If the D&D brand became too hot to handle,what would be the next 80 pound gorilla?

[trappedslider]

hypothetical: If for whatever reason the D&D brand were to be too hot to handle and shut down, what would then raise to the top in and possibly be resented for dominating the TTRPG sphere?

 

[Tigris]

My expectation is nothing. D&D is for most people = RPGs especially people outside the RPG scene.


Maybe, but thats a big maybe, a D&D clone like Pathfinder could take the place, but that just for the small subniche of RPG.


Overall I would expect the boardgaming market especially Legacy/Campaign games (especially dungeon crawler) to get bigger and get more share of the market of D&D.

 

[humble minion]

D&D.

Because if it got too hot to handle, someone at Hasbro would be seeing a line go unacceptably down on a spreadsheet, and would do something about it. D&D makes a vast amount of money for relatively little investment. You don't leave that on the table. They'd sack everyone and hire a bunch of people who were vocally opposed to whatever the previous team did to make it toxic, and let them run the brand instead.

 

[VashVet]

If D&D shut down, that’d be because people aren’t playing it, and that’d likely mean a lot of people just exiting the hobby rather than playing another game.

 

[trappedslider]

D&D.

Because if it got too hot to handle, someone at Hasbro would be seeing a line go unacceptably down on a spreadsheet, and would do something about it. D&D makes a vast amount of money for relatively little investment. You don't leave that on the table. They'd sack everyone and hire a bunch of people who were vocally opposed to whatever the previous team did to make it toxic, and let them run the brand instead.

so "I reject the premise of your question"

 

[aco175]

So Smasbro would come in a buy the rights from Hasbro Like what Wizards did to TSR.

I guess if no new books were being made, I could play with my existing stuff. I could buy 3PP stuff still unless all the other companies stopped making things. Aftermarket/Blackmarket stuff could still be sold after the purge for those daring or cool enough to handle the truth.

 

[humble minion]

so "I reject the premise of your question"

Pretty much! Not very fair, maybe, but I find the premise sufficiently far-fetched that I feel comfortable with doing it.

 

[Dbudzik]

In the spirit of the question, and according to Bob World Builder’s survey, it might be Pathfinder. They were a distant second to D&D.

 

[Willie the Duck]

so "I reject the premise of your question"

Pretty much! Not very fair, maybe, but I find the premise sufficiently far-fetched that I feel comfortable with doing it.

The 'null' and 'mu' answers to the question are (IMO) valid in this situation. We're being asked what happens when a hegemon falls. If the question were 'if the Roman empire had collapsed in 27 BCE, what would have taken its place?' I would want the discussion to consider answers like 'Rome by another name' or 'Rome's identical twin brother, Reme.'

Truth is, if there was some scandal that made WotC consider the D&D brand to be untenable for a while*, I think it'd take them days to weeks to introduce their new 'Forgotten Realms' or 'Baldur's Gate' or '5e' ('what's 5e stand for?' 'absolutely nothing') game -- probably with just a legal-department-combover's worth of difference from the game they just dropped.
*which I think is pretty far-fetched, given that the previous owners seem to believe that accusations of playing the game leading to devil-worship actually benefited the brand.

Barring that (and excluding the people that just keep playing the game without new product), Tigris probably has the right answer -- a lot of former players would simply find a different (perhaps related) hobby. It happened before with collectable card games (and of course there's a continuous cycle of people that switch between board games, RPGs, and wargames as their and their friends' interests wax and wane). How many people would jump ship to a different TTRPG is an unanswered question -- with my guess being a minority (but not clear on how large or small of one).

In the spirit of the question, and according to Bob World Builder’s survey, it might be Pathfinder. They were a distant second to D&D.

For those that do stick with a TTRPG, it's possible that they would stay with D&D-adjacent games like Pathfinder or OSR games, but I think it is by no means certain. Those are the the runner's up, but they are runner's up in a world where D&D is the winner, so to speak. Take that away and being adjacent/analog-properties doesn't necessarily mean the same thing. I'm not sure we know what would rise to the fore (if it even exists now), but it's possible that without D&D's influence, some other variant of the hobby becomes most popular.

 

[Micah Sweet]

hypothetical: If for whatever reason the D&D brand were to be too hot to handle and shut down, what would then raise to the top in and possibly be resented for dominating the TTRPG sphere?

I have hopes on that score, but no expectations. If I had my way it would be EN Publishing's Level Up.