rpg

Do what Paizo did and make all rules free. Charge for books that contain art and adventures. Hire or contract with good writers for high quality adventures. Playtest the hell out of everything and have a robust QA department. Keep or hire diversity consultants to prevent other scandals.

Invest in the other classic settings more and revisit esoteric FR locations.

Actually balance the game for high levels and magic items. Standardize magic and item descriptions while keeping the effects and flavor.

Integrate dndbeyond with other vtts and sell content on them. Sell PDFs. Call Over D&D 6e or 5.5e ffs.

Make dndbeyond good/better, invest in 3rd party VTT integrations, and keep selling books through those channels. Keep partnering with 3rd party content creators to get a cut of their profits selling through dndbeyond.

I'd stop trying to disrupt the industry or chase massive profits, and just be okay with reasonable profits.

They'd oust me in a week.

Well that's not why she's been hired. She's been hired to squeeze every possible piece of money out of the property.

If you were a CEO who cared about the property and not about making the most money possible, you'd never be hired in the first place.

I would actually casualize the shit out of it. Streamline combat, make it so that most minor combat encounters end after like 5 turns max. Collapse skills down into like 10 max, maybe even combine two attributes to lower that number. Remove all the component stuff from spells, you can cast a spell as long as you aren't unconscious. I think the D20 system is too ingrained to change now, but I'd want to try something that's faster to grok, either by going for a system where you roll under your stat or moving to more D6s. I'd also want to jazz up character building.

Basically, make D&D into actually babby's first tabletop RPG. It's currently treated as such, despite being a terrible system for newcomers IMO. Most of the new crowd of TTRPG players I've played with want to hangout with friends, do some silly improv bits, maybe have a cool moment where they kill a goblin in a creative way, and go home. D&D is way, way too crunchy for that crowd, they quickly stop paying attention during combat if it drags too long, and nothing drags a game to a halt like one of those players needing to make a check they haven't "practiced" before. Assuming I'm still trying to do Cynthia's job of making more money than God, I think that's the clear way forward, because all the videogames and movies and marketing don't mean a damn thing if the new people bounce off the ruleset.

Assuming I actually wanted to keep my job and not just open source everything? Probably buy Paizo and mend the schism, then build a d&d which is streamlined and friendly to beginners but can have 1001 extensions and options for the keenos. Then maybe buy roll20 and make it into the ultimate virtual tabletop; the rules can be free and the books can be cheap if you're making a good enough VTT that people will want to pay for a subscription!

Surrender the entire property to creative commons.

D&D is fine… do you mean save WotC?

Is D&D in danger? D&D is in this weird place where it's in the middle of a lot of things. It's honestly pretty complex compared to actually rules light systems, but it's still much less complex than Pathfinder. If folks want more crunch they go to Pathfinder.

D&D has two pillars. Combat and everything else. I know that WotC defines it differently but generally I think it's easier to view like this. Everything I'm combat is extremely rigid. Everything outside is pretty flexible. Sure, exploration has more rigid rules than social interactions but I genuinely don't believe many people use rigid exploration rules. I think a lot of players dislike combat for a big variety of reasons. There are extremely few class-specific special things some classes can do outside of combat. Do fighters get anything special? Not really. And a lot of spells can totally negate specific things other players might be able to contribute.

It would be really nice to have flexible combat but I don't think there's a good way to do it without fundamentally changing the game. Instead, I believe every class needs to have meaningful ways to contribute to each pillar of play that cannot be one-upped by spells.

Another thing, I believe every class should have the same amount of limited resources more like 4th edition but I don't think there's a way to fix that in 5th edition or the new version without fundamentally rewriting everything.

Does D&D needs to be saved ?

It has a huge market share, is one of the few RPG generating money. Sure, there is some work for a CEO, but seems more about finding a way to generate more money, than about finding a way to not loose money like 99.9% of RPG out there

If my intention as CEO is to save Dungeons & Dragons and not make a boatload of money, saving my job, and get richer, then I would dedicate every single D&D product of which my Wotzi still has a copyright to the public domain; liberating both the rules (which can't be locked down anyway), the fluff/lore, and the awesome name.

Who am I saving it for? The players or the shareholders? Because if I was in charge, the shareholders would fucking kill me. I would be collaborating with actual players and making good rules and publishing them for free, focusing sales on miniatures and pre-made campaign modules, fictional publications and merch.