Ryan Dancey: This is why there was no M:tG setting for D&D

Hi! I was the brand manager for Dungeons & Dragons and the VP of Tabletop RPGs at Wizards of the Coast from 1998 to 2000. I can answer this question.

There were plans to do a Magic RPG and several iterations of such a game were developed at various times. After Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, there were discussions about making a Magic campaign setting for D&D.

After the release of 3rd edition, we had planned to do a Monstrous Compendium for Magic monsters which would have been a tentative cross-over product to see what the interest level was for such a book.

In the end, the company made the decision to keep the brands totally separate. Here's the logic.

D&D and Magic have fundamentally incompatible brand strategies. This is was once expressed as "asses, monsters & friends".

D&D is the game where you and your friends kick the asses of monsters.

Magic is the game where you kick your friends' asses with monsters.

(Pokemon, btw, was the game where the monsters, who were your friends, kicked each-other's asses.)

There was no good reason to believe that a D&D/Magic crossover book would sell demonstrably more than a comparable non crossover book. And such a book should be priced higher than a generic D&D book - in the way that Forgotten Realms books cost more than generic D&D books (that's the price premium for the brand). There's a fear in sales that the higher the price, the less volume you sell.

The brand team for Magic didn't want to dilute the very honed brand positioning for Magic as a competitive brand, and the brand team for D&D didn't want to try and make some kind of competitive game extension for D&D.

In the end, I think the company was well served by this decision. It eliminated a lot of distraction and inter-team squabbling at a time when neither team had the resources to fight those battles.

Today you might argue there's a different reason. The #1 hobby CCG doesn't want to be entangled with the problems within the D&D brand.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/conten...-Many-Arrows-Can-An-Archer-Fire#ixzz2jgoO0Whj

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

I believe Mark Rosewater referred to the Weatherlight Saga as a failure.

Having played during the Weatherlight Saga, I can tell you the story was a massive failure. Competitive players just didn't care what Gerard did. I cared about making my opponent's life total zero.

I didn't look at the Weatherlight Saga until I started on the idea to run a Magic the Gathering inspired game about a year ago. When I did, I found it to be an interesting (if generic) destroy the world plot. It meshed with my desire to run a save the world style game.

Magic and DnD are the two games that brought me into the hobby. I don't play magic anymore (that hobby is for young men with more time and fewer responsibilities). But having done my research into it, I think it would make a fine setting and a great addition to DnD. The setting won't be everyone's cup of tea, no setting is.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

I don't think WotC's decision was wrong at all. But what about the players who cross between the two games? I can certainly see a Magic campaign setting doing reasonably well. It's not like the two markets are non-intersecting sets.

They do intersect, but I wonder by how much. My guess is it's not a lot. The setting couldn't rely upon the Magic community supporting it. The setting itself would have to be quality for it to succeed, but that's true about any setting / book.

 

[Deset Gled]

I played both magic and DnD when WotC purchased TSR. The fear was (at least at the local shop) was that MtG would become the default setting for Dungeons and Dragons.

I am confused by the way that you are arguing that WotC should have done some work to merge the MtG and D&D products, while at the same describing the general atmosphere of the customer base as "fear" of merging the MtG and D&D products.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

I am confused by the way that you are arguing that WotC should have done some work to merge the MtG and D&D products, while at the same describing the general atmosphere of the customer base as "fear" of merging the MtG and D&D products.

At the time, people I was around thought that WotC would surely make Dominaria the core setting of Dungeons and Dragons (and thus, hurting the brand). Elves would all be Llanowar Elves, goblins all from the Mons tribe, Dragons would be Shivan Dragons, etc.

Obviously that never happened. With hindsight and nostalgia, I regret that a Dominaria/Magic setting never emerged. Dungeons and Dragons has room for lots of different settings (Eberron, Dark Sun, Spell Jammer, etc). I would not have wanted it to become the base setting, but I would have enjoyed seeing it.

 

[Deset Gled]

At the time, people I was around thought that WotC would surely make Dominaria the core setting of Dungeons and Dragons (and thus, hurting the brand). Elves would all be Llanowar Elves, goblins all from the Mons tribe, Dragons would be Shivan Dragons, etc.

This is exactly the brand dilution that Dancey was talking about, and it's a very real problem. Even if Magic was just a campaign setting, elements would bleed together. The closer two pieces of IP are to each other, the harder it would be to keep them separate.

It's also one of the reasons why they projected that sales of the crossover would be low: fans of both sides would eat it up, but others would completely shun it. The backlash from the crossover might even hurt sales of other books.

IMNSHO, the only way that Magic could have been successful as an RPG is if it was a completely separate d20 product, like Warcraft.

Dungeons and Dragons has room for lots of different settings (Eberron, Dark Sun, Spell Jammer, etc).

This is arguable. Many people attribute the downfall of TSR to over-reliance on campaign settings, which splintered the fan base and raised overhead. Lots of players may have interest in lots of different settings, but that doesn't mean that publishing all of them is financially feasible for a single company. I would posit that inability to find the right balance of campaign settings is basically the heart of D&Ds current crisis.

 

[RedShirtNo5.1]

I just wonder when Scott Rouse's confidentiality obligations will expire. I hope some day we can get this level of insight into the internal decision making process of WotC in the 4e era.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Actually, this was my experience as well (I was going to use a modified 3.5 rule set that included color for alignment and mana for spells and special abilities like Trample, Deathtouch, Lifelink, and Haste). Group elected to do Dark Sun instead (also 3.5, also DMed by me). My group didn't like all the changes to the core rules I was trying to implement to give the setting a Magic feel.

Which is one reason I went with HERO. With it, I could have mana-powered magic, COLORED mana; the ability to gain mana from land or other creatures; balanced casters & warriors...

I found that the most interesting challenge was getting things like Slivers to work properly.

 

[billd91]

IMNSHO, the only way that Magic could have been successful as an RPG is if it was a completely separate d20 product, like Warcraft.

That would probably have been its best niche, but I doubt WotC would have wanted to dilute things further with yet another game to compete for consumer dollars within their own shop. And that means they'd have to have licensed out Magic intellectual property - and I don't see them doing that.

This is arguable. Many people attribute the downfall of TSR to over-reliance on campaign settings, which splintered the fan base and raised overhead. Lots of players may have interest in lots of different settings, but that doesn't mean that publishing all of them is financially feasible for a single company. I would posit that inability to find the right balance of campaign settings is basically the heart of D&Ds current crisis.

I don't really think a right balance of campaign settings would fix the issue's currently bedeviling D&D's brand. It's a rules schism behind much of that more than a setting schism. Even in the days of Greyhawk gamers, FR gamers, Dark Sun gamers, you still had all of those players buying the same core rules. That is no longer the case and may not be the case for D&D Next (we'll see how well it does).

All that said, and though I acknowledge that the idea that too many settings split the market to TSR's disadvantage, I think there may be ways to support more than one campaign setting. In the 3e era, the Living Greyhawk campaign supported GH while the main product lines supported Forgotten Realms and Eberron. Granted, that's farming things out a bit but it may be a positive model to follow, particularly if there are inexpensive ways for the living campaign support materials to eventually filter out to everybody (something Living GH didn't do).

 

[Kinak]

I'm so glad we're in a hobby where we can get answers to questions like this, particularly without it being a he-said she-said dramafest.

The reasons he gave sound reasonable to me and would probably sound even more reasonable to the people responsible for shepherding both brands. Add in the fact that, as a couple people mentioned up-thread, the D&D community was pretty freaked out about WotC buying things at the time and there was certainly the chance that it would blow up in both brands faces'.

Sharing content like that also weakens the boundaries between the brands, making them harder to break them apart for legal reasons or selling them off.

That said, a Magic: the Gathering setting guide that could double as the backdrop for a D&D game would probably have found its way onto my shelf. I'm not sure how well their idea of a MtG monster manual would have done, though.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[n00bdragon]

If that "Asses Monsters and Friends" thing was reason they didn't do a Magic: the Gathering campaign setting it was an amazingly dumb reason. If that's the reason they STILL aren't planning to do it I am stunned and discouraged at the current leadership of Wizards of the Coast. If Magic doesn't want its image polluted by the troubled D&D brand that makes more sense.

See, it's not like Magic has had ANY problems with using D&D's image and brand. Zendikar block a few years ago was basically "D&D: the Gathering".

"Magic: the Gathering" as a campaign setting would probably be rather dull, but visiting the various planes that Magic does would be amazingly good cross promotion for both sides and, assuming D&D pulls out of its funk, the RPG materials would sell like hotcakes. Look around the internet and you'll already see people all over the place building custom campaign settings around Zendikar, Ravnica, Innistrad, and Mirrodin as these were some of the most evocative and "D&D-able" settings ever. I've personally run an entire campaign set in Innistrad. None of the players had played Magic before but they loved it and one even decided to give the game a whirl because of that. Heck, Pathfinder is almost a straight ripoff of Ravnica with its guilds and what not.