> All WotC really has going for it at this point is the D&D name and player goodwill, and they just shot the latter out of a cannon into the sun. DMs and PCs alike have already shown their willingness to migrate over to alternative D&D-like systems.
D&D survived the 4E attempt to overhaul the OGL, the backlash, the GSL that resulted from it, the backlash from that, and the backlash from 4E as a whole, and the mass migration at the time from 3.5E to Pathfinder/d20 instead of 4E. The brand's too valuable to die. "Heroin" used to be a brand name and there'll be people who call any and all fantasy TTRPGs "D&D" until the collapse of civilization.
What might die is Hasbro's interest in spending money and effort on the tabletop RPG part of the brand as a first-party content producer, which is frankly also fine by everyone. The market and content available today is broader and more diverse than ever. The 5E library alone could truck on with players and new content for decades without the need of any corporate steward, much less Hasbro.
Even most of the people who comprise D&D's content team right now came up through the barren years pre-3E and/or during-4E. If Hasbro cuts every one of them, they'd all land well, especially Wyatt and Schneider who've now covered just about every base possible in a single RPG writing/editing career.
I disagree, I think that with 5e DND got super lucky, because they hit upon an unexpected gold mine, with the pandemic, stranger things, and Critical Roll all happening at the same time. Instead of recognizing this as a valuable opportunity to move forward TTRPG and usher in a new renissance on that front, they instead got high on all the money they made for reasons largely beyond their control and assumed it would continue forever, because the corporate suits considered their players "undermonitized" their quote not mine.
I was suspicious of the 1D&D crap moving to a subscription model anyway, so I am quite frankly glad about this.
What's weird is I agree with everything else in your comment.
I don't think D&D's survival is a virtue, it's just inevitable. It's a generic brand for fantasy tabletop roleplaying whether anyone playing it likes it or not.
Hasbro's shenanigans are irrelevant to tabletop D&D's survival. They only endanger its success as a product line.
D&D survived the 4E attempt to overhaul the OGL, the backlash, the GSL that resulted from it, the backlash from that, and the backlash from 4E as a whole, and the mass migration at the time from 3.5E to Pathfinder/d20 instead of 4E. The brand's too valuable to die. "Heroin" used to be a brand name and there'll be people who call any and all fantasy TTRPGs "D&D" until the collapse of civilization.
What might die is Hasbro's interest in spending money and effort on the tabletop RPG part of the brand as a first-party content producer, which is frankly also fine by everyone. The market and content available today is broader and more diverse than ever. The 5E library alone could truck on with players and new content for decades without the need of any corporate steward, much less Hasbro.
Even most of the people who comprise D&D's content team right now came up through the barren years pre-3E and/or during-4E. If Hasbro cuts every one of them, they'd all land well, especially Wyatt and Schneider who've now covered just about every base possible in a single RPG writing/editing career.