Whither Dungeons and Dragons?

...Or Where is the Game Heading?

If you’re reading this blog and you haven’t been living under a very sturdy rock, you know that Dungeons and Dragons has released a new edition.

D&D is the flagship of role-playing games, and when a new edition is in the works it is one of the few games in the hobby that makes the news. A reboot of an edition is a great opportunity: people who've only heard about the game or who last played it many years ago are reminded that it still exists, and as it launches, they have an opportunity to get into it in an easy way.

All of that makes the recent launch the most excitement that fans of the game have seen since, well, the last launch. The launch is over now, and so the question I’d like to raise is: “where do we go from here?”

Well to answer that, we have to talk about where “here” is, and how we got there. Buckle up, it's going to get bumpy.

Hit the WABAC for me, Sherman!

Those of you who follow the game might be asking “didn't we just do this not too long ago,” and you’d be correct. Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition launched in 2008. The previous edition launched in 2000 while the one before that was from 1989. The first edition launched in 1979.

It’s obvious that the launches are speeding up, but they’re not that out of hand: eight years is still pretty good, right? Unfortunately Fourth Edition was somewhat notorious and had virtually no products for the last two years. In fact the last major campaign book for that edition, Heroes of the Elemental Chaos, was released in February 2012. As a matter of disclosure, I liked Fourth Edition (yeah, it was a Sith Edition) and am still holding judgement on Fifth.

There are a million reasons for why all of this happened, or to be a little bit cheeky, there are 50 million of them to be exact. Fifty million dollars is the threshold for what Hasbro, who owns Wizards, defines as making a brand "competitive." Brands below that line are held onto, but production is halted with only token signature launches from time to time.

Wizards already has one $100 million brand, and that’s Magic the Gathering. That in and of itself should give the designers some leeway, but Hasbro holds each of their major brands to that 50 million number individually.

Everything is Online

The Dungeons and Dragons team thought they had an idea of how to get there: subscriptions and online play. Fourth Edition D&D was launched with the idea that it would offer a portal to subscription services for the game that would leverage the millions of players into giving them money each month.

Whether it was a good idea or not, it failed. Spectacularly. The early team that was working on the online tools exploded. It was tragic, and ended in a murder suicide. Despite restructuring and changing developers the online tools never recovered.

Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons was the edition that was meant to be played online and to showcase a whole series of online gaming options from console to handheld to MMOs. None of that materialized. It’s ironic, but the game that detractors decried as being made to be an MMO wasn't made into one until it had ended. Neverwinter, the Cryptic games MMO launched in 2013, over a year after the last Fourth Edition product came out.

The Answer is in the Courts

Why didn't that happen? In short, because Wizards and Hasbro didn't actually have the rights to produce video games based on Dungeons and Dragons then: Atari did, and they weren't producing content that showcased the edition and weren't working with Hasbro. The result was a lawsuit filed in 2009 that wasn't settled until August of 2011.

It was a rookie mistake, and could happen to anyone, right? Well yes, except that mistakes involving $50 million aren't common, and rookies don't usually play with that kind of product line.

For most of the time, the edition “designed to be an MMO” had the rights to make one hashed over in court.

And that pretty much dashed any notion of an online edition that hit that $50 million threshold, so it failed.

What do we do when we fail? If we’re Wizards, we turtle up, go into hibernation, and wait for a major milestone. Dungeons and Dragons was launched originally in 1974, so 2014 would be the 40th Anniversary … I smell a comeback!

Wizards announced Fifth Edition D&D in January of 2012. They had a huge open playtest with the promise that this new edition, “D&D Next,” would learn from the past and unite fans. They had a little over two years to make this happen, so there will be no one to stop us this time.

A Marvelous Idea

Whew. We’re almost to the present, but you’re going to have to bear with me for one more digression.

The last edition had failed with the notion of online subscriptions as the model to make the magic $50 million, so it was time for a new idea. And thus Wizards started to discuss Dungeons and Dragons in terms of the "trans-media empire" it could become.

Now you may be wondering what the heck that means, so let me explain.

Back in the early 2000s, Marvel Comics was on the verge of bankruptcy. It may be hard to imagine now, what with their having multiple billion dollar franchises, but there was a time when they were about to sell everything and pretty much close up shop. This was because comic books sales were flagging. Paper prices were way up, and their readership was down.

A savior came to Marvel, and told them that their future wasn't in comic books. In fact, they barely needed to produce any comics at all. What they needed to do was leverage their brand and make money off of every part of it.

Okay, that sounds like some sort of marketing doublespeak (and hey, I am a Sith) but bear with me. It’s not the Spiderman comics that make Marvel: it’s the products they make from it, everything from toys and games to video games to films to kids’ t-shirts and underwear. If there’s a product that you can apply the adage “make mine Marvel,” to, the odds are that you can make it yours. Stan Lee is very proud. If you don't believe me, search on Amazon for Marvel and choose "All Departments." It's all there.

The Wizards team saw this success and said: Eureka! Our future. You might think of Dungeons and Dragons as being games you play with your friends in the basement, but it’s really movies and tv shows that people who wouldn't be caught dead in that basement will spend money on. You can produce almost no product for your core audience (enough to keep the lights on) and still be successful if you make movies, television shows and bring back D&D Underoos.

It’s brilliant!

Ready for Liftoff

So we had the launch of the fifth edition in August of 2014, and the “core three” books were in stores by Christmas time. The popular media, who know nothing about Dungeons and Dragons other than the fact that some weird kid they knew in high school played it (and wasn't there some kid who got lost in the stream tunnels on some college campus...), were talking about it and giving tremendous free publicity for the launch.

There was nothing left to do but begin the launch of that trans-media empire with a high profile movie and TV project and the journey to the darkside would be complete, right?

Except.

There’s one little problem: the rights for that movie weren't something that Wizards or Hasbro owned. In fact, they were suing the people who did have the rights (Sweetpee Entertainment) along with Warner Brothers (who were negotiating with Sweetpea for the rights). Yeah, it was in the courts. Oh, and did I mention that they were also courting Universal Pictures for the Next Big Thing?

That's a mess. You have a "studio" who makes direct to Sci-Fi movies (among with them, Dungeons and Dragons: the Book of Vile Darkness) to deal with, which isn't that bad, but you also throw Warner Brothers into the mix on their side. Warner Brothers who has the money to hire real lawyers. Sounds like a recipe for a slow and expensive process.

The lawsuit has just recently been settled, although the judge has still to offer their full opinions on what it all means. Yes, this means that the launch of the game, with all it’s free publicity, happened before a deal of who can make a Dungeons and Dragons movie can even begin, let alone before a movie is actually made. And we all know that major motion pictures happen quickly, don't we?

Does this sound familiar to anyone? We have a second launch of a game when the key ingredient for success isn't ready, and won’t be ready anytime soon.

Oops.

Maybe this will all get resolved shortly to Wizards and Hasbro’s satisfaction, but that means any sort of decent movie is at least a year away, and probably two years.

Those will be two years after the glow from the edition launch has faded and everyone who isn't already playing Dungeons and Dragons has moved on to … whatever the future holds.

Lightning doesn't hold in a bottle for that long.

So Back to the Present

That’s a long segway to get you up to speed. The Fifth Edition launch happened and it’s been a success in terms of books sold. The “core three” books have sold more at launch than the last launch, which sold more than the one before it. Book sales are strong.

At the same time, those sales are as good as they’re ever going to be, and they’re never going to be that good again. Man I love that phrase. Thank you True Romance.

Why do I say that? It’s because of the nature of the market. Role-playing games have their best sales like most things: right when they’re released, where the hype is at the strongest. You get current players buying the new shiny to keep up, along with the new people who saw the publicity and want to see what all the fuss is about. It’s after that launch that sales begin to slide and you have to give people the next thing.

That’s pretty much true with every business, from cell phones to computers to cars to games and books. After the people who are hooked by your product have it, they want what’s next. Think I'm crazy? Prepare yourself for the ads from Samsung for the Next Big Thing as they launch the Galaxy 6. (Editor: As much as that dates this article, the reader can fill in "Samsung X" that comes out every year or so to keep it current).

After all, this time you're going to get all of the things you didn't get last time.

And that’s where the problem for the future is: there is no “next” for D&D Next. The trans-media empire isn't happening because, once again, Wizards and Hasbro made the goal of the edition something that they legally can’t deliver. When they can deliver it, any buzz from the edition’s launch will have long faded and you’ll be speaking to your core audience alone.

We'll have our people talk to
your people and have a meeting.

And what about that core audience? Wizards has said that the core strategy for selling this edition of D&D is to make as little supplemental material as possible. They don’t want to insult their customers by asking them to buy adventure this or supplement that. They have adopted a strange take on the Bruce Lee theory of “fighting by not fighting.” Yes, that's the actual plan.

I think this may be another case of mysteriously ignoring Step two before Step three: profit.

Man, Those gnomes get hired a lot as consultants.

The only problem is that this is a terrible idea. Without new, current product in the pipeline, a product is seen by retailers as stale. Retailers know that role-playing products sell the most they’ll ever sell right at launch and then immediately drop off. That’s why you have a constant stream of products for game lines so that both the retailers and the gamers think of the product line as supported.

You might wonder if that’s such a terrible idea: there are a lot of people who are applauding the lack of supplemental material for the game. No splatbooks has tested very well, Wizards tells us.

As much as it looks like it,
this was never a thing. And
if it was, it would have been bad

But that’s hogwash. The biggest post launch kerfuffle came when Wizards decided not to produce something called the “Adventurer’s Handbook,” which would be a book that had more classes, races and spells. It was the very definition of a splatbook. When Wizards announced that the book wasn't happening (actually they said that it never was happening, despite there being a product description and cover image--that's to your left--but never mind) people were upset, because they couldn't buy more. They liked the initial product and wanted more. They wanted what's next.

Wizards has said that the material that would have been in the non-existent product will be presented online. Perhaps much of it will, but the fact remains that there won’t be anything new for fans to buy, and that means nothing to keep the brand fresh in the minds of retailers.

Do you know what to call people who play your game but don't buy anything from you? Not. Your. Customers.

So there’s no new D&D movie coming out to keep the game in the news and bring new people in, and there’s no new product to keep the game moving for retailers. There’s nothing to keep gamers from seeing a new game as the next shiny thing and moving on. And they will. The next time you're at a retailer, take a look for older products and how they're placed. Check for a dusty, out of the way place.

In effect this launch of the game has been just like the last one: lawsuits have kept the core goal for success in the edition from happening. It’s happened again.

Hibernation, Anyone?

I’m going to add one more piece to this puzzle before I give you my final assessment. Wizards just laid off two of their longtime staffers. No problem, right? I mean they probably have hundreds of people "living the dream" and working on their games. Nope. With those layoffs, it brings the total number of people who are creatively working on the game to a total of eight.

That’s right, the flagship property in role-playing games has eight people working on it. Eight people are not enough to keep a product line the size of D&D running. It’s seven more than a lot of gaming companies have, but it’s not a $50 million dollar team.

Remember what I said earlier about what Hasbro does to properties that don’t make the $50 million cut? The launch is barely complete, and it’s already happened. D&D as a major product line has effectively been halted. The people who are looking at the line’s future have decided that it doesn't have a big enough one to warrant further releases.

Whither Dungeons and Dragons?

That was the question I asked at the beginning of this article, and so I bloody well better answer it. Dungeons and Dragons will have a few token releases to keep the lights on until the movie rights are fully secured and a big time film is in the works. I certainly hope that happens, but they don't have a strong track record with media.

You've already lost!

So, as much as it hurts to say this, I'm telling you that the Fifth Edition launch has happened and has already failed. That's harsh, but them's the way I see it. It may help if you read that last sentence with the guy on the left's voice.

If the buzz generated from the movie is strong, they’ll do more targeted releases and the product line may have a strong resurgence. So when you see a new D&D movie or animated show, watch it or the elf gets it.

If not, we won’t see much about the game until…

The next big anniversary for Dungeons and Dragons is a big one: 50 years. That’s in 2024. I predict we’ll have a major re-branding effort at that point and the goal of an even bigger trans-media empire will be attempted.

See you then.

What Does This Mean for YOU?

As a gamer, you might wonder what that means for you. In the short term it means nothing at all. If you like Fifth Edition or not, whether it succeeds or not, your game will go on. The Wizard's Police are not going to confiscate your edition and keep you from playing it and having fun in your basement.

What it means for the industry is something else. D&D carries a lot of water for the gaming industry as a whole. As much as you might not like it, Dungeons and Dragons is role-playing for the 95% of the country who's never picked up a book or played the game.

For Pathfinder players, you're the big fish right now, but in the waters of the ocean you're still a tiny fish. If D&D is marginalized in the way that it certainly seems to be, there will be fewer and fewer people getting into the hobby. And that's a sad thing indeed.

What are we going to do about it? Ah, well that is another story and for another time.

Man it feels good to be back. Until next week, Make mine 20!