Since discussions of it are cropping up out of Tabletop Games, here's an all-purpose thread for players and GM's.
There's a very good reason for why shareholders want Wizards out of Hasbro's control, because they're ruining it at every turn.
Edited by theLibrarian on Dec 19th 2023 at 2:16:08 PM
Grin and tonic
I think and this point so many people have been fired from W.O.T.C that they could get together and make their own company creating 5e compatible content and compete with wizards. They should call themselves 'Sorcerers of the sea', just to piss off Hasbro.
My latest Trope page: Shapeshifting Failure
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Well, I imagine some might try to get hired by Paizo first and join its recognized union, United Paizo Workers, before they decide to take on the financial risks of starting their own indie TTRPG company.
Paizo's focus is on PF2e, though - which is increasingly its own thing from D&D. 5e-OGL is what everyone wants to make stuff for, just like 3/3.5/PF1 used to be. (Part of why 4e misfired was because the GSL was the original OGL 2.0 and drove away third-party publishers, who stayed with 3.5 and then joined the Pathfinder bandwagon.)
The game people want to play and buy supplements for is 5e, and writing for that sounds like something for indie companies.
(We can dream of someone buying out D&D from Hasbro, but let's be real, there is no way in hell Hasbro will ever sell an IP that hot.)
x5 Small correction: Mearls was co-Lead designer for 5e, along with Crawford who is still with the company. Further, Mearls was not in the lead designer role at the time he was made redundant - he hasn't worked on 5e in years (having been moved sometime in 2019), and was probably an easy person to let go given that he seemed to be a persona non grata after the controversies with Zak S and RPGPundit, given how they kept him out of the limelight.
Professional Forum Ninja
Chinese company Tencent is reportedly seeking to buy D&D from Hasbro.
Okay, which one of you cast Wish despite having a Jackass Genie on DM duty?
I guess it can get worse.
Ok, to reverse engineer that wish, maybe it was:
"I wish DND were easier to reskin / easier to make crossovers with." Cue fifty trillion Fortnite skins.
It's clickbait (or poorly translated).
Tencent is looking at acquiring rights to create/publish D&D video games.
The Best Worst Psychonaut
I looked at a Reddit thread discussing this, and one comment suggested that Tencent acquiring the rights to D&D might actually be a good thing in the long run - not because Tencent is anything but a soulless conglomerate that's probably in bed with the CCP (though I can't imagine they're on the best of terms since the Chinese gov't started cracking down on gaming), but more because Hasbro is that bad at managing the IP. Also because Tencent isn't struggling and has a wide, diverse array of revenue streams, which means they wouldn't have to bleed the IP dry out of desperation to appease the next quarterly statement. The same comments also pointed out that Tencent isn't really interested in micromanaging the IPs they acquire and how video game studios bought out by them haven't really changed at all.
Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Feb 1st 2024 at 11:44:47 AM
"If you think like a child, you will do a child's work."
And also they aren't acquiring D&D's rights at all
The Best Worst Psychonaut
I know, I'm just pointing out that even if it was true, it's not necessarily as bad as one might think.
"If you think like a child, you will do a child's work."
Disasturbator
> Okay, which one of you cast Wish despite having a Jackass Genie on DM duty?
thats a level 9 spell we don't that at our table!
New theme music also a box
Might have been me. My players freed a genie and got a Wish. Very entertaining for me, since i didn´t give the players time to think things through, which made them panic and gave them decision paralysis. But my genie was under no obligations and honestly gave the Wish out of gratitude, with no intention of screwing them over (but that also meant if they tried to game things he might feel insulted and just leave).
In the end they wished for more knowledge about the BBEG.
This. Cannot. Continue
D&D Whatever They're Calling It has been delayed. The original accidentally-revealed release date was May 21st, but now it's September 17th for the Player's Handbook, November 12th for the Dungeon Master's Guide, February 18, 2025 for the Monster Manual.
Having product delays after mass layoffs isn't surprising, but the notion of taking the three core rulebooks and releasing them separately, that's certainly eyebrow-raising when the past three editions put them all out at once, often in a boxed set. Even the 3.5 edition update had the sense to do that.
Current earworm: "Mother ~ Outro"
The original core books for the fifth edition were not released concurrently either.
Wo TC refuted the date ever being May, which wouldn't have made sense with the schedule they were keeping.
The Monster Manual being in 2025 certainly seems like a delay though.
And yes, the staggered release of the core books is a normal thing. They've recently even clarified why: because of the volume they print, they can't just make triple the amount of printings in a single quarter because of the bottleneck it will create. These books need to be physically printed in mass quantities, and they only have so much capacity for that.
Edited by Saiga on Feb 15th 2024 at 2:16:38 AM
Honestly I'm just gonna stick with my 5E stuff; granted I really only run it for my one buddy from work on occasion. He's gonna be running a Dragon's Dogma inspired 5E campaign for me soon so that should be fun.
Honestly though as much as I like 5E, I slightly prefer Pathfinder 2E a bit more. And as far as my favorite TTRPG right now that's Cyberpunk RED easy.
International Man of Mystery
Under what type of magic does it fall when spellcaster create magical animal-hybrids, like owlbears and griffins?
I would assume Transmutation.
This. Cannot. Continue
It ain't abjuration (defensive wards), conjuration (manifesting creatures or energy), divination (learning things), enchantment (changing minds), evocation (energy from nothing), or illusion (lies to senses). So my guess is that magical hybridization would fall under transmutation, changing the physical properties of something, or maybe even necromancy in that the spell school manipulates "the power of death, unlife and the life force."
Not that I can think of a fuse creatures or cross-species compatibility spell from any sourcebook. When they say A Wizard Did It regarding armadillephants, duckbunnies or spider-horses, they never give the details how. Though I'm sure some third-party publishers are more than willing to share their theories.
Current earworm: "Mother ~ Outro"
My running assumption is that liches go through periods of being ridiculously fucking bored and just invent random-ass spells like 'fuse two incompatible organisms' and the liches who do that never get ganked by adventuring parties so their spellbooks never get looted and those spells never end up in circulation.
The liches who do other things when they get bored, they're the ones adventurers have entire plotlines dedicated to stopping. Nobody's gonna want to spent 16 levels fighting the machinations of Lenny the Lich and his constant turducken puns, after all.
So just to recap the past year or so for WotC, Hasbro and D&D:
With a huge loss of player goodwill, declining stock value, and the critically-important launch of a new game edition on the horizon, this is of course the best time to lay off 1100 employees, including an art director, senior development editor, and 5th Edition's lead designer.
Professor DM at Dungeon Craft gives a decent rundown of the corpo crap and offers some less-than-uplifting predictions about the future of the game.
I think, if I ever feel the need to buy another D&D book, I'm getting it used.
Current earworm: "Mother ~ Outro"