INteresting stuff.

Just a point that got mentioned though. Chad said that the DDI failed. I'm really not sure that's true. There's something on the order of 65000 subscribers on the DDI (that we can verify to some degree anyway). That's penny ante for an MMO, but, for an RPG? That's pretty solid gold.

Sometime around 2006, the D&D team made a big presentation to the Hasbro senior management on how they could take D&D up to the $50 million level and potentially keep growing it. The core of that plan was a synergistic relationship between the tabletop game and what came to be known as DDI. At the time Hasbro didn't have the rights to do an MMO for D&D, so DDI was the next best thing. The Wizards team produced figures showing that there were millions of people playing D&D and that if they could move a moderate fraction of those people to DDI, they would achieve their revenue goals. Then DDI could be expanded over time and if/when Hasbro recovered the video gaming rights, it could be used as a platform to launch a true D&D MMO, which could take them over $100 million/year.

The DDI pitch was that the 4th Edition would be designed so that it would work best when played with DDI. DDI had a big VTT component of its design that would be the driver of this move to get folks to hybridize their tabletop game with digital tools. Unfortunately, a tragedy struck the DDI team and it never really recovered. The VTT wasn't ready when 4e launched, and the explicit link between 4e and DDI that had been proposed to Hasbro's execs never materialized. The team did a yoeman's effort to make 4e work anyway while the VTT evolved, but they simply couldn't hit the numbers they'd promised selling books alone. The marketplace backlash to 4e didn't help either.

Greg wasn't in the hot seat long enough to really take the blame for the 4e/DDI plan, and Wizards just hired a new exec to be in charge of Sales & Marketing, and Bill Slavicsek who headed RPG R&D left last summer, so the team that committed those numbers to Hasbro are gone. The team that's there now probably doesn't have a blank sheet of paper and an open checkbook, but they also don't have to answer to Hasbro for the promises of the prior regime.

As to their next move? Only time will tell.

Totally dig the intro's you guys put together for these shows. So Chad, I know you're a RPG minimalist, as in you don't have many RPG game books but if you like the idea of a Jenga Tower and the Dread mechanic I was wondering if you'd ever looked at Apocalypse World by Vince Baker. I've been reading through it and listening to a couple of AP's and it sounds pretty cool, very story driven with less rolling and a lot about consequences. I'd ask Adam his opinion but he can't be bothered to crack an RPG if it isn't Pathfinder. Keith, I'd wondered if you'd ever heard or checked it out either.

Wow, Chad you couldn't be more wrong about Christian Bale. I thought Machinist was the worst thing I had seen him in. I liked him first in Swing Kids which may have that nostalgic thing for me.

Totally dig the intro's you guys put together for these shows. So Chad, I know you're a RPG minimalist, as in you don't have many RPG game books but if you like the idea of a Jenga Tower and the Dread mechanic I was wondering if you'd ever looked at Apocalypse World by Vince Baker. I've been reading through it and listening to a couple of AP's and it sounds pretty cool, very story driven with less rolling and a lot about consequences. I'd ask Adam his opinion but he can't be bothered to crack an RPG if it isn't Pathfinder. Keith, I'd wondered if you'd ever heard or checked it out either.