D&D Movie/TV Dungeons & Dragons Adventures is a 24-Hour Streaming Channel Launching in Summer

This summer, a new free streaming channel will be launched by eOne, the entertainment company owned by Hasbro. It will be ad-supported and available on multiple (as yet unspecified) platforms and feature a mix of animation, third party influencers, and actual play shows.

The old 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon will be available, along with shows like:

• Encounter Party is based on an existing podcast and set in the Forgotten Realms.
• Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! is a comedy game stream in each episode of which a party of 1st level characters march to their deaths against deadly monsters.
• Heroes's Feast is a cooking/talk show.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

You're right, there are a lot of players who don't watch it (or care about it). I don't.

But do you know who it brought in?
My wife. Her entire group that introduced her to D&D. Because my wife plays, we do it as a family activity with our foster teen, who then brought in other neighborhood teens.
And who else came in? My best friend's coworkers who asked him about D&D. He invited me to come in and run a one-shot with them. So that's like 6 players in that group, who are now all TTRPG fans.

Critical Role brought more people into the hobby than the 80s cartoon, any of the 2000s movies, or Chris Pine. I really believe that.
I don't like watching it - I don't find it entertaining.
But I can say that before CR, I couldn't find a group of 4 people to play this game. Now, I literally don't have enough time to run games for everyone who wants to play.

Its waaaayyyyy to early to say how much influence DADHAT will have in growing things, we don't have that data yet.

 

[DarkCrisis]

CR isn't as big as the fans like to pretend it is. I love what Mercer and crew have done for the game and hobby but they don't have the brand name power of D&D. Or even Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Cthulhu, etc etc etc.

I'm sure their RPGs will have good sales but they arent replacing anything and frankly they are just more RPGs in an already glutted field.

 

[Retreater]

Its waaaayyyyy to early to say how much influence DADHAT will have in growing things, we don't have that data yet.

Well, we do have data that it is going to lose money at the box office, and was basically forgotten as soon as Mario came out. And it's going to be the biggest financial loss that D&D has had, even when you go back to the TSR/Random House days.

CR isn't as big as the fans like to pretend it is. I love what Mercer and crew have done for the game and hobby but they don't have the brand name power of D&D. Or even Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Cthulhu, etc etc etc.

All I can judge is from behind the DM Screen.
We have a local business that matches DMs with events like birthday and bachelor parties. You get paid $250 for running an event. 10 years ago, this was unheard of.
The local bar will pay me $80 and free drinks if I'll come in and run D&D.
We have a D&D club at the local high school with 80 members.
We have 4 groups at the area library, each with 8+ players.
My groups have so many people wanting to play I have to turn away folks or back off from running games.
We randomly meet people in bars who want to play (and they mention Critical Role, FWIW).

Yes, this is anecdotal. And perhaps CR didn't do all this. But 5e was pretty much a middling success until CR hit its stride. This stuff wasn't going on for the first several years of 5e, despite all their promotion and the new edition coming out.

 

[Oofta]

A side note to all this: I don't understand how streaming channels that are not on-demand succeed. And what benefit does it give the vendor to stream a 24-hour channel rather than on-demand? I guess there is more overhead in on-demand streaming infrastructure and software? But then there are things like Tubi, which does both for some reason? For example, I wanted to watch the last half of season one of The Nevers, which HBO licensed to Tubi. But it was on their live channel and not on-demand, and it was only a handful of times, which I could not watch (nor DVR). I was able to catch them in their (AFAICT) last run on Tubi. Maybe it's a licensing thing? If you show it a set number of times, you only pay the licensor a known amount. If you open it up to on-demand streaming, it could be viewed a greater number of times, costing more? I mean, I'm sure it's about the money. The bottom line is always the bottom line. I just don't see how this makes anyone more money than on-demand. Also, the last half of The Nevers fails to live up to the first half, IMO.

Between VCRs/DVRs and on-demand streaming, I thought the days of "appointment TV" were over (except for live events like the news, sports, the Oscars, etc.). Why is this a thing?

That's really my question as well. One place to go to stream shows I can understand. But I don't watch anything live anymore.

 

[Parmandur]

Well, we do have data that it is going to lose money at the box office, and was basically forgotten as soon as Mario came out. And it's going to be the biggest financial loss that D&D has had, even when you go back to the TSR/Random House days.

All I can judge is from behind the DM Screen.
We have a local business that matches DMs with events like birthday and bachelor parties. You get paid $250 for running an event. 10 years ago, this was unheard of.
The local bar will pay me $80 and free drinks if I'll come in and run D&D.
We have a D&D club at the local high school with 80 members.
We have 4 groups at the area library, each with 8+ players.
My groups have so many people wanting to play I have to turn away folks or back off from running games.
We randomly meet people in bars who want to play (and they mention Critical Role, FWIW).

Yes, this is anecdotal. And perhaps CR didn't do all this. But 5e was pretty much a middling success until CR hit its stride. This stuff wasn't going on for the first several years of 5e, despite all their promotion and the new edition coming out.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc...?

I love Critical Role, but they have 1.24 million followers on Twitch and 1.98 million on YouTube. Honor Among Thieves has sold more than 8.7 million tickets in the U.S. alone. Yes, that's anemic for a Hollywood tent pole, but it's alot more people than watch Critical Role. CR is part of a tapestry, not the whole picture.

 

[Oofta]

Well, we do have data that it is going to lose money at the box office, and was basically forgotten as soon as Mario came out. And it's going to be the biggest financial loss that D&D has had, even when you go back to the TSR/Random House days.

All I can judge is from behind the DM Screen.
We have a local business that matches DMs with events like birthday and bachelor parties. You get paid $250 for running an event. 10 years ago, this was unheard of.
The local bar will pay me $80 and free drinks if I'll come in and run D&D.
We have a D&D club at the local high school with 80 members.
We have 4 groups at the area library, each with 8+ players.
My groups have so many people wanting to play I have to turn away folks or back off from running games.
We randomly meet people in bars who want to play (and they mention Critical Role, FWIW).

Yes, this is anecdotal. And perhaps CR didn't do all this. But 5e was pretty much a middling success until CR hit its stride. This stuff wasn't going on for the first several years of 5e, despite all their promotion and the new edition coming out.

This idea that the success of 5E and CR having a strong correlation doesn’t have much data to back it up. The game was growing rapidly before CR, there is no sudden spike in sales based on the limited data we have.

Has streaming shows helped? Absolutely. Is CR "responsible" for 5E's success? It's helped. Just like dozens of other factors. How much difference did it make?

 

[Zaukrie]

I'm old enough to remember when this was about a new channel, and not the same arguments made in every thread.

 

[Superchunk77]

Let the monetization begin!

 

[Zaukrie]

Let the monetization begin!

Better than not having content. We can watch or not.

 

[Retreater]

I'm old enough to remember when this was about a new channel, and not the same arguments made in every thread.

And I remember Dec '22 and Jan '23 when WotC made some missteps towards the community and content creators. This new channel has the potential to continue those missteps, so I bring it up.
So I encourage us to be cautious if it looks like that might happen. It might be an overstep, but it's better than getting caught unawares if they try that again.