FatR wrote:
Start from 5 cents/word just for translating/proofreading the text itself and you'll need to make an effort finding a translation team that won't return you some hackwork (this happens here even with cash cow books, supposedly translated by experts, if the publishing house fails to care). It'll cost alot more in countries like Japan, of course.
That's expensive, but not prohibitively expensive.
The biggest problem I can think of are finding distributors. This is what really killed the videogame market from growing the pie higher than it could in the 80's (post videogame-crash) and 90's. But it's easier to print books than it is to manufacture and ship videogames.
But seriously, this is like an untapped goldmine here. The 90's WoD and D&D are pretty much the only 'names' in RPGs that have (had) the money for regular decent foreign translations. I know that there are native-language RPGs out there and also that some of them like DSA and Alshard are going to be really hard to unseat. But there's no need to let them run unopposed.
Monster's Den: Book of Dread somehow was able to read my mind. Because check this shit out:
http://monstrumgames.com/2010/07/devil-region/
Anyway, hopping back briefly to the D&D comic idea... if I was in charge of that idea, I would use DriveThruRPG.net as my distributor (charging 1,50 per issue) and also give it out for free to D&D subscribers. I wouldn't worry too much about the physical security; you actually want people to pirate it to a limited extent, because it's a form of advertising if the net loss isn't too high.
All this is just pandering to nerds. To be honest, I have no idea how to advertise the idea that D&D's cool to children. The most I can think of is really high-quality production values for the boxed set, but that'll make it too expensive for a 20-dollar price tag. I'd say something about cards but as far as I know the D&D-miniatures thing didn't go over too well.
Maybe you could whore out your license to LEGO? Going back with the previous animation idea... sell the idea to a studio? I really don't know how well this strategy works. D&D has stepped out into the 'cartoon' business at least four times before and except for the first cartoon I can't think of anything that would indicate success to me. Is it because that D&D tried to directly profit from the cartoon so sacrificed production values at the cost of having their 'own' product? Or is it just because no one wants to pick up the idea?
I'd know how I would structure the cartoon to promote the product without falling into the Saturday Morning Advertisement trap however. That part is easy. The hard part is getting people to watch it, pitching it to the studio, and most importantly using it to hawk D&D products.
Fuck, I really wish I knew how Boondocks got an animated adaptation. Oh, well.
