Wizards of the Coast just keeps on feeding us discussion points.
Wizards of the Coast has announced a few new releases and changes to the lineup we were given in the D&D Beyond Showcase farce. It now appears that all of the significant remaining 2023 Dungeons & Dragons game releases are going to hit between August and November. Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants is coming in August. The new Phandelver module, Planescape, and Book of Many Things are also hitting later this year. I’m leery of their dates at this point. They’ve also added a new Practical Guide to Dragons, which looks like a fluffy art book for the coffee table more than a game guide.
The bigger announcement is the upcoming price increase.
Along with all of these new releases comes the very ugly announcement of an across-the-board price hike in all physical print products of 20% starting with the new Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants. WotC claims this is primarily due to the increase in shipping costs and inflation. I think there are some ulterior motives involved, the least of which being an attempt to drive pre-order sales to their own website. We knew when it was announced that Chris Cao, VP of Digital Development for D&D said something to the effect of print books being for nostalgia that this was going to happen. My guess is they’re going to push physical books higher and higher in price while leaving all of the electronic product prices relatively low in order to drive more sales on D&D Beyond and the new Virtual TableTop.
This increase in prices has caused considerable uproar in the #ttrpgcommunity not just among D&D fans, but elsewhere in the industry as well. I personally see this setting a precedent where suddenly everyone is going to want to charge more for their TTRPG books. The price of books and even PDFs has been steadily creeping up for a while now, and it’s only a matter of time before we see what used to be a $30-$40 sourcebook jump up to $50 or even $60.
I don’t begrudge WotC for the price increase.
Before everyone starts typing angrily, please hear me out. Art costs money. Printing costs money. A lot of materials have gone up dramatically in price since the Icky Cough-Coughs Plague. Cost of living has gone up dramatically. I’m sure the big names at WotC who do all of the layout, design, art, etc probably don’t come cheap. I also think Hasbro/WotC are paying a ton of money trying to develop their virtual platform for 2024 with the Unreal Engine.
Everything I’ve just named comes with a dollar amount attached. Here’s what kinda turns my stomach- where do all of the increased profits go? Does anyone honestly think the increased revenue is going to make it down to all of the people who make D&D a success every day? Nope.
What is more likely to happen, is the money will trickle upward. The boys in the board room will slap each other on the back and say what a good job they did while they give themselves another fat pay raise. Cynthia Williams and Chris Cao continue to make more and clue less because they’ve managed to brag about how they “monetized the player base” in the next big meeting. The guy running the printing press wonders how he’s going to make rent this month and life goes on as normal.
Side note: I’d truly love to be in that crazy rich 1% or even the upper 10%. Think about how many people could be helped with millions of dollars. If WotC was smart, the pay cuts would come from the top every time stock prices at Hasbro drop. If the millionaire leadership fails, it should be on them, not the workers. Then again, if people at Hasbro were smart, the last six months of WotC shenanigans wouldn’t have happened or continue to happen.
They’re all about the money at WotC.
Big corporations such as Wizards of the Coast are going to do whatever they want to do. Honestly, I’m surprised it took this long. We could very easily see $59.99+ Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Masters Guide in 2024. Maybe even $64.99+. Remember, WotC is aiming physical books at the Collector’s market, not the DMs and players who actually participate in the game.
Please consider WotC wants to drive electronic sales to their website. They don’t want to compete with Amazon, Friendly Local Game Stores, or DMsGuild/DriveThruRPG any more than they have to. This means they want to reign all of the real sales into their arena. They want all funnels pointed to D&D Beyond or whichever site they use to sell “books” and the VTT. I’ve had a number of publishers tell me the markup on sales they get from direct buyers is so much more preferable to going through distributors such as Alliance, Amazon, DriveThruRPG, and various game outlets. It’s even preferable to selling through Target and Walmart for WotC because it still cuts out that middle link in the supply chain.
I think PDFs/E-Books are fast becoming the preferred method of sales for small, indie companies. Other than art, layout design, and possibly independent editing, small companies and lone wolf designers benefit greatly from selling PDFs even on DriveThruRPG. If you’re similar to me, I have me, myself, and I to rely on and that’s who I share my profits with. (*or will eventually.)
Wizards of the Coast may be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. They know they can charge paper prices or even what they charge the middlemen in the distribution chain for print for PDFs on their own website, and it’s a money factory for them. They could drop their PDF prices down, to a smaller fraction, but then there’s going to be a litany of excuses given as to why it’s a bad idea, the least of which is their massive profit margins. WotC knows D&D is their meal ticket along with Magic: the Gathering.
Look at the way Magic has been handled as of late. They’re now up to at least one new set of cards every month. The rarity on some cards is becoming more and more astronomical by the day. They’re doing variant cards with all kinds of increased rarity. They’re using a lot of aesthetic effects on the cards themselves to drive even more sales. I used to enjoy playing Magic. I could not keep up with the way it’s being run now. Again, it’s a money factory for WotC.
“Well, I don’t by D&D books since the OGL scandal anyway, so who cares?”
I see this sentiment going around frequently on Twitter and other social media platforms every time this latest WotC price increase is mentioned. I think people need to realize that once the biggest company in the industry does something, it’s going to ripple outward. It wouldn’t surprise me if Paizo, Kobold, Chaosium, and other industry giants followed suit.
I think we’ll probably see similar pricing model changes on DMsGuild and DrivethruRPG before long as well. I mean, yes, I’d like to see indie and/or Third Party Publishers make more money and continue doing what they do best. For many years I’ve said there’s plenty of room out there for everyone and the competition isn’t as necessary as people might think. I sometimes wonder if WotC even knows they are technically competing against other companies in the industry or if they think they have it all on lock.
I’m not very forgiving of Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast since the mighty OGL debacle back in January. I make no secret that I’m still fairly irritated that they tried to put a ton of people out of work with a bunch of sneaky legal shenanigans. They would have gotten away with it were it not for the actions of a few plucky YouTubers and others who blew the whistle. (I want to name them so badly, but alas, I wouldn’t want to get accused of “name dropping.”) Since then, many players have refused to buy any WotC products or support D&D directly.
The alternative to feeding the beast.
I’m a huge fan of dozens of TTRPGs that are not D&D. I will still always love and happily run D&D in some form if that’s what those around me want to do. It’s an easier, more recognizable game than say, Cypher System or Blades in the Dark. D&D is still kind of the gateway game for a lot of role-players who wouldn’t have gotten into the hobby otherwise.
Luckily, there are hundreds of Third Party Publishers out there on the 5E market. Yeah, you know? All of those people WotC literally tried to bury back in January with OGL 1.1 when they attempted to revoke a 20 year old license that props up half the industry? (*But we’re not bitter.) I’m glad everyone got to retain their jobs when the OGL was straightened out. Now we can afford to support those TPP even more than ever!
Tales of the Valiant from Kobold Press just launched on Kickstarter. I want to back it, but I’m waiting for it to come out on the market instead. Much like upcoming Pathfinder 2E revisions, TotV is a response to both the OGL debacle and the upcoming 2024 D&D revisions (whatever they’re calling it.) The TotV Kickstarter has been wildly successful so far. Here’s the link.
Unfortunately, like so many other gamers, I only have a meager amount of funds and a few hundred things I’d like to buy. I just backed Shadowdark by the Arcane Library as a late backer, along with a couple of other projects that came up during my almost two year financial dry spell. I’m saving up for August and November releases from several companies, none of which are Wizards of the (bloody) Coast! I honestly just can’t get behind mainstream D&D anymore.
Many former fans and well known YouTubers have either switched their TTRPG focus to other games or have begun only supporting Third Party Publishers. A few popular D&D YouTubers have also begun construction on their own fantasy TTRPGs. Vagabond from Rebel Rouser Games just wrapped up a successful Kickstarter, for example. The message is becoming quite clear: We don’t need WotC or D&D to have a good time with a fantasy TTRPG.
Then there’s that quality issue.
Another point that has been made on social media is the quality of WotC’s D&D releases as of late. We know Hasbro’s stock has taken multiple dips as of late. Some of these downtrends are the fact that they sell luxury/recreational items and inflation has hit many people pretty hard. Some of the poor returns are due to WotC and their negative press. The OGL scandal made NPR, for instance.
The last half dozen major D&D releases have come and gone with little more than a loud snore from the fans. Strixhaven, aka let’s play Harry Potter in D&D more-or-less flopped. (Possibly due to the fact it was emulating a franchise made popular by a known transphobe.) The Old Grognards and many serious D&D fans passed on it, anyway. Magical high schools are just not everyone’s cup of tea.
Then there was Spelljammer. #Hadozee didn’t help. Second rate editing aside, the books just weren’t that good. Who writes a game set in space with no ship construction or space combat rules? Apparently WotC didn’t get the memo on that. It was basically three 64 page books with lots of pretty pictures and nice typesetting that went nowhere fast, much less into space.
New! Dragonlance! Book! For the first time in decades, Lord Soth and Takhisis returned to crickets chirping in the background. This should have been the apology for Spelljammer. Instead, it just didn’t really get that much attention from all but the most diehard DL fans. Sorry.
Keys From the Golden Vault, was another overwhelming “meh” from the fans. I would dare speculate more copies of this book were given away to Content Creators, Influencers, and reporters than have actually sold. It was part of the promotion for the D&D: Honor Among Thieves movie. Looks like the book might be remembered as the Dragon Magazine articles detailing the original D&D movie characters back in Third Edition.
Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel was another D&D release that came and went quietly. Well, except it was noticed heavily by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. It almost won a Nebula Award for game writing had it not been competing with Elden Ring. Yet another resounding “Oh well” on that one.
My point with all of this is- what hope does the D&D community have for upcoming releases such as Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants with its shiny new $69.95 price tag (save $10 if you preorder from WotC) if they’re not adding anything new or terribly exciting to the book? 70 monsters? A single new subclass? So far it’s looking pretty bleak, like more of a fluffy coffee table book than a real D&D sourcebook.
We’ll skip ahead a bit to Planescape. Similar to the presentation of Spelljammer, it’s going to be a very pricey slipcase of couple of 96 page books, a 64 page monster book, and a DM’s screen. If the Spelljammer monster book is any indication of what’s to come, I ain’t holding my breath in terms of quality for the money. At least they’re bringing Morte back. For $69.95 I can get any number of Third Party supplements that are probably just as good if not far better.
The industry has already started in the direction of higher prices.
I’ve been doing a lot of TTRPG shopping lately. I’m sorry, Chaosium, but I’ve had to pass on Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed so far. The new $89.99 Malleus Monstrorum/Elder Gods slipcase is just a little too expensive for my tastes. The Investigator’s Handbook and Keeper’s Rulebook are comparably priced to the D&D Player’s Handbook and DMG just way better content from Chaosium. I could get the PDFs for Malleus Monstrorum, but what fun is Call of Cthulhu if I can’t play it when the power mysteriously goes out?
It’s okay, I still have many prior edition Call of Cthulhu books and I’m still planning on feeding the Mythos into other games or vice versa. (*Article coming in June.) Chaosium used to be fairly competitive with WotC in terms of prices and value for the dollar. I’m not so sure I’d say that now, though. I will say that in all the time 5th Ed was running, we only got one Monster Manual from WotC. The TPP monster books were way better, don’t get me wrong. But sadly, other than three fluffier monster books (Volo’s and Mordenkainen’s,) we never got an official Monster Manual 2 or Fiend Folio from WotC. And they wonder why all the old guys cling tenaciously to their AD&D books and retroclones… sigh.
Dragonlance and Wild Beyond the Witchlight boxed sets sold for around $145.99 and $79.95 MSRP respectively. These sets consisted of the sourcebook and an accessory pack of dice, maps, minis, and a DM Screen. Dragonlance also came with the War of the Lance boardgame, hence the price. Other game manufacturers have followed suit as seen with Chaosium. Paizo recently rereleased Pathfinder: Kingmaker to the tune of $99.99 and Pathfinder Tian Xia might be following the same model. Again, I can’t blame anyone for raising prices, but I seriously question where the profits go. Some companies I’d like to think maybe pay their artists, editors, and writers.
Are they pricing themselves out of business?
Honestly, I don’t think so. Prices are arbitrary. How bad do we want X product? Are we willing to spread peanut butter between two Magic commons for our next five meals just to afford a book? Do I have to sell my comics on eBay just to pay the rent after I buy Kingmaker? Well, is it worth the pain? If you really want to enjoy the setting or the game badly enough- yeah, it is. I’m not recommending anyone do anything outside of their means, but I’ve literally seen both of my examples in action and worse.
Wizards of the Coast probably has a lot more wiggle room than other companies when it comes to price increases. If they make a book and it bombs, they don’t have to lay a bunch of people off like a smaller company might. On the other hand, WotC doesn’t use crowdfunding to build their product up to a feasible starting point before printing it. Other companies regularly use Kickstarter to assure they have the money to produce the book before releasing it into the wild. I’ve seen some really good deals go by on Kickstarter. (Shadowdark.)
I think the industry overall will get prices back into a point of homeostasis sometime in or around 2025. Hopefully by then WotC will have done whatever they’re going to do to mangle D&D even more. All of the 5E continuations and knockoffs from other companies will have grown popular and successful. Maybe D&D will fall behind games that began on Kickstarter and have become far more popular than the new VTT.
If you’ve made it this far into the article, thank you! I appreciate you. I promise if/when I start pumping out published material of my own, I will strive to keep prices down. I also promise if I ever hit $1 Million, I’ll kiss a YouTuber on the lips and start a charity organization. (Yes, for real on the second part.)
Jeff's Game Box 
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