Why D&D 2024 Will Probably Fail

Can Wizards of the Coast get the lasting success they’re looking for from the new D&D rules? I have my doubts…

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
02:02 - The OGL Crisis
05:10 - A Series of Unforced Errors
10:59 - The 2024 Player’s Handbook YouTube Scandal
15:34 - D&D Beyond and the Divided Audience
20:09 - The New Edition Wars
27:20 - A Word From Our Sponsor
28:21 - COVID-19, and the Quest for Infinite Growth
34:13 - Outro

Recommended Reading:

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

Music from Epidemic Sound

#dnd #dungeonsanddragons #ttrpg #rpg #wizardsofthecoast

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Address for Packages:
Mike Christensen
100 W. High St., #1326
Moorpark, CA 93021
- PLEASE don't address things to "SupergeekMike"; I need to show I.D. when I pick up packages, and that isn't the name on my driver's license

Address for Letters:
Mike Christensen
P.O. Box 1326
Moorpark, CA 93020

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[SupergeekMike]

What’s your favorite Wizards of the Coast scandal?

[emmathomas]

i do genuinely question the sanity of people who expect infinite growth to be possible. Profit is possible. insane amounts of profit is possible. more profit than last year until forever isn't possible

[AlexLawngtv]

I'm still not sure why there is a monthly sub for DnDBeyond. It would make sense to have access to ALL the books and content included in your subscription, but having to buy the books and sub to the platform seems really weird to me.

[Simon-RucknRideAUD]

I played a game with a group in a restaurant, back a few years ago, its was spur of the moment. The DM ran the entire thing with 2 Packs of ordinary playing cards and a Tarro deck and 1 set of dice. Our characters were written on napkins. It basically changed how I played and my mindset.

[anewhero]

I know I’m probably sticking with 2014 5e, almost entirely for practical reasons - I’m broke, so buying new books is a non-starter. My players and I are familiar with 5e, I own a bunch of the 5e books, and we don’t use DnDBeyond, so we’re staying put lol

[justinsinke]

Ah yes, the quest for infinite growth, where unrealistic expectations abound because they numbers say X. It's never enough to be profitable, you always need to be more profitable, so profitable ventures get canned for "not meeting expectations" and then they wonder why the product that their data driven analytics told them would be a product everyone in the world would love ended up being a complete flop.

[JoULove]

Not to be that person but is it really unethical to download a digital copy of a book that you already payed for 👀

[quirkygeekgirl]

The spell mishap happened in the latest ep of CR - Marisha and Matthew were referencing different versions of a spell and not sure which version to use

[grokka]

I am a DM from jump who has lived through all the edition wars, and the only place they seem to actually exist is in forums and on sites like youtube. Most people play whatever game a friend is willing to run. You might as well have a war over which place in the food court you prefer, just enjoy the buffet. Play D&D, Play Fate, Play Pathfinder, Play TMNT and other Strangeness, Play Vampire, Play Dungeon Crawl Classics, play whatever scratches your itch, and if WOTC stops making crap...it wont matter. We own D&D, not WOTC. Not Paizo. Nobody Owns Chess. Nobody Owns TTRPG's. Most experienced DMS could make up a set of rules on their own to play just from memory. So just play...or don't. Reality is an adventure too.

[Keovar]

33:40 - Infinite growth is what cancer does… or what it tries to do, since that's inherently unsustainable, and often becomes deadly to the organism which develops it.

[Stephen-Fox]

...I can hypothesize on why they might not be thinking about people not wanting to change the rules of the game they're playing midway through a campaign - Because of the amount of management of WotC and Hasbro at the moment who come from a video game background, and this is how video game updates work. The update is put out, everyone's game is updated to reflect the change, people always play on the latest version. (And this isn't actually how things work with video games. Speed runners especially, when the game doesn't support easy downgrading to the best edition for the particular run you're doing, will go to great measures to play older versions of the game. But as far as the AAA sector is concerned, particularly for multiplayer games, it is how it works. It's more work to play on older versions of games, so the default is to play on the latest version. While with TTRPGs it's more work to update your in progress campaign to the latest version than keep playing with the old rules. And I'm not sure D&D's current management [not the designers] were ready for that change in the default player behaviour this results in)

[pippastrelle]

Obviously I hope the new edition wars don't get vitriolic but I must say, as a lover of game design, I am LIVING for all these new ttrpgs being released. Even if they're not my cup of tea, I want all the youtube videos about them!

[maeburekaiser]

I would argue that the company isn't easier to "bully".

D&D's core fanbase are people who spend way too much time thinking about the game, have spent years arguing with each other over minute details, with a massive variety of problem-solving skills sets, trained to work together against horrific odds, and who's biggest problem is scheduling.

And half of us already gave up on new editions each generation anyway.

[claytonpfeifer]

The whole 5.5e situation is like your friend who dates a jerk, you hope they break up or that things get better for them, but deep down you know they're likely gonna be stuck together good or bad, and anything you do will just be seen as unwanted meddling

[Wipomatic]

The Pinkertons were final straw for me, I'll still play D&D if I'm invited, and obviously I'll happily watch and support small creators making D&D content, but Wizards won't get another cent out of me, if they think doing that kind of thing is ever okay.

[michaelramon]

Oddly enough, Pathfinder 2e is doing something very similar to D&D 2024 with the "Pathfinder Remaster" - new but backwards-compatible player's books and DM's guides to scrape all the remaining OGL intellectual property out of the system and tweak a few things. But the main Pathfinder rules site, Archives of Nethys (which is free), kept all of the old content with "Legacy" labels. Looking at a Remaster version of a spell or whatever will even have a little link to the Legacy version, and vice versa. There are a few kinks in it (if you search for a magic item name that's been renamed, it will show you the new one without making it immediately obvious that it is what you are looking for rather than some random other thing), but it's overall a good system that clearly understands that some people will keep using the older 2e stuff (and, because of backwards compatibility, even Remaster players will still draw upon older stuff).

(The website also has a whole separate site for Pathfinder 1e stuff, so that's still totally usable - just no longer updated.)

[TheBahamaat]

Failure in business hasn't been about sales or profits for a long time - which is why big business has become untethered from reality for several decades now.

[Skip]

Maybe the real BBEG was the Capitalsim we made along the way 😢

[Lathlaer]

A quick fact check while I am watching.

8:46
Hasbro didn't made WotC lay off 1100 people.

Hasbro laid off 1100 people. Some of them were from WotC.

See, the difference here is that if Hasbro made them lay off 1100 there would be no one working at WotC.

[Wiz_and_Pippy]

Wow Mike just blew my mind! The last video's thumbnail having "Past" felt off in your typical composition and I was wondering what that was all about because your thumbs are usually very cohesive. Now I see it! We're going on a little journey and now I am super excited for the "Future" video! What a neat idea!