WotC Hasbro Bets Big on D&D

During today's 'Hasbro Fireside Chat', Hasbro's Chris Cocks, chief executive officer, and Cynthia Williams, president of Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming mentioned D&D, and about betting big on its name. This was in addition to the Magic: The Gathering discussion they held on the same call.

The following are rough notes on what they said.

D&D Beyond

• Leaning heavily on D&D Beyond
• 13 million registered users
• Give them more ways to express their fandom
• Hired 350 people last year
• Low attrition

What’s next for D&D

• Never been more popular
• Brand under-monetized
• Excited about D&D Beyond possibilities
• Empower accessibility and development of the user base.
• Data driven insight
• Window into how players are playing
• Companion app on their phone
• Start future monetization starting with D&D Beyond
• DMs are 20% of the audience but lions share of purchases
• Digital game recurrent spending for post sale revenue.
• Speed of digital can expand, yearly book model to include current digital style models.
• Reach highly engaged multigenerational fans.
• Dungeons and Dragons has recognition, 10 out of 10
• Cultural phenomenon right now.
• DND strategy is a broad four quadrant strategy
• Like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or Marvel
• New books and accessories, licensed game stuff, and D&D Beyond
• Huge hopes for D&D

What is success for the D&D Movie

• First big light up oppourtunity for 4th quadrant
• Significant marketing
• They think it’ll have significant box office
• It has second most viewed trailer at Paramount, only eclipsed by Transformers
• Will be licensed video games, some on movies
• Then follow up other media, TV, other movies, etc.
• Bullish on D&D.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Wizards could address that by creating an API usable by third parties. A DDB subscriber comes to the third party app, the app confirms their identity with DDB, and then DDB serves up the data to which that subscriber has access. The third-party app then presents that data in whatever way fits their design.

However, while Wizards could do this, there isn't a chance in hell that they will. It would have been a great idea back at the start of 5E, when the D&D team had been cut down almost to nothing; put out the API and let a thousand character builders bloom. Today, though, they are clearly aiming to dominate this space, and there's no reason for them to help out the competition.

They do have an API. Lots of Discord bots use them and Wizards even promotes the Avrae bot for that purpose. You can only see Basic Rules content by default (which is a huge amount of stuff, at this point), but if you've got unlocked access to the other account, it's visible as well.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I could easily envision a scenario where D&D rulebooks were more like coffee-table books, in say, the round of publications for the edition after 1D&D (which will likely be in 2032-2034).

I would not be shocked if we got a super-deluxe set of 2024 core rulebooks that fulfilled this role, for both the 50th anniversary and as a test of where the market is at. (And, for the record, I'd probably buy and use them, alongside DDB.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Sure wish I can wake up one day and see a new 3.5e book for sale, but I'm living in the wrong reality for that.

Uh, new 3E stuff is still being published in the third party market. Everything but, I think, 4E is supported to a greater or lesser degree.

If you liked anything from the TSR era, there's now more stuff being published each year compatible with those versions of the game than TSR published during its entire time in existence.

The OGL means you will never have to worry about not being able to buy new 3E material again.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Do they need to in order to be the new face? They do work closely with WotC, have released 2 official books for 5e, promote DDB on their stream. I'd be shocked if WotC isn't working to secure them moving to the 2024 ruleset and while I don't think Exandria will become the new default setting in this update, I also wouldn't be surprised if when they eventually stop doing their own streams, that they wouldn't sell the IP to WotC for a huge pile of cash to retire on.

I also think that if the main Critical Role campaign ever ends -- in the sense that Matt Mercer is done with spending four hours DMing every Thursday and who knows how many hours prepping each week -- it'll become an umbrella brand (which it's already on the way to becoming) with other DMs running campaigns set in Exandria. And if 1D&D is anywhere as successful as I expect it to be, most of them will be using it, and thus effectively advertising it.

 

[darjr]

Uh, new 3E stuff is still being published in the third party market. Everything but, I think, 4E is supported to a greater or lesser degree.

If you liked anything from the TSR era, there's now more stuff being published each year compatible with those versions of the game than TSR published during its entire time in existence.

The OGL means you will never have to worry about not being able to buy new 3E material again.

There are a couple few 4e publishers. One of them hangs out in this forum.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If I were to run a campaign in my home brew game again, I would probably use World Anvil. I still have most of my home brew content from my first 5e campaign in RealmWorks on a VM. RealmWorks had such promise. But I've been running purchased adventures the last few years, so all of the campaign-management tools I'm familiar with are not worth the time and effort for me.

Same. I'm running a MediaWiki for my campaign, but it's a pain in the ass for someone who hasn't done web stuff for a living since the dotcom crash and I'd happily pay to move everything to a service where someone else could manage security, etc., for me. But I now have thousands of pages of content (every NPC getting their own page pays dividends, if your campaign goes long enough, as mine has) and cannot imagine the work involved in exporting it all.

 

[darjr]

They already do coffee table books. Successful ones too.

Art & Arcana is amazing.

 

[Dausuul]

They do have an API. Lots of Discord bots use them and Wizards even promotes the Avrae bot for that purpose. You can only see Basic Rules content by default (which is a huge amount of stuff, at this point), but if you've got unlocked access to the other account, it's visible as well.

I don't know how I failed to be aware of this, but that's amazing. I will have to check it out.

 

[darjr]

Avrea is awesome. I use it to get quick tokens a lot a lot

 

[mamba]

I honestly feel that D&D has lost its magic of what it was, a group of people who didn't fit in and could come together for a night and forget all the reality of this world and become something from their imagination.

if 'people who didn't fit in' is a prerequisite I agree, but to me 'people come together...' also works, them not fitting in is irrelevant

I wish them good luck but for me and suspect many more this is not my D&D anymore, it is just a business about selling the idea but with no substance.

it probably is not your D&D anymore, but to me it is actually better than 1e or 2e, they always were clunky and their adventures were not that great either. I attribute a lot to nostalgia here...

If they came out today, they would not get much interest and arguably they also do not actually do so now, the OSR notwithstanding. If you look at what is being played, they basically fall into 'other'