Dungeons and Dragons

I am done with Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons. This week, Scalzi pointed out the screw job that they are doing to SF authors for their revamped Dragon Magazine (http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=159). The gist is that they are paying bare minimum for original short stories, and then they keep the copyright to the work in perpetuity. That is not cool.

I realize that this is their response to screwing up on writers’ royalties for their CD-Rom project of past Dragon issues, but this is ridiculous. If you want to do work-for-hire, then pay real rates. Otherwise, you are just going to be the official publisher of amateur Forgotten Realms fanfic. I’m pretty sure that this is not what the paying subscribers want to be reading.

Look, I understood why WoC made the move to 4th Edition. They were running out of interesting book ideas for third edition, and I’m sure that it was reflected in their sales. There just isn’t a world ready for the Complete Kobold or The Expanded Grappler. Unfortunately, I just don’t buy into 4th Edition as a consumer.

Much of 4th Edition seems to be predicated on paying for online services in addition to shelling out hundreds of dollars for books. Much of this online stuff is for Internet play. That’s a great idea in 2002, but ridiculous now. The technology they are planning on using is pathetic if compared to World of Warcraft. There simply is not a compelling reason for me or anybody else to move to the new system.

Overall, this seems like the last desperate gasps of a dying division of a major toy company (Hasbro). As a gaming consumer, I’m unimpressed. As an aspiring writer, I’m insulted. They will not be getting my money anymore, and I doubt that I’m alone in this. I would not be shocked if D&D is dead in four years.