Critical Role Could Critical Role launch their own RPG?

[Hussar]

Is there a particular reason that D&D Beyond couldn't support a Critical Role game? It's not like D&D Beyond is owned by WotC.

Critical Role has a built in audience for play testing as well. Hundreds of thousands of viewers is a vastly larger audience than virtually any RPG has other than maybe D&D. They could go the Paizo route of creating a game, leveraging their viewership into play testing, thus creating their own audience for buying the game, and move on from there.

Whether they will or not is debatable, but, should they choose to do so, they certainly have a HUGE leg up over any other RPG publisher. Heck, a major reason Pathfinder did so well was because Paizo could leverage its Dungeon and Dragon Magazine audience.

 

[Asgorath]

Is there a particular reason that D&D Beyond couldn't support a Critical Role game? It's not like D&D Beyond is owned by WotC.

Critical Role has a built in audience for play testing as well. Hundreds of thousands of viewers is a vastly larger audience than virtually any RPG has other than maybe D&D. They could go the Paizo route of creating a game, leveraging their viewership into play testing, thus creating their own audience for buying the game, and move on from there.

Whether they will or not is debatable, but, should they choose to do so, they certainly have a HUGE leg up over any other RPG publisher. Heck, a major reason Pathfinder did so well was because Paizo could leverage its Dungeon and Dragon Magazine audience.

They don't even have enough staff to implement the things they'd like to do for 5E in a timely manner, so I can't imagine they'd be able to support a whole second game system on top of that as well. I love D&D Beyond and have completely switched over to using it for all my games, but there's a pretty long list of small-to-medium things that I wish they'd fix that they just haven't been able to get to yet. Biggest one for me is a DM page that tracks a live summary of each character in the party, so I can easily see their HP and so on. Having a tab per character and manually refreshing kind of sucks, but it's better than nothing.

 

[Hussar]

They don't even have enough staff to implement the things they'd like to do for 5E in a timely manner, so I can't imagine they'd be able to support a whole second game system on top of that as well. I love D&D Beyond and have completely switched over to using it for all my games, but there's a pretty long list of small-to-medium things that I wish they'd fix that they just haven't been able to get to yet. Biggest one for me is a DM page that tracks a live summary of each character in the party, so I can easily see their HP and so on. Having a tab per character and manually refreshing kind of sucks, but it's better than nothing.

Why wouldn't you use a VTT? What's the point in using D&D Beyond as a virtual tabletop? I mean, even free VTT's like Maptool will do what you want.

 

[ParanoydStyle]

yes and they'll make a ton of money next question

It's not like D&D Beyond is owned by WotC.

wait, waht?

 

[Ash Mantle]

Before Matt Mercer and Co launch their own RPG, I'd rather they launch a book containing more classes and subclasses for 5e and possibly their own 5e house rules, and launch other books opening up their campaign setting. They seem to enjoy 5e quite a fair bit, and it seems to be more aligned to their own more narrative and character driven style of play.

 

[Ash Mantle]

wait, waht?

Yeah, D&D Beyond makes its product under license from Wizards. Which is why you have to buy their electronic products separately from the physical books that Wizards produces.

 

[Asgorath]

Why wouldn't you use a VTT? What's the point in using D&D Beyond as a virtual tabletop? I mean, even free VTT's like Maptool will do what you want.

Because the VTTs are terrible compared with D&D Beyond's character sheet? When we're sitting around the table and everyone has their tablets tracking their character sheet, and I have D&D Beyond up on my laptop, why shouldn't I be able to easily see the characters in the party? Sure, I could manually track everything myself in some other program, but that just feels like too much extra work (with the chance that I screw it up and the VTT copy is different to the DDB copy).

 

[Jester David]

Is there a particular reason that D&D Beyond couldn't support a Critical Role game? It's not like D&D Beyond is owned by WotC.

I imagine the name would be tricky. They'd need to make a separate website and remake a lot of the program.

Really, D&D Beyond isn't HeroLab. It's UI is based entirely on D&D trade dress. I doubt they could use that freely. So they'd need to make a whole new UI and art.
And you'd pretty much need to redo all the actual programming. They'd pretty much be starting from scratch. Unless the new Critical Role RPG was just a 5e clone that used a lot of the same rules... But, if they were doing that, why would they be bothering to make their own game?

Critical Role has a built in audience for play testing as well. Hundreds of thousands of viewers is a vastly larger audience than virtually any RPG has other than maybe D&D. They could go the Paizo route of creating a game, leveraging their viewership into play testing, thus creating their own audience for buying the game, and move on from there.

Whether they will or not is debatable, but, should they choose to do so, they certainly have a HUGE leg up over any other RPG publisher. Heck, a major reason Pathfinder did so well was because Paizo could leverage its Dungeon and Dragon Magazine audience.

Well, yeah. They would have a big advantage.
But so would the Superbowl. If the NFL put out an RPG and leveraged its audience, they'd have a huge pool of potential playtesters. A massive leg up on other RPG publishers.
That doesn't mean they should or it's a good decision for them.


I love Critical Role... but Matt Mercer isn't a game designer. He's an actor. Writing isn't where his strengths lie. There's a lot of problems in the blood hunter and his other designs. A game written and designed by him will be iffy.

And while people like to talk about how streaming has helped D&D, it's a mutually beneficial relationship. People started watching CR because it was D&D. It was something they already cared about.
They don't really gain anything by making their own RPG.

 

[Dausuul]

Is there a particular reason that D&D Beyond couldn't support a Critical Role game? It's not like D&D Beyond is owned by WotC.

It took them over a year just to develop the current character sheet for D&D. They still have a years-long backlog of D&D features to build. Their work is top-notch, but top-notch web development is hard and takes a long time.

To support a new game, they would need to staff up heavily, and it would still take a long time to get even the basics in place.

 

[Hussar]

Well, yeah. They would have a big advantage.
But so would the Superbowl. If the NFL put out an RPG and leveraged its audience, they'd have a huge pool of potential playtesters. A massive leg up on other RPG publishers.
That doesn't mean they should or it's a good decision for them.

Yeah, I noticed that when you have NFL Fantasy Football which makes more money than the entire RPG industry, and actually makes enough money to make it worth doing for a multi-billion dollar industry. Or the myriad NFL branded video games.

Why on earth would they even consider an NFL RPG? It's apples to oranges.

Why do people insist on bringing up completely ludicrous comparisons here? It's not like Critical Role is making the kind of money that the NFL makes. Heck, they aren't even making the kind of money TCG's make. They are actually of a size of an RPG company.

So, the notion that they could leverage their fandom into a sort of Paizo style jump into RPG game design and production is hardly a totally left field idea. I mean, good grief, Lisa Stevens has barely any game design credits, yet is CEO of a very successful Paizo. Since when do the people running an RPG company need to be game designers?