Who is left to rebuild the D&D franchise?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Anyone who has talked to me on these boards for more than 50 posts knows that I get off to the idea of having Bill Slavicsek, Mike Mearls, Andy Collins, James Wyatt, Bruce Cordell, and David Noonan being shown the door and pulling in a new staff.

The thing is... where are they going to get replacements from? Are they going to have to call in oldbies to revive the franchise? I don't even know if that's a good idea. I mean, the only guys I can think of off of the top of my head I want to write for 5E is Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Richard Baker. Maybe David Noonan if he apologizes for inflicting roles on us.






When the fuck is Mike Mearls getting fired?! I'm so giddy with anticipation that I could just DIE.

[Juton]

I see you are holding up hope of D&D rising from the ashes. After reading about D&D adventures I fear that they will warp D&D into something M:tG like and scratch their heads in confusion as the franchise flounders and dies.

Hopefully I'm wrong. I think Monte Cook would be my first choice for Lead Designer, and he'd really have to be a leader because if we are going to see a good version of D&D then all the minigames will have to be consistent and workable. That requires a micromanager as much as an innovator. Cook has a lot of ideas about how to make a d20 system, he'd need a good team to weed out his crap though.

My second choice would be the team at Green Ronin who puts together the Mutants and Masterminds games. M&M and D&D are fairly similar in terms of mechanics but fairly different in terms of philosophy. If you where going to do a classes version of D&D they'd be my #1 choice, but that's a heretical thought. I think they could make a systems though where all types of characters have something interesting to do and memorable encounters.

[Username17]

The problem right now is that they haven't gone three months without a new exciting revelation to turn everything onto its head in two years. In addition to just plain sucking, D&D is currently suffering from event fatigue. Badly.

Honestly, at this point when they come out with a new innovation in Skill Challenge mechanics, I don't even read it. Because I have no faith in them at all. And I am not alone.

Aside from some shrill and bitter 4rries, there really aren't a lot of people who even bother trying to follow the intricacies of each new innovation. And that's going to make rebooting D&D really hard. They have cried wolf 14 times in the last 3 years, and I just don't see people coming when they call anymore.

-Username17

[krainboltgreene]

If D&D comes back from the dead it's going to have to be the LOTR of RPGs. That is, the introduction-everyone-knows-it to roleplaying games.

Sadly I believe that means they need to keep Roles. It means getting rid of the vast dice array. It also means getting rid out of the non-stereotypical classes and races.

If 8-14 year olds enjoy it then they'll survive. Why? Because they're never going to make the adults who grew up on AD&D happy. Ever. This means convincing the next generation of adults that D&D is what roleplaying is.

[Korwin]

Not likely, since apparently an new LotR RPG is in the works.

20 Jan 10 - Cubicle 7 Entertainment and Sophisticated Games announce that they are developing The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® Role-playing Game.

[krainboltgreene]

I didn't mean literally. I meant in that "everyone and their uncle thinks LOTR when they think fantasy."

[Red_Rob]

Everyone outside the hobby already thinks of D&D as the poster child for Roleplaying. What they need is an edition of the game that doesn't split the fanbase as much as 4th did.

Before 3rd Jonathan Tweet had written some good but fairly niche games whilst Monte Cook was mainly known for writing adventures. Maybe there's someone in the wings at WotC waiting to make the 5th edition that will bring the fans back.

[krainboltgreene]

They only "know" the brand through lazy, negative, PR. Either from TV/Movie stereotypes or that whole 90's SATAN'S GAME thing.

When was the last time you ever saw advertising for D&D outside of a gaming shop?

It's my firm opinion that WotC has already let the ax drop with 4E. The fanbase is split 3 ways: Old, New, and Apathetic. Nothing they do is going to bring the fans back other than bringing back 2 or 3. That simply doesn't make money. No, if they want to pick up again they're going to have to convince /kids/ that D&D is fun and cool. Those kids will become adults with wallets.

[Juton]

If 8-14 year olds enjoy it then they'll survive. Why? Because they're never going to make the adults who grew up on AD&D happy. Ever. This means convincing the next generation of adults that D&D is what roleplaying is.

I don't think that is true. I got into RPGs around 2004, by then AD&D had pretty much died out around where I am and nearly everyone who played 2e had moved to 3e. 4e will be 5 in a few years but because of its quality and the fact you can play something 3.5 like with Pathfinder, 4e will being dying even more than it is now, assuming it isn't dead.

To revive the franchise they need a game as fun 3.5, but simplified (to an extent) and with less of the overpowered zanyness so prevalent in 3.5. If they can do that, and slap a D&D logo on it people will flock to it because of the logo. In the beginning of 4e I think a lot of people defended it because of its brand, but 4e was too radical a departure/sucked so eventually those people stopped defending it and playing it.

[Username17]

They went a long way with getting groups like Penny Arcade on board. Run some games for them, have some fun, get some advertising. The problem is that only gets you a flood of preorders. Real sales are still driven by word of mouth. And 4e still had the problem where it sucked. That hurt the franchise a lot. It meant that the sales of every book were very short and fucking everything got put on "do not backorder".

The primary problem is that no one was really happy with 4e D&D. They tried to blame it on everything from software piracy to the economic slowdown, but the reality is that people didn't buy the books because people didn't really want to own those books. And having them thrashing around like fish out of water with whole new untested subsystems and major nerftastic errata and crap every few weeks has given them a very unenviable position to try to convince people that they've learned anything. Even if they made something people actually did want now, who would know? No one except hard core 4rries intends to buy Psionic Power, so if it represents a major shift in strategy and writing quality, no one will know.

So they basically have two problems:

• Get an edition together that generates positive word of mouth.
• Get a marketing campaign together that will get gamers and potential gamers to try it at all.

First of all, they need to get a Dungeons and Dragons game out for twenty bucks. Children have $20, they don't have $29.95 plus tax. You need to get kids on board or your game is eventually dead. Mike Mearls obviously doesn't give a fuck about six months from now and never has, but Hasbro sure as fuck should.

Secondly, they need a marketing campaign to get them a chance from grognards. I'm not a marketing guy, I don't know. But you could do worse than getting a bunch of guys with nerd cred to play some public test games like they did before - that genuinely did seem to pique some interest.

Thirdly, stop felating World of fucking Warcraft. There are 11 million players, but for fuck's sake there are 20 million D&D players. And 100 million Lord of the Rings fans. No one cares about fucking Draenei and Blood Elves. Anyone whose experience with the fantasy genre is so limited that they start babbling about what they do in WoW needs to get ired. Like, yesterday. D&D stole judiciously from Greek Myths and modern fantasy of the time, and restricting yourself to WoW makes about as much sense as restricting yourself to Xena: Warrior Princess (about 8 million fans, by the way).

But most of all, they just need someone making the next edition who is more concerned about making a complete game than keeping his own week by week word count up. You gotta get rid of people like Mike Mearls
because they don't finish anything. People are going to D&D over some game written by some dude and his stoner friends because they are expecting a higher level of quality. If they aren't getting that, they might as well just download some guy's fantasy heartbreaker and play that. Mere volume of content isn't even an advantage.

-Username17

[Thymos]

What did happen to Mike Mearls? Iron Heroes actually showed a lot of promise even if it wasn't finished.

How did he go from churning out decent stuff that was never finished to crap that is never finished?

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm not a professional marketing guy, but if I was given the task of marketing 5E, here's how I would go about doing it.

1) The changes have to be huge, huge enough to distance itself from the previous edition. Frank's right when he says that trying to stack on a bunch of changes onto a sinking ship is a waste of time.

Just declaring your intent to make a new edition is like a reset button, but you might have to go extra far--if you say that 5th Edition is an expansion of 4th, it might have the same problems. But there always remains the problem that too many changes will alienate grognards; and while Frank is also right when he says that D&D needs to grow the pie higher long-term, short-term 5E needs to turn a profit and needs to turn a profit right now. Lapsed players are the easiest to get onboard so the effort should be towards getting them.

If I was going to market 5E, I would market it as 'An improvement on Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition with a lot of the innovations from 4th Edition in it'.


2) I would make a new campaign setting from scratch. If WotC still owns the IP, then they should make it based off of a fusion of Magic: The Gathering and Greyhawk/FR/Eberron/etc.. If not, I don't know what the end result would be like, but I do know it would have these features:

• Iconic races that everyone understands from scratch. People understand lizardmen, it has its own page on TVTropes and everything. No one gives a fuck about dragonborn. Or Eladrin. If I had to highlight 12 races, I would pick these: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Orcs, Goblins, Shifters (emphasizing the furry werewolf aspect), Tieflings, Warforged, Gith, Hobgoblins, and Bugbears (they would get retooled to look and act more like Goliaths though).
• A touch of grim and grey. Not completely grimdark, because you'll want children to be playing, but you want your campaign setting to feel like there's things for players to accomplish.
• A transitioning period from points of light to points of darkness--or the reverse. You want people to care about the geographic content of your setting and that's really hard for people to do if the vast outside of the world is unknown. A veteran to the default campaign setting should be able to name the major countries and cities. You actually do want some great swatches of darkness too, however, so people can add in their own content.
• Iconic villains. Spider-Man has the Sinister Six, Batman has Arkham Asylum, the next project of D&D needs its own rogues' gallery.
• Easily recognizable public domain deities. You can totally do the God of War thing and twist their personalities out of shape, but someone glancing at your campaign setting should be able to glance at your book and go 'oh yeah, I know who that guy is'. Your pantheon should look something like: Gaia, Zeus, Athena, Vishnu, Anasi, Bahamut, Faust, Dracula, Prometheus, Hades, Aphrodite, Iblis, Isis, Susanoo.
• Magitek technology. People don't mind there being wooden golems that shoot out fireballs people ride as long as there are castles in the background and no one uses guns. Once you've established that there are no guns, no automobiles aside from a train or two, and no penicillin people are surprisingly receptive towards bullshit technology in their setting--especially if you handwave with it with 'it runs by magic' as much as possible. Only this isn't even really a handwave; you're intentionally trying to magic it up so you won't offend peoples' suspension of disbelief.
• Get rid of the Boring Invincible Hero crap for the 'good guys'. Unless you have an iconic goody like Drizz't, you should not be afraid to kill off iconic heroes. In fact, the mortality rate should be high as you can make it without inducing Cancer Puppy Syndrome. This invests people into the setting and makes it feel like there are consequences without personally putting their own characters in jeopardy.
• The campaign setting needs several metaplots of some sort. Metaplots are a good way to get less imaginative tables to get involved in your game right now. Don't just say that there is war between goblinoids and the other races. When PCs travel the country to stop by the Library City, they should see an orc army laying siege to it. Don't just say that halflings are discriminated against, you should make note that the government in one city are slowly taking steps to remove their rights and eliminate them.
• Most important of all, don't write your campaign setting like it's a damn constitution or novel. You should make peace with the fact that people are going to knock over your beloved NPCs and destroy your beloved cities and twist the metaplot in a way you might not like. This is a good thing. The setting should make internal sense but it should be changeable, fragile even. While it makes sense for the king of the largest city on the continent to be head of the mage's guild, if you have to take draconian steps to protect your precious status quo then you should get over yourself.

3) Like I said earlier, Dungeons and Dragons the TTRPG is a loss leader. A lot of people play it and you can certainly turn a profit from that, but if you want to grow the pie higher you can't just sell the game on its own merits.

The first thing I would do is commission some writers to make some D&D novels/comics using my campaign setting. I wouldn't do the hackery of R.A. Salvatore; I would go through all of the fan material and offer to pay top-dollar for a comic or a novel highlighting my setting. Good novels take time to write, so I would schedule this project way in advance.

Secondly, I would get some videogames out of the gate. I would find the best social networking applications and produce a D&D videogame that worked for that. I would also create a low-maintenance flash applications that highlighted by videogame. On Kongregate.com, Monster's Den: Book of Dread is their most popular RPG and it sucks. It sucks because it's done on the cheap and seriously one guy is programming it. You could easily do better than that by waving around $30,000 to pay for some great art and programming.

While that was going on I would be doing my damnedest to look for a company to produce the next Neverwinter Nights using the new campaign setting. While it would be awesome to use a bought-and-paid-for developer to make my game like Bioware, this isn't necessary at this juncture. Right now the point of the videogame would be to strengthen the franchise and get interest in it. The hope is that when people are done playing the videogame that they will check out the tabletop RPG. If you churn a profit off of the videogame too, fine, but that's not the goal.

[Username17]

What did happen to Mike Mearls? Iron Heroes actually showed a lot of promise even if it wasn't finished.

How did he go from churning out decent stuff that was never finished to crap that is never finished?

Nothing happened to Mike Mearls, he has literally always been like that. He writes 20,000 words a week, an makes bold pronouncements and throws down cool sounding ideas. And as soon as he hits a snag, he just wraps up the project and goes onto something else. Because if he ever stopped and did some rewrites on stuff that wasn't working up to expectations or gelling with other material, his output would drop.

Cool Sounding Idea	Snags
Replace Feat Trees with levels of Feat specialization in feat categories	Organic characters fucked. Feat specialization levels not guaranteed to be level appropriate.
Give character classes lots of choices	Token explosion
Let people design their spells from little pieces	Game slows to a crawl while people do algebra in combat. Different combinations nothing like balanced.
Give each class cool things to do.	Not all cool things even vaguely comparable at the same level. "Wearing heavy armor" is actually never going to be that cool at any level.
Give out magical school specialization levels.	...which aren't level appropriate like at all.
Remove the magic items expectation.	Turns out that makes characters unable to handle the basic D&D challenges, and writing new challenges is boring and hard.

Looking back at th bold pronouncements made for Iron Heroes and the truly sorry state it was actually in when it hit the printers, are you really surprised that he has revised the Skill Challenge rules over a dozen times (personally, other authors have a dozen more half-assed attempts) in the last 2 years? I mean it's the same thing: he has some bold sounding ideas, then he does 20,000 words of hack writing a week. And when he hits design snags that would slow own his output, he just scraps it and moves forward on a new project with some new bold sounding ideas. The only thing that has changed is that you're now fully cognizant of his history of bullshitting and you are no longer willing to accept "This time it's going to be super cool!" from him as an excuse for why you should buy his stuff and wait for the patch to make it work.

-Username17

[sake]

Once you've established that there are no guns, no automobiles aside from a train or two, and no penicillin people are surprisingly receptive towards bullshit technology in their setting-

Oh god, I hate that mindset so much. Wands that shoot lightning, magic crossbows that shoot fireballs are A-OK, but god forbid you put a pistol grip on the wand for better aiming or remove the, then useless, bow arms from the crossbow, because you'll destroy someone's entire fantasy ideal.

And don't even get me started on the penicillin/cure potion, magic/psionic semantic bullshit thing.

The first thing I would do is commission some writers to make some D&D novels/comics using my campaign setting. I wouldn't do the hackery of R.A. Salvatore; I would go through all of the fan material and offer to pay top-dollar for a comic or a novel highlighting my setting. Good novels take time to write, so I would schedule this project way in advance.

The comic industry is already dying and unable to attract new readers.

Better idea would be doing a cartoon series. Between Hasbro and the D&D name req, I think you could probably get enough backing to pull it off. Make it a mix of action/adventure with a bit of comedy(actual comedy, not OotS style in jokes), pay some korean animation sweatshop to make it quasi anime style, and then stick it on Adult Swim. (that way you get the little kids, the teenagers, and 20 somethings watching it)

Oh and make it about the actual god damn iconic characters and setting. That way it would help build interest in the world, make people actually give a shit about your Iconics as characters rather than just some random people that keep showing up in your book's artwork, and even give new players a direction to go in when they start playing ("Ooo! I wanna be Jozen but with bow", or "Can I play a mage like Mailee, only female?") rather than being being overwelmed by all the choices.

And yeah... I will actually be kind of sad if 4E comes and goes without spawning at least one tactical rpg video game. Because much as the rules suck for table top, I think they could be awesome for a video game.

[RandomCasualty2]

I took a look back at Iron Heroes yesterday, because honestly, I hadn't checked it out in a long time, and I remembered it as being mediocre back in the day.

But as I checked it out with a fresh look, I can really say that it was just plain godawful. It had infinite loops, a spellcasting system that flat out didn't work, a weird token system that didn't really do much of worth, classes that weren't particularly interesting to play and numbers that just didn't work out well.

Mearls has a lot of admirable goals, and that's why I think a lot of people like him. Because when he talks about what he wants to do, everyone is nodding and saying "Yeah, that's the D&D I want."

Unfortunately Mearls ability to actually deliver on that is pretty much nil. The guy has maybe one or two good ideas now and then, but really doesn't understand the game well enough to make me think that those ideas rise above the monkeys on typewriters system of game design.

[K]

The problem is finding the creatives.

I mean, anyone with a resume in game design has been doing contract work with someone else's system, so there is no way of knowing that they have the chops to do their own game. I mean, if you said you did some work for Vampire there is no way of knowing if you are a hack or a talented designer chained to a shitty system.

This means that the only people who you know that mighty make good games are the people who have already written their own successful games.... and they have their own games, so why would they do contract work for you for a fraction of the glory and none of the profits?

I'm pretty sure that DnD up until now has been written by the "throw a stone at a convention, and see who looks up" method, meaning they just found some guys who were otherwise unemployable and stuck them in a room until a game came out. I mean, the guy who created Forgotten Realms sent an unsolicited crate of material to TSR and they were so shocked they gave him a contract, but these days people who are willing to send in content are a dime a dozen and sorting the wheat from the chaff actually takes more effort than it would to just hire your five friends from the local gaming store and just use the single draft that looks the best considering you tend to get the same level of quality.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Oh and make it about the actual god damn iconic characters and setting. That way it would help build interest in the world, make people actually give a shit about your Iconics as characters rather than just some random people that keep showing up in your book's artwork, and even give new players a direction to go in when they start playing ("Ooo! I wanna be Jozen but with bow", or "Can I play a mage like Mailee, only female?") rather than being being overwelmed by all the choices.

I don't know how much money it costs to make animation in this modern age. I do know that it's pretty damn expensive, though.

I suggested a novel and a comic book because those things are cheap. And I don't know who the IP-holders will be for 5E. If you have enough money for a cartoon that's one thing, but if you don't then you need to start trying to promote your property on the cheap. Granted, anyone interested in buying D&D will have to have some major bread to wrest it from Hasbro in the first place, but otherwise...

But yeah, if you want to actually have an animation franchise it's probably a good idea to throw in some heroic iconics. I think villain iconics are more important in the long run, but I would be dismayed if I picked up a Teen Titans: The RPG and there wasn't any easy way to pick up Cyborg. If someone picked up your RPG because your comic/TV show/video game was awesome and they can't play Aang or Morrigan right out of the gate then you risk having a disappointed fan.

First of all, they need to get a Dungeons and Dragons game out for twenty bucks. Children have $20, they don't have $29.95 plus tax. You need to get kids on board or your game is eventually dead. Mike Mearls obviously doesn't give a fuck about six months from now and never has, but Hasbro sure as fuck should.

Also this. You need to have something recognizably your edition and will lube butter the fans up for your new edition when they're done with your pre-product. 4E really fucked up by releasing Keep on the Shadowfell (which was panned by several blogs, even pro-4E ones). Aside from the fact that it's a crappy introduction adventure in the fact that it's too railroady, too grindy, and too difficult for non-veterans, they did a poor job of promoting it.

Guys, when you're promoting a product for your edition that's supposed to be the starter set, advertise the starter set. I know it's very tempting to drop an add and salivate over the thought of someone spending $100 for your new product, but seriously. There are three types of potential D&D customers.

1) True Believers. These are people who are already into the hobby to one degree or another and have probably played D&D before. While they're an easy source of money, you shouldn't spend too much effort trying to hook them. People who already want to plop down money for a new edition are going to whether or not you advertise. Gamers are plugged into the Internet. You really don't need to spend money right away to attract them. You attract those players through word of mouth.

2, 3) Non-gaming nerds and children. These are the people who are into nerd culture (or are a least willing to give it a look) but for whatever reason don't play a tabletop game. These are for whom the games are for. When you're targeting players through Newgrounds applications and Facebook and whatever, those are the guys who get sticker-shock. True Believers don't mind spending a hundred dollars for a product that's good, but New Meat will. Focus on making the best boxed set that you can. And hook people on that. If people like your boxed set then it's much easier to get them started on your mainline game. That's when the moolah starts coming in and that's when you start getting new blood.

Non-gaming nerds are more willing to drop a hundred bucks on something that looks neat than children, partly because being a nerd is expensive in of itself, but mostly because they CAN. I mean with a kid you have a neutral audience altogether (kids are harassed less about having 'grown-up' tastes like sex/sports/clothes than adults) but even if they are interested in your game you've failed if it's not something that their parents will get them outside of Christmas or birthdays. Whoever is next in charge of advertising actually will have it much easier than the previous editions because you can reach kids more easily through the Internet.

There's honestly no excuse these why someone with a good plan and a hundred thousand dollars to burn can't do a good job marketing and advertising the next edition. The Internet makes it fucking cheap (or FREE if you're really that good, but you don't have the time to advertise for free), your responsibility is to make it worth watching.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well, K, in my opinion there are two tiers of 'good' writing when it comes to RPGs.

You have people who are good at writing mechanics and people who are good at writing prose. In my experience I have not met anyone who is good at writing mechanics who isn't at least decent at writing prose, but the reverse is not true. Moreover, finding good mechanics writers is harder than finding good prose writers.

If you get people who are good at writing mechanics then they should basically be made to hammer out just the rules. Not because they couldn't write good prose, too, it's just less productive for them to be doing so. Unfortunately, finding people who are good at writing mechanics is hard. At the wages at which the typical RPG writer earns, someone with those skills could easily be playing something else. So it'll have to be a labor of love.

The only real consolation prize I can give you is that mechanics writing is backed up by 30+ years of practical experience. If you have someone willing to look at previous editions (of all RPGs) with a sober mind and see where they succeeded and where they failed, then you don't need a massive overhaul. Gall's Law works in full force here, people.

But as far as prose-writing goes, that's easy. All you need to do is has two or three people willing to trawl the Interwebs for fantasy writers. You come up with a list of people who you think are the best writers, then bargain with them for material. People who have written their own games or written published work get priority of course. There's really an embarrassment of talent out there, you just need to be committed to looking for it and also have enough discipline to corral this labor into writing a finished product.

I don't know how big the market is for potential writers itching for a chance to break in, but there has to be some buried treasure in it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Also, I know this is starting to turn into a rehash of my kickass marketing strategy thread, but I have one more idea about how to grow the pie higher.

Foreign markets.

If nothing else D&D should've printed out non-English language editions of their RPGs. D&D seriously has like no competition in a few markets. And while of course there are still people in non-English speaking countries who would still import the books anyway (or pirate it), there must be a huge untapped well to reach people. I mean, really, look at how anime works if you don't believe me. Naruto has had dedicated translation groups and has been at the top of fansubs almost since it came out for 6 years, but it didn't get big outside of Japan until it got translated. Similarly, One Piece continues to completely dominate the manga and anime market (selling 4 times as many volumes as Naruto) but in the English-speaking nations it's fucking dead in the water. Not because the series sucks, but because the translation suchs.



The Internet is a fucking goldmine. As crummy as 4th Edition turned out to be, it's just baffling how much the people who wrote this edition failed to take advantage of it. Even after word-of-mouth panned it, the Internet makes things so much easier and cheaper to advertise that it should've been a success anyway.

[hogarth]

If nothing else D&D should've printed out non-English language editions of their RPGs.

They did, at least for the core books.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Links? I mean, I'm not doubting you and you don't have to post the links if you don't want to. I'm just being lazy.

[hogarth]

Links? I mean, I'm not doubting you and you don't have to post the links if you don't want to. I'm just being lazy.

People mention the German and Spanish translations in this thread. I've also heard people mention the Japanese and Polish translations. If there isn't a French translation, I'll eat my hat.

[Lago PARANOIA]

hogarth, thanks, that link is fascinating.

I've seen several times in that thread that people prefer the English-language translation because they don't release enough sourcebooks but also because the translations (esp. for German and Spanish) are really bad.

Also that people are sad for 4E canceling its German translation in December 2008.

It really makes you think that a few dedicated teams could really make inroads into the other markets if they made the translations the best that they could get. I mean in Japan, the biggest RPG there is Sword World. And... it sucks. Granted, there are some features about it that make it competitive in ways that English-language TTRPGs aren't (they're small paperbacks with B&W art so are cheaper), but the actual mechanics suck. Like if someone spent some time making a good product and marketing it in Japan, it could easily crush the competition.

The anecdotes on that thread also dovetail nicely with my theory that a bad translation will completely sink a product no matter how good the original source material is. See: One Piece by 4Kidz. And One Piece's popularity isn't just because it's a 'Japanese' thing. For people with access to English fansubs of both the anime and manga it's also immensely popular. A bad translation killed it in ENG-markets and probably for good. I'm really surprised that Eiichira Oda hasn't personally cut off the CEO of 4Kidz's nuts for costing him literally millions of dollars.

[Prak]

Better idea would be doing a cartoon series. Between Hasbro and the D&D name req, I think you could probably get enough backing to pull it off. Make it a mix of action/adventure with a bit of comedy(actual comedy, not OotS style in jokes), pay some korean animation sweatshop to make it quasi anime style, and then stick it on Adult Swim. (that way you get the little kids, the teenagers, and 20 somethings watching it)

Oh and make it about the actual god damn iconic characters and setting. That way it would help build interest in the world, make people actually give a shit about your Iconics as characters rather than just some random people that keep showing up in your book's artwork, and even give new players a direction to go in when they start playing ("Ooo! I wanna be Jozen but with bow", or "Can I play a mage like Mailee, only female?") rather than being being overwelmed by all the choices.

now you have me curious about the viability of a Tome cartoon, that ends every episode, or story arch, or whatever, with a little cartoon Frank or K ranting about something...

[koz]

now you have me curious about the viability of a Tome cartoon, that ends every episode, or story arch, or whatever, with a little cartoon Frank or K ranting about something...

This could be brilliant. I can just imagine chibi versions of Frank and K, complete with 'your mom' jokes.