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

[Scott Christian]

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.

I think those are all good questions. I was just thinking of a hypothetical. Motive has been brought up quite a bit, and there doesn't really seem to be one. But if there was, say a publisher offering them a percentage of sales, that might alter the minds of a few people.

 

[Parmandur]

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.

That's the thing, though, Critical Role's audience is a small, though not insignificant, part of the 5E playerbase. 5E sales excel their viewership tremendously.

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.

Given the multiple books Critical Role is doing with WotC, I feel there very well may be a specific contractual arrangement in place that is guiding IP usage and boundaries. The Critical Role crew are pretty savvy about IP and legal obligations.

 

[Iry]

Given the multiple books Critical Role is doing with WotC, I feel there very well may be a specific contractual arrangement in place that is guiding IP usage and boundaries. The Critical Role crew are pretty savvy about IP and legal obligations.

Oh yeah. I would not be surprised in the slightest if Matt has sat down with Chris, Jeremy, and a few others and basically had a conversation about "We're going in a kid friendly direction, so I don't think either of us want to have CR folded under the WotC umbrella. But you're doing great work and have the unofficial thumbs up from us!"

 

[bedir than]

Oh yeah. I would not be surprised in the slightest if Matt has sat down with Chris, Jeremy, and a few others and basically had a conversation about "We're going in a kid friendly direction, so I don't think either of us want to have CR folded under the WotC umbrella. But you're doing great work and have the unofficial thumbs up from us!"

There's no indication that Call of the Netherdeep is kid friendly

 

[Parmandur]

There's no indication that Call of the Netherdeep is kid friendly

It is likely more PG-13 as written than the Legend of Vox Machina cartoon. The Wildemount book was more PG-13 than the Mighty Nein campaign, for that matter.

WotC has a PG-13 goal for their publications, given the preponderance of middle and high school players. Critical Role is a R-rated brand, sometimes sophomorically so.

 

[aco175]

I would ask how Pathfinder did/does against the D&D brand? There was the impression that they took a big chunk of the players when 4e came out. I wonder how many stayed with Pathfinder2 from the amount that came to 5e. I do not think that there would be a slight dent in the overall numbers.