D&DNext: Playtest Review

[Mask_De_H]

Because D&D isn't a major IP, TTRPGs aren't a major market and the money it makes is a drop in the bucket compared to MtG/Transformers/Pony dosh. As long as something comes out and it doesn't come with free necrotizing fasciitis in every book it will do well enough to justify D&D's IP existence as the Island of Misfit Toys.

The fact that D&D is getting a new edition is probably the most effort WotC is willing to spend.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Because D&D isn't a major IP, TTRPGs aren't a major market and the money it makes is a drop in the bucket

Look, even from a strict monetary perspective that's shortsighted. Even if the actual profit of the D&D TTRPG is peanuts the merchandising is everything.

The sales of Spider-Man comics and Harry Potter books are peanuts and from a strict anthropomorphic perspective don't influence how good the spin-off video games or Lego toys or backpacks end up being. But having a good Spider-Man or HP movie or comic series sure as hell moves more product.

D&D isn't Spider-Man, of course, but more people have heard of D&D than MtG. You can sell a D&D movie or comic series or spin-off video game in the way you can't (currently) with MtG. Treating D&D as the red-headed stepchild and MtG or whatever as a golden boy is just myopic. And considering that Hasbro extremely heavily relies on IP adaptations for their cash, for them it's not only myopic but idiotic.

Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 have sold over 2 million copies each. Would they have sold anywhere near as well as they did it they weren't coming off of the coattails of the most successful edition of D&D in history?

[shadzar]

Except Mearls is also in charge of board games and that Waterdeep or whatever board game did well or is doing well. the reprints of TSR editinos sold or are selling.

D&D isnt just the RPG, Mearls is in charge of all of it so gets credit for other things he doesnt even do. this is also how HASBRO see sit as D&D is NOT an RPG, but a brand name with lots of different things like novels, board games, etc. so while the RPG is asleep and doing nothing the D&D name is getting products. that is all HASBRO cares about for its $50 million to keep D&D afloat is that the brand is meeting that as per the Forbes article that said "the RPG is not the future of D&D but also board games, novels, video games, etc...."

Mearls and Wyatt will keep their jobs until HASBRO decides to mothball the D&D brand.

[Lago PARANOIA]

this is also how HASBRO see sit as D&D is NOT an RPG, but a brand name with lots of different things like novels, board games, etc. so while the RPG is asleep and doing nothing the D&D name is getting products.

Then Hasbro is even more retarded. I mean, do the Hasbro execs just not get that MLP wouldn't have exploded in popularity and sales if the cartoon wasn't well-written? Do they just not understand that Iron Man would not be selling as many pencils and toy sets as they have in the past 5 years if people didn't love the trilogy and Avengers movies?

Yes, to a large extent the long-term success of an IP is interlocking and once it gets to a certain level of saturation doesn't need any new promotional media to keep moving product. Even if no one ever produced a new Peanuts comic strip or Christmas special or whatever, you can still sell Snoopy dolls and bedsheets and it'll be that way for a long time. However, if Bill Watterson got a case of the Gimmies and unretired to take over the strip -- and the Peanuts relaunch ended up being good, of course -- then they would sell MORE life insurance and Snoopy dolls and whatever.

The D&D IP can pretty much continue indefinitely at this point. The occasional successful D&D video game or webcomic or B-movie will keep the franchise at least at a 'Peanuts' level. However, given that the D&D TTRPG A.) traditionally had a potentially high rate of circulation and B.) is amazingly inexpensive to produce even with high production values and C.) unlike a novel or a comic book responds better to traditional product management continually ignoring the low-hanging fruit is just baffling.

[Cyberzombie]

Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 have sold over 2 million copies each. Would they have sold anywhere near as well as they did it they weren't coming off of the coattails of the most successful edition of D&D in history?

My guess is NWN's success had more to do with the Baldur's Gate series more so than the actual D&D rules. The computer game market bolstered the TTRPG sales, and not so much the other way around.

[shadzar]

well truth be told does HASBRO REALLY have to worry about any of that? the name D&D is so ingrained into geek culture, that it DID sell woodburning kits in the 90s.

D&D has been poorly written since WotC took over. their attempts at making a game system are only slightly better than their poor quality adventures and stories.

D&D lived off hype in the beginning of WotC ownership, but so many people are just saying, and especially aftr 4th, that his is NOT D&D, so HASBRO can just dump the bad RPGs WotC makes and work on other things.

i think D&D should be jsut the RPG as that is what it is, and these other things CAN be tie-ins, but you don't let the tie-ins take over. HASBRO hs the luxery and money to jsut do what they want for their shareholders.

this is a problem with US and the world that is run by corporations (are we living in RIFTs now?) because the consumer doesn't mean anything. the moment some CEO learned that old carny concept of take the suckers money and give them little to nothing while showing them the door, ALL products in this world turned to shit.

HASBRO needs its name on things and either K&C owns TSR edition D&D or WotC/HASBRO just doesn't have the balls to really revisit it saved for PDF and limited print run books.

the only thing new editions of D&D can do is further damage it. wasnt there talk about a new new world of darkness around here somewhere?

HASBRO only cares about a logo they can sell to suckers, not a quality product. it isnt a part of their family game line and doesnt meet their religions and political views so it isnt worth salvaging to them so long as the name is on peoples lips and the cash is flowing from their wallets. this is Carnegie and Rockefeller style business.

it would be TOO easy to hire a team of editors, and fire high priced designers and have people write adventures for ALL editions, literally either fluff only or say "(see 3.5 MM)" etc where things can be used depending on the edition you prefer, or just simply write for the edition itself and let any consumer do what they will do and are already doing and convert from system to system or edition to edition, etc.

you don't even need full-time staff for it. just have freelancers writing for old edition. just have editors to fix some thing like TSR did where you had ONE author writing the adventure then the WotC D&D team clean it up a bit, add the illustrations, slap the logo on it, pay some portion to the author and go ahead.

how many OSR people do you think would stop because of something liek that? probably none. how many people would jump to give WotC some profit just to have their name in print as writing an adventure for THEIR preferred edition? more than the number of bad jokes we can make about Mearls rapping dwarf character.

how many eiditons is it? 6?

OD&D
B/X, BECMI, RC
1st AD&D
2nd AD&D
3.0, 3.5
4

yup, pretty much 6 editions of the game as far as comparability goes AD&D can be lumped into on because people that play that already convert between the two and know how.

1 adventure a month per edition and cycle through them

took most adventures about a month to be written for AD&D so no full-timer needed there. so 10 releases a year of what is the minimum now? hell just go POD with them. have both dragon and dungeon back in print that has things for all editions in them, but nothing other than D&D. then you just need filler for those extra months... BOARD GAMES! or some edition neutral product.

a product each month on shelves and ALL editions supported with less cost.

the artists et all that work on everything would be able to stay to work on everything like normal.

but see this isnt what HASBRO wants, they jsut want ONE logo like the Nike swoosh to sell, not any sort of product that will last, just whatever gets the most money today to give to the shareholders.

[Lago PARANOIA]

My guess is NWN's success had more to do with the Baldur's Gate series more so than the actual D&D rules.

Okay, now back that logic up a few steps. Why did the Baldur's Gate series become a success? If you're going to claim the influence of an ancestor product like the Dark Sun cRPGs, then why did THEY become a success? If you're saying that Baldur's Gate became a success, then why?

Sure, the flippant and probable answer is that the game was good. You can claim any number of factors; good writing, people had experience writing 2E D&D adaptations, etc. But why was the game able to attract people who could provide those things? Why did Bioware do Baldur's Gate at all instead of their own IP? And even if you're going to claim that they did the adaptation because D&D has a built-in market, why D&D and not something else that was popular at the time like The Matrix or Star Wars Episode I?

Success feeds on success. All other things being equal (we're deliberately ignoring how the quality of the base rules set would help with other game adaptations) , there's no reason to believe that any given team of, say, filmmakers or game designers would be able to make a better D&D movie or video game than a better Feng Shui/Exalted/WoD etc. movie or video game. But you'll be able to get more talent and money thrown at the project to begin with if people are confident in the integrity of the IP.

This isn't an iron law, of course. The Chronicles of Riddick franchise generally blows but the Escape from Butcher Bay game was surprisingly good. Superman is the American superhero and there has yet to be, AFAIK, a good Superman video game. But do you really believe that Harry Potter would've been able to get their ridiculous 100+ million dollar budgets if people didn't have faith in the underlying promotional media?

[shadzar]

because of two factors: the D&D name and adventure video games like Zelda, Final Fantasy, etc.

the story game disguised as an adventure was popular when these all came out with thinks like Sierra's King's Quests, AOL's NWN, etc even Leisure Suit Larry, there was already an attraction to these sorts of games.

sadly you cant say the D&D name was the only reason that SSI or other video games sold well. maybe some of the obscure SSI titles, but some people had the games that never played D&D. its a geek/nerd thing computers and D&D went hand in hand. so you really cant say anything about that time, but BGEE is selling D&D right now. that logo and BRAND is what is making sales, not Dragonspear Castle or whatever for the RPG.

the waterdeep board game and the video games are keeping the D&D logo in the public and pulling things out of their wallets. that is ALL HASBRO cares about.

[Cyberzombie]

Okay, now back that logic up a few steps. Why did the Baldur's Gate series become a success? If you're going to claim the influence of an ancestor product like the Dark Sun cRPGs, then why did THEY become a success? If you're saying that Baldur's Gate became a success, then why?

Sure, the flippant and probable answer is that the game was good. You can claim any number of factors; good writing, people had experience writing 2E D&D adaptations, etc. But why was the game able to attract people who could provide those things? Why did Bioware do Baldur's Gate at all instead of their own IP? And even if you're going to claim that they did the adaptation because D&D has a built-in market, why D&D and not something else that was popular at the time like The Matrix or Star Wars Episode I?

D&D was an established brand name in PC gaming by that point. You had Eye of the Beholder and the Planescape: Torment, both of which were popular games. While the Star Wars franchise also had some good PC games, those were pretty much action games, not RPGs, and the concept the design team had for Baldur's Gate 2 was an RPG.

They later actually went on to create Star Wars RPGs, but it's a risky title to put your company on the map, because it may not sell. It's always dangerous to try to change the genre of the game franchise you're using. Despite Halo doing very well, Halo Wars, the RTS, did rather poorly.

The other advantage of using D&D rules is that you can just copy the mechanics which presumably have already been playtested. That definitely saves some time, because you don't have to come up with custom mechanics for your game. And since it's a popular PC RPG market, your players also already know the mechanics, so it creates instant familiarity.

But like I said, it's all about the fact that D&D is a known name in PC gaming, and has little to do with the TTRPG. When selling a PC game, it's appealing to a mass market, similar to doing a movie. When they went out and created the Iron Man movies, they didn't set out just to attract fans of the comics, they wanted a broad audience. PC games are the same way. They're attracting more than just fans of the TTRPG.

The only interesting fact you can see in PC gaming is that no game used the 4E rules set as a base. Even the new Neverwinter MMORPG steals the names of 4E powers, but doesn't use the mechanics at all. Game designers hated the 4E rules so much they didn't even want to make a game with it. That says something about how terrible they are.

[nockermensch]

Regarding the "why D&D videogames are successful", I can present one reason that worked for me: I want my system mastery in the P&P game to be immediately useful on the videogame. I had a great time playing Temple of Elemental Evil or even Knights of the Chalice because I instantly knew how to make good characters. With any other RPG, there will be some learning curve, and while I'll end up having fun with them once I'm used, with a D&D based game, the fun starts on character generation.

[Voss]

Because D&D isn't a major IP, TTRPGs aren't a major market and the money it makes is a drop in the bucket

Look, even from a strict monetary perspective that's shortsighted. Even if the actual profit of the D&D TTRPG is peanuts the merchandising is everything.

Yeah, it is. But D&D has consistently failed to merchandise well. The novels happen (but other than the big ones, they're shit), and the computer games are largely good, but sometimes bad (The first 3e game- Pools of Radiance; as opposed to the gold box original Pools of Radiance, was absolute ass, though that admittedly was largely a development issue with the software company). But every other type of merchandising for D&D has been shit on a stick, and the novels and computer games are largely selling to the exact same audience as the tabletop (or a slightly smaller subset thereof).

[Maxus]

Hell, just the toys alone. D&D has a lot of badass critters and could do a decent toy line with bigass awesome monsters and characters. So Thrug, Orc Greatsword Assassin and Sir Lysantherevielrondingfoldor, Elf Paladin of Elfyness.

[Seerow]

Hell, just the toys alone. D&D has a lot of badass critters and could do a decent toy line with bigass awesome monsters and characters. So Thrug, Orc Greatsword Assassin and Sir Lysantherevielrondingfoldor, Elf Paladin of Elfyness.

But then someone might try to use those toys as miniatures, then how will they make money off randomized miniature booster sales?!

[Maxus]

Make money off the toys. Or make the toys too big for miniatures.

[OgreBattle]

D&D doesn't have any distinct visual style. I like Warhammer Fantasy more for art because it's imagery has been consistent for the last 30 years, they also have some great artists that do their armybook art and sculpt their miniatures.

[Dogbert]

Three words for making big Hasbro bucks out of D&D:

McFarlanne Toys Knockoffs.

[Mask_De_H]

Because D&D isn't a major IP, TTRPGs aren't a major market and the money it makes is a drop in the bucket

Look, even from a strict monetary perspective that's shortsighted. Even if the actual profit of the D&D TTRPG is peanuts the merchandising is everything.

The sales of Spider-Man comics and Harry Potter books are peanuts and from a strict anthropomorphic perspective don't influence how good the spin-off video games or Lego toys or backpacks end up being. But having a good Spider-Man or HP movie or comic series sure as hell moves more product.

D&D isn't Spider-Man, of course, but more people have heard of D&D than MtG. You can sell a D&D movie or comic series or spin-off video game in the way you can't (currently) with MtG. Treating D&D as the red-headed stepchild and MtG or whatever as a golden boy is just myopic. And considering that Hasbro extremely heavily relies on IP adaptations for their cash, for them it's not only myopic but idiotic.

Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 have sold over 2 million copies each. Would they have sold anywhere near as well as they did it they weren't coming off of the coattails of the most successful edition of D&D in history?

Yes, they probably would've. Because they were good games and D&D had a decent to good (love those beat-em-ups) track record with videogames. 3.0 helped, but not pissing on the brand name helped a whole lot more. As has been said, the really good D&D PC games were both really good and came when D&D was an established name in PC RPG gaming. The comic book movies have lots of advertising money, some basic cultural cachet and the comic book's standing as contemporary mythology to stand on.

MtG gets treated well because it makes money, has a near monopoly on the CCG market, and a team of driven, not-completely-retarded artists, designers and players who constantly drive the system forward. D&D has the more venerable name, yeah, but that hasn't really meant shit since the WTC went down. TTRPGs aren't as lucrative, they aren't as "accessible", they don't have the structures in place that CCGs have and most damningly, Hasbro/WotC doesn't own a monopoly anymore. You can probably thank 4e for that. They tried and failed to create a new audience in the double-ohs and the lesson Mearls and Hasbro learned was never try. At this point, the best thing to do would be to take advantage of modern genre conventions to create a new system and gamespace for the contemporary nerd and just keep the D&D name and some iconics.

If you were an outsider, you'd do that but shit all over old D&D and call it a dinosaur. You know, like the only system that managed to swing with D&D without being an ill-conceived bastard child.

Besides, would you trust anyone that currently runs or gives a good god damn about D&D to repackage D&D to be a merch mover?

[shadzar]

Besides, would you trust anyone that currently runs or gives a good god damn about D&D to repackage D&D to be a merch mover?

are you talking about scrapping D&D as an RPG and just making junk based on it?

HASBRO has MLP and could easily make D&D cartoons of some sort for boys like MLP is SUPPOSED TO BE for girls.

they jsut have Transformers as the big toy for boys and can't think anything else or they would throw in D&D/MLP Happy Meal toys. get whoever owns the Clix now to make D&D Clix that can paly stand alone or with other sets.

Elmister and Raistlin vs Dr Mindbender and Braniac?

HASBRO also has the rights it seems to HeroQuest as they made a D&D version, so they could bring that board game back with monopoly type miniatures on the cheap.

hell they made D&D Clue with those bad 3rd iconics, there is free money cross-overs with their own games. D&D Monopoly? FR Monopoly? Dragonlance Monopoly?

all the "miniatures" they could make like the little green army men to go for ALL these games could be sold in sets to make even more moeny as both the board games, RPG, and jsut plain old toy users could buy them.

HASBRO jsut doesn't want to put any money into D&D or trying to sell it. TSR was stupid with woodburning kits, but GI Joe trainset sold out... and TSR was putting the name out there in kids minds to make them like the name.

HASBRO and WOTC jsut sadly don't know how to market shit at all or how to make piddly crap to draw attention to their big ticket items. it is so easy in this day an age to make crap to franchise the brand out it isnt even funny!

[JonSetanta]

Speaking of Hasbro toys, when 3e came out I was expecting some kind of cartoon series or movie standalone with the iconics (Lydda, Tordek, Mialee, etc) to launch off.

Nothing.

Not even figurines, unless I missed those.

It's probably too late for that, but by my recollection 4e and Next have no iconics memorable enough (or any at all) to market as a show or toy line.
Pity.

[Cyberzombie]

MtG gets treated well because it makes money, has a near monopoly on the CCG market, and a team of driven, not-completely-retarded artists, designers and players who constantly drive the system forward. D&D has the more venerable name, yeah, but that hasn't really meant shit since the WTC went down. TTRPGs aren't as lucrative, they aren't as "accessible", they don't have the structures in place that CCGs have and most damningly, Hasbro/WotC doesn't own a monopoly anymore.

MtG is a gold mine because due to the tournament format, you've got a player base who routinely accepts that their cards will become outdated and must continually buy new ones. People don't get upset over this, they just accept it as a way of life. And even if your home games don't ban older sets, the newer sets are automatically allowed.

Meanwhile, everytime you reprint your D&D core books with a new edition, you annoy and anger your playerbase, and it fragments the player base each time, because unlike MtG each edition of D&D is exclusive. You just can't bring 4E material into a 3E/2E game or vice versa. Unlike MtG, D&D players are generally content to play their favorite edition and are upset when they're told they have to toss out all the material they bought before. It's a much tougher sell, which requires each new edition of D&D to be noticeably better than the last for it to succeed. As if that wasn't bad enough, everyone has different definitions of what a better D&D means.

From a profit standpoint, D&D has a terrible business model that isn't sustainable over the long haul.

New editions of D&D aren't even necessary for the much more profitable computer game standpoint. They could continually churn out PC games for AD&D and they'd do fine. The majority of the problems with AD&D are barely even noticeable when you're playing on a computer. NWN could have been made with AD&D rules and I doubt it would have made any big difference in its sales.

[Voss]

Speaking of Hasbro toys, when 3e came out I was expecting some kind of cartoon series or movie standalone with the iconics (Lydda, Tordek, Mialee, etc) to launch off.

D&D toys (and cartoon and several comic lines) happened before. They sucked. They didn't sell for shit.
I'm not sure why folks are jerking off to this concept in this thread, but apart from some novelty sales to a relative handful of 30/40 somethings, a D&D toy line wouldn't sell to the intended audience and wouldn't be worth launching.

[shadzar]

Legolas, Tanis.. how different are they really Voss? if LotR toys can sell being the same genre, then D&D can too. you just have to make the right thing for the audience, not try to make EVERY FUCKING THING to try to sell to everyone.

Speaking of Hasbro toys, when 3e came out I was expecting some kind of cartoon series or movie standalone with the iconics (Lydda, Tordek, Mialee, etc) to launch off.

Nothing.

The Scourge of Worlds: A Dungeons & Dragons Adventure (2003 Video)

. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375048/combined .

To save the world, three fearless heroes-Regdar the human warrior, Lidda the rogue halfling, and Mialee the elf wizard-must embark on a treacherous quest and choose between honor and evil, between life and death. But the choice is not theirs. It is yours.

the Jeremy Irons movie came out with 3.0 in 2000, and with 3.5 you got the iconics in a CYOA type movie. really annoying unless you have the cheat sheet to get all the endings.

you think Mialee looks bad in the art, wait until you see her in CG.

since 200, there have been 5 D&D movies.
-D&D 2000
-Curse of the Dragon God
-BoVD
-Scourge of Worlds
-DragonLance

NWN could have been made with AD&D rules and I doubt it would have made any big difference in its sales.

it was, originally. the problem is that SSI style games and 300 baud modems are such a thing of the past, then threw the baby out with the bathwater when they made that stupid radial menu and 3rd rules.

was a good VTT for quite a while though to a DM that had time to script it for players to use as a living map, and jsut used PnP to pay AD&D with it. better than skype screen sharing cause everyone can see the same thing, and if a player runs off alone... well they can end up dead for being stupid.

[Voss]

Legolas, Tanis.. how different are they really Voss? if LotR toys can sell being the same genre, then D&D can too.

What are you talking about?

[malak]

D&D was an established brand name in PC gaming by that point. You had Eye of the Beholder and the Planescape: Torment, both of which were popular games.

Lets not forget the SSI gold box games (even before EOtB). And after Baldur's Gate (1), they obviously could build on an already existing engine and an established game IP on top of the established RPG IP.

But you're wrong with Planescape: Torment. It's a cult game now, sure, but at the time, it was looked at as a failure. It got stellar reviews, but sold way less than ARPG trash like Icewind Dale that was based on the same engine, while being far more expensive to produce.

And re: Why D&D: In this interview, the Bioware founders are stating that

And as Interplay picked up Battleground Infinity as a much simpler single-player RPG, they applied TSR's Dungeons & Dragons license to it.

So they wanted to make an RPG and their publisher made them use D&D.

Publishers want safe investments, and there was a long line of successful D&D games going back almost two decades.

They later actually went on to create Star Wars RPGs, but it's a risky title to put your company on the map, because it may not sell. It's always dangerous to try to change the genre of the game franchise you're using.

That was long before The Old Republic disaster - a Star Wars branding was a license to print money for any game at that time. And still is, outside of MMOs.

Also, when KoToR was released, it was marketed as D&D and Star Wars combined; and it is, the mechanics are pure d20, based on the Neverwinter Nights engine but renamed to sound Sci Fi-y, and with more feats handed out so you get stuff to pick each level-up. The KoTor classes are pretty much a Fighter and two 3/4-Bab Rogu-like classes, with prestige classing into Jedi (Wizard) - you get 'force powers' instead of 'spells'.

The only interesting fact you can see in PC gaming is that no game used the 4E rules set as a base. Even the new Neverwinter MMORPG steals the names of 4E powers, but doesn't use the mechanics at all. Game designers hated the 4E rules so much they didn't even want to make a game with it. That says something about how terrible they are.

Or, more likely, they wanted to make an MMORPG with an action-based combat systems that uses D&D names (because they paid for the license), but doesn't contain non-mainstream sales-poison game concepts such as a turn-based or real-time-with-pause. They follow the DA2 paradigm.

[sake]

Even the new Neverwinter MMORPG steals the names of 4E powers, but doesn't use the mechanics at all.

I'd think that's more because the 4E rules would be horrible for a MMORG than anything else. Some genres it would be fine for. Hell I would have genuinely loved the fuck out of a Final Tactics style game with 4E's ruleset. Playing a 4e character bored me to tears, but give me a whole team of them to build and control with the game handling all the fiddly math and dice rolls for me and I'd have played the shit out of it.