D&D Advertising & D&D Lite

[maddman75]

On the first issue, here's what first got me playing D&D. First I had seen the D&D cartoon and thought it was awesome. Didn't really associate it with a game though.

A couple years later I saw an ad in a comic book, featuring a wizard and fighter battling orcs with swords and magical lightning. At the end they said there was a game where you could play the role of heroes like that. It was a short time that I tracked down a player's handbook and greyhawk adventures, grabbed a buddy, and tried to run a game. Once I actually got a monster manual and DMG the games got better .

That was 15 years ago. Still playing.

Here's what I'd do for D&D lite.

- Cut it down to the four basic monster food groups, fighter, rogue, cleric, and wizard. Preselect the skills, but let them pick the feats. Provide a limited selection of spells and items.
- Do NOT use the iconics. Maybe provide them as pregens, but one of the essential concepts of an RPG is playing a character you create. Keep it simple, but let them make their own characters.
- Provide premade adventures. Keep the leveling simple - when your character completes an adventure, they go up a level. The adventures should take them to fifth level or so.
- Keep combat simple. No AoOs, partial actions, or any of that. Just move and attack/cast spell/other action.
- Provide a conversion guide, so that when a group is ready to start playing the full game they can keep playing the same characters.
- Finally, and most importantly, get these things into the toy departments of major stores. Hasbro can put it right next to the board games easily enough I would imagine.

This would both help bring new players to the hobby and help generate sales of PHBs, which we all know is the goal of WotC. It wouldn't even be all that much work to create, as the basic system already exists. All you need to do is strip it down and write the adventures.

 

[Danzilla]

They just need to develop a love of dice and you have them hooked. (Perhaps lace dice with cocaine).

Great...another reason for gamers to get dice stuck up their noses...

 

[mxmarkargent]

[AV] my ideal intro kit

There are few, if any, fantasy-based board games available in toy stores that aren't based on Harry Potter. D&D needs a new board game. My impression of the Adventure Game is that it's underproduced (as in "cheap"), ill-supported, and not widely distributed if not entirely out of production. If you can't get it in Toys R Us, it's not distributed well enough.

The Adventure Game was cheap and underproduced. Give me something that doesn't embarass me. I want an intro kit with lots of toy value that grabs kids' attention. Give me pre-painted minis of the iconic characters and simplified rules. Give me a pre-set board, but also give me dungeon tiles. Give me treasure chests and other dungeon furniture. Give me spell cards and eraseable character sheets and wax pencils. Give me something that can compete with MK Dungeons for toy value.

Don't call it Dungeon!, call it Dungeons & Dragons. Don't include character creation, use the iconics -- that's what they're there for, right? Play to the strengths of the brand: the board game is a wahoo, balls-out monty haul dungeon bash. The board layout is randomized. The rules are stripped down, but they introduce people to D&D's core concepts. They use a d20 most of the time and 2d6 for bell curves when necessary. There's wandering monsters, treasure, magic items and even level advancement. There are feats and skills, attacks of opportunity and fire-and-forget spells. There's a dragon at the end of every dungeon.

Give me a dragon. Give me a nice big plastic red dragon, with articulated wings, neck and mouth. Oh yeah.

Make expansion sets that introduce more of everything, but don't blow the wad. Push people towards the core rulebooks, especially the PH.

Oh yeah: and it shouldn't require a DM. Kids should be able to play it on their own, or have a parent/older sibling/cousin/teacher act as the DM. When kids are old enough to be their own DMs, they're old enough for the core rulebooks.

Push the D&D brand. Use Hasbro's marketing power. D&D is a strong, strong brand. Everyone's heard of it, even if few people know what it really is. Pokemon may have been a fad, but D&D has been around for nearly thirty years and could be around for thirty more if Hasbro and WOTC play their cards right. Every family should have copies of Scrabble, Monopoly and D&D.

I have some more ideas along these lines. I'm sure others have, as well.

[Edited to clarify a point.]

 

[ichabod]

I would never make a marketing plan to push D&D into the mainstream.

D&D is a niche game. That is, only a limited portion of the population are potential players. It is not the sort of entertainment that most people in our society are interested in. That could change in the future, and advertising could help nudge that change along. But changing society is a philanthropy project, not a business plan.

What I would do is saturate the niche. Make sure as many potential players become actual players as possible. Fill that market, sustain that market, and keep that market happy. Be very careful about pushing the brand into other markets. Mess ups there can be expensive, and successes probably won't have a lot of return.

I would never do D&D Lite.

D&D Lite will split the limited market in two. I'd be making twice as many products and (if I'm lucky) selling half as many of each. So I'd be spending more money to make the same amount of money, which is generally not a good business plan. And it will probably be less. My Lite players won't want to play with my full players, which means less potential game groups, which shrinks my market. Spend more money to make less money?

Once I manage to split my market, they would start to hate each other. The Lite players would see the Normal players as elitist gear heads who are too busy get their jollies with obscure math functions to understand how to lighten up and have fun. The Normal players would see the Lite players as a bunch of less than intelligent wannabes who could never understand the complexities involved with a real game. The only time you want your market divided and hating each other is when you are selling guns.

At least, that's my opinion.

 

[Corinth]

Remember the "I Am Sci-Fi" ad campaign that the (US) Sci-Fi Channel did a few years ago? That's what any D&D campaign needs to do, as I outlined above in my previous post. That's it; after that, the game sells itself.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I would never do D&D Lite.

D&D Lite will split the limited market in two. I'd be making twice as many products and (if I'm lucky) selling half as many of each. So I'd be spending more money to make the same amount of money, which is generally not a good business plan. And it will probably be less. My Lite players won't want to play with my full players, which means less potential game groups, which shrinks my market. Spend more money to make less money?
At least, that's my opinion.

I would argue that the market is already split -- into an incredibly small number of little pieces. Look at all the RPG flavors/genres/variations out there. Now, D&D is still the 800-lb gorilla, and a large majority of RPG players out there play multiple systems, so there is some overlap. But is you are afraid of splitting your market, then you only gain market share in a niche market by taking share away from everyone else. D&D gets larger, and other gaming systems wither and die. I don't want to see that.

I'd argue that the downside of d20 is that it will fracture the D&D market. d20 as a brand lacks an identity. How is a new player going to get involved in d20, or figure out how to play the game if he/she picks up a d20 sourcebook off a shelf? It's potentially more confusing than D&D.

If we want D&D to stay strong (and I'm not arguing it's weak, layoffs at WOTC notwithstanding), and to continue to have access to quality products, it hs got to continue to sell. I suspect it will be not more than a year or two before the propensed market is saturated with PHBs, and core D&D players start to drift back to other systems. So how does D&D grow? Increase market share, or increase market penetration.

For those not familiar with those terms, imagine that there's this orc, and he's got this pie. A bunch of adventurers break in, and they want pie too, so the orc has to share. The orc only gets a piece of the pie. Now, the orc wants a bigger piece than he's getting. He can either fight the adventurers for it, or he can get a bigger pie!

Translation: The orc is D&D; the pie is the propensed roleplaying market. The adventurers are other RPG systems. With a fixed share, there's only so much propensed market to go around -- but if you expand the market, increasing penetration, then the size of everyone's share increases. It's a win-win situation.

Which is a long way of saying that rather than be happy with our little niche, and afraid of products which might split it, we should encourage the products that make the niche bigger -- it the long run it's better for everyone.

 

[Telgian]

D&D needs to get into theaters showing LOTR and Harry.--Zaruthustran

OK, I'm with you so far, even if the practicalities of the situation would not allow it to happen. These are people who are already intrested in the fantasy genre, and could become intrested in D&D if approached.

[RANT]

Think about it. Joe the fantasy enthusiast and his pals are standing in line for LOTR: Two Towers or HP: Sorc Stone.--Z

Quibble 1. And Joe the fantasy enthusiast always goes to the theatre with his buddy pals? Never with his SO? Never with his buddy pals and their SO's? The times that I have gone to the theatre the audience seems to be about a 50-50. Don't forget that not everone in line is male.

Up walks a man in scale mail accompanied by a hot chick wearing little more than a belt of spell components. --Z

Quibble 2. Oohh and I bet Joe's SO just [sarcasm]loves[/sarcasm] this little display.
So is this approach to market D&D, or bring up gender issues?
I mean, after all, if the gal is a "hot chick" Joe will be drooling, right? Right? That is the point of the example isn't it? Sell by using sex?
So what about the reaction of the gals in line? (Oh, I really need to lose weight -- I would never look good in that; I wish I were that pretty; wonderful, my boyfriend is drooling over another woman; What kind of freaks wear that in public; I wouldn't be caught dead in that; I wish I had the courage to wear that; Is that what my boyfriend likes; how embarrasing, and they're heading our way;...)
Well, so far we're off to a good start with the guys, and the gals...a bit negative already there I would think.

They're handing out stuff. Joe goes over.--Z

And this goes over like a lead balloon.

"Mialee" hands him something about a game called D&D. "Regdar" tells him a little bit about it, says they're having a demo every hour down at the food court. Joe enters the theater and, while waiting for the movie to start, he reads the flier given to him by Mialee. After the flick, he and his buddies wander down to the food court.
--Zaruthustran

Quibble3. Matinee I would assume?
[/RANT]

So what about tasteful and well done costume? What's so wrong with that? "Regdar" and "Mialee" in something like 16th century court attire?

The problem with costumes is that they must be *very* well done, or they have little more impact than the unfortunate soul in a chicken outfit standing outside a restaurant trying to wave customers in.

First contact, as it were, should be a little more credible than the chainmail bikini approach. Remember, if this is a persons first exposure to D&D they may not have run into the chainmail bikini's or the LARPers before, and may not be horribly impressed. Especially if their viewpoint is somewhat conservative.
[And as a matter of fact they do not impress me. Just so that you are aware of my biases.]

Unless it's a different movie theatre than the type I assume that you are talking about

Maybe we should try to do some marketing to the female population out there. Doing so would also help repair the image that all gamers are scary, smelly, and social inept....which we're not...right?
--olethros

Bravo.

 

[Buttercup]

I would apologize for concieving of BoVD and Dragon 300 and recognize that most normal human beings would find the content of those to be offensive and repulsive. Stop printing 3E and bring back Basic D&D with an endless stream of adventures to support it.

This looks suspiciously like a troll to me. Have you considered staying on topic?

 

[Buttercup]

So I ask all of you. What could WotC do that would make it easier/ more attractive/ cooler, whatever to bring more people into the game.

Well, I think there are two sorts of people who aren't playing, but would enjoy it if they tried.

First, we have the folks who used to play long ago, but gave up on the hobby for various reasons. The bulky, contradictory nature of 2e, or just acquiring a spouse, career and kids are the two biggest camps, in my experience. For these folks, the only thing necessary is to have a friend bring them back into it. Three of my current players fall into this group, and they're all delighted with 3E.

The second group are those who have never played. These people might not know much about the game, and they might think it's for weenies. I've sold two people in this camp by billing D&D as collaborative storytelling. If there were some way WotC could get the idea across that D&D is about The Story, I think that might draw in a new group.


On a completely unrealated note, WotC should be marketing to librarians. In the past year, a friend & I have recruited nearly a dozen of 'em. I think it's a huge, untapped market. I guess it's because librarians are used to being in touch withe their inner geekiness already.

 

[Buttercup]

Think about it. Joe the fantasy enthusiast and his pals are standing in line for LOTR: Two Towers or HP: Sorc Stone. Up walks a man in scale mail accompanied by a hot chick wearing little more than a belt of spell components. They're handing out stuff. Joe goes over. "Mialee" hands him something about a game called D&D. "Regdar" tells him a little bit about it, says they're having a demo every hour down at the food court. Joe enters the theater and, while waiting for the movie to start, he reads the flier given to him by Mialee. After the flick, he and his buddies wander down to the food court.

This is a terrible idea for several reasons. First, as has been said by others, you are really going to piss off the women. Since women tend to control the household spending these days, that is an extremely bad choice. Not to mention what it does for the game's reputation.

Second, people who walk around in public in freaky costumes tend to look like pathetic Trekkies instead of something that most folks would want to actually emulate.

If I had ever seen a woman in nothing but a spell-component belt, or chainmail bikini or whatever, while I was waiting in line for a movie, and she was advertising D&D, I guarantee you I would not be playing today, for both of the reasons I mentioned above.