Top D&D designers join Critical Role after quitting Wizards of the Coast
Top D&D designers join Critical Role after quitting Wizards of the Coast
It’s a fully fledged RPG war now
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Good. WotC is wretched hive of scum and villainy.
And Crawford is an incompetent smartass. I honestly don't know what any TTRPG would have to gain from including him in the team.
If they hope to chase 5e's success by following in its footsteps - piss poor adventure modules, nonexistent DM support, unbalanced player options, and a game designer that contradicts himself on Twitter every other post while attempting to explain why he isn't wrong - then good luck to them, I guess.
I very much doubt that 5e became the juggernaut that it's now because of Crawford. If anything, it's despite of him - mostly because of the free publicity granted by things like Critical Role and Stranger Things, and DnD being the default option for anyone who develops an interest in roleplaying for the first time.
How much do we actually know about what Crawford is like outside of the WotC machine? He might be perfectly competent but held back by executive mismanagement.
Crawford worked on Blue Rose, Warhammer Fantasy, and Mutants & Masterminds outside of WotC.
Ok, I'm not familiar enough with any of those to know what that means in this context. But in any case, weren't his contributions to those games all ages ago? M&M in particular came out almost 30 years ago, right?
Aren't Hasbro the villain moreso than WotC?
People have been complaining about WotC's executive meddling in D&D and MTG for as long as I can remember, since before the 1999 Hasbro purchase. D&D 3e, mostly written after WotC acquired TSR but published shortly after Hasbro acquired WotC, was panned so badly that they dropped 3.5 just a couple years later. And 4e (including the first OGL fiasco) happened when Hasbro didn't care about WotC because they were all-in on the Michael Bay Transformers movie. In fact, up until Stranger Things and Critical Role, Hasbro seems to have considered WotC the "Magic: The Gathering Money Printer" and done most of their meddling on that side of the house.
I organized pen and paper RPG conventions back when D&D 4 came out. We banned D20 based games even then as a boycott of WotC.
From what I’ve read WOTC has been a bad employer for a long time.
From my understanding, they used to basically be the same as Games Workshop is today: If you talk to people who work there "off the record" (or they are pushing the equivalent of a youtube channel... shout out to Rogue Hobbies) you'll either get outright condemnation or LOTS of vague posting of a culture of theft and abuse.
But recent years have seen people get annoyed enough at the products that they now care about labor and we start to see a LOT more complaints.
WotC+D&D is like ~30-40% of Hasbro. The only other brand they have that's worth a similar amount is (ironically enough lmao) Monopoly.
The problem for Hasbro is that, right now, the company doesn't have that much in non WotC moneymakers and hasn't had it for years. There have been attempts by activist investors to push for having WotC demerged from Hasbro so WotC isn't subsidizing the rest of Hasbro. The across-the-board cuts were Hasbro leadership trying to placate investors, but they cut muscle and bone from WotC for some reason instead.
I mean, sure, but it's like pulling the WotC mask off a Scooby Doo villain.
Why?
Sending The Pinkerton's off to intimidate a YouTube reviewer
Everybody who was passionate about games have left and been replaced by money-grabbing opportunists who only want to inflate the stock value, bail out and get their severance pay.
I don’t have links to it at the moment (I’m prepping dinner.. so excuse the laziness 😅) but if you search “D&D controversy” or “OGL” you’ll find plenty of discussions and analysis.
In short: they tried (but are still attempting to) bring micro-transactions and loot box mechanics to tabletop games.