Quote from: Haffrung;686514Thing about niches is without new blood they tend to get smaller. Just look at the historical hex and counter wargame hobby. Used to be massive. Games selling 200,000+ units. Clubs in every college. Then the publishers kept catering to the same aging demographic of hardcore players until it become a totally inaccessible hobby, with three map and 2,000 counter games that take 12-40 hours to play. Print runs of 1,000, mostly bought by solo collectors. RPGs are heading off the same cliff without popular commercial revitalization.

There is a wargame out there that sells well year in and year out.  Axis and Allies.  It's just that to the grognards, it's anathema.

Quote from: jadrax;686529It basically doesn't cater to older players. The whole business works on sucking in new players, selling them a lot of expansive items, and then discarding them in favour of new customers.

Like a "teen idol" rock star?

(ie. New Kids on the Block, Leif Garrett, N'Sync, Tiffany, Justin Bieber, etc ...).

:rolleyes:

Quote from: ggroy;686518If they can't make any headway with the D&D ip, will they sell it or shelve it?

All the while with Courtney Solomon continuing to destroy the value of the D&D ip.  :rolleyes:

Tell me about it.  Maybe he thinks his movies are cool to himself and his posse of yes men, but to the greater population those things are drek.  And worse than that, they make the RPG hobby look even worse because he keeps putting that crap out.

If he hasn't learned that hackneyed dialogue and terrible plot won't work by now, he'll never learn.  He has to let the IP go, or we'll end up with more movies that make the Battleship flick look like the work of genius.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;686534There is a wargame out there that sells well year in and year out.  Axis and Allies.  It's just that to the grognards, it's anathema.

I can see axis and allies catching the players that like wargames but arn't into the really hardcore wargames like advanced squad leader, longest day, star fleet battles; etc...

I am a huge fan of wargames and I also love axis and allies and shogun, that entire series of games.

Quote from: robiswrong;686503Totally.  Ironically, early D&D tended to be grimdark, and I think an interesting strategy for revitalizing the brand would be to re-emphasize that aspect of the game - which would also appeal to traditionalists.

My hope is that Next leans this direction, but I haven't read the rules really well enough to make that judgement.



I'm sure they'd care about a $50M brand.  And I think D&D can be at least a $50M brand, if managed properly.  A large part of that may be just the IP value of the brand.  Keeping the RPG current in many ways may be a loss leader to license the brand for computer/video games.



Meh.  I'm not a 3x fan, and I think that, in the larger scope, PF will maintain itself as a niche.  I think there's just too much barrier to entry.

What I see as more likely is that Hasbro decides to sell off either WotC or just D&D, and a smaller shop that *will* be happy with smaller numbers ends up buying it and running with it.  I don't know if that's Paizo, for the reasons I've given above.

Paizo isn't going to buy D&D; that'd be like killing off Pathfinder.  If anything, I'd expect WotC and/or D&D would be sold to a partnership of rich geeks (like Silicon Valley rich) who want to rescue the brand.  That's probably the best result, but I'm not exactly counting on it.  What would be most likely would be that Hasbro will shelve the brand for a decade, putting out D&D themed Monopoly and ilk, and then revive it some years later.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;686540Paizo isn't going to buy D&D; that'd be like killing off Pathfinder.  If anything, I'd expect WotC and/or D&D would be sold to a partnership of rich geeks (like Silicon Valley rich) who want to rescue the brand.  That's probably the best result, but I'm not exactly counting on it.  What would be most likely would be that Hasbro will shelve the brand for a decade, putting out D&D themed Monopoly and ilk, and then revive it some years later.

How much would it cost to 'Buy' DND?

Maybe I'll win $400 million at powerball.

Quote from: Bill;686539I can see axis and allies catching the players that like wargames but arn't into the really hardcore wargames like advanced squad leader, longest day, star fleet battles; etc...

I am a huge fan of wargames and I also love axis and allies and shogun, that entire series of games.

While I like Axis and Allies, it's one of two of that old Gamesmaster line that still published by Hasbro.  Shogun is now called Ilkusa.)  They farmed out the IP for Fortress America to FFG and Conquest to Glenn Drover of Eagle Games (now out of print again), and Broadsides & Boarding Parties has been mouldering since the mid-80s.

Hasbro never seemed to truly understand what they had in terms of games outside of A&A, which they've leveraged to the hilt.

And let's not talk about all the old Avalon Hill IP they're sitting on, just because they can.

Quote from: Bill;686543How much would it cost to 'Buy' DND?

Maybe I'll win $400 million at powerball.

I doubt Hasbro is selling it any time soon.  They'd need to a big amount of cash dangled in front of their faces to consider it, and any partnership willing to buy D&D would probably want M:tG along for the ride.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;686546I doubt Hasbro is selling it any time soon.  They'd need to a big amount of cash dangled in front of their faces to consider it, and any partnership willing to buy D&D would probably want M:tG along for the ride.

Unless it was an idiot like me that won powerball and just wanted dnd and not magic

Quote from: jadrax;686529It basically doesn't cater to older players. The whole business works on sucking in new players, selling them a lot of expansive items, and then discarding them in favour of new customers.

Case in point: they produced $202,564,792 in revenue


$4,174,999 - was paints alone in the month of April of last year.

$29,379,626 - in total profits after everything else is accounted for.

But they have nice perks for their store managers who meet their quotas - profit sharing, manager bonuses, at least according to their investment packets. But it also explains why *everything* is aggressively pushed at you when you walk in the door.

And frankly I think their stores generally suck. But I'm spoiled by my own FLGS.

Quote from: xech;686522I wonder how Games Workshop manages it with its warhammer games.

GW ruthlessly targets a certain demographic, 13-20 year old men, to the exclusion and even near hostility to older players.

In short, GW fires it's fan base every 5-7 years like clockwork.

The joke used to be that GW had to get as much money out of someone as possible before they discovered girls.

Quote from: Piestrio;686553GW ruthlessly targets a certain demographic, 13-20 year old men, to the exclusion and even near hostility to older players.

In short, GW fires it's fan base every 5-7 years like clockwork.

The joke used to be that GW had to get as much money out of someone as possible before they discovered girls.

 It's a tough choice. Assembling a painted squad of Dark Eldar and dominating in combat or....girls.

Quote from: tenbones;686552And frankly I think their stores generally suck. But I'm spoiled by my own FLGS.

It is a mistake to view them as just stores. They are essentially a babysitting service that will take your annoying kid off you while you go shopping in exchange for a ton of cash spent on bits.

Well, first off, the currency I would use to buy D&D from Hasbro is the next hot toy.  You'd hit the point where you'd need their resources to take it to the next level anyhow.  And I'd ask for all properties tied to TSR, not just D&D.  Magic and Pokemon they can keep.

There'd be a D&D basic set that would look a lot like The Practical Guide to Dragons very shortly thereafter.  Mechanically it would be pretty close to red book basic but with a few more spells and hitpoints at first level.

As for Games Workshop, I expect them to really start hurting from Kickstarter driven competition in the next year or two.  Sooner or later someone will do it better, cheaper, slicker and without all the baggage and they won't have the capacity to respond to it.  Mantic might even get there though I think there'd need to be a new edition of Kings of War that patches some things for that to happen.

However, I'll go out on a limb and guess that the winner will be the first one to bring a functional and physically attractive wargame to market that appeals to boys and girls.  Jetisoning half the population is madness.

Quote from: David Johansen;686566Well, first off, the currency I would use to buy D&D from Hasbro is the next hot toy.  You'd hit the point where you'd need their resources to take it to the next level anyhow.  And I'd ask for all properties tied to TSR, not just D&D.  Magic and Pokemon they can keep.

There'd be a D&D basic set that would look a lot like The Practical Guide to Dragons very shortly thereafter.  Mechanically it would be pretty close to red book basic but with a few more spells and hitpoints at first level.

As for Games Workshop, I expect them to really start hurting from Kickstarter driven competition in the next year or two.  Sooner or later someone will do it better, cheaper, slicker and without all the baggage and they won't have the capacity to respond to it.  Mantic might even get there though I think there'd need to be a new edition of Kings of War that patches some things for that to happen.

However, I'll go out on a limb and guess that the winner will be the first one to bring a functional and physically attractive wargame to market that appeals to boys and girls.  Jetisoning half the population is madness.

Yeah, those bra manufacturers are crazy the way they jettison half the population...