Did WOTC make money with COC d20?

[Gomez]

While having a spirited discussion about Classic COC rules and the d20 COC book. I stated that I thought that WOTC made money with the d20 Call of Cthulhu book. Does anyone here know if they did or not? I don't need exact figures just if they made a profit or not. Thanks.

 

[Dismas]

I don't know if they did or not and I think that it would be tough to get a real answer, the original plan for d20 CoC was to show that the d20 system was not just DnD, (according to one interview), hence the restricted 1 shot license.

I hope that Chaosium did well out of the deal.

 

[Nisarg]

They made money off it, which only makes it all the more curious as to why its a dead line.. was it WoTC that balked? Was it Chaosium?

Anyways, it rates as one of the crimes of modern roleplaying.. Call of Cthulhu d20 was a brilliant innovation, and in a better world there'd be a whole line of supplements and adventures for it; but someone somewhere is being an asshat and thus its not to be.

Nisarg

 

[Gomez]

They made money off it, which only makes it all the more curious as to why its a dead line.. was it WoTC that balked? Was it Chaosium?

Anyways, it rates as one of the crimes of modern roleplaying.. Call of Cthulhu d20 was a brilliant innovation, and in a better world there'd be a whole line of supplements and adventures for it; but someone somewhere is being an asshat and thus its not to be.

Nisarg

WOTC only bought the rights to do it for a limited time. After that the rights went back to Chaosium, who could not even begin to pay for a reprint if they wanted to.

 

[Ranger REG]

At the end of the day, it's all up to Chaosium.

 

[trancejeremy]

I always thought WOTC did it just to help out Chaosium a bit, not so much make a lot of money. (Back then, WOTC was still owned by itself, IIRC)

 

[RPGRealms]

I always thought WOTC did it just to help out Chaosium a bit, not so much make a lot of money. (Back then, WOTC was still owned by itself, IIRC)

WotC was acquired by Hasbro in late 1999. d20 CoC was announced a little over a year later and didn't come out until 2002.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I imagine it sold pretty well. It had good distro and I saw it in every major chain book store as well as RPG shops. I have a copy myself, which I love, and whick precludes me from buying any Chaosium stuff, because I'm a d20 purist. Not that d20 is the alpha and omega, but because d20 is The Easy To Teach and makes it alot easier to get D&D people off the sauce and onto the GOOD stuff. That and its So Much Easier to thug CoC stuff for use in other games (my pulp d20M supers game, for instance).

The d20 rules are, effectively, FREE. Chaosium doesn't have to pay anybody to put d20 Stats in their books ... it's OGC. They could have d20 Statted all their old stuff, slapped a pretty new trade dress on it, and printed it up for the d20 CoC gamers. I guarantee I'd have bought a few books that way. Dual-statting is ... okay, but not as attractive to me. Instead they're what, re-re-reprinting BPR stuff for people that already own it?

--fje

 

[Pagan priest]

Yeah, even if they just wanted to take their old stuff and slap some d20 stats on it, they would have sold a lot. One problem, they needed to have something out the door within a month or two of D20CoC being released. By failing in that simple task, they missed a big window of opportunity.

I was really looking forward to a couple of things from them, both Pulp Cthulhu and the San Francisco book that was supposed to have been out early last year. If they aren't d20, no sale.

 

[Gomez]

Well considering how badly they botched the Stormbringer d20 rules and have alienated most of their freelancer writers. I doubt Chaosium could put out a good COC d20 product if they wanted to.