If this upcoming edition of 5e D&D is going to have old-school influences on it, I have a question. Why, a couple of weeks before the announcement of the edition, did they think it was no problem to lay off Steve Winter, their one remaining employee from the olden days?
One would think that if older school design was supposed to be something they want to integrate, that they would have at least marginal interest in keeping an employee who knew something about old school design.
This roll-out is slick by any measure, and WotC clearly learned lessons from the 4e fiasco.
First they signaled, with the Monte Cook hiring, and then they pulled in the national press as well as the gaming pundits (under an NDA), and then they announce a beta playtest the same way Paizo did it. All being done very nicely.
But ..... why did they lay off their one older-school employee right before all these announcements? It's hardly a signal to write the whole thing off as hype, but it's not a good sign about they way that the thinking at WotC is really running.
Well. We dont know the reasons why. It is likely though that it was one of costs. Older employees are paid more and thus most likely to get let go in lean times.
ReplyDeleteReinvnetion is always easier for those without a personal investment in the actual history.
ReplyDeleteBut Steve wasn't at TSR from 1976-1979 when AD&D and Holmes Basic were being published. He's not part of that establishment; he could however, offer _context_ and _continuity_ if there was a real desire on the part of WotC to go back that far.
ReplyDeleteWotC's loss; the game's loss.
Allan.
What gets me is a NDA and any other agreements they may have had to sign. Isn't the NYTimes still engaged in that antique thing called journalism? Or am I just being romantic again?
ReplyDeleteYou didn't know that they're part of the marketing dept for Hasbro now? ;)
ReplyDeleteAllan.
He probably makes way too much money for the amount of value he provided to the company.
ReplyDeleteI lean toward the opinion that Steve was paid less than the value he brought to the company -- but then, I would.
ReplyDeleteThe simple truth is that no one is indispensable to a corporation. Someone's assessment agreed with Dan's instead of mine. I like to think that D&DNext would have benefited from having Rich Baker and I involved, but it's in good hands either way. Many of the current crop of retroclones were written by people without long D&D pedigrees, and they include some top-notch work. So I'll reserve judgement until we see something more developed than what we were playing with in December.
I do appreciate the support, Matt, and look forward to the annual bash in Dallas.
Steve