D&D 5E Hypothetical: WotC goes under and Hasbro vaults D&D. Now What?

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

The thread assumes WotC/Hasbro folds completely and some sort of bankruptcy litigation fiasco ensues wherein the rights to the D&D brand are locked in legal limbo and nobody can effectively own/control/use them. That would necessarily mean DMsGuild shuts down. WotC doesn't own the site, but they do have rights to all the products on it, which means those products would become inaccessible/unsellable along with the rest of anything that has the D&D brand, and no new products could be published through it.

All of the tons of 5E material published on DriveThruRPG using SRD and 3rd party content would remain available.

I think the answer to the main question asked here is that TTRPGs would go on, and there would be D&D-alikes created by various third parties, and the ones that are already prominent in the market would be best positioned to grow. But no one of them would ever dominate the market in the way that D&D has, and there would no longer be Dungeons & Dragons as the gateway drug/lingua franca of TTRPGs as we've known it.

That said, it won't happen. "Dungeons & Dragons" the brand is valuable enough that if Hasbro folded and there was an ensuing rights fiasco, a large company (think Disney-level) would step in and pay enough to unravel it and own the brand. Just like there will always be a Spider-man. Even if the company that owns it dies, "Dungeons & Dragons" has enough cultural currency at this point that SOMEBODY would pay enough to pull the brand out of legal limbo and get it into market again - though what the product attached to the name D&D would be or look like would be up for grabs.

Actually, if you read the OP again you will see Hasbro hasn’t folded. WotC is no more and Hasbro puts D&D in the Vault. Additionallly, the OP mentions Hasbro gets litigious about defending it IP

Sorry I haven’t read the rest of your post yet because it was clearly based on a false assumption. I will go back and read it shortly and see if there is something to respond to.

 

[Micah Sweet]

why would they wait with that until 5e is bagged, the time to do this would be right now

Golarion's a pretty cool setting. I would probably buy a version of it that doesn't require me to play Pathfinder.

 

[dave2008]

Probably but that's a WotC problem.

Well, not according to the OP.

 

[Incenjucar]

Golarion's a pretty cool setting. I would probably buy a version of it that doesn't require me to play Pathfinder.

For what it's worth they have a forked publishing system where the Lore-heavy books and the mechanics-heavy books are separate. A lot of the lore books have barely any mechanics in them.

 

[cbwjm]

I don't think it would really matter, plenty of DnD adjacent RPGs out there now, I've seen people mention how they still haven't got through all of the options in their 5e content and so have enough to play with for years to come so I kind of feel like if WotC goes under (or perhaps just the DnD side, I have a hard time seeing MtG going under) that people will keep on playing with what they have or try out similar RPGs.

I'd be interested to see what happens to the online platforms. I'd expect DnDBeyond to be shuttered and the various VTT platforms to lose the license to sell DnD content that wasn't creative commons but that could lead to a number of people creating their own modules to fill the gap.

 

[Reynard]

why would they wait with that until 5e is bagged, the time to do this would be right now

Because they would not have to compete with WotC campaign length adventures.

 

[Reynard]

I don't think it would really matter, plenty of DnD adjacent RPGs out there now, I've seen people mention how they still haven't got through all of the options in their 5e content and so have enough to play with for years to come so I kind of feel like if WotC goes under (or perhaps just the DnD side, I have a hard time seeing MtG going under) that people will keep on playing with what they have or try out similar RPGs.

I be that many of the people that have "more content than they could ever use" are just the sorts that would keep buying stuff even after Hasbro stuck D&D in the vault.

 

[mamba]

Because they would not have to compete with WotC campaign length adventures.

but in a smaller / shrinking market. If Kobold Press and other 3pps can survive despite WotC, I do not see why Paizo would not be able to. They already converted two APs, I assume we will see more if those worked out for them

 

[Zardnaar]

I be that many of the people that have "more content than they could ever use" are just the sorts that would keep buying stuff even after Hasbro stuck D&D in the vault.

If it was still available probably

It doesn't really make much difference to me. Unless players start getting hard to find.

Total collapse I have more than I'll ever need.

 

[not-so-newguy]

No more DnD? Less onboarding of new players.