Business Discussion

[Umbran]

In a nutshell, those who care about and love TTRPGs will produce and sell them for as much money as they can. Those who care about and love $$, will do whatever it takes to make more of it regardless of what that does to the product in form or function.

Both of these statements are subtly but substantially incorrect.

Those who care about and love TTRPGs will produce and sell them for as much money as they think they can. Generally, pricing is a guessing game as to what the market will bear.

Those that love $$ will do whatever it takes to make more of it, regardless of what it does to the product, only if they are, in a business sense, terminally stupid, or otherwise only interested in meeting short-term goals. Intelligent people who love $$ realize that running a product into the ground caps the $$ they can make, and ends the life of the product and thus the business, while careful shepherding creates and ever-flowing stream of wealth. However, there's also a guessing game here, about what the market will see as good developments, and what not.

 

[TerraDave]

Given how strong Trasformers is doing, I think it is pretty obvious what D&D needs:

 

[shadzar]

Given how strong Trasformers is doing, I think it is pretty obvious what D&D needs:
~revolting image removed~

I am sure it would gain new "older people" to gaming at least with one purchase if start sets included "a prostitute in each box"...sort of like the prize in a box of cereal.

It might help more if that had something interesting to the customer of the game. Poster maps with one side a map, and the other side an elf in a chainmail bikini, rather than the ogress you had in your post.

But simply put...sex still sells, so you may be right, just picked the very WRONG example to use.

 

[Alzrius]

I think there's more than meets the eye to what's going on here.

138. Transformers
139. Transformers Animated
140. Transformers Crossovers
141. Transformers Marvel Crossovers

*rimshot*

 

[ashockney]

Well, I'm back.

I see we've been relegated to the dregs of a new forum. I wonder if we'll even garner 20 viewers here... Too bad, this topic had potential. I'm pretty disappointed in that.

Thanks for those who've added something substantive to the discussion.

I'm going to skip the remainder of the analysis I was planning as it seems moot at this point, and jump to my key industry questions I had in the hopes that ONE person may view this and respond with some validity.

How many SKU's could a TRPG company support/develop in six months? Specifically 300 sku's, with about 80% of sales from the most recent and most productive 30 SKU's?
Do you think a TRPG company could yield a 5x operating margin on production to retail?

 

[Tarek]

Such pessimism. I'm going to skip past the profitability thing entirely, because I'm not qualified to comment; not enough data.

Instead, what I'm going to do is lay out how I see Hasbro proceeding with D&D.
Start with the premise that Hasbro understands boardgames, how to create them profitably and market them at the "right" price point.

There are a couple variations I can see them taking; One is to use the Essentials rules as a "core rules system" and release "boxed sets" as expansion/adventures.
New rules, items, etc are introduced solely in the boxed set, and the boxed set comes as a package with unpainted plastic figures, dungeon tiles, and perhaps a sixteen page scenario/adventure. Every few years, Hasbro releases a "rules update" of the core rules incorporating the most popular elements from the most popular boxed sets, retires the old sets, and comes up with another range of boxed sets. This brings D&D's profitability margins closer to what Hasbro expects.

The other alternative I see is for them to scrap the idea of the "core rules" entirely, keeping those behind the DDI paywall, and releasing the rules physically only in boxed sets, piecemeal. That was the original Basic D&D approach.

At some point, they're likely to issue collectible "game" cards like those in the Gamma World boxed set; they may extend this to collectible "miniatures" which enable special abilities otherwise not available.

Right now, seeing the recent moves Hasbro has made, including noting how expensive the DDI initiative was and the implied budget cutbacks that forced Wizards to cut their rulebook releases in half, I see that Hasbro is positioning themselves to transform D&D in just such a manner.