The Decline of D&D

The few days it took D&D YouTube to react to the WotC firing was like shock setting in like they had just been given the news the party was ending, and everyone had to go home and get real jobs.

That period of silence was telling.

How do I report on this?

What will happen to me?

I feel bad for them.

But 5E was going to die, one day or another. There will be the less-successful follow-up, the Atari 5200 to the 2600, and the die-hards will hang on. The explosive growth and mainstreaming of the hobby was a fad, and fads do not last forever. This happens with everything from Pokémon cards to any hobby that sees explosive growth, people get tired, and everything gets put in the clearance aisle.

And they never learn. Follow-up products that are iterative and not innovative to explosive growth never succeed. Nintendo knows this. And D&D is a butter and margarine product, easily replaceable, and there is nothing special about it. The management's decision to not invest in a "Lord of the Rings" style fantasy setting and make that the center of the D&D experience will haunt them.

Baldur's Gate 3 proves the appeal of the Forgotten Realms as an IP, but the IP was abandoned in terms of support and focus of the game. This was their most copyrightable and exploitable IP, but they chased the nebulous planar setting that can be replicated by dozens of companies pushing the tired multiverse concept.

Any old-guard Hollywood person could tell you this.

You own it; it owns you.

Wake up. Anyone with a house, pet, or car can tell you this.

You own the IP and are doing nothing with it. The D&D movie did not leverage the decades of stories and familiar experiences you own. It was a Hollywood star vehicle, not a D&D story. Where the hell is Eliminster's story? Do it right, get Peter Jackson involved, do it seriously and not a smug, goofy-faced in-joke, and you have a billion-dollar movie and franchise.

You had a chance when you had the world in your hands during the Pandemic.

Too little, too late.

The firings at WotC mark the end of the 5E era. The last year was just the foreshocks, and it began when they put the writing on the wall with the OGL mess. They could have played along and kept the ride on a slow decline, but Wall Street's greed ruined the party.

Lesson learned.

Again.

And they think a new set of rules with minor changes will save them.

Small thinking will doom them.