The question is discussed in this podcast episode.
Cynthia Williams is out at WotC, which begs the question: If you were hired as the new CEO, what would you do to right the ship of game and sail us all to safer waters?
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Do what Paizo did and make all rules free. Charge for books that contain art and adventures. Hire or contract with good writers for high quality adventures. Playtest the hell out of everything and have a robust QA department. Keep or hire diversity consultants to prevent other scandals.
Invest in the other classic settings more and revisit esoteric FR locations.
Actually balance the game for high levels and magic items. Standardize magic and item descriptions while keeping the effects and flavor.
Integrate dndbeyond with other vtts and sell content on them. Sell PDFs. Call Over D&D 6e or 5.5e ffs.
WOTC has greater resources than Paizo so they could theoretically do the same thing better (if they were so inclined). I’d love to see them turn D&DBeyond into a first party AON analogue. But with better UI, faster updates, a powerful API, maybe a featureful character builder, etc. all available. Maybe they could charge for the character builder and API, but the game content should be free just like PF2e.
Exactly what I was thinking. PF1/2e allowing AoN to use ALL of their content and display it makes getting into the game and seeing all your options ridiculously easy. It doesn’t have the best interface which could easily be expanded with a company that was paying to develop it.
What I really want to see DnDBeyond do is complete their Homebrew creator. It has SO many problems and doesn’t even implement all of the rules from content WOTC releases (can’t lower hit dice except by spending in short rest, some magic items do this). And I want to be able to create my own classes and item types like new weapons. And also some weird rules that aren’t allowed like changing weapon damage dice.
And they could really lean into 5e’s greatest strength: their 3rd party support. 5e being so popular means there’s a HUGE 3rd party scene that’s doing so much to keep 5e alive and fresh. DnDBeyond is just starting to embrace them now but they could really open it up as a marketplace in the same way they have the DMsGuild. Then 3rd party publishers could at their own leisure add their own content and sell dndbeyond licenses (or include them in their books) for their content. This would mean people who prefer to use dndbeyond’s character sheet (it really is one of the best digital ones that integrate with VTTs, foundry’s sheet is subpar sadly [haven’t tried 3.0 yet]) are able to do so while using any 3rd party classes and content they wanted.
Right now, I buy 3rd party content and then add as much in as possible to dndbeyond but I can’t do that for whole classes and I often run into roadblocks where I simply can’t add in certain features and there’s no automation for some things.
Make dndbeyond good/better, invest in 3rd party VTT integrations, and keep selling books through those channels. Keep partnering with 3rd party content creators to get a cut of their profits selling through dndbeyond.
I’d stop trying to disrupt the industry or chase massive profits, and just be okay with reasonable profits.
They’d oust me in a week.
I second this.
The problem is that investors are no longer tolerant of ‘We made money, here is some money you get for doing nothing’.
They demand ‘We made more money than last year! And not only did they money go up, it went up more than the last time it went up! And next year, we expect it to go up again, and go up faster than it went up this year! And go up more and faster each year until our product is the primary commodity of all people, at which point we’ll create new life and make that our emerging market.’
Nothing is enough for these people.
Most people hear “<blank> bubble” and think “oof, that’s not a good thing.”
Capitalists (the ones with the actual capital) hear the same thing and think “just imagine how rich I’ll be if I get out right before it pops! Blow more hot air into it! Quickly!”
keep selling books through those channels
They need to start writing books worth buying again, first.
Well that’s not why she’s been hired. She’s been hired to squeeze every possible piece of money out of the property.
If you were a CEO who cared about the property and not about making the most money possible, you’d never be hired in the first place.
Assuming I actually wanted to keep my job and not just open source everything? Probably buy Paizo and mend the schism, then build a d&d which is streamlined and friendly to beginners but can have 1001 extensions and options for the keenos. Then maybe buy roll20 and make it into the ultimate virtual tabletop; the rules can be free and the books can be cheap if you’re making a good enough VTT that people will want to pay for a subscription!
I would actually casualize the shit out of it. Streamline combat, make it so that most minor combat encounters end after like 5 turns max. Collapse skills down into like 10 max, maybe even combine two attributes to lower that number. Remove all the component stuff from spells, you can cast a spell as long as you aren’t unconscious. I think the D20 system is too ingrained to change now, but I’d want to try something that’s faster to grok, either by going for a system where you roll under your stat or moving to more D6s. I’d also want to jazz up character building.
Basically, make D&D into actually babby’s first tabletop RPG. It’s currently treated as such, despite being a terrible system for newcomers IMO. Most of the new crowd of TTRPG players I’ve played with want to hangout with friends, do some silly improv bits, maybe have a cool moment where they kill a goblin in a creative way, and go home. D&D is way, way too crunchy for that crowd, they quickly stop paying attention during combat if it drags too long, and nothing drags a game to a halt like one of those players needing to make a check they haven’t “practiced” before. Assuming I’m still trying to do Cynthia’s job of making more money than God, I think that’s the clear way forward, because all the videogames and movies and marketing don’t mean a damn thing if the new people bounce off the ruleset.
I mean if you’re going to simplify D&D that’d be great, but a lot of people would hate it.
Most of the new crowd of TTRPG players I’ve played with want to hangout with friends, do some silly improv bits, maybe have a cool moment where they kill a goblin in a creative way, and go home
I routinely tell people that Fate is more in line with how people new to RPGs imagine them to go. It’s sad watching D&D crush the creativity out of players. “I’m a pirate, surely I can sing a sea shanty!” “Sorry, you only have 8 charisma and no proficiency in perform because you’re a fighter.” “But I’m a pirate.” “That’s just flavor.”
Though it does have a higher burden on the players to actually be creative. “Bob the fighter” works fine in D&D, but not so much in Fate.
I mean, I’d hate it as well, but I already avoid D&D, and Wizards of the Coast has shown over and over again that they’re more than happy to burn out committed fans in order to chase the potential of new players. Also maybe it’s just the pick-up games that I’ve been in, but playing a creative character is often a huge part of the draw that people come in for. People are becoming aware of TTRPGs through improv comedy clips on TikTok from funny people like Critical Role or Dimension20, and those are the moments they want to emulate.
so that most minor combat encounters end after like 5 turns max
5 turns or 5 rounds? 5 turns means some players are only getting one turn which might not be great fun. 5 rounds is probably longer than most combats I’ve ever had!
You can still sell the original rules as Advanced D&D. :)
Nah, you gotta hit people with the nostalgia bait. Sell 3e again as D&D Classic, reusing artwork from 1e, with Minsc & Jaheira on the cover.
Surrender the entire property to creative commons.
Who am I saving it for? The players or the shareholders? Because if I was in charge, the shareholders would fucking kill me. I would be collaborating with actual players and making good rules and publishing them for free, focusing sales on miniatures and pre-made campaign modules, fictional publications and merch.
Does D&D needs to be saved ?
It has a huge market share, is one of the few RPG generating money. Sure, there is some work for a CEO, but seems more about finding a way to generate more money, than about finding a way to not loose money like 99.9% of RPG out there
Is D&D in danger? D&D is in this weird place where it’s in the middle of a lot of things. It’s honestly pretty complex compared to actually rules light systems, but it’s still much less complex than Pathfinder. If folks want more crunch they go to Pathfinder.
D&D has two pillars. Combat and everything else. I know that WotC defines it differently but generally I think it’s easier to view like this. Everything I’m combat is extremely rigid. Everything outside is pretty flexible. Sure, exploration has more rigid rules than social interactions but I genuinely don’t believe many people use rigid exploration rules. I think a lot of players dislike combat for a big variety of reasons. There are extremely few class-specific special things some classes can do outside of combat. Do fighters get anything special? Not really. And a lot of spells can totally negate specific things other players might be able to contribute.
It would be really nice to have flexible combat but I don’t think there’s a good way to do it without fundamentally changing the game. Instead, I believe every class needs to have meaningful ways to contribute to each pillar of play that cannot be one-upped by spells.
Another thing, I believe every class should have the same amount of limited resources more like 4th edition but I don’t think there’s a way to fix that in 5th edition or the new version without fundamentally rewriting everything.
If my intention as CEO is to save Dungeons & Dragons and not make a boatload of money, saving my job, and get richer, then I would dedicate every single D&D product of which my Wotzi still has a copyright to the public domain; liberating both the rules (which can’t be locked down anyway), the fluff/lore, and the awesome name.
