Quote from: JongWKTSR refusing to license AD&D to a Japanese company that had a new manga series inspired by it. In the end, the Japanese published their own game.

The manga's name? Record of Lodoss War. :rolleyes:

Ouch.

Quote from: JongWKThe manga's name? Record of Lodoss War. :rolleyes:

Damn, I had no idea.  

Lodoss is also the best representation to date of D&D on TV/film.  You can pretty much tell the class/race of everyone involved.

The biggest? TSR and D&D. A royal fuck-up in the grand style. Confused, confusing, too many settings and too many contradictory rules. Then the company pissed away the money they made on half-assed schemes and vindictive fits.

The settlement with GDW and Omega Helios regarding the Dangerous Journeys line involved a payment by TSR in the 7 figures. This at a time when TSR owed money to their printer, and was still defending against copyright suits brought against TSR by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax.

You want to beat the Lorraine Williams TSR as the biggest fuck-ups in RPG history, you're gonna have to work at it.

West End Games fucked up their Star Wars license by trying to keep a shoe company afloat.  Just before the new (crappy) movies came out.

Quote from: droogChaosium blew earlier opportunities too. RQ was highly popular at one time, second only to D&D in fantasy and vying for second overall popularity with Traveller. The supplements were groundbreaking and great to play in. That's when any sensible company...sells their RPG to a wargame company?

Yup... Chaosium: first rate game-designers, third-rate businessmen at best.
When your greatest accomplishment in the last 10 years is "Not going under", that's a pretty sorry state of affairs.

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Quote from: jrientsI actually think Chaosium blew it biggest with Dragonlords of Melnibone, their d20 fantasy outing.  They could have planted their flag as the one true way for dark fantasy d20 gaming.  Instead, they blew their wad on a slipshod project.

Agreed. It was done with such utter lack of effort that I would almost suspect that they did it as an exercise in trying to "prove" that D20 wasn't a good system, by making a crappy D20 book.

QuoteAn even bigger lost opportunity was Decipher's inability to capitalize on the LotR movies.  They had a license already signed for a megahit movie trilogy.  Why didn't that game break big?  Why wasn't more product on the shelves at the release of the second and third films?

This one was a huge blunder.  Not making it D20 was a huge part of that blunder.

QuoteBut the biggest blunder in the history of the hobby would have to be the wargaming companies passing on OD&D when Gygax and crew shopped around the manuscript.  Back then I can see not wanting to take a chance, but hindsight is pretty unforgiving on this one.

Ehhh, this one is more forgiveable. In the other cases we're talking about, the people involved had to KNOW that they had a license to print money, and they flushed it down the toilet anyways. Whereas blaming the wargame companies in this instance is a bit like blaming the record companies that passed on the Beatles; at the time, they had no way of knowing. It was a lack of vision, but it wasn't a case where they were literally offered a sackful of money and choose to light it on fire knowing what was inside.

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I think chaosium really blew a lot of great chancers, like ringworld. They could have ran with one of the most popular series in SF, known space, but didn't.

I guess they wanted to be "The call of cthulhu game company". Well, they got their wish.

Quote from: jrients... An even bigger lost opportunity was Decipher's inability to capitalize on the LotR movies.  They had a license already signed for a megahit movie trilogy.  Why didn't that game break big?  Why wasn't more product on the shelves at the release of the second and third films? ....

Bingo.

Quote from: fonkaygarryI'll toss my money in with D20 CoC.  The layout's gorgeous, the rules are tight and the setting's perfectly presented.  Near the end of the book there's a breakdown of all the shitty things that happened in the 20th century that's probably the best historical writing in an RPG ever.  The stats for using the Mythos gods in D&D was just icing on the meatball sub.

Chaosium didn't just drop that ball; they cut it open, shit inside it and threw it off the end of a pier.  The sooner those marvels of capitalism just hand the game line over to their German counterparts, the better off CoC will be.  (I sometimes wonder if the boys at Chaosium shit themselves in terror at the idea of CoC getting popular and the buying public forcing them to publish something other than short fiction anthologies.)

KrakaJak makes a fine point, though.  What in the hell is WotC doing with all that setting info?  Their MtG guys write massive style bibles for the worlds they set the game in, there's a metric fuckton of official art that's already paid for...  I hope there's an angle I just don't see.

I had no idea that the COC d20 book was worth anything at all on the collector market. It's just been sitting on my shelf. I agree that it was a nice product and deserved better support all around.

Decipher, like I was just saying to Mr. Analytical, is another bunch of foot-shooting nimrods. I mean, how on Earth do you manage to not make a bundle on a LOTR title, especially one that uses images and other intellectual property from the wildly successful movies? Support was non-existent, that's how.

I'm starting to feel the same way about the "Serenity" rpg.

Quote from: LostSoulWest End Games fucked up their Star Wars license by trying to keep a shoe company afloat.  Just before the new (crappy) movies came out.

A shoe company? :eyepop: Any sites I can get more info on this? sounds too good not to read up on.

WotC's take on D&D.

I felt like it ditched every single thing I (and a lot of others) loved about the game.

Thank Zagyg for Castles & Crusades.

Quote from: cnath.rmA shoe company? :eyepop: Any sites I can get more info on this? sounds too good not to read up on.

The story is that, somewhere along the line, WEG was acquired by a shoe company.  WEG was actually stable, despite a string of not exactly well received game engines and licenses.  The shoe company, however, was not financially stable, and the owners siphoned money off WEG to keep their shoe business alive.  In the end, the shoe company went out of business and the owners left WEG bankrupt and in total disarray.

Another possible entry for a missed opportunity is the Gundam RPG.

Way back in 1999 or 2000, Mike Pondsmith of R Talsorian games announced a mecha gamer's dream come true.    R Talsorian had acquired the rights for a North American Gundam RPG.  The game would be a translation of a Japanese RPG which was in turn a licensed use of the Mekton game system.  It would cover the Universal Century era from 0079 to 0083.

At the time, Gundam was a tangible market force in the US.  Gundam Wing had performed well on cable TV.  While the original Gundam wasn't doing all that well on TV, there were some steady toy sales.  The franchise was popular with the right age bracket and awareness was fairly high.  Even better was that at the time (and even now) there was no actively promoted mecha RPG on the market.

Of course, it all fell apart somehow.  Early on, the same excuse as was given for the cancellation of completed Mekton products was given for the cancellation of the Gundam RPG.  Namely that R Talsorian didn't have a big market presence, and that Gundam simply wasn't a recognizable enough brand name to convince distributors to carry the product.  R Tal needed to warm the waters a bit with a well known product like Cyberpunk V3 first.

Over time, that explanation was abadoned and the rationale became that R Talsorian didn't have enough money to pay the translators, so the book was never completed.

Whatever the reason, the Gundam RPG was stillborn.  R Talsorian lost the license.  And Cyberpunk V3 hasn't exactly taken gaming by storm.

Quote from: GabrielThe story is that, somewhere along the line, WEG was acquired by a shoe company.  WEG was actually stable, despite a string of not exactly well received game engines and licenses.  The shoe company, however, was not financially stable, and the owners siphoned money off WEG to keep their shoe business alive.  In the end, the shoe company went out of business and the owners left WEG bankrupt and in total disarray.

Things are actually reversed. The original owner of WEG inherited (or was involved with) his family's shoe import business. Using money from that business, he started WEG. IIRC, as long as WEG made a profit or at least didn't lose too much money, he could use the shoe company to keep it afloat. Through a bit of bad luck and a few bad decisions with licenses, WEG started losing money at the same time that the shoe company hit a rough spot.

I'd like to see a Ghost in the shell game, but not for d20, for the love of god not d20!!!