Nice, and I was a small part of that. Grabbed a pocket edition of the game masters guide. Super nice book, but a bit thinner than I expected from a GM book. Also grabbed The One Ring expansion and Basic set which is actually super nice and has a set of dice. Already had the base book. And then the physical copies of Ironsworn: Starforged became available again so obviously I grabbed it and the cards and Reference Guide. So I just blew close to $250 total on non-DnD stuff. Good job, WotC!
Yeah, I grabbed Bestiary 2, which I didn’t have yet, as well as the Advanced Player’s Guide.
It’s been a great month for other RPGs, Savage Worlds is sold out as well of a supply that should have lasted month.
5e has alot of internal engineering/balance built, for example all the balancing they did between the spell classes and melee classes so the power curve for both moves in a similar manner.
But your thesis is spot on…it will be hard to pry people out of 5e as its a good system.
4e I skipped. I was still playing 3.5e actually. I’d played a bit of 4e, and did not want to play a tabletop MMRPG. Such a total waste IMO.
I just found out the PF 2e inventor gets both a robot buddy and they can, at 6th level, have that robot buddy fire lightning with a feat that scales with your level.
Honestly, the only thing better is that the Inventor can take power armor instead, which at 6th level can throw out Lightning.
Hmm, so this is how 5e Archery works?
Stuff
More stuff.
All PF 2e. So you can really stick it to ‘The Man’
Ah! Thats the one everyone was waiting for!
Paizo has been milking WOTC’s debacle for all they’re worth - and their marketing team is absolutely killing it, lmao. It’s honestly incredible to see.
At least one tabletop games publisher, Kobold Press, tells Polygon that its sales quadrupled in January. Goodman Games, on the other hand, said it had its best month of sales since 2003. Nearly every other publisher that responded to our request for data reported at least double the expected sales, with some selling through nearly an entire years’ worth of stock in less than three weeks.
I’m curious if @Vesper has noticed any similar changes in buying patterns in regard to DnD merchandise in their store?
Yep - we got cleaned out of all things Pathfinder. Finally got core books back in stock this week. Non-maintrsream RPGs also sold better - for example I did not expect to sell out of the new Blade Runner RPG in the first week. That’s pretty niche.
Thanks for that insight! Curious to see what the long term impact for WOTC will be after this whole OGL kerfuffle. Seems like they really damaged their brand with it.
Kyle Brink, the guy on the hook for the latest updates from WotC, gave an hour-long interview.
Highlights here:
So the WOTC team is basically saying, this was Hasbro’s team working on monetizing DnD, and that they did not have enough people involved at that level to push the brakes. Hasbro did not take their concerns over the changes to the OGL seriously enough.
Certainly is the narrative we all had in our heads, when this dropped.
Yup. Pretty much. The folks in charge had no clue what the business was really about. They underestimated what the community means to D&D.
Sure, of course they will say that, and as people who work on DnD I am sure they want what is best for the community for a game I am sure they all play regularly.
But, the article mentions:
I mean… she was around when the disastrous OGL 1.2 was created and leaked. She certainly had a chance to jump in and defend the WOTC team there.
There was a breakdown from leadership to team in this decision making, and the solution they have proposed is that they are using the same president? Like, wasn’t the OGL 1.2 decision made under her leadership? She is just going to listen more? Wasn’t it her job to make sure her team was heard at those meetings? I mean, she failed pretty spectacularly at that.
Who knows what the internal politics situation at WOTC is, but the takeaway I have is that they have made no major changes in staff or decision-making other than… they promise to do better.
Note the way in which “Senior executive made a major fuck up” gets motivated by the alchemy of power into “we didn’t have the right people in the room but she’s just soooo emphatehtic and we really have a much better way of doing things now”.
When banks start rolling their eyes at you and saying that you’re fucking up due to over-monetization and dilution of your brands hoping for short term gain at the expanse of long term growth/stability maybe you should rethink your strategy?