Thoughts on the Failure of Licensed IP in the Hobby: The Lack of Disney-fication is a Feature, not a Bug

[Baron Opal II]

While there were protagonists in the various short stories ... spoiler ... they don't really get repeat performances. Importantly (perhaps for purposed of the ongoing OGL debacle) the prominence of Lovecraft skyrocketed in the 70s and later first as August Derleth (and Arkham House) licensed anything and everything they could, and then later as it was realized that a good deal of Lovecraft's work was in the public domain. If you ever want to read something that is both comical and also puts the recent contretemps regarding Hasbro's statements to shame, I suggest reading this one from Chaosium.

Dead link.

IIRC, they were paying some moderate royalty to Arkham House for the first or second edition, and then discovered that most of the lore they were mining was in the public domain. There was a significant renegotiation after that, and maybe even wholly dropping all IP beyond Lovecraft.

 

[MGibster]

One also wonders how much Chaosium would've had to pay for the Cthulhu license when it first started? It certainly couldn't have been as much as WEG paid for Star Wars, for example.

How much did WEG pay for Star Wars? As hard as it it to fathom, when WEG acquired the Star Wars license it wasn't exactly the hot property it was in the late 90s or certainly not today. Kenner had stopped producing Star Wars action figures in 1985, the Droids/Ewok cartoon stopped being made in 1986, and by the time 1987 rolled around and saw WEG's Star Wars game released it was pretty much a dead property.

 

[Aldarc]

The basic metric here is likely hours of media content available.
Up until 2008, with the release of The Clone Wars animated series, Star Wars had six movies - between 12 and 18 hours of content.
By 2008, Star Trek had 683 TV episodes, and 10 feature films.

Not much of a contest, there.

Thinking a bit more about this, I'm not sure if the metric of "hours of media content" passes a sniff test. The total run time for all Star Trek media, as per this 2022 September 8 article, is 650 hours of run time. Days of Our Lives, by comparison, has a total of 13,150 hours of run time., as per this 2002 August 4 article. Many other soap operas - e.g., East Enders, All Our Children, General Hospital, etc. - similarly dwarf the total run time of Star Trek. "Not much of a contest," as you say. However, I am not sure if we would necessarily say that this would make the focus or scope of a soap opera greater than Star Trek, especially for purposes of a shared universe for roleplaying games. I suspect that a Days of Our Lives TTRPG, if anything, would be quickly labeled with some derision as a super niche "bespoke game" in the TTRPG sphere or at least more so than a Star Trek TTRPG. So I'm not sure if the run time of a media really gives us a good sense of the media's actual scope, focus, or breadth of content. So I think that there must be a better approach for understanding an IP's scope for a potential TTRPG than run time.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

As far as I can tell, according to Greg Costikyan, they bid $100k (almost $300k in today's dollars) for the license. Still, I can't imagine Lovecraft's rights went for anywhere near that. But you absolutely are right, back then Star Wars' fields were fairly fallow. And would stay that way until Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy and Dark Horse's Dark Empire hit in the early 90s. I imagine the license goes for way more now.

How much did WEG pay for Star Wars? As hard as it it to fathom, when WEG acquired the Star Wars license it wasn't exactly the hot property it was in the late 90s or certainly not today. Kenner had stopped producing Star Wars action figures in 1985, the Droids/Ewok cartoon stopped being made in 1986, and by the time 1987 rolled around and saw WEG's Star Wars game released it was pretty much a dead property.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I don't think that I would label licensed IP as a whole as a "failure". Games come out, they live for a while, and they die - licensed or not.

The biggest challenge with a licensed game is just that - there is a license involved and so there is an extra layer of expense added on to all the usual challenges of publishing a tabletop RPG. Those fees tend to go up, not down, and at some point even a successful line will hit a breaking point.

Not sure how FFG does it but they've had a pretty comprehensive Star Wars RPG in print for about 11 years now (12-23), same edition, consistent mechanics. WEG did it before with a roughly 12 year run (87-99) that covered everything that had been released during their time. WOTC had a similar run of about 11 years (00-11) but released 3 different versions of the game as each of the prequel movies came out. I don't think anyone publishes a game line for over a decade and calls it a failure.

I've run and played multiple short and long campaigns with Star Trek, Star Wars, and Marvel RPGs and they are a ton of fun but they are all very different from a typical D&D campaign. If you can find a group of players interested in playing the crew of a federation starship your Trek game will probably go well because that's the baseline expectation in those games. Not everyone wants to play that though. Or Star Wars. Or Marvel superheroes. Even when one or all of these have had a really strong system you have to want to invest time and money into playing them.

In fact none of these properties dominates much of anything other than being somewhat popular movies or TV shows:

• The biggest miniatures game out there is Warhammer 40K, an original IP. There have been many Star Wars games, some Trek games, and even some Marvel games, and none of them have managed to take the #1 spot.
• The biggest western MMORPG is World of Warcraft (another original IP) and has been almost since it's launch in 2004. There have been 2 Star Wars MMOs - one of them failed years ago and one never met expectations though it is still running. Star Trek has one MMO which is alive but very small. Marvel had one MMO game and it was never huge and was shut down years ago.
• Star Wars occasionally makes noise with a videogame release but the biggest ones are still things like Fortnite, Call of Duty, Dark Souls/Elden Ring, Madden, Fifa, and various racing games. Marvel has one out now that seems to be pretty popular but it's one game. Trek hasn't had a big game in some time.

I think expecting a big franchise to take over RPGs is a reasonable thing at first sight but if it isn't happening in other genres maybe it's not. Reasonably popular but not dominant seems way more likely and I'd say closer to how it has been historically.

For what it’s worth, one of the biggest wargames is based on Lord of the Rings (it’s GW’s second or third best seller). Three of the biggest mmo’s (Warcraft, Elder Scrolls, and Final Fantasy) are based on games from other genres, and Star Wars has a long history of successful if not bestselling video games. Adaptation can work, but it isn’t a reliable way to hit top spots.

Which probably shouldn’t be surprising; medium matters. Changing medium can make the appeal of something hard to recapture.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Thinking a bit more about this, I'm not sure if the metric of "hours of media content" passes a sniff test. The total run time for all Star Trek media, as per this 2022 September 8 article, is 650 hours of run time. Days of Our Lives, by comparison, has a total of 13,150 hours of run time., as per this 2002 August 4 article.

This is the most amazing "apples to oranges" comparison I think I've seen. Even so, bad choice for a contra-example.

However, I am not sure if we would necessarily say that this would make the focus or scope of a soap opera greater than Star Trek, especially for purposes of a shared universe for roleplaying games. I suspect that a Days of Our Lives TTRPG, if anything, would be quickly labeled with some derision as a super niche "bespoke game" in the TTRPG sphere or at least more so than a Star Trek TTRPG. So I'm not sure if the run time of a media really gives us a good sense of the media's actual scope, focus, or breadth of content.

This is a show that has been in nearly continuous production for almost 60 years. There are more characters by an order of magnitude. For two seasons, I think, there were supernatural elements incorporated. It could be used as a template for modern urban, if not Renaissance, family based intrigue for years.

Not to mention I think there was an RPG made for Dallas, and there is SOAP: A game of soap opera mayhem.

 

[Aldarc]

This is the most amazing "apples to oranges" comparison I think I've seen. Even so, bad choice for a contra-example.

Instead of just telling me that I had a bad example, maybe you could tell me what would have been a better choice if you wanted to show that run time is not a good metric of an IPs total scope or focus?

This is a show that has been in nearly continuous production for almost 60 years. There are more characters by an order of magnitude. For two seasons, I think, there were supernatural elements incorporated. It could be used as a template for modern urban, if not Renaissance, family based intrigue for years.

Not to mention I think there was an RPG made for Dallas, and there is SOAP: A game of soap opera mayhem.

I don't debate any of this, and the first paragraph plays into my point. I am aware that the Dallas RPG and SOAP exist; however, many people regard these games as highly niche and specialized TTRPGs in our hobby.

 

[aramis erak]

Not to mention I think there was an RPG made for Dallas, and there is SOAP: A game of soap opera mayhem.

Dallas is interesting... but it's not really a good starting point for non-RPGers to learn RPGing.

 

[practicalm]

Isn't it weird that, if I'm not mistaken, we've not seen another TMNT game since the Palladium one?

That's true, and Hollywood, as shown by the way a lot of properties are stumbling around that concept, seems incapable of even capitalizing on the Non-Characters elements of their setting. I think Ghostbusters, for exemple, could have been a much more profitable franchise if they hadn't felt the need to stick to the original 4 and had instead followed the obvious way Venkman and the other could make their business flourish: FRANCHISING. We should already be neck deep into a Ghostbusters cinematic universe the same way the Law & Order, CSI, etc went about populating the TV screens. Where's 'Ghostbusters: New Orleans', 'Ghostbusters: Chicago', 'Ghostbusters: London', 'Ghostbusters: Cincinnati', 'Ghostbusters: South-West Minnesota', etc etc. I think it could have worked.

Ghostbusters was built along the idea of the players being franchise operators. I think they did stat up the original characters but the goal wasn't to be those characters.

Back to the original post, Dungeons and Dragons does three things well that contributes to it's success.
1. Player growth. The zero to hero is laid out in the level chart. You know what powers you are going to get access too if you keep on the treadmill. Point and skill based games give incremental progress that doesn't translate as well to the anticipation feeling you get when a new power is coming.

2. Enemy progression. In a lot of IP based games, the enemies you face don't necessarily progress in power like Dungeons and Dragons enemies do. Few IP based games have an enemies list like the Monster Manual (and it's successors). Call of Cthulhu has a good variety of enemies but a campaign may be based off of one of them and their cultists. Super Heros should have a wide variety of villains but the power of the villains doesn't necessarily get an upgrade like the enemies you are facing as you level up in Dungeons and Dragons.

3. Story Creation. In Dungeons and Dragons, GMs are not really limited at all. When you work in the realm of an existing IP, there are expectations of the players about what should or shouldn't be there. It's bad enough that Dungeons and Dragons has people who will raise complaints if your Forgotten Realms isn't like the novels, but if your James Bond game doesn't fit the player's preconception it seems harder to manage.

A minor point related to 3 is ease of creating content as a GM. In Dungeons and Dragons you can randomly roll up a dungeon and while it is not the greatest game you could be having, it would work. To create a session in an IP based game, it takes a bit more work. (Except maybe the super hero genre, where you can improve villains at [x] location doing [y] crime for [z] reason). Your content is going to be compared to the original IP work and that can be a hard comparison.

I was thinking there might be a fourth characteristic but I'm not sure.
Most fantasy games don't have the characters within a hierarchy or even within society.
Modern and future games put people in the context of law and order
Star Trek and James Bond have bosses they need to report too
The freedom from restraint may be a factor.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Instead of just telling me that I had a bad example, maybe you could tell me what would have been a better choice if you wanted to show that run time is not a good metric of an IPs total scope or focus?

Granted, but I agree with the premise that it is an acceptable initial metric.

I don't debate any of this, and the first paragraph plays into my point. I am aware that the Dallas RPG and SOAP exist; however, many people regard these games as highly niche and specialized TTRPGs in our hobby.

Also granted. On further thought, I would have to say it would be an exceptional sourcebook to adapt to any RPG that utilized social dynamics as a key feature. A "soap opera" game would be niche.