[QuickTidal]

So I didn't know where to put this...but I just read a news report (will link below) that Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were commissioned in 2017 to pen a new trilogy of Dragonlance novels to refresh the book brand under Hasbro/WOTC. Weis & Hickman who have written all the main sequence DL novels to date, had not written a novel in the D&D setting since 2009's DRAGONS OF THE HOURGLASS MAGE (which was abandoned from a printing POV making it prohibitively expensive for someone like me).

It sounds like they had written at least 2 volumes of the new trilogy, tentatively titled DRAGONS OF DECEIT, and DRAGONS OF FATE...but that recently things went south when WOTC got into hot water for their D&D arm, Magic the Gathering arm with sexism, and misogyny, and even workplace harassment...and Weis and Hickman's book series got unceremoniously ditched after 3 years on the back of that hot water (and nothing they did themselves) with the WOTC lawyers using double speak that terminates the contract but they claim doesn't break it?

That sounds like what's going on anyways.

And as a big fan of both authors AND their work in the Dragonlance setting I'm well on their side in this. My hope is that the 10mill suing tag is enough to force WOTC's hand to finishing the deal.

Because as someone who collects and still enjoys the Dragonlance titles, ESPECIALLY Weis and Hickman's input, I'm like blown away as I didn't even know that new DL novels were supposed to be happening!

https://www.polygon....ons-and-dragons

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 28 June 2022 - 01:06 PM

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

I stumbled on this for the first time yesterday evening too.

WotC don't seem to have had a good year PR wise, between one thing and another. You'd hope the threat of a big price tag to a suit, as you say, and it being brought in the name of a popular brand might encourage them to behave.

[QuickTidal]

 TheRetiredBridgeburner, on 20 October 2020 - 12:35 PM, said:

I stumbled on this for the first time yesterday evening too.

WotC don't seem to have had a good year PR wise, between one thing and another. You'd hope the threat of a big price tag to a suit, as you say, and it being brought in the name of a popular brand might encourage them to behave.

Indeed!

I think it upsets me more because Weis and Hickman and a new DL trilogy has nothing whatsoever to do with the other problems they are experiencing PR-wise with the other arms of their business...so why throw the baby out with the bathwater to tune of 10Million?

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

I wonder if this will also put paid to the idea (not aware anything was in the offing, but I kept seeing it requested along with Spelljammer, Greyhawk, basically anywhere not The Sword Coast) of any new game content being set in Dragonlance?

(And I fully blame WotC if so, not Weis and Hickman).

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 20 October 2020 - 02:54 PM

[amphibian]

The Polygon article has a few things that are wrong with their summary.

The best thing to do is to read the complaint itself: https://www.scribd.c...-Hickman-v-WoTC

The biggest thing that the Polygon write-up leaves out is that the nature of the contract requires Weis and Hickman to submit the drafts, respond to edit requests, and the contract requires WotC to provide those edit requests, provide the licensing, and move this towards publication.

The next biggest thing is that Weis and Hickman were the ones who took initiative to open discussions with WotC, broker the agreement with the actual publisher etc, and bore the costs of producing the finished first book and the mostly done second and the outlines for all three plus costs of doing the edits.

I play Magic the Gathering, mostly in the form of Commander. What happened in the firestorm that seems to have killed this project was a storm long in the making. There were some extremely racist cards made early in the game's history, partly bc one of the artists hired to make the art and cards (Harold McNeill) was then and is now a violent neo Nazi (he put Klan imagery on one card in particular) and partly because the creators didn't think through the painful implications of having cards like Crusade be structured to bring up the horribly violent and racist actual Crusades or cards that show Muslims or Islam the religion as lesser people. There are cards that honor the heritage of many cultures and people, but a few were "ok-ish" for the early 1990s and now that the general audience has grown up a bit, we see that they're horrible. There's much more to dive into here, but that's not the point of this comment.

Accompanying the "racist cards" thing was credible accusations of racist and harassing conduct on the D&D side of WotC by several people. The Zak Smith/Mike Mearls thing was awful. The racist stuff has been bubbling for years and the most recent situation includes a non-binary black person who was brought on and then minimized/driven out. WotC has always been a very white, very male company and has not structured itself to be welcoming to a diverse workforce (by either hiring and paying well diverse people or by empowering them or even treating them like equals).

One of the details in the complaint that may have passed by the attention of readers here is that the editorial team for Weis and Hickman was replaced by Nick Kelman and someone else.

Kelman is the overall head of story for WotC and he has not done well on the Magic side of things. Part of that was the effect of decisions made before he came on (to contract out the story writing to people and then poorly prepare the contractors + fuck with their process in a way that left them severely limited time to write or massively delayed the release of the writing). Part of the cluster fuck is him directly working with authors in a way that leaves them not wanting to come back and his input as the boss of story somewhat damaging beloved characters in ways that appear to be anti LGBTQ and out of character. The complaint mentioned his writing prior to working at WotC because it features some extremely gross stuff involving sex with women who are minors.

We don't know what happened at WotC during the firestorm and what happened to kill the Dragonlance project from their end. WotC will respond with their defense, which we will likely see publicly too.

However, I see this as a necessary kick in the ass of a company that has not performed well in the past regarding racism, treating authors and stories well, building diversity, and has not changed significantly enough to really begin addressing those beyond PR pablum.

I had been having arguments with people in real life and online about playing the racist cards for years. I was very happy that WotC banned almost all of them from any organized play and that most players of the various formats agreed to ban them too.

But WotC has not treated people who work for them who aren't cis male white men equally. One of the big things that I can point to is that multiple women and people of color have said the short term contract hiring they do, which is a 6 month contract that demands the person move to Seattle, is a big risk and that the people who can afford to take it are going to mostly be white males who can rely on family for money and support plus move almost anywhere easily without worry of safety or medical needs or finding a good living space. That's also followed up by the institution having a culture that isn't friendly to "outsiders" or having people in the game's section chain of command who aren't white men.

[QuickTidal]

 amphibian, on 20 October 2020 - 03:09 PM, said:

The Polygon article has a few things that are wrong with their summary.

The best thing to do is to read the complaint itself: https://www.scribd.c...-Hickman-v-WoTC

It's directly linked in the article for people to read...I'm unsure why you'd have an issue with that or post it here? The made a small summary and linked the main complaint...seems fine to me.

 amphibian, on 20 October 2020 - 03:09 PM, said:

The biggest thing that the Polygon write-up leaves out is that the nature of the contract requires Weis and Hickman to submit the drafts, respond to edit requests, and the contract requires WotC to provide those edit requests, provide the licensing, and move this towards publication.

The next biggest thing is that Weis and Hickman were the ones who took initiative to open discussions with WotC, broker the agreement with the actual publisher etc, and bore the costs of producing the finished first book and the mostly done second and the outlines for all three plus costs of doing the edits.

This did all that was asked of them though...so I've no idea why it needs direct pointing out. It's not really relevant to the notion that they are suing WOTC with a strong case, because its WOTC that is in breach. The details are interesting, but not important to the glut of the case.

 amphibian, on 20 October 2020 - 03:09 PM, said:

We don't know what happened at WotC during the firestorm and what happened to kill the Dragonlance project from their end. WotC will respond with their defense, which we will likely see publicly too.

We can actually infer from previous context. This is not the first time that Weis and Hickman have been screwed out of things by WOTC. It's the third time in fact (that we know about publicly). At some point WOTC approached Jim Butcher to reboot the Dragonlance books entirely using the 5e...this was done behind Tracy and Margaret's backs (the two people who originated the whole Dragonlance setting and characters)....and when Jim found out that they wren't involved and didn't even know about the attempt, he walked because of how shady that was. Good on him to be honest.

WOTC also were annoyed by the fact that the 'Lost Chronicles' books weren't helping to sell the post-War Of Souls setting by instead being nostalgic looks back at the Companions/Legends Era (something WOTC commissioned so I'm unsure why they thought that it would do that)...so they completely destroyed the marketing push for the final book, and fucked the print runs to nothing (making it a rarity now), and telling Weis and Hickman were to 'stick it' when they spoke up.

I think we can use all that previous shit to assume that WOTC is not operating in any kind of good faith here. And Weis and Hickman obviously have a love for the setting they made popular and want to keep making good content. But they keep having to go back to a poisoned well because WOTC owns the IP.

 amphibian, on 20 October 2020 - 03:09 PM, said:

However, I see this as a necessary kick in the ass of a company that has not performed well in the past regarding racism, treating authors and stories well, building diversity, and has not changed significantly enough to really begin addressing those beyond PR pablum.

100% agreed on this. Very much hope this is that kick in the pants.

[amphibian]

The previous arrangements between Weis and Hickman do not have bearing yet on what happened with this situation. The complaint makes a very clear "tapdance" around those, which is smart.

If WotC is dumb enough to give the plaintiffs an opening to bring those in, the plaintiffs will have a field day going in on that.

[QuickTidal]

Very true. I still think that there is precedent a judge would listen to with regards to how they've been treated before though.

[Gorefest]

Wut? Racist magic cards? I think I'll need to revisit my collection. Never really noticed anything like that and I used to play it quite a lot in the mid/late nineties.

[amphibian]

 Gorefest, on 20 October 2020 - 05:43 PM, said:

Wut? Racist magic cards? I think I'll need to revisit my collection. Never really noticed anything like that and I used to play it quite a lot in the mid/late nineties.

The list of the cards banned is as follows:
Invoke Prejudice
Cleanse
Stone-Throwing Devils
Pradesh Gypsies
Jihad
Imprison
Crusade

[Dadding]

Learning that there’s a new Weis & Hickman Dragonlance series partially written, and then immediately learning it's probably not going to happen is so 2020.

[QuickTidal]

 Dadding, on 20 October 2020 - 07:55 PM, said:

Learning that there’s a new Weis & Hickman Dragonlance series partially written, and then immediately learning it's probably not going to happen is so 2020.

Right my heart soared and then sank when I read the news!

[LinearPhilosopher]

 amphibian, on 20 October 2020 - 07:01 PM, said:

 Gorefest, on 20 October 2020 - 05:43 PM, said:

Wut? Racist magic cards? I think I'll need to revisit my collection. Never really noticed anything like that and I used to play it quite a lot in the mid/late nineties.

The list of the cards banned is as follows:
Invoke Prejudice
Cleanse
Stone-Throwing Devils
Pradesh Gypsies
Jihad
Imprison
Crusade

Forgive my blindness, but aside from the gypsies and the crusade card, but what is so bad about some of these cards?

[amphibian]

Invoke Prejudice has people wearing KKK robes and the card itself has to do with color based rejection. It is also illustrated by a man who was then and is now a very, very verbose neo Nazi and white supremacist. He does not hide it whatsoever anymore and was booted from the group of artists associated with the game long ago.

Cleanse is racist due to "racial cleansing" as it only destroys black creatures and is a white card.

Stone Throwing Devils is a phrase that people use about Muslims and has racist connotations.

Jihad is a bad representation of the islamic concept of Jihad and slides into racism with its implementation of white creatures getting stronger.

Imprison comes off too much like enslavement of a black person in the art.

[amphibian]

I think the hiring practices of WotC are more deserving of a spotlight and permanent change, yet it's a simple and correct gesture to ban these cards.

[Werthead]

Quote

However, I see this as a necessary kick in the ass of a company that has not performed well in the past regarding racism, treating authors and stories well, building diversity, and has not changed significantly enough to really begin addressing those beyond PR pablum.

This appears to be the crux of the matter. WotC like to say they are being diverse, inclusive, progressive etc, but they have gargantuan problems behind the scenes. One of the problems with the DRAGONLANCE project seems to have been them assigning Nic Kelman as editor to look over the book after it was already accepted for publication. Kelman is notorious for having written a novel in 2003 that glamourised pederasty and people have been urging WotC to get rid of him for ages, but they've ignored them. Assigning him to the project is like asking a fox to do a health and safety check of the henhouse.

They also hired a QAnon-spouting idiot as a MAGIC artist, quietly rehired Mike Mearls (having removed him for reportedly passing details of sex abuse claims to the alleged abuser, a freelancer working for the company) and alienated a few of their writers and artists of colour by refusing to use their work whilst letting subpar work from white writers and editors through.

WotC, at heart, do not seem to understand the issues around representation and prefer to do the minimum required so they look progressive but don't follow through behind the scenes.

 QuickTidal, on 20 October 2020 - 04:23 PM, said:

WOTC also were annoyed by the fact that the 'Lost Chronicles' books weren't helping to sell the post-War Of Souls setting by instead being nostalgic looks back at the Companions/Legends Era (something WOTC commissioned so I'm unsure why they thought that it would do that)...so they completely destroyed the marketing push for the final book, and fucked the print runs to nothing (making it a rarity now), and telling Weis and Hickman were to 'stick it' when they spoke up.

This is interesting. IIRC, the Lost Chronicles was commissioned in 2005-06 because they thought the animated movie might do big business, so a series of books set in the same timeframe was a good idea. The movie did virtually no business at all (to the point where most people don't even know it exists today), so that didn't work so well. When D&D switched to 4th Edition in 2008, they brought all the settings back inhouse and terminated them (apart from FORGOTTEN REALMS, for which they have to keep publishing material annually or the rights revert to Ed Greenwood), which made them much less interested in the DRAGONLANCE books; the last Lost Chronicles novels was pushed out in 2009 to fulfil the contract and nothing more, and it remains the last DRAGONLANCE novel to be released.

I don't think it had anything to do with the tabletop material because WotC have not released a single DRAGONLANCE-branded product since 2003. All of the material released in 2003-08 was from Margaret Weis's own company, Sovereign Press, and WotC was completely uninterested in any of it apart from the fairly minimal money it brought in via the licence fee.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 23 October 2020 - 12:20 PM

[QuickTidal]

 Werthead, on 23 October 2020 - 12:15 PM, said:

This is interesting. IIRC, the Lost Chronicles was commissioned in 2005-06 because they thought the animated movie might do big business, so a series of books set in the same timeframe was a good idea.

This is not accurate. The animated movie came out in January 2008, DWARVEN DEPTHS came out in 2006, and had been planned/worked on by Weis and Hickman since 2004 when they went to WOTC with the idea. WOTC reportedly agreed because the Chronicles and Legends sold bananas, and War Of The Souls era didn't. They were trying to return to the well.

 Werthead, on 23 October 2020 - 12:15 PM, said:

the last Lost Chronicles novels was pushed out in 2009 to fulfil the contract and nothing more, and it remains the last DRAGONLANCE novel to be released.

Nope. The abandonment of the last books' marketing and especially its print run had everything to do with D&D 4th edition (I said 5e above, which was not accurate, it was 4th ed. I meant to say), not the animated movie. The marketing push for the first two books was fine, as were the print runs (they are easy to come by today as a result), it was Hourglass Mage that got screwed over at the 11th hour.

 Werthead, on 23 October 2020 - 12:15 PM, said:

I don't think it had anything to do with the tabletop material because WotC have not released a single DRAGONLANCE-branded product since 2003.

I'm not willing to believe that it had nothing to do with the tabletop scene at the time...the 4th Edition is REVILED. It landed with a thud in June 2008...and HOURGLASS MAGE came out the following summer...those timelines line directly up, especially knowing the print industry and how long it takes to get book runs, edited, printed, bound ect. and then marketed. By the end of 2008 D&D 4th Ed. was a known stinker and that was right when HOURGLASS MAGE was going from editing to prepress and print production.

 Werthead, on 23 October 2020 - 12:15 PM, said:

All of the material released in 2003-08 was from Margaret Weis's own company, Sovereign Press, and WotC was completely uninterested in any of it apart from the fairly minimal money it brought in via the licence fee.

Not true. Lost Chronicles was literally in 2006, 2007, and 2009, and begun in 2004. W&H literally rolled right from War of the Souls in 2003 into work on Lost Chronicles in 2004, for release in 2006-07, and didn't stop working on the IP till mid-to-late 2008 when they finished editing on MAGE.

[Werthead]

 QuickTidal, on 23 October 2020 - 01:29 PM, said:

This is not accurate. The animated movie came out in January 2008, DWARVEN DEPTHS came out in 2006, and had been planned/worked on by Weis and Hickman since 2004 when they went to WOTC with the idea. WOTC reportedly agreed because the Chronicles and Legends sold bananas, and War Of The Souls era didn't. They were trying to return to the well.

Ah, that makes more sense then.

Quote

Nope. The abandonment of the last books' marketing and especially its print run had everything to do with D&D 4th edition (I said 5e above, which was not accurate, it was 4th ed. I meant to say), not the animated movie. The marketing push for the first two books was fine, as were the print runs (they are easy to come by today as a result), it was Hourglass Mage that got screwed over at the 11th hour.

That's in accord with the point I was making, that WotC dropped all interest in DRAGONLANCE pretty damn fast because of 4th Edition and the desire to blast through the contractual agreement.

I think the situation with Jim Butcher doing a total reboot of the franchise developed during this timeframe (2008-11 or so) which is also why WotC wanted to wash their hands of W&H and move on with that project, which also never happened because Butcher had integrity.

Quote

Not true. Lost Chronicles was literally in 2006, 2007, and 2009, and begun in 2004. W&H literally rolled right from War of the Souls in 2003 into work on Lost Chronicles in 2004, for release in 2006-07, and didn't stop working on the IP till mid-to-late 2008 when they finished editing on MAGE.

No, the gaming material. WotC released all of those novels, but they sold Weis and Sovereign the licence for D&D DRAGONLANCE tie-in material in 2003 after that one single rulebook was published (which in turn was the first DRAGONLANCE product released since the 15th anniversary adventure book in 1999) and then reverted the licence in 2008. So I don't think they had any interest at all in what was going on with the setting material at all, they were solely interested in the novels.

The actual D&D gameplay material for DRAGONLANCE has always sold rather poorly, after the initial flurry of interest in 1984 for the original run of DL# adventures. That wouldn't necessarily be the case in the current market - where WotC are publishing D&D material so infrequently that anything with the logo on sells like hot cakes - and there were strong rumours that DRAGONLANCE was going to be relaunched with a setting and adventure book next year or in 2022, but those plans seem to have also been changed.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 23 October 2020 - 02:22 PM

[Mentalist]

Required watching:



I don't think I ever read the second Lost Chronicles book (I do own it). Guess I was waiting for Hourglass Mage? Dwarven Depths was.... all over the place, tbh.

Wasn't the last thing Weiss wrote in Dragonlance the Isha books?

I kinda fell off the Dragonlance wagon as my tastes changed. Would've been interesting to see if this new trilo showed any evolution in their writing.

[amphibian]

 Werthead, on 23 October 2020 - 12:15 PM, said:

Quote

However, I see this as a necessary kick in the ass of a company that has not performed well in the past regarding racism, treating authors and stories well, building diversity, and has not changed significantly enough to really begin addressing those beyond PR pablum.

This appears to be the crux of the matter. WotC like to say they are being diverse, inclusive, progressive etc, but they have gargantuan problems behind the scenes. One of the problems with the DRAGONLANCE project seems to have been them assigning Nic Kelman as editor to look over the book after it was already accepted for publication. Kelman is notorious for having written a novel in 2003 that glamourised pederasty and people have been urging WotC to get rid of him for ages, but they've ignored them. Assigning him to the project is like asking a fox to do a health and safety check of the henhouse.

They also hired a QAnon-spouting idiot as a MAGIC artist, quietly rehired Mike Mearls (having removed him for reportedly passing details of sex abuse claims to the alleged abuser, a freelancer working for the company) and alienated a few of their writers and artists of colour by refusing to use their work whilst letting subpar work from white writers and editors through.

WotC, at heart, do not seem to understand the issues around representation and prefer to do the minimum required so they look progressive but don't follow through behind the scenes.

I believe the Q Anon supporting artist you're talking about is Terese Nielsen, who is one of the three most famous MtG artists. Her works have been commissioned and included in the game from 1996 (fairly early in the game) up until people found out that she holds anti-trans views despite being a L of LGTBQ+ and that she donated original works of hers to a Q Anon fundraiser. She's made the art for some of the most prized MtG cards ever (200+ art for cards and some of them are worth 4 figures) and has a huge dedicated fanbase. Her original artworks go for 5 or 6 figures.

The decision to stop commissioning works from her was one that cost WotC significant money. I'm flabbergasted that WotC actually did it instead of just shaking a finger at her and hoping the big part of its audience that was upset about her views and statements and actions would forget.

So it's not accurate to say WotC hired a Q Anon artist. It's more accurate to say that WotC finally heard the audience and did something basic and right, yet surprising bc they did so many shitty things to other people. They have stopped commissioning works from her and will not print her stuff in sets going forwards.

The stuff about Kelman is way more complicated than your summary.

WotC has a big soap space opera type story running through Magic with many side stories at the same time. They have flipped back and forth between having that story be made by people in-house and by authors paid by the gig. The story has long been a series of very uneven quality work, yet there are some genuinely fun and good pieces - mostly written by people who weren't paid enough and were eventually fucked over by WotC.

Kelman was brought on in a weird way. His previous writing has some truly gross stuff in it and he hadn't had the experience of other authors or story producers at WotC in making the kinds of studies WotC was seeking headed towards. Some of those story producers were putting in tons of overtime work to create some really good short stories and they burnt out due to low pay and low enthusiasm from upper brass. They got shuffled elsewhere, Kelman was brought on, and the story was pushed mostly out of house.

The delivery of the stories from out of house writers has been extremely uneven and in particular, Kelman's interviews about the bits of story he really pushed have shown that he's kind of a dick and he hasn't caught on much with the audience. His preparatory work and editorial with has also kind of screwed over Greg Wiseman so badly with forced changes to characters, poor communication about editing, pushed back publishing, and more. He likely affected Kate Elliot's work as well and the overall story that's being produced.

Then this Dragon lance stuff came out. Weis and Hickman seem really unhappy with his work with them - unhappy enough to bring up the gross book he's written. That's not surprising, yet he has the keys to the story for basically half the company at this point.

WTF is going on with Kelman and WotC?

This post has been edited by amphibian: 23 October 2020 - 02:55 PM