If you owned D&D....

[shadzar]

what would you do with it?

not necessarily which edition would you print, would you make it PDFs, but with D&D itself in the design process?

would you keep it a brand name?

so D&D has become yours, how do you proceed with designing ANYTHING for it, and your first product for it?

my ideas are formulating and have been for a while on this, but figure i will give other people a chance to respond first, before inserting my ideas into their psyche.

[koz]

First off shad, in case you haven't noticed, your ideas are shit and nobody cares what you think here. If you reckon anyone actually gives a damn, PM those people and stop filling this forum with your trash.

However, the topic is an intriguing one. I for one would shelve it for about a decade. 4E has been so divisive and destructive to this hobby that a significant length of time needs to be given to cool tempers and get people nostalgic (because positive affect bias regarding the past is true for most people). Then, I would focus on getting something out there that could be marketed to a much larger audience than DnD currently can be. This edition would deliberately aim for new markets by excluding grognards and number-fetishists, aim for simply-written and easy-to-read rulesets, draw upon current trends in fantasy (if that means steampunk, so be it), and most importantly, would actually 'just work'.

Some specific things I would aim to have:

- A setting that makes actual sense.
- Fighters getting nice things.
- Being able to change the world being written in to stop GMs like certain people formerly of this forum from denying people that right.
- Versimilitude-based mechanics.
- Flavour being rewarded instead of punished (i.e. organic builds should actually work instead of sucking the cock).
- Dragon cock not being sucked.
- Caster cock not being sucked.
- Judeo-Christian cock not being sucked.
- Medieval cock not being sucked.
- Hell, just a minimum of cock-sucking in general.
- Not being afraid of not being 'family friendly' - just not in a retarded way like WoD or FATAL.
- Have black-and-white illustrations a la VtM, rather than the video-gamey approach taken by WotC in 4E. In general, do everything to minimize ruleset cost.
- Nicely-designed PDF releases of everything. This means full OCR (no image PDFs here), as well as rock-bottom prices (we're talking something like NZ$10 or less).

[Avoraciopoctules]

what would you do with it?

not necessarily which edition would you print, would you make it PDFs, but with D&D itself in the design process?

would you keep it a brand name?

so D&D has become yours, how do you proceed with designing ANYTHING for it, and your first product for it?

my ideas are formulating and have been for a while on this, but figure i will give other people a chance to respond first, before inserting my ideas into their psyche.

First, I would be sad that I hadn't been able to get a real job.

Then I'd make a bunch of licensed computer games. The rules would be designed to support the computer games as readily as possible, and I'd post them online for free at the same time the first game got released.

1st game would be some kind of multiplayer thing where you delve into dungeons and strongholds to accumulate wealth, then build your own in order to take part in a larger scale strategic conflict between 2 or more sides. It would come in a box that also had the game rules on a manual, and this "boxed set" would be the closest thing the edition had to a physical core rulebook.

The fact that there was a bunch of stuff without any rules to support it would probably fill many fans with rage, but I'd be very interested to see what an edition of D&D with computer games as the primary focus rather than an afterthought.

[Neurosis]

At some point I put shadzar on my ignore list, despite my best efforts I've been unable to take him off of it. His posts comprise such a large percentage of posts in the topics around here; clicking on them one at a time is super annoying but the alternative is not knowing what's going on and I can't find an unignore button/function anywhere, and I've looked.

[Ted the Flayer]

I would sell it to the highest bidder.

[shadzar]

I can't find an unignore button/function anywhere, and I've looked.

Ignore list

I'd be very interested to see what an edition of D&D with computer games as the primary focus rather than an afterthought.

WoW, City of Heroes, Psychonauts, Final Fantasy, Xenogears/saga, Gauntlet, and any other action adventure computer game.

[Neurosis]

I can't find an unignore button/function anywhere, and I've looked.

Ignore list

Thank you. One less click to read your always er...fascinating...posts.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well if I owned D&D and was trying to make it profitable I would break pretty radically from prior models.

Firstly, any new edition of D&D has to be competitively priced, and that means a range of $0.99 to $2.99 US per E-Book. $10 per PDFs is the going rate for indie game kickstarters without any economies of scale and significant creator goodwill (see current siggy)

However, as RPG books require more development and testing than novels, that price point means you either need
1. improbably massive sales numbers or
2. a much smaller and less-tested rules system than any prior edition or
3. a business model that doesn't count on E-Book ruleset sales in order to make a profit.

Ideally, I would want #3, because that means you can have a pretty loose OGL and not have to worry about file sharing competing with your profits -- however I have no idea what could work to generate profits instead. Print book sales aren't able to support major bookstore chains currently, so it's unlikely they could support D&D. Hasbro's various minatures lines have been cancelled, so presumably there isn't enough profit there. To hear Gygax tell it, licensing worked when he was in Hollywood running it, but it obviously hasn't done well since then, so that's an iffy bet. Thus unless there's a genius idea for a new model or licensing once again becomes profitable we're left with the first two options.

[Wrathzog]

These are always exciting... Ignoring Mechanical Changes...

Firstly, create a full suite of software to support the game.
At the very least... Character Creator, Monster Editor, Dungeon Generator, On-line Rules Compendium, and a Digital Board.
Most of these should have phone/tablet app support. They should all be feed into the Digital Board and vice versa. Characters made in the character Creator can be imported right into a map I created in the Dungeon Generator and fight something I whipped up in the Monster Editor.

Secondly, change our entire marketing strategy to focus on digital purchases.
If you buy physical copies of the book, you'll also get access to electronic versions.
When you purchase a PHB, you'll get access to the full software suite and it's basically the only thing that you're required to buy.

After that, everything else comes down to adding content to the tools that you already have. The DMG gives you some free dungeons (on top of DMing advice). The MM fills up your Monster Editor with hundreds of monsters. Any other splat book basically comes down to giving you access to Classes, Feats, Spells/Powers, Items, and Monsters in their corresponding program.
And to make things even stupider, we break it all up into Micro-transactions. So, instead of buying an entire book for 20-30 dollars, you can purchase a Class for 6-10 dollars (and this would come with all supporting feats, spells, and items). We can sell Maps for 5 bucks. Monster and Item Packs for a buck.
Then we get Evil and run contests in the community. Winners get the privilege of having their stuff sold by us.

Besides that, we need to make some video games. Good ones and not shit games like Daggerdale. We basically want another Baldur's Gate or Planescape:Torment. Actually, Fuck it, let's just remake those with the new rules. Update the Graphics, get some decent voice actors, and ship that shit out. People will eat that shit up.

Lastly, assuming that I actually have control of WotC and not just the D&D product line, I'd probably Merge D&D with Magic. Magic has a lot of decent fluff and a much larger player base to pull from. Market it on the idea that you can play a Summoner and go out adventuring with Karn in Phyrexia or something.

[Whipstitch]

A full-on D&D-MTG merge would be pretty dumb although I could see the argument for the occasional crossover product. Churning out say, a Kamigawa campaign setting--an old block, and not a great one, but it's relatively self-contained and you could fish for MTG players AND weaboos in one swoop--would have been a better idea than say, D&D Essentials. That'd have to be a 5e thing though since selling people on a new campaign setting late in a product cycle is tough sledding.

[Prak]

Well if I owned D&D and was trying to make it profitable I would break pretty radically from prior models.

Firstly, any new edition of D&D has to be competitively priced, and that means a range of $0.99 to $2.99 US per E-Book. $10 per PDFs is the going rate for indie game kickstarters without any economies of scale and significant creator goodwill (see current siggy)

However, as RPG books require more development and testing than novels, that price point means you either need
1. improbably massive sales numbers or
2. a much smaller and less-tested rules system than any prior edition or
3. a business model that doesn't count on E-Book ruleset sales in order to make a profit.

Ideally, I would want #3, because that means you can have a pretty loose OGL and not have to worry about file sharing competing with your profits -- however I have no idea what could work to generate profits instead. Print book sales aren't able to support major bookstore chains currently, so it's unlikely they could support D&D. Hasbro's various minatures lines have been cancelled, so presumably there isn't enough profit there. To hear Gygax tell it, licensing worked when he was in Hollywood running it, but it obviously hasn't done well since then, so that's an iffy bet. Thus unless there's a genius idea for a new model or licensing once again becomes profitable we're left with the first two options.

You know, I tried out one of the D&D board games, and something occurred to me. It was a lot like 4e, but minus character creation, feats, skills, etc. That's not surprising though. What was surprising is how well it worked in the board game medium.
It's as if the 4e system were perfectly tailored for board games, and then had some extra stuff tacked on.

So maybe that's the way to go for your idea. Treat it more like an elaborate board game, so that rules are simpler, and can be sold for less. Then you can make your real money on board game stuff like playing pieces, dice, tiles, item, even booster packs of monster and encounter cards.

[MGuy]

First some fashion changes.

1: Use Eberron as the primary setting.
2: Usher the setting into Steampunkville [Do some kind of cataclysm/time skip thing to get us there]
3: Rewrite the rules completely to match what I'm writing right now.

Then some business model changes:
1: Make the actual books come at a competitive price as mentioned before.
2: Make someone hammer out a "not" Neverwinter Nights game. Make the graphics look pretty simple in exchange for making an online tabletop gaming tool that can work. [This would include making simple settings so people who are less than tech savvy can jump in and go while keeping options for those with talent to make some fairly interesting products]. Place it at standard gaming price.
3: Go back to 2 and make sure its a priority. Have frequent user content contests. Updates to the system for subscribers [subscription would of course be cheap 5 - 10$/month]
4: Get good writers to make good stories and iconic characters. Bring back the magazine.

Now if we do well otherwise I'd further things by:
1: Media. Whether its a movie, a TV show, something to get the Dungeons and Dragons name out there. I know I started playing because of an episode of Dexter's Laboratory.
2: More media. Start advertising or something, selling action figures, board games, start a CCG, etc.

[hogarth]

I would sell it to the highest bidder.

This is the most sensible answer.

But if I were forced to run the company, I'd first accept that the tabletop game market has shrunk since the days of selling a million copies of the Basic D&D set, and no amount of retooling or churning out books will change that.

If this were in 2007, I'd probably release a somewhat retooled version of 3.5 and continue releasing books at a more moderate pace (which might require downsizing, of course).

But in 2012, Pathfinder has pretty much filled that niche, so a more drastic revision would be necessary. I'd probably base it along the lines of Mutants & Masterminds (e.g. get rid of hit points and mandatory use of equipment, group abilities together by theme, decouple abilities and attack/defense) and Blood & Vigilance. For those who aren't familiar with it, B&V is a superhero add-on for d20 Modern; the power system works similar to the d20 skill system, in the sense that you have a given number of points per level that you can spend on class powers (or cross-class powers for double the price) and the power level is capped at class level+3.

I'd also invest in a subscription-based D&D Insider-type system, with a character builder etc. And I'd publish it under an OGL-type license, although I would be judicious at what I designated as Open Content (enough for 3PP to publish supplements, but not enough to publish a complete clone a la Pathfinder). Again, I'd publish supplementary books at a moderate pace (e.g. one or two new rulebooks per year, with the rest being modules and the like).

[Aryxbez]

my ideas are formulating and have been for a while on this, but figure i will give other people a chance to respond first, before inserting my ideas into their psyche.

wait...this is starting to feel like some major Deja-vu when I was reading this...

simple question, lots of discussion options. holding my answer for later o it doesnt chance to influence others, and i am still writing it up...so others can answer and discuss without having to wait for my answer.

from: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=52788

Well, it certainly both just as really damn arrogant as when they were first posted. Hell, it's understandable when other posters on here are being arrogant, even if it's about their ideas, least they "know" what they're talking about, or doing. Here, this is just truly a stupid amount of arrogance, that only seeks to make you look worse in the eyes of your fellow posters. I mean come on, do you "really" think any of us prize your ideas to any form of acceptable quality? Hell, I wonder who'd be worse, Mike Mearls, or Shadzar?

I would sell it to the highest bidder.

This is the most sensible answer.

It truly is

In somewhat Shadzar fashion, I'll reserve typing out my answer so for the sake that I don't "influence anyone with my pure golden god-like genius" (obvious joke and/or sarcasm note here). However, unlike him, I'm also going to just be lazy and post this link to a post of mine awhile back, assuming it's kinda relevant till I can think of a better answer later.
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=234336#234336

[K]

If I owned DnD, I stop running it like a personal clubhouse and welfare program for my friends and run it like a publishing company.

[shadzar]

@k: how do you mean like a publishing company? Scholastic, Random House, and like those?

my ideas are formulating and have been for a while on this, but figure i will give other people a chance to respond first, before inserting my ideas into their psyche.

wait...this is starting to feel like some major Deja-vu when I was reading this...

maybe due to the younger generation just liking to insult each other on the internet many dont know how to have a discussion or conversation.

when you are trying to sell an idea to someone you give them information up front on that idea. this type of post is found here in IMHO subforum.

when you are asking a question to other people to start a discussion on that, you dont front-load your opinion into it out of respect* to the people you are asking the question of... making your question NOT be rhetorical, or providing them no room to answer it.

note MOST of the "discussion" around "questions" from WotC are already front-loaded with idea like their polls. they give VERY little room to answer anything except what they want you to answer. do their questions are just trying to get agreement, and stifle disagreement.

i actually ask a question that is meant to be answer from the other person(s). this allows discussion of ALL ideas, not just discussion of a singular idea...the initial question askers idea.

unlike yourself, that just wants to troll.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Fire half design team. Use their salaries to get insurance actuary. Get actuary to do math.

I honestly don't know the D&D guy's salaries here.

[K]

@k: how do you mean like a publishing company? Scholastic, Random House, and like those?

Basically. Somewhere between a magazine, a textbook company, and a novel publisher.

Accept submissions of large completed works and pay only on acceptance, pay royalties to successful writers, don't do work-for-hire projects with in-house staff except for the easy stuff like fluff and flavor and editing, and generally leverage the creativity and skill of the thousands of potential writers instead of limiting the creative output to what your half-dozen closest friends can come up with.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm not even going to go into how I would remake the game. But I think I could get a lot more agreement on how I ran the marketing and management of the game once it was released:

If I ran D&D, the first things I would do are:

1.) Be a lot more aggressive in translations. By the end of the year of my latest edition, I will be extremely aggravated if I do not have high-quality (meaning: legal document quality that costs 30 dollars a page) Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, French, Russian, and German translations of my core books. I may or may not push for Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Hindi, and Arabic, but I'll have those out in two years.

2.) Release the core and money-maker books in disposable B&W newsprint books like they do for crossword puzzles.

3.) My in-house staff are editors, artists, and dedicated crunch writers who have proven themselves. I'd be a lot more aggressive about soliciting content from the fanbase, complete with content submission contests and ego-stroking. Also this: Accept submissions of large completed works and pay only on acceptance, pay royalties to successful writers, don't do work-for-hire projects with in-house staff except for the easy stuff like fluff and flavor and editing (ED NOTE: I would not skimp on this, a good editor is worth their weight in gold), and generally leverage the creativity and skill of the thousands of potential writers instead of limiting the creative output to what your half-dozen closest friends can come up with.

4.) Find some nerd-cred Internet guy and get them to pimp my product. They will need to be an actual fan rather than a paid shill. But you do things like give them priority for content submission and also previews that only they get to see (and hopefully distribute it amongst their fanbase).

5.) New SRD. The English. Spanish, and Japanese versions would be up on the Internet even though the SRD applies to all translations. I'm not quite so sure about other languages, depending on how much babying we'd have to do to keep it updated. Like right now. Pathfinder and 3E D&D have conclusively shown us that it's practically business malfeasance not to have one. They only increase sales.

6.) New Boxed Set. I keep getting derailed talking about this and I do intend to do a review, but, Pathfinder's boxed set is seriously one of the most money traditional gaming products I've ever seen. It's a bit too expensive for my tastes (US $34.99) and I'd spare no effort at getting the cost down to US $20.00 -- meaning that it'd have to be in monochrome and newsprint except for select pages -- but they have the right idea in my opinion.

7.) Different release cycle. 3E/4E D&D's release cycle was a tad too aggressive in my opinion. Only the most hardcore of hardcore fans knew what was coming out more than a couple of weeks in advance, there wasn't any time for playtesting or playerbase content submission, and frankly that much material burns people out. On the other hand, going too long between releases causes interest to wane. I'd shoot for a sizable release of chaff products (so not things like miniatures, adventure paths, etc. I mean things like sourcebooks) every 3-3.5 months, with the average content amount of books being Oriental Adventures or Manual of the Planes length.

8.) I'd keep the DDI release cycle the same as in 4E D&D, though I'd aim a lot more on crunch and less on fluff. I'd like to bring Dungeon back to magazine format, but sadly I think that those days are past.

[shadzar]

@K: who would own the rights to the submitted work? D&D would no longer be a game, but a label that only people publishing through you would be able to apply, but submissions are open to everyone?

sounds like the d20 STL if i am understanding right. at least somewhat.

[K]

@K: who would own the rights to the submitted work? D&D would no longer be a game, but a label that only people publishing through you would be able to apply, but submissions are open to everyone?

sounds like the d20 STL if i am understanding right. at least somewhat.

Traditional publishing buys the rights from the author for a set print run. For example, the cost of a first-time fantasy novel of 80K words is like $5K for a print run of 50K copies, usually with an option to buy more copies at increasing fixed rates as economies of scale start to kick in. Second and later print runs might be 100-200K copies and and pay proportionately more plus bonuses ($50K total maybe).

This encourages people to submit and accept the first tiny amount in the hopes of hitting the jackpot and let's you take advantage of print-on-demand for things that won't have a mass appeal. You also aren't out a lot of money if the book flops.

You can also just not accept stuff that comes in crap. If someone can't write crunch or tries to overpower some archetype and won't take editing advice, you aren't out a lot of time or money and you don't have to deal with in-house politics pushing bad product onto the public because firing them loses you a friend.

Magazines might pay several hundred bucks per 2000 word article and buy all rights forever and that's ideal for adventures. Basically, RPGs right now work on a model like magazines with in-house writers so they can own the rights forever because it's work-for-hire, but that's not even something you want considering you'll be putting out new editions by new writers every few years anyway.

I mean, crunch is not even something you can copyright. You don't have to worry about people sitting on rights to your game so their ownership of old rights is pretty meaningless when you want to change editions. You can literally come out with a game with a spell called Fireball that does 1d6 per level and caps at 10d6 and you don't have to pay the old authors anything.

@Lago: No one ever wants in-house artists. The goal of the art department is to get hip young artists from around the world sending in portfolios so you can cherry-pick the best pieces and keep costs down. Basically, it's the same reasoning why you don't want in-house writers.

[Lago PARANOIA]

@Lago: No one ever wants in-house artists. The goal of the art department is to get hip young artists from around the world sending in portfolios so you can cherry-pick the best pieces and keep costs down. Basically, it's the same reasoning why you don't want in-house writers.

Not every artist for your book is supposed to be in-house. However, you still want a stable of artists who can pump out work quickly, otherwise your DDI offerings are going to either be cheap-looking or unnecessarily delayed. The ideal is to have them not only work on DDI material but any spare art gets cached if you need to use them in a later book.

Dragon and Dungeon is the only area in which I think 4E D&D did unquestionably better than any previous edition. But a big reason why it did better is because they had a couple of guys dedicated to producing content (unlike the 3E Dragon, which was just passed off to the first intern who came back with coffee) and even more importantly had a team of artists who were able to get a piece of artwork with each section.


As far as the release cycles go, I'd keep it extremely consistent. It is extremely useful to someone who publishes a periodical (which, let's face it, most TTRPGs which aren't flash-in-the-pans more or less are) to be able to put forward a date that everyone knows when new content comes out. Since once a month, let alone once a week, is too aggressive for common offerings you'd have to choose an easily grokkable time period. Personally, I favor scheduling releases at least in the U.S. around Holidays: Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, Cinco de Mayo, Fourth of July, Labor Day.

[Seerow]

1) Have an open SRD a la 3.5. All core material required to play the game is available free for everyone online.

2) There would also be an extended SRD with access to all non core crunch, available via subscription. This would have some minimal cost, along the lines of 3-5 dollars a month.

3) Start with having a suite of programs, similar to what DDI promised, just actually deliver. Make sure they are done and tested before launch. These may be accessed as web based programs for free if you have a subscription, or may be purchased separately as downloadable content for some fee.

4) All books are available in hardcover and ebook format, hardcover books come packaged with the ebook, but ebooks can be bought separately at 3-5 bucks (whatever the subscription costs)

5) Subscription fees rather than just throwing away money go to an account that may be used to purchase D&D merchandise. So you pay your 5 dollar subscription getting you access to the extended SRD and programs, but that 5 dollar subscription may be spent to get an ebook. This way even should the content eventually be removed from the site, players don't feel like they wasted their money, they still have stuff they bought with that money, whether it be ebooks, hardcover books, the downloaded programs, or something else.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm still pretty fond of the idea of having a Character Viewer so people can play pretty princess dressup with their characters. I still support 3D models, however, if a 2D Character viewer gives us access to several styles at once (Frank Frezetta-ish, Modern Age Superhero Comic, Realistic Anime) and has a large stable of outfits and facial features I could totally go for that and wouldn't be offended.

5) Subscription fees rather than just throwing away money go to an account that may be used to purchase D&D merchandise. So you pay your 5 dollar subscription getting you access to the extended SRD and programs, but that 5 dollar subscription may be spent to get an ebook. This way even should the content eventually be removed from the site, players don't feel like they wasted their money, they still have stuff they bought with that money, whether it be ebooks, hardcover books, the downloaded programs, or something else.

Love it. Actually I can't think of a reason why this couldn't be combined with idea #4.

[8headeddragon]

- Open SRD

- Nice hardcover prints but also inexpensive digital copies

- Less aggressiveness with splatbooks. That is, the $30 book a month thing would not be happening under my watch.

- Fighters forced into supernatural territory when supernatural is required to survive (this can be making the fighters grow big, this can be making their swords shoot lasers, but the DMF must choose some form of evolution if and when the setting becomes so far out that they cannot compete)

- Monster Manuals ship with databases on each monster that can be loaded into and edited in...

- ... software designed for easy editing of monsters, preferably in a fashion similar to Redblade. A DM can click a few buttons to add and remove HD as necessary, see the impact of changing size categories, applying templates, adding new abilities, and so on. All automatically calculated. This will be part of...

- a software suite for easy character sheet creation, the aforementioned monster tweaking, and creating maps that can be loaded into a map and marker system like Screenmonkey. Make it as easy as possible for new players that are still trying to figure out all these little rules and numbers to get a character set up, make it speedy as possible for a DM to get a passable scenario set up, and make the presentation pretty if possible.


Maybe I'm speaking too much from a personal perspective but the big things are keeping new players from getting too frustrated or feeling too clueless while allowing the vets to enjoy finely tuned builds, and making it easier for a DM to get set up without spending a lot of time on the technical stuff. The more the mechanics can be automated, the more accessible the game will be to people who otherwise wouldn't play. D&Ders can't all be geniuses with all the time in the world.