D&D General On making 5E versions of other games

[Thomas Shey]

It's more of 'outrage outrage outrage' oh look a butterfly. It's something to do until the next controversy. Frankly these folks were either:
1) Not around for the d20 3.X everybody on board system. or
2) They weren't paying attention if they were.

Well, or weren't fans of it then, either. It should be noted that most of the D20-everything systems didn't exactly have an extended lifespan, and the only one I know of that did (M&M) evolved progressively away from its 3e roots over time.

Crying that it's not fair that a company has to compete with WotC because they are smaller is like saying Germany's bobsled teams have an unfair advantage over Jamaica.... Duuuh? Who said life was fair?

Well, yeah, "Its hard for a company to compete with the juggernaut of the hobby" is like saying water is wet.

 

[Thomas Shey]

While I enjoyed your post immensely.... I really seriously doubt it. Marvel has tried to drop rules several times before (Even using Mutants & Masterminds and a failed attempt at d20 Modern) Marvel doesn't have the patience to support any gaming system for long.

Few licensors do, honestly.

 

[Aldarc]

Few licensors do, honestly.

It’s honestly a pretty big reason why I don’t think many TTRPG publishers can build their company around licensed IPs. With possible rare exception, it’s not sustainable.

 

[Stormonu]

Sounds like a "blame the customer" moment.

If the game isn't popular with the current system, I don't expect it will do much better using 5E rules. The 3E bubble showed that was true for several systems - 7th sea, L5R, CoC, etc. Star Wars may be the only exception, but that's Star Wars and even it moved on to another non-D&D system where it did well for quite some time.

I have the C7 version of Who for some time back, I can say that making a 5E compatible version will not incline me to buy into a new version, as I think D&D's rules would be a poor fit a Who game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, but the latter should also not be surprised that their opinion just isn't relevant to this decision.

Frankly, I don't expect my opinion to be relevant to any company's decisions. But again, I'll note its not like a lot of the 3e D20 products exactly had a long lifespan either, so "Using the current most popular game's basic engine" isn't quite the winner I suspect people think it is.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It’s honestly a pretty big reason why I don’t think many TTRPG publishers can build their company around licensed IPs. With possible rare exception, it’s not sustainable.

Yeah. I was actually involved with a limited degree with the BtVS line when it was alive, and I can say it was a constant pain in the ass for Eden dealing with the licensor.

 

[cbwjm]

With all the flak the 5E Doctor Who is getting I thought this tweet was telling.


With all the people telling “there are better systems for it!” the answer is they know, but you won’t play that. People talk about how they don’t want to learn another game, and the fact that people aren’t even aware of the 10-year old and running existing non-5E game is kind of ironic.

This is part of the reason why I think people aren't really keen on a Dr who RPG. They don't know about the current version (which I believe has a 2nd edition so someone must be playing it) because they would rather watch the show than play an RPG based on the show.