Cordell leaving WOTC

ScottS · Post by **ScottS** » Tue Jul 16, 2013 9:15 pm

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Bruce R Cordell on G+ wrote:It’s with mixed emotions that I announce the end of my 18-year run at Wizards (and TSR before that). I gave my notice last week and will be leaving the company.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Jul 16, 2013 9:55 pm

Only Richard Baker is left then. once he is gone Alternity crew is no longer at WotC and D&D can be free of it once and for all.

infected slut princess · Tue Jul 16, 2013 10:31 pm

He is actually pretty smart to bail on 5e, which is shaping up to be the biggest debacle in RPG history.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Jul 16, 2013 10:52 pm

infected slut princess wrote:He is actually pretty smart to bail on 5e, which is shaping up to be the biggest debacle in RPG history.

when an edition is promoting heavy ties to a setting such as Planescape, and ALL the Planescape designers leave its design...you know shit is going to be terrible.

infected slut princess · Tue Jul 16, 2013 11:19 pm

Uh. Yeah. Cordell was not a Planescape designer. They've had Monte Cook leave before they even started talking about the edition's links to Planescape. Who are all these Planescape designers who are leaving? Actually forget I asked

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Jul 17, 2013 12:04 am

Item Code: #2633
Title: A Guide to the Ethereal Plane
Type: Accessory
Author: Bruce R. Cordell
Published: 1998
Format: 96-page perfect-bound book

Bill Slavicsek, Monte Cook, Skip Williams... mostly the same people that worked on the stupid Alternity game system. i think even Rich Baker did Planescape too... leaving the Alternity/Planescape group with only one member still at WotC, Rich Baker.

infected slut princess · Wed Jul 17, 2013 4:02 am

So... One book out of what, 30? Probsbly one of the less popular books as well. Hardly a critical figure in the development of planescape.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Jul 17, 2013 4:51 am

infected slut princess wrote:So... One book out of what, 30? Probsbly one of the less popular books as well. Hardly a critical figure in the development of planescape.

No noooo! Don't you SEE! Planescape, Psionics, Bruce Cordel, Spelljammer, 5E, 4E, Monty Cook, Monty Python, 3.5 Edition, Pathfinde, 3E, 2E (Players option handbooks only), Time Bandits, Kieth Richards, The Illuminati, Gary Gygax, Obammacare, Disney Land, HITLER!

It's ALL CONNECTED!

edit: No, no, wait, I'm sorry. This post was a total failure, looking at it in retrospect it is FAR to quick, concise, clearly written and sane to be even close to parodying Shadzar, sorry...

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jul 17, 2013 7:04 am

infected slut princess wrote:So... One book out of what, 30? Probsbly one of the less popular books as well. Hardly a critical figure in the development of planescape.

37. Of which yes, Bruce Cordell worked on one, the Ethereal Plane book. Rich Baker worked on fully twice that many: the "Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix II", and the adventure "The Eternal Boundary". Neitheris particularly integral to the direction of Planescape as a whole.

Of course, Rich Baker also got fired from WotC almost two years ago - about five months after Slavicsek got fired. The Alternity Crew was always a very small part of WotC, and they are all gone and have been for years. Shadzar's rantings are, unsurprisingly, completely not factual.

He wants to believe that the people who screwed up his game in the nineties are somehow responsible for the game going into the crapper today. But it's simply not true. The reality is that the people who made 2nd edition AD&D into a game he liked were the very same people who changed directions to go to 3rd edition, which almost everyone likes a lot more. And those people have all since lost their jobs, and the people ruining the game today are the people who lost sight of why 3rd edition was good. It's a narrative that doesn't sit well with Shadzar because he stopped paying attention to what was actually happening when he broke with TSR over their thrashing about in the late nineties.

-Username17

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Wed Jul 17, 2013 7:23 am

You also included caps. Really, PL, you should know better.

Krakatoa · Post by **Krakatoa** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 10:06 am

I'd be questioning my decision to stay at a company also, if it were making a product as bad as D&D Next appears to be.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 10:22 am

I don't get it, how hard can D&DN be. I think any of us can make D&DN in one weeks time.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 12:39 pm

Krakatoa wrote:I'd be questioning my decision to stay at a company also, if it were making a product as bad as D&D Next appears to be.

So, what's your beef with D&DN, exactly? I'm genuinely curious here.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 10:06 pm

OgreBattle wrote:I don't get it, how hard can D&DN be. I think any of us can make D&DN in one weeks time.

not hard at all, just release OD&D, Mentzer basic, RC, AD&D, 2nd edition, 3.x, 4th

6 boxes and one single book. so 7 SKUs or whatever and let it ride. you can fire all the designers and get freelancer writers to do adventures and such from Dungeon or whatever. use the MtG art department, the novels dept editor for adventures, and your done. how much money was saved getting rid of the D&D departments such as design and development, D&D art, and R&D? got to be at least 20 people at about 50k per year... thats 1 million saved, plus insurance costs, benefits, etc.

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 6:15 pm

So, any idea as to why he left WotC?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 6:44 pm

Dogbert wrote:So, any idea as to why he left WotC?

First of all, let's not discount the fact that he was forced out. While Bruce Cordell's incompetence doesn't seem to be really ingrained in the TTRPG crowd at large, we still nonetheless get glimpses of it like with the 4E Ranger Article Retraction and with the 4E Dark Sun team cursing him out for fucking up an adventure.

I think that it's quite plausible that he was given an ultimatum to ship up or ship out and decided to pre-emptively ship out.

Assuming that he wasn't encouraged by the higher ups to leave or get his act together, he still had a few rational reasons for wanting to leave.

1.) He's a psionics whore. The bulk of his material in 3E and 4E D&D is psionics fuckery. Mike Mearls could've flat-out said that psionics wasn't going into the game -- not because of balance concerns, but because of thematic ones -- and he would've or could've left in a huff.

1a.) This verges on conspiracy theory, but he might've had overtures made towards him from Pathfinder to be their psionics guy. The symbiosis is obvious. Pathfinder gets a big-name D&D designer on staff and gets to squirrel him away to a system no one really cares about and Bruce Cordell doesn't have to work really hard creating new psionic product. Pathfinder already has extensive psionic material but no one uses it because it has even less legitimacy than 3.5E D&D psionics. Psionic fanbois might see him as their 'in' to making it a respected subsystem and Bruce Cordell gets to slather his dick on top of other peoples' work.

2.) He might've sensed that 5E D&D was going down in flames and was getting out while the getting was good. Since they're releasing the first for-money 5E preview in less than a month from today that was probably his last chance to bail out without being tainted by the product.

I mean, he isn't a good writer himself but he does have good corporate instincts.

3.) It's quite possible that he flat-out got another job not working in industry. Even for D&D writing game material isn't exactly lucrative. He could've just pulled a Noonan and gone on to work as a nobody for another industry altogether and still end up better off than the second-in-command for the industry's flagship product.

I mean, his website shows that he has a bachelor's degree in biotechnology and he worked as a lab technician for six years. If he wants to, he can probably get much better-paying work than what WotC or any TTRPG could've provided.

4.) And of course there's no reason why it can't be a combination of all three. Heck, I think the most likely scenario is that Bruce Cordell found more lucrative employment elsewhere and is in the future going to be a B-list TTRPG celebrity who occasionally contributes to hobbyhorse projects. There's no reason to drag the process out by remaining on a sinking ship unlike authors like Wyatt and Mearls who probably don't have occupational alternatives.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 9:40 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I mean, his website shows that he has a bachelor's degree in biotechnology and he worked as a lab technician for six years. If he wants to, he can probably get much better-paying work than what WotC or any TTRPG could've provided.

I think you greatly overestimate the awesome job market for Biology Bachelor's Degree holders with experience as Technicians, especially for one who hasn't been keeping his hand in the field the past several years.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 12:05 am

A biology degree is still pretty decent if you live pretty much anywhere west of Chicago due to the sheer number of quality assurance personnel needed in big agribusiness, particularly since the pool of potential hires to draw upon is smaller out here. The pay isn't incredible, but the industry is ludicrously stable compared to the mickey mouse bullshit that happens in tabletop town.

ScottS · Post by **ScottS** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:17 pm

My uninformed guess is that he's switching to full-time fiction writing.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Jul 23, 2013 1:04 am

thought someone said he was going over to Monte Cook so he could actually create things, like the DC/MArvel comic artists leaving them, instead of being an assembly line worker for HASBRO churning out crap that not even he likes?

it was either tweet or monte direction someone said bruce was going to?

ScottS · Post by **ScottS** » Fri Aug 16, 2013 9:21 pm

shadzar wins

Monte Cook on G+ wrote:Bruce Cordell joins Monte Cook Games (and we couldn't be happier).

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Fri Aug 16, 2013 10:04 pm

I'm almost certain everyone on that design team has been sending their resumes out anywhere they can think of. They know that it won't be long before they're all fired. At this point they're using stall tactics to keep D&DN in development as long as possible to squeeze out a few cheap paychecks.

unnamednpc · Post by **unnamednpc** » Fri Aug 16, 2013 10:35 pm

I guess if you're a cynical asshole who hates the hobby and everybody in it, WotC's DDN office must be a primo awesome place to work right now.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Fri Aug 16, 2013 10:38 pm

unnamednpc wrote:I guess if you're a cynical asshole who hates the hobby and everybody in it, WotC's DDN office must be a primo awesome place to work right now.

so you are saying Lorraine Williams has applied for a job at WotC?