D&D General Ben Riggs on how to make D&D a $1 billion brand

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

An open letter posted on Gizmodo.

How to Make Dungeons & Dragons a $1 Billion Brand

D&D historian Ben Riggs offers an open letter to the game's current publishers with advice for not making the same mistakes twice.

gizmodo.com

The nut of his argument:

You need to reframe your thinking. Do not think of D&D as products. Don’t even think of it as a brand. Definitely don’t think of it as a video game.

D&D is the first and most famous tabletop role-playing game, and tabletop role-playing games are an original and radical medium. A TTRPG is something new to do with paper, pencils, and the human mind that was invented in 1974. Imagine acting was invented in 1974, and that we are a mere 50 years into seeing how acting will change culture. That is the potential of the TTRPG revolution.

One of the most amazing features of the TTRPG is that it is infinite. If one started a D&D campaign in 1974 with the first rules release, one might still be playing that same game today, which is to say telling that same story today. Most video games, by contrast, can be finished and once complete require a new purchase. Video games are finite. TTRPGs are not. They are a bottomless bottle of vodka, or a car that never breaks down and doesn’t even need gas.

So how do you make money off a new medium which, after an initial purchase, never requires another? It’s tricky, but it can be done. The most successful models are sports and religion. (I want to be clear here I am not denigrating religions, nor am I making some sort of truth claim for D&D.) And the key to unlocking a bigger, brighter, and more profitable future for D&D is not at Wizards, not at Hasbro, and ironically it isn’t with the players, no.

It’s the Dungeon Masters.

Across the world, hundreds of thousands if not millions of Dungeon Masters ask people to try D&D for the first time. They explain the rules. They setup D&D nights. They figure out who’s bringing the chips, and who’s bringing the dip. They literally sell your product for you, and they do it for free. Consider this simple math. If there were only 10 Dungeon Masters in the whole world, but every year, each DM convinced one other person to become a DM, within 20 years, you have over 20 million Dungeon Masters.

Most of the rest of it reads like a wishlist thread from ENWorld:

• "Campaigns should have one to three authors. Add more with only great caution…"
• "Campaigns should be pitched by authors & designers."
• "You should pay your game designers like they are working on video games, and you should give writers royalties."
• "There should be a consistent format for campaigns that carries over from book to book."
• "Time for playtesting should be included in your production cycle. It should be measured in months."
• "Your books need to be shorter! Incorporate 21st century RPG layout & design." (Hey, that's my wishlist item!)
• "Return to the boxed set! Create handouts, maps, character portraits, in-game journals, & clues to go with the game. (Also make PDFs of those goodies available.)"

 

[aco175]

"Return to the boxed set! Create handouts, maps, character portraits, in-game journals, & clues to go with the game. (Also make PDFs of those goodies available.)"

I like this one best, mostly since I do not play online. I would like it better if the box was not 100.00.

 

[Parmandur]

I mean, I don't dislike a lot of the specifics per se, but a lot of this I'm not sure it's the path to success, ot it's what WotC is already doing.

 

[overgeeked]

Despite loving what Ben is saying, I’m not sure following those suggestions is how to make D&D a $1 billion brand.

 

[humble minion]

"Campaigns should be pitched by authors & designers."

I kinda thought they were already? The pitch process is kinda informal and internal, and authors and designers within WotC are the ones who give them, but the process is already there.

"There should be a consistent format for campaigns that carries over from book to book."

Disagree, strongly. WotC doesn't produce many campaigns in the first place - one, maaaybe two per year? Sticking to a single format means that when you identify structural/formatting problems in your last product, you can't fix them. And it means that you can't branch out to produce more experimental stuff, or to produce a spectrum of campaigns to appeal to customers with different tastes.

• "Your books need to be shorter! Incorporate 21st century RPG layout & design." (Hey, that's my wishlist item!)
• "Return to the boxed set! Create handouts, maps, character portraits, in-game journals, & clues to go with the game. (Also make PDFs of those goodies available.)"

'21st century RPG layout and design' and 'return to the boxed set' seem a bit contradictory to me.

 

[bedir than]

Wizards is the only place paying its designers well. That's an odd call-out

 

[Parmandur]

Despite loving what Ben is saying, I’m not sure following those suggestions is how to make D&D a $1 billion brand.

Point by point there seems to be merit fir each one, but yeah, not sure This is The Way.

 

[Parmandur]

I kinda thought they were already? The pitch process is kinda informal and internal, and authors and designers within WotC are the ones who give them, but the process is already there.



Disagree, strongly. WotC doesn't produce many campaigns in the first place - one, maaaybe two per year? Sticking to a single format means that when you identify structural/formatting problems in your last product, you can't fix them. And it means that you can't branch out to produce more experimental stuff, or to produce a spectrum of campaigns to appeal to customers with different tastes.



'21st century RPG layout and design' and 'return to the boxed set' seem a bit contradictory to me.

Also, WotC does some if the most time intensive plsytesting in the industry, apparently in the range of months. So, some arguable points and stuff that WptC is already on the cutting edge of...?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Despite loving what Ben is saying, I’m not sure following those suggestions is how to make D&D a $1 billion brand.

Agreed.

 

[J-H]

Also, WotC does some if the most time intensive plsytesting in the industry, apparently in the range of months. So, some arguable points and stuff that WptC is already on the cutting edge of...?

And yet most reviews of WOTC adventures seem to include "This needs work" or "This only makes sense if the party does X" or "This could be a lot better."

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I dunno, a lot of this seems right to me. Even if WotC is working on doing some of it, they could still stand to lean into it.

Also, I don't see a contradiction between "Use modern design" and "make boxed sets".

Make modern designed boxed sets.

 

[Parmandur]

And yet most reviews of WOTC adventures seem to include "This needs work" or "This only makes sense if the party does X" or "This could be a lot better."

Sure. Yet that's from months of playtesting.

 

[Dire Bare]

I like this one best, mostly since I do not play online. I would like it better if the box was not 100.00.

If the box contains anything worthwhile, WotC would have a hard time charging less.

Things are a lot more expensive these days.

 

[overgeeked]

Sure. Yet that's from months of playtesting.

Considering most of their modules are years-long campaigns…

 

[humble minion]

And yet most reviews of WOTC adventures seem to include "This needs work" or "This only makes sense if the party does X" or "This could be a lot better."

I suspect WotCs problem is that they simply can't put the time into iterative, complete-campaign playtesting. You'd need to run a bunch of groups through the entire campaign (faithfully as written!), then get all the feedback, synthesise it and make changes accordingly, then run through the same process again, multiple times, and then once you've finally got to a point where you're satisfied, publish the result as is without any further edits for space, word count etc. I don't know if this is how it's done. You probably have some groups testing the balance of individual combat encounters with parties of different composition, you might have some groups going all the way through but offering progressive feedback as they go, etc etc. And of course you probably have different authors working on the post-playtesting fixes to different bits of the campaign, and they might not be the same authors who wrote the material in the first place, and this whole process continues all the way up to the day you send the files to the printer. There's lots of places for things o go wrong.

Also to be fair, I suspect that if most 3pp campaigns were played by as many groups as WotC adventures, or were subject to the same level of scrutiny, then the same complaints would be levelled at them a lot more often. Writing campaigns is haaaard.

 

[overgeeked]

I’m with the group not seeing a contradiction between modern and boxed sets. The Avatar Starter Set at Target is absolutely a modern boxed set. Do something like that. Nerd Immersion did a review today that goes through the contents.

Looking at 4E and most OSR games for more useable and modern layout and design would be a huge step up from the current WotC standard. Using double page spreads. Mini maps next to room descriptions. Keep everything compact and readable instead of sprawling and tucked away.

Likewise, you don’t need a column for a monster stat block, for example. Not even 1/2 or 1/4 of a column. Look at Goodman Games’ Dungeon Denizens. The 5E version is 100+ pages longer than the DCC version because the 5E stat blocks are ridiculously oversized. Same monsters, same text, same everything…except the stat blocks.

 

[Zardnaar]

Ultimately they need something like a hit movie, TV show or video gane.

RPG won't hit a billion dollars anytime sooner. Eventually they'll hit peak D&D ttrpg. He'll they may have passed that point already.

Not to many of Riggs suggestions well help. They need to grow the entire brand by a doctor of 6 or 7. Good luck with that.

 

[mamba]

Considering most of their modules are years-long campaigns…

if you play four hours a week, which playtesters generally do not…

 

[Clint_L]

They aren't going to become a billion dollar brand from selling D&D books, so his entire premise is flawed. They only become a billion dollar brand from branching into other media. His Slaying the Dragon is a great read about the death of TSR, though!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

If the box contains anything worthwhile, WotC would have a hard time charging less.

Things are a lot more expensive these days.

I mean, the starter sets are boxed sets, and they're like $20. I know they're loss leaders, but it shows that there's a lot of room for price points in between $20 and $100. The content would just have to be carefully selected.