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A lot of great comments in this thread - I'm glad people found something interesting to consider out of the panel at Pax East! Hopefully we'll be able to do it again in the future!

I think its funny that people respond to a discussion of branding strategy and positioning by stating the premise that the problem was that we were incapable of making a great product. Talk about .... Missing the point....

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...

Yeah 1989. Typo. :(

I stand (gratefully) corrected. Good to hear about that success Chris! RyanD

After Vince Calouri was pushed out of Wizards of the Coast he was replaced by Chuck Heubner. Chuck basically had to manage Wizards on the downslope from the Pokemon salad days. Hasbro has been through many boom & bust cycles in the toy business and they have a standard response when it happens...

You have to learn all the backstory that led up to that meeting to understand the context. It's a long and winding road. After Vince Calouri was pushed out of Wizards of the Coast he was replaced by Chuck Heubner. Chuck basically had to manage Wizards on the downslope from the Pokemon salad...

I know for a fact that such a pitch was made to Hasbro. It was how they got the green light to do 4e & DDI.

So less than 10% of the minimum goal they set for themselves. Since I doubt anyone at that meeting was going to sign off on any sales figure over $20-25 million for the physical products, I suspect they were looking for something more like 300-350k DDI subs; I.e.what a moderately successful MMO...

I'll try to answer your questions as best I can but I'll tell you up front that the kind of rigor you're looking for with regards to numbers doesn't exist. For example, the distributors don't share information about retail sales with publishers, so no publisher knows where the distributors are...

The data regarding the collapse of the brick & mortar bookstores is unquestioned, right? That's 50% of the D&D business going away. Since Barnes & Noble didn't grow to replace all the vanished stores and is in fact not that healthy, do you agree its a safe conclusion that the volume of D&D...

Many replies! The brand team under my leadership from 98-2000 developed a comprehensive plan to bring new players in the hobby. This plan was backed by data we received in consultation with a specialist in child developmental psychology. It had 4 main components. The first was a series of...

As many of you know, the Escapist has recently run a 3-part series on the past, current and future of Dungeons & Dragons. The ENWorld coverage begins here. I contributed some insights to that column and wanted to take this opportunity to expand and clarify some of my thoughts on this topic...

I couldn't find the "create article" button I used to use. So I posted this here, so it can be moved to the right section.

“The party is currently split ... in two different dimensions. Mei Ling is "mostly dead" and being dragged like a meat balloon through zero gravity tunnels by Marteen and Bog. Temper is very badly injured and "Dimissed" herself back to the Prime Material Plane a melee round before being turned...

Undermountain Update Since my last column we have played 4 sessions of Undermountain and I am happy to give folks an update. If you’re unfamiliar with the Undermountain concept you can read more about it in my last column, but in summary it’s a stripped down version of Pathfinder optimized for...