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.

 

[teitan]

Granted this is all speculation and just how it looks to me after about 6 months of WotC's regular missteps with the community.

• The leaked early draft of the OGL sought to forbid D&D content on video - including "pantomimes" (aka TikTok). This is their opportunity to enforce that.
• Where did the fanbase organize against the OGL (and also criticism about Spelljammer and other products) - on social media platforms such as YouTube. WotC would've LOVED to shut that down. If all video creators are on their WotC's channel, that's easy.
• When they sent Kyle Brink on his goodwill tour, they put him on YouTube. Imagine having all the viewers of D&D content only watching on a D&D Channel - they can frame the message however they want.
• They recently sent private security to intimidate a YouTuber who was showing off Magic cards because they specifically wanted to control what was shown.
• Critical Role (the biggest D&D live streamers) are breaking away. If they were tied into a D&D channel, their success would be heavily monetized by Hasbro and they'd be locked into that ecosystem.
• And granted, they aren't always as antagonistic as GW, but when GW did this, they went after battle reports, painting tutorials, lore videos, and more to boost their faltering subscription channel. I would be very surprised if they're not looking at GW as a model of what to do. As a community, we need to make sure WotC knows this isn't acceptable to our community.

I don't know if I've clearly stated on here what I think of Critical Role's announcement regarding their new game releases, but I've certainly told my group and friends what I think. (I've not posted it here previously because I know many of you are big 5e fans, and I don't want to upset anybody. I'll put it in spoilers if you're curious.)

Spoiler: Critical Role RPG thoughts

I think CR just made OneD&D "DOA." I think it's dead, at least compared to what D&D has been for the past 8 years or so. It's going to be a failure of a magnitude we haven't seen in decades. It's going to drop off to levels like we saw in the TSR late 2e era.

Where else were they going to put him??? Vimeo?

 

[teitan]

Hasbro doesn't care about quality content. They want only control of the content that's out there.

Not to me and many other fans.

Those people are still in control, and it's doubtful they have simply "changed their mind" about what the goals for their corporation are. Which is, you know, to make increased money for shareholders after unprecedent years of growth in situations that no longer exist. Anything less for C-level executives is a failure.

CR brought a lot of people to D&D. A lot of people tried Call of Cthulhu when they tried it. They have a large, passionate fanbase. I think it will be impactful IF they quit D&D and start one of their new systems.
If you start getting D&D 2024 content only on a fledgling new channel, I think that will hurt the exposure and the adoption by the community. When Nintendo did this, their sales suffered.

I don't hate WotC - I love D&D. I don't like the corporate direction the game has been taking in the past few years. I think it has soulless, bad design. I think they have an anti-fan mentality.
And right, this is a thread that is very speculative. Any time we talk about the future, that's the case. What I can address is the effect that it's have on me and my games. And I don't like this direction. I think trying to bring fan content under one easily controlled umbrella gives the company too much power over something that has been traditionally nurtured in our home games.
How will this impact my friends who are streaming their game?
How will this impact the content creators I enjoy watching, who have patreons and create new classes and adventures, and provide DM tips?
What about lore channels? What about people who talk about gaming news?
WotC doesn't produce the only gaming content I enjoy. In fact, they produce less of it than others.
I'd rather watch knowledgeable streamers dissect the playtest than Jeremy Crawford's self congratulatory "this game is perfect" scripted interviews.

You read like someone during 2e complaining about TSR. It’s a cycle. Corporate is everything after the first three to five years of your fandom.

 

[teitan]

Agreed. But will they allow content that is critical of their products on other platforms? Will they allow streamers to put their content on the platform they choose? This is stuff I need to know before I can celebrate this announcement with the rest of you.

CC-BY prevents them from restricting it as long as it doesn’t use their IP. Anything in the SRD released to CC-BY is not IP. It’s self explanatory.

 

[teitan]

Copyright strikes if you use protected names, show art, maybe even game streams, etc. Again, we've seen GW and Nintendo do this.
Imagine if I were to stream my group playing "Curse of Strahd." They could block that for giving out spoilers, or saying that viewers could take the story from what I ran and not have to buy the adventure.
Or what if someone shows some problematic art to criticize a new publication? Would WotC copyright strike that? They could.

Depends. Fair use actually is fairly broad. In the case of streaming your Curse Of Strahd campaign, they would need to take down everyone who streamed it without a contract or cite exactly why they are having your content removed. Fair use, since you are not actually reading the book word for word on the stream, would allow you to play it because it’s not a presentation of their copyrighted material but an interpretation of it for a game. Even the use of the names etc are covered under fair use.

The reuse of the artwork if it’s done in a review, for example, is also fair use.

These things are called out in the beginning of most books as ok to do but not reproducing the whole contents. So you can’t read the book, present the images to the corresponding page and upload it as a video. You can take the map of Strahd’s castle and interpret it into 3D as a file to be 3D printed and share that under the name “The Vampire’s Castle” etc. and some people have done just that and run kickstarters for those files as modular dungeon tiles. Due to the modular nature of 3D printed terrain it becomes a possible and “fair use” build with the pieces of the terrain. If you just rendered it as a single piece of terrain and sold it like Wizkids would, then you have a legal issue.

Even with the dreaded GW fans are making their own battle reports and how to videos and reviews, presenting artwork and as long as they follow fair use GW hasn’t done a thing to those users and there are a lot of them. They even, just like WOTC, send them early product to help them hype.

We aren’t in the days when TSR would sue you for having the word Dragon on your website. GW has a bad rap for suing a model company that was making models that recreated GW art and selling them as what that art represented. They don’t sue 3D printing, bits companies and fans for doing their own thing. They might have rules for their tournaments and stores about 3D printing but they’re also trying to sell product in their store.

 

[teitan]

I did my part. I bought a digital copy (and I never buy digital, always just get a hard copy).

Anyone else also gotten it digitally?

Yep and my 6 month old wants to watch it constantly and by that I mean he has certain things he reacts to, Miss Rachel, Number Blocks, Nursery Rhyme TV, Spider-man, when we turn those on and included is Lord of the Rings but also, apparently DaDHAT. He will whip his head when he hears Chris Pine or Michelle Rodriguez voice like he does those other things and when we are looking for something makes audible excited noises when he sees the characters on the Prime app. I turn it on as background noise when I study or whatever or when it’s nap time and he puts his head on my chest and watches it until he falls asleep. It’s the colors. It has a nice color pallet.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

We should remember it is going to be a free streaming channel. This means low-budget productions. A new animated show sounds very well, but this would need more money to be produced, and then it should be released in Paramount+ or Netflix.

* Is it going to be only English-languange? If the 80's cartoon is going to be released... only in English? If it is going to be dubble to other languanges to attrack a new generation of fandom... with the original no-English voice actors, or with new? Why not a new version (in English languange, I guess) of the epic song from the Spanish version. It was a cool music, even if you couldn't understand the lyrics.

* Maybe some game-live show could be licenced version of videogames what need self-promotion. For example Hasbro talks with Epic Games, and then a game-live show would be a group of PCs playing Fortnite: Save the World (the tower defense PvE, not the PvP battle royal). Later the VTT could sell packs of virtual miniatures based in those licenced franchises.

* What if the demiplane of desolation was a merger of Amonkhet(Magic the Gathering), Dark Sun, and maybe other unknown wildspaces?

 

[Nylanfs]

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.

I wish The Nevers had continued.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You read like someone during 2e complaining about TSR. It’s a cycle. Corporate is everything after the first three to five years of your

Now, they were corporate pretty much the whole time. They just also made stuff I liked until recently.

 

[bedir than]

We should remember it is going to be a free streaming channel. This means low-budget productions

Most tv shows are still airing on "free" channels.

I don't think we'd call Grey's Anatomy low budget. CSI? Ghosts?

These are shows that people actually watch, not streaming shows with hype and bad numbers

 

[Dire Bare]

Most tv shows are still airing on "free" channels.

I don't think we'd call Grey's Anatomy low budget. CSI? Ghosts?

These are shows that people actually watch, not streaming shows with hype and bad numbers

Hey now, you can't expect these kids to understand the ad-supported broadcast TV model . . . that still exists!