WotC WotC to power other IPs with D&D and M:TG

In Hasbro’s recent conference call, a few things were mentioned. Using D&D and Magic ‘play systems’ to power other IPs via their ‘Universes Beyond’ initiatives Using D&D Beyond as a hub Other physical and digital tie-ins The Universes Beyond initiative has been running since early 2021 for Magic: The Gathering, and initially featured a The Walking Dead expansion (grandfathered in from 2020)...

In Hasbro’s recent conference call, a few things were mentioned.
  • Using D&D and Magic ‘play systems’ to power other IPs via their ‘Universes Beyond’ initiatives
  • Using D&D Beyond as a hub
  • Other physical and digital tie-ins
The Universes Beyond initiative has been running since early 2021 for Magic: The Gathering, and initially featured a The Walking Dead expansion (grandfathered in from 2020), and a Stranger Things set (2020). 2022 will see Warhammer 40K, Fortnite, and Street Fighter; and a Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth set is going out in 2023.

In addition, properties like Godzilla and Dracula have featured as MtG sets, but not as part of the Universes Beyond initiative; and in 2019 there was a My Little Pony crossover. There have also, of course, been D&D/MtG crossovers in both directions.

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Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming segment President Cynthia Williams said:“You'll see us continue to expand the number of formats and reach new customer segments by expanding our Universes Beyond initiatives, which brings IP from outside of Magic into the Magic play system, We've talked a lot about universes beyond in Magic, which is this concept of thinking about Magic as a play system and bringing in outside brands or outside IP into that play system. We see potential for that with D&D as well."

She also talked about other tie-ins: "And then we see a lot of e-commerce and direct opportunities working in partnership with our Hasbro Pulse team to have physical digital tie-ins that are unique to the platform".

Hasbro’s Chris Cocks mentioned the recent D&D Beyond acquisition: “And then we’ll add on top of that the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons in 2024, where that entertainment, consumer products, and gaming momentum will continue. So, we see a lot of growth vectors and a lot of lifts for D&D with the D&D Beyond platform being central to that.”

IcV2 has a good summary.

 

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Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
Ah right. Says it used to be 14M. This article says 17M.


Heck of a drop-off.
 

bedir than

Full Moon Storyteller
And Dallas had over 350 million viewers world wide and the RPG didn't sell... so I don't think audience number are a good judge for these sort of things. Just because you can sell Funko Pops doesn't mean you can sell a game to those same people.
The Walking Dead MTG product did sell. It exists. We don't have to guess
 



A d20 Walking Dead would be more an one-shot box, like Rick&Morty or Stranger Things. A list of weapons and the walkers. Here other would rathers videogames as Resident Evil or Back4Blood, with more variety in the "bestiary". Here the dark domain of Falkovnia in the rebooted version of Ravenloft would be more interesting for the players. Even you could find a list of zombie apocalypse videogames for mobiles, tablet or social net.

* A "freak" Walking Dead spin-off is possible in the demiplane of the dread. Maybe the punishment of the dark lord is to face their nemesis, "clones" of famous characters, Michonne and Negan for example. One of the curses is when somebody dies, doesn't become a "walker", but reincarnated in one of the "clones" to try vengeance against the dark lord.

In the past I suggested cybertronians(transformers) as a PC race for April Fool's.

I am afraid we will not see a d20 Star Wars d20 published by WotC again. Now the licence is by Asmodee/Fantasy-Flight-Games, and when this ended, maybe Mavel will publish its ow Star Wars using a version of system 616.

* Some fantasy sagas even being very famous aren't too easy to be adapted to d20. "Song of Fire and Fire" (Game of Thrones) is a good example of low-fantasy-level. Warhammer Fantasy or the Witcher have got different styles of magic.

* Hasbro wants D&D to be as Fortnite the king of intercompany crossovers.
 


Jer

Legend
Supporter
A d20 Walking Dead would be more an one-shot box, like Rick&Morty or Stranger Things.
I actually do think that's a niche that Wizards could exploit - boxes that contain a complete game with enough scenarios to have fun for a few different sessions. Like the Essentials Kit, but geared towards different properties rather than being a D&D all-in-one box, instead of doing an entire hardcover book line for a game.

They did actually do that back in the day - as in before 3e came out. I still have the "Dungeons and Dragons Diablo" boxed set on my shelf based on 2e AD&D and there was a StarCraft Alternity-based boxed set as well. I think there was also a 3e revision of the Diablo game after 3e was released. But for whatever reason they never went farther with it (Maybe because they got acquired by Hasbro and the plans changed?)

There's room for that kind of game, depending on how much effort they'd need to put in to developing the classes to match the setting. But the How to Host a Murder games sold single scenarios with little replay value in a box for years, so I suspect a regular cycle of that kind of game could actually work.
 
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