https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUFUwLM3xRI
Hasbro-Wizards fired everyone in charge of the physical 5.5 Edition books in December. Why? What does it mean? PDM analyzes.Get The Tomb of Gyzaengaxx! http...
From the video (basically the first thing said):
It just came to me from Ben Riggs ... I'm going to read it exactly as I received it: Multiple independent sources with knowledge of the situation say that the team in charge of production and distribution of physical DND books was laid off in December 2023. So that's the previous round of cuts. Now I'm not a journalist, but Ben is, so I consider that solid.
Not everything that some specific person said is automatically true. However, a specific quoted statement made by an identified qualified source is, in fact, a citation. Now we know who (allegedly) said it, and we can get on into a conversation about whether they actually said that, or whether they're qualified, or what other qualified people say about it or bring other sources to bear etc.
What would you say is a citation, if not who said it, why they're qualified, and what they said?
To read their comment generously as I did initially, calling it a "quote of hearsay" is calling the validity of the citation so far removed from being trustworthy it doesn't deserve the word. Granted, it would be doing this without explicitly stating so or supporting it with any evidence or arguments.
To be honest, I'm not convinced by this source. We don't know who made the claim, we know a guy that wrote a DnD book a year and a half ago told a youtuber they exist and said it. That's a step or two removed from where I would trust it.
See that makes perfect sense. If "Citation needed" said instead "Who is Ben Riggs and why would I trust him" then we could have had a lot more time efficient productive conversation about it.
citation noun [C] (EXAMPLE): a word or piece of writing taken from a written work.
I guess it depends if they were taking a quote from published work?
This is such a silly aspect of this to be spending this many words on.
citation /sī-tā′shən/
noun
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition • More at Wordnik
This is number 2. Usually an explicit reference is enough, but in this case it's got the exact quote, the exact source who said it (you can contact him on Twitter if you want to verify it or find out more), why the source considered it reliable information, and why they should arguably be considered an authoritative source. Again: Doesn't mean what's in the video is true. But it forms a basis for starting to talk about whether it's true.
I think people have gotten accustomed to invoking the word "citation" as a way of disagreeing with something they don't think is proven, so much so that they've lost sight of the actual concept involved and the next steps once you have the source and what they said. It seems like at this point it's just a way to sound smart or skeptical in a comment.
I think, too, people have interpreted "citations" as "smoking gun proof", and not, literally, just the thing that was said, and the name of the person who said it/location where you can find the thing that was said. As if the point of citing sources is to win arguments, not to let information be traced and independently verified.
There's an infamous Twitter exchange among the online Toronto Blue Jays fandom, where the team's official Twitter account announced that a player was injured, and someone replied with "Source?"
The team's account replied in turn with "Literally us, the Blue Jays".
I think quite a lot of people on the internet view the entire point of the operation to be winning arguments, as opposed to getting at the truth. I can understand the drive but it's not a real productive tradition.
@Alphastream @darjr @btmoo Got into a discussion about this on a Discord server.
It was the D&D fiction team, not the D&D rules/game book team.
And they were part of the layoffs from Hasbro, not fired.
Frankly, considering the guy says in the video they were laid off and not fired AND this guy's done this clickbait crap in the past, Hasbro/WotC should start sending C&Ds for defamation since they're knowingly lying.
@Abstruse@chirp.enworld.org Do you have a named source / a good authority or anything that I can reference?
If this is true, I'd like to make a second follow-up post "hey that thing I posted was crap," but I'm not real familiar with the people in this space or who's trustworthy.
As if anyone's been making the distinction between "laid off" and "fired" when talking about these corporate restructurings.
They lost their jobs. They no longer work there. That's what they're saying, and that's what they're trying to say. Words have different connotations in different contexts, and those contexts can be inferred by listening to the other words that they've said.
Yeah. It's not real relevant to the core discussion but it seems like everyone involved has been saying "laid off in December"; I have no idea where the desire to debunk "fired" came from since I don't think anyone's saying fired (and yes the distinction will be a little arbitrary anyway if it turns out someone is saying it.)
To the wider point - I'm moderately convinced now that the video is, in fact, bogus; I'm just waiting to hear a little more and then if it seems like it checks out I plan to make a follow-up post with the right information.
Are there any 5.5 physical sourcebooks? Were they ever planned at all?
I haven't been following One D&D news, but I got the impression they were focusing on a subscription-only model, so I've been planning to stick with my 5e books or switch to an ORC-licensed system.
I think you've grasped the essentials of Hasbro's general direction of thinking. (Not that I think moving steadily away from physical towards online is inherently a bad thing, but I think that under this leadership it's likely to be coupled with a general threat of crappiness and monetization.)
(Edit: Added some balance and some why)
If WOTC adopts the subscription-only model, remember, you can save each chapter of the digital books in PDF by pressing Ctrl+P in the PC browser. Then just unsubscribe, screw them
