Quote from: David JohansenFor another it would take vision and significant financial backing.

I'm not sure about that last bit. It seems to me that Vampire rose to second place without having scads of money thrown at it.

Personally, I think D&D is the king of the hill because people like it. It meets their needs.

If some game were going to supplant D&D, it would have to stop meeting their needs and the new game would have to start.

Quote from: David JohansenIt would have to be advertised heavily on TV to kids.

I disagree. I don't think creating a new generation of gamers would overthrow the preferences of the existing one. They're drawn in too many directions to be helpful.

Seanchai

Quote from: KoltarSo, if D&D is "Coca-Cola"

 Then what game is the "Mountain Dew"

Vampire, or if you prefer, the whole World of Darkness chain. The flavor is different enough that it captures a decent portion of the market, and if WotC were to try to make D&D taste like WoD it would fail miserably.

The analogy can even be twisted just a little bit to show how New WoD (Monte Cooke's d20) bombed and they opted not to pursue the line.

QuoteWhat Hasbro really wants to be, 5 years from now, is WoW with D&D IP....

people keep saying this, and yet, it still fails to make any sense whatsoever when you consider that Hasbro sold the interactive rights to Atari until 2015.  And allowed Atari/Turbine to get away with the utter abortion that is D&D Online.  If they were really serious about competing with WoW, do you really think they'd have been stupid enough to do either of those things?

Frankly, I think people drastically overstate the influence that Hasbro has on the workings of Wizards themselves, and there's no better proof of that than the whole digital initiative business, because if the higherups were at all aware of the virtual tabletop business they'd be shitting a brick, because Atari is desperate for cash and would absolutely salivate at the possibility of nailing Hasbro to the wall for breach of contract.

That's interesting, J - I didn't know that.  When did they sell the rights?

Never mind J, I did some googling....

Hasbro sold off Hasbro Interactive in 2001. After a promising start, this portion of Hasbro posted dismal numbers in 1999 and Hasbro got hammered in the dot com bust in 2000.

WoW came out in 2004.  While Warcraft existed as a single player computer game for years before, the MMORPG did not arrive until 2004.

So it's possible that Hasbro never foresaw the use of the technology, MMORPG, as a viable risk - especially given the losses of 1999. Now they see what they can do by marrying the technology with the IP.

I also saw, paging through google results, some reference to Hasbro buying back a bunch of the stuff they sold off in 2001. I'll see if I can find a decent source for that...

Quote from: flyingmiceNo.

-clash

What he said.

Quote from: J ArcaneFrankly, I think people drastically overstate the influence that Hasbro has on the workings of Wizards themselves, and there's no better proof of that than the whole digital initiative business,

Fun fact: It was Hasbro, not WOTC, who decided Dungeon and Dragon had to switch from print to online.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityFun fact: It was Hasbro, not WOTC, who decided Dungeon and Dragon had to switch from print to online.

How do you know this?

I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityI could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

If you do....salvage the pipe first....

Quote from: J ArcaneFrankly, I think people drastically overstate the influence that Hasbro has on the workings of Wizards themselves...

I dunno, man.  Every time I meet someone who works for WotC -- and I do from time to time -- they invariably identify themselves as working "for a division of Hasbro".  I'm guessing they're pushing corporate identity pretty hard.  Wizards is Hasbro.

!i!

See, Transformers was one booklet and a die away from having a game when it came out, there were stats on the packaging and everything.

Package "imaginative play aids" like adventures and some rough guidelines with a line of modular action figures, add a big TV show with bad animation and there you go, you've got a mass market rpg coming from an entirely different industry.  We've already seen a fair bit of wargame like products from heroscape to attacktics in the toy stores.  It wouldn't take much to create an rpg.

Quote from: James J SkachThe question is, will 4e do something not seen before - differentiate itself enough, that is (as Pundit points out), narrow it's scope significantly enough (either by accident or design), that you could make a "bog-standard" fanatasy game that was different enough from D&D to pick up the people not included in the new, narrower focus.  How many people will that be? Will the new edition of the game be differentiated/focused enough that a new slot essentially opens up?

Too soon to tell, but I'm betting on, at the very least, a small community of folks who do not move with the edition.

And you would be totally right that there will be a small community of discontents. Where I'm skeptical is whether a single "bog standard" frpg will pick them up.

Most likely, some of them will go to former editions of D&D (from OD&D to 3.x), others will go to their old favorites, others to one of the gazillion frpgs out there.

The only credible scenario I can see for another rpg to to eclipse DnD in terms of sales would be where 4e did not meet Hasbro's revenue expectations leading them to take it off the market but where they chose to retain the IP in case later projects suggested themselves.

At that point, DnD would be out of print and likely to remain so, I'd expect the market then to fragment, I'd also expect the rpg market to shrink heavily over time as a result.

Quote from: James J SkachDo I need to bring up New Coke?

Yes, please bring up New Coke.  Then we can talk all about the advantages D&D has over Coke as a dominant brand:

Coke is a disposable, multiple-purchase item.  You buy a can/bottle/cup of Coke, drink it, and it's gone.  You can try an alternative to Coke once with almost zero impact on your overall Coke purchasing habits (unless you prefer the alternative).  You don't need to invest any time or effort in learning how to drink Coke, and once you're a Coke drinker you don't need to relearn how to drink Coke-alternatives should you want to try them.  There is no meaningful barrier preventing Coke drinkers from trying Coke-alternatives, other than availability (and indeed, availaiblity is the biggest advantage Coke has over Pepsi -- it's superior sales numbers are driven in large part due to restaurants and similar venues which carry Coke products exclusively).

D&D is a persistent, single-purchase item; you buy the books once and continue to use them virtually forever (as many 1e players will happily tell you).  There is a not-insignificant investment in money, time and effort involved in purchasing and using the D&D product, and even if you know how to play D&D there will be a similar investment in money, time and effort required should you wish to sample an alternative to D&D.  This represents a meaningful barrier to competition for D&D-alternatives.  That's why they based a whole product marketing and development strategy around the phenomenon... it was called d20, and you may have heard of it.

KoOS