D&D General A Dent in 1.3 Billion? A Crossroads for Multimedia?

[Scott Christian]

Just a hypothetical: If Critical Role and a few other top broadcasts/podcasts teamed up to create their own roleplaying game, how much of a dent would it put into D&D sales?

The way I see it, it is now or never if they ever want to trailblaze on the company side of the screen. Soon, I feel most of these groups will be locked into promotional style contracts, complete with tours and non-compete clauses.

So warm up those scrying devices and tell me what you see.

 

[Iry]

Honestly nothing. I know that's not what you are asking, but Matt has been very loyal to the D&D brand and I see that continuing into the future. He's absolutely in a great position to start his own roleplaying system (ala Pathfinder) thanks to his enormous following, Darrington Press, and the fact that he already has to scrub the IP from his own published content.

But the man just doesn't want to. He's faithful. He might make a secondary product, but I don't see him swapping to running it in the majority as long as he is still at the DM table. I have no doubt he's aware that D&D as a name has an enormous amount of nostalgia power behind it, and the two benefit each other in a very symbiotic way right now. They are literally feeding into each other's success in a major way.

Now, this might change if WotC becomes more adversarial, or he sees them going in a direction he dislikes. But right now? He seems pretty happy.

 

[Jer]

Just a hypothetical: If Critical Role and a few other top broadcasts/podcasts teamed up to create their own roleplaying game, how much of a dent would it put into D&D sales?

I don't think it would make an impact and I don't think any of the top folks would want to do it because they don't really want to be game designers, they want to be (and are) entertainers. They might dabble in game design but they don't want to start their own game company.

But even if they did, I don't think it would make much of a dent. They'd have the same problems that every other game company has - how do you get your product in front of people to buy it, how do you write your game to make it easy for them to learn - and in the end even big IP properties like Star Wars have struggled with those issues in the last few decades.

 

[dave2008]

I will agree with @Iry and @Jer and say not much. The fan base of critical role, though large, is still less than 10% of DD players.

 

[Oofta]

I don't think it would have a big impact and I don't see why they would do it anyway. It seems like they're quite happy to do their streaming thing and publish setting books. I don't think they ever "compete" with WOTC in any significant way, it's more of a mutually beneficial arrangement.

As far as "scrubbing their IP", I don't see any of that. Matt likes to create custom monsters and change the fluff of some monsters to better fit the story. Other than coming up with new classes or sub classes, I do the same thing all the time.

 

[Iry]

As far as "scrubbing their IP", I don't see any of that. Matt likes to create custom monsters and change the fluff of some monsters to better fit the story. Other than coming up with new classes or sub classes, I do the same thing all the time.

It's something he has needed to do for his Non-WotC published products. Like both the Tal'Dorei books making sure they don't specifically include major name monsters from WotC, or how Legend of Vox Machina needed to change all the major IP spells into serial-number-free versions of the same things. This goes all the way to depicting Hotis as a regular tiger man instead of the iconic Rakshasa, keeping Vecna as the Whispered One, Melora as the Wildmother, Erathis as the Lawbearer, Pathfinder's Serenrae as the Everlight, and one of the reasons why (among several reasons) they didn't start with Kraghammer because of all the Mindflayers and Beholders.

Their relationship has been so mutually beneficial I doubt WotC would actually fuss at him, but there's some legal expectation for an IP holder to protect their assets that WotC probably just doesn't want to deal with, and some 'asking for permission' aspects that Matt probably just doesn't want to deal with. So Matt does some light scrubbing, WotC looks the other way, and everyone is happy.

 

[bedir than]

Would entertainers like to threaten their income doing the thing they love by doing a thing they aren't trained or practiced in?

No

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

D&D is a game too focused in the crunch to get serious rivals, and the closest one to this is Paizo's Pathfinder. And to create a new system to be the rival of d20 system is too hard, better to enjoy the adventages of the open licence, or even a partnership with WotC.

 

[overgeeked]

Just a hypothetical: If Critical Role and a few other top broadcasts/podcasts teamed up to create their own roleplaying game, how much of a dent would it put into D&D sales?

The way I see it, it is now or never if they ever want to trailblaze on the company side of the screen. Soon, I feel most of these groups will be locked into promotional style contracts, complete with tours and non-compete clauses.

So warm up those scrying devices and tell me what you see.

I’m of two minds on this. One, if Critical Role came out with their own RPG it would eat D&D 5E’s lunch. Because the majority of the resurgent interest in D&D is from CR. The fans who disliked 4E came back for 5E, but 5E wouldn’t have lit the world on fire as it has without CR. Two, it would put a small but noticeable dent in D&D as CR has made avid fans of D&D from the avid fans of CR. The Call of Cthulhu one-shot CR did had a huge positive impact on Chaosium. CR could do quite well with an RPG of their own, but I doubt it would be more than a few percentage points off WotC’s sales.

 

[Amrûnril]

I feel like this question is putting the cart before the horse. How would this hypothetical game be different from D&D? What, from the perspective of its creators and target audience, would be its advantages? Personal/professional loyalty on the part of prospective developers, and inertia on the part of players aren't trivial concerns, but they don't ultimately matter until there's a compelling argument on the other side of the scale.