Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[overgeeked]

Oh...oh, man. I think I need to go lie down.

 

[Scribe]

For reference:

Thread 'Ryan Dancey: This is why there was no M:tG setting for D&D'

Nov 4, 2013

Hi! I was the brand manager for Dungeons & Dragons and the VP of Tabletop RPGs at Wizards of the Coast from 1998 to 2000. I can answer this question.

There were plans to do a Magic RPG and several iterations of such a game were developed at various times. After Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, there were discussions about making a Magic campaign setting for D&D.

After the release of 3rd edition, we had planned to do a Monstrous Compendium for Magic monsters which would have been a tentative cross-over product to see what the interest level was for such a book.

In the end, the...

• RyanD
• Replies: 81
• Forum: *Pathfinder & Starfinder

• 
• 

Thats very interesting. I would question if the same beliefs have been retained after all this time. The Magic community of 2013 is certainly not the Magic community of 2025, but I dont know.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

For reference:

Thread 'Ryan Dancey: This is why there was no M:tG setting for D&D'

Nov 4, 2013

Hi! I was the brand manager for Dungeons & Dragons and the VP of Tabletop RPGs at Wizards of the Coast from 1998 to 2000. I can answer this question.

There were plans to do a Magic RPG and several iterations of such a game were developed at various times. After Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, there were discussions about making a Magic campaign setting for D&D.

After the release of 3rd edition, we had planned to do a Monstrous Compendium for Magic monsters which would have been a tentative cross-over product to see what the interest level was for such a book.

In the end, the...

• RyanD
• Replies: 81
• Forum: *Pathfinder & Starfinder

• 
• 

I can see why they’d think that. It’s plausible.

OTOH, WotC has long been skeptical of supporting more than 1 RPG at a time. That may have put some extra weight on that side of the scales.

 

[TiQuinn]

I can see why they’d think that. It’s plausible.

OTOH, WotC has long been skeptical of supporting more than 1 RPG at a time. That may have put some extra weight on that side of the scales.

I think it also falls into the area of “why isn’t an rpg of a popular license the most popular game in the market, like Marvel or Star Wars?” etc. Sometimes the translation of one thing into another doesn’t produce the same effect. Magic as an RPG may sound like a natural fit but it’s probably not going to do gangbuster numbers.

 

[Ryujin]

Oh...oh, man. I think I need to go lie down.

View attachment 418801

Superman: Proving Lord Acton wrong since 1938.

(But only in fiction.)

 

[Staffan]

Thats very interesting. I would question if the same beliefs have been retained after all this time. The Magic community of 2013 is certainly not the Magic community of 2025, but I dont know.

Well, they've clearly done some cross-pollination with MtG settings getting D&D sourcebooks and a few Magic sets being based on D&D, so they're not as opposed to doing it as they were back then. I think the success of Universes Beyond* sets probably showed them that there's little commercial danger of mixing in outside things in Magic.

* Cards and sets based on licensed IP, such as Doctor Who, Warhammer 40K, or Marvel. They started doing these a few years back, and initially kept those cards out of Standard but they've recently put more effort into them to the point where 4 out of 7 sets next year will be Universes Beyond.

 

[RealAlHazred]

WotC has long been skeptical of supporting more than 1 RPG at a time. That may have put some extra weight on that side of the scales.

At, one point they had Primal Order, SLA Industries, Ars Magica, and Talislanta. They only concentrated down to one RPG when they acquired TSR.

 

[MoonSong]

At, one point they had Primal Order, SLA Industries, Ars Magica, and Talislanta. They only concentrated down to one RPG when they acquired TSR.

Because before that they didn't have the number 1 RPG?

 

[RealAlHazred]

Because before that they didn't have the number 1 RPG?

I mean, Ryan Dancey was also the guy who didn't want anybody playing any RPGs other than D&D. So under his guidance, yes, all other game support went to zero.

That brings us to Open Gaming, and why we're pursuing this initiative inside Wizards and outside to the larger community of game publishers.

Here's the logic in a nutshell. We've got a theory that says that D&D is the most popular role playing game because it is the game more people know how to play than any other game. (For those of you interested researching the theory, this concept is called "The Theory of Network Externalities").

Note: This is a very painful concept for a lot of people to embrace, including a lot of our own staff, and including myself for many years. The idea that D&D is somehow "better" than the competition is a powerful and entrenched concept. The idea that D&D can be "beaten" by a game that is "better" than D&D is at the heart of every business plan from every company that goes into marketplace battle with the D&D game. If you accept the Theory of Network Externalities, you have to admit that the battle is lost before it begins, because the value doesn't reside in the game itself, but in the network of people who know how to play it.

If you accept (as I have finally come to do) that the theory is valid, then the logical conclusion is that the larger the number of people who play D&D, the harder it is for competitive games to succeed, and the longer people will stay active gamers, and the more value the network of D&D players will have to Wizards of the Coast.

The logical conclusion says that reducing the "cost" to other people to publishing and supporting the core D&D game to zero should eventually drive support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the market, create customer resistance to the introduction of new systems, and the result of all that "support" redirected to the D&D game will be to steadily increase the number of people who play D&D, thus driving sales of the core books. This is a feedback cycle -- the more effective the support is, the more people play D&D. The more people play D&D, the more effective the support is.

 

[Staffan]

At, one point they had Primal Order, SLA Industries, Ars Magica, and Talislanta. They only concentrated down to one RPG when they acquired TSR.

They sold the others off some time before acquiring TSR. I can't be hedgehogged to look up the actual date, but there was definitely a gap of like a year or two where Wizards didn't publish any RPGs at all. Basically their beancounters told them "Why are you spending money on these products that give you marginal-at-best ROI, instead of spending it on Magic and Pokémon which are bringing in HUGE dollars?" So they sold off SLA Industries, Ars Magica, Talislanta, and Everway (and maybe something I forgot), making sure they went to companies that could actually do something with them. I believe they kept Primal Order because that was Peter Adkison's own baby, the reason he started Wizards in the first place, but it wasn't like they were doing anything with it. Eventually he bought it off them some time after he left Hasbro.