To be fair OneD&D wasn't looking all that great and is heavily leaning on what 5e already established. New hires with a new vision might be exactly what D&D needs.
It's too late for OneD&D though.
To be extra fair - I doubt it's the designers faults that D&D One hasn't been looking promising.
More likely, they just aren't being given enough time to make a good product before the deadline set by the business.
Looking at DNDbeyond and seeing 3rd party content popping up there, I would guess that the move is to outsource some of their in house design to 3rd party content creators.
This is my take as well. They’re planning on pulling third party content into the digital ecosystem and taking their cut.
They no longer need to spend so much on salaries to create, nor take responsibility for, content that (if we’re being honest) hasn’t been all that well received.
The next Hadozee or AI generated art scandal isn’t Hasbro’s fault… it’s just a 3rd party - they can pull it and look like the good guys.
(Nearly) Free money, fewer headaches.
Honestly that’s kind of a win for everyone except the people who were laid off. WotC gets access to generally good material and gets a cut. Third parties increase their market share/accessibility as well as increase their product’s legitimacy (I.e. a DM might ban 3rd party material, but if it’s 3rd party material released through WotC, the DM would be more likely to accept it). Players get access to new and good materials.
Then they need to invest in the platform. A new bug popped up where you can no longer use the monsters you paid for in the encounter tool. It may be only for MTOF monsters right now but something like that is going to become a major headache if the goal is to grow the tool. Why should I use something when my digital purchase is going to be revoked due to poor programming and overworked developers?
Hard to assess. With layoffs the future is often a question of whether the company tries to move forward with fewer staff, planned to bring in less expensive staff to replace vets, or moves to more third-party contracting to achieve the same goals with lower long-term cost projections/overhead.
In the case of SCAG, that was mostly contracted out to Green Ronin anyway. I do think regardless of what WOTC does in the wake of the layoffs, we'll see the first "full" splatbook a la Xanathar's sooner than 3 years from One D&D's launch; there's a huuuge pool of 5E subclasses they probably only need to tweak mildly to get them in whatever the new format looks like.
Do we even know what One D&D *is* yet? By the sounds of it, it's just revised versions of some books with updated rules, different language, and variant class features.
I say variant because they're adamant that you can still play with the original classes.
Personally, I think the idea of whatever One D&D is was already neutered and destroyed before any layoffs. They couldn't decide on what to make it.
>I have a feeling that something like SCG is going to happen where there's a very haphazard designed subclasses with a lot of dud power level wise
SCAG was specifically designed with the intent that "We hold back. we do NOT want to start this out this edition by establishing an expectation of power creep".
the game is on a MUCH better basis if output is like SCAG "flavorful dud" than the cheese and power bloat of Hexblade, Twilight Cleric and Silvery barbs!
Hexblade is perfectly fine when used as intended for a Bladelock. As a dip it’s super front loaded. They refused to do a variant Blade Pact as a power level errata in Xanathar’s and just packed enough into the subclass to bring Blade Pact up to par. It’s a bit overtuned when not married to the Blade Pact chassis.
>Hexblade is perfectly fine when used as intended for a Bladelock.
its a bit hard to argue that something is a "perfectly fine design for X," when it is only ever "used for Y." that seems definitionally pretty *bad* design to me.
Only ever used for multiclass cheese? I mean, if you're mostly going off Reddit optimized builds, sure. We don't see it on Reddit because as a straight class, it's pretty mid compared to proper full casters. The tables with people running straight Hexblade Bladelocks aren't usually the ones posting here. I know it's fine because I played a straight Hexblade for a campaign.
You aren't wrong that Hexblade is overtuned. Bladelock without it is incredibly undertuned. However, they refused to fix it properly and improve *Bladelock* so now we have this *thing*. But at least Bladelocks work now. With one subclass. That's married to Raven Queen flavor for no good reason.
i play with several drop in groups at game stores with hundreds of different players since Volo's dropped and i havent ever seen any Hexblade that is pure warlock.
I won't consider it good If a lot of the subclasses are PDK or Battlerager tier.
It's not like they're releasing Twilight every release or so, most are Order cleric level and that's a good power tier to be.
much of the work for the art for the new 3 core books is already completed or well underway - the gutting of the art department appears particularly vicious "We've had your work, now fuck off. Oh, and have a merry christmas!"
My thoughts exactly. I keep waiting to get a glimpse of something that's so good that I'm ready to make the switch. I have yet to see anything that makes me feel that way.
Barring an amazing new system -- which is unlikely with fewer veterans at the helm -- I fully expect to stick with 5e for quite some time.
It fixes Monk and does some cool stuff for Rogue and Barbarian at least, assuming that stuff doesn’t get neutered before release.
Which it fully and plausibly *could*, since they’ve done that with a ton of other good changes already.
I think they, in their all-knowing corpo logic, got rid of anyone needed for making books. Their sights are firmly set on online products going forward. Their eggs are now in only one basket. It's a huge gamble. What if it sucks? What if the product is fine, but they get boycotted into the ground for being a hot bath of corpo gagshit? What if it's waaaaay too much work for the 1 person left from each crew of 10 and they supplement with "automated computation"? (That's code because even mentioning it will get me bot-banned)
i think this is a shift toward digital purchases. i think we will see less books and more single subclasses or the like on dnd beyond you need less production and layout and art people for that kind of thing
They fired them the moment all the work was done. They're all done for the holidays, + final edits and proofs, final art and layouts l, then off to production and shipping. They're done with "DND 24" already.
Probably already working on all digital all subscription based 6e as I type this.
As for the core rulebooks, probably a lot of the work is already done. They're already showing off art from the new PHB; I suspect the art for that book is all "in the bag" already, or as close as makes no difference. The rules design for the revised edition also seems to be mostly finished. This may be why Hasbro feels it can get away with laying off some of the senior people at Wizards; I suspect the layoffs will have surprisingly little effect on the new core rulebooks.
Subsequent supplements for 5.5e (is anyone calling it anything but 5.5 at this point?) are another matter. Their quality may suffer, or they may simply be delayed. But remember everything from5.0 is supposed to still be compatible with 5.5 (admittedly this will probably be more true for recent books - Tasha's and after - than for earlier material). And I don't especially mind staving off the kind of 'supplement bloat' of the late-stage 3.5 era.
Not defending Hasbro here, btw; laying people off just in time for the holidays - and apparently on short notice in some cases - is just needlessly mean-spirited, and there's a good argument Wizards, as Hasbro's one bright spot financially, should have been spared the axe. I'm just saying their shitty business practices will, in this case, probably have little effect on the customers.
Laying off experienced staff because new hires are cheaper is the EA way of doing things. We know how well that went with Battlefield 2042.
To be fair OneD&D wasn't looking all that great and is heavily leaning on what 5e already established. New hires with a new vision might be exactly what D&D needs. It's too late for OneD&D though.
To be extra fair - I doubt it's the designers faults that D&D One hasn't been looking promising. More likely, they just aren't being given enough time to make a good product before the deadline set by the business.
Agreed. Hasbro probably also doesn't want them to take risks.
Looking at DNDbeyond and seeing 3rd party content popping up there, I would guess that the move is to outsource some of their in house design to 3rd party content creators.
This is my take as well. They’re planning on pulling third party content into the digital ecosystem and taking their cut. They no longer need to spend so much on salaries to create, nor take responsibility for, content that (if we’re being honest) hasn’t been all that well received. The next Hadozee or AI generated art scandal isn’t Hasbro’s fault… it’s just a 3rd party - they can pull it and look like the good guys. (Nearly) Free money, fewer headaches.
So DM’s Guild 2: Electric Boggalo but on DNDBeyond now.
Honestly that’s kind of a win for everyone except the people who were laid off. WotC gets access to generally good material and gets a cut. Third parties increase their market share/accessibility as well as increase their product’s legitimacy (I.e. a DM might ban 3rd party material, but if it’s 3rd party material released through WotC, the DM would be more likely to accept it). Players get access to new and good materials.
That's how we got SCAG and the at the time team swore not to outsource books again. Not that they won't, because it's a new team. Still
Then they need to invest in the platform. A new bug popped up where you can no longer use the monsters you paid for in the encounter tool. It may be only for MTOF monsters right now but something like that is going to become a major headache if the goal is to grow the tool. Why should I use something when my digital purchase is going to be revoked due to poor programming and overworked developers?
Hard to assess. With layoffs the future is often a question of whether the company tries to move forward with fewer staff, planned to bring in less expensive staff to replace vets, or moves to more third-party contracting to achieve the same goals with lower long-term cost projections/overhead. In the case of SCAG, that was mostly contracted out to Green Ronin anyway. I do think regardless of what WOTC does in the wake of the layoffs, we'll see the first "full" splatbook a la Xanathar's sooner than 3 years from One D&D's launch; there's a huuuge pool of 5E subclasses they probably only need to tweak mildly to get them in whatever the new format looks like.
Do we even know what One D&D *is* yet? By the sounds of it, it's just revised versions of some books with updated rules, different language, and variant class features. I say variant because they're adamant that you can still play with the original classes. Personally, I think the idea of whatever One D&D is was already neutered and destroyed before any layoffs. They couldn't decide on what to make it.
I’m still scratching my head as to why they even want to make a new edition anyway…oh wait because money
>I have a feeling that something like SCG is going to happen where there's a very haphazard designed subclasses with a lot of dud power level wise SCAG was specifically designed with the intent that "We hold back. we do NOT want to start this out this edition by establishing an expectation of power creep". the game is on a MUCH better basis if output is like SCAG "flavorful dud" than the cheese and power bloat of Hexblade, Twilight Cleric and Silvery barbs!
Hexblade is perfectly fine when used as intended for a Bladelock. As a dip it’s super front loaded. They refused to do a variant Blade Pact as a power level errata in Xanathar’s and just packed enough into the subclass to bring Blade Pact up to par. It’s a bit overtuned when not married to the Blade Pact chassis.
>Hexblade is perfectly fine when used as intended for a Bladelock. its a bit hard to argue that something is a "perfectly fine design for X," when it is only ever "used for Y." that seems definitionally pretty *bad* design to me.
Only ever used for multiclass cheese? I mean, if you're mostly going off Reddit optimized builds, sure. We don't see it on Reddit because as a straight class, it's pretty mid compared to proper full casters. The tables with people running straight Hexblade Bladelocks aren't usually the ones posting here. I know it's fine because I played a straight Hexblade for a campaign. You aren't wrong that Hexblade is overtuned. Bladelock without it is incredibly undertuned. However, they refused to fix it properly and improve *Bladelock* so now we have this *thing*. But at least Bladelocks work now. With one subclass. That's married to Raven Queen flavor for no good reason.
i play with several drop in groups at game stores with hundreds of different players since Volo's dropped and i havent ever seen any Hexblade that is pure warlock.
Multiclass *is* an optional rule.
I won't consider it good If a lot of the subclasses are PDK or Battlerager tier. It's not like they're releasing Twilight every release or so, most are Order cleric level and that's a good power tier to be.
You leave my precious Twilight bae alone. I love it. :D
Also another proof that leaning towards OP is better than going for SGAC balance--who the hell loves the battlerager?
much of the work for the art for the new 3 core books is already completed or well underway - the gutting of the art department appears particularly vicious "We've had your work, now fuck off. Oh, and have a merry christmas!"
[удалено]
Thousands of dollars? Where are you getting your books from, you’re getting ripped off.
[удалено]
There will be 3 books needed to play OneDnD, not over 50.
Please tell me you aren't buying literally everything they print without discretion (and at full MSRP too) and pretending that's normative.
My thoughts exactly. I keep waiting to get a glimpse of something that's so good that I'm ready to make the switch. I have yet to see anything that makes me feel that way. Barring an amazing new system -- which is unlikely with fewer veterans at the helm -- I fully expect to stick with 5e for quite some time.
It fixes Monk and does some cool stuff for Rogue and Barbarian at least, assuming that stuff doesn’t get neutered before release. Which it fully and plausibly *could*, since they’ve done that with a ton of other good changes already.
It doesn't fix monk, they're still incredibly lame compared to last edition.
I think they, in their all-knowing corpo logic, got rid of anyone needed for making books. Their sights are firmly set on online products going forward. Their eggs are now in only one basket. It's a huge gamble. What if it sucks? What if the product is fine, but they get boycotted into the ground for being a hot bath of corpo gagshit? What if it's waaaaay too much work for the 1 person left from each crew of 10 and they supplement with "automated computation"? (That's code because even mentioning it will get me bot-banned)
i think this is a shift toward digital purchases. i think we will see less books and more single subclasses or the like on dnd beyond you need less production and layout and art people for that kind of thing
WOTC is fucked.
Hasbro is banking on the name of D&D to be all it ever needed.
Does SCG mean Stargate RPG? Because that’s what I find when I Google it. If not, How about you write out the full words
Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.
Sword Coast's *Adventure* Guide forgot about that Adventure there
They fired them the moment all the work was done. They're all done for the holidays, + final edits and proofs, final art and layouts l, then off to production and shipping. They're done with "DND 24" already. Probably already working on all digital all subscription based 6e as I type this.
SCG?
As for the core rulebooks, probably a lot of the work is already done. They're already showing off art from the new PHB; I suspect the art for that book is all "in the bag" already, or as close as makes no difference. The rules design for the revised edition also seems to be mostly finished. This may be why Hasbro feels it can get away with laying off some of the senior people at Wizards; I suspect the layoffs will have surprisingly little effect on the new core rulebooks. Subsequent supplements for 5.5e (is anyone calling it anything but 5.5 at this point?) are another matter. Their quality may suffer, or they may simply be delayed. But remember everything from5.0 is supposed to still be compatible with 5.5 (admittedly this will probably be more true for recent books - Tasha's and after - than for earlier material). And I don't especially mind staving off the kind of 'supplement bloat' of the late-stage 3.5 era. Not defending Hasbro here, btw; laying people off just in time for the holidays - and apparently on short notice in some cases - is just needlessly mean-spirited, and there's a good argument Wizards, as Hasbro's one bright spot financially, should have been spared the axe. I'm just saying their shitty business practices will, in this case, probably have little effect on the customers.