D&D 5E Where are the whaling vessels? (A.k.a. material for big spenders)

[Astrosicebear]

OK. So once a forty year old, multi-million dollar brand whose high point was in 1983 is "established" they will license it without using a full court press with their PR. Riiiight.

WOTC builds brands slowly. After 4E the D&D brand lost ALOT of market share. Since 3E Tabletop RPGs has become an incredibly competitive market with not alot of growth. From a corporate standpoint, why spend $$$$ to fight for $. Even if you capture the entire market share, you still might not be profitable with such a small market. So you build , or in this case -rebuild the brand. Make D&D sleek, sexy, and appealing. Make it the world's favorite RPG. Make it fit into pop and more appropriately geek-chic culture. Now you've got momentum.

Now you licence it and get it everywhere. This is where Hasbro excels. D&D lunch cans, D&D trading cards, D&D movies, D&D cartoons. Make it so everything you licence brings in money and re-enforces the brand. In a competitive and limited scope market, you dont need to be the best, you just need to be more places than everyone else, and steal retail space and market awareness.

 

[Ravenheart87]

I'm pretty sure the D&D novels produced far more money in the nineties, than the rulebooks.

 

[delericho]

I'm pretty sure the D&D novels produced far more money in the nineties, than the rulebooks.

They did. And in the naughties the minis made more money than the rulebooks.

Unfortunately for WotC, it's not the nineties or even the naughties any more.

 

[Nytmare]

Now if you have tons of disposable income, and want to spend it on gaming material I would point to universal things like five thousand dollar gaming tables, pewter miniature collections, dwarven forge dungeon tile sets, overhead projectors on top of your game table, stuff like that.

I'd argue that in RPG terms, a minnow buys a set of dice, a t-shirt or a single miniature for their character, a dolphin buys a core book or occasionally buys the odd box of miniatures, and a whale buys the limited edition deluxe rulebooks or stacks of Dwarven Forge scenery (I prefer fans and superfans, for what it's worth). In terms of D&D, I'm with Paraxis: you'd have to look towards the whole brand rather than the RPG alone. That's the board games, attack wing, miniatures, the Tiamat and Bahamut iconics, and the core game itself.

I'm assuming that part of the point that Neon was going for is that WOTC isn't making any (at least direct) money off of sales of other companies' gaming tables, terrain, or projectors; and I don't think they've done a specific dice set or any tee shirts.

 

[delericho]

... I don't think they've done ... any tee shirts.

Here they are.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I find threads like these about as exciting as the 'business of sports' coverage you see on ESPN. I don't really care about how a certain baseball player's contract is structured, I care about how they play the game. Reducing D&D to a commodity and discussing it like one seems to deflate some of the magic of the game to me.

 

[Nytmare]

Here they are.

Wow, they're doing official tee shirts through a print on demand web store? Do you know if the designs on that page that weren't contest winners are licensed products?

 

[delericho]

Wow, they're doing official tee shirts through a print on demand web store? Do you know if the designs on that page that weren't contest winners are licensed products?

I found that site by following links from the D&D website (and knew they existed because the advert at the back of "Rise of Tiamat" said so), so I imagine so.

 

[Nytmare]

I find threads like these about as exciting as the 'business of sports' coverage you see on ESPN. I don't really care about how a certain baseball player's contract is structured, I care about how they play the game. Reducing D&D to a commodity and discussing it like one seems to deflate some of the magic of the game to me.

You could always stop watching TV shows that bore you and that you don't care about.

 

[SteveC]

Congrats to Neonchameleon for a great post. The question of "where do we go from here?" is one that WotC really doesn't have an answer for. In the previous thread, I mentioned that the job posting for someone to manage licensing now is telling. That person should have been ready to roll even before then PHB came out last August.

Unless something changes the 5E launch and sales are as good as it gets, and they're never going to be that good again.

Now a movie deal would definitely count as something big, but the rights to that are currently being litigated.

So the question of additional revenue is a very good one. I am absolutely baffled at how WotC is congratulating itself for not producing additional product for people to buy, while at the same time not having any sort of alternative revenue stream in place in even the foreseeable future.