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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6357796" data-attributes="member: 996">The debacles surrounding 4e were mostly business & PR issues (and the unrelenting malice of the edition war, of course).  Even so, with all the marketing screwups, it showed this same level of success this early in the process, as has happened with every new rev-roll.   WotC PR is more measured, this time around, and, though we haven't had an insider spill the beans, as yet, there's no reason to think they've over-promised to Hasbro this time. Likewise, with every new rev-roll, WotC tries to do /something/ to boost non-core sales.  With 3e it had some success with the OGL keeping things rolling  With 4e, it tried to arbitrarily declare everything core.  Now, with 5e, it seems they may just decline to publish a great deal beyond the core, at all, thus avoiding the spectre of 'falling sales' and the imputed 'declining popularity.' Well, it's never happened before.  but, unless someone pitched unrealistic revenue goals to Hasbro again, not winning the revenue lottery shouldn't kill D&D, this time.IMHO, the Mearls Plan /is/ just to consolidate a majority of the fan-base.  That won't result in spectacular revenue, but it doesn't need to.  If he can avoid another edition war, and an appearance of failure, maybe he can take another shot at revitalizing the franchise outside the hard-core niche.  But, to do that, he has to appease that niche. That'd be pretty nearly the worst-case scenario.  I doubt it's even theoretically possible for 5e to be /so bad/ that it couldn't achieve that.  The old one happened due to controversies that made D&D seem dangerous and much darker and sexier than it really was.  Rumors of 'real magic,' satanism, mind-control, suicide, etc - the same kinds of silliness that made heavy metal popular around the same time, really.  Hey kids, your parents will freak if you play D&D = instant fad.I suppose it's not inconceivable that D&D could go mainstream the way Marvel has - but, y'know, Stan Lee spent a lifetime making that happen, with many failures and false starts in the movie biz.  Think about how much and for how long Marvel heroes were on TV, for instance.  Any one of them got more exposure on Saturday morning TV than D&D did (just the one cartoon).A more likely point of entry would be video games.  D&D has essentially spawned a whole genre or CRPGs and MMOs without any of it's own forrays into that market ever really taking off.  If WotC/Hasbro would finally license D&D to the right developer at the right time, it could get another fad rolling.  The TTRPG would likely be forgotten in the process, but it'd give the IP a shot.</blockquote>

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