Does WoTC need licensed settings?

[Maldin]

And yet...
Star Wars isn't a WoTC setting. Still supported with minis, tiles and RPG. This is a licensed setting.
Gamma World, Ravenloft, Dragonlance and probably others, were licensed out.
Fairly recently mind you, not decades ago.

All true, however...
I think we'd all agree that Star Wars is not your average license, nor is it a game world being used within D&D. Its a stand-alone of a very special nature.

And that WotC has supported some of their other settings (sparingly) relatively recently, but that all of that support is gone now, and all of the settings licensed out in the past (licenses all forged more then a decade ago) have been pulled. Mind you, all of those examples had companies paying WotC, not the other way around.

Personally, I'd love to see them license out some of their stuff (to the right people), and I personally know companies that have tried to do exactly that within the decade... but WotC wouldn't even discuss the possibility. Period.

Denis, aka "Maldin"
Maldin's Greyhawk Maldin's Greyhawk **Celebrating 10 Years!**

 

[Aus_Snow]

How well did Wheel of Time do, for WotC, I wonder. . .

 

[JoeGKushner]

How well did Wheel of Time do, for WotC, I wonder. . .

That was one of the licensed settings they did that I was thinking about when I posted this. Love or hate the old WoT, the game book had a lot of great options in it.

I used the male spellcasting to represent worshipping titans in the Scarred Lands for example.

 

[jdrakeh]

How well did Wheel of Time do, for WotC, I wonder. . .

Oh, wow! I totally forgot about that! I'm guessing that it didn't do very well, given that you could buy cases of overstocked WoT RPG books for pennies on the dollar at one time.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Oh, wow! I totally forgot about that! I'm guessing that it didn't do very well, given that you could buy cases of overstocked WoT RPG books for pennies on the dollar at one time.

Yeah, that was pretty much my thinking as well, based on what I've seen. Maybe they got burned on that one, and aren't keen to try again? Or hey, I could be way off the mark there. Still, that's a hella popular modern (as in recent) fantasy series, right? I don't imagine this would bode well, *if* the book(s) - were there two? - didn't sell in good numbers, that is.


JGK, good to hear they might've got something right in it. Or interesting, at any rate. I wonder then, what turned people off it, or didn't turn people onto it, whichever. Again, *if* sales were poor.

 

[Voadam]

They also did d20 Call of Cthulhu. A lot of Lovecraft is Public Domain now but I believe there was a license deal with Chaosium so they could do stuff derivative of the Chaosium created works.

There was also AEG's Rokugan in Oriental Adventures. The licensing going back and forth on that one is complicated though from what I read.

Plus 3e Diablo II D&D.

WotC does not need licensing, they have plenty to old stuff of their own to work with and plenty of new ideas I'm sure, but I would not be surprised to see stuff like world adaptations in dragon articles again similar to how they did with A Game of Thrones and Shanara and others in the past.

 

[Voadam]

Oh, wow! I totally forgot about that! I'm guessing that it didn't do very well, given that you could buy cases of overstocked WoT RPG books for pennies on the dollar at one time.

Last year I bought my brother 6 different eberron hardcover books for $0.01 each on amazon (before shipping and handling). I'm regretting not picking up MM III, Lords of Madness, and others for myself as well at the same time for $0.01 each as well. I don't consider being able to pick them up cheap at some later point as an indication that they did not do well.

I have not heard anything one way or the other on how well d20 WoT actually did for WotC.

 

[Ranger REG]

I was reading Lord of the Isles and thinking, "With 4e's whole points of light bit, this would make an interesting campaign setting."

And I was wondering, does WoTC need licensed settings to expand the D&D brand beyond it's own campaigns?

Opinions?

My opinion is that WotC stick to or create their own settings, for financial purpose.

To get a licensed setting means:

1. They must share portion of their revenue of licensed setting sales. Either WotC lose some money to the IP owner, or compensate by increasing licensed products' sticker prices.

2. All material must be subject to approval by IP owner or their licensing agents. Basically they want to make sure you don't deviate or sully the recognized quality of their brand.

2a. Such approval can only be gained by a reviewing procedure, an extra step before publishing and distributing products to the customers.