RPG Evolution: The Dragons Come Home to Roost

Thanks to the game's surge in popularity, D&D's brand plans are coming to fruition.

D&D has long striven to be more than a game, but a brand. Thanks to the game's surge in popularity, those plans are coming to fruition.

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Hasbro’s Strategy​

Hasbro’s association with the movie industry has long been a mutually beneficial relationship, in which toy sales surge with each new movie. Star Wars and Transformers are both examples of how Hasbro’s bottom line is impacted by the release of the latest film. Unfortunately, this strategy means Hasbro is reliant on third party schedules to produce revenue, and the pandemic highlighted just how much can go wrong with the complicated process of releasing a movie. No wonder the company wants its own intellectual property that it can monetize for movies and streaming.

This is why Hasbro's strategy has moved well beyond just producing toys and games. Hasbro divides their new approach into four quadrants: Toys & Games, Digital Gaming, Licensed Consumer Products, and Media (TV, Film, Digital Shorts, Emerging Media). Hasbro previously announced plans to execute on this four quadrant strategy with all of its licenses, including My Little Pony, Transformers, Magic: The Gathering, and Dungeons & Dragons. Some of those Media plans have been easier to execute than others, with Transformer movies running out of steam, the My Little Pony series winding down, and a Magic: The Gathering series yet to launch on streaming. That leaves D&D.

WOTC’s Strategy​

Wizards of the Coast has always struggled to justify its revenue goals for Dungeons & Dragons amidst high revenue brands like Magic: The Gathering. At one point, each division was given a goal of $100 million in annual sales, a number that was not reachable through tabletop gaming channels.

The solution was digital gaming. D&D tried several times to mimic the Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) space, which it inadvertently spawned dating all the way back to Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) and Interactive Fiction (IF). The idea was that if the company could own a slice of that digital engagement dedicated to off-brand D&D, they could reach at least $50 million.

It didn’t work. WOTC never had enough resources, the right partners, or the technical know-how to effectively launch a digital ecosystem that would last longer than a few years. Then something surprising happened: D&D became more popular than all the other Hasbro brands combined.
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The Dragons Take Over​

The passing of the previous Hasbro CEO created a power vacuum quickly filled by the staff shepherding D&D into the new age. The twin factors of the pandemic and streaming made D&D uniquely suited to a much wider audience, and it didn’t take long before WOTC was responsible for 72% of Hasbro’s total operating profit. In a very short period of time, WOTC went from a barely-mentioned division on Hasbro investor calls to the darling of the company, with CEO Chris Cocks taking the reins as Hasbro’s CEO in February 2022.

So what’s next? Sure enough, WOTC is executing on Hasbro's four quadrant plan for D&D. Let’s break it down:
  • Media: The juggernaut most likely to influence the other three quadrants is the upcoming D&D movie. There have been many attempts at making D&D movies that have all been commercial failures. This time around feels different, if only because there was a legal battle waged through proxies on behalf of movie-making behemoths (Universal Studios vs. Warner Bros.) for D&D’s film rights. It’s clear they think there’s a lot of money to be made with a D&D movie. Unlike other movie launches, Hasbro is supporting the movie with the full force of its license. For an example of what this might look like, see the above picture of the D&D Advent Calendar. Speaking of which...
  • Licensed Consumer Products: Advent calendars are interesting products because they can contain just about anything, but that thing has to be small. They also require a lot of creativity to produce, as 25 different items is a lot to put into one package. If the D&D advent calendar is any indication, we’re going to see a lot more of beholders, displacer beasts, mimics, owlbears, and gelatinous cubes. There are stylized, iconic images of each monster repeated across everything that’s in the calendar, including stickers, gift tags, pencils, and ornaments.
  • Toys & Games: D&D is a game first and foremost, so the release of the next edition (an edition that requires playtesting but holds out the promise for backwards compatibility) is the obvious prime mover in this space. In addition to the aforementioned licenses, D&D toys are starting to show up in the wild. Egg Embry wrote an overview of just some of the D&D action figures available. We can expect a slew of monster toys too.
  • Digital Gaming: The big news here is One D&D, which uses D&D Beyond as its base. With 13 million registered users, WOTC is banking on D&D Beyond as a base for propagating One D&D to the masses. For better or worse, this includes changes to the OGL with the likely plan to defragment any digital content that currently resides on third-party platforms. There has been several failed attempts at establishing a digital home base for D&D, so it’s really important they get this right.
Cocks has never hidden his digital ambitions for D&D, and now with the company’s full resources at his disposal, we’re about to see a four quadrant D&D plan in action. Hasbro and WOTC are all in on this plan, with the future edition of D&D, the D&D movie, and its reinvigorated digital platform all unified in an attempt to make D&D not just a game, but a brand expression.

Will it work? Perhaps the more relevant question for current D&D fans is ... what if it does?
 

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Michael Tresca

Michael Tresca

Von Ether

Legend
While the specific games I like the most are relatively new (...Without Number, DCC, ACKS, Level Up) what I like about all of them is an adherance to the spirit of an style of play that originated decades before, in the games I  did grow up with. So to me the theory more or less holds.
I can not find fault with your choice of games. :)
 

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Remathilis

Legend
I've introed 5E players to 2E and the 2 of the 3 love it more because, and I quote, "I feel like what I do matters".

I often think about what requires more work, smoothing out the jankiness of 2E (Thac0, skills, saves etc) or modifying 5E to fit what I want from D&D (more grit, less HP, less... everything).

Once i finish this 2E campaign I may intro them to BECMI.
Can you explain what "I feel like what I do matters" means? What they feel that AD&D is offering that later editions don't as far as empowerment. I want to say I feel the opposite, but I'm curious to see what they are seeing first.
 

DarkCrisis

Spreading holiday cheer.
Can you explain what "I feel like what I do matters" means? What they feel that AD&D is offering that later editions don't as far as empowerment. I want to say I feel the opposite, but I'm curious to see what they are seeing first.

The Fighter was happy that when he hit something it generally died, and visa versa.. HP bloat and tons of healing have made fights take longer. He also expressed that he preferred one saving throw over say 3 saving throws. Why try to turn anyone to stone when they got 3 chances to avoid it?

He went from a player in 5E who kicked in a door or tripped a trap because he was never worried about actual consequences. His character would live more often than not.

Now in 2E, he lets the Thief do her job. He uses strategy. He's even switched to playing a Wizard and comes up with creative ways to use his limited spells. He recently defeated a Chimera by using illusions (and the monster failed it's ONE save) to scare it off.

The Thief (our usual sneaky type player) likes that she's actually useful. Traps actually need to be found and dealt with. Listening at doors is a life saver. Scouting ahead. Picking locks. Sneaking is its either working or its not, which she really liked. No perception checks.

Of the 5 players, 4 of them like the old school difficulty that swings both ways. One save can make a combat. One swing of an axe can turn the tide of battle. AC actually matters! And they love getting XP. A small reward every session!

The only hick up is of course the different ways to do skills and another to do saves and another for combat etc etc. After like 4 months I still don't think they have a grasp on THAC0, but hey that's what charts are for. And the one who always plays a Druid now feels really under powered. A few magic items helped her out though but she'd still rather be playing 5E.
 

Levistus's_Leviathan

5e Freelancer
You are just as much of a problem as he is, ready to judge/scream and a reading apprehension of 'not much' (if you think I'm writing apologia for him). Maybe put down that lance, get of that high horse and stop angling for those windmills... ;)
Please don't "both sides!" bigotry. The post that started this literally said that the majority of a generation was stupid, implying that the generation the poster is from was/is better. That's ageist. @Azzy isn't "tilting at windmills" or being on a high horse. It's calling out bigotry.

A person calling out someone else for bigotry is not as bad as the bigotry. A person mocking the bigot is not as bad as the bigot. However, a person supporting the bigot is as bad as the bigot.
 

Please don't "both sides!" bigotry. The post that started this literally said that the majority of a generation was stupid, implying that the generation the poster is from was/is better. That's ageist. @Azzy isn't "tilting at windmills" or being on a high horse. It's calling out bigotry.

A person calling out someone else for bigotry is not as bad as the bigotry. A person mocking the bigot is not as bad as the bigot. However, a person supporting the bigot is as bad as the bigot.
I think you may have misunderstood the post that @Azzy was responding to (in the same way that Azzy seems to have misunderstood it). It was the original poster ( @Vincent55 ) who made the hateful/ageist/bigoted/etc. statement. @Cergorach wasn't defending Vincent55's statement... in fact, Cergorach is very explicitly calling out the tone/malevolence of Vincent55's language. What Cergorach was saying (in the post that Azzy responded to) was that Cergorach felt that there was a neutral and perhaps valid reason behind Vincent55's misdirected/holier than though/nasty screed. That doesn't make what Vincent55 said okay! Vincent55 took a valid concern and blamed 'youth and lack of intelligence' for it instead of coming up with a more reasonable, objective and non-judgmental cause. Which was part of Cergorach's point.
 

Stormonu

NeoGrognard
The expansion into products other than focusing on the core printed book business is what gives me hope because it takes some of the pressure off of the publish or perish side of things. Time will tell, but the three core books are still selling fairly well and many people are coming around to the idea of the long tail of getting profits with minimal investment. I guess I've just chosen to be an optimist, it's better than assuming gloom and doom all the time.
I have no problems with them branching out into VTT's, minis, board games, themed notebooks, artbooks, novels and movies - but when they start selling D&D socks and blankets, that's a bridge too far.
 




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