D&D 5E (2024) D&D Universes Beyond - what should they do?

One of the neat things about Enworld, is sometimes you can go back twenty plus years and find some scutflebutt straight from the horses mouth:

I'll point out that WotC did have rights to the HP property (they made a trading card set out of it). And WotC wanted to make an RPG. I probably can't say exactly what happened, but let's just say that JKR didn't let it come to fruition, despite some really cool ideas by the design team. It's not WotC's fault at all. Some IP-owners have some very strange ideas about what other people (whether companies or kids just wanting to play "let's pretend") should and should not be able to do with their IP.

Seems that her seething hatred of fanfixtion and people taking some level of agency within her world has prevented this from already happening. Doubt that she has gotten more reasonable on this front.
 

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They should do D&D Big Bang Theory. Roleplay as nerds who play roleplaying games about nerds who play roleplaying games, etc. Nerds playing roleplaying games all the way down.

More seriously; I dunno. Realistically, I doubt I'd buy them anyway. As always I'm looking for a grounded fantasy that feels as much like horror as fantasy. The superhero power fantasy is already more than well served. Although honestly, everything is pretty well-served. I don't know why I need D&D to make a book about an IP I like unless they meaningfully add something interesting to it.
 


As always I'm looking for a grounded fantasy that feels as much like horror as fantasy.
Like Walking Dead? Or more Eldritch? Or like Midsommer? Or something like Evil Dead or Sean of the Dead? Oh humor horror is a genre that's kind of underserved in the RPG space.
 

Like Walking Dead? Or more Eldritch? Or like Midsommer? Or something like Evil Dead or Sean of the Dead? Oh humor horror is a genre that's kind of underserved in the RPG space.
You can easily drop all of these into one ongoing standard D&D campaign. Humour is down to the players' reactions. You don't need specific rules or a setting to do humour. You could do Discworld and the players could treat it with deadly seriousness, not a laugh in sight.
 

The sitcom "Big Bang Theory" ended but a collab like "Teddy" could be possible.

For a D&D-Kingdom Hearts WotC had to talk not only with Square Enix but also Disney.

It would be really curious to a mash-up mixing Eberron and Blizzard's Overwatch.

The licence of "Walking Dead" now is owned by "Free League Publishing" and players would rathers a diversity of monsters. A better option could be "Back 4 Blood" or "Redfall".

* What if Epic Games published or created its own VTT within Fortnite and WotC got the licence of "Fortnite: Save the World"?
 

Rowling knows just enough about TTRPGs to think that they're both deeply uncool (she is at her heart, a "mean girl", even by her own self-serving 'poor little me' accounts of her time a school, she was part of a mean girl clique), and to get very angry at the idea of someone potentially roleplaying characters from her novels but outside her control. This is a woman, who when only the first two HP novels were out, semi-famously gave an interview in a widely-read British magazine (I forget which) where she basically got into a fight with the interviewer because the interviewer took-as-read that HP was fantasy (which it undeniably is!), and asked about Rowling's fantasy influences, and Rowling absolutely excoriated fantasy literature, saying HP was definitely not that, and that fantasy was basically just wank-material for spotty fat dim 13-year-old boys (barely paraphrasing and I 100% believe that was her genuine "mean girl" opinion, given the sort of school she went to). Much later she changed her mind on this (about when four or five books were out I think) because she realized how much her readers crossed over with general fantasy readers (like, huge crossover) and that maybe insulting them directly wasn't a great plan.

And remember she also only through gritted teeth barely tolerates HP fan fiction, and I strongly suspect if she could legally shut it down now without blowing up the brand, she would.

I think the core issue for her is not just that TTRPGs are for losers, but more "nobody should be allowed to RP any characters I created, without my explicit permission". To her, videogames are mostly safe because they are simply retellings of her works, or don't really feature her actual characters/story, just HP branding. This is, I think, how the most recent HP game, the big one, I forget the name, got away with it, it's set deep in the past of Hogwarts, and doesn't really feature main HP characters as a result. So even though it's a lot more like an RPG than most previous HP games, you're not going to be able to use Harry to say "trans rights" or something. Also even there the one trans character in the game has a pretty insulting name ("Ima Mann" or something equally depraved and Rowlingesque), so I suspect she made some edits.
Well, she doesn't want people role-playing in her word, I don't want to role-play in HP's world, so win-win, I guess... :unsure:
 


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