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Author Topic: Will the current Woke Environment Hasten, or Delay a WOTC commitment to 6th Ed.?  (Read 9737 times)

Snark Knight

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I think it will also be a 5.5 D&D update. The Tasha race rules will go into core. They will stop calling them races. Combat Wheelchair will be the PH just to scare the Nazi's off. The DMG will have a consent section. Monster Manual descriptions of sapient creatures will change.

It's a shame because the game really does need a 6th ed. All the levels after 10 are useless and the game really drops off in quality after level 4 and most players want to start at level 3.

This seems the most likely to me. There's still some milk left in the cow yet and I think Covid will probably have impacted on their plans as well, wherein even if they were writing up a 6e (which wouldn't surprise me even if it is some ways away) they'd have a good reason to delay it until things are largely back to normal. A lot of games may have moved online, but I'd bet that's not the majority of them - most groups have probably been on hiatus.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2021, 03:39:57 PM by Snark Knight »

Wicked Woodpecker of West
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I doubt they would release 6e now, after turning to quite prudent and slow milking the cow with 5-ed.
But definitely they will try to umph a game for 50th aniversary - maybe some anniversary version of older edition or smth - and probably it will go woke-lite like most of their products.

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As I pointed out in our latest episode of Inappropriate Characters, I think that the sign of it is in the Candlekeep book. It's got every look of being absolute woke garbage, almost every adventure written by people with no real background in RPGs, full of woke signalling.

Now, because of sheer inertia, it will probably still sell OK. But there will be a bunch of people who will buy it, regret it instantly, and then never buy another D&D book again.

So the decline will start after the next book from Candlekeep. It will be BECAUSE of the SJWs, and yet they will probably be able to successfully argue to the WoTC/hasbro execs that this wasn't the case ("candlekeep sold well!"), and that in fact the reason is because a new more Woke D&D edition is required. So unless Hasbro execs are way more intelligent than I think they are, the new edition will happen 1-2 years after the book after Candlekeep comes out.

And of course that new edition will end up being absolute disaster.
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The SJWokehold will impact 6e. I could see a game with DIY Classes and Races. Alignment will be removed completely so Demons and Chromatic Dragons can be our friends :-* And, you can play gender-fluid, paraplegic, schizophrenic half-dragon, half-Tabaxi Monk/Magus/Artificer with a teleporting golf-cart --- at L1, of course.

Who wouldn't want to play THAT?!?!?

Exactly! Who wouldn't want to play a muddle, a thing, that doesn't actually mean anything at all??? Hooray for the new world where no definitions matter and nothing is held true!

The reason these people want to mess with Call of Cthulhu so badly is because they ARE Cthulhu Cultists.
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Two Crows

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A second counterpoint would be what has happened to the major print comic book companies DC and Marvel since they went full woke.

If they were not owned by their respective big corporations they would have filed for bankruptcy years ago. Comic sales from them are at an all time low. The wokeification of  comics and woke versions of iconic characters do not even do close to the numbers that the original un-woke versions did.

You'd figure Marvel comics be riding high after the success of the marvel movie series. But they are not. Marvel and DC had both been steadily downsizing even before the Kung-Flu hit.

You might want to question your assumptions.

I don't even think most middle age adults realize where a lot of sales from both major comic companies are coming from. For example, I don't think most middle age adults have even heard of Raina Telgemeier, though her middle school graphic novels are outselling most books being published today. And I didn't make a mistake in language there - her graphic novels are outselling most BOOKS, including all comic books, these days.

I think when you're talking comic books, you're thinking superhero books. Superheroes is not even where most of the money is at these days. Not to mention, both companies are selling a lot in other languages and in other nations these days as well. The marketplace changed. It's huge, and not what you might expect.

Also, this is one of the very few topics where I have genuine insider knowledge. Neither company would be bankrupt. Neither has run a negative for any year as it's own unit other than the year decades ago when Marvel really did file. Neither is propped up by it's larger corporate owner. Both have run profitably every year for decades. While I do think woke politics are doing some internal damage to both companies, both are still doing OK with sales, though Covid did give both a gut punch as so many stores shut down. But that's unrelated to woke politics.

The OP's point regarding the traditional superhero comics is valid, IMO.

The are rumors AT&T will be shutting down DC comics this June, and Forbes recently ran an article stating hero comics were now actually less than 10% of what is sold.

Perennial mainstays that stayed in print for decades have already been canceled (AquaMan, Suicide Squad, Hellblazer, Teen Titans).  They are talking about licensing Batman & Superman off to another publisher.

Also, it's worth noting all the sites claiming "positive" movement for superhero comics are sticking with apples-to-oranges comparisons (i.e. a switch to Total Gross Revenue instead of the traditional Units Sold).  That both uses inflation as a mask of performance and simultaneously obfuscates recent sales with nostalgia via graphic novels (such as The Killing Joke & Watchmen). 

Given the example was intended to illustrate the effect of "wokeness" on superhero comics (not Dog Man, Manga, etc.), AND assuming that is the primary cause (I have seen nothing examining this), I'd say it's a fair point.
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I'm not super plugged in, but I haven't seen or heard anything to contradict the claim that traditional Marvel/DC superhero comics have seen declining sales (number of books sold, not $$) for a while now. Of course the overall picture for "comics" in general is different, especially, as noted above, if you are including manga.

I know a few people in the comics industry still, and a few who have quit, either totally, or gone indie.
Things are bad for Marvel and if it were not for the movies their rampant and often outright hateful woke agenda would have sunk them well before Covid. Marvels underhanded business practices have been pissing off and eventually repulsing vendors for a while now and their attempts to either force shops to buy, or create their own venue have damaged things even more.
For a while DC was reaping the benefit of Marvel's stupid. But they have been gradually infiltrated over the last year or so as well and like Marvel have gotten increasingly hateful in pushing their woke agenda. And sales are plummeting. Not as fast as Marvel. But its started.
IDW has been back and fourth for a good while now and you never know what they will do great, and what they will ruin with their on again/off again woke agenda.

And various RPG and gaming companies are doing exactly the same and several are only staying afloat due to momentum, near cult level fans, or swinging between woke and not such that some product fail but the rest succeeds. WOTC, Chaosium and FFG come to mind right off. And there are many others, some going full on woke cult and attacking others. Some more quiet about it.

The thing with WOTC is that in their product the agenda is not really present. The few things in books are nearly every time meaningless and have no impact or backing.
Staff on the other hand are a totally different matter and have gotten, of course, increasingly nasty towards people.

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They're getting sucked into the online world too much.  They're stuck in the big woke bubble and think they're doing well.

Twitter ain't real life folks.

Chris24601

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They're getting sucked into the online world too much.  They're stuck in the big woke bubble and think they're doing well.

Twitter ain't real life folks.
No, its not. I forget where I read it, but there's a pretty standard pattern for internet populations; 10% of a total interest group passively follows their interest online to some degree. 10% of those passively follow daily. 10% of those will sometimes interact (post/tweet something). 10% of those will do so daily.

Net result... about 0.01% of a given interest group is actually the vocal face on the internet and are always the most extreme in terms of interest/opinions about it.

Throw in the general Twitter demographic skew (80% millennial, 76% female) and your typical Twitter vocal fan group is a band of rabid millennial women representing a tiny percentage (1:10,000) of the actual customer base.

Basically, if Twitter is all you're taking cues from; you're ignoring 99.99% of your audience to appease the least reasonable extremists... then wondering why everyone hates your plot twists designed to pander to them.

wmarshal

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I’m thinking Hasbro may actually want to delay a 6th edition. The Candlekeepnbook sounds like a product to put out just to get something out the door without a lot of work by WOTC resources. The recent legal entanglements (some since resolved) did seem to be a possible sign that Hasbro could be trying to clear the deck of WOTC to make it easier to sell off D&D. A D&D movie is supposed to be going into production soon. Hasbro may be hoping for a successful movie to increase the value of the D&D IP even more. If Disney at that point came with an offer to buy D&D I think Hasbro would sell. I can easily see a D&D theme park as part of Disney Land/World. Trying to create a woke version of D&D at this point can readily lead into a cycle a analysis paralysis as they try to figure out a woke version that doesn’t become problematic after a few years. Better to leave that to the new owners of D&D, and the game being at a point where it’s “ready” for a new version of the game to be rolled out by the new owners becomes a selling point. So to go back to the original question, overall I think trying to make D&D more some actually delays a new version coming out in addition to the other reasons I gave above. If there’s going to be a 50th anniversary edition of D&D it’ll likely be a formal 5.5 version.

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A D&D movie is supposed to be going into production soon. Hasbro may be hoping for a successful movie to increase the value of the D&D IP even more.

Little problem. The D&D movie is not from WOTC or Hasbro. Its still under Solomon who did the 1st and 3rd D&D movies and has stonewalled any D&D movies or cartoons long as he holds those rights. I'd have thought he had lost that by now since the last movie was some time ago. But apparently not as his name is still attached to the proposed one. Which might never see light or more likely, will, and be so woke its worse than the 3rd movie.

This is why WOTC wanted Dragonlance as 5e's setting. It is not covered under Solomon's stranglehold.

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A D&D movie is supposed to be going into production soon. Hasbro may be hoping for a successful movie to increase the value of the D&D IP even more.

Little problem. The D&D movie is not from WOTC or Hasbro. Its still under Solomon who did the 1st and 3rd D&D movies and has stonewalled any D&D movies or cartoons long as he holds those rights. I'd have thought he had lost that by now since the last movie was some time ago. But apparently not as his name is still attached to the proposed one. Which might never see light or more likely, will, and be so woke its worse than the 3rd movie.

This is why WOTC wanted Dragonlance as 5e's setting. It is not covered under Solomon's stranglehold.

I’m not saying Hasbro’s hope is going to be rewarded with a good movie, just that they’re hoping the movie will increase the value of the IP. Whether or not the movie will be bad in the artistic sense (and there’s a good likelihood it will) isn’t as important as Hasbro’s hope that it’ll help the D&D brand. Plenty of terrible films enjoy a limited time of popularity, and D&D is very much in a “fad phase” for now.

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Which might never see light or more likely, will, and be so woke its worse than the 3rd movie.

Dunno, those Solomon seems like quite schlocky studio considering last D&D movies, I'm not sure they're one to go really deep into woke.


Two Crows

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A D&D movie is supposed to be going into production soon. Hasbro may be hoping for a successful movie to increase the value of the D&D IP even more.

Little problem. The D&D movie is not from WOTC or Hasbro. Its still under Solomon who did the 1st and 3rd D&D movies and has stonewalled any D&D movies or cartoons long as he holds those rights. I'd have thought he had lost that by now since the last movie was some time ago. But apparently not as his name is still attached to the proposed one. Which might never see light or more likely, will, and be so woke its worse than the 3rd movie.

This is why WOTC wanted Dragonlance as 5e's setting. It is not covered under Solomon's stranglehold.

If that is the case, they could be screwed.  Depends on the deal.  And that one is old enough that it is probably terrible.

Marvel Studios/Disney has been trying for DECADES to recover film rights to all sorts of characters.  The only ones that have been successfully reclaimed in full were part of a purchase in excess of $70 billion dollars.

They still don't hold The Hulk, Spiderman (and the whole damn Spiderverse, such as Venom or the Sinster Six), Sub-Mariner, and more.


Honestly though, I can't say I've ever been excited by the notion of a "D&D" movie.
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I’m thinking Hasbro may actually want to delay a 6th edition. The Candlekeepnbook sounds like a product to put out just to get something out the door without a lot of work by WOTC resources. The recent legal entanglements (some since resolved) did seem to be a possible sign that Hasbro could be trying to clear the deck of WOTC to make it easier to sell off D&D. A D&D movie is supposed to be going into production soon. Hasbro may be hoping for a successful movie to increase the value of the D&D IP even more. If Disney at that point came with an offer to buy D&D I think Hasbro would sell. I can easily see a D&D theme park as part of Disney Land/World. Trying to create a woke version of D&D at this point can readily lead into a cycle a analysis paralysis as they try to figure out a woke version that doesn’t become problematic after a few years. Better to leave that to the new owners of D&D, and the game being at a point where it’s “ready” for a new version of the game to be rolled out by the new owners becomes a selling point. So to go back to the original question, overall I think trying to make D&D more some actually delays a new version coming out in addition to the other reasons I gave above. If there’s going to be a 50th anniversary edition of D&D it’ll likely be a formal 5.5 version.

Hasbro almost never sells ANY of its IP.  It will not sell D&D. This is a pipe dream.
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Omega

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Which might never see light or more likely, will, and be so woke its worse than the 3rd movie.

Dunno, those Solomon seems like quite schlocky studio considering last D&D movies, I'm not sure they're one to go really deep into woke.

Depends on how much pressure Hollywoke or WokeTC put on the movie to push their agenda. Which is hopefully very little. But I never underestimate WOTCs ability to fuck things up.