Andrew,

When Hasbro purchased WotC outright, they fired damn near all the RPG book writers. Much like what CCP did when it bought White Wolf. Hasbro then put a bunch of board game designers in to take their place that had no experience writing RPG books and 4th edition was born from that. A mistake that gave rise to Pathfinder. Many of the writers fired by the Hasbro buy-out now work for Paizo, Green Ronin, and Kobold press. They're aren't "outsourcing" the writing so much as getting the original writers to do it because they can't write good content and don't have the experience to pull it off. Without the original writers doing the work, the game would not be what it is.

Pathfinder's lead developer, Jason Buhlmann, was actually one of WotC's 3.5 writers. If you look at any number of Eberron books, his name is on the cover. He was a major contributor to Eberron. He took a lot of his writing buddies to paizo. And if I'm not mistaken, the Inner Sea World of Pathfinder was actually written by or contributed to by Ed Greenwood, the same man who gave us the Forgotten Realms. They wouldn't be able to do Forgotten Realms right without Ed's input and the input of his writing staff that once worked at WotC. Hasbro and WotC realized firing these guys was a mistake when 4th edition capsized and started sinking financially but by then the people they fired had jobs already in other companies which they're not likely willing to give up now. They have to weigh the option of job stability vs. being canned again and having to look for a job elsewhere. They really have no choice but to outsource the writing to get the original people writing it again. Dragonlance will require at the very least Margaret Weis to be on board writing before I'd even take a look at the books. If they also signed Tracy Hickman, they'd have a "Shut up and take my steel pieces" moment from me and other loyalists. WotC knows they need the original writers to make the products sellable.

Fantasy Grounds and the Virtual Reality thing are too expensive to be feasible. How many of us have a projector rigged above our gaming tables? When you consider what that alone would cost, it makes Fantasy Grounds useful for running games online mostly, which I am not a fan of. I prefer the group of gamers I game with to be sitting around a table with a cold stein of Guinness and being able to see the d20s roll. This virtual reality thing looks like an attempt by WotC to finish the digital table top tools they advertised in 4th edition. It's nice but it's not something I am willing to throw money at. Dragonlance books written by Weis and Hickman, "Shut up and take my Steel Pieces" but this... no. I'll throw money at dice, books, hero lab, and maybe an odd video game. But frankly I am not going to set up a projector over the top of my table just to use fantasy grounds at the table, and then dump a ton of cash into it after the fact. That money could buy a lot of pizzas from Little Caesar's that would be eaten during gaming.

I was going to write something, but figured it would start a flame war so I'm just gonna leave it.

I wouldn't even call this discussion a flame war myself. I'm just pointing out a few things, bro. People forget that the Hasbro takeover was not kind to the writers. Yes Gygax and his friends mismanaged money, but WotC wasn't in such a financial situation when Hasbro did their thing. WotC was purchased solely for the pokemon ccg by Hasbro. They were after that card game's profits and that was the reason they bought WotC. They didn't care about the other IPs so much. So the writers were fired. We should just be thankful that D&D wasn't buried and locked in a vault of failed games by Hasbro.

Hey, the November Survey is out.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/feat...er-2015-survey

They are asking about adventures and campaign material:

I bought the Sword Coast Legends book even though I run my own campaign world. Overall it is a quality book. Since I don't plan to run a campaign in the world, I don't mind—actually, I like—the focus on flavor over crunch.

Anyway, as to why I'm not running any adventures in SCL, seems like a perfect opportunity to point out that it isn't the 1980s any more. I don't run adventures from paper. I manage my campaigns in RW.

Oops. They are asking about the video game, not the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

I'm annoyed by the mixing of the video and ttrg properties. It is like they are trying to get me away from the table and play the video games. I think it is neat what they are trying to do with creating a video game where a DM can create adventures and lead players through it, but won't come close to the TTRG experience.

Give me digital tools that help prepare for and D&D at the table.

This isn't a new concept, they did this with Neverwinter Nights by Bioware years ago. The game had DM tools for making your own adventures and you could post them online for people to play. You could build some pretty good sized adventures but there was a learning curve as you had to know a bit of computer code to actually set wandering monster patrol routes. It's all stuff they did before and isn't what I'd call new. They're just resurrecting old mechanics they used to have. Sad that the survey is about the video game though. I wish they'd just focus on written content right now.

My 5e file has come pretty far. Hopefully I will get to test it out soon with a group of gamers for printed sheets at least.