D&D 5E D&D Next: Let's discuss it's mass multimedia goal.

[delericho]

Sorry, I can just about delude myself enough to pretend I know something about making an RPG (based on never having done it, but having seen lots of other people doing it several times), but I'm not deluded enough to think I know anything about "mass-multimedia branding".

But, you know what? I don't care. Really, I don't care if D&D is a huge hit in the movies, as a video game, as a board game, in novels, or whatever else you care to name. I care about the D&D RPG. The rest of it is just not for me.

 

[Hussar]

Experiments often fail. That is what labs or for. Do the experiments there.

Their experiment failed during the Peer Review phase.

I think D&DNEXT is the self correction of the scientific method at work..

Fair enough. I have no problems with that. Better that than keep trying to flog a dead horse, driving the brand into the ground, going bankrupt and allowing themselves to be bought out by a card game company...

But, again, it's ten thousand times better to try and fail than to keep on the same old same old. We've been there. We've done that. Let's hope that we never go through that again.

 

[billd91]

Instead of continuing to hi-jack the overloaded thread, I figured I would create a separate thread on the issue.

I for one do not feel like their goal is a realistic one. As has been mentioned by another poster, D&D does not have the appeal, or the reputation that some of the big ones have such as Marvel and DC. Creating a few video games would be no problem, but beyond that, I don't see the brand going anywhere else. We have already seen their attempts and let's just say that I'm not going to hold my breath.

They don't have to have the reputation that Marvel and DC have, nor do their multimedia ambitions need to be so high either. But I think getting something out there is considerably better than not. Why should WotC be content to have a large slice (possibly even the majority) of a shrinking pie when they can get slices of lots more pies? I'd love to see another set of decent D&D computer and console games. D&D Heroes for the X-box was a lot of fun for all of its hack and slashyness. Baldur's Gate was an excellent computer RPG as a hybrid of 2e with some 3e influences. I'd be thrilled to see them work with Bioware to produce something on Mass Effect's level of D&D console RPG.

And by getting more D&D out there in these other media, they may be able to slow the shrinking of the tabletop RPG pie. Cross promotion will bring some people in and I'm all for that.

 

[Halivar]

And by getting more D&D out there in these other media, they may be able to slow the shrinking of the tabletop RPG pie. Cross promotion will bring some people in and I'm all for that.

And this is good for every publisher in the market; D&D is still THE feeder game.

 

[DMZ2112]

I'll call into question a different aspect of the OP's position: that of the universal appeal of Marvel or DC.

I would agree that most people know who Spiderman is. I think the perception that most people have a /fondness/ for Spiderman is an illusion borne of being part of the geek community. And the further you dig into the Marvel canon (and you don't have to dig far), even the familiarity most people have with the material evaporates.

I think Batman and Superman are a different case -- I do think everyone is at least fond of the idea of Batman and Superman, if not the details of their particular incarnations, because they have been successful "multimedia" concepts for a long time. Everyone my age remembers Christopher Reeve and Michael Keaton. But in the case of DC that curve representing loss of familiarity over canon-depth is even steeper. I think maybe two in ten people could name the whole JLA, tops. And after that, nothing.

My point is that I don't think D&D needs to be beloved to pull this off. It is known, and that is a good start. I'm not saying that it will be an automatic success, just that it doesn't necessarily need anything more than what Marvel had -- a media blitz, a capable screenwriter, and a handful of relatable characters.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, and investment capital. A metric giga-pantload of investment capital.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

This I don't get. 4e is the least video game friendly rule set. Every class has out of turn powers that work retroactively. There is no way to do this in real time. Turn based video games would work but nothing close to real time.

Yeah that's something I realized back when I first saw the 4e rules, it would never work with a game like Baldur's Gate or Planescape:Torment or Neverwinter Nights which are real time. And generally I feel those games should be the standard in which to do D&D video games. Now there's certainly an appeal to the gold box games and those Dark Sun video game that came after, but it was always Baldur's Gate that was the first that did D&D well as a video game. Dragon Age and the first Witcher game very much came from the lineage of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. Even though Baldur's Gate has been re-released, I've always found the approach in recent years to their video games questionable, and it didn't even surprise me at all that the sequel to Torment is based on Numenera and not D&D.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So how many times do you need to try before you realize you won't succeed?

What you see as an insurmountable barrier with a predetermined outcome ("you won't succeed"), others see as a problem with a potential solution (what would it take to succeed?).

What would it take for D&D as it exists now to be a successful multimedia brand in the next, say, 10 years? They clearly haven't done it well thus far, but what would they have to do in order to make it work?

It's got some videogame cachet. It's got popular novels that still sell like hotcakes. Given that, it could probably have a movie that does pretty well (just make a movie version of the first few Drizz'zt books, people will eat that noise up, even if the books and the movie are both mediocre -- and the movie doesn't necessarily have to be mediocre!). Make a few really solid videogames more like Baldur's Gate or Torment than like the recent fare (taking the liscence back from Atari would be the first step on this). It once had a Saturday Morning Cartoon, and since Hasbro has its own cable station, they're set up to have another animated kid's series pretty well, alongside My Little Pony and GI Joe and Transformers. If that does well, there's action figure potential there, and that's VERY lucrative.

That's not a bad place to be, really. There's a lot of potential growth there.

The public's opinion of the game isn't entirely relevant to the success of these things. People won't watch a Drizz'zt movie because they like D&D, they'll watch it because it's a cool fantasy action flick about a rebellious dark elf who fights with two swords and has Vin Diesel in it. Kids don't choose to watch the cartoon based on their love of the game, they watch it because it's got dragons and heroes and wizards and monsters in it. The TTRPG is completely irrelevant to people buying novels. And it only bears on the videogames as much as the designers want it to (D&D the MOBA is almost inevitable at this point. ).

The TTRPG can still be this goofy thing that only a particular segment of the brand's loyal sycophants really care about.

 

[Mistwell]

How about a realistic answer?

I think this is the most revealing answer you've given in a long time, though you formed it like a question, Jeopardy-style.

"If you fail, keep trying" is the realistic answer. For most things in life.

You know how many times Joss Weadon failed before he succeeded?

How about Brandon Sanderson - He failed at THIRTEEN books before he succeeded.

Marvel? Marvel was LITERALLY BANKRUPT not that long ago.

The people at Paizo? Most of them had come off a failure, before they joined Paizo (not all, but most).

Monte Cook? MASSIVE failures before he hit success.

Steve Jobs? LISA was a massive failure.

Bill Gates? Traff-O-Data was an utter failure.

Richard Branson? Almost landed in jail twice, record company debt so bad he was arrested for tax evasion.

In fact, it's actually hard to think of successful people who didn't have lots of failure to begin with.

What the heck are you talking about that you think it's an unrealistic answer to say, "However many times it takes until you are successful or go out of business"? That is absolutely the right answer, and it's the answer just about every successful person has given. I am willing to bet you've encountered failure in life, tried again, and eventually found success as well. Or maybe not? I don't know why you express a defeatist and negative attitude about this topic. But I do want to know why do you think WOTC should quit trying?

 

[I'm A Banana]

In fact, it's actually hard to think of successful people who didn't have lots of failure to begin with.

Yar, to become REALLY successful, you've gotta be successful enough in the first place to absorb some pretty catastrophic failures. If you can't afford to fail -- if you can't afford to take a risk -- you're not going to grow much.

D&D is successful enough to take risks and fail. CLEARLY. We all know about the movie.

 

[Halivar]

D&D is successful enough to take risks and fail. CLEARLY. We all know about the movie.

What movie? There was no movie. Who's Jeremy Irons? Never heard of him. Next existed.