VectorSigma
First Post
No doubt it was a combination of day-residue from having discussed the PDF debacle combined with some dubious microwavable food before bedtime, but the other night I had that dream again. You know, the one in which I win the MegaMillions lottery and end up (somehow) buying D&D away from WotC. Perhaps you've had this dream (or daydream) yourself. What was different this time is that I actually remember chunks of the content.
Now, I'm fully aware that any business decisions I may make in dreams would most certainly drive any company into the ground, and probably fast. I'm no MBA and I have zero experience at running a business. So this is not a lecture or a business plan by any means.
In the dream, WotC dumped the D&D IP and my group of investors (I believe Tom Clancy and Cal Ripken were involved, but hey, it's a dream) picked it up for a reasonable amount. The dream mostly consisted of me making some kind of speech at a Con about how we had acquired D&D and rights to the whole back-catalog, and though our plans were not firm (esp with regard to new editions, etc), we had some guiding principles, to wit:
1) Everything from the back-catalog would be made available digitally. Period. PDF, Kindle, whatever. With discounts for bundles. Want 'everything Planescape'? One click, one (good) price, download. Or for a small extra fee we'll burn it to a DVD and ship it to you. Pure (small) profit.
2) Old IP that we had zero intent of revitalizing would most likely be released from our iron grip. We announced Star Frontiers as Creative Commons not-for-sale and put all the PDFs up on an archive page for free.
3) We appointed a small team of people to go through the legalese and figure out what chunks of old Dragon and Dungeon content we actually owned outright, so that we could, y'know, do stuff with that.
4) In addition to the Rules Cyclopedia being available in PDF, we somehow convinced Bruce Heard to compile all the old Princess Ark stuff, write some new stuff, and we released it as a hardback as a love-letter to Mystara. And then we authorized the fan community to do current- and past-edition conversions for the stats therein (or implied), and we put that up as a free pdf.
5) We pledged not to be stupid about our IP. The Dungeons & Dragons brand still has some stroke, and throwing the IP at the wall to see what sticks is no way to steward the goodwill (once?) associated with the brand. In the dream, I went off on a tangent-rant during the speech about how DDO could have worked, should have worked, if "they" had made it FR instead of Eberron and just done it as Neverwinter Nights "plus" instead of trying desperately to generate a WoW-killer.
6) After my speech, I approached a number of well-known designers past (who were, of course, in the crowd) to chat with them and make them offers. We were still a small company, but I wanted freelancers with cachet. I'd say, "Hey, Dave 'Zeb' Cook, whatcha thinking about lately?" and he'd say something brilliant and insane as a sourcebook/setting, and I'd then ask him if he wanted to do that project for me as a freelancer and retain a chunk of residuals. And before you knew it, we had a bunch of legends from multiple generations of the brand tapping away at their keyboards, pouring ideas onto pages. And there was encouragement of fusion, as well. "Y'know, Monte, that's funny you say that, because I think Jeff Grubb was working on something similar. You guys should jam on this." It was glorious, I tell you.
7) The magazines were made of paper, and they were wonderful. One way we picked up some ad revenue was by having a standard package whereby a video-game publisher with a new game coming out could come to us, loan us a test copy, and we'd write an article full of game concepts and stats based on the game which would appear in Dragon the month the game comes out (alongside a full-page ad for the game, of course). They paid us to do this, because we knew how to make their game look cool to fans of our game. It made sense.
8) I had a beer with the people from Reaper and Privateer both, and the conversation started with "One of you is going to get our license for metal models. You've got the time it takes me to consume two beers and ten cigarettes to convince me you're the right company." In the dream, I think Reaper won out, I can't remember why.
9) I scheduled meetings with whoever has the rights to Dave Arneson's latest stuff so we could talk about working together on issuing a Complete Blackmoor. Ditto Castle Greyhawk.
10) I chatted with the folks at Paizo about what a shame it was that the other two Adventure Paths never came out in hardback, and how we needed to work together to fix that.
11) We made plans to revisit classic sagas (T1-4, for example) with extra added awesome content, yet remain respectful of the originals. And when you bought the updated awesome version, you got a pdf of the original for free for legacy/comparison purposes.
12) We formed a not-for-pay advisory council composed of some of our people, some well-known designers from the past, and some vocal fans; the purpose of the council was sanity check on our stewardship of the brand.
13) I don't remember if it was explicitly the GSL or whatever (as I said, there was no edition-talk in the dream), but I remember that whatever I announced 3PP-wise was received with raucous cheering.
14) There was some talk of taking stuff we had the rights to - board and dice games and such - and knocking out versions of them for Xbox Live Arcade. I distinctly remember pimping that Orcwars game (remember that?) with online play, downloadable for $10, coded by fans for a large cut of residuals and given our official imprimatur.
15) And there was something about licensing Drizzt for a series of next-gen console games that would parallel the books.
That's all I remember that's cohesive.
The point of the ramble is to ask...ever have that dream? And if so, what did _you_ do?
Now, I'm fully aware that any business decisions I may make in dreams would most certainly drive any company into the ground, and probably fast. I'm no MBA and I have zero experience at running a business. So this is not a lecture or a business plan by any means.
In the dream, WotC dumped the D&D IP and my group of investors (I believe Tom Clancy and Cal Ripken were involved, but hey, it's a dream) picked it up for a reasonable amount. The dream mostly consisted of me making some kind of speech at a Con about how we had acquired D&D and rights to the whole back-catalog, and though our plans were not firm (esp with regard to new editions, etc), we had some guiding principles, to wit:
1) Everything from the back-catalog would be made available digitally. Period. PDF, Kindle, whatever. With discounts for bundles. Want 'everything Planescape'? One click, one (good) price, download. Or for a small extra fee we'll burn it to a DVD and ship it to you. Pure (small) profit.
2) Old IP that we had zero intent of revitalizing would most likely be released from our iron grip. We announced Star Frontiers as Creative Commons not-for-sale and put all the PDFs up on an archive page for free.
3) We appointed a small team of people to go through the legalese and figure out what chunks of old Dragon and Dungeon content we actually owned outright, so that we could, y'know, do stuff with that.
4) In addition to the Rules Cyclopedia being available in PDF, we somehow convinced Bruce Heard to compile all the old Princess Ark stuff, write some new stuff, and we released it as a hardback as a love-letter to Mystara. And then we authorized the fan community to do current- and past-edition conversions for the stats therein (or implied), and we put that up as a free pdf.
5) We pledged not to be stupid about our IP. The Dungeons & Dragons brand still has some stroke, and throwing the IP at the wall to see what sticks is no way to steward the goodwill (once?) associated with the brand. In the dream, I went off on a tangent-rant during the speech about how DDO could have worked, should have worked, if "they" had made it FR instead of Eberron and just done it as Neverwinter Nights "plus" instead of trying desperately to generate a WoW-killer.
6) After my speech, I approached a number of well-known designers past (who were, of course, in the crowd) to chat with them and make them offers. We were still a small company, but I wanted freelancers with cachet. I'd say, "Hey, Dave 'Zeb' Cook, whatcha thinking about lately?" and he'd say something brilliant and insane as a sourcebook/setting, and I'd then ask him if he wanted to do that project for me as a freelancer and retain a chunk of residuals. And before you knew it, we had a bunch of legends from multiple generations of the brand tapping away at their keyboards, pouring ideas onto pages. And there was encouragement of fusion, as well. "Y'know, Monte, that's funny you say that, because I think Jeff Grubb was working on something similar. You guys should jam on this." It was glorious, I tell you.
7) The magazines were made of paper, and they were wonderful. One way we picked up some ad revenue was by having a standard package whereby a video-game publisher with a new game coming out could come to us, loan us a test copy, and we'd write an article full of game concepts and stats based on the game which would appear in Dragon the month the game comes out (alongside a full-page ad for the game, of course). They paid us to do this, because we knew how to make their game look cool to fans of our game. It made sense.
8) I had a beer with the people from Reaper and Privateer both, and the conversation started with "One of you is going to get our license for metal models. You've got the time it takes me to consume two beers and ten cigarettes to convince me you're the right company." In the dream, I think Reaper won out, I can't remember why.
9) I scheduled meetings with whoever has the rights to Dave Arneson's latest stuff so we could talk about working together on issuing a Complete Blackmoor. Ditto Castle Greyhawk.
10) I chatted with the folks at Paizo about what a shame it was that the other two Adventure Paths never came out in hardback, and how we needed to work together to fix that.
11) We made plans to revisit classic sagas (T1-4, for example) with extra added awesome content, yet remain respectful of the originals. And when you bought the updated awesome version, you got a pdf of the original for free for legacy/comparison purposes.
12) We formed a not-for-pay advisory council composed of some of our people, some well-known designers from the past, and some vocal fans; the purpose of the council was sanity check on our stewardship of the brand.
13) I don't remember if it was explicitly the GSL or whatever (as I said, there was no edition-talk in the dream), but I remember that whatever I announced 3PP-wise was received with raucous cheering.
14) There was some talk of taking stuff we had the rights to - board and dice games and such - and knocking out versions of them for Xbox Live Arcade. I distinctly remember pimping that Orcwars game (remember that?) with online play, downloadable for $10, coded by fans for a large cut of residuals and given our official imprimatur.
15) And there was something about licensing Drizzt for a series of next-gen console games that would parallel the books.
That's all I remember that's cohesive.
The point of the ramble is to ask...ever have that dream? And if so, what did _you_ do?
