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The thing about RPGs is that a good games master will have enough imagination to create his own setting and stories and set them in the the context of any suitable set of rules.

There are so many different rulesets around now you are spoilt for choice.

Also you don't need a lot of terrain and models like you do for a wargame.

In other words, I think RPGs are still big but they are played by people who don't need to go to the RPG shop every month to get a new set of adventures and things.

Kirby is preparing to retire. He dont care for what will be GW after he gets out. What he care about is how his retirement plan is goying on. My country is governed by people like that, i know what im talking about.

On the bright sight, it is probably that after Kirby retirement, the new CEO will look to the situation, do the maths, and GW will come back as it should...

Someone else took over as CEO a couple of years ago.

I don't know how old Kirby is but his retirement plan might include regular dividends from his GW shareholdings.

Hi Killkrazy.
The following is my recollection of what happend with the new 'C.E.O' GW decided to hire...(It may not be 100% accurate, but quite close.)

Apparently any PLC having a Chairman that is the C.E.O. is frowned upon/illegal.Mr Kirby did both jobs on his £400k+ salery.

Then he hired mark Wells as C.E.O , to stop GW plc from being 'frowned upon' by the people in power/shareholders etc.

After MR Wells had served his contract time (5 years?)on about £150k a year.(Focusing on more cost cutting , maximizing profits by R.O.W embargo ,)He left the company quietly with a slightly longer but good CV .

And then Mr Kirby offers to take on the job of C.E.O. temporarily (Untill he retires in 2-3 years time?)And gave himself a pay rise, (Oddly enough he did NOT take a pay cut when Mr Wells was doing half his old job as C.E.O.)

AFAIK, Mr Kirby got his buy out investment back when GW floated as a PLC .His Shares have netted him £Ms in dividends over the years.(Not to mention his massive pay grade.)

I think Mr Kirby got his option on (free?)shares as part of his original contract.Even if he had to buy them, his returns through dividends over the years would have covered the initial purchase price. (Appx £500k dividend on his shares last pay out.Thats just one out of 20 dividend payouts!)

I think Mr Kirby had taken the decision to get as much money out of GW as he can before he retires, rather than rely on long term dividends in a toy soldier company seeing him through retirement.He is in a prime position to see how vunerable a company like GW plc is to miss- management!

 Agamemnon2 wrote:

 Mannahnin wrote:
Magic has kept on well, but D&D has taken steps back and lost market dominance.

It's true that Hasbro does not care about D&D. For them, it is the gazebo tacked alongside WOTC's MTG juggernaut. RPGs are on a downswing, and there's now an actual competitive marketplace out there. 20 years ago, D&D was the only game in town (ah-ha), but now there's retroclones and alternatives, from spartan homebrew PDFs all the way to the thriving product range of Paizo's Pathfinder. Ironically, it was WOTC itself that did this, but creating the OGL, a djinn that's long since escaped its lamp and will not be returned thither.

20 years ago Vampire: The Masquerade and a whole wave of storytelling-focused, RP-intensive games were taking over the market, and D&D (while still the biggest game) was considered unfashionable and backwards by much of the gaming community. At the same time, TSR was in their death spiral of corporate mismanagement.

Of course Hasbro doesn’t love D&D the way the founders of WotC loved D&D. No non-geek does or would. Peter Adkison and his folks loved D&D enough to buy the sinking TSR to save D&D, enough to put a vast amount of resources into the 3E launch and original super-cheap, high-production value core books, and enough to create the OGL to ensure that no corporate owner could ever legally lock away/suppress the D&D name and system, as was a real danger when TSR was sinking toward bankruptcy. The OGL is what paved the way for the retroclones, and I don’t know if one can really consider that ironic, as it was part of the point. When they created the OGL they were explicitly freeing the Djinn.

Anyway, they were okay having D&D bring in low profits or even be a net loss (for example their game store in Seattle was an over the top showcase of geek fun, but bled money), because they didn't need it to be profitable, since they had Magic. Once Hasbro bought them, the idea of handling D&D like that went out the window, so we got 3.5 and then 4th editions, as Hasbro wanted more revenue from the game.

Which worked when D&D and MTG came from the same budget, but since they were split Wizards have had all the money in the world to do new Magic stuff, but not for D&D stuff.