Whoever said they were “creatively bankrupt” was probably right.
Editorial:
I don’t have any personal grudge with anyone at Wizards of the Coast. Heck, I don’t have a beef with Kyle Brink (whatever his title is today) Director of Dungeons & Dragons except for that one comment. (I’m still good for that character wrestling match, though.) The point is, it’s nothing personal with anyone and this article is not intended to harass anyone.
I don’t necessarily think Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins are even all that bad as designers. They’ve been there, at Wizards of the Coast doing the same bloody thing for over a decade. I think new ideas have flown the coop with these guys and they’ve resorted to rehashing old, licensed properties.
Spelljammer? Dragonlance? Planescape? They even rehashed the Lost Mines of Phandelver and added onto it a little bit. The Deck of Many Things has been in the game since Greyhawk 1975.
All they’re doing is creating watered-down, cute, nerfed versions of old products! Yes, they brought new “talent” onto the team- someone who started playing D&D for the first time in 2018! What did it do for the game? Have you seen the new Deck of Many Things? They’re charging $100 for an item that’s been around since 1975 only with some cute new tarot cards instead of playing cards.
Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.
Wizards of the Coast is just having a rough year, right?
2023 has been a rough year for D&D. While I may not be able to point to a significant financial dip, it does look like WotC/Hasbro could be doing better as of Q3 of 2023. The better question might be how much better they could have done had it not been for the multiple corporate blunders starting as far back as December of 2022-Great OGL Debacle of 2023 in January.
1%-3% higher sales numbers is not growth. It’s barely breaking even. The D&D Honor Among Thieves movie did a fraction of what it was supposed to do at the box office. It hasn’t lead to the torrent of new players that were initially predicted. Minecraft D&D arrived 6 months late. The D&D channel courtesy of E One never launched.
Keys from the Golden Vault, Phandelver and Below, and Bigby’s Glory of the Giants all gave subpar performances according to critics. Planescape 5E has been loved by the shills but panned by some critics. Much like Dragonlance, all I’ve heard is a resounding “meh” from the community about Planescape. It will never match up to the original.
It seems like it’s been one scandal after another with WotC, too. First the OGL Debacle and the lame attempts to clean it up by Kyle Brink and company. Then the Content Creators’ Summit in early March which went over like a lead balloon. We’ll overlook the Pinkerton’s scandal because that was Magic: the Gathering. Then there was the AI art disaster in Bigby’s Glory of the Giants. Phandelver and Below was marred by a poorly placed content warning that many felt was superfluous. Most recently it’s the printing errors causing an almost indefinite delay for the Deck of Many Things.
I know I skipped a few disasters like Jeremy Crawford and the Half Elf thing. There’s plenty going on or rather not going on with the new PHB 2024 playtest. They can’t even pick a name for the project. They’re still clinging to 5E only for 2024.
I’m not a big fan of unemployment.
If you’ve been following the blog for a while you probably know that I’m not just unemployed but discouraged from ever finding work again. Writing is one of the last career choices in front of me, and it’s going pretty slowly. I’m over 50, college educated, Caucasian, male, with a family so presumably cishet. Everything an employer doesn’t want these days and we haven’t even gotten to my sterling physical attributes, mental health, or neurodivergent concerns.
So, what I mean to say is, I don’t take unemployment likely. I don’t wish it on anyone. I seriously wonder if the writing shouldn’t be on the Jumbotron for the WotC D&D Design team and especially the editing staff. That puts the ball squarely in the court of Kyle Brink, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, and even Mackenzie De Armas. (*Again, nothing personal with any of the above.)
Why would I say it? #Hadozee was an editing failure. Crawford and Perkins (lead editors for most projects these days) were running around doing public relations work and putting out fires in the community. Who’s editing?
The AI art in Bigby’s Giant Glory of Whatever was a fan discovery. How many hands did that pass through before it was discovered? How long did they have to figure it out? Oh, the artist “didn’t know” he wasn’t supposed to do that? No one vetted the guy and saw he was using AI. Editing failure.
The placement of the content warning in Phandelver and Below was totally an editing botch. No one thought, “Hey, maybe we should put this in the front of the book instead of burying it halfway through the adventure if we want people to warn players up front.” Editing failure.
The company that makes Magic: the Gathering can’t get a decent set of cards cut to the right specs and printed uniformly? How many hands did those proofs pass through? Who was in charge of quality control? Editing FAILURE!
Btw, shorter names, please. I’m biting my tongue hard not to make fun of the titles of some of these things as it is. They’re not making it any easier.
I feel awful for saying this, but if I were on the WotC editing and design team for D&D, or even the poor guy in charge of it? I’d be looking to get called into the boss’ office for a royal butt chewing or worse. It’s dreadful when corporate security and your boss meet you at the door on the way into the office. Gotta love that “We need to talk” moment followed by seeing all the personal stuff from your desk in a cardboard box. It never ends up being a good talk.
If you do a poor job on any job from custodial all the way to CEO, disciplinary proceedings and possibly a solid firing are a strong possibility. Is that a reasonable expectation at any job? One dissatisfied customer on one occasion is a fluke. Hundreds or more dissatisfied customers on multiple occasions? Heads should be figuratively rolling. How much money do the constant blunders and insensitivity to the fans cost WotC/Hasbro? Has anyone thought to ask?
I’m not worried for anyone at Wizards of the Coast even if they were suddenly unemployed by WotC. Crawford and Perkins only really need their names, phone numbers, and years at WotC on their resumes. They’ll get scooped up fast by a lot of companies. Even De Armas, with her lack of experience in the TTRPG hobby, could easily land somewhere such as Darrington Press. Much to their credit, WotC designers have the big jobs with the big pay in the industry right now. (*Remember when everyone wanted to be a writer for WotC?)
Wizards of the Coast could be doing so much better with D&D from the top down.
We have people in charge of Dungeons & Dragons, a 50 year old franchise, who as far as we know never play the game. Some of these people truly believe it’s a video game, so that’s how they’re treating it. Physical books and other products are just collector’s items. I think that’s how they justify the ridiculous price tag on Deck of Many Delays.
It’s super clear to me that several people on these McCorporate design teams either don’t know what they’re doing or just don’t care. What’s D&D 2024 going to really look like? They keep changing their minds in the playtests. It’s almost like the books are done and ready to go to print already and WotC is just stringing the fans along. They haven’t even announced a month for the new books yet. What’s up with that?
A friend of mine said it best when he said, “You can’t design a good RPG by committee.”
I’m starting to agree more with that statement every time I look at WotC. They have all of these teams and committees which undoubtedly leads to lots of meetings.
They’re probably encouraged to hold hands and sing together off the clock after work, too. (Corporate culture and all.) Play the actual D&D game? Nah. Why would anyone want to do nerd stuff? Magic: the What? Oh, more nerd stuff. Team bonding off the clock at a bar somewhere. That’s much better.
Imagine for a moment a different flow chart with one person at the top. Then a Lead Editor who stays in the office unless he’s running the D&D game at a convention on the weekends or a playtest group. Then maybe an art director. Someone should be in charge of quality control. Then there are type, layout, and cultural sensitivity editors. Below them are the artists and teams each assigned a chapter with ONE editor liaising amongst them. Meetings on Monday and Thursday. Bring results.
They wouldn’t like me much which is probably one of a million reasons I don’t work for a large company. Newspapers, magazines, and book companies have been doing things roughly the same way for decades now. Basic writer-artist-editor flow works pretty darn good.
Hasbro’s stock prices continue to tank. How much better could they be doing if D&D was leading the charge back uphill instead of whatever they’re currently doing? Yes, we know there are big Virtual TableTop plans in the works. YouTube shills and privileged insiders have already told us as much. We know the new PHB, DMG and Monster Manuals are coming sometime probably in 2024 along with an untold number of products before then. There might be physical books if there aren’t any printing problems.
WotC has already raised prices once this year and announced that they were allegedly having trouble finding good printers to use in 2024. Wow. We sure wouldn’t want another Deck of Many Problems, would we? It’s only the company that prints thousands of Magic cards every year. Print books can’t be that hard to get right, can it? The fine folks over at Lightning Source (unrelated to WotC) only do Print on Demand for the DM’s Guild and DriveThruRPG every day. How hard can it be?
Guys were printing off D&D books and zines on a photocopier and stapling them by hand 40-50 years ago just to get them out there. We know Jeremy Crawford says there’s no canon prior to last year, unless they drag another old IP off the shelf and put a fresh coat of paint and some new (“not AI”) art on it. Yet, that old game Dungeons & Dragons sold pretty well to people WotC would have no respect for back in the day. We wouldn’t even have a hobby were it not for those two guys that WotC has forgotten about altogether and never seem to want to credit for anything. (Gygax and Arneson.)
Nowadays WotC can slap an ampersand on a bowl of wet oatmeal and call it a D&D product. There’s no love for the hobby coming from Wizards of the Coast. The company is too far removed from the D&D community, their fans, to really connect. There’s no dialog or discourse with the fans when corporations ply shills with free product in the hopes of good reviews.
We’re a long, long way from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
I think we’ve besmirched the memories of Gygax and Arneson. 1974 seems so far away right now. All the hard work and dedication that went into the Dungeons & Dragons game is lost to us. We used to be able to shake hands with our TTRPG idols and talk about the game.
Now? I’m sure there are plenty of WotC D&D designers who would be ashamed to hang out with us. Remember, the guy in charge of their team said, “guys like us can’t leave the hobby fast enough.” (And pretty sure he meant it even though he’s still around.)
I can’t even get as much as a lousy email back from WotC telling me to f🦆🦆k off. I met Gary Gygax when I went to Gen Con back in the day. Can’t say the same for anyone now. Not even an email.
If Wizards of the Coast had to start all over again with D&D, would they succeed? Some of these people in charge have been with WotC since 2007 or prior. Where’s the leadership? Yeah, running D&D in a castle is great and all, but have you tried putting a book together recently? Ever wonder how Gygax or Arneson could go to conventions and still show up to work on Monday morning? Crawford and Perkins probably don’t know.
Crawford, Perkins, and others working on developing D&D have gotten it into the mopey state of affairs it currently finds itself in. Brink should be ashamed of himself and his team for letting it get this freaking bad. Lucky for all of them nobody above them at Wizards of the Coast seems to have a clue, either. If the game actually mattered, it would be a totally different story.
Thanks for hanging in here with me to the end. I appreciate you so much more every day. Tomorrow let’s talk about what makes a truly good TTRPG from the ground up. Then we’ll try to follow that model with a sourcebook I’m working steadily on.
Jeff's Game Box 