How badly has D&D been mismanaged?

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lategamer said:
Ok that confirms it. You’re in some weird mirror universe and I need to figure out how to get there.
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I can confirm I am also living in that universe. It feels weird how much stuff that was hidden in a subculture is now mainstream.
Not rpgs but most normal bookshops in Dublin now have a shelf of euro-games. Lots have D&D too.
There is a non-alcoholic pub (yes, you read that right) just 300m down the road from me that is games themed and has a library with a wide range of hobby games for patrons to play. It also sells games.

This is a good timeline (for games). Come join us.
 
robb said:
I can confirm I am also living in that universe. It feels weird how much stuff that was hidden in a subculture is now mainstream.
Not rpgs but most normal bookshops in Dublin now have a shelf of euro-games. Lots have D&D too.
There is a non-alcoholic pub (yes, you read that right) just 300m down the road from me that is games themed and has a library with a wide range of hobby games for patrons to play. It also sells games.

This is a good timeline (for games). Come join us.
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Same here, really. I'm seeing boardgames in bookstores here, and those that have English-language sections just might carry RPGs as well...:thumbsup:

I've definitely seen Bulgarian titles in bookstores before, though, so that's not much of a surprise. They're selling local CYOA-style gamebooks, too:shade:.
 
lategamer said:
Clooney is 63. Christ that lad has good genes.
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Clooney is one of the few people I've seen who seems to somehow get better looking as they age.

Like, yeah there are weird cases where someone just doesn't seem to age at all (Paul Rudd still looks almost the same he did when he was in his 30s and is 55. Keanu Reeves is similar and is somehow 59), but Clooney is a weird case where you can tell he's aging, but somehow he just still stays just as if not more attractive.
 
carpocratian said:
As far as the bookstore stuff goes, I worked at Borders during its height in the 90s. It went downhill after buying Waldenbooks, mainly because the Walden executives who got promoted into leadership positions at Borders brought a mall-bookstore mentality with them, and wanted to emulate B&N's way of doing business. The original founders of Borders were passing things down to the next generation of family members at the same time, which didn't help things. That change in mentality nullified the things that made Borders different from B&N, which is a big part of what led to their downfall. There was also the Amazon issue, but the downward slope was happening before Amazon really grabbed the biggest part of the market.
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I was just about to post about that. I worked at the flagship store in Chicago, and they had a lot of executive meetings there, so I had a front row seat to the Waldenbooks influnce. They were behind such good ideas as not letting employees put up their own displays of recommended books anymore. Corporate should be deciding on all the displays. You had to take a book knowledge test to be a bookseller at Borders. The Waldenbooks people got rid of that. In their opinion, people with their own opinions on books were difficult anyway. Booksellers just needed to push the books they were told to push like The DaVinci Code.

At a time when the Internet was becoming a threat, they were removing everything about Borders that provided something you couldn't get from a website.
 
EmperorNorton said:
I mean, I don't disagree, notice I didn't disagree about attractive. And they are also professionals (actors and voice actors) which I'm sure helps. (I don't think age has much to do with it at all. Like, imagine if it was George Clooney instead of Matt Mercer.)

My only disagreement is calling them young. It's a very specific disagreement. Probably because its kind of annoying being in your 40s and have grown kids and for people to still treat you like you don't have much life experience.
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Those are also glamour shots, so full makeup / costuming / post-processing, and the streams are also part of their job so similar there. Of course they look good, any of us would in those circumstances (And that's discounting those of us who just look that damn good ✨✨✨all the time✨✨✨), but looking good alone doesn't keep folk tuning in for four hours every week.
T. Foster said:
The stigma was real in those days, and now seems to have completely evaporated.
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Yeah, exactly.

And obvs I come from the UK, where we have Games Workshop stores in any town that matters in fairly expensive retail positions; 40k went mainstream decades ago, and Warhammer is just part of the background pop culture stuff you can assume people vaguely know of nowadays. Whatever stigma there was has gone.
EmperorNorton said:
Clooney is one of the few people I've seen who seems to somehow get better looking as they age.
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Fuck, I'm a lesbian, and yeah.
 
lategamer said:
The main thrust I was thinking of is that whole industry may have a lot more money rolling around it, but the needle wasn't nudged by D&D. The hobby is still in the place it was in the 1980s and 1990s. It's still niche, it's still considered weird.

I mean, even outside of the 'progress' being measured in terms of monetising and commodification and their ethics, it's not like it's done them a lot of good. They're increasingly reviled in a way that should be hard to explain.

I don't like D&D ...but I want to. I think it's a shame that it's the biggest RPG in the world and I loathe it (and it's not entirely my fault)
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Yep... Monetize is a bit of a dirty word, because associated with fleecing customers. But WoTC has a unique position to make big boy money from licensing contracts, they're just too mismanaged to consistently do that, so what happens? Fleecing customers is back on the table.

Monetization always has it's inherent issues, but good monetization strategies mean more money/good games/jobs for everyone, and bad monetization means someone's getting ripped off.
lategamer said:
On that level, they're probably doing fine. Apart from firing people to make a quarterly target set by some short sighted shareholders. Seems to me they're a games and hobby company that thinks it's a tech bro company. Or is trying to become one.
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Tech bro compagny = scam so yep lol. But if they focused on building up contacts and expertise instead of milking GMs and weird AI psyops they would make more money, be more respectable... but yep go explain that to a disconnected shareholder (no overhyped buzzword = no dopamine).
 
Barnes & Nobles resurgence is because the CEO told the stores to cater to their clientele and put displays out that actually sold product. Cookie cutter ideas out. More businesses should take notice.
 
As an old, I'll chime in to say, sure, Clooney has good genes. He's also wealthy. I could look like a B movie leading man at my ripe old age if only I had Clooney's money, and chose to spend it on looking good rather than say, spending it on painted D&D miniatures. :hehe:
 
burbles said:
Great, I'm 59. Can I get the definition a bit better defined than 'about 60' please?
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I'm not sure why people are surprised at "middle age" and it is not just here I run across people in their 40s and 50s who are bothered to be called middle aged all the time. With life expectancies being 70-80 years old, well hello half that (the middle) is 35-40.

Society is so ageist, but appreciation for vintage, experienced, elders is growing. I'm very much about you are only as old as you feel / act.



Many take the line from the Who's My Generation "I hope I die before I get old" to mean live fast die young. I'll admit when I was younger that was my interpretation as well. I've changed my outlook, now I take that as a challenge. I hope I die before I (act) old.

I've known people in their late 30s who act older than my 80-something Dad.

Age is just a number. Admittedly the miles do rack up on the body, but honestly I feel better mentally and physically in my mid 50s than I did in my early 40s.


As I intend to make it to 150+, I've still got almost 20 years until I reach middle age. :wink:


Ok, off my soap box, back to the important stuff. ::honkhonk:
 
Endless Flight said:
Barnes & Nobles resurgence is because the CEO told the stores to cater to their clientele and put displays out that actually sold product. Cookie cutter ideas out. More businesses should take notice.
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No, they can't do that; they have to spend millions of dollars on consultants to tell them what to do! It's the Excel-jockeys with MBAs who should be deciding what they sell.
 
Endless Flight said:
I worked at Border’s in 2000, right around the time when 3e was coming out. I remember a couple of the guys there talking about a d20 Star Wars game coming out behind the service desk and I put a special order in on it. I probably got a copy before most people did.
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So you got to feel the pangs disappointment before the rest of us?
 
Vargold said:
54, also no adult, and I suspect that all the adults I've known were faking it to make it and still felt like 14 year olds inside.
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You know, after trying it for about a week, I'm going to have to concur. This 'Adult' thing just isn't working for me, either.
 
Toadmaster said:
I'm not sure why people are surprised at "middle age" and it is not just here I run across people in their 40s and 50s who are bothered to be called middle aged all the time. With life expectancies being 70-80 years old, well hello half that (the middle) is 35-40.

Society is so ageist, but appreciation for vintage, experienced, elders is growing. I'm very much about you are only as old as you feel / act.
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...you mean I'm between 6 and 16, when I don't feel like I'm 94:shock:?
Fenris-77 said:
I'm 47 and mostly feel like I'm either 12 or somewhere in my creaky seventies.
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I know that feeling..and hell, a lot of the regulars do as well:grin:!

David Johansen said:
To properly monetize D&D I should be able to walk into a gas station buy, platemail, a sword, shield, and spear, a week of iron rations and 50' of rope for $1140 and hit the dungeon.
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So, you want microtransactions and an AI to DM for you::honkhonk:?
 
Some folks' posts be reaching tibia good pun.

I'm just shy of 60, and still feel ~13 to 15 mentally.

Emotionally, I feel quite a bit more settled and content than I did at 15, however.

Practially, I've been pretending to have, as the kids say, this whole adulting thing down for almost 50 years now.
 
Moracai said:
At under 50, my ego is still writing cheques my body can't pay. Ow, ow, ow.
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The last two days for me have been digging holes with a post hole digger (not like a powered one, just you know, man powered) and then mixing concrete (again, by hand, no concrete mixer, just a mortar hoe and a wheelbarrow) to put the posts up for a fence.

When I was in my 20s this wouldn't have even phased me. Right now I feel like arms are about to fall off.
 
Halfway through 'Slaying the Dragon' by Ben Riggs (a history, mostly composed from interviews with some of those involved) of the rise & fall of TSR.

If Wizards are making misjudgements, this is very much not a new thing for D&D...

And still it lives!

Random musing - they really should make a Ravenloft movie.
 
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