What are our expectations for the future of D&D?

https://archive.is/UKyWG

>>96069804 (OP)
So slop instead of actual games
Not that there is actual games and any Gen Xigger who sucks cocks of like order of the stick needs a bullet in their head

You did this

>>96069804 (OP)
more random irrelevant bullshit to sell to lifestyle brand fags
impressive considering their glacial release cycle for the actual game

>>96069804 (OP)
They've tried this before. It didn't go great.

>>96069822
>wordslop reply
do better

>random exec tells board of directors what they want to hear
wont work, the brand is no where near as valuable as they think its.

>>96069804 (OP)
>What are our expectations for the future of D&D

Death.

>>96069891
Ahahahahaha oh wow... you actually believe that don't you?

>>96069922
The movie bombed, official VTT crashed and burned and D&D video games that are not Baldur's Gate 3 keep underperforming. The brand does not have kind of an automatic appeal shareholders wish it had.

>>96069941
this. If it had appeal to a sufficiently sized customer base, it would not have experienced the failures that it did. And any honest analysis of BG3 would show that its succes had little to do with the IP itself. And it almost certainly will not be repeated.

>>96069941
None of that matters in the face of
>Movie Action Figures selling decent-to-good
>Baldur's Gate 3 making so much profit it dwarves everything D&D's done in a decade, and tricked the normies into bringing the sales numbers on every other D&D Game into the top seller's list on steam.
>The Lego Tie-Ins selling like gangbusters.
Stop being wrong.

>>96069804 (OP)
>former Halo exec
From the Bungie-era, or the 343i/Halo Studios-era?

>>96069971
If any of what you listed translated into sufficient amounts of success for WOTC/Hasbro, then there was no need to shake up the management team. But they did, because the brand is not meeting their expectations.

>>96069922
The only reason D&D is even remotely popular is because of third party creators. Stranger Things brought it into mainstream consciousness, Critical Role made it extremely popular among lipstick nerds, and Baldur's Gate 3's success is 100% due to Larian's engine and game design.

Well Critical Role moved on and is doing its own thing, Stranger Things has basically died as well, and Larian had such a miserable time working with Hasbro they've sworn off working with them ever again. All Hasbro's other attempts to create products and brand awareness have totally failed, and pop culture nerd's infatuation with the game has plummeted year after year since 2022. There's no miracle on the horizon, Hasbro's greed has alienated any potential talent that might create good content for the studio and their incompetence ensures they'll never have an in-house hit. Like most American corporations, Hasbro is a wildly overvalued zombie company kept afloat by nostalgic millennial money and short term strategies that are undermining any possible longterm stability like constant mass layoffs and squeezing successful brands dry to the point of customer dissatisfaction like they're doing with Magic.

Hasbro won't survive the general American economic collapse that's coming in the 2030s and even if some Chinese or Malaysian corporation bothers to buy it they'll just shove D&D in a box.

>>96069891
The closest things they've got is the cast of characters from the movie and a handful of distinctly D&D brand-aligned creatures like Owlbears and Beholders. They can sell some shirts that say some corny "nat 20" nerd shit or some blankets with the D&D logo on it, but they've been floundering on this for twenty fucking years now because the execs think D&D is only a brand and then retardedly believe all brands can be packaged and sold the same exact way, unconditionally.

They never stop to think that D&D is a game where you make your own characters and story and play out this ephemeral, unlike-any-other-hobby experience. That's the thing people want out of D&D, more than anything else, but corpos don't understand that they can't have Netflix or Tiktok levels of wealth and success with something that requires half a dozen people and hours of effort for a thing that will likely never leave that group, who no longer needs the company to be involved at all, and most of which will get zero meaningful, marketable engagement if posted to social media.

>>96069986
>"Ayoub has worked with D&D and Wizards of the Coast since 2022, initially as head of studios and then as senior VP of digital games. Before this, he worked at Microsoft for 11 years, predominantly as an executive producer and studio head for Halo's 343 Industries."

>>96069999
>predominantly as an executive producer and studio head for Halo's 343 Industries
Quads of doom.

>>96070011
Yep. 343 destoyed Halo. D&D is allready destroyed, so 343 boy sure as hell wont help.

>>96069999
Hasbro has been undergoing a stealth Microsoft takeover for the last few years. Why is nearly everyone on their exec board ex-Microsoft or Xbox division?

>>96070025
>Why is nearly everyone on their exec board ex-Microsoft or Xbox division?
To translate their IPs into video games or other digital products.

>>96070011
Double Dubs confirming. Hopefully D&Done will end things for awhile and the tourists will move on.

>>96070039
>Hopefully D&Done will end things for awhile and the tourists will move on.
This is the ultimate fate of all nerd culture. Business people sought to make money off things they had little to no understanding about, applied the only thing to it they did know (MBA curriculm) to it, ran it into the ground, and now it will be cut loose and returned to the various gatekeepers.

>>96069804 (OP)
So they're going back to the TSR model?

>>96069822
I wonder if English as a first language would have been enough to save this post?

*opens 24 pack of Dew™ to get a code for +1 to attack rolls*

>>96069804 (OP)
It's kind of crazy that the most successful d&d adjacent media property is the Crit roll animated series. How have they not done their own version of that, yet? Wasn't there supposed to be a fuckin' drizz't show for literal years now?

I mean, they couldnt even do anything for the 50th, I have no expectations for them to do anything, but the amount of bag fumbling that has occured in the last 5 years is almost impressive. If failure was a piano, Hasbro would be a bold and innovative talent.

>>96069804 (OP)
I expect that it will die, and that this will not effect me at all. I'm told I'm not the target audience. Ho hum, maybe women faggots and swarthoids will magically save it, I heard there are a ton of them.

>>96069989
no you cuck, the fact that the management team has failed to continue that push indicates that they needed a new person

>>96070415
brink left wotc btw

>has old culture war crap saved on his desktop (not a tourist btw)

>>96070401
>Wasn't there supposed to be a fuckin' drizz't show for literal years now?
Considering drizz't was cut from the D&D film due to "controversy" I think it's safe to say that's not going to happen. They hate their own creations and turn everything they touch into slop made to avoid offending anyone, especially leftists. But these days people have to avoid offending the right too so everything becomes the most vanilla boring shit you can imagine.

Link to article about drizz't being cut https://archive.is/Rc85S

I think D&D should continue to do what it does best as a "franchise model" WoTC have shown time and time again that they are hopeless at creating things in house. Other people do a much better job because they don't despise D&D and the people who play it. And no I'm not talking about them hating white men or whatever the fuck although they probably do. They want D&D to be a lifestyle brand for quirky "nerd girls" who are just stacies who want to stand out. They want to appeal to everyone to make all the money in the world somehow but all it will do is make something that appeals to nobody. At least if they whore out D&D to everyone with a 1000 monkeys on typewriters one of them will make something decent.

>>96070497
Man, you sound like a fuckin' miserable person. Unironically think critically about your life and consider making some changes.

>>96069804 (OP)
How do we port Fortnite skins to D&D?

Easy–the answer is booklets! Each booklet will have a custom race, class or subclass, spells, and equipment designed to tie in with some popular IP

They can even start selling these booklets in blind boxes to cash in on the Gacha craze

>>96070505
some of /tg/ are the most miserable and insufferable people on this planet.

>>96070488
Cry more shitkisser. Rent's coming due, and we accept groveling apologies and ended careers only.

>>96070561
>nogames
classical music

>>96070505
>>96070520
Everything he said was correct. This whole mess is an unforced error of cuckold pigs sabotaging their own shit for Current Year points. Now they're in a pickle because it turns out that in Current Year 2025 the coin they sold their souls for can't buy shit.

Get fucked. It's gonna get way, way worse.

>>96070579
>wordslop
again, you guys cant stop can you?

>>96070587
All of these words have meaning that's easier to convey this way. Lurk moar.

>>96070594
>justifying tourism
Cuck, next you’ll tell me about your game your not playing

>>96070603
>tourism
Now who's using word salad. Lurk moar faggot.

>>96070607
>esl uses word salad incorrectly

>>96070611
>esl
Oh look, more "word salad"

>>96069804 (OP)
>Former Halo exec
>takes over DnD
It's fucking over.

>>96070623
It was already over.

>>96069994
Christ, it's depressing being a millennial and realising we're basically the boomers 2.0: Ruining the world through nostalgia over products and practices that should've abandoned a long time ago.

>they'll just shove D&D in a box
Unironically the best hope for D&D after 2030 is for some up and coming gaming company to make a Marvel Rivals equivalent styled after it. Even though that will also definitely kill off the last of the grog audeience.

>>96070064
>This is the ultimate fate of all nerd culture
Which makes me happy all of Roger Zelazny's stuff, even the TTRPG, is too obscure to be touched by dirty corpo fingers.

>>96070627
I mean yes, yes it was absolutely, but D&D was dying a relatively quiet and ignominious death from disinterest and subfandoms following different things. Getting Halo people involved is when I expect it'll start getting truly noticeably rancid, on the level of the new Doctor Who series.

>>96069804 (OP)
maybe this time they will be rich. lmao

>it might not be bad
>dnd is already in a pretty shit place
>some new blood might shake things up
I wonder what part of halo he is responsible for
...
oh...

>>96069986
Basically as soon as reach came out so exactly when Halo started becoming shit lmao!

>>96070505
......but the anon isnt wrong though? Anyone with a brain and two eyes can see this is exactly what Wotc have been doing. Why are (you) so upset anon?

>>96069804 (OP)
Will it be less woke now

>>96070667
That should've been obvious the moment his most recent work history was in Halo at all.

>>96070711
Please pay attention.

>Halo
Not only is the answer no, but it will quickly have even bigger problems than merely being woke.

I invite you all to imagine the following scenario vividly in your head with as many senses as possible, said in the style of "I, am Steve."
>My name is Drizzt Do'Urden.

No ones getting out of this life alive. There will be endless sequels, there will be endless spin-offs, we will have a cinematic universe and it will have to hire in Gunn for the second go at it. There will be both a Squid Games crossover as well as seeing Elminster as an anime fighting game character. We are on the cusp of a great new, dark, and loathsome future. Praise Cyric!

>>96069994
>the general American economic collapse that's coming in the 2030s
India super power by 2030

>>96069804 (OP)
>He previously worked for Microsoft for over 11 years, serving as an Executive Producer and Studio Head for 343 Industries
>343 Industries
You already know what to expect

>>96071260
Most boomers will be dead by the 2030s and the fate of their wealth will determine if America survives or collapses. You can’t hold ~60% of America’s wealth in a single generation without the fate of that wealth being an enormous question.

>>96070401
don't forget BG3 among successful D&D adjacent media
which Hasbro still seems to think was purely successful because of the D&D brand

>>96071260
You think Trump being a schizofag with the tariffs and begging countries not to pivot to China is a sign of a strong and robust economy? Fuckin lmao

>>96071837
>don't forget BG3 among successful D&D adjacent media
>which Hasbro still seems to think was purely successful because of the D&D brand
divinity original sin 2 was a niche game. it's not too far off to say that the d&d/baldur's gate branding helped bring more mainstream prominence to the game, especially when aided by the marketing and momentum of 5e at the time.

>>96071883
it was helped but at the same time, if the game hadn't been as good as it was, it wouldn't have sold purely on D&D branding either, the things most people praise about the game aren't really all that D&D related

it's more that Hasbro is going to expect BG3 style sales on in-house games that are nowhere near BG3 levels of quality, and are going to be disappointed

should also be noted that one of BG3's strongest marketing factors was their early-access, which only works as positive marketing if the game is actually good

>>96071837
>>96071883
Having to use 5e or rather a heavily homebrewed version (which is normal for 5e) forced them to keep the game grounded. A lot of their games get weirdly complex and kind of frustrating for new players, personally I love them. Because so many people know 5e it did help. Even someone who doesn’t know 5e gets to play a very simplified version of D&D. I think BG3 will have taught Larian a lot and when they make their next game it will break free from the shackles of 5e but stay grounded or go off the rails again.

I really doubt whatever shitty studio they find to make BG4 will do a decent job. I’m expecting a D&D dark alliance/Veilguard situation. I would put money on them removing the turn based part of the game as well for “broader appeal”

>>96071883
>divinity original sin 2 was a niche game
Original Sin 1 sold over 2.5 million copies, and according to Larian 2 sold three times more, making it more successful than recent Final Fantasy games.

>>96069804 (OP)

They keep bringing in these video game CEOs who want to sneak in shit like microtransactions. I think the best we can hope for is something like 3E in the 2000's where they let independant creators make books for some of the less popular settings like Ravenloft.


>>96071733

I think people are going to be disappointed if they're expecting a great wealth redistribution.

Many boomers including my parents are weirdly bad with money. EG my parents made 200K/year(in Midwest dollars) and had a paid off house before dad retired and they were living paycheck to paycheck. A lot of the money will go towards medical bills. I could see a huge rush where they downsize and swoop in on condos/townhouses/bungalos and drive those prices up(stairs are hard on old people). And whether they die or trade for smaller retirement homes, most of the houses are going to end up in the hands of private equity firms.

>>96069971
Then why are the hemorrhaging money?

>>96070505
What about it is wrong? Yes, people that are realists are generally more miserable.

>>96071148
I mean I literally don't care because I'm not going to play D&D. I play games that are actively superior to it in all ways except player count, but given the quality of the players, I would just rather not.

>>96071883
>t's not too far off to say that the d&d/baldur's gate branding helped
BG3 sold copies primarily by viral marketing that occured after a pre launch event where they showed the man bear sex scene (I remember watching that event and noting its aftermath). Before then BG3 was a negative meme in that it had been in early access for years, to the point people put it on par with Star Citizen as a scam rip off. Then it came off, and most of the content created centered on the character creator and the very early game: the metrics showed most people did not finish the game because it was not very good in total. The normie hordes got to the key meme scenes and quit. And Larian knows this. D&D as an IP had very little to do with BG3s commercial success. It was a critical darling because of the acting and through extension sexual politics (the most popular VA being gay and making sure everyone was aware of it). But as a game it was mediocre. Most players played it as the Sims, not D&D.

>>96069971
>Baldur's Gate 3 making so much profit it dwarves everything D&D's done in a decade

WotC had a whole team in constant contact with Larian, got a huge pile of cash once it launched, and then immediately they fire the liason team and Larian announces they aren't doing any more for it.

Most likely Larian asked for more going forward than Hasbro was willing to green-light, and as a result they won't be able to make another game like this. Exactly what happened is unknown, but what is obvious is that this was a monumental failure on behalf of WotC because this was their one big success and they fucked up the followthrough.

Anyway if anything was going good they wouldn't have fired everyone / everyone quit or whatever. D&D 5.5 isn't doing well, D&D as a brand is falling way behind what it should, and whatever it's just kinda funny.

>>96070025
>Why is nearly everyone on their exec board ex-Microsoft or Xbox division?
Only other company in Seattle.

>>96072088
what are you even talking about
BG3 had tons of positive attention from their early access because people genuinely enjoyed playing the game
nobody ever said it was star citizen tier scam

BG3 sold because it was a good game, /pol/ has rotted your brain so much you see politics in literally everything

>>96072090
another reason for the falling out could have been that Hasbro demanded more monetization with split profits, cash shop shenanigans and such and sort of expected Larian to go along with it because it's free money
Only to run headfirst into Larian absolutely hating cash shop shenanigans

>>96069999
>>96070011
Holy checked. This is bad news, why do retards who destroy franchises get to keep working on big names? Don't they look at this guy's resume?

>>96072136
Ignore him, that is bitch basic /v/pol/ jabber, trying to cope that despite BG3 being 'woke', it was still a good GAME that sold bangers.

The only takeaway I'm getting from this thread is that the word "cuck" must be trending on tiktok or something.

>>96069804 (OP)
Matt won.

>>96070025
same state/city as each other

>>96072253
It wasn't a high bar to clear, but the ultimate test is whether or not people will be playing Faggershart in a month or if they'll be right back to playing D&D and only D&D.

>>96071949
>it was helped but at the same time, if the game hadn't been as good as it was, it wouldn't have sold purely on D&D branding either
yeah that's why i'm saying it helped to get it more mainstream, not that it was the only reason for its success.
>should also be noted that one of BG3's strongest marketing factors was their early-access
the early access was in 2020 . . . i wonder what other piece of the puzzle was booming in 2020 . . . coincidence?? i think not!!

>>96072253
>dungeon assblast's weekly low effort clickbait
typical 5e derangement syndrome . . .

>>96072349
You type . . . Like a faggot . . .

>>96072438
>You type . . . Like a faggot . . .
you type like you're on mobile. like after you pressed on the period it automatically capitalized the next word. phoneposter ass nigger.

>>96069804 (OP)
We already had licensed video games and books way back when the game was still good. Now we have all that, plus movies, and its all equally as trash as the shit system they're selling these days. It's sad to see

>>96070035
All the ex-MS people explains why Hasbro is constantly talking about how they're just going to make video games, and acting like that's such an easy thing to do. After Larian made them think that "just make D&D but as a video game" was such a good idea, they started forming their own studio, hiring AI guys, and now they're bringing in other ex-video game guys who worked in upper management for big video games. In classic upper management fashion, all of them think you just hire a bunch of nerds, tell them to make a game, and then you'll have a game and it will make a gorillion dollars because big, famous companies always get lots of money when they release games.

They think this, because a lot of them were "monetization specialists" who were brought on because they were big names during the era where microtransactions were forced into everything and 7th gen gaming saw massive growth for reasons unrelated to horse armor and paid XP boosters. You can also tell that they have no idea how the fuck to put together a studio because they're investing in AI and hiring the tranny that killed Dragon Age to head up their next doomed-to-fail game.

>>96072460
>like after you pressed on the period it automatically capitalized the next word

NTA but is using the shift key that hard for you underage summerfags

>>96070415
Has there ever been a time when insulting your market benefits you?

>>96069995
Maybe...

They could try playing D&D?

>>96072460
There are . . . Two magical keys . . . On a keyboard . . . They're called . . . Shift . . . They make capitalized letters appear . . . When pressed together . . . With a letter key . . .

>>96072530
>>96072572
>shift key jewry
maybe stop using ai/speech-to-text to make all your posts and actually type things out like a normal person. if you can't help but capitalize everything like a good little goyim that's not my problem.

>>96072641
>Stopped Using ". . ."
Thanks For Admitting Defeat . . .

>>96072693
>started capitalizing everything
typical of a midwit to not understand the nuances of writing style

>>96069804 (OP)
it was dead af before, now they're going to take the corpse, stuff it with C4 and blow it up

>>96072641
Fuck off and go back to your own board, tourist

>>96072770
>nuances of writing style
a postmodernist rejection of the structure of written language via removing capitalization isn't really something special. its like the bottom of the barrel 'i'm special' when getting into the rejection of norms and customs. get back to me when you start removing entire letters from your writing style.

>>96072795
>Fuck off and go back to your own board, tourist
zog-brained toy junkie mad?? feewings hurt??
>>96072815
>get back to me when you start removing entire letters from your writing style.
nggr!!

>>96069804 (OP)
DnD fans have more than enough to play the game without any new content till they die, the mechanics are already there, you can put literally anything on that system

>>96069967
>If it had appeal to a sufficiently sized customer base
It's good that it doesn't.
I don't want normalfags playing D&D. It's bad enough the new baldurs gate game is so popular. The movie was heartwarming at least. But I don't want more normalfags coming into the hobby. The game was better before them. I admit I enjoyed watching Stranger Things even though I was born the year the 80s ended but still a bit nostalgic for me, however it doesn't matter because it fucking flooded DnD with so many normalfags that it wasn't worth it. If I could go back in time and delete that show I would. It'd be the preferable opion.

Unironically NORMIES REEEEE

>>96072555

Modern day corpo-think is that they can quadruple their profits by making media that everyone likes if they can just crack the code and get the word out. Star Wars that black women will watch, DnD for non-nerds etc.

>>96071148
>I invite you all to imagine the following scenario vividly in your head with as many senses as possible, said in the style of "I, am Steve."
>>My name is Drizzt Do'Urden.
Kino.

>>96070505
Shut up nigger.

>>96071148
Please, I just want them to leave Ed's magical realm alone... I'm too attached to the Forgotten Realms lore to take anymore of WoTC/Hasbro's trashtastic retcons and intellectual property milking

>>96071983
>where they let independant creators make books for some of the less popular settings like Ravenloft.
And lose money? C'mon anon.

>>96069804 (OP)
>Movies
Honestly I liked honor among thieves. But I thought because it didn't make a morbillion dollars Hasbro says never again

>>96072888
Why would you want to continue playing D&D? I gave up on that game when 4E came out.

>>96072136
>>96072204
Just look up the completion stats yourself. It was released Aug 3, 2023; by Jun 24, only 21% of the people that purchased the game on Steam had completed it. If the game was "so good" why did they not finish it? Your problem is that your D&D fans, and thus possess a blinkered perspective that the thing you are a fan of is not as popular as you think it is, and that impacts your self esteem as a nerd. I understand that. Saying every fact you dont like is based on a /pol/ talking point shows how narrow minded you are.The reason those completion numbers are what they are is that most copies of the game that were purchased were bought because of marketing, not beause of gameplay or any interest in the IP. Interest dramatically shot up once social media picked up on the man bear sex thing. I watched it happen, in real time. I skimmed numerous playthroughs, and most died out in relatively short order, because they decided the game was not good. The only people that were excited about the game before that were BG fans, especially that subset with the sunk cost fallacy of having paid to be beta testers for years.

>>96073054
>only 21% of the people that purchased the game on Steam had completed it.
>using steam numbers
More /v/ shit.

>>96073038
>I gave up on that game when 4E came out.
Why? It is 2e with less arbitrary pc death.

>>96073064
you have a better, objective metric? Or do you need to run back to your hugbox?

>>96073106
>you have a better, objective metric?
Sales numbers :^)
More /v/ shit., off topic, pls report.

>>96073034
>But I thought because it didn't make a morbillion dollars Hasbro says never again
thats the problem with publicly traded companies. Its not enough for something to be profitable, its has to be profitable enough. Line must go up, enough, not just at all.

>>96073118
well since video game licenses are now under the same man as the TTRPG, and the game was D&D mechanics, there is sufficient intersection. Again, Steam was the most popular sales platform for the title, why did only 21% of the purchases on that platfrom run to completion if it was a "good game". I'll give you another reason; many people bought it for modding, so they can do what they want with the characters. And they treated it like the Sims. Not a D&D game. Because the game was not purchased by most people because it was "good".

>>96073149
fuck off tourist

>>96073159
Ah, a total lack of rebuttal. Your feelings have been hurt, I see. I've been here a long time. You should head back to ResetEra.

>>96073185
why did bg3 get goty if nobody played it? fuck off with that stupid metrics argument. people buy games all the time and never finish them. jesus, steam sale just happened and there's probably like a million more games added to peoples libraries that'll never be completed.

think critically about this instead of just looking at steam stats. you cuck

>>96073054
21% completion for a game on steam is actually really fucking good, anon. Most games, even good ones, hover at 8-10% if they're lucky. I've seen games where the cheevo for "click start to begin" only has like 70%. At 21% it means most of the people who spent more than 4 hours playing it finished the whole thing.

>>96073211
>why did bg3 get goty if nobody played it?
because critics liked it.

>>96073280
so people liked the game, it sold well, and lots of people did played it. sounds like it was a good game.

5e stands strong as the worlds greatest role playing game.

>>96072556
Unironically, I think everyone at the top of a company managing a game should be mandatorily required to play their own products. If you don't understand what your customers want or even why they enjoy your product, you cannot make rational, intelligent decisions about the future of that product. Cocks swears he's playing D&D with 30 to 40 people, somehow, but clearly doesn't understand what his customers want. Instead he thinks he can tell them what they want and they'll buy it.

>>96070415
>>96072555
>>96072894
To be fair things keep occasionally popping up that gives them reason to believe that it's true when shit like Crit Role gets inexplicably popular among normalfags.
My mom was addicted to The Guild even though she doesn't play any fucking videogames at all.
They are gambling on acquiring that "niche media mysteriously catches on with normies". This is that "wider audience" that every producer is ruining franchises over. But they are just trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

>>96072155
>Don't they look at this guy's resume?
they do, but they're looking for different things than we would
whereas a normal person would look for someone actually being successful, business fags simply see that he was one of them and give him the job
it's all just class-based favoritism, because none of them actually give a fuck about long term success, they just want to get as much money as they can as fast as possible and help out their buddies along the way

>>96073230
>At 21% it means most of the people who spent more than 4 hours playing it finished the whole thing.
Then why did most of the people that bought it DID NOT spend the hours to finish the game? How can anyone say a game is good if most of the people that bought it did not play most of it?
>>96073211
why did bg3 get goty if nobody played it?
You need to educate yourself on how TGA voting for the vast majority of the awards (90% is the voting board, which is industry/critical people). That being said, BG3 DID also win the Player Voice award that year as well, which is at least done online (and is gamed as well). Even you will admit that any such award does not mean something is good, only that, at best, its popular. All kinds of things are popular that are bad. And to keep it on topic, how did Hasbro/WOTC capitalize on the only thing that was really close a win for them? They did not, because for them, it really was not a win. BG3's commerical success did not reflect in bolstering the TTRPG products at all, and thats because BG3's success had vanishingly little to do with it being D&D. If Larian had done a game based on a Pathfinder AP instead of BG, it would have sold just as well.

>>96069994
>Baldur's Gate 3's success is 100% due to Larian's engine and game design.
It's success was a complete fluke. The game isn't even good.

>>96073356
>BG3's commerical success did not reflect in bolstering the TTRPG products at all
i could have sworn that hasbro said otherwise in their quarterly / yearly release data

>>96073312
>5e stands strong as the worlds greatest role playing game.
Correct, lessers fear the greatest

>Trolling outside of /b/
Such is the nature of tourist scum

>>96071967
Sales numbers legit mean fuckall when the bulk majoirty of sales are 50+% price reductions via Steam Sales, and a large portion of those also have 0 play time on them.

Steamfags are legit weird.

>>96073513
>>96073515
maybe they're pissed that there's still a general in /vg/ for BigGay3

>>96073211
Astro Bot was GotY last year (deserved) and barely anyone played it, Anon.

>>96073038
He crying about "normalfags" so he probably too stupid to play any tabletop game.

>>96073054
All that to say you are assblasted that a "woke" game did great. Take your retarded cope back to /v/

>>96072894
That's not a group that's the list of characters the artist played.
Which is why one is a follower of a previous one after that one ascended.

>>96071995
They're not. It's a /tg/ myth.

>>96069999
It's ogre

>>96070641
My dude, Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light was bought out by the fucking CIA and the set design was used as a cover story prop for covert operations in Iran.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Caper

There's always someone behind the curtain.

>>96069804 (OP)
>What are our expectations for the future of D&D?
I don't know but I bet it'll look a lot like this

>>96070395
>Drink verification can to continue

>>96069804 (OP)
This feels 25 years too late and under the direction of the wrong type of people.

More D&D, TV, movies and video games, books and comics in the heyday of a mini revival, right around the release of 3rd Edition, would be great - I say. Then people at Wizards still "got" D&D, if they weren't babying it too much. Now? Yeesh. No fucking way they won't make low quality wokeslop and cash out full corpo trend soulless games, if not full blown gacha. Comics are dead in the west. Books? idk but generic owner owned fantasy will probably still be better.

>>96077325
Fell's Five was an excellent DnD comic, and didn't get near enough love.
It proves that it has nothing to do with Wizards, and everything to do with the people they contract. BG3 proved this without complaint.

>>96069822
pure gibbersih

>>96073356
>How can anyone say a game is good if most of the people that bought it did not play most of it?
Most people that played Elder Scrolls games never beat the main questlines yet Skyrim is one of the most successful games of all time (quality aside)

>>96069804 (OP)
Manganiello tried to make Dragonlance a couple of years ago, that could have been as big as GoT but they ditched it

96077224
>I posted it again! Yaaaay! It's this picture that I totally hate but have it on my computer so I can post it over and over again! Yaaaay!

>>96072894
>Modern day corpo-think is that they can quadruple their profits by making media that everyone likes
Are they wrong though?

>>96073230
>21% completion for a game on steam is actually really fucking good
No it isn't. Most are around 30%, even hard ones. 31% of players have defeated sword saint isshin for example. Around 20% is the floor for games that aren't total garbage. It doesn't necessarily mean a game is bad. But it's certainly not high.

>>96072938
They can't retcon shit without consulting Ed. He's still in charge of what's canon. Every statement of them saying otherwise is a breach of contract.

>>96077877
Yes 100% wrong. You lose the old audience and the people you're trying to pander to don't buy it. It's happened over and over for years. But because BG3 and barbie did well apparently woke shit sells. BG3 was a decent game that wasn't a woke pile of shit despite what the /pol/tards on here claim. Barbie was a women's brand marketed at women, unlike things like marvel and star wars which are now men's brands targeted at women and gays. The number of woke failures far exceeds anything that remotely succeeded.

D&D are suffering from brain drain and fear. They are afraid of ruining their golden goose which has been printing them money for ages. Unfortunately I suspect 5.5e has already done that to some degree. Something like 40% of /5eg/ swapped to 5.5e. If half your audience are playing one edition and the other are playing another whenever you release a 5.5e book half of the audience already doesn't care, while the old books are useless to 5.5e players. It's just retarded and terrible business sense. If they weren't fucking moronic they would have released something like expanded psionics or a player's handbook 2 with more core class options.

>>96078083
BG3 was woke and was also a 10/10 game. Those things are not mutually exclusive despite what /pol/tards say.

>>96077973
What happens when Ed kicks the bucket though?

>>96078139
>BG3 was woke
I think our definitions of woke are different. To me a woke games is shoving THE MESSAGE TM in your face constantly. Just having gay people in a game does not make it woke. The infamous bear scene is not something that is shoved in your face either, I've played the game twice and multiple times with friends but not to completion and have never seen it. It's just fun adventures in the Forgotten Realms. If having gay and black people makes a game woke to you then you've lost the plot.

>>96073319
Okay but in counterpoint the head of Xbox loved Xbox games and completely screwed the pooch

>>96071861
>begging countries not to pivot to China
This isn't hard, no one likes China. The tarrif shit is because Trump is a retard, and has nothing to do with the economy and more to do with how he 'negotiates' because he's again, a retard lmao.
>>96071260
this
>>96069994
>Larian
Larian swore off working with Hasbro because Hasbro fired everyone they worked with.
>general American economic collapse...even if some chinese or malaysian corporation bothered to buy it
It's so easy to spot Brazilians, russians, and chinese because they have no idea how economies work and truly believe China is on the rise and not desperately trying not to collapse when all of its neighbors hate it and their demos are fucked.

>>96078169
BG3 is woke as fuck.
Most games that do well are woke because most writers are 'woke'.
The really bad stinkers USE woke as a screen to try and avoid criticism.

>>96078169
>Just having gay people in a game does not make it woke
>If having gay and black people makes a game woke to you then you've lost the plot.
Tell that to /v/ and /pol/.

I'm fairly liberal and even I noticed the woke undertones in BG3. Every character is seemingly bi. Gay couples are as common as straight ones etc... Again, I don't think that detracts from the quality of the gameplay or the narrative but the wokeness is definitely there.

>>96070505
What a stunning counter argument, I bet you're a hit with the ladies.

>>96072136
BG3 is not a good game past act1. BG2 is superior in every way.

>>96070711
Part of the reason modern Halo is failing release after release is that - in addition to the games being all-around bad - the devs would rather focus on trannification than fixing their game design.

>>96072279
Won't matter to Hasbro if they aren't buying 5.5, and they aren't. Matt made his money for his trannygame and doesn't care any more. He already "won" because he has no board to answer to and almost no one to pay besides himself.

>>96073356
>Then why did most of the people that bought it DID NOT spend the hours to finish the game?
Holy ESL
The reason is that Steam achievements are a horrible metric and most people don't finish games in general
If you use any mods, achievements stop working, so for Steam where mods are extremely easy to install with Workshop a lot of people will not register as having finished a game even if they've completed it multiple times
Additionally, a lot of people will play a game for say 40 hours, and then move on
It doesn't mean it wasn't fun or they didn't like it, just that other things came up
For some comparisons, BG3 has 90.1% beating the tutorial and 24.5% for beating the game. But Hardspace: Shipbreaker has only 50.2% beating the tutorial and 9.2% beating the game--the massive reduction in tutorial success is due to achievements not being implemented during the Early Access phase. MGS:V has 89.3% beating the tutorial, but 7.5% beating the game. And finally Grim Dawn has my favorite 27.7% beating the final boss, but only 27.3% beating the game, implying ~1.5% of people who beat the final boss didn't bother to turn in the quest and see the ending cutscene. It seems silly, but that's actually a lot of fucking people.
In short, achievements on Steam are a terrible metric for absolutely anything, particularly for games that get modded, and beating a game is a terrible metric for whether or not it's good or people had fun. I'll leave you with a final stat: the most common achievement for Mount and Blade: Warband is installing a mod (at 51.6%)--which disables all other achievements.

>>96072516
Genuinely doesn't bug me. Modern development & publishing means I get plenty of good games AND I get to watch huge studios burn money and the dangerhairs there throw melties before getting laid off.

>>96078189
>>96078211
I never noticed it being woke. The characters being bi is about giving player choice to me. They can all be straight if you want them to be or straight passing. I don’t remember any gay couples except for the tiefling bard. The story isn’t a HERo’s journey it’s a fantasy romp. Perhaps the definition of woke has become too broad if BG3 counts. The characters don’t feel like their sexuality is their entire personality like it would in a woke game.

>BG3 act 1 is best
My favorite act was act 2. I’ve always loved the underdark. Act 3 is where everything comes together and are resolved so I found it better than Act 1. Act 1 is great but it’s the tutorial.

Bg3 isn’t a woke game that somehow did well. It’s a good game that sold well without microtransactions, live services, day one dlc, lootboxes and all the other shit people can’t stand. Ironically 5e tried to bring in microtransactions to a fucking ttrpg through dnd beyond. WoTC are so unbelievably stupid.

>>96078382
Unless act 2 was just the shadow cursed lands, then it was the weakest act.

>>96078211
You'd probably need to take it up with original Forgotten Realms authors. If anything BG3 was more faithful to their vision of FR that a lot of other games and literature. Greenwood was a known degenerate even when he first started. Though he had the discipline to keep it as background details.

>>96078298
Want to preface this by saying that I don't care that these are losing their jobs and having a shitty time, but when the C-Suite is retarded, it's the employees below them that suffer. Those executives have the most resplendent golden parachutes you could ever imagine. They'll walk out of Hasbro's smouldering ruins looking pristine and then they'll land themselves another 8 figure job at another company within days of leaving Hasbro.

Mismanagement and corporate incompetence keeps rewarding these sorts of subhuman demons, and that's a problem. However... The fact that it's happening to Hasbro/WotC could not be funnier to me.

I think D&D could become 100% more profitable if they created some kind of "create your own hero" online tool like Heroforge that automatically exports 2D tokens that you can drag and drop into Roll20 or .stl files so you can print your own mini. tons of people would pay for this. I know i would. after all thats what tabletops are all about. creating your dude and customizing it. trying to make money off pdfs is a waste of time. that market is tapped out.

>>96078382
>I never noticed it being woke.
retarded
>straight passing.
blind and retarded

>>96069804 (OP)
Gonna be shit.
Every single time someone takes over and promises to do anything that isn't "getting the game to functional and enjoyable playing state with a focus on table play instead of online play" it's always gonna be shit. Every time.

>>96073447
For a CRPG it's really good.
I mean, I managed to play through about half the game before stopping and having zero desire to return. That's pretty impressive when most CRPGs last about three hours max before I just hate the core gameplay so much that I get angry it's on my hard drive.

>>96079167
Look, I know that this is 4chan and part of the culture here is endlessly whining about things no one is forcing you to put up with, but why would you continue to play games of a type that you clearly hate?

4.5E please. With 20 classes, each of which have 6 different paths that dramatically change the way the class plays.
An actual PRICED menu of magical items.

>>96073531
Yeah but lots of people played the free ps5 demo, ALSO named astro bot, which is probably where the confusion comes from.

>>96069804 (OP)
As a halo fan who clung onto the game for far too long, far past it's prime. You guys are fucked. Pic related was part of slide show of a real presentation he did.

>>96079599
>As a halo
lol you're a fucking loser

>>96078155
No idea what their contract says. WotC is likely going to breach it anyway. Let's just how they get fucked in court.

>>96079599
>As a halo fan who clung onto the game for far too long, far past it's prime. You guys are fucked.
as if bungie would have done any better/different than 343. the series was already in decline from halo 2. one random michaelsoft exec did not have any significant impact on the trajectory of the series.

>>96078292
Some steam games let achievements fire with mods on, some don't. It's honestly a crapshoot as to which it is.

>>96078155
I think they lose the rights to that setting.

>>96080499
They're all supposed to fail but the games have to know they're modded, which many kinds of mods or games don't. It's also why you can use a thing that just unlocks all achievements for you with a button press. It's not designed to be secure or super informative just a half-baked system slapped on with devs often times putting even less effort into it.

>>96069804 (OP)
Merchandising.

To be fair, unless very carefully managed, your core books are the only product that sells, so the only way for an RPG to survive as a business is to release a new edition every couple years and make people spend another $50-180 on core books. That only goes so far, which is why most RPGs flop.

>>96070039
that one dude is so fucking dead...and it's 100% the woman's fault.

>>96080221
>as if bungie would have done any better/different than 343

You have no idea, 343i was one of the worst developers in the history of gaming. Any other developer could have done better. The games released unplayable for months. It's not even that the games were bad, but they didn't function. He's wasn't some random exec, he was a studio head, one of the top 3 guys at the company. He oversaw everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz3Ko0td45w

>>96080221
343 are so reviled that they had to rebrand. It's extremely rare in the video game industry, even among unpopular development teams. I have a very hard time believing anyone could have done a worse job than them, literally all Bungie would have to do is release one more game and they'd have a better track record than 343.

But back onto D&D, if this exec is to be believed, then expect every major release to require homework on the level of pic related. Want to play Baldur's Gate 4? Well if you want to understand what's going on, you'll need to read three comics, a series of novels, a podcast, five animated shorts and a live action netflix show. One of the reasons why 343 Halo was such a mess was because there was a massive push to turn it into a multimedia franchise where everything linked into everything else.

>>96077224
Possibly not. Most of the major companies are trying to distance from the rainbow stuff, seems the blackrock money dried up.

>>96082132
>Well if you want to understand what's going on, you'll need to read three comics, a series of novels, a podcast, five animated shorts
You must be new to D&D lore.
>and a live action netflix show.
Except that one isn't there yet.

>>96077877
>Are they wrong though?
Yes.
The "General Audience" does not exist anymore. A consequence of the increasing diversity (read: ethnic, political, and age-group fragmentation of society) of society means that society is now comprised of many groups that have conflicting and wildly different opinions, perspectives, morals, and preferences. In the 21st century, trying to please everyone means making something bland and inoffensive that pleases no one. This is not the 1950's and the whole family doesn't sit down to watch Leave it to Beaver or listen to Patti Page. But suits keep trying to chase the pipe dream of finally capturing the nonexistent modern audience, like a mirage in the desert.

>>96083527
>A consequence of the increasing diversity
This has nothing to do with it. Society has always been fractured into various subgroups. General audiences also still exist, it's just the pandering to them hasn't worked lately because businesses have lost touch with what general audiences Want and been losing money because of it.

>>96082465
Wait until after Trump's term is up. It will be back.

>>96090990
>It will be back.
Trump isn't the one that stopped it anon, it was the inevitable drying of the well that happens from all unsustainable business decisions. Blackrock is running out of money, customers are rebelling, and most countries are in too much debt to spend on feeling good about themselves. It's not coming back until after great depression part 2 comes, passes on, and we're back in a boom economy that can afford to be stupid again.

>>96078174
People can like something and have shit takes, that's why you hire consultants that aren't just yes men.

>>96083527
Nah, the "general audience" exists, especially in D&D. It's white guys, same as it always was, in D&D. In other media it's just regular white people.

If you make media for that group, the general audience will enjoy it just fine.

>>96082132
I love how awkward the "Hunt the Truth" ARG was, setting up some new protagonist that was clearly going to take over the franchise but then when you actually play Halo 5, it's just Master Chief trying to stop Cortana from going crazy and also "the new protagonist" trying to stop Chief because ??????

>>96090990
It's simply not profitable and it's not as widely supported. Not to mention that a number of monetary policy changes over the last 10 years have made it increasingly more expensive to produce an entire line of new products and packaging with rainbows on them, just for them to sit on shelves until they get sold to overstock dumpster stores.

>>96078083
>>96083527
I'm going to go with the marketers on this one. I get that you guys don't like the direction that DnD is going in but it makes far more sense to try to appeal to the masses rather than fringe groups of nerds and it appears to be working from a commercial standpoint.

Also, anecdotally, there are tons of normies that got into DnD because of Stranger Things or a friend who invited them to try a session.

>>96093896
> I get that you guys don't like the direction that DnD is going in but it makes far more sense to try to appeal to the masses rather than fringe groups of nerds and it appears to be working from a commercial standpoint.

It's not "the marketers". It's shareholder capitalism.
Here's Larry Fink with his famous "force behaviors" comment:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/blackrock-ceo-slammed-force-behaviors-dei-initiatives

This was of course going on before this, but it's pretty much why we ever had to put up with all the race swapping, insertion of gay characters, and a variety of other anti-white, anti-male, and to a smaller degree, anti-Christian sentiment.

And when it became too noticeable, when the cost that they were paying (because again it was never something from marketing, it was forced on them to do politics because that's what power and money gets you, your political will manifest), and when other things rose to the forefront, then we had this:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelperegrine/2024/03/26/larry-fink-turns-the-focus-of-stakeholder-capitalism-to-secure-employee-retirement/

Anyway it was NEVER profitable, and everyone knew that. And the moment it's considered to get enough effect for the dollar, we'll see it again.

>>96069971
>>96069967
>>96069804 (OP)
Under this model a new BG3 like game cannot be made.

>>96073494
Fun fact: because you can't make such claims legally in some European countries, it says "most popular" instead.

>>96069804 (OP)
Traditional games?

>>96073054
>play BG3 until end of chapter 1
>get annoyed at slow as fuck dice roll animation
>install faster dice roll mod
>achievements no longer get tracked
>some incel on 4chan claims I didn't play the game

>>96094000
This. Much as with film and movies, these things aren ot done because they sell more--becuase they don't.

The claim that people buy D&D or anything more BECAUSE of faggots trannies and other mental illness forceed into games is laughable. It's provably false. Nobody wants that shit and if you took it out it would sell 10x as well. It's there to try and force people to pretend that faggots and trannies are good, just like putting blacks in 15th century Britain is supposed to force people to pretend that the British in London in 1425 were black.

It isn't about making money. You can prove empirically that it isn't about making money because it would clearly be making more money if they weren't doing it.

>>96094122
Yes, Dungeons and Dragons is Traditional Games content.

>>96073054>>96073230
I know someone who has played it for 150 hours and not finished somehow, meanwhile I cleared it twice in the same playtime

>>96094609
By all objective measures it would sell worse if they removed the shit that made it more popular.

>>96094000
>a variety of other anti-white
How far down the /pol/ rabbit hole do you have to go to see "anti-white" sentiment in DnD?

>>96069804 (OP)
>mfw remembering Halo 2's ending
>remembering the way Halo 3 would lock you out of base game playlists if you don't buy the DLC
>remembering the shitty stories of 3, ODST and CoD: Reach
>and remembering the pointless asshole treatment Bungie did to Ensemble Studios when they made Halo Wars
This is going to turn out horrible, filled with crunches, abuse, and straight up awful on dozens of levels.

>>96094727
Surface level. Leftists are just nakedly anti-white and they'll say it openly. Until we get some pretty groveling public apologies that's going to be the default assumption for normal people. Go outside sometime dude.

>>96069804 (OP)
Another retarded suit with big promises to corporate and no idea what they're doing.

>>96069804 (OP)
dnd has been shit before
who cares

>>96094678
Nobody is talking about removing the shit that made it popular. Trannies, faggots and vitiligo did not make it popular, there's no evidence of that whatsoever, and quite a bit of evidence that that alienated people.

You'll get to see this in real time btw, the NGOs that pushed all of this stuff were gutted earlier this year, so all of the money is drying up.

>>96094844
Are these "anti-white leftists" in the room with us right now?

>>96094727
Here's a classic, pre-identity-era bit of anti-white nonsense perpetuated by a self-admitted conspiracy!
https://forum.rpg.net/threads/the-many-deaths-of-regdar.532957/

Monte Cook boasted about this back in the day, and put it on his blog. It sounds so bad that he even had it purged from web.archive, which has most of his blog (he manually requested purges of certain pages, including this one).

Anyway, the story is that marketing, doing their job, asked for a regular white guy somewhere among the zoo of ludicrous bullshit than 3.X had as their iconic characters. The leftists there added one, but (tee-hee) always portrayed him dying or being useless. Haha! Isn't that great!

This is obviously racial- if you were to go to any of the various media companies that have explicitly stated that they were adding non-whites or replacing whites, and, as an employee, always show their non-white inserts getting killed or punked, you'd be fired and never be able to work again. But because the industry accepts anti-white stuff, none of the participants here were subject to trial by twitter or blacklisting or anything. It just became one of those "aren't we cute edgy Gen X lefties" quips from history.

It's not particularly hard to find anti-white sentiment at D&D throughout 5e, including "guys like me... can't leave fast enough" from Kyle Brink, speaking at least about white guys in high level spots of role playing games, but possibly also about white guys in TTRPGs in general.

It's totally delusional to pretend this isn't there. They literally tell us its there while they do it and claim it's a good thing.

Anyway, it's not about profit. It's about whether they are getting enough politics for their dollar at the moment. If they want to make money again they can just yoink all the weird "I gave the character top scars" artists, stop inserting tons of forced diversity, and have just a few regular white guys anywhere.

>>96096487
I remember Redgar having a cameo in 4e and he was dying there too.
Ironically I think the actual human model for Redgar was half Native.

>>96096487
(You)'re a pathetic excuse for a human being whose greatest accomplishment is sharing the skin color with some other dudes.

>>96107784
>lose argument
>lash out

>>96107784
>tries to gaslight "no no they don't do politics"
>quotes them doing politics "it's good actually"
>uh, ok, you must be a doublebad person to point this out

many such cases

While I do believe in blackrock and dei consultant extortion, I have learned that there's a lot of nerdy women and they LOVE gay dudes and "diversity". This is a fact. These women buy a ton of shit with their provider's money. They are a massive buying force. It doesn't always work but the marketers know and they desperately want their money when they make videogames tv shows and other entertainment.

Role playing games are contained in books.
Watching companies trying to turn books in to a service has been genuinely pathetic. Even the actual publishing industry managed it better than this with book club editions.

>>96126443
They're not actually a major buying force for the actual product itself and certainly not for the actual hobbies.
The reason it's a fad in book circles are influencers pushing it as a status thing on booktok showing off their "spicy" new buys and (unironically) how they look on their shelves. Often getting paid to shill these books.
It's just the current thing™ like pretending you're a BPD retard going to therapy to show off that you can afford it.
Expect it to go back to a niche like harlequin novels were because 90% of them haven't actually read the crap they're pretending to care about.

>>96126588
>like pretending you're a BPD retard going to therapy to show off that you can afford it
What the actual fuck are you on about?

>>96126443
>>96126588
Its because women are the ones that do physical shopping. That's the reason.
The reasons the book market is how it is currently is because like 20 years ago publishers realized that the people walking down supermarket isles and purchasing books was women because women do most of the grocer shopping and it cascaded from there.
Then with stores like Walmart and Target and therefore a vast majority of physical based products its the same deal.
The issue is that people to research on these subjects learn about the ubiquity which is then conflated with everything because the sheer amount of shit you buy at a supermarket serves as a smokescreen for more nuanced markets that don't function that way.

If men were the ones doing household grocery shopping then this entire dynamic would be reversed.

>>96126676
Not that long ago it was a big thing among women to pretend you had X mental disability like saying you were 'self-diagnosed' for BPD/depression/OCD and bragging how they/their husbands/daddy were paying thousands of dollars for their therapy sessions.
Basically just an instagrammable moment that showed off their wealth and social class better than a spiced pumpkin latte.

>>96078186
>It's so easy to spot Brazilians, russians, and chinese because they have no idea how economies work and truly believe China is on the rise and not desperately trying not to collapse when all of its neighbors hate it and their demos are fucked.

This book becomes more relevant every year.

>>96127667
It this point while I know china is going to collapse eventually, but it could be in two months or 20 years because the entire underlying social and economic indicators everyone uses are negated by it being an authoritarian state that has people still living that recall the massive quality of life improvement going from rural dirt farmers without pluming to factory workers with electricity.
Any issues they face are negated by just disappearing those involved, leaving outside conflict (any time), demographic collapse (at least 20 years), or political dissolution as the older generation steps aside (what might be happening right now).
All this to say it will happen when it happens and all the prediction shit is blowing in the wind.

>>96069804 (OP)
"Taking the game in primarily a more Vidya direction" when?

>>96070505
You're absolutely pathetic. Sad.

>>96069994
>the general American economic collapse that's coming in the 2030s
lmao

>>96069941
>official VTT crashed and burned
How do they continue to fuck this up repeatedly, it shouldn't be hard

The OGL...whatever happened there?

>>96129378
WHATEVER HAPPENED THERE???

>>96126530
The publishing industry has a lot wrong with it but to be fair paperbacks have barely gone up with inflation for like 15 years. Its like they know they're on thin ice.

DnD material is if anything more vulnerable than that. Because a lot of people have a preference for print books over pirated digital ones, but even DnD players who like the physical products are liable to impulsively pirate some random throwaway module for next weeks game. You can be a guy who loves having a tonne of rulebooks, merchanidise even , but if its convenient you're still liable to pirate the kind of secondary/short term material they're trying to turn into a service out of convenience and a need to get it quick. Last thing you need is to pay some kind of subscription for highly available, purely digital content.

>>96071148
Elminster is already an overpowered self-insert magician, he'll fit right into the Isekai Quartet.

>>96073005
It's weird because gothic horror is super versatile, and the place was doing the diversity push back in the 90's. You'd think their risk-averse asses would be all for milling it out to cheap-as-fuck content creators and elevating the few success stories. That's been their strategy so far and it's definitely paid off, so why not again?

>>96069994
>and Larian had such a miserable time working with Hasbro they've sworn off working with them ever again
Thank fucking god. I wanted to kill myself after hearing Larian would work with the DnTurd IP after how fucking good DoS 1 and 2 were. And oh boy is BG3 their worst game to this day.

>>96107858
Implying your retarded and whiny post is an argument.

>>96069804 (OP)
How could not have been moving to a franchise model already? They have been franchising since it was sold to hasbro!

>>96069804 (OP)
There are already role playing games, video games, movies and MTG crossover sets. How is this not already a franchise?
Nothing will change it's just empty business talk.

>>96069804 (OP)
They fucking called it. Pic is right. No wonder Votrans is just destinyshit trash. Fuck you Bungie.

>>96069804 (OP)
we're back to getting D&D every month

>>96136045
No, that's still Beyond Divinity and Dragon Commander, one of which was a game to keep the lights on and the other of which was a case of nobudget cause it all went to OS1. It's definitely their worst game since DC though.

>>96127667
Gordon Chang looks like more of a retard every year. It's a shame the US isn't good at getting its own sons into the study of foreign cultures and languages, and instead outsourced its regional foreign policy to butthurt exiles and civil war losers.

343 Industries and Microsoft's Mixed Reality Department. "Halo" executive lol. Yeah, at least it's not a diversity hire I guess but not much to get excited about.

>>96069804 (OP)
utter rubbish straight to the bin

>>96069941
its almost as if not everything can be a hit and hits only evolve out of a pool continually shifting efforts that play off one another

its the same thing having capeshit film execs chewing their fingers off

>>96069994
>All Hasbro's other attempts to create products and brand awareness have totally failed
Except for that one time they did it on accident, and completely squandered it.

>>96140239
they abandoned the VTT a month after release or something retarded like that, it's like they're trying to fail to get kicked ou

>>96140331
It didn't even last a whole month. Within the first couple weeks, 90% of the team was laid off. The remaining people working on it swore they were going to keep working on it and get some more promised features implemented, and then a day later, an official statement about all work ceasing on Sigil was released.

>>96083527
You're imagining a fake past based on made up stuff.
It was the same way in the 50's, people had less options and they consumed less. The culture of having to watch the thing so you can talk about the thing with everyone the next day was reserved for sports and news events that fucked with your life. People consume more now because there is something they will like somewhere.

>>96093653
Yes. Regular white guys were super cool and well respected for liking D&D in the 80's. They weren't huge fags in the eyes of every other white guy.

>>96140460
Anon its been like that since at least the 80s with Dallas.

>>96140397
>>96140331
I still get emails about new junk being added to sigil pretty frequently so I’m not sure they’ve entirely stopped

>>96145797
That could be already finished content being trickled out. Unless they walked back firing nearly all of the team, I doubt they are investing the money to have new things made by a team they already cut down to nothing.

>>96070497
I'm not even going to to take a risk of brain damage to read how Drizzt could be "controversial". I mean sure drow culture is edgelord gooner territory by today's standards but they wouldn't need to deep dive into pregnant drow mothers orgasming from her fetuses killing each other to have Drizzt as a character.

>>96127014
>The reasons the book market is how it is currently is because like 20 years ago publishers realized that the people walking down supermarket isles and purchasing books was women because women do most of the grocer shopping and it cascaded from there.

No. It is like that because starting in the 2010s the publishing industry started to be female (and feminist) in majority. They then started to select works that they were biased towards and only publishing those. The shift is incredibly noticeable in SF&F publishing because of the shift in number of male/female authors and the dominance of "Romantacy."

>>96140469
Actually D&D was very normalized for a long time. Most the stigma attached to it was a brief "satanic panic" thing which was regional, there were regular TV shows about D&D and it was reasonably popular.

Almost all of the mythology about bullying and nerd culture in America are completely fake and inspired by movies made by creeps who later became film makers and retconned their own past into them being the victims.

I played D&D quite openly in the 80s, and I knew entirely normal people who thought it was kinda cool but just a different thing than they were used to. Now if I had been some seething scrawnoid Jewboy with a gay alien skull and both pockets full of neurosis maybe I wouldn't have had such a positive experience.

The "deliberate low status nerd culture" really only started in the mid 90s and 2000s.

>>96155155
If you don't mind where did you live, because like you said it was a regional thing. Because to my understanding getting picked on for being a nerd was very much a midwest suburbs and inner city masculinity check kinda culture.

>>96069864
the ps2 diablo clone was kino

>>96155155
>Almost all of the mythology about bullying and nerd culture in America are completely fake and inspired by movies made by creeps who later became film makers and retconned their own past into them being the victims.
The swirliecaust never happened, but it should have.

>>96094609
>You can prove empirically that it isn't about making money because it would clearly be making more money if they weren't doing it.
That isn't an empirical proof. That's an unsubstantiated claim that then points back to itself as its own evidence.