WotC James Wyatt is on the Dungeons & Dragons Team Again

[Hatmatter]

Isn't there already an MCU-licensed game, at least one that has a license to use Marvel properties. I don't play supers these days, so forgive my ignorance. I doubt it has sales that are even a flea on the back of D&D. Sure, Hasbro might easily scoop up that license, and then do what...? Make about as much in a year as their least popular D&D supplement now makes in a month? Yes, it could be a great critical success as an RPG, and even potentially make a little money. The 'little' is the key there. Honestly, there's a good reason I never got into pro game design, there is almost ZERO money in it! I could easily have gone and worked for Steve Jackson or TSR in the early 80's, the doors were open. You just couldn't get paid half of what engineering/software jobs offer. EVEN TSR didn't really make all that much. It was just a lot for a few guys from Lake Geneva, for a while.

I do not know Abdul. I sort of feel like my examples overshadowed my point, but I have no one but myself to blame. I think designing RPGs could have been a fun career...but, as you allude, perhaps, frustrating also. Enworld had some sobering posts last year from an RPG designer who was writing what it was really like to be a professional RPG author.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think, beyond that even, WotC clearly recognizes that the health of the RPG industry depends heavily on a fairly small cadre of dedicated creative players and designers. Without them, even D&D will do poorly. To utterly dominate the industry and drive out everyone that isn't working for them or a contributor to them, isn't good for that industry. While Paizo et al may be almost insignificant in terms of business, they are still vital to the MARKET. So the choice is even more stark, dominate the market and make 10% more share off a 4x smaller market, or leave well enough alone and just continue to live off the fattest part. And lets not forget to give them their due, WotC is very supportive of the whole industry in every way basically. I think ONLY making one hugely popular RPG is, effectively, part of that support!

RPGS aren't the only industry with this sort of thing either. Microsoft providing massive support for apple & the linux/OSS community is another example where an even more dominant 800lb gorilla helps the industry itself with even more overt support. MS is so overt about it that the ttrpg equivalent would be like Wotc themselves publishing their settings for PF2.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

RPGS aren't the only industry with this sort of thing either. Microsoft providing massive support for apple & the linux/OSS community is another example where an even more dominant 800lb gorilla helps the industry itself with even more overt support. MS is so overt about it that the ttrpg equivalent would be like Wotc themselves publishing their settings for PF2.

Yeah, community is important. I think with MS they like to make sure they have mind share too, so they welcome us Linux guys into their nicely furnished den! I think they saved Apple mostly because their dominance of the desktop was looking bad. It is funny because now Apple is perhaps the stronger of the two companies.

 

[JEB]

At best one could imagine other RPGs as some sort of ancillary product intended to enhance the IP of something Hasbro already owns. There seems to be little fodder there... GI Joe the RPG? Barbie the RPG? I mean, yeah, maybe you could come up with something viable from a few of their product lines, but it would probably sink without a trace on release. Given that, they'd spend practically no money on it and it would join the few other promo RPGs that have come and gone without accomplishing anything.

Interesting data points: Hasbro did recently authorize the creation of G.I. Joe and Transformers RPGs... by a licensee, Renegade Game Studios. Also a My Little Pony RPG (the second in as many years, in fact) and even a Power Rangers RPG (which Hasbro is themselves only a licensee for, so this is a sub-license). The four RPGs are all supposed to be D&D 5E based, as well.

That means that Hasbro isn't opposed to having more RPGs... but isn't interested in producing them through Wizards.

Isn't there already an MCU-licensed game, at least one that has a license to use Marvel properties.

The last Marvel RPG was Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, which apparently didn't make enough money to sustain itself, despite coming out just as the MCU caught fire. It's kind of astonishing there hasn't been another attempt...

 

[Parmandur]

Interesting data points: Hasbro did recently authorize the creation of G.I. Joe and Transformers RPGs... by a licensee, Renegade Game Studios. Also a My Little Pony RPG (the second in as many years, in fact) and even a Power Rangers RPG (which Hasbro is themselves only a licensee for, so this is a sub-license). The four RPGs are all supposed to be D&D 5E based, as well.

That means that Hasbro isn't opposed to having more RPGs... but isn't interested in producing them through Wizards.


The last Marvel RPG was Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, which apparently didn't make enough money to sustain itself, despite coming out just as the MCU caught fire. It's kind of astonishing there hasn't been another attempt...

Hasbro actually bought Power Rangers outright at this point and at least they are having all these games use 5E rules.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Interesting data points: Hasbro did recently authorize the creation of G.I. Joe and Transformers RPGs... by a licensee, Renegade Game Studios. Also a My Little Pony RPG (the second in as many years, in fact) and even a Power Rangers RPG (which Hasbro is themselves only a licensee for, so this is a sub-license). The four RPGs are all supposed to be D&D 5E based, as well.

That means that Hasbro isn't opposed to having more RPGs... but isn't interested in producing them through Wizards.

As for the 'based on D&D' part, that sounds like a manager type of pronouncement, not a design decision made by people with any knowledge of what would actually work to build an RPG. Anyway, think about it from Hasbro's point of view: they imagine kids playing the RPG and thus buying more Power Rangers 'stuff', and maybe hankering for a Power Rangers movie, etc. To an extent, as long as the game works enough to be engaging to kids, it is fine in their eyes. It doesn't have to really sustain itself as a completely engaging game. This is also a good reason to have some 3PP write it on license. When sales barely cover development costs, WotC isn't stuck paying people to support it. If it has any traction then a few supplements or adventures will spin out, otherwise nothing is lost. In a sense the 'use 5e as a base' is simply a way of establishing control of the process with Hasbro, they can say 'no, that is not acceptable' and insure the thing cannot possibly damage any of their IP.

The last Marvel RPG was Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, which apparently didn't make enough money to sustain itself, despite coming out just as the MCU caught fire. It's kind of astonishing there hasn't been another attempt...

Right, this is the entire history of licenses. Name a single license game that has succeeded for long. The truth is that the number of RPGs which generated revenue sufficient to cover the paper they were printed on is a tiny fraction of all RPGs. The number that also covered a license fee, apparently zero. WEG d6 Star Wars seems to have done OK for a time in a day when the Star Wars IP was not being overly hyped and the license was probably dirt cheap. The original (FASA was it?) Star Trek RPG, likewise, the IP wasn't seeing a ton of action, so it must have been cheap to license (back then we also had the Star Fleet Battles games, etc.). Those were both good solid games, but once the studios decided to make more pictures, get back control, make real money, then that was the end of them, because a WEG or a FASA was making ALMOST nothing even with really good games.

All the various licensed supers games have met the same fate. In every case margins are so thin they cannot cover the license. There's always some other new guy willing to pursue the dream and shell out his life savings to give it a try, and a new incarnation of system is born, lives for 2-3 years, and then the money runs out. We can see a similar pattern with LotR games too.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hasbro actually bought Power Rangers outright at this point and at least they are having all these games use 5E rules.

But, as I say above, I think that is a management decision, not a game designer decision. Also, 'use 5e rules' is a pretty loose statement. You could have 6 standard ability scores (or something close) and a similar list of skills, and a few basic core rules that 'work like 5e' and then most of the game could be genre-specific mechanics. I agree that would be 'based on 5e', but it might be a pretty tenuous relationship. There might not even be levels, classes, etc. 4e GW was like that, it was a LOT like 4e, but it was far from being the same game.