D&D 5E (2014) D&D Next: Let's discuss it's mass multimedia goal.

[Dausuul]

I have never heard this claim, and I feel like I've been pretty on top of news like that. Can you back that claim up with anything?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ist-Bonus-Column/page21&p=5765766#post5765766

 

[Halivar]

One thing Marvel did successfully was boosting good character stories into good cast movies. Adding Black Widow to Captain America; adding Nick Fury to Iron Man. Heck, the latest Cap Am movies felt more like an ensemble movie like Avengers.

So if I were making a D&D movie, I'd ask what's missing and add it. No wizard in the Drizz't novels? I'd throw in a Harper. Shamelessly. I'd have Artemis Entreri in the first movie. At this point to Drizz't novels are such pulp that the only canon that needs to be adhered to is asking the question: "Could this have happened in the Forgotten Realms?" Kitchen-sink everything that meets that criteria and then chop it down in the screenplay.

 

[Dausuul]

Dragonlance could do it. Planescape, Dark Sun, even Ebberon are all settings that can contain very compelling characters and stories.

I think character is important, but it's not the only thing that drives movies and television. Setting is capable of driving them too (particularly for television). Who wouldn't want to see a new movie or show based in the world of Harry Potter but which involved all new characters? Star Wars is likely not focusing on the old characters much (though they are tangentially involved).

You're talking about spin-offs and sequels, not original properties. You can't have a spin-off unless the original is a success. Without Harry, Ron, and Hermione, no one would ever have heard of the Potterverse. Without Luke, Leia, Han, and Vader, Star Wars wouldn't have taken off and nobody would be making a sequel today. Setting is very important in fantasy, but characters are essential.

Planescape, Dark Sun, and Eberron have great settings but forgettable characters. I don't see a lot of promise there unless the scriptwriters think up a great set of characters to populate them. Drizzt is a hugely successful character, so there's some potential, but his setting is rather bland and the rest of the cast is nothing much, so you'd be putting the entire movie on Drizzt's shoulders.

Dragonlance is ideal because it has everything. There's an ensemble cast of well-realized, appealing characters. Sure, Raistlin is the breakout star, but Caramon, Tanis, Tika, and Sturm are all very strong too, and even Tasslehoff could be a favorite if they resist the temptation to make him into Jar-Jar Binks. There's a setting with tremendous depth and scope. There's a world-spanning conflict. And there's even a built-in sequel, all set to go: If "Chronicles" becomes a hit, they can follow it up with "Legends."

 

[Rygar]

Say what? D&D was on the brink of bankruptcy when Wizards picked it up. Part of the reason 4E made such radical changes was that Hasbro was threatening to mothball the D&D brand. Now they're going all-out to woo back the players who left over 4E, because they really need that player base back; when they left, new players didn't come to replace them in sufficient numbers. MMOs have been eating D&D's lunch for the last decade. And that's for the 800-pound gorilla (before Pathfinder, at least) of the tabletop world.

Meanwhile, Magic has been a cash cow for Wizards for the last 20 years. Magic revenues were what enabled Wizards to rescue D&D when TSR collapsed. It's had ups and downs, but at no point did it flirt with the kind of disasters that have threatened D&D. It's got no problem pulling in new players and keeping old ones engaged.

Um...TSR was on the brink of bankruptcy, D&D wasn't having any problems selling, TSR was selling products at a loss. Being horrible at managing a business doesn't mean the product wasn't selling well.

MMO's aren't eating anyone's lunch. That's one of the biggest problems with the RPG Industry, they created their own mythical beast they attribute all of their problems to. If you count World of Warcraft as the generational fad it is, you'll find the rest of the MMO genre just pretty much shuffles around the same playerbase for the last decade. World of Warcraft was the 2000's Call of Duty, it was the game "Everyone played", and it'll never be reproduced, because it was that generation's fad. Once you count out WoW, everyone else is obtaining pretty much the same sized player base with each release. Star Wars Galaxies in the early 00's pulled 1 million players, The Old Republic pulled 1.6 million. People in the gaming field routinely report that when a new MMO launches the others all dip. MMO's aren't pulling in new blood, they're shifting the same people.

There's a reason for that, an MMO is designed around forcing you to repeat actions endlessly in order to keep you paying for as long as possible. Players must have large amounts of free time and an extremely high tolerance for repetitive actions. There's no real story, you can't change the world or complete a grand quest because the world state can't be changed, it's just an endless grind. That limits its impact to a fairly small segment of players as its requirements precludes anyone with an active lifestyle.

It's also worth pointing out, judging from Ryan D's 1999 survey, pretty much every MMO has had only a fraction of the players that D&D had in 1999. It's also worth pointing out, the Asian MMO's are irrelevant, the Asian territories were never big D&D participants.

If D&D's popularity is dropping, then the problem lies somewhere other than MMO's. I'd suggest that it's because WOTC's policy has been minimal adventure support, eliminating all players with time or imagination limitations who previously participated due to the ability to buy adventures to play.

No, they're not. The number of variables may be technically finite, but practically it's unlimited. Chess has nowhere near as many variables as Magic does, and we aren't running out of chess games. The design team is always experimenting with new mechanics, because sometimes they hit on an idea that really improves the game, but the vast bulk of the cards printed in Magic are using the same design space* they've had from the start: Instants, sorceries, creatures, enchantments, artifacts, and lands. I came back to the game after a 10-year hiatus and had no trouble with the new cards.

Coming back to the topic at hand, though... I think there is potential for awesome movies to be made out of D&D properties, as long as they focus on the specific property instead of trying to make it "generic D&D." Epic fantasy demands a fleshed-out world. With a hugely popular novel series, a well-defined world-spanning conflict, and some really vivid characters, Dragonlance is the obvious choice. (Yes, they already made some animated films which were by all accounts awful, but that wasn't the fault of the source material. The animated "Lord of the Rings" was atrocious; didn't stop Peter Jackson from turning it into a blockbuster live-action hit.)

[SIZE=-2]*In fact, the original design space had a number of elements that have since been removed. It used to be that artifacts came in "poly," "mono," and "continuous" varieties. That's not a thing any more. There used to be a seventh card type called "interrupt," and at one point they added an eighth for "mana source." Both of those were later folded into instants. Ante was removed from the rules once they realized nobody wanted to play for ante, which meant they could no longer print cards that messed with the ante. Et cetera, et cetera.[/SIZE]

Practically unlimited and viable are two different things. You could have a creature with a p/t of 0/0, but it isn't viable. Any combination of X/0 isn't viable. You could have an instant that states "Tap an already tapped land", but it wouldn't be viable. At this stage, a substantial portion of Mtg cards are reprints/recolors/renames of existing cards. In fact, if you do a google search for M10 you'll find a massive firestorm over the fact that the better part of the "New cards" were existing cards with a different name.

Chess games aren't comparable, Chess strategies are. Which at this point are so well exhausted that you can buy books outlining them and their commonly used names.

Rejoining you on the topic at hand. I agree there is potential for awesome movies to be made. They can either tap into existing strong novel series like Dragonlance Chronicles or they can create new ones, but the key is to do a Resident Evil if they create new ones. Take the theme and some high level elements from D&D and focus on the story, not trying to tie it into D&D's mechanics like the jarring "You're just a low level mage..." from the first movie.

 

[Rygar]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ist-Bonus-Column/page21&p=5765766#post5765766

I think that's a little misleading. D&D was unfairly broken up into more pieces than just one. The D&D side wasn't allowed to claim the revenue from Turbine's MMO, they weren't allowed to claim novel sales as D&D sales unless the novels explicitly supported the setting, which cut out all Dragonlance revenue since WOTC didn't have a Dragonlance setting. IIRC, they weren't even allowed to claim the Dragon/Dungeon revenues.

The way things worked out, D&D found itself seperated into many "Products" instead of being allowed to be counted as one product. The equivalent for Mtg would be if they had to split their revenue streams into Standard/Modern/Commander/Premium and treat each one as a seperate product line, in which case it wouldn't be a 100 million dollar brand either.

 

[Mistwell]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ist-Bonus-Column/page21&p=5765766#post5765766

Right. My read of that seems different than yours. It says to me "it would have been easy" for them to decide to table the entire game, but it never says that plan was ever actually contemplated by Hasbro. Instead, it was something people working on D&D were worried COULD happen, but as far as I am aware nobody from Hasbro ever even considered it. From my view, you've conflated "some D&D guys were worried about X" with "Hasbro threatened to do X", and I don't think that's an accurate spin on what happened.

 

[Mistwell]

You're talking about spin-offs and sequels, not original properties.

And you're talking about continually refining your position every time someone replies to you. What's the moving target stuff? I can only reply to what people write, not the next position the plan to take after they get a reply. People said setting doesn't work alone, and I just showed how it does.

You can't have a spin-off unless the original is a success. Without Harry, Ron, and Hermione, no one would ever have heard of the Potterverse. Without Luke, Leia, Han, and Vader, Star Wars wouldn't have taken off and nobody would be making a sequel today. Setting is very important in fantasy, but characters are essential.

Nobody knew those characters until the first property was made, by definition. The advertisements were about the setting for both. Star Wars may have become about Luke, Leia, and Han, but it was marketed as a cool new space movie. It was the space movie that first got people into those seats, not the characters.

Planescape, Dark Sun, and Eberron have great settings but forgettable characters.

You make unforgettable characters. That's why I said it has to be well written - but the characters don't need to be what drives people to initially watch - setting can do that.

I don't see a lot of promise there unless the scriptwriters think up a great set of characters to populate them.

Well that's a negative way to phrase what I said to begin with - as long as you have a good writer, casting, and director, it can work well.

Drizzt is a hugely successful character, so there's some potential, but his setting is rather bland and the rest of the cast is nothing much, so you'd be putting the entire movie on Drizzt's shoulders.

The Underdark is bland? Well, we disagree about what is and is not bland.

Dragonlance is ideal because it has everything. There's an ensemble cast of well-realized, appealing characters. Sure, Raistlin is the breakout star, but Caramon, Tanis, Tika, and Sturm are all very strong too, and even Tasslehoff could be a favorite if they resist the temptation to make him into Jar-Jar Binks. There's a setting with tremendous depth and scope. There's a world-spanning conflict. And there's even a built-in sequel, all set to go: If "Chronicles" becomes a hit, they can follow it up with "Legends."

I agree Dragonlance is a good one to go with.

 

[Dausuul]

Right. Doesn't say what you claimed it said about Hasbro threatening that. It says "it would have been easy" for them to decide to table the entire game, but it never says that plan was ever actually contemplated by Hasbro. Instead, it was something people working on D&D were worried COULD happen, but as far as I am aware nobody from Hasbro ever even considered it. You've conflated "some D&D guys were worried about X" with "Hasbro almost did X", and I don't think that's an accurate spin on what happened.

All right, I shouldn't have said "threatening." That was the wrong word. But the prospect certainly was on the table, and it was on the table because D&D wasn't performing up to Hasbro's standards for core brands:

"There's no way that the D&D business circa 2006 could have supported the kind of staff and overhead that it was used to. Best case would have been a very small staff dedicated to just managing the brand and maybe handling some freelance pool doing minimal adventure content. So this was an existential issue (like "do we exist or not") for the part of Wizards that was connected to D&D. That's something between 50 and 75 people."

Now, of course, this is Ryan Dancey's assessment of the situation, and he could have been wrong. We don't have a memo from a Hasbro executive saying "Get to $50 million a year or we're putting you out to pasture." But since we aren't likely to get a look at Hasbro's internal communications, Dancey's account is about as good as we can hope to see.

 

[Texicles]

Basically, all you have to do is look at the Elder Scrolls franchise to see what it takes to make wildly successful RPG video games: immersive environment and compelling, multi-directional story (that can be ignored). These things can be created from the D&D universe rather readily (and in fact regularly are, across many a kitchen table). Beyond those two things, you need some character options, decent (but not amazing) graphics, and a combat system that isn't bad, but isn't anything special.

Then there's the bad news. As far as I know, Hasbro doesn't have any game studio subsidiaries. This is a bummer because of, as someone mentioned earlier, licensing costs for developers. There's a strong correlation between successful RPG games and RPG games that were dreamed up and developed in-house (see: Bethesda, Bioware, Blizzard or Square). Baldur's Gate is the only real exception I can think of, and even so, total sales of games in the Baldur's Gate franchise are probably close to Skyrim's sales in its first week (~7M copies).

I'm not going to give up hope on a blockbuster D&D RPG, but I think it will only really happen if the D&D brand becomes so strong that it can attract a major game studio, and that's going to take years of other successful mass media.

And on that note, my suggestion for a D&D movie is this: I can't speak for its mass appeal, but I'll watch and purchase any movie featuring Splug. You can keep your Drizzt and your Raistlin, just gimme some Splug.

 

[Derren]

Then there's the bad news. As far as I know, Hasbro doesn't have any game studio subsidiaries. This is a bummer because of, as someone mentioned earlier, licensing costs for developers

Its not only the cost. In the worst case the studio has to run everything past WotC which adds additional overhead. And even with a more lenient contract it is a limitation. And if the game is a success and they want to make a sequel they always have to go back to WotC who now is in a strong position as they can deny them the ability to make them.

To put up with all that the license must add a lot of value to the game. And the success game studios had with original fantasy worlds (or rather unknown ones) and the player loss of 4E means that D&D currently doesn't deliver this.