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

[Hussar]

When you take away the rpg from the center of the wheel, there is nothing left in the center to solidify the brand.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...t-s-mass-multimedia-goal/page10#ixzz31Yq40lQv

See, that's the problem though. The RPG will not be the centre and that's a bad way to think about it. Just like the comics are no longer the centre of Marvel Entertainment. The RPG line will be one spot on the network. It's not about all the products feeding into the RPG to sell more RPG books. D&D the brand is not going to be just D&D the RPG.

And we see it already. Attack Wing D&D, Kre-O D&D, Tons of novels, boardgames (and that's plural boardgames), and video games are all in production right now. I'm sure there are more as well.

The RPG is great and we all love it, but, it's not going to be the break out product, because outside of English speaking North America, it's largely unknown. Yes, I do realise that other people do play D&D. But, I can go into any store here in Japan and find Magic cards. I've never seen a print D&D RPG book anywhere. I have seen all sorts of D&D novels though. And the video games seem to be around - I do see them.

That's where the growth has to be. Not in trying to get more people to play the RPG. After thirty or forty years, that well is pretty much dry. I don't know if the gamer population is shrinking, but, I'm fairly sure that it's not making huge inroads in new players either. It seems to be pretty static. Which is fine. But, to grow the brand, you have to move away from the idea that D&D The RPG is the core of the brand. It won't be.

That was the message I took away from what Mearls said.

 

[sunshadow21]

The problem is will be vs what is now. Other things may be in production, but Next is going to be the first thing to hit the market, and if Next is not at least mildly successful, than the rest is going to have a much harder time. Novels and boardgames are already out there, and are basically their own brand with their identity, so don't help a whole lot with the core brand. I get that eventually in order to grow that the rpg must move away from the center, but they are not there yet, and won't be for be for a while. So for now, yes it does have to be the center of the brand and yes it does have to compete with Pathfinder. That is the crux of the matter that I am not certain that WotC understands, or that matter has ever understood; in order to get where they want to be, they first have to successfully manage the immediate challenges. To me, it seems like they can do either long term strategy well, and have poor immediate product, or have a good product with no clear vision of what to do with it. If they can change that with Next, where they have a good immediate product with solid and clear long term support, than the day will come when the rpg is no longer at the center, but a successful and well supported Next is key to reaching that long term goal, and the recent past is not entirely encouraging on that point.

 

[Mistwell]

WotC is not Hasbro

For movies? Yes they are.

and the novel line is for all practical purposes it's own product and brand, the success of which has little to no bearing on any other part of the brand.

It's about characters and brand recognition, and yes they absolutely are connected and always have been connected. I didn't say the success of the RPG is connected...this discussion has nothing to do with the RPG really. It has a connection to the movies though, and they've sold more novels than Marvel sold some comics of properties they successfully turned into movies. That's relevant.

And the fact that Iron Man shifted the focus for Marvel away from comic books is great, but WotC has nothing in the pipeline aside from Next for the D&D name

Uh, they have several movies in the pipeline right now. I am getting the sense you have not been following the larger WOTC and Hasbro news, and have been focused just on D&D. You were aware, for example, they're working on a Magic: The Gathering movie?

so whatever is going to come after Next's release will be effected by Next's relative success or failure.

You know what connection the Blade movies had to the success or failure of the Blade comic book at the time? Zero. Same with Iron Man.

At the end of the day, WotC still has no real sellable product to sell under the D&D brand right now aside from Next.

Uh, they have a ton of IP. It's all sellable. They're already making movies with some of it.

Next and the tabletop game is still what has to be front and center because it's the only thing they have to sell right now.

Unless you think everyone at WOTC is just outright lying right now, then you're wrong. They plan to put the brand front and center, and they've said that every opportunity they've been given to say it.

I am not sure why people are in denial over this concept, but it's odd to me. For you to be right on this subject, you have to assume a massive conspiracy or mass delusion going on at WOTC right now.

Take away Next and the tabletop game, and you have just another generic fantasy concept.

Dragonlance, Ebberon, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, these are not generic fantasy concepts. And they exist independent of the RPG itself.

This is not to say that the tabletop game is always going to be the only thing they have to sell, but for now, it is.

Shall we bet on them selling a lot more than that, in the first year? I am up for it if you are.

Until WotC themselves can create a truly sellable product outside of the game itself, no one else is going to bother, and that no one includes Hasbro, which doesn't need or care about D&D at this particular point and won't until WotC gives them reason to.

You know this how? Again, please, cite your sources.

WotC has completely failed to anything with the novel line aside from sustain what they inherited

You say that like it's a negative - it's a HUGE positive. It's hard to do. Also I strongly disagree with your assessment of that issue.

The key with both Transformers and Iron Man is that while neither had been particularly smash hits prior to their breakout movies, both were easily recognizable IPs

Now we are going in circles. The first success for Marvel was Blade, not Iron Man, and it was not recognized by most people at all. The second was Iron Man, and it also was a second tier property that was not well recognized by most, and did not have a good following by fans a the time. That's the truth. This "easily recognizable" claim has been disproven multiple times in this thread - and so far nobody has answered it, they just keep repeating the false claim again and again. It's enough already - if you have evidence showing Blade and Iron Man were more popular than I am claiming, then let's see it already. Otherwise, deal with the fact that two relatively unknown properties were turned into successes through things like casting, directing, writing, and marketing - and not prior reputation of the properties.

far easier than what WotC faces with D&D, which lacks clear ownership of any world or character they might try to use

What they heck are you talking about? They own their settings. That was established a long time ago. Are you under the mistaken belief there isn't clear title to their settings? If so, I hope you have some evidence to support that claim.

Marvel may have had some work in convincing people that their long term strategy was good, but it is very clear that even at that early point of trying to sell Iron Man, they had at least a solid outline of long term strategy and goals that they could use to market their ideas; I'm just not convinced yet that WotC has anything similar or that if they do, that the people there today will be there long enough to implement it properly.

Fortunately it's not you they have to convince - it's people who approved of Battleship, and Tonka, and Jem, and Candy Land, and Hungry Hungry Hippos, and Monopoly, and Ouija, and Battleship, and My Little Pony.

 

[sunshadow21]

First off, please quit parsing individual sentences like that; it's really, really, really annoying and tends to miss the greater points being made. Second, WotC has been saying, and for that matter, doing, the same thing since they released 3rd edition; the issue isn't whether or not they are lying but whether or not they can actually pull it off successfully. If they can pull it off this time, great, but until they do, the table top rpg is still the functional center of the brand. Novels, while they have some tie ins, are not seen by the vast majority of people as the same brand, and will continue to operate in their own universe until WotC successfully creates something that can serve as a bridge; if the D&D brand were to suddenly collapse tomorrow, Salvatore could still make a comfortable living off of Drizzt. Boardgames, given time, could develop into something big enough to move the rpg away from the center, but it isn't there right now.

My problem with your posts is that they ignore that this isn't the first time that WotC has tried all of this. That doesn't mean that they are guaranteed to fail this time, but it does mean that a lot of the assumptions you are making about the automatic success of all of these other products are as bad as those who assume that because of past history, they will fail again. My concern is that there are a lot of variables involved, and WotC has not shown a very good understanding of how to manage and limit the variables in the past; that part I don't really see them changing much on. They do seem to have learned at least a bit from 4E's problems, and that gives me reason to actually watch and pay attention instead of completely writing their efforts off, but whether they have learned enough remains to be seen. Ultimately, to me at least, WotC is at a point where making assumptions of any kind, either good or bad, simply isn't wise; they could go either way within the span of a blink. They are trying to catch lightning in a bottle, the same way they have been their entire ownership of the IP, and while they have yet to have the lightning hit them instead, they didn't understand how to handle the closest thing they got to getting it in the bottle, the OGL, and neither you nor I truly know if they have the people and experience needed to get the bottle even that close again and if they do, how to handle it. Having products in production means nothing; it's where the rubber hits the road that matters, and WotC has not had a good track record of that to this point. I truly hope that they finally prove their doubters wrong, but until they do, assuming that this new round of multimedia products will take off just because they are bound to get lucky eventually seems as dangerous a bet as assuming that they will automatically fail.

 

[Rygar]

The problem with the D&D brand is lack of a central focus. Reviving Iron Man wasn't nearly as difficult because the focus was already there, it just needed the right combination of script, actor, and timing to catch the public eye. D&D has no such focus. Even in the individual product lines, there tends to be heavy splintering of focus between different worlds, characters, or preferred versions of lore, rule sets, etc. Making a smashing success of a Drizzt movie or a Dragonlance movie helps Drizzt or Dragonlance, but does little to help the core brand. In order for the multimedia aspect of WotC's goals to work out, Next has to successfully define D&D as a core brand that includes numerous other secondary brands that are already in existence and quite strong in their own right. If Next can do this, than getting people to want to license both the core brand and the secondary brands for games, movies, and whatever other products people can come up with will be much easier. Without that core identity, there's no real reason for anyone but WotC to care about the brand because there's no sellable core identity that everyone automatically thinks about when they hear the term D&D. You might get a few video games here and there, just like what 3.x and 4E got, but that's pretty much it. TV and movie producers will be just as likely to go with their own ideas because vague mentions here and there are not enough to constitute a bankable, reliable, ready made market.

I disagree.

The goal is for D&D to become a brand. Similiar to how Magic the Gathering is brand, Mtg isn't any one setting, in some sets it isn't any setting. If some movie causes people to identify D&D with some setting or even a new setting, that's great. WOTC doesn't care if they're selling 1,000,000 copies of Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, or even Birthright, so long as they're selling 1,000,000 copies of one of them.

If they are, then D&D is thriving. Over time, people will spread out to other settings, just as people who bought a deck of Mtg spread out to other sets of Mtg, other formats to play in.

The whole goal with any entertainment product is an onboarding point, it's irrelevant what that point is, so long as people are being onboarded.

D&D does have a core identity, it has things that are common across all settings: Mages, fighters, thieves, clerics, monsters, magic items. Many of these things are signature, and people immediately associate them with D&D.

I'll also have to point out, there was perhaps two 3rd edition video games? Maybe 3? No 4th edition games? This has alot more to do with Hasbro's choice of partners than it does people not buying D&D games. In fact, 1st and 2nd edition were both substantially more fragmented across settings than 3rd and 4th edition and those video games sold quite well.

Dungeons and Dragons is likely in the top 5 most recognizable properties in entertainment, and quite possibly in the top 3. 80 year olds know what D&D is, and they likely couldn't name a single video game character to save their lives, and precious few comic book characters as most of them didn't exist when they read comics, but they know what D&D is. When D&D doesn't have a player base fragmented as it did these past few years, it has a very large built in audience, and honestly it's probably a larger one than Iron Man, Thor, or Captain America did before those movies. IIRC the comic book industry was in a death spiral until Bryan Singer saved them with X-men. Few had heard of True Blood, Walking Dead, or Game of Thrones before those TV shows.

A well done movie, whether it is an existing storyline or a new one, is only a good thing, and D&D has more than enough brand recognition to explode if a good movie is produced.

 

[Iosue]

The RPG is great and we all love it, but, it's not going to be the break out product, because outside of English speaking North America, it's largely unknown. Yes, I do realise that other people do play D&D. But, I can go into any store here in Japan and find Magic cards. I've never seen a print D&D RPG book anywhere. I have seen all sorts of D&D novels though. And the video games seem to be around - I do see them.

The list of stores in Japan that handle D&D RPG print materials is short enough to fit on 1, maybe 2 pages.

In fact, here it is.

 

[sunshadow21]

Dungeons and Dragons is likely in the top 5 most recognizable properties in entertainment, and quite possibly in the top 3. 80 year olds know what D&D is, and they likely couldn't name a single video game character to save their lives, and precious few comic book characters as most of them didn't exist when they read comics, but they know what D&D is. When D&D doesn't have a player base fragmented as it did these past few years, it has a very large built in audience, and honestly it's probably a larger one than Iron Man, Thor, or Captain America did before those movies. IIRC the comic book industry was in a death spiral until Bryan Singer saved them with X-men. Few had heard of True Blood, Walking Dead, or Game of Thrones before those TV shows.

A well done movie, whether it is an existing storyline or a new one, is only a good thing, and D&D has more than enough brand recognition to explode if a good movie is produced.

And planning your entire brand around something that may, or may not, happen is a recipe for continuing to have exactly the same problems they have right now. You simply cannot assume that just because a movie is made that it will be good, or that any success will carry over to the greater brand. A good brand becomes a great brand when a company plans for average growth around the few variables they can directly control, and has a plan in place to deal with unexpected success. I'm not entirely convinced that WotC has either of these things at this point. I can say with reasonable accuracy that they have not in the past. As for your first point, being recognized and be easily monitized are to completely separate things; the selling points that WotC and their fans are pushing have not changed in the last several decades, yet we are still having this conversation, so clearly WotC has been missing at least one key ingredient, if not more, that would make it reality. I am not questioning the potential for growth if the right key elements can be harnessed, but at this point, it's safe to say that if they were that easy to harness, WotC would have done so by now. At this point, WotC very much seems to be at the "throw everything at the wall, and see what if anything, manages to stick even a little bit" phase of development, and that makes any kind of predictions about what will happen, as opposed to what could happen, very difficult.

 

[Mistwell]

First off, please quit parsing individual sentences like that; it's really, really, really annoying and tends to miss the greater points being made.

Tough. I've been here a dozen years, and I've always done it. Hundreds of others do it as well, here and elsewhere. If you don't like it, don't respond to me. I am not missing any greater points from my perspective - I respond to any point I think is worth responding to.

Novels, while they have some tie ins, are not seen by the vast majority of people as the same brand

What is your source for this claim concerning what the vast majority of people believe about the brand?

[cut bunch of your opinion stuff about what you feel about the brand and success and failure previously]... assuming that this new round of multimedia products will take off just because they are bound to get lucky eventually seems as dangerous a bet as assuming that they will automatically fail.

I am not assuming success of the multimedia stuff - I am saying that is what they are attempting to do, and I am optimistic about it. But nothing I've said or implied assumes success of anything. And I don't think WOTC is assuming success of anything either - they're just optimistic about their strategy and have backing for it right now. The RPG product is not the focus of this new effort - the brand is. It might succeed, it might fail, but that is what they are going to try to do.

 

[sunshadow21]

You're optimistic, but you have no more to support your optimism than those that show pessimism, probably less if you look at WotC's track record, yet you demand proof from others that you yourself cannot give. That's not trying to have a debate, that's trying to outshout your opponent, which it would very much disappoint me if that's all this thread turned into, because it is actually a very interesting topic with ramifications that go well beyond WotC and D&D.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It strikes me that this is a little in parallel with one of my other favorite gaming pastimes: Final Fantasy.

Different worlds? Check.

Different characters? Check.

Different storylines? Check.

Different "editions"/mechanics changes? Check.

Cruddy movie? Check.

Brand recognition? Pretty big check.

...this also parallels a lot of Nintendo-brand stuff.

The characters and mechanics and worlds and stories and whatnot are open and varied and flexible, and they can all make crap and people will STILL throw money at it.

Nintendo and FF have largely been happy just doing one thing really well -- it just happens to be a media where a success can make a few hundred mil. They've branched out and failed big time (typically with movies...).

I wonder what it is about movies that makes it so easy to make a remarkably horrible one with a good brand, but Uwe Boll won't return my phone calls.

I mean, even if it's awesome, it risks going all John Carter and being a solid flick that nobody sees.But it's a smart thing to try and do, even "again." If nobody tried a second time for an LotR movie, we'd still have this: