Would D&D be better off in the public domain?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I quoted things that would do so- modification of PI, use without attribution, etc.

Those may seem to be tiny things, but if it costs you the chance of recouping your investment in releasing a product...

 

[Lanefan]

I agree with some previous posters that the D&D brand really needs to be owned/controlled by the same people who produce the product, for two reasons:

1. They are more likely to care about the game/hobby/industry (example: Adkison WotC vs. Hasbro WotC)
2. They are more likely to see it as more than a job, which always reflects in the end product.

D&D being fully in the public domain reads well but I think plays badly - someone has to be at the helm. That said, if said person(s) at the helm made the IP fully public domain but kept the name (thus allowing anyone to put out whatever they wanted using D&D's IP as long as it didn't say D&D on it) I think the hobby would explode - in a good way. Yes there would be a lot of garbage produced; but the market would soon enough take care of that, and all editions/versions/varieties could be supported to the exact extent those who wished to support them could do so.

Lanefan

 

[Orius]

I honestly can't say what would be best for the game's future.

I'm not sure being owned by Hasbro is necessarily a good thing, D&D doesn't seem to have a lot in common with its other brands. You've got toy brands tht they can shelf for a few years when the current generation of kids grow out of it and they bring back when those kids have kids, and there's perennial board games like Monopoly. Then you've got Magic, but as a TCG, it can keep releasing new card sets every few months, it's kind of designed like that.

D&D I don't think has the same sort of market. You can't re-release the rulebooks every few years, I dobut the market isn't big enough for that. And 5e or whatever next is being released so soon after 4e doesn't fill me with confidence, it feels more like 4e was a failure (I'm not saying it was a failure, but this is pretty fast for a turnover in the RPG market, it was what, only 3 or 4 years?). Hasbro can set a 50 million mark for the less profitable brands, but it's doubtful D&D can consistantly hit that; it might be able to in a very good year particularly when a new edition is released, but every year doesn't seem likely to me at all. Releasing new editions too often tends to make the playerbase too suspicious (like how people though 3.5 was just a money grab), but there's only so many new sourcebooks and accessory proucts you can release because there's ever-diminising reutrns.

That doesn't mean D&D is absolutely worthless, it has name recognition and can be a valuable IP, but it probably can't be marketed the same way Hasbro handles stuff like Transformers or (gag) My Little Pony. It's not a toy that's going to be popular for a few years every generation, or a popular board game that's always going to be selling copies all the time, but the players like to stick with it for the long haul. Licensing can probably be a decent source of profit if they release things like video games under the brand that are good and pull in money. But there's also big potential for failure like the infamous movie.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

(snip all sorts of good stuff) (snip) That doesn't mean D&D is absolutely worthless, it has name recognition and can be a valuable IP, but it probably can't be marketed the same way Hasbro handles stuff like Transformers or (gag) My Little Pony. (snip)

I think your points are all right on the money.

I honestly don't believe that the tabletop RPG market is ever going to produce the numbers that Hasbro wants. So, as you correctly point out, that means finding other ways to extract value from the IP.

The big money is going to be in CRPGs and movies but WotC needs to find the right production partners for both and, yes, that's also an enormous gamble. However, you look at the Drizzt schlock and its enormous fanbase and you cannot help but wonder why nobody has made a serious effort to turn that into a movie trilogy. Oh, and once a (decent) movie is rolled out, then Hasbro can provide its real expertise: movie-themed toys.

As for the tabletop RPG, license it out on reasonable terms and keep the additional IP generated as content for later movies and CRPGs.