Originally published at: Another critical fail for Wizards of the Coast as they delay release of their Deck of Many Things due to manufacturing issues | Boing Boing
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Or you could just play a different game from another company. Crazy thought.
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While WoC has issues and D&D has problematic elements, can we agree not to turn this one into “Play Another Game!” hobby gatekeeping bullshit this time? Ragging on people for liking D&D when you consider it a basic or bad system seems to be one of the last bastions of acceptable nerd culture elitism and I am so absolutely fucking sick of it. Rag on the company all night long, point out the problematic aspects of the game’s design by all means. Just quit being assholes to people because of what game mechanics they like.
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This is honestly a bit surprising. WoTC is not exactly some two-guys-in-a-shed operation, Hasbro is a multibillion dollar company(that publishes quite a few games with custom cards and packaging elements), and custom playing cards(up to and including ones suitable for real-money casino use) seem to be something that’s in fairly wide and regular demand.
It seems like, between internal and available-to-paying-customers experience executing on a deck of cards and a couple of books wouldn’t be treading any uncertain ground; and that the value of having everything go smoothly for the customers who buy cool-but-definitely-optional premium products would be evident, especially given that goodwill isn’t…entirely…abundant these days.
Is it still significantly harder than it appears? Doable; but harder if you try to juice the margins by going with the plucky low bidder?
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WOTC also makes magic the gathering, and anyone familiar with this game knows that the physical quality of the product has really gone downhill in the past few years. It’s very common for cards to have ink blotches, faded printing, or roller lines all over the place. Card stock is flimsy. Instead of crisp edges, many cards are often ragged right out of the pack.
Foil cards are so warped players refer to them as Pringles, and tournament users will no longer utilize foils because they make their deck technically illegal due to marked cards, visible in a stack.
I don’t know the whole history here, but whatever printing arrangements WOTC currently uses are inferior to the ones they use in the years past, and it’s well known that they’re aggressively prioritizing profit at the expense of the game. Cards feel very cheap, despite very much not being so.
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Well it does take ten years or so to learn the forms and wisdoms properly.
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Honestly my experience is that the sort of people who play tabletop RPGs are more likely than non-RPG-players to actually be a practicing witch or a shaman and have serious opinions about the cultural appropriation and stereotyping hanging around those terms.
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I don’t think it is gatekeeping to recommend trying to something new to people who are dissatisfied with the game they are playing. Nobody seems to be starting an edition war or any such thing., just pointing out that if a person is unhappy with what WotC and D&D is providing them, the could always try something else. That isn’t being an asshole… and if people want to play D&D? I agree… let them do so in piece.
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Ah, the Venger Satanis/Pundit fan club heard from. 
It is funny how, as right-wingers keep shouting “go woke, go broke”, D&D is still the best selling RPG in the world and represents the majority of Hasbro’s income stream. I’d say that, by pissing off a few Alt-Right folks, they have done pretty well financially. Now, if they could only stop angering the gaming world as a whole, they’d likely be fine.
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If you’re not gatekeeping, that’s fine! I wasn’t posting in specific response to anyone, I was trying to preempt the D&D discourse I usually see, which is people enjoying their game, and other people telling them that it’s bad actually and they should be playing something else.
That being said, I think “if you don’t like D&D then play another game” is a bad response in general to a post about a poorly made but very expensive WoC product. Anyone who buys this is going to be a very large D&D fan, and complaints about product quality being fobbed off with “well play something else then” is ignoring what brought them to the product in the first place.
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if they can’t figure out how to avoid terms that cause harm to their players and still make good products, they really don’t deserve to be in business at all.
but then of course the two issues have nothing to do with each other anyway. revising cards is the lifeblood of the company. the problem is they’re cutting corners. badly.
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Totally fair. I agree that product quality discussions are just that. I was responding to a different part of your post which, I know grasp, was truly meant to be peremptory. of the standard driving trollies. My apologies for my confusion.
So, in effect, Dreck of Many Things?
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Came here to say the same, or at least the 3.5E equivalent: of course there’s manufacturing problems, the knowledge to craft a minor artifact was lost in a long-forgotten age, let alone the knowledge to mass produce them!
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I know that Luke Gygax has been working on a Deck of Many Things project, with art by several old school artists. I think it has been releasing cards in small bundles at Gary Con (I’ve not bought it so I’m relying on my memory - YMMV)
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I back again just to say… I’m STILL chuckling over that quick throwaway. Thanks for brightening my day a bit… “Dreck” of Many things…
I have a nifty product from Stratagem games that combines an OGL-licensed Deck of Many Things with a companion deck called the Deck of Many Fates. (amazon link)
For the price, it’s nicely put together, the two decks are in separate flap boxes, and there’s a printed insert with usage included. The quality of the cards is at least equal to the tarot deck I’ve been using for several years now.
I’m partly in agreement that WOTC/Hasbro screwed up with QC/QA in this case, and hopefully they’ll get it corrected. (especially considering the price of the high end edition!)
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in case anyone’s interested: The tarot deck I use is The Sweeney Tarot sold over at the Game Crafter. (link)
