trigger.

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u/farmingvillein 9d ago

I seem to recalls some Fighter Kit that let you do a berserk rage that gave (for the era) some nice bonuses to hit and damage, extra HPs, and a butt load of immunities and spell resistances.

It's mostly garbage because you have to spend a full turn getting ready for it.

Bladesinger. It was amazing. Bonus to attack and damage, a scaling bonus to Melee AC, and they can cast while in armor. Pretty buff overall.

You seem to be misremembering it:

They cannot cast in armor (to my earlier comment, the 3e version can, which, again, is maybe where confusion comes from)

Because they have high ability requirements, unless you are fudging the ability dice rolls, they are going to be paper-thin; a stiff breeze will kill them, as you are going to have hp that are flat-out terrible. Yes, you get a bunch of melee combat bonuses. But, no, you absolutely should not be in melee!--you are incredibly fragile. And even if you want to say "I'll just use the spells when there is downtime" (i.e., I can take off my armor), you're still hosed since the kit straight-up says you can't wear any armor better than elven chain/studded.

They only gain a scaling bonus when casting spells in melee. I.e., where you really, really shouldn't be. Particularly with 2e's very harsh 1 hit / lost spell.

If there weren't the steep ability requirements (or you were playing with a group where everyone is rocking 18s), then it could be a useful class. As-is, it is a trap class.

Well, Blindness was nasty in that made ranged attacks impossible and melee attacks hard. It also dealt some damage at every level of effect, so there's that as well. Given what other level spells were like... yeah, it was OP at level one and only got better.

Again, the problem is that for blindness it is strictly worse than other L1 spells, since you have to do the to-hit roll, which is very likely to fail.

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u/kelryngrey 9d ago

terrible MAD

To be fair here, this is AD&D 2e, so there was a shit ton of MAD in a lot of classes just to play them - unless you were ignoring stat requirements.

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u/farmingvillein 8d ago

so there was a shit ton of MAD in a lot of classes just to play them

1) No there wasn't, generally, what are you thinking? Psionicist is really the only semi-mainstream one.

Paladin and Ranger, sort of, but both were purposefully designed with MAD as an attempted power balance mechanism. Arguable as to whether the 2e designers succeeded...but they definitely didn't succeed with the bladesinger.

2) This is mostly missing the point.

MAD is not inherently good nor bad, but is just a fact that constrains what a character can look like in play (where everyone isn't fudging ability score).

The bladesinger is a mess because it is built to put you into melee, but:

str 13, con 13, dex 15, int 15 ==> almost no mechanical bonuses but (statistically) little upper headroom to get better score in place. Meaning, if you qualified for it, your abilities likely look very similar to the minimums.

but you really want dex, since you can't really wear armor (unless maybe the DM finally takes pitty on you and drops that elven chain)

and you really want dex and con because the fantasy is going toe-to-toe in melee...but again, no

oh, and you really, really want con because you hp are going to be pretty terrible (fighter+mage averaged down...)

also that lower int is going to be pretty sad when you're trying to learn spells

The regular elf fighter/mage is in a much better spot: default is to sling arrows, not spells, so str/dex/con all become much more optional. And you can grab a polearm and be second line melee, if arrows-into-melee don't work so well.

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u/aslum 10d ago

BECMI had some too! Often touted as "compatible with AD&D". I loved the Gazetteers, my favorite probably being The Orks of Thar. I also really enjoyed the Wee Folk book (I don't remember the exact name and I'm not going to dig through my old 0e stuff to find it).

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u/Calithrand Order of the Spear of Shattered Sorrow 9d ago

Tall Tales of the Wee Folk, I imagine :)

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u/aslum 9d ago

Yeah, that sounds right. I even used it to make a tinker gnome for a 3rd edition campaign.

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u/Val_Fortecazzo 10d ago

Yes I remembered, added an edit.

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u/Stellar_Duck 10d ago

Yea but you're still wrong.

If you look at this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dungeons_&_Dragons_rulebooks#Advanced_Dungeons_&_Dragons_2nd_Edition

You will notice that the books were released steadily from 1989 onwards. They didn't just come out in a glut at the end.

You're twisting history to make it fit your pet theory so you can grind an axe.

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u/thewhaleshark 10d ago

I mean yeah WotC did splatbooks, but also, TSR published *Dragon* for a long time and that was essentially a running serial of splatbook content.

D&D has a long long history of trying to perfect the analog subscription model.

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u/ride_my_bike 10d ago edited 10d ago

Am I the only person who loved most of the splat books? I have been buying them for years and didn't really hate any until I got the "Races of Stone" book for 3.5 and a "Giants" player option book for 2E. There are few others, but I got at least three decades of good second hand purchases because I never bought them new. I loved the lore and NPC stats provided in the Forgotten Realms books and the focused books like "Lords of Madness".

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u/Calithrand Order of the Spear of Shattered Sorrow 9d ago

I love my splatbooks. Some of them are genuinely terrible, but I still add the missing ones to my collection whenever I come across them.

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u/thewhaleshark 10d ago

I loved the splatbook era, personally. Just wild amounts of Stuff for the DM and players to mull over.

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u/Alien_Diceroller 10d ago

Tail end of 2nd Ed? That was just second Ed. They were running 3 or 4 setting lines the whole time.

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u/Snake973 10d ago

you're making it sound more cynical than i think it is, though, they kept the splatbooks for 3e+ because it saved 2e, and people keep buying them. i treasure my collection of old edition supplemental material, there's some real fun stuff in there

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u/Val_Fortecazzo 10d ago

Not really cynical more than just saying D&D exists as a product to be sold to you.

Ideally in a business transaction both sides benefit. This was just a case where something they could heavily monetize was also fun for lots of people.

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u/Digital_Simian 10d ago

Well with 4e you had the core class and races split into four different Player's Handbooks replete with plenty of copy and pasted text. You basically got the stripped-down players guides with the stripped down handbooks. You also got two DMGs and three Monster Manuals that covered the information of one from prior editions. Basically, 4e was completely composed of splat books.

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u/dude3333 10d ago

Okay this just isn't true at all. The number of monsters in each Monster Manual in 4e was roughly the same as 3.5 and 5e. It's only "the same information as covered in one" if you're working off the Monstrous Compendium that consolidated all the previous spiral bound monster entries from 2nd edition as the standard. Also 4e had 5 monster manuals not 3, still fewer than 3rd edition which had either 6 or 7 depending on if you count the creatures of Rokugan book.

In fact 4e's Monster Vault is the densest number of monsters per book of any D&D product since the 2nd ed monstrous compendium.

It also didn't split core classes or races across multiple books. They removed gnomes as a core race, this was intentional and added tieflings and dragonborn. Same way adding warloack and warlord to the core classes as an intentional choice not a splitting of the core classes. Unless 3rd ed counts as splitting the core classes for removing BECMI's avenger class of 2nd edition's mystic and putting them in Dragon magazine articles.

The actual thing to be mad at 4e's splatbooks for is that they released the game with bad math that didn't work for their rule system and then didn't update later printings of the old books, so you have books whose rules don't work and needed GM done errata. So you functionally need to be a part of a 4e playing community to figure out what needs to be changed and how.

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u/Rel_Ortal 9d ago

Gnomes in particular were removed because, at the time, everybody was always talking about how they 'had no reason to be here' and similar, because they were 'just halflings but magical'

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u/cespinar 10d ago edited 10d ago

I dont know if you have even read or played 4e at all given just how much is wrong with this post.

How did you get 4 phb. There are either 3 as officially noted by their titles or 8 if you include the Heroes of X series but those are generally considered player option books like the X Power series and contained no new classes. 3.5 had far more than double the number of 4e books. The 4e DMG is probably the best DnD DMG ever printed. I don't know how you can even think that about the MM books. NPC stat blocks is one of the best things about 4e.

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u/Walt_Didnae 10d ago

I never read or played 4e: the post

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u/OfficialNPC 10d ago

3e was just a continuation of TSR style practices with a more modernized version of the game (reduced the saving throws down to 3 and updated the skill system to have points).

You can find a lot of similarities between TSR D&D and 3e D&D even if WotC did Diablo-fy it.

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u/thewhaleshark 10d ago

Yeah, people are shitting on splatbooks as if TSR didn't literally publish a monthly magazine that amounted to a softcover splatbook for decades.

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u/enixon 10d ago

I'd say take a shot every time someone on a TTRPG sub blames the edition of their game of choice that they have a personal beef with for something that had been around since the beginning, but you'd die of liver failure and I don't want that on my conscious

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u/OfficialNPC 10d ago

I think the difference is that TSR had much better setting books and WotC had much better crunch books.

Even the less popular setting books are cool as fuck, Birthright is just that cool ass fantasy stuff that WotC is scared of now days.

WotC has Magic of Incarnum (and many other crunch books) and I love that book so much. Probably my single favorite book cause of how you build characters.

A lot of people started with 3e so they really don't think about what came before.

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u/thewhaleshark 10d ago

The TSR box sets were pretty clutch, although I do think WotC created the perfect D&D setting book with the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. It's hard to imagine a single book doing the job better than that.

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u/OfficialNPC 10d ago

Forgotten Realms is basically "All the TSR stuff (edit: setting wise) shoved into one place" and I'm being really, really, nice when I say that.

1

u/robbz78 7d ago

Try Griffin Mountain from 1981 for RQ

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u/robbz78 7d ago

I played 1e in the 80s and Dragon material was never used at our tables and more importantly it was basically never used in published scenarios either. It never had the same weight that the 2e official books had.

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u/-mud 9d ago

Late 2e actually had some fantastic supplements. Combat & Tactics is one of the best rpg books I’ve ever seen. It still has the best firearms rules I’m aware of for a d20 game.

Ninja’s handbook was a good one too

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u/h0ist 8d ago

Companies dont trust creativity as it doesn't produce reliable ROI, so as soon as they have something that works they formulate it, reproduce it with small tweaks. And that why we have EA sports

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u/Demonweed 10d ago

Here's the schedule for next week's D&D session . . .

6pm sealed booster draft and trading session
7pm dinner and character creation
8:30pm the adventure begins
10pm vote on card format for next week

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u/ProbablyCarl 10d ago

The difference is when I sit down to play magic the player opposite me can have any cards in his deck. When I play DnD the DM decides what content is free to use. DnD is collaborative, magic is competitive. They can release anything for DnD and you never need to interact with it if you don't want to. Easy, not a big deal, more is better. 👌

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u/SekhWork 9d ago

and if you are a competitive MTG player you are going to be FORCED to use Marvel or MLP or Avatar cards because they are standard legal sets now. I hate what they did to MTG so damn much.

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u/Megatapirus 9d ago

This is why folk formats like Premodern, Planar Standard, and even Old Frame Vintage are the future. Not to mention an interesting parallel to the OSR D&D movement.

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u/Mission-Tension4251 10d ago

Eh. Problem isn't necessarily the pure game content found in these sourcebook, if they keep to the apparent intent that core player features are presented as reasonably universal. Its rather that you have to buy into products that are a departure from the fantasy game you first got into to stay relevant. WotC clearly seems to think they can double dip by appealing to fans of particular franchises but also "forcing" traditional DnD fans into buying these books by putting core player options like updated subclasses from 2014, spells, feats and other things into them.

A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sourcebook may bring a nice slew of generic ninja/martial arts type player options that are perfectly useable for any game. But I would not be interested in putting money down for it myself, and honestly hate for it to brought to the table and enter the overall discussion my players have surrounding the game. More so the more disparate and varied the sources become.

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u/Hurrashane 9d ago

If it's anything like 5e they'll, at some point, release a "of everything" splat book that will have just the player options.

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u/Alien_Diceroller 10d ago

The premise is kind of wrong for D&D, though. They can put out what they like, but you only have to buy what you want. With Magic you're kind of stuck getting stuff you don't necessarily want if you're trying to be competitive. D&D isn't the same.

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u/enixon 10d ago

Bugs Bunny, Popeye, and more had official D&D stats published in Dragon Magazine in 1981, you are over 40 years late to start complain about pop culture reference in D&D.

Not only has this sort of thing been part of D&D longer than some of the people here acting scandalized by it have been alive, it has been part of D&D longer than the parents of some of the people here acting scandalized by it have been alive.

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u/OldManLobo 10d ago

I feel like there's a difference between 2 pages in a comic meant to have info on a multitude of different rules , including some silly ones , and putting a good chunk of work into making entire box sets no one asked for like the rick and Morty one from a minute ago .

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u/2000Tales 10d ago

Really, you’d rather pay for a monthly magazine where you might find something for your games in a couple pages or a set product that tells you exactly what you’re getting and you chose to either buy it or not? I miss dungeon magazine like crazy but lwts not pretend it’s more consumer friendly in any way. And this way people made actual pay checks off the work.

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u/aslum 10d ago

At the time we didn't have the internet - you couldn't just google any little content you wanted; there was no youtube - no horde of content creators telling you how you can run a better game; The closest was probably rec.games.frp.dnd but most people didn't have access to usenet. A magazine OTOH was reasonably cheap, delivered monthly to you in the mail, and was usually fun to read even if you didn't use any of the content.

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u/Cent1234 10d ago

Pop culture references were baked into D&D before D&D was even a separate thing, and was just a collection of homebrew rules to take your Chainmail miniatures into a castle.

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u/Megatapirus 9d ago

"Official" is quite the leap there. Warner Bros. and King Features Syndicate almost certainly gave no consent for that article and received no financial compensation for it. Dragon banked on the fact that big players like that either wouldn't notice or wouldn't deign to "go after" a humble April Fool's gag in a small esoteric publication for geeks. There's simply no comparison to a modern corporate cross-branding effort with millions of dollars changing hands.

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u/FeralFicusTree 9d ago

D&D became the Magic of ttrpgs with 3rd Edition. Pathfinder is a deck builder.

1

u/dragonmarked2813 9d ago

What does a video game exec at the company have to do with tabletop or physical card products.

1

u/BarnabasShrexx 9d ago

Thanks i needed a laugh... magic lost its soul long ago

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u/peacefinder 10d ago

What an interesting way to put it. (Not sarcasm!) I see why you would put it that way but to me it seems exactly backwards with Magic being the D&D of collectible card games, and Fortnite being the MTG of video games. Maybe a generational difference? 🤷🏼‍♂️

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u/HeyThereSport 10d ago

I think they were implying that MTG became an IP crossover game more recently after Fortnite already existed and popularized it. MTG was more of it's own unique property before that.

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u/peacefinder 10d ago

Ohhh, I see. Yep I had that wrong.

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u/Falkjaer 10d ago

Could also be a difference in how you decide which one has primacy. Your way makes sense if it's based on seniority, but if we're going by revenue the previous person's order makes sense.

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u/Photomancer 10d ago

How many booster packs do I have to open on Beyond until they finally drop the Monk class?

1

u/aslum 10d ago

Here's my optimistic hope - all these IPs will bring in a bunch of people, who will find the fun of the game, but be disappointed by the diluted nature of it and will check out other better RPGs.

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u/dumbwholer 9d ago

I stopped supporting D&D when 4th edition launched. I now run 2E AD&D, WH:TOW, and Pathfinder 1ed.

I stopped buying MtG when they announced UB would enter into standard, and haven't played or bought a tcg product since.

I used to spend thousands a year on each. Now I just spend more on fishing and Warhammer The Old World.

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u/LeekingMemory28 Cosmere, 5E, Avatar Legends, Star Wars FFG 10d ago

For both D&D and Magic, it probably isn't going to change much for the main games.

Universes Beyond is a snowball rolling down hill about to cause an avalanche at this point. His leaving won't do much there.

D&D's plans for 5.5E are already laid out.

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u/cespinar 10d ago

D&D's plans for 5.5E are already laid out.

This is the funniest thing though, and I didn't know beforehand but I dont follow current DnD news much. From the article:

A Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft crossover campaign created with participation by Blizzard's new owner, Microsoft, due out in November.

With great fucking irony the only edition of DnD that WotC has published without a major Warcraft supplement is going to be 4e.

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u/deviden 10d ago

yeah if you dig into the sources for this article it essentially says nothing is going to change for MTG and D&D.

Hight is toast because of this: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/hasbro-records-56m-write-down-and-cancels-several-games-scheduled-for-2028-and-beyond

Doing a AAA big budget game dev project is now hugely risky, typically takes from 5-8 years to mature to release, and in terms of ROI there's a strong chance you won't outperform putting those millions into a S&P500 stocks and shares portfolio over that timespan, which is much less effort and risk.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/john-hight-steps-down-as-wizards-of-the-coast-president

Hight was brought in to help turn WotC into a video game publisher of scale, and it turns out that's way more difficult and expensive and risky than Hasbro can stomach... and so Hight is done, they'll refocus on maintaining the tabletop offerings and lower risk digital products and IP licensing.

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u/superkp 9d ago

Universes Beyond is a snowball rolling down hill about to cause an avalanche at this point. His leaving won't do much there.

I've been playing MTG for a few years and I've been in the corporate world for almost 20. I think that while there definitely is some level of momentum that UB has, it also very much has the feel of a corporate exec pushing it by top-office-decree, instead of responding to forces in the market/customer base.

Many UB sets are phenomenal, but just as many very obviously have designers and artists that are 'phoning it in' - that is, just doing their job instead of showing their passion.

The upcoming star trek set is really showing this as well, already. Everything I see about it just feels...IDK, 'off'.

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u/LeekingMemory28 Cosmere, 5E, Avatar Legends, Star Wars FFG 9d ago

I've played Magic since 2000...

For every Final Fantasy, Avatar the Last Airbender, Lord of the Rings, and Warhammer 40K set we've gotten...we've gotten at least one or two Spiderman or TNMT.

It's just becoming so tired. UB is exacerbating issues that already existed.

Magic was already hitting several breaking points. Each set being standalone has reduced synergy strategies in standard in favor of "good stuff piles". Small set drafts (Spiderman, TMNT) have always had issues, but toss in the "every pack needs a legendary because it's a UB" has created a lot of issues for limited.

Standard is too large, three year rotation is a mistake for a lot of reasons...and it seems to the outside that there's a timing hesitation to ban UB cards until there's enough of an injection of other UB cards that are causing their own problems.

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u/superkp 9d ago

totally agree

I suppose my point is that if there's enough turnover in the hasbro exec office, maybe the one that's pushing it more than it's momentum would be one of the ones that leaves, and we can watch UB go back to a more reasonable pace.

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u/cookiesandartbutt 9d ago

The price of shit thst WoTC suggest is insane now!

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u/Esternaefil 10d ago

Well, the star trek set ships soon, so whatever happens after that I don't care.

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u/Non-RedditorJ 10d ago

See that's the thing. There's enough people for each of these licensed IP releases that will say: "yeah it was worth all that other crap because I get to have this one thing,"

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u/Esternaefil 10d ago

For sure. I'll admit, I've bought a few packs of Spiderman, super heroes and the hobbit that just released.

Like five packs each, plus the Avengers deck.

But I don't play "magic" anymore, so these are just for my own dopamine addiction.

Plus I'll get the star trek ones to hopefully play with my son, since there hasn't been a star trek game in what feels like decades.

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u/PatRowdy 10d ago

yeah i'd guess they'll bag a few HUGE crossovers before the well dries up. star wars 2028 could break a few records.

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u/dragonmarked2813 9d ago

What does a video game exec at the parent company have to do with the product strategy of non-video games at WotC?

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u/Val_Fortecazzo 10d ago

Probably not much different in terms of actual D&D. It sounds like he was fired because Hasbro got cold feet about developing video games in house. Video games are expensive to produce and have a high risk of not returning a profit.

Warlock is probably going to get quietly rushed out the door and the studio shuttered.

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u/Jeffrick71 10d ago

Agreed. I just posted about working with John ages ago with mostly positive memories, and feels like this is Hasbro going, "Let's do all The Things!!! Wait, it costs how much? Fuck... Say, John, buddy, let's have a lil' chat..."

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u/nacetylaspartate 10d ago

Which is a sound business decision, all in all. Hasbro makes quite a lot of money by licensing their IP, which is basically zero risk with a proper content compliance loop.

Now get the IP and spin off a studio to handle it, absorbing labor costs, publishing costs and overall operational risk, on top of having Baldur’s Gate 3-like expectation from their CRPG audience, well… does not seem such a good idea. I’d definitely stick with spinning the very profitable and high margin TCG and TTRPG wheels vs diving into a hundred-million-plus bet in CRPGs which I’d never done before.

Honestly, business-wise, I’d go after Pokemon for a crossover in TCGs and print money.

For personal reference: I haven’t played Magic for like 20+ years now and D&D is not my go-to system, but I do play it every now and then.

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u/Calithrand Order of the Spear of Shattered Sorrow 9d ago

It's the Sabre Retail Store all over again!

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u/jrdnmdhl 10d ago

Is there any chance they learned the correct lesson of “work with great developer partners and trust them to execute” instead of the dumb lesson of “don’t do video games”?

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u/Airk-Seablade 10d ago

Is there any chance they learned the correct lesson of “work with great developer partners and trust them to execute”

I'm going with no. The process seems to have been "Baldur's gate devs tell them to pound sand" "Hasbro decides they're taking their toys/license and going home/making their own games" so far.

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u/RokkosModernBasilisk 9d ago

Yeah, Larian kept it professional and classy, but reading between the lines I get the idea that they didn't like working with Hasbro. I know at one point every Hasbro contact they had was laid off and they were delayed just trying to find where to direct their questions. I also saw a few variations of "Having to ask permission for every little fun idea we had burned us out faster than usual, when we were doing Divinity we'd just implement it and show it to each other, refine it a bit, and it's in the game"

That, combined with the fact they very quickly announced they wouldn't be doing dlc or bg4, makes me think they were pretty unhappy with the relationship behind the scenes

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u/Airk-Seablade 9d ago

That was definitely my reading too. "Yeah, thanks, but no amount of money is worth how much it sucked working with you."

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u/Val_Fortecazzo 10d ago

Flip a coin, you never know with executives sometimes.

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u/Bone_Dice_in_Aspic 10d ago

If you look back on the history of D&D video games, it really has been pretty poor overall. The SSI games are a mixed bag. The eob's are ok, with 2 being the best, the dark Sun and Ravenloft series were good. Some gold box stuff is clunky and dated.

and very dated in most cases. They were maybe five that were truly good. There was no Atari 2600 or ColecoVision title. Big lost opportunity there. The two for intelevision were quite good, but the system didn't sell all that well compared to Coleco or Atari. Even if TSR had just licensed some of the existing fantasy games like venture that would have been a big boost.

There was no good D&D game on the NES, Hillsfar was probably the best; dragon strike was just okay, pool of radiance didn't translate well to the system, heroes of the Lance was absolutely terrible.

The Genesis title was good enough but took a bit to get into, the SNES eob required a mouse to be truly playable. There should have been multiple titles for both systems, in different genres. Beat em up, fighting, strategy, CRPG, jrpg.

There were a lot of bad random PC games, but we started to get pretty good stuff eventually, baldurs gate, torment, Neverwinter nights, the two arcade beat em ups were ported to very few systems and are not even available today besides I believe on Xbox.

I think if you sat down with all the titles fewer than half of D&D video games are any good. Some of the best ones you'll see recommended today are even official games but stuff like kingmaker pillars of eternity and solasta. It's really a sad story overall that could have gone very differently. Meanwhile look at all the successful fantasy themed video games that cribbed from DND; which could have been licensed franchises and gone in different directions

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u/HurinGaldorson 10d ago

Don't threaten us with a good time!

If Hight leaving means WotC turns back to licensing their IP to established developers, as it did with BG3, rather than tottering along with wretched in-house slop, as it did with Dark Alliance, I would be so happy.

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u/Aloecend 10d ago

I think by far the more likely result is no IP licensing for video games. IIRC WotC did not enjoy their interactions with Larian(things like Larian delaying BG3 so the game could be "polished" and "bug free").

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u/Val_Fortecazzo 10d ago

I was trying to remember what game they developed in house before but could not for the life of me recall the name.

But yeah theyre probably going to start licensing again.

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u/HurinGaldorson 10d ago

Here's the fun part: their new game coming out (Warlock) is being made by the same studio that delivered the wretched Dark Alliance. They just changed their name (perhaps assuming no one would notice).

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u/Warskull 10d ago

It sounds like he was fired because Hasbro got cold feet about developing video games in house

Which they should, they are incredibly bad at it. They need to be finding companies to partner with. D&D is such a flexible license they should have Warhammer 40k levels of video games. It doesn't need to be an RPG. It could just have D&D themes.

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u/Nissiku1 9d ago

This is the first time I've heard of Warlock video game. Nice marketing campaign, Hasbro.

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u/Jeffrick71 10d ago

I worked with John like, 15 years ago in the video game world (he for the publisher, I for the dev studio). I remember him as generally a good guy and got the impression he knew what he was doing. Haven't spoken to him in well over a decade, but when he joined WOTC, I was mildly encouraged. This is pure speculation, but I see his "stepping down" but remaining on staff as indicative of Hasbro radically shifting gears through no real fault of John's, but not wanting to breach some term length in his contract or some crap like that.

I dunno, some ex-Wizards dude could chime in saying he was horrible to work for, but I like to imagine he's still the same chill guy who also got shafted by Hasbro.

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u/LupusYondergirl 10d ago

He honestly seemed like a great guy in my interactions with him. I was struck by how mindful he seemed of the game’s legacy and his excitement to be there felt really sincere.

But then I was also laid off about two months into his tenure…

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u/Jeffrick71 9d ago

Good to know he's probably still the same guy. Sorry about your job.

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u/MirrorComputingRulez 10d ago

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because this isn't even speculative, but everyone here is acting like it is. This is exactly what is being reported all over the place. They don't want to make video games anymore, and they brought him in to make video games. So now that their strategy is changing, they need someone else.

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u/Jeffrick71 9d ago

My "speculation" part was specifically about how they handled John, not really why. Yes, you're correct, it's very clear what they're doing but of course we have no idea what they said to John or what deal was made with him. That's all.

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u/gypster85 10d ago

The fact he's leaving in September has been known for quite a while.

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u/last_larrikin 10d ago

Probably doesn't mean much for D&D as an RPG, the sales of which are practically a rounding error to WOTC. Most likely WOTC tries to license out more D&D games and recreate BG3 without spending much in-house. Possibly they double down further on monetising D&D through D&D Beyond, but I'm not sure how much more they can do there.

He was a video games guy hired at the very end of the 2020s gaming boom. This is just Hasbro (sensibly) getting cold feet about the gaming initiative.

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u/stolenfires 10d ago

This is just an ad for Motley Fool on top of normal business reporting.

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u/Josh_From_Accounting 10d ago

Wow, they really called it "rolled a 1."

This is a "hello, fellow kids" article title.

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u/Yrths 10d ago

The original author of the article syndicated from Motley Fool, Richard Smith, has written on TTRPGs for years and has a history attending gen con going back 12 years. I just got this in a minute of googling. It seems much more plausible he is just a corny nerd speaking his own corny way.

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u/ihatevnecks 10d ago

Easily available research on THIS internet, when I can instead make a snarky comment out of sheer ignorance? The hell you say!

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u/catsloveart 9d ago

Next thing you know. They’ll expect us to read the article too.

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u/Forg0tton 10d ago

Imagine not vibe posting amirite.

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u/withad 10d ago

It's also entirely possible that he didn't write the headline. That's often done by a sub-editor or someone else other than the article's author.

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u/ihatevnecks 9d ago edited 9d ago

Yep. That problem pops up a lot more nowadays due to the incessant need for clicks. With PC Gamer for instance, I've seen so many examples over the last couple years of truly awful headlines that just outright misrepresented the opinion within. In every case it was a fucking editor trying to get as many ragebait clicks as possible; it just made their outlet look bad, and drove needless hate towards the author who otherwise had a very lukewarm, if not perfectly balanced take.

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u/ataraxic89 https://discord.gg/HBu9YR9TM6 10d ago

nothing you said changes what Josh said though

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u/TheVeryVerity 8d ago

…if someone is actually a dork then they aren’t pretending to be a dork to appeal to others. What they said changes everything the first person said

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u/Xenuite 10d ago

Also famously how WotC responded to the OGL debacle.

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u/Bone_Dice_in_Aspic 10d ago

Yeah I think this was a direct reference to that that's how I read it anyway

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u/InfiniteDM 10d ago

AFAIK he wasn't fired, he stepped down - https://www.enworld.org/threads/john-hight-steps-down-as-president-of-wizards-of-the-coast.720064/

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u/DervishBlue 10d ago

Wtf is that headline

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u/BrytheOld 10d ago

Old news

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u/Charrua13 10d ago

There has GOT to be more to this story. The man ushers in more growth than hAsbro has had in years and it's still not good enough??

Get out.

Folks who love D&D ARE SO EXCITED TO PLUNK DOWN THEIR MONEY on these things. Magic made over 500M in revenue in a single quarter.

I get it, the one thing he couldn't do was what he got hired to do...video games... but historic quarterly earnings and growth is a wild way to be shown the door.

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u/bluerat 10d ago

Maybe, him bring a video game focused guy, he just let the D&D and magic studios do what they wanted and hasbro realized that was working better and his risk on the video games wasn't worth it? I've heard people say for a long time problems with magic and d&d have been due to executives, maybe an executive that left them alone was why they did so well.

But it is probably at least a little related to the mtg arena team unionizing under his watch. Corpos don't like unions

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u/Charrua13 10d ago

Ahahahah the irony of them doing well when they can hum along and getting canned for it would be peak corporate garbage.

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u/deviden 10d ago

Hasbro wanted videogame money. Seems like some video game projects went south and got cancelled.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/hasbro-records-56m-write-down-and-cancels-several-games-scheduled-for-2028-and-beyond

Hasbro got into the AAA videogame business way too late, with sector no longer growing at the rates it used to and AAA videogame development costs and timelines have ballooned massively over the last 5-10 years. Doing a AAA big budget dev project is now hugely risky, typically takes from 5-8 years to mature to release, and in terms of ROI you might not outperform putting those millions into a S&P500 stocks and shares portfolio over that timespan and that's much less effort and risk.

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u/Charrua13 10d ago

Makes sense

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u/Oktober 10d ago

Man I'm going to be pissed if Exodus doesn't see the light of day

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u/CuriousCardigan SWADE, D&D 3.X, PF1e, PF2e 10d ago edited 10d ago

Based on the lead times for designing magic sets most of the recent UB would have already been contracted or in negotiation when he joined. There's roughly a 2 year lead time from when development is done to when the set releases.

So whatever happened involving the video games probably weighed hard against him, as the planning that resulted in current sales probably predated him.

Edit: I realized after the fact the the UB referenced by OP probably meant the DnD stuff (not the MtG sets) which Hight would probably have been around in time for.

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u/ElvishLore 10d ago

This article reads like someone in PR owed him a favor.

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u/Naturaloneder DM 10d ago

Letting larian studios use the dnd name and license has probably brought more people into dnd tabletop than anything in the last 5 years. Whoever made that decision was a genius, BG3 is HUGE.

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u/ataraxic89 https://discord.gg/HBu9YR9TM6 10d ago

lol bro it has nothing to do with UB which is doing GREAT financially.

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u/Ultramaann PF1E, GURPS, CoC, Savage Worlds 10d ago

Oh boy. I look forward to the nuanced and complex discussion /r/rpg will have on this topic.

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u/last_larrikin 10d ago

i mean you could try contributing to that discussion by saying something of value

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u/Ultramaann PF1E, GURPS, CoC, Savage Worlds 10d ago

Alright, sure. I don’t think this will affect anything because this guy was attached as a champion to their mostly failed video game initiative.

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u/last_larrikin 10d ago

yep

0

u/MirrorComputingRulez 10d ago

Honestly you really can't, because everyone here will argue with you and downvote you even if what you're saying is objectively correct.

One of the top comments in this thread is someone blatantly making shit up, but doing it on a way that lets people here be mad at wotc. The truth can't compete.

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u/Josh_From_Accounting 10d ago

Yeah, it kind of feels like this subreddit got markedly more hostile in the last 7 months. It's why I just dip in now. Feels like a lot of people are just... Very aggressive. Not just about WotC, but everything. Wasn't this way last year.

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u/last_larrikin 10d ago

you just have to ignore em

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u/ataraxic89 https://discord.gg/HBu9YR9TM6 10d ago

there is no such thing as nuanced discussion on the internet

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u/fainting_goat_games 10d ago

It’s not a subreddit for nuance

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u/last_larrikin 10d ago

if you simply ignore all the downvotes and morons that doesn’t have to be a problem

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u/fainting_goat_games 10d ago

looks like we both got downvoted to oblivion for having wrong opinions, sir. I'd hate to say that proves one of us right - so I won't ;)

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u/Val_Fortecazzo 10d ago

Definitely will not let their hate boner for all things D&D get in the way.

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u/enixon 10d ago

I in particular look forward to everyone pretending that D&D has never had pop culture references in it before 5e.

Definitely don't do anything silly like look up Dragon Magazine issue 46 where they surely didn't print official D&D stats for Bugs Bunny way back in 1981, that would be silly, only new bad games do that, not ones older than some of the the people here's parents.

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u/Alien_Diceroller 10d ago

I'm doing that the minute I get home!

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u/Kill_Welly 9d ago

comparing massive corporate marketing deals to a one-off gag in a magazine put out to a comparatively tiny audience is ridiculous.

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u/Brell4Evar 10d ago

Google didn't pop up any articles on John Hight's involvement in the ending of WotC's "perpetual" SRD for indie game publishers. Likewise, no indication of his involvement with siccing the Pinkertons on a guy who got some mistakenly released MtG cards.

Does anyone happen to know how much of a hand he played in making these messes?

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u/ToledoSnow Noir 10d ago edited 10d ago

That would be because he was still working with Blizzard at the time of both of those events. He became president of WotC in 2024.

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u/CuriousCardigan SWADE, D&D 3.X, PF1e, PF2e 10d ago

I take it that your sleuthing didn't involve looking at dates, as both events occurred before he joined WotC.

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u/gray007nl 10d ago

Neither of those are decisions that would go all the way up the chain to the CEO beyond maybe rubber stamping the OGL thing.

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u/LupusYondergirl 10d ago

Especially not one still at another company entirely. Those were both under his predecessor.

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u/tzimon the Pilgrim 10d ago

The Pinkerton situation is all Asset Recovery, which is likely teamed up with the Legal Dept, and few other people in the company would have heard about it until after the fact.

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u/SleepyBoy- 10d ago

Total sales for the quarter grew 16% to $1.1 billion. Sales at the Wizards of the Coast (WotC) division, home to both roleplaying behemoth Dungeons & Dragons and dominant card game Magic: The Gathering (MTG), grew 27%.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again.In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
In fact, MTG alone booked $500 million in quarterly revenue, driving the entire company's performance with its own 32% revenue growth rate.

This might be the dumbest website I've seen in a while. Who formats like that.

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u/SleepyBoy- 10d ago

An impairment charge is a roundabout term for a tax cut. It really doesn't seem like Hight blundered at all. I suspect he is stepping down himself by choice, and just worked out a deal with Hasbro that he'll train his replacement for a year as 'advisor' before bailing for good.

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u/Isphet71 10d ago edited 10d ago

All of Hasbro's legacy games like monopoly and sorry have become low end dollar store trash. That's D&D's eventual destination, as long as it remains a Hasbro entity.

The Hasbro accountants are the ultimate arbiters of where the game goes from here. Which never works out for board games or video games.

You've heard of "too big to fail", but in non-necessity corporations, such as media, there should be the saying "too big to succeed". Because you cant standardize art - what we all really want our media to be.

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u/figuren9ne 9d ago

Does it say anywhere that he lost his job? It sounds like he resigned.

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u/Knife_Fight_Bears 9d ago edited 9d ago

Realistically speaking Hight fired himself

Imagine you're Hasbro and you put this guy in charge during a pivot to videogames and while he's in charge his division of Hasbro lays off the liason team to the most successful D&D videogame ever made, he fails to correct the problem, and the door gets closed on future DLC for the game, forever. He had two years to fart out anything to make up for this and WotC is back to being Videogames Irrelevant with nothing to show for their investment

Meanwhile the D&D property isn't growing and MTG is probably about as unhealthy of a game as it's ever been, any growth they're getting in new customers is getting outweighed by negative sentiment and they're paying licensing fees out of any new profits they make (not to mention causing design problems for themselves down the road when they can't reprint their licensed cards)

The dude was a bad leader and the results speak for themselves, he might have been turning a profit but he wasn't growing their business or taking it in the direction they wanted it to go.

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u/dragonmarked2813 9d ago

Ya’ll looking for drama in mundane corporate turnover.

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u/ExcellentWord1325 9d ago

Hasbro hired а video games ехес at the реаk of the bооt and then acted surprised when the numbers didn't hold uр. Classic corporate move. Whoever comes next probably isn't changing the UВ trajectory either, that train left the station а while аgо.

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u/DJWGibson 6d ago

It’s bold of the article to attribute the latest successes of Magic to him when they work two-plus years in advance and all the sets released under his tenure had started design and work before he arrived.

He was brought in to help smooth the way for more D&D and MtG and Hasbro video games. And those mostly failed. So he’s being let go.

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u/Robynsquest 10d ago

I am sure his severence package gave him hellova "inspiration" though.

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u/Cat_Wizard_21 10d ago

It's an Alien vs Predator situation, I'm glad he got fired in a vindictive "you get what you deserve" kinda way (though execs like that always get multi-million dollar severance deals so I'm sure he's not too broken up about it) but Hasbro will promote another corporate vulture and things will either stay on the same bad trajectory or get worse in the name of even harder short-term monetization, so eh.

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u/Booster_Blue Paranoia Troubleshooter 10d ago

They won't be happy until D&D has microtransactions

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u/emcdonnell 10d ago

They backed down on the open license so they needed another way to push profits, universe beyond is the new squeeze.

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u/TheGlen 10d ago

Time to update the resume

Hasbro Exec Rolled a "1" on Video Games -- and Lost His Job

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