Would D&D be better off in the public domain?

[Dire Bare]

Public domain? It wouldn't get the resources it gets now. Who's gonna spend millions to produce tens of thousands of glossy full colour hard back books and novels if someone else can just copy it? It'd turn into a small press affair.

I'm not saying that might not result in someone doing something awesome with it; it probably would. But you wouldn't be likely to find that awesome thing at a decent price in local game stores spanning the globe with great production qualities, and consequently you'd find it increasingly difficult to find a D&D group. I have a hard time finding D&D stuff locally as it is, and that's with Hasbro's resources.

So yeah - it would likely result in the occasional awesome thing, lots of dreck, and highly reduced networks.

Private company? It has been before, it could be again. Plenty of things do perfectly well without being part of a publicly traded corporation.

This.

With no company that "owns" the D&D brand, and the game in the public domain, it's my opinion that the hobby would wither and die. D&D, like it or not, is the flagship brand that carries the hobby and acts as a gateway to every other rpg out there. Everybody playing rpgs right now would probably continue to do so, and even attract new players, but it would become increasingly difficult to recruit new gamers over time, and as the grognards start to die off, so does the hobby.

Now, if Hasbro spun off WotC into a private company again, or sold D&D to a smaller company like Paizo . . . . that would be cool. I agree with the other posters that the tabletop rpg would be better served by a smaller, privately held company.

If Hasbro keeps D&D, which is the most likely scenario regardless of how D&D Next does, D&D still has the potential to bring in the profit that WotC/Hasbro needs. Licensing a (damn) good movie series, tv series, and blockbuster MMO would be great steps. The best hope that I see is if WotC makes D&D accessible entirely as a digital product, while at the same time maintaining its "physical" presence as a face-to-face game. With the right marketing and some stellar game design, 5E could very well be the game's salvation.

I remain hopeful, but won't be holding my breath for it to happen.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

With no company that "owns" the D&D brand, and the game in the public domain, it's my opinion that the hobby would wither and die. D&D, like it or not, is the flagship brand that carries the hobby...

I think the hobby carries the industry, rather than the industry carrying the hobby.

I don't think the disappearance of D&D as a brand would significantly change demand for tabletop RPGs. The current pool of gamers would continue on with whatever system tickled their fancy, and they would introduce new gamers to that system. The industry would be shaken up, but the hobby would march on. And, yeah, it would march on in its slow contraction, but that is happening whether WotC exists, or not.

Demand for RPGs wouldn't suddenly plummet off a cliff if WotC closed its doors. Demand would be about the same and there'd be a vacuum on the supply side that somebody would step up to fill.

What do you think is more significant, as far as bringing in new players: WotC marketing of D&D, or current gamers inviting new people to play? WotC is pretty good at marketing their new products to current gamers. But I think WotC marketing pales in significance, as far as *new* gamers goes.

 

[delericho]

I think the root of this question is "Is D&D a big enough brand for a company like Wizards of the Coast." The answer is no, D&D as a brand only made a profit one year since Wizards bought TSR. Both third and fourth edition were failures from a corporate standpoint.

Cite? While I'm inclined to agree that D&D-RPG is probably too small for WotC/Hasbro, you've made some huge claims there - I think you need to back those up.

 

[ggroy]

I wish it were with a private company where it could be special as opposed to just another brand that needs to produce for megacorp or else....

Wonder how much better it would fare, if D&D was handled by a non-profit organization or a charity type organization.

Though one point going against such a non-profit/charity organization, would be the analysis paralysis in deciding what to produce for a new edition, with thousands of "fandumb" voices yelling for their particular specialized rules, monster, setting, mechanics, etc ...

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Cite? While I'm inclined to agree that D&D-RPG is probably too small for WotC/Hasbro, you've made some huge claims there - I think you need to back those up.

I missed his post the first time around. I suspect that D&D has made a profit most - if not all! - years it has been owned by Hasbro else it most definitely would have been "parked" or sold.

Nevertheless, it will be interesting if he can back up his assertion.

As for D&D being run by a non-profit or charity? No way. Where's the incentive? (Actually, please don't take that as dismissive as it may read. I'm really interested in the argument you might make in support of this idea.)

 

[Morrus]

I think that things such as "who owns the brand?" are outweighed by other factors; especially "who is the lead designer?" Hasbro may require certain overall numbers, they certainly don't get involved in game design.

 

[Mallus]

That's all well and good for the company, but is it good for D&D?

Simple question: what does "good for D&D" mean (if anything)?

There are currently multiple versions of the game being enjoyed by "D&D players". Fairly soon, they'll be another official one from WotC, plus, I'm sure, more retroclones and variants that share a significant amount of DNA with a version of D&D. This is a good thing for players. Regardless of 5e's success, there will support for the various versions, so long as we still have nerds, free time, the Internet (and possible Kickstarter).

The problem, if there is one, is simple. WotC/Hasbro is too big a company for D&D. Pazio does quite well w/Pathfinder. But it wouldn't be good enough for WotC had they released something like Pathfinder as 3.75e, or as the continuing evolution of 3.5e.

 

[Alzrius]

I think the root of this question is "Is D&D a big enough brand for a company like Wizards of the Coast." The answer is no, D&D as a brand only made a profit one year since Wizards bought TSR.

This is a half-truth. While D&D under WotC (before it was acquired by Hasbro) lost money, that was because it was deliberately set up to do so.

I direct you to former WotC employee Rick Marshall:

By the time third edition was released, I doubt Peter seriously thought D&D would become a big money-maker for Wizards in the future. Certainly, in the present he treated it as a loss leader designed to strengthen the RPG community. The game store bled money, and Peter was fine with that; he thought of it as a well-deserved thank you to RPG players.

When the Hasbro financial folks got a look at the bottom lines for D&D and the game stores, they were appalled at the money Wizards was losing to support D&D - but these are the sorts of decisions most accountants and MBAs cannot comprehend. From our perspective it made perfect sense, since the income from Magic: The Gathering was enough for Wizards's needs (a sentence that must sound like gibberish to a bean counter, I'm sure - what is this word, "enough").

Likewise, since the Hasbro acquisition, it's hard to say how profitable D&D has been given Hasbro's exceptionally high annual targets for for the D&D brand. To quote Ryan Dancey:

Sometime around 2005ish, Hasbro made an internal decision to divide its businesses into two categories. Core brands, which had more than $50 million in annual sales, and had a growth path towards $100 million annual sales, and Non-Core brands, which didn't.

[...]

Core Brands would get the financing they requested for development of their businesses (within reason). Non-Core brands would not. They would be allowed to rise & fall with the overall toy market on their own merits without a lot of marketing or development support. In fact, many Non-Core brands would simply be mothballed - allowed to go dormant for some number of years until the company was ready to take them down off the shelf and try to revive them for a new generation of kids.

At the point of the original Hasbro/Wizards merger a fateful decision was made that laid the groundwork for what happened once Greg took over. Instead of focusing Hasbro on the idea that Wizards of the Coast was a single brand, each of the lines of business in Wizards got broken out and reported to Hasbro as a separate entity. This was driven in large part by the fact that the acquisition agreement specified a substantial post-acquisition purchase price adjustment for Wizards' shareholders on the basis of the sales of non-Magic CCGs (i.e. Pokemon).

This came back to haunt Wizards when Hasbro's new Core/Non-Core strategy came into focus. Instead of being able to say "We're a $100+ million brand, keep funding us as we desire", each of the business units inside Wizards had to make that case separately. So the first thing that happened was the contraction you saw when Wizards dropped new game development and became the "D&D and Magic" company. Magic has no problem hitting the "Core" brand bar, but D&D does. It's really a $25-30 million business, especially since Wizards isn't given credit for the licensing revenue of the D&D computer games.

Presumably D&D has been managing to hit at least the $50 million mark more years than not, since it hasn't been "mothballed" yet.

 

[Mr. Greengoat]

Sorry for the giant rambling post, my intentions are pure

Point-blank I would rather have the rules of play of D&D watched over by an organization much like a governing body like other sports. I think company monetization should happen with play-organization, digital tools & social networks, writing adventures & campaigns, selling hard-copy references. Having the industry and players as a whole shape the rules assures the play-base sticks together through consensus. Change in rules would be much slower but more meaningful. The "health" of the rules of D&D is directly related to how many players use those rules. The brand of D&D is sometimes a completely different beast in definition.

On a related note:
When is the last time you can recall the hobby growing off of a cold sale in a non game store? I don't know about you, but practically everyone I have ever played with started as friends of an existing player. Word of mouth and peers that play seems the majority way of how the industry gets new players. This is most successful when the user-base is together and can advocate for itself to new players.

D&D does not make money like a toy or any other Hasbro offering. I would guess it now gets it's money from long-time "lifer" players who are in it for the long-haul. Transformers and other toys are heavily based on revolving trends for short attention-span kids (because kids are developing creatures). Adults that play D&D need longer continuity in how they conduct their hobby. A new edition of the rules every couple years weakly mimics the brand cycle for toys but is cross-purposes for how adults use the product.

The current WOTC model of game publishing seems to cannibalize itself every few years in search of new revenue. Some players will buy the new stuff and others will keep the old. This creates a loss of the user-base that must be constantly replenished. Why can't WOTC just wave the wand and support all previous editions by digital release and get out of the rules-design business and stick to selling sexy looking hard copy items, facilitating play, writing adventures, make gateway toys.

Sorry for the thought-vomit.

 

[Fifth Element]

Simple question: what does "good for D&D" mean (if anything)?

I can't see that it does. D&D means nothing without context. It's not even an inanimate object, it's an idea.

I direct you to former WotC employee Rick Marshall:

I'll object to Mr. Marshall's claim about accountants not understanding the decision. Speaking as an accountant, I'd daresay that accountants have a much better grasp on various types of business decisions, in general, than do gamers.

Also, the claim that MBAs also could not understand it seems silly, considering Peter Adkinson himself is an MBA. These comments seem to be "the suits just didn't get it, man" rather than "maybe there were legitimate concerns with the decisions that were made."