Indie game designers unite to buy D&D!?

[Dausuul]

Hasbro is so incredibly big, that WotC isn't even named more than once in their annual brief to shareholders. They only mention Magic the Gathering in a side note, it's a minor product for them, and it's like 10 times bigger than the entire D&D franchise. Just to point out, Paizo Revenue is estimated around 20 millions. Hasbro revenue is 4 BILLIONS.

I think people do not realize how small this hobby is.

D&D is the headwater of a mighty river. Virtually all MMOs, including the Big Warcraft Cheese itself, are descended from D&D. Its impact on modern fantasy has been huge, and as fantasy moves into the mainstream, that impact is magnified. Pretty much all forms of fantasy gaming show D&D's influence.

But for all that, the headwater itself is only a tiny stream.

 

[triqui]

D&D is the headwater of a mighty river. Virtually all MMOs, including the Big Warcraft Cheese itself, are descended from D&D. Its impact on modern fantasy has been huge, and as fantasy moves into the mainstream, that impact is magnified. Pretty much all forms of fantasy gaming show D&D's influence.

But for all that, the headwater itself is only a tiny stream.

I agree on that. Just like the Telegraph is the headwater of current Internet. However, the importance of telegraph right now is clearly disminishing, and any attempt to "force Google shareholders to " by some kind of telegraph boycott is ludicrous.

Even with the big influence it had in the past, the truth is, right now, D&D (and pen and paper RPGs) are a very very very minor hobby. Trying to bully Hasbro, as some posters have suggested, is laughable. The Transformers franchise alone has produced waaaaaaaaaay more dollars in the past decade than the whole D&D franchise (including pathfinder and retroclones), ever. Magic the Gathering alone is much bigger than D&D. And it's just a drop in the sea of Hasbro's budget. Starting a crowdfunding to force a 4 billion per year company to sell intellectual property sounds like... well... childish?

 

[Azgulor]

I wonder how much it would cost to buy the D&D intellectual property outright.

Picture this: Paizo, Monte Cook, Green Ronin, Ryan Dancey, and Peter Adkinson, with the help of a massive Kickstarter, co-operate to make an offer to Hasbro.


This D&D Initiative:

• Owns the D&D brand and all its rule books, campaign settings, novels, magazine articles, board games, memorabilia, and other spin-offs; with the minor pen & paper RPG brands, such as Gamma World and d20 Modern, thrown in too.
• Simultaneously releases D&D Next and reissues Original D&D, BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia D&D, First Edition, Second Edition, Third Edition, and Fourth Edition.​
• Rebrands all Paizo, Monte Cook, and Green Ronin d20/OGL products as Dungeons & Dragons. Pathfinder RPG, True20, Arcana Evolved, and other related rules sets become iterations of D&D.
• Makes an easy-to-use license for 3rd Party D&D publications.
• Explicitly opens all D&D content for non-commercial purposes.
• All D&D/d20/OGL campaign settings and adventures from TSR, WotC, Paizo, Malhavoc, and Green Ronin are translated into each rules iteration.
• Perhaps operates as a game designer co-op, a sort of "CSG" (community supported gaming), which aims to provide a partial or full livelihood for many past, present, and future game designers and fantasy artists, where they may work in artistic freedom while receiving enough bread to live a modest life.
• Commissions work from all sorts of former TSR and WotC designers and artists, and other grognards, to make new material for all the D&D settings. For example, for Mystara: Bruce Heard, Aaron Allston, and Ann Dupuis.
• Enacts all the product suggestions in Mike Evan's petition for a content-provider publishing model.

1. As others have stated, this is implausible because Hasbro is known for NOT selling its intellectual properties.

2. The number of Polyanish dominoes that would have to fall into place would put this into "Odds of winning the Powerball" realm of possibility.

3. Even if all that were to come to pass, as a gamer - I wouldn't support it. The assimilation of those gaming houses into iterations of D&D would cause them to sacrifice their individual identities. I like Paizo, Green Ronin, Malhavoc, and others. I love Pathfinder & Mutants & Masterminds. Honestly, I could give a dead rat's backside whether or not I'm playing a game called Dungeons & Dragons. In the past, when I have, I've enjoyed it. I'm loyal to the hobby & to the games and companies that I like. NOT the D&D brand.


While I salute the goodwill feelings that inspired the creation of this thread, it is unfortunately another Exhibit A-grade example of how most gamers would make piss-poor RPG businesspeople...