Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

This is the same Hasbro that tried to retroactively close off the D&D Open Game License (and thus the third party ecosystem). It was a massive betrayal that caused a ton of pushback: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/jan/12/dungeons-and-d...

They also sell so many overpriced kits with not much going on in them (just a few pieces of paper, not enough dice, sub par instructions ). Or really expensive character toys.

D&D has undoubtedly gotten more popular, but I wish it were under the stewardship of someone more deserving, like a geekier board game shop than greed-enthralled Hasbro. They've become the Disney of board games, all quantity and profit and no real concern for a high quality gamer experience. I bet someone like Larian (Baldur's Gate 3) would've taken better care of the IP and rulesets (and they're working on a Divinity tabletop game!)

It's like Oracle buying Sun. We just need to move on from Java to other languages at this point.

If you ever want another huge, ancient labyrinth of a language that also kinda sorta runs everywhere, the Javascript world welcomes you with open tentaces! Here we're controlled by an evil older than Oracle itself (Microsoft and Typescript), with upgrades and crossgrades and cross compilers that deliver astounding 15% improvements in performance in exchange for a mere few animal sacrifices and a lifetime of misery. In our delightful world, getting your app to run on other platforms is as simple as embedding your operating system into WASM and putting it in their browser. What could be simpler?

controlled by an evil older than Oracle itself (Microsoft and Typescript)

Who still uses typescript? It's not the mid-2010s anymore. Plain javascript is everywhere and I'd argue using a framework implies an immature project or team.

I've never seen a large js codebase without typescript and I'm not even sure how you could realistically manage one without.

I've never seen a large js codebase without typescript

So you're explicitly identifying yourself as a non-authority (but in a weird tone that tries to suggest the opposite?).

<https://searchfox.org/>

I'm not even sure how you could realistically manage one without

Pretty simple: write boring code.

write boring code.

But who wants that?

It’s a disaster. The most knowledgeable dev on my team regularly uses ChatGPT to solve typing issues. At this point we’ve lost the plot.

This is an absolutely baffling take to me. Like, I don’t know if you are even being serious or not.

What? Typescript solves an entirely different problem than most frameworks (you mean frontend frameworks?).

Did I miss typings in vanilla Ecma, or...?

According to StackOverflow’s 2023 Developer Survey, TypeScript is the fifth most popular language, beating C, C++, Java, C#, Rust, Go, etc.

getting your app to run on other platforms is as simple as embedding your operating system into WASM and putting it in their browser

???

I'm kidding, but sometimes it feels like that. Javascript is never just Javascript.

It depends on whether you use Typescript (with tsc or tsx or esrun?).

It depends whether you use V8 or Node or Deno or Bun.

It depends whether you're using AWS Lambda or the Serverless framework or a Cloudflare Worker or a Vercel or Fastly edge function.

It depends whether you use vanilla or HTMX or React or Next or Vue or Nuxt or Svelte or Astro or Remix or Angular or or or.

Then if you go native, it depends whether you use React Native and Expo and Electron and Tauri and and and.

Somehow we went from a universal language that can run in all web browsers to a hundred mutants that each only work in some niche...

I've never seen two Javascript codebases that looked the same :/ Every one is like a new archeological dig. Sure, you can still find some identifiable generic pottery fragments and such, but somehow they managed to build an entire civilization in a totally different way from the one next to them, using technologies that no longer exist just a few years later.

I've never seen two Javascript codebases that looked the same

I think you may have described every programming language.

Except maybe Go

Probably JS was a victim of its own success in this regard, being both incredibly popular and incredibly long-lived, which drew hordes of amateurs (myself included) in. We all re-invented the wheel, though in my case it was more like an oblong hexagon =/ I rolled with it... but I feel terrible for anyone who has to maintain my old code after me, lol.

Most languages have perfectly functioning wheels right there installed and ready for use.

People keep reinventing the wheel on javascript because it doesn't have any.

True, but Go codebases only look the same because there's only so many ways to make a neolithic handaxe.

that's why JS/TS is to easy to hate: it's got a lot of surface area.

May you descend into the Inferno…

Sure, but the JavaScript world won, and the Java world lost. A long long time ago, last century. The war has been over for decades, since the demise of Netscape Javagator in 1998. And C# was released 23 years ago, specifically designed to do to Java what Java did to C++, and it did. It's like you're trying to still fight the Civil War.

https://www.wired.com/1998/02/whither-crawls-netscapes-javag...

WIRED Magazine: FEB 26, 1998 4:26 PM: Whither Crawls Netscape's Javagator? Netscape officials deny a report that work on Javagator, an all-Java version of the Navigator browser, has been suspended.

Oh, and then there's this:

Larry Ellison

In the browser. Javascript won in the browser, which was indeed Java's original target platform. They lost that, but they won nearly everywhere else.

JavaScript won the war of running the same language on both sides, because it runs in the browser, and you can run any language you want on the server. You can't practically run any language you want on the browser, only one, and it's JavaScript, so it's not possible for Java to run on both sides now. And in case you didn't notice, people run JavaScript on the server all the time, because they can share the same frameworks and libraries and data structures on both sides, like easy server side rendering. The cost of developing and deploying and running and maintaining two different languages and implementations of everything and incompatible frameworks on each side is just too high, and a huge waste of energy and time and human effort. Java usage is declining and stagnating, and JavaScript/TypeScript usage is rising rapidly. And JavaScript's and TypeScript's future is not controlled by Larry Ellison.

https://experttal.com/blog/top-programming-language-trends-i...

Top Programming Language Trends in 2023

Java Won’t Be as Popular as It Was

In a similar vein, Java — a language central to the emergence of the software industry as we know it today — increasingly appears to be past its prime.

Java slipped out of the top spot on the TIOBE index — a position it had held for nearly two decades — a couple of years ago. As of 2023, there's every indication that Java won’t recover the top spot.

Although Java will likely remain widespread over the coming year, it's hard to imagine it returning to its former stature as one of the most popular languages. On the contrary, we suspect Java will continue to decline in popularity over the coming year and beyond.

https://marketsplash.com/javascript-statistics/

50+ JavaScript Statistics For 2023 Trends & Facts

Microsoft introduced TypeScript in 2012 as an extension of JavaScript, incorporating optional typing. This adaptation retained the syntax and essence of JavaScript while implementing supplementary features essential for developers. The contrast between JavaScript and TypeScript is noteworthy, as the latter presents heightened productivity and simplified maintenance for expanding codebases.

For this reason, TypeScript transcends being merely a fleeting JavaScript trend; it has evolved into an established language. The most recent survey from 2022 indicates that JavaScript stands as the most utilized programming language, boasting a considerable 78% adoption rate among developers. This survey stems from the State of JS Survey.

Nobody is denying the popularity of Javascript. I'm merely pointing out that Java is huge. Java is still incredibly popular in enterprise environments, and so much Java code has been written there that I've called Java the COBOL of the future on several occasions. It's still very easy to find work in Java.

You can't practically run any language you want on the browser, only one, and it's JavaScript

Everybody knows that, but are you aware of the history of that? Why Javascript is called Javascript, despite not being in any way related to Java?

Java was originally aimed to run in the browser as Aplets. That required a plugin of course, and those have since fallen out of favour for good reason. But Java was originally the language that ran in the browser, and Sun specifically marketed it for that. And then Netscape introduced their own language called Javascript specifically so people would associate it with Java, but it had the advantage that it would run in the browser without the use of plugins. And Netscape was so dominant that they could dictate this sort of thing.

Plenty of Web Aplets have been written at that time, but with browsers abandoning plugins, they've become obsolete. And requiring a plugin before it runs was definitely an obstacle.

Instead Java became the preferred language on the server, and it took a very long time before Javascript got any traction there. It has that traction now, and the advantage of running the same code in browser and server is definitely an advantage, but there's a lot of history before that.

And while Java's popularity is certainly dwindling (and deservedly so, if you ask me), it's coming from an extremely high popularity and has a very long way to go before it's gone. Because it did win almost everywhere outside the browser.

Looking forward to the day Amazon buys Rust

Is Rust deployed internally at Amazon?

Fire cracker (lambda backend vm) uses it

Not that I want to defend them, but Typescript is probably the best thing Microsoft ever created.

If we are liberal with the meaning of "Microsoft created", there's Age of Empires II.

You sir go wherever you want but please leave Java to professionals that make companies just work (TM). Yes its not ultra fashionate with all new features in some other languages (but improving constantly), but TBH I don't care, at all, I can work till retirement with Java 8 and be very happy, at the end its just a tool to solve problems and darn good one.

Proper quality engineering is delivering good robust solutions to companies, and Java is great for that in many many aspects, moreso than most other platforms. And who steers it, that's a question I couldn't care less about, just keep it working as expected, completely cross-compatible across all platforms and all previous version (looking at ya Microsoft, that clusterfuck with 'MS Visual C++ redistributable' requiring 20+ sometimes conflicting installations, often ending up in games not working at all even if required version is present - that's just bad engineering, they don't even have solid internal registry to prevent these FUBARs requiring full clean reinstall of Windows).

All those wonderful technical and business arguments and whataboutisms and swag, but there's still:

Larry Ellison

OpenJDK is GPL 2, how is Larry going to take it away?

Also many people use "Java" in the enterprise without paying Oracle a red cent.

that's a good comparison given how litigious Hasbro has been in the past.

I'm no fan of Oracle but Oracle's steward ship of Java has been pretty good. They have invested in long term (open source) improvements such as Loom and Graal and open sourced additional technologies such as Flight recorder.

The lawnmower has arrived, adjust behavior accordingly. You can't reason with it, it only knows: "cut grass"!

We just need to move on from DnD to other IPs at this point, it is absurdly clear that everyone putting all their eggs in the basket with wizards of the coast and it is just a bad idea.

There are plenty of fantastic alternatives, we really don’t need the DnD universe. I mean, as highly acclaimed as BG3 is, people in general seem to feel that the dev’s previous game Divinity Original Sin 2 has better combat mechanics… so idk I just think it’s time to move past wizards of the coast and embrace better systems.

Divinity Original Sin 2 has better combat mechanics

While I think the combat in 5E combat in BG3 is fairly simple by comparison, DOS2 combat was definitely not better. All combat devolved into status effect versions of “the floor is lava” and a lot of builds become unviable late game.

You didn't like the environmental interactions? I thought it was awesome how the "floor is lava" could quickly become "the air is now noxious gas / steam / full of lava elementals", how undead and the living react to elements different, etc. But it's really more that the action points system gave you a lot more tactical flexibility than the D&D "attack/cast + move" limits.

Still, though, I loved the different builds in both games :) When Original Sin first came out, I made a wine barrel build that just had an insanely strong level 1 character with telekinesis and no other skills... he could insta-kill any enemy in a single turn just by throwing 600 kg wine barrels at them. Or in BG3 how you could have a party of shovers that just throw people off cliffs.

I think the environmental effects were fun, but in longer or large battles, too much of the emphasis was placed on managing them. One thing I appreciated about BG3 is that you can use them to your advantage, but they’re not a primary focus of combat. I like the scale and variety of combat in DOS2 better overall, however. All the BG3 combat, outside a handful of battles, felt trivial and anti-climactic.

All the BG3 combat, outside a handful of battles, felt trivial and anti-climactic.

The final battle in BG3 was clearly rushed in design IMO. You just avoid the fight entirely and you're done. That's not what I want in a climatic final battle with an other-dimensional entity of immense power that has to be controlled by implements of the gods. You straight up shouldn't be able to cheese it, almost as a requirement; it should be the culmination of all the elements of strategy the game has offered, but it doesn't do that to me.

Yeah, you can beat the whole thing in a few turns. The enemies in the courtyard and ascent to final boss were a bit better, but still akin to any number of fights in DOS2 (vs. a climax).

Yeah, just to add on, Orin and Gortash were much more interesting fights for me even; Ketheric took a few iterations to realize what the pattern was. But the final battle is either Sisyphean or cheesed entirely. I haven't played either DOS games, I might take a go at em.

DOS2 holds up pretty well. DOS is kind of clunky.

I think the environmental effects were fun, but in longer or large battles, too much of the emphasis became on managing them.

Oh, I see what you mean there. Yeah, I agree, the environmental effects were SO powerful they often occluded the usefulness of other skills. I'm glad they toned it down a bit in BG3.

The alternative systems flourished with DnD 4.0 back in 2008, since that system just wasn't as good as 3.5 or the new 5th edition.

Wizards of the Coast did a great job with the balance of customization vs simplicity of 5e and that's why DnD did so well recently. But the alternatives always were there.

Its a big community of literal house-rule makers (everyone plays DnD with their own houserules). Its a community used to making rules for themselves, buying 3rd party rules packages or discussing balance things online. The community will figure something out one way or the other.

Was 4 really worse than 5? Everyone I've heard speak on it is pretty hesitant to say 5 is better, and that a lot of of great design choices (martial classes not being completely outclassed, less frustrating saving throws, rule clarity, better handling of numbers on enemies, better rest mechanics, etc.) were thrown out in 5 because 4 caught so much shit for being "not 3.5".

Was 4 really worse than 5?

They're just very different. 4 is as much a tactics game as an RPG.

Older D&D editions actually had a tactical miniatures game. Of course D&D originally evolved from the Chainmail miniatures rules. 4e had a miniatures game as well as some great tactical board games that are fun with friends and can even be played solo. With 5e they wanted to emphasize "theater of the mind" but you can still have fairly tactical battles with miniatures, terrain, etc.

All D&D versions seem pretty great. I've played the 2.5e CRPGs (fun!), classic Pathfinder (basically 3.5+ - also fun!), 4e RPG, miniatures game, boardgames (all definitely fun!), and lots of 5e (also very fun!) The classic rulebooks are baroque, fascinating, and immensely charming. The settings (Forgotten Realms etc.) are brilliant.

I loved 3.5, but it was really complex and unbalanced. 4E was a very different kind of game, more like World of Warcraft than 3.5. But I enjoyed it a lot too (the classes were much better balanced), and it was far easier to teach to new players because they couldn't as easily dig themselves into a grave with poor character development (anti-munchkinism, or whatever you call it).

I don't mean role playing a flawed character for story flavor, but that in 3.5e it's way too easy to accidentally make a non viable build that's drastically weaker than other party members (and level appropriate enemies).

5e is more similar to a simplified 3.5e with a little less complexity. And rather than focusing on the tactical turn based combat of the 4e (which was often kind a drag to execute without digital DM aids and digital tabletops), they shifted the focus more to storytelling and player involvement. It was the right move, IMO, for a tabletop role playing game.

On the other hand, I don't think the 5e rules translate as well to computer RPGs. BG3 shines for its exceptional narrative freedom, but its combat is lackluster compared to Temple of Elemental Evil or even Nwverwinter Nights or KotoR, which all used 3E/3.5E to allow really cool build diversity.

4e was a very different kind of game. They did fix the balance problem, but they did it by making every class work in pretty much the same way. Also, the focus was so strongly on the battlegrid that it felt more like a tactical skirmish game than a roleplaying game.

Yep.

Every character class was practically the same with the same mechanics (at will "spells", per encounter "spells", per long rest "spells") and a massive amount of repetition across abilities. As a DM, I was an over worked CPU; monsters were boring and scripted and every character class had liberal amounts of "force the monster to do x" actions that resulted in monsters having little to no agency.

I ran a few adventures in 4.0 and put the books away forever.

I think Forgotten Realms has a special place in many people's hearts (especially the millennials and around them), being a formative part of our childhoods: Minsc and Boo, Drizzt, beholders, mimics, etc. It's like Star Wars or LOTR, people get attached and emotionally invested and it's not so easy to let go overnight.

I enjoyed the Original Sin series and played them for many hours,but never finished either one. The characters and stories weren't their strong suit IMO (they were kinda cheesy, honestly), but yeah, tactically they played better than BG3. That's the downside of trying to accurately transfer tabletop mechanics, I guess, and combining it with the poor UI of the BG3 series (too many different types of actions and reactions to squeeze in the toolbars). Anyway that's beside the point.

I agree new IPs would be great, but those are rare! It would be cool to see an open source fantasy world where high quality fanfic could be curated into canon.

The characters and stories weren't their strong suit IMO (they were kinda cheesy, honestly)

Yes, but so are D&D characters like Drizzt and Minsc. But they come with added feel-good nostalgia.

I agree new IPs would be great, but those are rare!

I am really enjoying "The Timescape" at the moment. It's the setting from Matt Colville / MCDM. It's used in a range of D&D supplements, streams, literature books, videos and more. And soon in a new TTRPG as well. It is more concise and less "out there" that the Forgotten Realms. And it doesn't carry 40+ years of inconsistent lore baggage.

"Soon" in this case means 2025 or later.

We just need to move on from DnD to other IPs at this point

Or go back to AD&D 1e like the good lord ... err gygax intended :)

Relatedly, Old School Essentials is, IIRC, B/X just more streamlined in presentation? They also have a cool-looking setting with Dolmenwood (as I gather, basically "a mix of darkness and whimsy in the style of old-school fairy tales") that just had a kickstarter for a big campaign setting guide earlier this year.

While I haven't played D&D in any form for nearly 30 years, I lurk in places like r/adnd. There's something I often wonder in the light of the OSR trend & renewed interest in B/X, early AD&D, etc. And that is - to what extent the style of play captures the older style of play vs. hybridizing the more modern style of play w/ the older rules.

When I talk to friends who play contemporary versions of the game, even if one normalized the rules, what they play isn't what I played way back when. There's much more focus on the actual role playing & narrative/story. It tends more towards high fantasy, almost more like a superhero game. That sort of thing.

I assume it must wind up as a hybrid, and find myself curious to see what that looks like. Granted, it's easy enough for me to try it first hand and find out :)

Side note: I had tremendous fun doing a BG3 combat-only playthrough (meaning paying no attention to the story or characters, just min-maxing combat).

One of my most memorable encounters happened entirely by accident: I had just learned how to make my characters fly, and was exploring a new city by gliding from rooftop to rooftop. I ended up on top of some big castle thing by chance, and pissed off all the guards in what looked like a throne room. They chased me out onto a small patio, where I set up a perfect ambush: https://share.cleanshot.com/tPHhWk6p

A cloud of darkness blocked vision out of the only exit, with only my fighter visible at the end of the ledge. Each enemy would come stumbling out of the darkness, only to be ambushed by arrows fired from a dust cloud. Enraged, they'd run towards the ledge, engage my fighter, only to be blown into the chasm below by my warlock hiding on a tower above. Over the next couple hours, I ended up killing like 40-60 of these huge guards, a pile of bodies at the river bottom. (Apparently this was some sort of boss fight, which I had no idea lol). It was just such a perfect tactical setup to blow them off the ledge, one by one, unaware and so angry :D

One of the best moments I ever had in any video game.

My full review, with more silliness: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199138390397/recomm...

If people are still going to pay money for D&D then they truly do not care about the hobby. I must admit before the OGL fiasco I didn't see much of the allure of other systems, but that really pushed me away and the world of TTRPGs is so much brighter and better than crappy D&D.

I still play in one D&D campaign, but it was started before the fiasco, but I have already decided that at least I won't be running another D&D game.

As someone thinking about getting into Pen and Paper games, I'm surprised to read all this. What are the alternatives?

Some interesting ones:

- Blades in the Dark: Players are members of a thieves guild. Focus on pulling off heists, creative ways of solving problems, and providing a spectrum of outcomes (e.g. "success but with consequences" or "failure but without consequences" instead of a binary pass and fail).

- Heart: Sort of a psychedelic cosmic horror take on underground adventuring. Has an interesting level up system where at the end of each session you tell the DM something you want to have the chance to accomplish in the next session in order to gain a level. Character classes are crazy (e.g. one revolves around sharing a connection with a hive mind of transcendent bees). Each class's tenth level ability is incredibly overpowered but renders the character unplayable (often dead but sometimes it's something like ascending to a higher plane of consciousness by becoming one with the previously mentioned bee hive mind). For example, there's a class that revolves around communing with a demonic subway system. Their tenth level ability summons a subway car to bust through a wall and destroy everything in the area including the player.

- Electric Bastionland: Set in nearly infinite city of Bastion "the one city that matters" in a society that's similar to a late Victorian era take on sci-fi. This one's difficult to describe because it's more about the vibe than the rules. The players are attempting to pay off their debt to a kafkaesque bureaucracy. The layout of the city changes daily. The Underground can be used to travel anywhere quickly, but it is controlled by sentient Machines that require the players to complete "tests" in order to pass. Sentient muppets are a canonical player race. The best comparison that I can give is if you've played Fallen London or Sunless Seas/Skies.

Has an interesting level up system where at the end of each session you tell the DM something you want to have the chance to accomplish in the next session in order to gain a level.

Ugh, I play games to get away from sprint planning...

Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, Harnmaster (my personal favorite--too bad it had such a shitty IP fight/divergence), Warhammer, Amber, Cyberpunk, and hundreds/thousands more. People in this space are incredibly creative.

It definitely ain't everyone's cup of tea, but my current favourite system is Mörk Borg and other "old school" rules-light systems like it. My next game will be run in either Mothership or Death In Space.

All in all I feel like D&D has too many rules (but crucially not enough to not leave details up to interpretation) and too many artificial limits on the characters one can play. The good thing about D&D is that many people are familiar with it, but again in various degrees, which will often (at least in my tables) leave into unexpected outcomes when either the GM or the player is not familiar with all of the nuances of the system. Ranging from simple stuff like using wrong skills for actions (using perception to find a hidden door instead of investigation) or having/expecting spells to penetrate walls when a foot of stone i.e. any stone wall will block most magical effects.

There are literally thousands of other RPG systems.

If you want to stay close to the D&D experience, the big alternative is Pathfinder of course. Pathfinder 1 was basically an expanded/fixed version of D&D 3.5, but Pathfinder 2 is really its own thing and possibly a better direction than D&D5 is. But more importantly, Pathfinder is legendary for its massive thematic campaigns. (There are some duds, and none are perfect, but many are quite good and there are a lot of them to choose from.)

Another option is 13th Age, by Jonathan Tweet, one of the main developers of D&D 3.x, and according to some people, it's the system that D&D should always have strived to be. (I don't know it myself, though.)

Then there are tons of retro-clones trying to bring back the experience of older D&D editions, including:

* Dungeon Crawl Classics

* OSRIC

* Labirynth Lord

* Swords & Wizardry

* Old School Essentials

* Whitehack

And many, many others.

Some modern narrative-style systems:

Dungeon World uses the Apocalypse World system to simulate the D&D experience.

Apocalypse World itself is a post-apocalyptic Mad Max style game, with a very different, light-weight, narrative-focused system that's great at simulating different genres. There are spin-offs for almost every property imaginable, including Cthulhu, Star Wars, Cyberpunk and many others. The game itself is not generic, but specifically tailored for a specific feel, but the same approach can be used to create games tailored to different genres.

Blades in the Dark is a bit like that too, in that it's been modded for all sorts of different genres. It is however specifically tailored for heists. The original is a kind of pseudo-Victorian fantasy.

More traditional RPGs:

Shadowrun is cyberpunk + fantasy. Near future, dragons rule the boardrooms, corporate mages defend their employer's interests. And for plausibly deniable direct action, they hire teams of mercenary criminals (the players) who basically do heists. Violent, rich background, complex system, poorly edited rulebooks.

Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk Red: the system the Cyberpunk 2077 CRPG is based on.

GURPS is a system that's able to handle any genre (or so it claims, at least). Very generic, and if you want to mix cyborgs, wizards and superheroes, in space, this system can do it.

Savage Worlds: also generic, but lighter than GURPS and optimised for mass combat. You can have massive battles in this system while still remaining playable. But it's mostly used for pulpy action.

Star Wars. Of course there are several Star Wars RPGs, but the best ones are the original WEG d6 Star Wars (which created much of the expanded universe lore of Star Wars; Lucas Arts loremaster Pablo Hidalgo got his start there) and FFG Star Wars (Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion and Force and Destiny, uses weird custom dice, but great system).

Traveller -- the original SciFi RPG. Must be up to about a dozen different editions by now. 11,000 worlds, millennia of history, aliens, spaceships, but often ends up focused on trade. In the original edition (and several others) you could die during character generation.

There's hundreds more. I'm not going to list them all; this is just a random sample.

It would be hard to mention them all. I'd find a local shop or a TTRPG Discord if you don't have a local spot available.

To give you a small sample, some older non-dnd classics are Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu, but there are even some really awesome niche systems that you should consider like Symbaroum. It depends what you and your eventual group want to play.

ttrpg nerd bait, my favourites:

Forbidden Lands: This is a whole old-school D&D exploration-based game. It's a big, huge setting with a lot of content to explore. Characters are simple to make, the rules are light, and it's easy to run with many groups or players dropping in-and-out without ruining the continuity of any stories.

Microlite20/Microlite70: These are super-small, cut-down, and free revisions of the old-school D&D style games. The rules fit in a couple of pages. It's all compatible with the enormous library of OSR content out there. And it's straight-forward to hack into your own setting, add your own house rules, etc.

Torchbearer: If you like the idea of down-on-their-luck mercenaries out on the edges of civilization robbing ancient tombs and hunting down relics for rich patrons in order to make a buck and scrape by; this game is great. It has the classic D&D feel of regular people picking up a sword and heading into the wilderness with plenty of story-telling hooks. Gameplay is much more structured than in Microlite* games but it's also very easy to prep for as a DM.

Burning Wheel This is the grand-pappy of Torchbearer (and other games made by the same publisher like Mouse Guard). It's a crunchier system than most as it has rule systems for debates, all kinds of combat, etc. However this game is more of a world-building toolkit kind of RPG where you are encouraged to build your game world and story at the table and pick which parts of the rules will be relevant to your game. Want a game with high political intrigue in a low-tech society with no magic but faith? You can use the rules for debating (called, Duel of Wits), skip on all the magic and creatures and limit characters to humans and faith-based paths. Want a high-magic setting with monsters lurking around every corner? You can build that too.

It's a bonus that the books are handsome and well made.

Root/Ironsworn/Powered by the Apocalypse: These are all games that use the same basic mechanics. More narrative-driven and light on the rules/mechanics. Generally pretty cheap to acquire and teach.

Wraith: The Oblivion 20th: My favourite World of Darkness setting. Very much not D&D... but still a TTRPG. I tend to play Vampire more because it's more popular. However this one is an overlooked gem of a game and setting. It's all about playing as ghosts and the afterlife. However what sets it apart from the rest of the World of Darkness setting is that it's possible to transcend from the world and have a good ending. This system, I find, is pretty rules-light and easy to get into... although it's the content of the game that's overwhelming! There are a lot of options for building characters and it will take a long time before you get a grips on all the different options. However stories here tend to be dark, dramatic, sometimes hilarious... it's worth making sure you're playing with the right group that can handle the subject matter and support one another playing through it.

There’s hundreds, possibly thousands. Don’t Close Your Eyes and Glitch/Nobilis are three of my favourites.

I didn't really enjoy D&D, but I loved Call of Cthulhu. It felt more free-form, i.e. more like an adventure and less like trying to game the mechanics. There is no board with CoC (at least we didn't use one). If the tabletop/board combat of D&D is its major appeal then obviously CoC will be less enjoyable.

As always, getting a good GM and a well-composed group is very important for how your experience will be.

What system would you recommend?

Pathfinder is DnD but better; most others focus on different settings so it depends on your interests I have always liked Cyberpunk 2020.

In my experience (which is limited to Pathfinder 2e without any extensions) Pathfinder is by far inferior to D&D 5e.

The classes _are_ more interesting, but you pretty much have to maximise your character's potential if you want to keep the game going or you just have to be willing to re-roll often and let characters die and just abandon quests. i.e. it is not good for heroic fantasy.

Then again Pathfinder isn't gritty enough for me to be interesting as "bunch of peasants who try to be adventurers" either.

Yes; rulesets and even settings are not the most important thing and are highly subjective. It is hard to make recommendations. I would expect a GM to scale difficulty to prevent characters dying too much (at least if they don't want to) with any system. But I can see that Pathfinder dose incentivize min-maxing long lived characters which will not be everyone's cup of tea. Similarly the combat system is fairly terrible in Cyberpunk 2020 but never stopped me enjoying it.

The biggest thing that I've seen D&D offer is support for campaign play. Systems like Blades in the Dark, Heart, and Mork Borg are great, but they are built around the assumption that characters are replaced (or in the case of Mork Borg, the world ends) regularly. A lot of other systems also tend to abstract away treasure in a way that I think is less satisfying for some players.

Personally, I'd love to see more systems that are less "wargaming" oriented than D&D but with a focus on long term play and, where possible, player growth.

They also sell so many overpriced kits with not much going on in them (just a few pieces of paper, not enough dice, sub par instructions ). Or really expensive character toys.

For me this is the most telling part that Hasbro doesn't quite get what you're actually selling if you have a tabletop company; it's not the ruleset, that will be leaked as soon as you sell a single copy and people actually play the game. It's instead ideas and world building visions from the people who were directly involved in creating the world and rules the company tries to sell to people. People are creative, but even the best story tellers wouldn't turn their nose up at some lore to help spark creativity, long as the lore isn't needlessly restrictive.

For me the naive part is focussing on player options.

I understand that groups generally have one DM and 4 players, do if you include player options you might sell 5 books instead of one. But that's the shallow, cash-in-now-fuck-next-decade mentality.

Meanwhile they haven't put out a decent adventure in a decade. The internet is awash with people trying to glue their ramblings back into coherent campaigns and running D&D (always a huge time sink) is becoming a worse experience every year as they keep flooding the market with crap.

I love running games but I've come to the point where I'm not really interested in starting a D&D group anymore because of all the bullshit.

WOTC: support your DMs or die.

Meanwhile they haven't put out a decent adventure in a decade.

Lost Mines of Phandelver, the adventure from the intro box, is pretty good (except when it switches to "every room has a monster" later on). It's very big for an intro adventure and there's tons of stuff in it.

But it's quite possible that it's the only good one they made.

I regret to inform you that was released in 2014, almost a decade ago.

That's longer ago than I thought, but still just within the decade, so it counts.

I admit it's a depressing performance by WotC.

Only a true D&D player would rules-lawyer the decade definition like that.

Sounds like a rollplayer, not a roleplayer.

I'm actually not a D&D player; I'm currently involved in Shadowrun, Blades in the Dark and Pathfinder 2. Despite that, I don't consider it very controversial to count a decade as 10 years.

They did expand on it with "Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk," which I understand to be quite good. Unfortunately it seems like most other paths are ok at best. I'm currently running the Dragonlance adventure, Shadow of the Dragon Queen, and that's very much how I'd describe it: ok. There are some really weird omissions where the game doesn't have info you need to run an encounter as described, and the world-building and information included in the book is woefully inadequate to "color outside the lines" without making up lots of details out of whole cloth. For a book that represents the first Dragonlance adventure in many years, it's a disappointing introduction to the setting.

WOTC: support your DMs or die.

good thing WotC isn't the only company writing adventures for D&D 5, then?

Yes. But more importantly, there are lots of creators making excellent stuff for systems that are not compatible with their bullshit player option supplements.

No Steve, you cannot be extra-planar half-staplerkin half-mongoose demi-lich paladin/sorcerer with a lemming patron. I don't care what Tasha's Bulging Cupboard of Crap or Volo's Yard-sale of Absolutely Everything has to say about it.

This was a problem in 3 and 3.5 era too and was only exacerbated by the rise of forums and wikis. I don’t think it’s possible to release one-size-fits-all-the-crap-that’s-out-there campaigns that are going to be actually interesting. At some point the DMs job is to make decisions about what fits and what doesn’t, and to help cultivate a culture of collaborative storytelling.

Yes, 100%. I DMed during the 3 and 3.5 era, and the “bullshit player option supplements” were a major problem. Players want to ask for the most out of pocket stuff they pick up from the splatbooks. It was beyond difficult to build a coherent party of players when everyone was using radically different concepts to build their characters. Game balance went out the window. 3 and 3.5 had terrible game balance to begin with, but once you bring in books like Exalted Deeds, it was even worse.

4E fixed a ton of problems here. Character classes were much more balanced and there were not many supplements with new classes and options—partly because it takes a ton of effort to make a new 4E class.

The internet is awash with people trying to glue their ramblings back into coherent campaigns

Cases in point, for the unaware: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44214/roleplaying-games... https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/41217/roleplaying-games...

Lore and adventure supplements are wonderful. Not only do I enjoy playing them, I enjoy reading them as their own form of literature.

It's instead ideas and world building visions from the people who were directly involved in creating the world

Yes, but someone needs to impress their boss/shareholders this very Quarter, and then the next, and then the next. Planning for the long haul requires a vision and patience that is not on the table. Hasbro mentality is (probably) "release the game mid-December, let it sell tons for Xmas, rake it in, start planning for next Xmas release".

I don't know if 'slow burn' is in their scope. It would be interesting to hear from them on this.

Also their recent move to 3-book + DM screen sets is really annoying. They did it first with Spelljammer's rerelease into 5e and I think the oceanic thirst for Spelljammer content might have sent them the wrong signal about the popularity of the actual content which was pretty thin for the amount you paid for it with notable missing rules like long range travel... for the space setting.

OMG they rereleased spelljammer? Brb, gotta go buy some DND books.

Which is to say, I am clearly part of the problem here.

Oh man it was super-disappointing and the end of my willingness to buy WoTC 5E. You'd be better off with the originals from DriveThru.

It was a bit thin, but I still had fun playing! I will be sad if they don't develop it further. Then again, I'd kind of like to see more of their legendary forgotten settings like Dark Sun...

They will never release another Dark Sun. It is waaay to vile and racist. Personally I love the setting, but there is zero change they could publish it without some serious backlash from a lot of people ... for who that content is not intended. Let's put it that way.

If they ever release something with the name Dark Sun, it will be that in name only. Disconnected from the original. Even worse than Spelljammer.

Oh man it was super-disappointing and the end of my willingness to buy WoTC 5E. You'd be better off with the originals from DriveThru.

I mean 5e is less broken than 2e so maybe it would be OK (that's not a high bar, to be fair).

Hmmm, thanks for the feedback, will try to resist the urge to splurge.

5E Spelljammer only superficially resembles the 2E Spelljammer. As a fan of the original Spelljammer the 5E version is a massive disappointment.

E-mail me at the profile, don’t give wotc money.

The combat system is pretty piss-poor, too - to the point where many people have released their own, better, rulesets for combat to address these problems.

Spelljammer combat? You have any links to that my wife is running a Spelljammer campaign right now and those might be useful to her.

Over all yes the whole thing came across as very weak and half hearted but of course it's freaking Spelljamming so it still sold very well despite being a weak product.

Here you go: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/407191/Spelljammer-5E-Theat...

(It's pay what you want, so you can pay zero if you want to try it out.)

This was written by a DM friend of mine who also runs an excellent podcast, if y'all are into that :)

They also sell so many overpriced kits with not much going on in them

Isn’t that the core business model of Hasbro?

I have enjoyed 5e greatly - I wish that Hasbro wasn't working so hard to kill D&D.

Yeah, WotC should never have sold themselves to Hasbro. Buying TSR was great, but selling to Hasbro was not. It may have seemed like a good idea at first because they got a lot of freedom in those first 10 years, but Habro has been tightening the screws lately and none of that has been good.

For those of you who are sick of Hasbro/WotC's shinanigans, give Pathfinder a shot. Its setting and rules should be very familiar for anyone used to DnD, but I've found the small changes they made to combat and progression really make the game much more interesting and rewarding.

I've found Paizo's pricing to be much more reasonable than WotC and they work well with open source projects. I've been using the open source system for Pathfinder on FoundryVTT with Paizo's official content packs and it's amazing. My experiences with DnD in Roll20 and AboveVTT don't even come close.

I really miss 2016 MtG. I remember when full art lands and full art promos were RARE and with money for no reason other than their collectability. I really liked when cards were rare because of the fact that they were good and uncommon and maybe because they were the same as the regular card but foil, not because they were arbitrarily a different type of shiny, or like when that one card from Kamigawa had a different color neon border that made it spike to 3k for a while, let alone the new serialized cards.

I wish we could go back to that, because I was so excited about collecting cards back then. Nowadays I feel like unless I open a pack with a crazy reprint or a REALLY lucky list card, there are essentially no cards worth anything. I remember pulling some shock lands and even when they were only 8 bucks it felt really great, like it was gambling. Now, I only ever get packs of remastered sets, and standard sets are wholly uninteresting. I do a $40 draft and get $3 worth of cards, and it is to be seen if these EVER go up in value.

I still love the game, and I play it more than ever. But there are three groups of people: investors, people that realize it is a TCG, and people that think all cards should be worthless. The first is greedy, the middle is realistic, and the latter is idealistic. But I am solidly in the middle, and there is so much pushing on both sides that the middle group is demonized for wanting to play a game and have cards have relative value too.

Why don't you buy singles?

(Not trying to be snarky. Just started playing a few months ago and that seems to be the best way to make decks without gambling. What's the point of buying packs?)

What's the point of buying packs?

Draft is probably the best MtG style of playing.

A lot of MtG turns into pay-to-win, since the best cards of the meta inevitably cost more. Drafting on the other hand, ensures that everyone has zero-cards upon the start of the draft and have to make due with the booster-cards that come in the draft.

In many ways, drafting is cheaper. You don't have to worry about making the best deck ever... instead you just have to make the best deck given the cards you draft. Then you can sell the expensive singles after the draft.

As a beginner, I think the drafts are a really unfriendly format that heavily biases experienced players (who know how different mechanics can combo each other, useful counters, deck balance, etc. by heart). I tried that with friends a few times but it was like trying to learn a new game every time, as fast as possible, so you can out-pick the cards before someone else grabs them. Personally I felt it shifted the gameplay from tactical card playing to race-to-viability in drafting.

In non draft games, either self made decks or pre-cons, you can spend time studying your deck and optimizing it before actual play starts. In drafts, much of the actual gameplay IS the drafting and gambling. The actual decks that get built are usually uninteresting, just fast aggressive combos that play like starter decks.

Thankfully I discovered Commander pre-cons, easily upgraded with some cheap singles, and have a lot of fun with that. Especially in 2v2 or free for all. It's all the stuff I love about card games (the deck building and tactics) without gambling. I'd much rather spend $50 on a precon and another $20 or so on singles, knowing exactly what I'll get, than buy or draft a bunch of random packs that almost never give me a useful deck in the end.

Just a matter of taste, I guess. I wish Magic weren't even collectible, personally, but a limited card game like the Fantasy Flight ones (game of thrones, arkham, etc.)

It sounds like you don't know what to look for in Drafts.

On the 1st cycle, decks are passed to your right. Remember which colors are getting passed to you, especially on turn 7+ in the Draft. this tells you which colors players on your left are _NOT_ going.

On the 2nd cycle, booster-packs are passed to your left. Same same, you're getting information from the other side of the table, so you know what to hate-draft (a draft-pick to hurt someone, rather than help yourself) in the 3rd phase.

The drafting phase also tells you which bombs and removal cards to look out for. Of course, 1st deck / 1st pick bombs are always taken and are fully secret, but 3rd round, its unlikely that the rare is going to be in the colors of your left-side opponent. So there's a good chance that the rare-to-your-left is passed to you, giving you information on what that opponent has drafted (whether that card matched their deck or not).

There are also incredibly powerful commons (ex: Lightning Bolt a few years ago...) that would be 1st-draft 1st-pick and better than the rare. So if you're 2nd pick and there's a good rare on the passed deck, it means the person to your left is likely going red/lightning bolt 1st pick.

Or in another set, when Doom Blade was in format, that'd be the 1st-pick / 1st draft card as a very powerful removal spell despite being a common.

that almost never give me a useful deck in the end.

But everyone has the same condition in a draft. The card pool is closed: everyone had access to the same card pool and is therefore nearly fair. Obviously if your 1st pack / 1st pick was much better than everyone else's, that's a bit of the luck to the draft.

The "goal" of Draft is to pick the color that "the table has ignored". If your 7 other opponents are white, red, blue, green, red, green, and white... then you can pickup all the powerful black-cards. The "winner" of the draft will likely be fought between blue vs black (the only two "uninterrupted drafters") in the table that set.

There's only so many good cards for any given strategy. If *EVERYONE* goes early-aggro / rushdown (IE: White/Red/Green), then the one guy who drafted all the control cards (Blue/Black) probably just beats everyone at the table.

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I'd say the main problem with Draft is the unbalanced nature of it all. If you're sitting to the right of a newbie who passes you good cards (or is otherwise ignorant of the Drafting format), you end up building a deck far more powerful than everyone else.

IE: The biggest advantage you can get in a Draft is sitting to the right of a newbie (2x rounds where you pass to the right). The 2nd biggest advantage is sitting to the left of a newbie (1x round where you pass to the left).

But if everyone at the table is of roughly the same skill level, its a great format. The drafting phase innately self-balances, as everyone is picking (and changing their picks) in relation to what they've been passed.

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I'd much rather spend $50 on a precon and another $20 or so on singles,

Competitive decks "in the meta" are closer to $200 to $500 in my experience. 60x cards, and a chunk of them cost $20 to $80.

Preparation and Money ruins the game since you're just buying up known combos and 4x of the best $50 cards that on the last tournament...

It sounds like you don't know what to look for in Drafts.

[snip]

Yeah, exactly. It's that whole meta-game I have zero interest in (competitive card-picking, as opposed to competitive card-playing). Just different strokes for different folks and all that.

I'd say the main problem with Draft is the unbalanced nature of it all. [...] But if everyone at the table is of roughly the same skill level, its a great format.

That makes sense, especially in MTG where there are like 20,000 cards to choose from. The P2W can definitely come out.

Ironically that's actually one of the reasons I prefer another card game, Elder Scrolls: Legends (https://bethesda.net/game/legends), a Morrowind/Oblivion-themed digital card game that's technically "collectible", but they stopped making new cards a few years ago. Now it's just the same set of a few hundred old cards, but people still keep coming up with new metas without spending any more money. It's awesome, and there are no new overpowered cards to be surprised by, just interesting new uses of them. Despite having been technically abandoned, the community is still very active (no more than 20-30 seconds to find a match, which is sometimes faster than even MTG Arena!)

I feel like MTG suffered the opposite fate, where it became a victim of its own runaway success, and draft was popularized amongst older players who got sick of trying to keep up with the incessant power creep. Is that fair?

Now it's just the same set of a few hundred cards, but keep still come up with new metas without spending more money.

That's called a "Cube" in Magic the Gathering.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/building-your-firs...

https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Cube_Draft

We draft Cubes from our old collections all the time, to help recycle our older cards.

That makes sense, especially in MTG where there are like 20,000 cards to choose from. The P2W can definitely come out. > Now it's just the same set of a few hundred cards, but keep still come up with new metas without spending more money.

A typical Draft's card pool is only ~300ish cards or so, whatever is in the newest set. Its actually small enough to memorize.

You don't draft booster-cards from all of MtG. A Draft is innately around the ~300ish cards of some set. Lost Caverns of Ixalan only consists of 291 cards.

That's called a "Cube" in Magic the Gathering.

It wasn't super clear to me from that article, but does this mean everyone drafts from the same cube (like you combine cards and then everyone draws from them)? Or does everyone make their own cubes?

I think a difference there (vs a limited number of cards in the game, period) is being able to realistically know all the cards that can be played. There's not this surprise of "what, I didn't even know this ridiculous card exists" -- everyone's seen all the cards, dozens if not hundreds of times -- but it's up to them to create new and interesting combinations of those same cards. It's more chess-like in that way and less of an arms race.

You don't draft booster-cards from all of MtG. A Draft is innately around the ~300ish cards of some set. Lost Caverns of Ixalan only consists of 291 cards.

Right, but that only lasts a few months, right? Or is it weeks now? Getting 291 unique cards would require many cases of cards (and thousands of dollars, probably?)... I tried that for one cycle and then stopped after realizing how expensive it gets, and how quickly too.

It wasn't super clear to me from that article, but does this mean everyone drafts from the same cube (like you combine cards and then everyone draws from them)? Or does everyone make their own cubes?

A cube is 360 (total) cards that you tell all your friends about. Some of these cards are repeats (ex: 4x Elite Vanguards).

You bring those cards, you shuffle them up, deal out 15-to-each-person, and then start drafting (pretending this random-deal of 15 is "like a booster pack").

There's not this surprise of "what, I didn't even know this ridiculous card exists" -- everyone's seen all the cards, dozens if not hundreds of times -- but it's up to them to create new and interesting combinations of those same cards. It's more chess-like in that way and less of an arms race.

Then keep to the same cube. Make everyone in your group know what cards are in the cube, ask questions about those cards before playing.

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The "owner" of the Cube is responsible for "balance patches" (Hmmm... Red is too strong. I'll replace some of these powerful Red cards with weaker ones). So its not completely static. But the general plan is to build a set that your group can "recycle" and grow to become experts in.

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Right, but that only lasts a few months, right? Or is it weeks now? Getting 291 unique cards would require many cases of cards (and thousands of dollars, probably?)... I tried that for one cycle and then stopped after realizing how expensive it gets, and how quickly too.

You... look at the cards before entering a draft. Ex: https://www.magicspoiler.com/mtg-set/the-lost-caverns-of-ixa...

All of this information is published ahead of time. Some, more competitive, players even playtest / draft when the spoilers are released long before the Pre-release. Using computer software to emulate a draft.

The only money you put down in each draft is the 3x Booster Packs per draft (or if you're in an official event, the entry fee which also includes a bit extra for the prize-packs)

Draft-players don't "collect" the cards. You usually sell the cards after the draft.

Then keep to the same cube. The "owner" of the Cube is responsible for "balance patches" (Hmmm... Red is too strong. I'll replace some of these powerful Red cards with weaker ones). So its not completely static. But the general plan is to build a set that your group can "recycle" and grow to become experts in.

Thanks for explaining this! I actually really like this. I will suggest it to our Magic group next time :) That might just be the kind of experience we're needing.

All of this information is published ahead of time. Some, more competitive, players even playtest / draft when the spoilers are released long before the Pre-release. Using computer software to emulate a draft.

Wait, really? I didn't know that either. So if I'm understanding you right, people basically simulate drafts (in software... any recommendations?) before the actual release? Does the software include estimated rarity, such that if you practice drafting a few times, you're as unlikely to get the rares as in the real card version?

Draft-players don't "collect" the cards. You usually sell the cards after the draft.

This probably just goes back to the difference in preferences earlier: novelty in cards vs novelty in tactical deck-building. I prefer the latter, where you work a small pile of "knowns" and rearrange them more effectively, vs constantly having new piles of unknowns. The "curated Cube" may just be the perfect answer to that. Thanks again!

https://dr4ft.info/

https://ponymtg.github.io/cockatrice1.html

Does the software include estimated rarity, such that if you practice drafting a few times, you're as unlikely to get the rares as in the real card version?

Yes, of course. Rarity is important to drafting strategy.

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You ain't gonna beat a top level player who has practiced drafting a set dozens of times before the release, lol.

But grow to the skill level you're comfortable with. A bit of practice goes a long way.

Thanks!

There's a large crossover between magic players and software developers, so there are a huge amount of great tools. The ones I currently use are:

- https://cubecobra.com for inspiration. There are draftbots but they are not very good. - https://draftmancer.com the ideal way to draft online or against bots

Personally even as a player who's pretty good at piloting a deck I dislike draft because it a) requires a good knowledge of the set I don't have the time or inclination to build to know what strategies are supported well b) has a lot of skill in reading 'signals' to have an idea of what colors are being heavily pulled from early enough to change directions and c) gluing that pile of cards into a deck that can be even a little fun to play or have a chance of winning.

I prefer a rich man's draft: Buy a box for myself, and see what I can cobble together.

- A magpie, with approx $300 of MtG on my desk rn

If you are exclusively buying singles that screams to me you are just powergaming and netdecking your decks instead of actually figuring out the game and playing it.

Sure you can get a better deal that way - meaning a higher win rate deck while spending less money, but a lot of the fun of MtG is (or at least was when I played) the discovery of new cards in the set, trading cards with your gaming group(s), and trying to build the best deck(s) you collectively had access to. When people started to just look what wins tournaments and just order whole decks as singles from web stores it ruined the hobby.

A) There was less cards to go around for the rest of us

B) they were just playing something someone else designed and play tested and tuned for GP or PT

I actually just enjoy building decks that are interesting in some way, and singles let me do that without going bankrupt.

I don't know what netdecking is (buying singles to make someone else's posted deck? no fun in that). I don't play competitively and I don't care about the meta or anything, I just have the most fun arranging decks to fit some purpose without having to gamble.

For what it's worth, the decks I've built weren't really meant to win (they rarely do), but to explore some aspect of Magic I felt interesting. An example one is a Mindflayers copy deck that just spawns a bunch of mind flayers and copies them and takes over enemy creatures one at a time. It almost never works (it's easy to counter and has a slow ramp), but in the rare instances it succeeds, it's fun to watch. I only built that deck because I was really enjoying Baldur's Gate 3.

I only started playing Magic a few months ago, and the pay to win aspect had zero appeal to me. I have no interest in collecting and selling cardboard cards, I just want to design fun new decks and experiment with them. Singles and proxies make that possible.

People who play Magic the random gamble way are IMO playing a different game. That's fine, just not what I'm into :)

My theory is that all cards will eventually be under $10, because cards like Mana Crypt are opportunities for WoTC to make money via reprints. I’ve only been playing/buying since March, but I’ve seen so many cards dropping dramatically in price, much more often than seeing a card shoot up in price. Reprints help drive sales and justify the higher prices for booster packs.

Cutting staff implies that, perhaps, they anticipate more Universes Beyond and reprints, and fewer original sets with original mechanics. Universes Beyond is great for Wizards because they don’t have to really invent cards, and fans will pay whatever they ask for cards from their favorite shows and movies and games.

This month people are losing their minds over the Princess Bride and Dr. Malcolm Secret Lair sets.

They're in a tough spot because they have to keep several audiences happy: collectors and players. Players generally want the cheapest set pieces while collectors want the value of their collection to grow. I think WotC has done a decent job trying to satisfy both groups and are at least trying different things. As an investor, you should be happy about that. Whether or not this sea change of releases over the pandemic helps or hurts the long-term health of the game is a worry of mine.

I wish playing with third-party "proxy" cards were more accepted (like https://mtg-print.com/set/fallout or https://proxyking.biz/), where you can get any card custom-printed for a dollar or so. Maybe I just have to find a group where nobody cares about collecting.

If WotC did that first-party, I'd buy a shit ton from them even if they had zero resale value. But I guess that would eat into their collectibles and gacha pack market.

At least in commander casual it seems pretty well accepted.

And with how extensive some alters are, their proxy nature may not be distinguishable (although I don’t think you should mislead people, just be upfront and if you don’t mind bring fallback decks).

It might actually be more accepted in competitive EDH (and pretty much required) as most people can't be expected mortgage their homes to buy a deck full of expensive reserve list cards[1] :D. It helps that cEDH is not a sanctioned format.

[1] cEDH is sometimes called singleton multiplayer vintage for a reason.

I would not be shocked, but I know nothing about cEDH while I have at least some acquaintance with EDH.

Also talking about singleton vintage is a bit funny when vintage is the only format with a restricted list (and thus in a way the original format with singleton restriction).

yes, arguably vintage is singleton vintage :D

This month people are losing their minds over the Princess Bride and Dr. Malcolm Secret Lair sets.

Wonderful art on the Princess Bride set.

I can't help but notice that if Inigo Montoya gets into combat with the Man in Black... he'll win.

I dropped $200 on Dr Malcolm and some others for the Locust God promo. I'm very happy with it all, and now get to build an Egglord deck with Jeff Goldblum's face on it.

And, if you've only experienced a few set releases, price swings will seem weird. Keep in mind that more boxes will be opened for a while, thus making more copies of coveted things available. It's a different story when a set goes out of print.

The monopoly profit maximizing price for a card is going to depend on the precise shape of the demand curve for each individual card; It may be $10 it may be $50; the fact that they could crash the price whenever they want does not mean it is in their interests to do so.

There’s only two camps, investors and gamers. I think that anyone who wants to “have cards that have relative value” are investors, whether they realize it or not. Its one thing to collect because you like something inherent about the cards themselves (I recall a recent Reddit post where the user was trying to collect every single Magic card that depicted an owl in any way). But if your concern is about the monetary value of the cards in your collection, you are an investor, of some kind.

I personally think cards should be for playing, and am pretty opposed to cards being valuable if that means that playing the actual game becomes prohibitively expensive. Standard decks costing hundreds of dollars is not a good thing.

There’s only two camps, investors and gamers.

It's not that black and white. I used to play the game in the mid nineties. The most expensive card I bought back then I paid the equivalent of 5 EUR (the Euro didn't even exist yet) because I needed it for a deck but that card came out before I started playing.

I'm not an investor in MtG cards. But my collection went up in value. Nothing crazy (I don't have any of the "power nines") but with 28 dual lands, the most valuable card from Legends (The Tabernacle At Pendrell Vale) and the most valuable card from Arabian Night (Bazaar of Baghdad) and a few others, I'm sitting easily on 20 K EUR atm.

I didn't do it on purpose: I simply never got rid of my cards, not paying attention to the price. I just like my old cards and they bring me back memories when I look at them.

I'm take it I'm in a third category: nostalgic people who simply like their very own (and very old) cards.

This would have been me. My old collection would have been worth $30k+ today…if I hadn’t gotten rid of them 25 years ago.

On the other hand- I played in 1999 and looks like my collection would be worth probably less than what I sold it for at the time

The cards that I remember having, specifically 4 of every dual land (about $800 / each as of a couple of years ago) and my most valuable card at the time...a Time Twister ($1,500 now) make up the bulk of it. I don't remember what all else I had.

An emotional investor is still an investor, and I think people like you are specifically a lot of the reason MTG/Hasboro wants it to be collectible.

It's the "oh this card is valuable because it's powerful, and has good art, AND everyone else thinks it's monetarily valuable which justifies my nostalgia of it"

It's a weird example of how money messes things up. The "it's good in and my deck and has emotional value" should be enough because scarcity makes it hard for the 13 year old with only spare lunch money to get into EDH.

Its one thing to collect because you like something inherent about the cards themselves

I mean, isn't that a collector? I doubt there are more "investors" than "people who thought the card looked cool". A collector might turn into an investor, but people who aren't looking to flip their cards in months time are more likely to be a "collector". So for there card and art quality is key.

If you want my anecdote: I never seriously played YGO but there was a point where I tried to get every single Blue Eyes I could grab. I didn't care about mint condition or even the dozen of rarities. I just wanted to see the different ways Blue eyes was portrayed, even if it was the same exact card with different art.

I think you can not be an investor and like the gambling aspect. And I personally wouldn't consider gamblers investors.

I enjoy having high-value cards in my collection, but the best way to show them off is in a deck that uses them well. I'm not throwing my Surge Foil copy of The One Ring in a random Commander deck.

https://old.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/13gihbr/today_i_f...

for the owl collector, who at the time of posting seems to have missed a few.

I prefer having cheap cards. You are paying for the experience not the cards when you draft.

What I don’t like is wotc printing new powerful cards in non-standard sets. Modern horizons, commander sets, etc print absolutely must play busted cards but the sets are limited print quantity and artificially scarce.

If it was up to me all new cards would be printed in standard sets and supplemental sets are reprints only.

2016 magic was nice because you could play reserved list cards without having to sell a kidney…

Part of the point is that a lot of these cards would be busted in standard though, so printing straight to modern is a way to still get these kinds of cards out without powercreeping the standard of the day.

I copped this version of the Hidetsugu you're thinking of for $30 at my LGS a few weeks ago: https://scryfall.com/card/neo/432/hidetsugu-devouring-chaos

Prices of swaggy stuff is always irrational until the smallest attention spans have moved on.

I assume you know about Collector Packs, those are my favorites for splashing a chunk of money on a set. If I can afford to preorder a box, or pick one up on some random sale, they have the highest swag tier.

The only card I've sold in the past several years has been a copy of Parallel Lives. It got me enough store credit to cop a Chatterfang, and some other goodies to build a first Commander deck after not touching my cards in years. I had 4 or 5 copies, so it was easy to part with. I also gave one copy away to a friend who had just bought some sort of 'Hobbits and food tokens' precon deck.

A layoff gives managers the opportunity to fire people who they've wanted to fire for a while. The firings within WotC were likely opportunistic and not about trying to change the direction or strength of the company. Doing it as part of larger layoffs gives an excuse for it and in theory mitigates drama.

Ah you beat me to it. Layoffs like this mitigate the drama for sure, but also mitigates legal liability, which just goes to show you; you're a fool to remain loyal to the company. A lot of the people fired were rated highly in their performance reviews, I'm sure. But if you're too ambitious or criticized the boss for making a mistake or just looked at him wrong... you're gone.

My advice:

- Always be interviewing

- Never stay somewhere longer than 2-4 years

- Don't take on extra work or go above and beyond

- Try to work two or more remote jobs

- Kiss your boss' ass

- Never take a stand on anything

Try to work two or more remote jobs

What, routinely?

No.

It's not as hard as you think, especially if you do contract work on the side while you have a full time job.

How much money do you need?

Enough to tell my boss to get f*cked

So now you have three jobs?

You work too much.

You’re likely mistaken about the value they’re contributing. Corporate America can be a heartless place, for sure, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to straight up fire underperforming white collar workers.

There is no heart or soul, rhyme or reason in it. It's all about who's friends with who, and each particular cult of marketing of apparent utility.

The difficulty in firing is directly related to how risk averse (lawsuit averse) HR is.

This feels like a self fulfilling thing. You get laid off, so you start following these rules and you are even more likely to get laid off.

I can honestly say I not only don’t follow these rules, I think I follow almost their direct opposite, and despite many around me being laid off I never have been even when voluntary redundancy was being offered and applying for it, I have more than enough money to walk away from a job if I want to.

If you find every workplace so hateful that you must follow these rules have you considered that the problem might actually be you?

I'm glad you've found fulfilling places to work, but I think you might have a bit of survivorship-bias.

Yeah, your comment above really hit home for me. Had the exact experience and younger me could've used that advice. Things are good now, but yeah

The "48 laws of power" gets a lot of (perhaps well deserved) shade, but there are some insights there, if your post is any indication.

Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri did a really interesting deep dive into this book and its author in their podcast "If Books Could Kill". Recommended listening.

TL;DR: It is theorized that the author (Robert Greene) studied classics and wanted to write a book about influential leaders throughout history, but the only way to get such a book green-lit by a publisher was to wrap the history around a "self-help for men" context, which naturally gravitates towards building empires and making more money. This is why, like many self-help books, the advice is dubious, but unlike almost all self-help books, the historical anecdotes are extremely correct.

Never take a stand on anything

"If you stand for nothing, Burr, what'll you fall for?" (c)

agree, I'd rather be a professional with a shorter lifespan than a henchman/goon that can survive anything

This is a little too jaded, but in all seriousness younger me, everything except the 2+ remote jobs is true.

Always ask yourself _does my manager want this, or do I think my manager will want this when I'm done with it?_.

Also, you never take a stand on anything in the sense that _you never want to be the only person in the room advocating for something longer than a couple sentences_.

Adults are just as nasty as middle schoolers, but to your face, they won't say a thing. They are old enough to have learned its easy and feels good to shit on other people, and it is hard and feels bad to have a Discussion(tm).

Nah.

Hold yourself and those around you to high standards and you’ll develop a keen sense for when people aren’t doing the same.

That helps you avoid the shitty companies and bosses that make these coping mechanisms seem necessary.

"A layoff gives managers the opportunity to fire people who they've wanted to fire for a while"

This may be true sometimes but I have seen plenty of layoffs where whole projects/departments got axed based on not very good information. A lot of C*O people make these decisions based on very flimsy information.

Yeah it means no requirement to do a PIP.

That would be true if it was managers actually making the decision who to fire. It's increasingly centralized all the way to the top.

Do you have any evidence this is what is happening? Why didnt it occur with the first round?

This comes after this year selling the rights to the Transformers movie series, an arguably larger hit to their ability to have mainstream impact. It seems very unlikely they wouldn't be looking for a buyer for WotC as well, and trimming down to just the IP may be making it a better sale.

The company is struggling and likely pulling out all the stops the avoid bankruptcy, when you need liquidity this could very much include cuts to otherwise profitable segments.

The quality of the IP that they sold off w/ eOne, both on the music side in their 2021 sale and the tv/movie side with this recent one, is staggering.

Notably, the entire Death Row Records catalog, Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, international distribution for The Walking Dead, etc.

Those notable titles are pretty old and past development. Same as Transformers.

I guess they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business.

they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business.

Isn't that business basically free money? The way I see it, no capital investment is needed. You just need to keep a few accountants and lawyers around to handle occasional licensing paperwork. Am I missing something?

It may be "free money" as you frame it. But a cash stream that provides n dollars per year forever can be valued in today's dollars, assuming a discount rate of d, at n / (1-d). So it's reasonable to prefer cash now to revenue forever, at that exchange rate, depending on your corporate interests.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/present-value-annuity.a...

This strikes me as a shortsighted, risky, and frankly unsustainable attitude for a company. It's no surprise they're struggling.

The discount rate is doing a lot of work here. There is a discount rate such that we're not talking about shortsightedness. Getting it right is difficult. But as an example, how much would you buy an investment that pays a hundred dollars, guaranteed, next year for? Trivially, the discount rate includes at least the expected amount of inflation; it's not worth a dollar.

For assets line like IP you have to factor in how risky the returns are, how much investment you'd have to make to see them (e.g. making a movie), and overall strategy (do we want to be in that line of business).

All this to say - if you have IP that pays 10 million a year, you can value future returns on that IP in today's dollars. If someone offers you more than that to buy it, you should take the deal; you come out ahead.

You have the right idea, but you got the formula wrong. That's evidenced in the source you link, but you can also reason it from first principles: a higher discount rate should make the cash stream less valuable, not more. The correct formula is n / d.

Oops, that's what I get for mathing before coffee-- mixed up the formula for \sum (1+r)^n vs. \sum r^n

It might not be that straightforward when dealing internationally?

But doesn't that mean that at least nationally, it's essentially a money printing machine?

Because this is my layman's conception of how media licensing works, at least.

Well consider the recent spate of music artists who've sold their back catalogues. They're selling that future income for a lump sum [while they can enjoy it].

Hasbro is doing the same. Swap fifty years of slow income for instant liquidity. A company with as many steels in the fire as Hasbro should be able to use that to generate a lot more money than through legacy property.

It is very much not free -- they apparently raised a lot of debt to buy eOne, and they are going to have find a way to pay that off or roll it over into a much, much higher interest rate environment than 2019.

Does it matter? Hasbro probably has growth targets. They may have concluded that price hikes for legacy content matching their growth targets were unlikely to be feasible.

Well, why wouldn't they sell (license) the rights to make Transformers films (which as far as I know is just extending their existing contract with Paramount)?

They still own the underlying IP[^1], so as long as the contract is a decent one, Paramount has to deal with the actual making/distributing the film, and Hasbro just gets the money, and a toy line off the back of the film. Feels like an easier set up than taking the risk on movie-making yourself (which they did attempt with eOne for other properties, but seemingly have decided that it's probably not a good deal with them)

[1] yes, yes, it's a bit more complicated with Takara in the mix too, but you can essentially view it as a Hasbro-owned property

I don’t see why they would sell WoTC considering it’s the profit generator that keeps the other businesses afloat.

Prepare for the enshittification and bedbathandbeyonding of Magic the gathering.

If I had to make a guess as to why, given the fact that the people they laid off were all senior leaders and the numbers are good, it would be preparing for a pump and dump.

if you want to be able to pump and dump a really strong brand then you need to be able to have leaders who don’t mind burning the brands equity in order to make money. My guess is that specifically what intending to do here.

Change the leadership, make new “sticky” products, pump revenue numbers, then spin out a public offering of the magic brand that looks like a great new reboot and refresh.

However the brand is only there to smuggle in the subscription model around new products that have strong margin. Everyone* gets rich cause they slaughtered their fattest pig and yet another cultural staple is killed.

Don’t worry, another band of psychopaths will resurrect it in a few decades like Mattell is doing with the Barbie brand currently.

*Not everyone - very few actually

Prepare for the enshittification and bedbathandbeyonding of Magic the gathering.

That happened during the original design of the game. M:tG was one of the first products to sell you a pig in a poke. That was the concept!

I've seen people say that it would be nice to regulate loot boxes in video games, but they can't figure out how to do it without banning Magic's business model. I never understood why that would be a problem.

Exactly. It would be a better game if they just sold entire expansions where you get all of the cards.

It may not even exist without such a model, on the other hand. Which may cause many other things to cease as well or never expand to mainstream-ish reception.

It might be slowly moving to that model: with precon decks, challenger decks and secret lairs, WotC is selling a lot of non-randomized stuff. They even split for a while draft boosters from collector boosters (and then reversed the decision when nobody was buying the draft boosters and risked killing the format).

They have non-randomized offers, but the vast majority of their stuff can only be obtained randomly (or secondhand).

I've seen people say that it would be nice to regulate loot boxes in video games, but they can't figure out how to do it without banning Magic's business model. I never understood why that would be a problem.

The genius thing about Magic is that it doesn't place individual value on a card. Even if there is indeed a "drop rate". But that drop rate doesn't always evaluate to higher value. It correlates and they try to make if so, but that's ultimately a different marketplace who externally decides what has value.

Video games don't have such safeguards. It's all on the studios servers and they can adjust value on the fly. Unless lootboxes are all cosmetics there's a more direct hand in the market that can influence value and worth. And it all comes crashing down the moment the studios decides to shut down the servers. I feel that's an intrinsic difference that places a video game closer to a casino ("the house always wins") than a TCG (throw out what you think is worth and let the community sort it out).

With MtG, I can go online and see what my odds are for just about any kind of packs I get: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/collecting-ravnica...

Not sure if they were always this forthcoming about the 'slotting', but I do appreciate it.

They did one round, but I think it takes 3 rounds of pump and dump before it really dies

The enshittification already happened. The most recent incorporation of other IPs, like the upcoming Dr Who, is a series of last gasps. While sales have followed along the aging income growth of existing players, the inverse pressure of exiting players is past sustainable levels. Other forms of gamba have eroded the MTG gamba allure.

Re: Youtube - Tolarian Community College - which is very good at capturing the state of the ecosystem.

What is inherently wrong with co-branded product? Do you have any data to back up "exiting players"? I don't think we really have a good read on that. The MagicCons I've been to have been increasingly packed with people.

What is inherently wrong with co-branded product?

it points towards brand dilution and financial straw-grasping. it indicates that the stewards of the IP no longer care about the thing being meaningful and the release schedule is now no longer ordered to increase impact and brand value, but rather to extract whatever value has been accumulated via customer good-will thus-far.

you can see this trend/process occur in just about any long-standing fantasy/fiction IP.

Some IPs are built to push product. Evangelion and Gundam are designed to shove plastic toys out the door since day 1.

Some IPs slowly evolve into that product push once main-line income dwindles; those are the ones that tend to upset folks with that sort of behavior, and frankly it cheapens the brand appeal by reducing exclusivity.

In other words : niche appeal exists, and generally the move towards synergistic advertisement partnerships over quality generally signals the corporate desire for generating mass market appeal at the sake of sacrificing the niche crowd.

The concern many MtG players have is that throwing a bunch of other IP crossovers into the card game has a variety of potentially negative effects:

- established players who enjoyed the theme of Magic in the first place might be turned off

- it creates an increasing number of products and therefore product fatigue, which is something I’ve heard lots of players mention and was even brought up by Hasbro themselves in a financial call

- it adds to the increasingly confusing legality of cards/formats. Some crossovers have alternate in-universe versions. Many don’t. Some are commander legal. Some are commander and modern legal. Some have their own draft environments. Knowing what cards you can play in a given format is getting obnoxious to track.

- They clearly seem to be introducing new players to Magic, but they are also clearly driving old Magic players away. The question is how persistent are the new players? Do they stick around, or does their interest wane when their favorite crossover franchise isn’t getting new cards anymore?

I personally think it’s too soon to tell, but a lot of the moves strike me as very reminiscent of the types of moves that eventually are identified as enshitificafion as management tries to extract as much short term juice as possible in a way that damages long term health. I’d love to be wrong.

The part of the player base that cares deeply about the lore of MtG was skeptical of having My little Pony, Warhammer 40k, Lord of the Rings, Fallout and Street Fighter cards (all real btw!).

The other thing is that there's a certain product-fatigue and format fatigue in the community. There are so many releases each year that it's increasingly impossible to give the monetary and time commitment to follow 100% of MtG. It was never a cheap hobby, but the price increases and the proliferation of products really is noticeable.

The old-school entrenched playerbase is also noticing that the formats they grew up with are becoming increasingly irrelevant. In-person standard-events in local stores are increasingly harder to find (and even if an event is planned it often fails because not enough people show up). The competitive tournament scene is almost completely dead. The big money-maker for wizards is Commander and you are thus seeing more and more cards aimed at that format, even in standard-sets.

In short: the extended universe is not aimed at the old-school base and can be seen as an unnecessary money-grab at best or as an "they killed my preferred format for this?!" outrage condensation point.

You are seeing the same thing in the MCU: it's hard to follow /all/ movies and TV shows and even worse: some of the shows are not aiming at the classically young singe male audience and thus shows aimed at female teenagers are produced. Some part of the nerd community sees that as a direct attack on their identity.

I did not care about Dr Who, Godzilla, Walking Dead, Fallout, etc. But I did buy the LotR and Warhammer decks (and I was not disappointed). The reality is that different people like different things, and I don't think Universe Beyond is a bad thing per se.

It is not like the default story is terribly interesting and little more than generic, second rate fantasy.

It seems like we're reliving 1980 all over again but with smartphones, internet, millions of homeless people, and slightly better fashion.

“now it’s a union shop in the same state as Wizards”

- regarding unions is it considered a good thing? I still think of it as a crony workplace where only age is promoted and not merit. Am I wrong? Only did union job at a grocery store (UFCW)

Unions tends to reward credentials and years of experience over performance or capability.

For most people it lowers downside risk and lowers upside opportunity.

Unions prioritize whatever it is the members want prioritized.

Unions like government prioritize what ever the vocal, loudest, and most organized minority of the group wants prioritized, this will not align with all members, and rarely even aligns with what the majority of members desire

I don't think that's generally true.

A recent example: the WGA just ended a strike against the movie and television studios and from what I've read about it, the resolution was not determined by the loudest minority. A deal was worked out, the membership voted, and 99% voted to accept the agreement. That seems like a success.

Lets survey the membership, what is left of them, in a year or less and see if they still feel it was a "success"...

I have a feeling a large % of them will not be in WGA jobs in 18 mos

Indeed. And members tend to want to put up barriers to entry and engage in credentialism to prevent competition from new comers.

That’s true of corporations too. In practice there are patterns.

I worked at a unionized job as a teenager at an industrial plant and I asked how to get hired for real instead of temping and he explained how unions worked there and other plants in town. He said it's extremely neoptistic, they'd usually hire a kid of one of the workers or a friend and the odds of an outsider getting in was thin. They dealt out jobs like a mafia family.

I have a few friends in the trades, all part of a union, and none of them would echo this sentiment.

It's also funny because this is the exact same sentiment people complain about with the corporate world, where it's more about who you know than what you know.

Trade unions and Employment unions are very different.

That said, i suspect the parent story was from years ago, most likely late 90's or early 00's when that type of thing was common

Today most unions are very very very hard up to find anyone willing to work everyone that wants a job, and can actually follow instructions, and show up on time (harder than it sounds it seems) gets a job right now...

It was early 2000s in Southern Ontario Canada

I worked at a unionized job. It was not that way for us at all. Perhaps a different industry? It was mostly just protection from shenanigans. Once, for instance, the owner of the company tried not to give us a contracted wage increase - a wage increase he agreed to - and he got slammed by the civil judge. We were paid 3 times the wages that he had tried to steal.

There's only one unionized TTRPG shop and it's Paizo, so it's uncharted waters for that industry. That said, several people now at Hasbro (F. Wesley Schneider, Amanda Hamon, Judy Bauer) jumped ship from Paizo before the unionization effort. I haven't seen any of those names in the layoff lists, but the company they left is very different now, and I don't know if that makes it more or less attractive to them.

I don’t think it’s possible to determine if a decision like this is a good one without working at the company. News articles like this are useless.

How does the board of directors evaluate management performance then?

I think it's fair to consider a board of directors as people who "work at the company".

I don’t. Further it’s common for all stockholders to be asked to vote on decisions with 1 vote per share. While it’s true most people have only a trivial number of shares and are therefore largely irrelevant they also don’t have access to non public information.

Most Boards of Directors contain a bunch of representatives of the largest institutional holders and some members hand picked by the CEO.

In Hasbro's case, the Chair of the Board is listed as an employee of the company and was their interim CEO. The rest of board follows what you would expect.

If history is any guide, "work" might be a stretch but "employed by the company", sure. Only half joking.

Simple. Did the management meet the various internal targets outlined by the board.. Those could be anything from profitability, to total cost structure, to anything really

Have you ever read a news article about something you have insider knowledge of?

I'm not so sure. Whether this article is good or not is a moot point. Hasbro is publicly traded so there is verifiable information about the company available. As others have pointed out, we can see them rapidly selling off assets and IP and cutting staff. I'm not a professional analyst, but surely one could substantiate an argument for or against this decision.

Edit: Also, this decision isn't a single data point. We can look at the track record and business trajectory to make an informed decision. I am not particularly well informed about Hasbro, but based on historical stock price, industry trends and comments here, it really seems like they are fucking up

MTG and D&D both grew by like 20% last year. If they’re fucking up with managing them it’s not showing in the numbers yet.

Also it would be hard to know from numbers anyway. Maybe if they managed it better it would be up 30% Neither product has significant competition so you couldn’t even really guess by comparing to an overall market.

Broader Hasbro numbers might be a little more comparable (there is an overall toy and games industry) but still tough.

It’s often hard to tell from the numbers that a company is being ruined until it is too late.

Good and bad itself depends on the perspective. Good for Hasbro? Can be argued I guess, depends also on its current economic situation and a lot of things other people may indeed not have the best knowledge about. Good for the players and fans of DnD? Good for those who actually work in the company and got laid off, or the remaining staff there? Almost surely not. This decision is not taken on their behalf and does not serve them in any way. And considering the popularity of DnD there is no surprise that the issue is going to be approached from an employee or player perspective rather than an investor or manager one.

Yeah, MTG twitter is really mad about it, but people at WoTC often have fairly narrow skillsets, so I would not be surprised that at some point they want to rebalance the set of skills that they have access to to do something different.

I found out they fired a community manager... and I had no idea who that person was without a bunch of googling, which tells you a bit about how effective that spending was for wotc.

Not to say that I think wotc corporate is at all infallible, they are clearly not very good at doing anything besides designing the cards themselves, and even then, they have largely inherited a very good game rather than really doing anything amazing.

Wotc could really use a shake up that raises the standards of what they produce to the level of eg riot games, but that's unlikely to happen any time soon.

The market seems to disagree with the piece. The stock was in free fall from early October and recovered a bit after the layoff announcement.

Anyone have an idea why?

Because layoffs provide profitability, rough as it is.

However! What Hasbro is doing to WOTC is tremendously short term thinking. You do not prune the organizations that are providing all of your liquidity in a time of crisis for fear of pruning the wrong branch and diminishing the growth by sending a message to key people that it’s time to go, which is always possible and arguably likely when you cut.

I believe that Hasbro shareholders should insist on making WOTC’s management team responsible for the whole company, as they have time and again been the backbone of profitability, progressive projects that actually ship and make actual money and have been doing a lot of good decision making in recent years.

Yes I’m aware of the CEO’s criticisms around short term decision making, but he’s always had to answer to the parent company and they are very corporate and MBA-logic oriented.

Now on to the answer to your question, here is the math they look at:

https://www.business.com/finance/big-tech-earnings-and-layof...

From the article:

Key Takeaways

Amazon had $2.8 million in earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization – or EBITDA) for every staff member they laid off in January.

Meta had $3.9 million in earnings for each of the 11,000 staff members they laid off in November. In response to Meta’s cost-cutting strategy, its stock price increased by 19 percent.

Tech giant Microsoft had an EBITDA of $98.8 billion in 2022. This means they earned $9.8 million for each person they laid off in January 2023.

Other companies’ layoffs weren’t as difficult to understand: WeWork ended 2022 with an EBITDA of -$824 million, and Spotify ended its fiscal year with an EBITDA of -$290 million.

The current CEO, Chris Cocks, was the President of WOTC from 2016 to 2022.

Ah, then perhaps my opinion is outdated or incorrect. I did not know.

have been doing a lot of good decision making in recent years.

Wait, what? Aren't these the same people who tried to rug-pull the D&D license and caused a bunch of MtG drama with new cards that almost crashed the card market? Perhaps those decrees came from Hasbro, but we outsiders can't really know that, can we?

Earnings per laid off employee seems like an odd metric. It makes the decision sound more "rational" the more employees are laid off (which is clearly backwards), and would give ridiculous numbers for companies with very few or zero layoffs.

I only skimmed the linked article, but they don't seem to bother justifying why this metric matters.

Short term thinking also doesn't matter to investors. They can drop the stock like a hot potato any time they want. There are no incentives built in for long term holding.

Literally, and speaking generally, the stock price might go up due to short term gains? Layoffs are a form of cost-cutting and assuming it doesn’t affect the service or product, this leads to short term increased profits or offsets expected incurred losses? Not everyone playing the stock market is a value investor.

As the fine article notes:

At time of writing, it’s unclear why Hasbro’s chosen to lay off employees at the single strongest company in its portfolio. This year, Wizards debuted a critically if not commercially successful major motion picture, earned a Game of the Year trophy at the 2023 Game Awards, and was consistently profitable, but Hasbro’s still sacking its employees. It’s the sort of math that only makes sense if you’ve got shareholders to placate.

Browsing their most recent 10Q[1], it looks like they took a substantial loss on their investment in EntertainmentOne[2]. Which they did with borrowed money, meaning they don't have that much equity to lose. If you look at it from a business line perspective, WotC made 2x the profits of the next biggest, on half the revenue.

My read: management bet the company on Film&TV in 2019, and lost so hard WoTC pays the price.

[1]:https://investor.hasbro.com/static-files/69afb88f-126e-4604-...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_One#Sale_to_Hasb...

Fed didn't raise rates in December due to lower than expected inflation.

The entire market took off like a rocketship. You need to normalize against the market (ie: calculate Alpha) to negate the macroeconomic effects.

The market is more focused on next quarter's profits than next years - if layoffs help the balance sheet next quarter, they don't care if game quality suffers and there's less profit in the years to come. Well, it's not that the market doesn't care about next year's profit, but they'll expect the company to figure it out by next year.

As a long term Wizards player / purchaser, I think their product quality has been dropping over the last few years. In D&D, take the Planescape box set - it was a really empty world lacking in the imagination that the original second ed Planescape had. All the D&D content just seems like filler to me. In MTG, they are releasing so many sets that it would cost a fortune to keep up, and the cards are all like 'meh'. They are doing Dr Who and Lord of the Rings - so of course they are easy sells, but the quality is really average.

I guess the equation is - people keep buying, we have market dominance, so who cares about the quality?

I think this hypothesis is a good example of an opinion I’m developing that any average executive team can follow the spreadsheet. But what makes a team truly exceptional is the ability and wisdom to identify and act on the subjective and immeasurable qualities of the business.

If quality falls but sales rise, did quality not matter? Will it not matter? Maybe we’re not measuring the right things. Maybe we have the wrong models. Maybe there is no model and you just have a general intuition that this is probably important regardless.

I actually think measurement is the source of “artificial stupidity”.

We tend to measure what’s readily quantifiable. But these tend to be the most basic facts of a situation. And when we make decisions solely based on those metrics, we ignore significant higher order effects — which are difficult to measure.

So we make reductive decisions.

Which is where humanity had previously evolved tribal knowledge, parables, etc — because generationally, we can learn those effects. But we threw all of that data out of our models, which are based purely on numerics.

However, the effect can be years to decades to manifest — much like modeling a farm as only basic inputs and outputs, then destroying the soil over years. (To reference another article today.)

It would be like trying to measure the GDP of the renaissance, then predict which artists to invest in.

any average executive team can follow the spreadsheet. But what makes a team truly exceptional is the ability and wisdom to identify and act on the subjective and immeasurable qualities of the business.

This precisely. The spreadsheet explains your limitations, not your potential. No spreadsheet can truly predict demand. The best example is in marketing - you can give a marketing department $50 million to light on fire, or the right person in the right place at the right time can do the right thing and set word-of-mouth ablaze without spending a dime. Having a $50 million marketing budget doesn't allow you to control the outcome, it merely limits you to spending no more than $50 million in coming up with your own approach. It's not the same thing.

I saw someone pointing out they are doing exact same things comic companies did leading to their crash.

The comic companies started to sell a ton of variants, foils, collector editions.

They also started to do attention grabbing but bad quality storylines.

And also they started to try to cut middlemen and sell more directly to the consumer.

The end result was that readers eventually noticed quality was crap, with comics being poor products as story medium. And collectors noticed that they had a problem of no readers to buy their stuff, and that x-men #1 os worthless since it had millions of copies, unlike for example action comics #1. This led to stores losing losing money and then going belly up, then suddenly the comics companies themselves were losing money.

It may not have worked in the comic book industry but the same tactic has proved an enormous boon to the sports card industry in the last decade and that's absolutely booming.

Is it still booming or is it coming down like many other things post pandemic free cash flow and ability to do things with people again?

In D&D, take the Planescape box set - it was a really empty world lacking in the imagination that the original second ed Planescape had. All the D&D content just seems like filler to me.

The other problem is that 5e supplements might be better described as pamphlets.

The box set you mention advertises itself as containing three sourcebooks:

1. A campaign setting (96 pages).

2. A prefab adventure for levels 3-10.

3. A monster manual (64 pages).

The second edition Planescape supplement lists 224 pages of campaign setting + monster manual, of which the monster manual is 32 pages.

The 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is 320 pages.

-----

Here's something that bothers me about WotC's modern quest to sell their cards at every conceivable price point:

The concept is, obviously, market segmentation. If some people have more willingness to pay, you charge them more, and you get more money! Instead of having some consumer surplus and some producer surplus, you have lots of producer surplus and almost zero consumer surplus.

The problem I see with attempting to drive consumer surplus to zero is that -- staying entirely within the realm of theory -- you end up with a customer base consisting mostly of people who are almost completely indifferent as to whether they buy your product or not.

This is not a good way to build goodwill. And, if you ever even slightly misjudge the value of your own product, suddenly you see people abandoning it in droves, because the barely-noticeable dip in value was still larger than the gap between how much everyone liked your stuff vs how much they liked the money it was costing them.

Brandon Sanderson has started writing about how much he likes WotC's model of selling the cards at every conceivable price point, and how it's inspired him to try to sell his books the same way.

But I think he's overlooking the fact that, as a millionaire many times over, WotC's highest offered price point is still insignificant to him. Things look different when you're part of the finely-segmented customer base.

It's a perfect time for Matt Colville's MCDM RPG to be announced. It's on backerkit and people are clearly eager for something different. The crowdfunding is at 4x funding and climbing

thinly related but i could really use some advice.

There's a board game called "quoridor" that I've been playing a lot lately. I found 2 platforms where u can play this online, major one being BGA (boardgamearena). It was kinda sad to see a game on par with chess in terms of simplicity and strategy, being lumped into the same group as kids games.

So, I started building a platform for it myself in my free time. Still a work in progress (https://li-quoridor.vercel.app/).

The issue is that I have no clue if the game mechanics are copyrighted or not. The wiki says "By 1997, the five biggest game companies in the world (including Gigamic) American bought the copyright [clarify] of this game and released it to the world". But wiki itself acknowleges that this is a statement has no source. So, how do i go about making sure i have the right permissions to build this stuff, and will they even give these permission or not?

BGA is... not for kids games. I mean, there are kids games there, but there's also RftG, TtA, T&E...

Quoridor is nice but I would not even put it in the top 10 modern abstracts, let alone on par with chess.

Legality aside, it is a bit of a dick move to reimplement a modern abstract that people can play for free, or even make themselves for a low cost, just because you don't like the (free) site it's on.

The problem isn't free site, it's extensibility. Chess/chess.com has 100s of variants, ability to study games, and lots of other chess specific features.

Bga has fixed set of features for all its games. And their focus is divided.

This game atleast deserves its own home.

Look, for all I know Gigamic is just waiting for someone to come along and make chess.com for Quoridor, and you're the guy to do it.

But I think your ignorance of the hobbyist game market is revealed a bit here already (not having full context for BGA, not knowing if Gigamic still owns it - they certainly do and had a booth at Essen this year like they do every year) - and you're vastly overestimating not just Quoridor's popularity but the size of the entire market for non-chess/go/tables/poker games. And I don't just mean financially - dozens of variants are no good if there are barely enough players to match dozens of games to begin with.

Did you try contacting BGA to see if you could get the Studio files for Quoridor?

Expanding on one point - not just market size, but the amount of competition. As you said upthread, there's no shortage of reasonably popular [1] modern abstract games, there's plenty of other options for people to play. It might be possible to try and promote Quoridor more broadly, given how simple its rules are, but that'd be tough (and marketing it more yourself, beyond just providing an implementation, would probably cause issues with Gigamic).

[1] Popular within the modern board game community, at least.

Not even “competition”. BGA is more or less allowed because it’s assumed it drives sales. A Quoridor-only site would probably sell Quoridor fine, but BGA will also sell Cuarto, or a dozen other Gigamic games. Or vice versa - BGA probably does more to draw e.g. Catan players into checking out Quoridor than a dedicated Quoridor site would.

Also BGA explicitly asks for permission to post these games.

Also BGA is pretty big and large. It's already one of the best places to put digital implementations of games, and that's why you see major hobby games come out on there, like Wingspan and Ark Nova, with about 75 or more new games added to the site every year, including games that haven't even been released yet and still on Kickstarter, like Undergrove recently.

And yeah, I've bought probably at least a dozen games now after playing them on BGA first. It's fun to play them on BGA, but I'd also like to play them in person with my friends, too.

It's categorized as a "Children's Game" on Board Game Geek [1]. BGA is probably just using the same categories.

[1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/624/quoridor

With the disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice:

- Game mechanics generally can't be copyrighted. If you had a platform for playing "Prakhar's Game" that had the exact same rules as Quoridor, you'd be in the clear.

- Specific pieces of art related to the game would definitely be copyrighted. Copying the exact box art of some commercially-released version of Quoridor would be an issue.

- I think the issue to be concerned about would be whether you can use the name (which would be trademarked, not copyrighted). A quick search turned up a page from the US Patent and Trademark Office [1] showing that it's still held by Gigamic. I'd probably look for sources on that 1997 "release to the world" to see if you can find more details; looking around Gigamic's site might also turn up something.

EDIT: BGA definitely isn't just for kid's games, incidentally. Something like Ark Nova or Agricola is a long ways from Battleship or Candy Land or what not.

[1] https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75334527&caseSearchType=U...

Getting laid off has got to be the single highest trigger of suicide. Maybe breakups or child loss are higher but it’s at least top 3. Watching companies perform layoffs on thousands of employees just for their stock price to temporarily bump is really disgusting. I’d like to see some legislation that significantly penalizes companies engaging in layoffs. They should be a last resort, not a well-worn tool.

I’d like to see some legislation that significantly penalizes companies engaging in layoffs. They should be a last resort, not a well-worn tool.

Be careful, such legislation might reduce layoffs, but might make other aspects of the labor market worse. For instance, in some European countries where layoffs are hard to pull off, companies are very adverse to hiring anyone, lest they hire a dud that they have to keep on payroll forever. Or they only hire them for fixed term contracts, so that if the economic winds change they're not stuck with a long term liability. It's the opposite in freerer labor markets like in the US. Companies are more willing to hire unproven/unconventional candidates because they know they can be easily fired if things don't work out, and they react faster to demand shocks because each hire isn't a long term liability. That's not to say we should accept people committing suicide after layoffs as a trade-off for a more dynamic labor market. A robust unemployment system and/or social safety net mitigates the negative effects of layoffs without the affecting dynamism of the labor market, and should be the solution rather than making workers harder to fire.

It's not like it's easy to get a decently paying job to begin with in the States. Making the interview process less frequent or more annoying falls of deaf ears when it can already be 5-7 interview stages and 2-3 months before you actually get to offer stages.

Or they only hire them for fixed term contracts, so that if the economic winds change they're not stuck with a long term liability.

Games industry in a nutshell. They certainly try and they tried so hard Microsoft got slapped again for trying to have their cake and eat it too with "eternally contracted employees with no benefits".

Sounds like you can only go up, since the industry would only do contract gigs if they can get away with it.

A robust unemployment system and/or social safety net mitigates the negative effects of layoffs without the affecting dynamism of the labor market, and should be the solution rather than making workers harder to fire.

I see nothing wrong with both.

^Companies are more willing to hire unproven/unconventional candidates because they know they can be easily fired if things don't work out, and they react faster to demand shocks because each hire isn't a long term liabilit y

In all honestly, I feel those kinds of hires are perfect for a fixed term contract first. That's just another weakness in that companies will try so hard to not convert someone to FTE even if they at some point are more productive than most of their staff. That can also be regulated. X months/years of work and you convert or walk. Worst case the employee gets a few good years of experience, of which should be more than enough experience to make the next step much easier than the first.

----

I feel like the best balance of this would be

- FTE gets a 3-6 month trial period (similar to an internship). This period can be treated as "at will" and can be let go if stipulations show they can't perform to the role. After that, you got an employee and that employee is protected in someone way.

- You need to layoff, fine. 6 month severance minimum. Otherwise the employee is either breaking the law or borderline breaking the law (e.g. sexual harassment, coercion, etc), has a significant breach of contract (breaking NDA that isn't whistle blowing, consistently is not available at agreed upon hours), or has multiple months of severe lack of productivity to give them the boot.

- contract work has stipulations as above. Enforce a decent minimum contract length, only allow renewals for some given period of time by the same company (my gut says 2-3 years of work at the company, but the exact number isn't important) before either breaking the contact or hiring full time. Contracting houses also cannot keep an employee for more than 2 of these contract lengths; we shouldn't encourage places to keep employees long long term as some mandated middleman

- in general, encourage more apprenticeships if you want to train unproven talent (and not leave it to a contractor). Don't know why these died down if companies are going to turn aroind and complain that new grads don't have the skills. They don't, but most of your stuff is proprietary. What do you expect? If you need specialized skills you gotta teach that and not expect a unicorn to master it in a month and be productive.

there can be exceptions of such a house is themself a company doing work (i.e. Not simply a middleman) or they hire very specialized talent. Main point is to not exploit new labor trying to get a break and it becomes the new normal.

It's not like it's easy to get a decently paying job to begin with in the States. Making the interview process less frequent or more annoying falls of deaf ears when it can already be 5-7 interview stages and 2-3 months before you actually get to offer stages.

What's your argument? That because it's hard to find jobs now, it can't possibly be worse? It certainly can. See US unemployment rate[1] vs spain[2]'s.

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate

[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/unemployment-rate

Sounds like you can only go up, since the industry would only do contract gigs if they can get away with it.

Not hiring and/or moving to another country is also an option, as shown above.

- in general, encourage more apprenticeships if you want to train unproven talent (and not leave it to a contractor). Don't know why these died down if companies are going to turn aroind and complain that new grads don't have the skills.

Because you train up the employee, and then they bolt after they finished training and get enough experience, which means all the resource you poured into training goes up in smoke.

and then they bolt after they finished training and get enough experience

There are contract forms to mitigate this. Usually with opt-out payment clauses. Someone can pay those and you lose your investment in the person but not the money invested.

Where I live the defense industry does this for engineering hires, 2 to 4 years training, minimal service period of 4 to 6 years afterwards. Opting out basically costs you your education tuition, but not your salary. The same thing for C(+E) drivers licenses and affiliated stuff (heavy trucks and loading permits).

Accept that your job can disappear at anytime and for any reason, no matter how loyal you are.

Your sense of security should come from your confidence in getting work if needed.

This is more acceptable as a solution in a situation where your and your family's literal access to healthcare is not dependent upon your not getting laid off. Healthcare costs on the "open" market are enough to drive even families that think of themselves as well-off into poverty.

One of the reasons that a single-payer healthcare system didn't take off in the 15 years between 2008 and now has been that the current system was working well enough. I wonder if the widespread layoffs and resulting loss of healthcare access will change voters' minds on that issue.

Unemployment is actually at record lows now; it's just the tech industry seeing massive layoffs probably due to a ZIRP bubble popping.

The indignities of the system are already well-known to the majority of people who don't have 6-figure work from home jobs. You'd think a single-payer system would be more popular, but that is not what people seem to prioritize. Instead it seems that they vote ever more to cut social safety nets (though I think they really vote for cultural reasons and right-wing politicians use their grievances to serve the wealthy).

Even on death’s doorstep, Trevor was not angry. In fact, he staunchly supported the stance promoted by his elected officials. “Ain’t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,” he told me. “I would rather die.” When I asked him why he felt this way even as he faced severe illness, he explained: “We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.”[0]

[0]https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-m-metzl-dying...

That’s definitely the advice I give to friends and family. Waiting around for the government to solve layoffs is not a viable strategy to keep you and your family out of the soup kitchen.

Publicly, though, I’m happy to advocate for layoffs to end or at least for companies to stop treating them like a fun tool.

A bit of a hot take, but video games need a change. they have stagnated as their profit have soared but like most things....profits are a lagging indicator and like Disney marvel.....were on the slide down.

this doesn't mean video game industry is dead....just that it needs to shed it's skin and remove the profit hungry leeches....

the big names will lose lots of money and will do all they can to consolidate anything left unscathed by their ineptitude and attempt acquisitions....it is time for a new dawn....break up the corpos....I look forward to a fresh empire of creators...

I unironically blame the consumer. I guess also some parents/game companies for exploitative practices on children. There's a mountain of games out there that aren't garbage but they keep shoveling money towards the games that are pretty much explicitly anti-user.

There is no "the consumer."

Well someone is preordering all these games that are almost garunteed to be unfinished, at best. What shod we call them?

suckers?

" they have stagnated as their profit have soared but like most things"

That's the preferred mode for a lot of managers. There are only a few company leaders who can push a company forward and keep it innovative. You could argue Apple is at that stage. Profits are strong but their innovation output is pretty low compared to the resources they have.

Your hot take on video games seems unrelated to the topic of WOTC, which makes tabletop games.

a fresh empire of creators

there's so many indie games out there that i have not even considered buying from a corp made game for many years.

As for mobile games, it's a blight on the landscape, best left alone. Dont feed that industry, except to buy indie games that you want to support.

Penny Arcade comic on the situation, "Isolator":

* https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2023/12/15/isolator

"D&D is, for lack of a better term than I have used previously, a culture. Serving that culture is such an honor. Does such a culture survive, truly survive, lodged within a pair of digital, aggressively monetized parentheses?" (Penny Arcade)

D&D is the ony common RPG available these days is most of Australia - it certainly has the largest market share. As cultures go, RPG can easily rebuild itself from a fan-base. I personally liked 5th Ed core rules, yet I could be very happy to see D&D topple itself and reintroduce gamers to a new world of freshly minted RPGs.

…what? Dnd is the market leader but we have the internet, availability shouldn’t be an issue. You can download almost anything from drivethru rpg, and I ran a multi year World of Darkness game with pdfs and online resources.

You might not be able to wander into a store and play with randos, but if you have some open minded friends, just about any tabletop game is an option.

BTW, I detest PDF for online use. It looks great, but the typesetting never matches whatever screen I'm using. If it's going to go paperless, the RPG industry needs to evolve beyond "let's pretend this is paper".

Pathfinder has an AU distributor (Let's Play Games, and I think also Aetherworks still?), so I'm curious how that shakes out on the ground.

That's interesting. In the states there are an absolute abundance of rpg's available. Many rule sets, many settings. It's an actual renaissance of the field, I would argue.

woah. it's been years since ive seen a penny arcade comic. didnt realize it was still around!

Layoffs during periods of strong performance really raise an eyebrow to me.

You should have to prove some economic need to make those kind of layoffs similarly how you have to prove economic need for work visas.

Why do so many people think the economy is in a healthy position? Strong performance now means nothing. e.g., Department Store Sales 3-month average was $17B in 2008 and is now down to under $11B. It's a bloodbath. It has been steadily trending down since 2008.

"Bill Ackman warns economy will fall off a cliff if the Fed doesn't hurry and cut rates"

The Fed isn't going to cut rates for years. They're refusing to blink. These are Volcker-sized balls on JPow.

Any rallying now is squeezing blood from the stone. Any massive layoffs, sales, mergers, bankruptcies, or consolidations is hedging for the unavoidable cliff.

These are just smart, safe moves by corporations -- getting their affairs in order, per se.

And now the workers are going to suffer because they didn't organize labor when the economy was booming and they weren't feeling the pinch. Hopefully they learn this time and don't let the unions weaken if they want to avoid being battered and left for a cheaper workforce or replaced with automation.

I think you in this case missed the tree for the forest. Hasbro right now os doing well. A company doing well should not be able to simply fire the labor that helped them succeed like they are tools.

Layoffs wouldn't be an issue of they were respectable. Some mix of either foresight or proper severance. In reality, it's rarely either unless you're in a sector that is likely already well compensated. I think thars more in the heart of what the GP was talking about.

And now the workers are going to suffer because they didn't organize labor when the economy was booming and they weren't feeling the pinch.

If we had good government labor laws, unions wouldn't be necessary. I don't know why everyone feels collective bargaining is the only road here. Moreover, they aren't mutually exclusive; we can vye for both unions and better government regulation of jobs and how easily you can lay someone off on a profitable quarter.

Department Store Sales 3-month average was $17B in 2008 and is now down to under $11B. It's a bloodbath. It has been steadily trending down since 2008.

No comment on the rest of your post, but I suspect this particular metric has more to do with the rise of online retailers and less to do with falling purchasing power.

That's how it's done in most of the world. But the US and "at-will" employment tends to benefit the company much more often than the employee. These kinds of layoffs elsewhere would mean you need to throw out a gigantic severance to compensate. 2-3 months is generous for the US tech sector, but we're easily talking 6+ months severance if this happened in most of Asia. You'd need to prove multiple quarters of loss or such a drastic loss that you are physically unable to pay labor for layoffs to go through this way.

I think its possible Hasbro is trying to become a more appealing purchase target.

Reminds of when Rockstar laid off Red Dead Redemption staff despite great sales figures.

Game dev is pretty different though. There's huge internal shifts in need for headcount since everything is often tied to development of a specific game. It's pretty common to lay off employees after a game gets shipped.

It's pretty common to lay off employees after a game gets shipped.

While it is common... Why? You can employ people on a limited time or production span duration. I don't see the point in pretending to give someone a permanent job to only lay them off anyways.

Probably helps keep their wages lower and prevents them from bailing on a late project like if they had a contract with a time limit.

On the other hand, I wouldn't exactly be killing myself to ship on time if I was going to get laid off afterwards.

Can't new MtG sets literally be generated perfectly with AI now? Might be behind a lot of this.

Looks like the layoffs were pretty heavy on the art department: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/18ij198/list_of_kn...

Reminds me of the transition from classical animation to CGI. It used to take teams of hundreds of animators to make a film simply because of the sheer amount of work to be done. Whole career paths were made obsolete by the switch.

Can't new MtG sets literally be generated perfectly with AI now?

no not quite

you can generate cards sure

but for a set to work you need more then just random generated cards

especially if you want it to go well

or if you want to continue to have success with crossovers where the choices of mechanics should synagize not just with the set in general but with the lore from the cross over, something mtg somewhat managed to do quite well for multiple of their cross over sets in the recent years

but a lot of the current AI is really bad at getting any of this broader context right

and there is the broader balancing both for draft, commander, balancing prices, reprints etc.

Similar while there are always examples of AI are being extremely well made, most of it has subtle but clear signs it's AI art. That's not necessary bad art, but clearly different art. And a lot of the mtg players I did now over the years cared about the art quite a bit and would probably be very unhappy if it becomes AI art.

I think for a lot of magic players AI generated cards (with similar price gauging selling structures as the current cards) might very well be the last straw causing them to exit the game.

EDIT: Additionally AFIK you can't really copyright AI art in the US which would be a major problem for them.

Point in general is that the workload is massively reduced no matter what. You no longer need teams of people manipulating Illustrator files. It's just a single artist fine tuning a generated image.

Any more details on what Hasbro's "Entertainment" division does, and why it's lost more than $800M this year?

Hasbro Entertainment, a division that will be dedicated to leveraging Hasbro’s most valuable brands to develop and produce premium content across platforms for audiences of all ages, following the close of Hasbro’s sale of eOne’s film & television business. The new division, which unifies Hasbro’s film, television, animation, and digital media expertise under one umbrella, reflects a significant step in the execution of Hasbro’s Blueprint 2.0 strategy, which is defined by increased investment in Hasbro’s priority brands

https://newsroom.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-detai...

Sounds like they're losing money on making media. Maybe it's Capex for a movie(s)? Maybe they're just not popular media? I don't know but that's the team losing money.

This might be a stretch (and also is 100% speculative), but maybe it’s a tax write-off thing. They put money into something, decided they wanted the tax breaks more than to sell the product, and there’s your loss.

If I was one of the excellent artists at Wizards of the Coast, I would be worried about Stable Diffusion.

One of the Dungeons and Dragons artists got in trouble for creating an amazing drawing of a giant then using Stable Diffusion to make it really pop. A different Ilya than the one we all know and love got in a bit of hot water [0].

[0] https://decrypt.co/151515/dungeons-dragons-ai-artificial-int...

AFAIK, MtG art is all gig work. Art is part of the product and to the extent that AI gets involved it would be about elevating the value rather than cutting costs.

MtG saw a huge increase in demand while people were mandated to stay at home. Now that the mandates are over, the demand is likely about to implode as people return to previous activities.

MtG saw a huge increase in demand while people were mandated to stay at home

Did it? If anything, MTG Modern prices were going down until the end of 2020, both in paper and online. And it's one most popular formats.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/modern#paper

How can their board games etc. be losing money? It seems like they shouldn’t cost much to produce.

Lot's of mistakes? They made about a billion Monopoly games for instance. I see Monopoly games for specific cities, other IPs etc. Cheaters Version, Classic, Monopoly Junior.

I regularly see brand new Monopoly games for sale on clearance for $10.

Hasbro laid off 1100, of which 20 are at WoTC. But how many folks are at WoTC? Are those 20 involved in the actual money printer they have with WoTC?

Very astute observation.

It is sometimes worth it to take people who are unhappy in their job and/or not performing well and give them a package when they are available. I would guess there are 20 of these people at any company of that size, not just WOTC.

As someone who's played these games, it's disheartening to see the layoffs at Wizards of the Coast. Their contributions to the gaming world are immense, and the potential brain drain to competitors is concerning. These games hold a special place in many hearts, and the recent controversies have cast a shadow. Hoping for a brighter future for the gaming community.

WotC has multiple Marvel sets coming out for Magic over the next few years, so who needs a design staff?/s

What's baffling about it? It's just another corporation deciding it wants All The Money Ever and making dumb short-sighted decisions in search of profit. Old news.

It's not baffling, it's the latest in business lemmings' theater: when profits are at record levels, squeeze out even more money by suppressing wages with a good round or 3 of layoffs. That'll teach those corporate employees to stay hungry and not to earn too much because the CEO and investors needs those profits.

I've been playing ttrpgs for over 25 years now and have a substantial library around 500 books, mostly rulebooks, but also plenty of dnd supplements. Overall I can say, the quality of WotC material has never been particularly good, but in recent years has fallen even below its old mediocrity, especially compared to their much smaller competition (not that it matters for the market share). Sure, 5e is pretty much late-stage dnd and splatbooks have always been rather questionable at the end of an edition. But the quasi monopoly of dnd and its success is also its greatest problem. They remember the reactions of the community towards 4th edition, as well as the ogl disaster earlier this year and they probably know that they cannot simply push "new product" to replace the current material people have purchased. They can only extend it or make slight improvements that don't disturb the average player who already spend money on something they like and plays "fine" (i.e. an inoffensive, acceptable and conventional fantasy experience). "one d&d" playtest material, anyone? d&d players are a rather conservative bunch of weirdos, why else would they cling to such a dusty system? So, what's there to promise the shareholders? A successful new edition? Unlikely. Maybe digital products? But you hardly need the old staff for that. We'll see, I guess. On a personal note, I've all the dnd I ever need and I've been rather bored with it. For my ttrpg future it's currently at the bottom of my list of things I want to play. The market of ttrpgs is generally pretty over-saturated and while the last years have been great as far as products by small publishers go, there's been less and less interesting material, e.g. even reputable publishers are desperately picking up tv and movie franchises to turn into rpg books. The hobby has had ups and downs, the early 80s, the late 90s, and the last few years were high points, now expect a downturn. Don't get me wrong, it will remain popular, but there will be less money in it for conventional material. And I guess WotC knows it, too.

I really wish I could sit on one of these decision meetings just so I could understand how the sausage is made. There's an entire class of people out there running the world yet operating in their own universe completely removed from the consensus reality we live in.

"Ok we have this cash cow..."

"Shoot it"

"But..."

"Shoot it, the cow accepted an open license"

"That doesn't make any..."

"I don't care, shoot the cow"

Hedge funds have a goal of creating reliable profits by systematically dismantling profitable businesses. This is that.

Hasbro is ruining the brand at alarming levels. They think they are doing it "smart" because MTGA and some other plays to try and split the audience of regular players and whales.

There is no "smart" way to destroy your business.

Also as a player right now is one of the worst lore breaking and general worst story related times to care in any way about these characters, assets, places or anything else.

Hasbro blows

I play/run D&D three times a fortnight using the O.G. editions (AD&D, B/X, retroclones). The brand is dead, long live the game!

Most of these layoffs have been very odd. These are companies making bank and then laying off people left right and center that are key to them making that bank.

Corporate companies are totally baffling Hasbro is no different.