Ryan Dancey: This is why there was no M:tG setting for D&D

Hi! I was the brand manager for Dungeons & Dragons and the VP of Tabletop RPGs at Wizards of the Coast from 1998 to 2000. I can answer this question.

There were plans to do a Magic RPG and several iterations of such a game were developed at various times. After Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, there were discussions about making a Magic campaign setting for D&D.

After the release of 3rd edition, we had planned to do a Monstrous Compendium for Magic monsters which would have been a tentative cross-over product to see what the interest level was for such a book.

In the end, the company made the decision to keep the brands totally separate. Here's the logic.

D&D and Magic have fundamentally incompatible brand strategies. This is was once expressed as "asses, monsters & friends".

D&D is the game where you and your friends kick the asses of monsters.

Magic is the game where you kick your friends' asses with monsters.

(Pokemon, btw, was the game where the monsters, who were your friends, kicked each-other's asses.)

There was no good reason to believe that a D&D/Magic crossover book would sell demonstrably more than a comparable non crossover book. And such a book should be priced higher than a generic D&D book - in the way that Forgotten Realms books cost more than generic D&D books (that's the price premium for the brand). There's a fear in sales that the higher the price, the less volume you sell.

The brand team for Magic didn't want to dilute the very honed brand positioning for Magic as a competitive brand, and the brand team for D&D didn't want to try and make some kind of competitive game extension for D&D.

In the end, I think the company was well served by this decision. It eliminated a lot of distraction and inter-team squabbling at a time when neither team had the resources to fight those battles.

Today you might argue there's a different reason. The #1 hobby CCG doesn't want to be entangled with the problems within the D&D brand.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/conten...-Many-Arrows-Can-An-Archer-Fire#ixzz2jgoO0Whj

 

[darjr]

I do wonder if going the other way around would work. A D&D magic the gathering set. I'd love a Magic Monster Manual. Or spell book.

 

[darjr]

Asses, Monsters, & Friends

I wonder how many more games could fit this model?

 

[delericho]

There was no good reason to believe that a D&D/Magic crossover book would sell demonstrably more than a comparable non crossover book. And such a book should be priced higher than a generic D&D book - in the way that Forgotten Realms books cost more than generic D&D books (that's the price premium for the brand).

Hang on... I thought the FR price premium was because it was a setting book, and therefore only of interest to that subset of D&D fans who were also FR fans - a much narrower potential audience?

Conversely, shouldn't a Magic monster book have been able to avoid that increase, on the grounds that it was potentially of interest to D&D fans (who weren't necessarily Magic fans) and to Magic fans (who weren't necessarily D&D fans) - potentially, therefore, a much wider audience?

Since WotC owned both D&D and FR, and both D&D and Magic, there's no inherent reason they would need to charge a premium for the brand - unless they're silly enough to go charging themselves a licensing fee, anyway. And, since the goal of such a crossover product is to try to persuade fans of the one property to at least look at the other, it's worth doing even without the extra margin (potentially even at a loss), if it manages to shift other product.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

The "logic" behind it is mind-boggling. Here are the main points

• Magic is different from Dungeons and Dragons (asses, monsters, and friends argument)
• Magic as a setting might not sell and might be too expensive
• Magic would be diluted
• Inter-team squabbling

Asses, Monsters, and Friends
Magic, as a setting, is an IP. IP successfully cross from their original genre all the time. Star Wars has made the leap from Movie to Comics, Games (Video, Board, RP), Novels, Television, etc. The setting, lore, characters, tropes, and themes are what translate, not the nuts and bolts. WotC translated Star Wars from a movie into a Roleplaying Game. Are they unable to translate a CCG into an RPG simply because it's roots are in a competitive game?

Sales and Cost
Why would it need to be sold at a premium? You didn't license the IP, you created it. The key word here is "fear." For some reason, the fear of failure with Magic is greater then the fear of failure with some other setting. The first new setting for DnD in years is bound to generate interest, look at Eberron.

Magic would be Diluted
There is not going to be brand confustion on this. A pack of magic cards is very different from an RPG Source Book. Magic the Setting and Magic the Competitive game would be as different as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: New Jedi Order. Both entertain using Star Wars, but no one is going to be confused by a Video Game versus a Book series.

Inter-Team Squabbling
Is this the real source of the problem?

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

Hang on... I thought the FR price premium was because it was a setting book, and therefore only of interest to that subset of D&D fans who were also FR fans - a much narrower potential audience?

Conversely, shouldn't a Magic monster book have been able to avoid that increase, on the grounds that it was potentially of interest to D&D fans (who weren't necessarily Magic fans) and to Magic fans (who weren't necessarily D&D fans) - potentially, therefore, a much wider audience?

Since WotC owned both D&D and FR, and both D&D and Magic, there's no inherent reason they would need to charge a premium for the brand - unless they're silly enough to go charging themselves a licensing fee, anyway. And, since the goal of such a crossover product is to try to persuade fans of the one property to at least look at the other, it's worth doing even without the extra margin (potentially even at a loss), if it manages to shift other product.

The whole things reeks of the Magic side saying you can't play with our toys.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I understand it, but I disagree.

True, the M:tG game is played by "epic level Summoners" to use a D&Dism, but the setting itself and its storylines are quite rich, and could be a very hot RPG setting IMHO.

I know that when I announced to my gaming group- most of whom play or played M:tG- that I was making a M:tG fantasy campaign, interest was high. (Then I said I was doing it in HERO, and the crickets began to serenade...)

But to be fair, prognostication is difficult- there are a lot of high-profile/wealthy people who have made comments on what would succeed or fail in the market that were ultimately proven to be 100% wrong.

 

[saskganesh]

I don't think Magic needed D&D. I can appreciate that D&D didn't want to co-operate with the WOTC's Magic Department out of fear of Magic the RPG, but I think that's navigable.

So: "Magic: The RPG, powered by Dungeons and Dragons."

But:

The whole things reeks of the Magic side saying you can't play with our toys.

Yeah, this.
​

 

[saskganesh]

Magic is the game where you kick your friends' asses with monsters.

Dungeonmasters do this too.

​

 

[Jester David]

Asses, Monsters, and Friends
Magic, as a setting, is an IP. IP successfully cross from their original genre all the time. Star Wars has made the leap from Movie to Comics, Games (Video, Board, RP), Novels, Television, etc. The setting, lore, characters, tropes, and themes are what translate, not the nuts and bolts. WotC translated Star Wars from a movie into a Roleplaying Game. Are they unable to translate a CCG into an RPG simply because it's roots are in a competitive game?

I bolded the most likely answer.
Magic is competitive. The point of the setting is wizards fighting other wizards with monsters. It's trickier getting that into a cooperative RPG without losing the spirit of the source game. The die-hard fans of one might be less interested in the play of the other.

It's worth noting, that this would have been the early 3e era. Right after WotC acquired TSR, having watched the gaming giant fall for trying to support too many disparate brands. WotC only really supported FR at this junction, although it was starting work on Eberron. They would likely have been very hesitant to add yet another campaign setting to the mix, and risk fracturing their audience and sales even more.

Sales and Cost
Why would it need to be sold at a premium? You didn't license the IP, you created it. The key word here is "fear." For some reason, the fear of failure with Magic is greater then the fear of failure with some other setting. The first new setting for DnD in years is bound to generate interest, look at Eberron.

At that time, WotC (and TSR's) price was different between Core books and non-Core books. The latter tend to sell at a premium to offset the reduced sales, because they were niche and had a smaller audience. FR fans wouldn't buy Eberron (or Magic) products and the reverse.

Magic would be Diluted
There is not going to be brand confusion on this. A pack of magic cards is very different from an RPG Source Book. Magic the Setting and Magic the Competitive game would be as different as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: New Jedi Order. Both entertain using Star Wars, but no one is going to be confused by a Video Game versus a Book series.

It's different than licenced products where the RPG is not made by anyone remotely associated with the source material. In this case, WotC is publishing both. Instead of a company that makes two separate products there's a company that makes only a single product.

A crossover has much more "canon" implications. Suddenly, the RPG might influence the CCG and vise versa. If the RPG really focuses on cooperation or different elements of the world that might have pushed the CCG to incorporate those same elements. As the RPG world would likely make use of standard D&D monsters, those would have to enter the CCG as well.
There's the very real worry that as the two properties overlap more and more certain elements would become less brand specific and more generic. Such as if Beholders and Mind Flayers were on MtG cards. Suddenly those would no longer be "D&D" monsters but just "monsters".

Inter-Team Squabbling
Is this the real source of the problem?

Had this been the only problem they product would still have happened. Management can easily squash dissent and tell everyone to play nice.