D&D 5E (2014) Reasons Why My Interest in 5e is Waning

[pemerton]

there are no Pathfinder players who have never heard of D&D.

<snip>

By that definition, most Pathfinder players are D&D brand evangelists

I think these are good points.

 

[Shasarak]

I'm not saying it won't be the case in the future, but at present there are no Pathfinder players who have never heard of D&D.

Since they are playing DnD that should hardly come as a surprise.

 

[BryonD]

I'm not saying it won't be the case in the future, but at present there are no Pathfinder players who have never heard of D&D. There might be plenty of players who have only ever played Pathfinder and not D&D (I myself was one of them until 5E came out), but even the casual players know about D&D and the relationship between it and the game they are playing. So whether Pathfinder or D&D is on top of the RPG charts in 2016 or 2017 is immaterial to whether a movie would be successful or not.

I disagree

You have to keep both the gaming culture and popular culture in mind as co-existing but not the same thing.
If D&D stops being recognized as "the thing geeks do" by people who have never heard of Magic Missile, then the brand starts losing value fast.

They could shut down the RPG tomorrow and still make a successful D&D movie tomorrow. Agreed. But does it need the "D&D" name? Would Seventh Son do better if it was D&D: The Seventh Son? And more important to the point, if fewer and fewer people play and talk about "D&D" over the next five years, does the added value of taking the D&D name on a movie remain unchanged? (No)

The fact that the gaming commnity will still know "D&D" whether they are playing it or not is irrelevant.

 

[BryonD]

As I understand it, two big studios are currently litigating the rights to make a D&D movie.

I think the D&D brand has far more market power than the Pathfinder brand.

Absolutely.
As I already said, D&D has DEEP roots. It could collapse as a game tomorrow and no other brand would eclipse it for a VERY long time.


Again, if this is all that matters, why do 5E at all? What does 5E bring to the table that they didn't already have with 4E?

They want to maintain the brand value. If their value is $100 for movie rights and the second best brand is $3 for movie rights, then staying far and away the #1 isn't a concern. If two years from now their brand is worht $75 and #2 is worth $3.50, the fact that they are still vastly ahead of everyone else will not be the key issue. The fact that they lost 25% of the brand value will be.

 

[BryonD]

I think these are good points.

And yet neither of those point have anything to do with non-gamers going to see a movie based on D&D in the name

 

[BryonD]

We have gotten pretty deep on a tangent.

The bottom line is that the more people actively playing D&D, the more success D&D will have at all levels. (the game itself and the overall brand)
You can assume that the D&D brand is immune to human nature and changing focuses over time.
You can assume that people playing D&D will just keep playing "just because".

I assume that maintaining focus on the game and keeping the niche hobby fan base from waning is better for the brand than letting the fans interest wane.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

I disagree

You have to keep both the gaming culture and popular culture in mind as co-existing but not the same thing.
If D&D stops being recognized as "the thing geeks do" by people who have never heard of Magic Missile, then the brand starts losing value fast.

The thing is, people who have never heard of Magic Missile have never heard of Pathfinder, either. Or WoD, or FATE, or any other tabletop RPG. If they're even aware that tabletop RPGs exist (thank you, Futurama / Big Bang Theory / Community), they lump them all together as D&D.

Look at Transformers - was it a potential hit because people were really, really into the 2005-2007 Transformers: Cybertron cartoon, or because it was a big budget movie with robots punching each other and explosions that had big brand recognition from the 80s and early 90s?

They could shut down the RPG tomorrow and still make a successful D&D movie tomorrow. Agreed. But does it need the "D&D" name?

Let's imagine a spec script Universal has in their vault, about a ragtag team of medieval warriors fighting an evil sorcerer / dragon / demon-king / what-have-you. It's circulated amongst the producers and they like it, but don't know how it'll fare at the box office.

The question is, does attaching the name "Dungeons and Dragons" to that script make it more or less likely to succeed at the box office than developing it as a completely new IP? Especially if they're then able to add a Beholder fight scene and make the demon-king into Orcus?

That kind of brand recognition is invaluable to movie companies and D&D has been a part of nerd culture for decades. As you've said, D&D has DEEP roots - it could collapse as a game tomorrow, and no other brand would eclipse it for a very long time.

Again, if this is all that matters, why do 5E at all? What does 5E bring to the table that they didn't already have with 4E?

They want to maintain the brand value. If their value is $100 for movie rights and the second best brand is $3 for movie rights, then staying far and away the #1 isn't a concern. If two years from now their brand is worht $75 and #2 is worth $3.50, the fact that they are still vastly ahead of everyone else will not be the key issue. The fact that they lost 25% of the brand value will be.

I think you're drastically overvaluing how valuable gamer buzz towards 5E would be to a D&D movie. They could have easily ceased support of 4E and pursued the exact same brand strategy. They chose not to, in my opinion because it would have left the tabletop game on a controversial and sour note (the 3.5 / 4E split) and a "D&D Resurgent" narrative is much better press. Movies take a while to make, so even if 5E sales start tanking hard a year from now the studio will be already be producing it.

A recognizable brand name is the only thing that matters to the studio and the amount of nerds actually playing 5E in 2017 means diddly squat to them - and Hasbro will be able to show them some impressive sales numbers as recently as last year and spin them a yarn about the millions of former players from the 80s who'd probably go see it and that's all it'll take.

They made a movie out of Battleship for crying out loud!

We have gotten pretty deep on a tangent.

The bottom line is that the more people actively playing D&D, the more success D&D will have at all levels. (the game itself and the overall brand)
You can assume that the D&D brand is immune to human nature and changing focuses over time.
You can assume that people playing D&D will just keep playing "just because".

I assume that maintaining focus on the game and keeping the niche hobby fan base from waning is better for the brand than letting the fans interest wane.

The more people actively playing D&D, the more success D&D will have at all levels - completely agreed.

However, people still play 1E. Hell, they play 2.E, 3E in original vanilla, .5 and Pathfinder flavors, 4E, Swords and Wizardry, Blood & Treasure, Labyrinth Lord, I could go on... none of those games receive the support 5E is receiving, but people still play them.

Could there be a mass exodus to the new shiny if 5E doesn't see more product come out? Sure, maybe, though I'd argue over timescale with you. But from a brand perspective, those departed fans are still just that - departed fans. Are they playing 5E at the moment? No, but as long as they're not anti all things D&D, they're still more likely than the average Joe to go see a D&D movie and therefore everything Hasbro and the movie studio has set out to achieve has been accomplished.

Playing just one game of D&D (any edition) with friends and deciding it doesn't suck is all it takes, even if they're not converted into lifelong tabletop gamers.

 

[BryonD]

The thing is, people who have never heard of Magic Missile have never heard of Pathfinder, either. Or WoD, or FATE, or any other tabletop RPG. If they're even aware that tabletop RPGs exist (thank you, Futurama / Big Bang Theory / Community), they lump them all together as D&D.

Exactly

But will that last?

If geeks spend the next 5 years saying "Pathfinder" then people will start lumping everything under "Pathfinder". That is a long long way off. D&D has deep roots.
But the presumption that this is unwavering is not forward thinking.

There are a lot of shades of grey between the conditions of today and the Big Bang Theory of 2020 talking about Pathfinder. And every one of those shades reduced the brand value.
I suspect someone somewhere has done brand recognition surveys over the past decades and D&D has gone up and down within a range over that time.
If, hypothetically, the D&D output dropped to a couple APs with free 25 page pdfs per year, the downs would start being a lot more than the ups and sooner than later the range would start finding new lows.

If competitors offer good alternatives, the issue will only accelerate.

That kind of brand recognition is invaluable to movie companies and D&D has been a part of nerd culture for decades. As you've said, D&D has DEEP roots - it could collapse as a game tomorrow, and no other brand would eclipse it for a very long time.

But you are treating it like it is a yes/no question.

If the value drops 10% or 25% that is a decline.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Again, if this is all that matters, why do 5E at all? What does 5E bring to the table that they didn't already have with 4E?

It's cheaper to produce and it's OSR friendly. 4e was meant to be a lavish edition - on-line tools produced in-house, classes with hundreds of powers each, rapid pace of releases, LRF, encounters program with printed adventures, poster maps, tokens & swag - it was meant to grow the line beyond the bounds of reason, to bring in hordes of new players, and get everyone playing to subscribe to DDI to use the vaporware VTT, and rake in revenue in multiples of the entire estimated size of the RPG industry. When all that didn't work out, it was still a game with a design paradigm that required a lot of development effort to put out anything. And, it was unfamiliar to returning D&D fans who hadn't played since the 20th century - who, coincidentally, about the same time 4e was released, started being attracted to the somewhat overdue OSR come-back of the 80's D&D fad.

5e has a less FTE-intensive design philosophy, including re-using barely-modified material from the classic game, that, obviously, feels familiar to the longtime and returning player. So, it both saves design effort, and jumps on the OSR bandwagon - a cheap & easy win-win. It can serve to anchor the line, while resources are put into areas where growth might still be a possibility. All it has to do is stay in print and consolidate the existing fanbase well enough to present a clear brand identity.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

Exactly

But will that last?

If geeks spend the next 5 years saying "Pathfinder" then people will start lumping everything under "Pathfinder". That is a long long way off. D&D has deep roots.
But the presumption that this is unwavering is not forward thinking.

There are a lot of shades of grey between the conditions of today and the Big Bang Theory of 2020 talking about Pathfinder. And every one of those shades reduced the brand value.
I suspect someone somewhere has done brand recognition surveys over the past decades and D&D has gone up and down within a range over that time.
If, hypothetically, the D&D output dropped to a couple APs with free 25 page pdfs per year, the downs would start being a lot more than the ups and sooner than later the range would start finding new lows.

If competitors offer good alternatives, the issue will only accelerate.

This comes down to the timescale argument I mentioned previously. Let's say Wizards stops putting out D&D products entirely after Princes of the Apocalypse comes out. No rpg books, no board games, no video games, no Salvatore novels even.

It'll have zero impact on the success or failure of a D&D movie. 21 Jump Street didn't need a network television revival in order to have a successful film made out of it, just a decent script, funny actors and brand recognition that was a holdover from the late 80s. Five years is nothing, reboots and adaptations routinely pick up properties that have been lying fallow for decades.

D&D was an enormous fad from the late seventies / early eighties. It spawned the Baldur's Gate series, played by millions, and the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels, regular New York Times Best Sellers. The tabletop game could have ceased to exist after TSR collapsed in the 90's and it's eventual film reboot would still be an inevitability.

The only reason it hasn't already happened is because of the cluster$#@! that was the film rights being indefinitely retained by Sweetpea. The legal case over the matter heard closing arguments last year, the outcome of the trial (or a settlement agreement between Warner Brothers / Sweetpea and Universal / Hasbro) will be determined this year.

Movies take time to be made, and number of current 5E players in 2015 isn't even on the movie studios' radars, let alone what they'll be in 2017. They're not going to sit on the IP for three years just to see how 5E fares before they decide whether or not to make the movie. They'll wait for the legal issues to be resolved, take a look at 2014 sales figures if they even bother to care about those numbers, and start pre-production in 2015, for a 2017 or 2018 release.

At which point they could care less about how the tabletop game does, because the movie will either be a success or a flop. If it's a success, the tabletop game is irrelevant to the film franchise, we're now in movie sequel territory where the studios are most comfortable and Hasbro will make bank on merchandising. If it bombs badly enough that there's no interest in making another, it's a dud and how well or poorly the tabletop game is faring is also irrelevant to the film franchise.

The tabletop game is only relevant to the strength of the brand before the first movie gets put out, and the primary strength of the brand is that it was a really, really popular thing back in the 70's and 80's, the history of everything since, editions 3-5 included, are an afterthought. The fact that there are still younger gamers (Mearls said most players were around college age) is a point in D&D's favor that makes it attractive to the studios but a big fantasy epic that'll target the wallets of everyone who remembers hearing about "Dungeons and Dragons" back in the game's golden age is what makes it really valuable as an IP.

You don't think that the 21 Jump Street movie got greenlit because executives at Columbia and MGM noticed a spike in the old series' DVD sales circa 2010, do you?