Pitch Your D&D Killers

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What if one of Gary's sons relaunched TSR and promised to rediscover the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons? He could even partner with some kind of hobby museum to harness nostalgia. Surely that would be a serious contender?
 
Spellslinging Sellsword said:
I do think Marvel could overtake D&D with a good game that is fairly easy for casual play. Do people consider Icons easy to get into as a game? If so, maybe Marvel publishing their own game along the lines of an rpg like Icons but using their own Marvel IP and art.
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ICONS was largely built on TSR's Marvel Super Heroes so that would take things full circle.

That does raise the point, their was a casual, beginner-friendly Marvel game, supported by the biggest roleplaying game publisher. Along with the more traditional campaign play, MSH also supported a casual, skrimish drop-figures-on-a-map-and-fight play mode. And it was reasonably successful, it just didn't make it to the top somehow.
 
I still think the thing that holds Superheroes back as an RPG genre is how much people like character progression in their RPGs. The Superhero genre just aren't really built around that outside of a few exceptions.
 
EmperorNorton said:
I still think the thing that holds Superheroes back as an RPG genre is how much people like character progression in their RPGs. The Superhero genre just aren't really built around that outside of a few exceptions.
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I could see if you bypassed RPG fans and went straight for marvel fans it might be something that could take off. I don't watch superhero movies so it is a genre I know little about. But in the hobby it always has seemed a little niche. Yet as Rob points out, it is surging in the culture. I would think rather than focus on growing in power you'd probably want to focus on things like character development and the sorts of things fans expect from the movies that are out. Also there have been other types of entertainment in the past that reached audiences for genres like this. The bookshelf games for example. My aunt is definitely not a gamer, but a murder mystery fan and she has two or three murder mystery book shelf games.
 
There's a lot of reasons superheroes would never stand a chance overtaking D&D.

I'd list them, but I'm not in th mood. But I think one of the most obvious is...

OK, picture in your mind a typical dungeoncrawl. Now picture a typical Call of Cthulhu mystery. Now picture a standard Shadowrun.
Now.....try to picture a typical superhero adventure...

....yeah, that's one of the main reasons why.
 
Spellslinging Sellsword said:
I do think Marvel could overtake D&D with a good game that is fairly easy for casual play. Do people consider Icons easy to get into as a game? If so, maybe Marvel publishing their own game along the lines of an rpg like Icons but using their own Marvel IP and art.
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Marvel could but this game that’s coming out next year by them will not do the trick. It’s way too clunky and some of the design decisions by Matt Forbeck make no sense.
 
Ok, here’s my pitch for a D&D Killer: genre is kitchen-sink modern/urban fantasy including witches and wizards, vampires and werewolves, psychics, martial artists, elves, cat-people, half-demons, mutants, monster hunters and paranormal investigators, rich vigilante inventors, aliens, and more. Characters start out with an archetype/template but are highly customizable and there’s an elaborate lifepath system that gives every character a full backstory so every character is very detailed and unique and cool even before play starts.

The premise is that a repressive government/corporate/religious authority is imprisoning and killing all of the weirdos so all the disparate traditions of weirdos are forced to work together to resist and overcome them - it’s simple enough to be instantly grasped but also has tons of lore that players can dive deep into. There’s roleplaying relationship stuff, mystery stories to solve, and lots of action and fighting. There’s a multiverse with lots of alternate worlds that is gradually revealed.

The rule mechanics are medium-crunch but it doesn’t matter so much because everything is done online, via a website and a mobile app. Basic tier (creating and storing a handful of characters) is free - higher tiers cost a subscription fee and add more features. There’s an “arena” for PvP duels, there’s in-character chat areas including shops and clubs and such, and there are pay-to-play “stories” run by pro GMs with new seasons every few months that push the metaplot forward. There’s a companion animated show and comics and other ancillary merch. There’s a VR component.

If someone is willing to invest a ton of time and money into developing this and hires sufficiently talented people that it all actually works and doesn’t suck, I think you might have something that could take on D&D.
 
T. Foster said:
Ok, here’s my pitch for a D&D Killer: genre is kitchen-sink modern/urban fantasy including witches and wizards, vampires and werewolves, psychics, martial artists, elves, cat-people, half-demons, mutants, monster hunters and paranormal investigators, rich vigilante inventors, aliens, and more. Characters start out with an archetype/template but are highly customizable and there’s an elaborate lifepath system that gives every character a full backstory so every character is very detailed and unique and cool even before play starts.

The premise is that a repressive government/corporate/religious authority is imprisoning and killing all of the weirdos so all the disparate traditions of weirdos are forced to work together to resist and overcome them - it’s simple enough to be instantly grasped but also has tons of lore that players can dive deep into. There’s roleplaying relationship stuff, mystery stories to solve, and lots of action and fighting. There’s a multiverse with lots of alternate worlds that I’d gradually revealed.

The rule mechanics are medium-crunch but it doesn’t matter so much because everything is done online, via a website and a mobile app. Basic tier (creating and storing a handful of characters) is free - higher tiers cost a subscription fee and add more features. There’s an “arena” for PvP duels, there’s in-character chat areas including shops and clubs and such, and there are pay-to-play “stories” run by pro GMs with new seasons every few months that push the metaplot forward. There’s a companion animated show and comics and other ancillary merch. There’s a VR component.

If someone is willing to invest a ton of time and money into developing this and hires sufficiently talented people that it all actually works and doesn’t suck, I think you might have something that could take on D&D.
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Is that...did you just pitch World of Synnibarr ?
 
TristramEvans said:
There's a lot of reasons superheroes would never stand a chance overtaking D&D.
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Oh come on, we can't blame everything on the George Clooney's Batman.
TristramEvans said:
OK, picture in your mind a typical dungeoncrawl. Now picture a typical Call of Cthulhu mystery. Now picture a standard Shadowrun.
Now.....try to picture a typical superhero adventure...

....yeah, that's one of the main reasons why.
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I don't know. I think a creating a superhero adventure is actually quite similar to a CoC adventure.

I think the superhero equivalent of the dungeoncrawl (it its simpler incarnations, dungeons can get quite sophisticated) is the Heroclix-style skirmish game, in which the crime is just a loose pretext to move figure around a map for some good old Clobberin' Time.
 
The problem with most of the suggestions in this thread is that they are just recycling ideas that appeal to 40-60 year old gamers. Anything that's gonna knock D&D off its throne is almost certainly going to trend hard among a significantly younger, more diverse audience.

Edit: Frankly, whatever this new D&D killing thing will be, I can assure you that a great deal of the 40-60 year old crowd won't like it, won't understand it, etc.
 
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PolarBlues said:
I don't know. I think a creating a superhero adventure is actually quite similar to a CoC adventure.
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I've adapted many CoC adventures to superhero games. But the issue is that the set-up isn't archetypal to the games themselves. Superhero RPGs, on the whole, are generally horrible at giving any kind of guidance as to game structure.


PolarBlues said:
I think the superhero equivalent of the dungeoncrawl (it its simpler incarnations, dungeons can get quite sophisticated) is the Heroclix-style skirmish game, in which the crime is just a loose pretext to move figure around a map for some good old Clobberin' Time.
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Yeah, but this only highlights the lack of or inappropriateness of XP/levels as a motivator for players when emulating superheroes. The superheroes lak the inbuilt motivation of D&D-style games, and ultimately this "beat em up" set-up would be better suited to a board or videogame.
 
Spellslinging Sellsword said:
I don't think the Marvel movies are making billions of dollars off of just the 40+ crowd.
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True, but there's also been dozens of supers RPGs going all the way back to at least the 80's and they've never been able to kick out D&D either. So either supers RPGs are not gonna cut it, or there's some secret supers RPG sauce game designers haven't been able to figure out yet.
 
TristramEvans said:
No, but the folks watching the movies aren't rushing out to buy the comics either. A viewing audience doesn't translate to a gaming audience.
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No, but gamers coming home from the theatre may think, "Hey! I want to play supers!"
 
chuckdee said:
I think Marvel or DC has the potential, but they've never had the game to back it.
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Superhero games don't satisfy the acquisition element that D&D offers. Look at video games - there are so many more that nod to the tropes of D&D than those of superheroes, despite superhero other media outweighing that of kitchen sink fantasy by 100 or more to 1.

Levels and treasure gathering have proved themselves as successful engagement mechanics time and time again.
 
T. Foster said:
Ok, here’s my pitch for a D&D Killer: genre is kitchen-sink modern/urban fantasy including witches and wizards, vampires and werewolves, psychics, martial artists, elves, cat-people, half-demons, mutants, monster hunters and paranormal investigators, rich vigilante inventors, aliens, and more. Characters start out with an archetype/template but are highly customizable and there’s an elaborate lifepath system that gives every character a full backstory so every character is very detailed and unique and cool even before play starts.

The premise is that a repressive government/corporate/religious authority is imprisoning and killing all of the weirdos so all the disparate traditions of weirdos are forced to work together to resist and overcome them - it’s simple enough to be instantly grasped but also has tons of lore that players can dive deep into. There’s roleplaying relationship stuff, mystery stories to solve, and lots of action and fighting. There’s a multiverse with lots of alternate worlds that is gradually revealed.

The rule mechanics are medium-crunch but it doesn’t matter so much because everything is done online, via a website and a mobile app. Basic tier (creating and storing a handful of characters) is free - higher tiers cost a subscription fee and add more features. There’s an “arena” for PvP duels, there’s in-character chat areas including shops and clubs and such, and there are pay-to-play “stories” run by pro GMs with new seasons every few months that push the metaplot forward. There’s a companion animated show and comics and other ancillary merch. There’s a VR component.

If someone is willing to invest a ton of time and money into developing this and hires sufficiently talented people that it all actually works and doesn’t suck, I think you might have something that could take on D&D.
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I like the first two paragraphs, the business model would be a massive turn off for me.

I have run a Harry Dresden setting D&D game with both 4e and 5e. They were great fun IMNSHO
 
OK here goes, I'm not sure it could ever be a D&D killer but it would be unique and appropriately aimed for people new to RPGs.

Modern urban fantasy, the players are half fae with a wide range of backgrounds, werewolf, vampire, fairy, elf, ghost, goblin, etc. They are the defenders of humanity against more hardcore fae.

The game would have three levels of play. Any of which are optional.
First level keep it simple, characters are young adults, investigating and blocking incursions of fae and stamping out their local strongholds. Play is mainly into he real world with some going into the link worlds between Earth and the fae realms. These games are aimed more at beginner, teenage players and so need options to keep the crunch simple at first and have a bit of zero to hero growth feel as complexity adds.
Groups are encouraged to place adventures in locations that are local to themselves with guidance on how to turn local stories. history, places, news into adventures as well as a range of published adventures that can be placed in many locations without issue.

Second level the characters are more involved with the local fae world(s) and have more power this moves the game into a more political power politics game and allows more variation in the world that the PC group is exploring. It is becoming more of a superhero fantasy game.

The third level is totally gonzo out there fantasy space epic as the players can travel across the many planes of existence and get involved with the powers of of the universe.

So where is the kicker?
The basic stuff can all be pencil, dice and paper, but for more joined up play with other groups an app or web site is used.

The system is geolocating events and adventures in real places. GMs can hook up adventures, encounters, etc to real world sites so that their players and other players can encounter them through a geolocating phone app or website that allows you to walk the world.
Random encounters can be seeded by the system so players when out and about can play a pokemon go esq game.
The aim would be to create local communities of RPG players using their local environment to create and share stories, part RPG, part treasure hunt, part computer game. How you would balance any of this, I have no idea, but some form of encounters balancing to the player group in the area or online at that spot or a duck out method for encounters that are too powerful.

A GM's outer worlds are found through finding the appropriate gate point which is also geolocated and a particular outer world such as the publishers, can be accessed from many points in the world. Once there, the outer world encounters geolocate to the real world as well, so you can differentiate play levels in the same area. You walk into the local pub and suddenly your phone is showing you a cave system to explore.
 
In Japan, the D&D killer was CoC. Apparently, it has outsold all other RPG put together and this has happened in the last ten years because of a generation and gender shift. It’s possible that a game that’s already in print could overtake D&D at some point. Like others have mentioned, we probably won’t see it coming.
 
Sloth_in_a_bowl said:
OK here goes, I'm not sure it could ever be a D&D killer but it would be unique and appropriately aimed for people new to RPGs.

Modern urban fantasy, the players are half fae with a wide range of backgrounds, werewolf, vampire, fairy, elf, ghost, goblin, etc. They are the defenders of humanity against more hardcore fae.

The game would have three levels of play. Any of which are optional.
First level keep it simple, characters are young adults, investigating and blocking incursions of fae and stamping out their local strongholds. Play is mainly into he real world with some going into the link worlds between Earth and the fae realms. These games are aimed more at beginner, teenage players and so need options to keep the crunch simple at first and have a bit of zero to hero growth feel as complexity adds.
Groups are encouraged to place adventures in locations that are local to themselves with guidance on how to turn local stories. history, places, news into adventures as well as a range of published adventures that can be placed in many locations without issue.

Second level the characters are more involved with the local fae world(s) and have more power this moves the game into a more political power politics game and allows more variation in the world that the PC group is exploring. It is becoming more of a superhero fantasy game.

The third level is totally gonzo out there fantasy space epic as the players can travel across the many planes of existence and get involved with the powers of of the universe.

So where is the kicker?
The basic stuff can all be pencil, dice and paper, but for more joined up play with other groups an app or web site is used.

The system is geolocating events and adventures in real places. GMs can hook up adventures, encounters, etc to real world sites so that their players and other players can encounter them through a geolocating phone app or website that allows you to walk the world.
Random encounters can be seeded by the system so players when out and about can play a pokemon go esq game.
The aim would be to create local communities of RPG players using their local environment to create and share stories, part RPG, part treasure hunt, part computer game. How you would balance any of this, I have no idea, but some form of encounters balancing to the player group in the area or online at that spot or a duck out method for encounters that are too powerful.

A GM's outer worlds are found through finding the appropriate gate point which is also geolocated and a particular outer world such as the publishers, can be accessed from many points in the world. Once there, the outer world encounters geolocate to the real world as well, so you can differentiate play levels in the same area. You walk into the local pub and suddenly your phone is showing you a cave system to explore.
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I've been working on and off on a setting that's similar to this, sans the geolocating app stuff or characters necessarily being half-fae (although that's a character option). The basic premise is that it's the same world we live in, only magic is real, creatures of myth and folklore exist, and there's an Otherworld made up of countless "realms" overlaid over our world, separated only by a "Veil Between Realities", but regular people don't know about it. There's an entire "Hidden World" of paranormal stuff out there, where different factions wage a "Secret War" behind the shadows, including secret societies, government agencies tracking paranormal activity, monster hunting clans, hidden magical communities, otherworldly creatures living on Earth, etc. And PCs are either regular people who unwittingly stumble into this stuff, or members of some of these various factions who already knew. They can be human, or different types of magical creatures (like fey, vampires, shifters, etc., or humans with magical abilities) depending on what the campaign is about.

Adventures can take place on Earth—usually involving stuff like investigating paranormal occurrences, or tracking down monsters and stuff—or they can involve otherworldly travel, either conscious or unwitting (PCs fell down a rabbit hole and wound up in another world and now must find their way back!). There are different degrees of separation between otherworldly realms, with an initial "Crossroads" realm more directly overlaid over our world, and more distant realms going deeper into the Otherworld. And different realms are classed into various domains that define their theme, such as the Underworld, wonderlands, heavenly or infernal realms, etc.
 
Endless Flight said:
In Japan, the D&D killer was CoC. Apparently, it has outsold all other RPG put together and this has happened in the last ten years because of a generation and gender shift. It’s possible that a game that’s already in print could overtake D&D at some point. Like others have mentioned, we probably won’t see it coming.
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. . . Mythrasssssssssss . . .
 
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Endless Flight said:
In Japan, the D&D killer was CoC. Apparently, it has outsold all other RPG put together and this has happened in the last ten years because of a generation and gender shift. It’s possible that a game that’s already in print could overtake D&D at some point. Like others have mentioned, we probably won’t see it coming.
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Not exactly CoC is the best selling imported game but my understanding is that Japanese RPGs far outsell any of the imports.
 
“While Call of Cthulhu is the most popular RPG from outside of Japan, the best-selling tabletop RPG developed locally is Sword World, a fantasy game first released in 1989 that has sold hundreds of thousands of copies across multiple editions. Other popular roleplaying games created in Japan include 2019 release Shinobigami, a ‘Modern Ninja Battle’ RPG designed for one-shot sessions; “multi-genre horror” RPG inSANe that bears some similarities to Call of Cthulhu; and the superhero-themed Double Cross.”

Fromhttps://www.dicebreaker.com/games/call-of-cthulhu-rpg/news/call-of-cthulhu-dnd-japan-rpg#:~:text=Long-running series Sword World,RPG to originate in Japan.
 
lol, Sword World was D&D that used D6s because it was hard to get polyhedrals in Japan at that time
 
That’s kinda funny because supposedly the problem Capcom and TSR had with the D&D arcade games was getting the Japanese programmers to understand the D&Disms.
 
One thought that's kind of self disqualifying is that it would be nice if some kind of an OSR standard with a brand and logo could supplant D&D as number one, for largely the reasons WotC gave for the creation of the OGL in the first place: so nobody would ever again be in a position to destroy the game.
 
David Johansen said:
One thought that's kind of self disqualifying is that it would be nice if some kind of an OSR standard with a brand and logo could supplant D&D as number one, for largely the reasons WotC gave for the creation of the OGL in the first place: so nobody would ever again be in a position to destroy the game.
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Isn't the point of the OSR is that there's no one in charge who gets to set a standard?
 
I've got no idea what could supplant D&D today, but David Johansen David Johansen's o.p. seemed more historical to me--what could have taken over as top dog some time in the past. Voros Voros made a very good point:

Voros said:
As to the OP, what I think kept some previous competitors from rising above D&D (WoD, CoC) was a lack of scale, both in distribution and marketing.

Being able to get D&D into the big chain bookstores, featured prominently and consistently stocked not just a lone copy filed somewhere, is the real killshot.
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So, along those lines, I'll nominate B.R.P./Runequest of the Avalon Hill era as the possible giant-killer. Obviously, it wasn't/didn't, but Avalon Hill at least had the money to compete with T.S.R. in the mid-1980s and a distribution network. If they had supported the game more robustly, rather than providing 2 'Fantasy Earth' options and recycling earlier Glorantha material with a rather slow release schedule, it might have attracted more attention and players.

What really would have helped is if Avalon Hill had bankrolled/distributed all of Chaosium's output (or at least the B.R.P. parts of it). So Call of Cthulhu, Ringworld, ideally a B.R.P. version of Moorcock's work in the 1980s (instead of the 1990s), etc. Plus putting money into snapping up some I.P.s that other companies got--Middle Earth and Star Wars. It's also easy to imagine a set of B.R.P. books like the GURPS 3rd ed. setting books that are justly famous. And an official B.R.P. Tekumel, though that wouldn't add a lot of sales, probably.

Well, a man can dream, can't he?
 
Voros said:
Being able to get D&D into the big chain bookstores, featured prominently and consistently stocked not just a lone copy filed somewhere, is the real killshot.
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I'm pretty sure I bought (well my mom bought, I was like 6) my first D&D book in a Waldenbooks in the Georgia Square Mall in Athens, GA.
 
EmperorNorton said:
I'm pretty sure I bought (well my mom bought, I was like 6) my first D&D book in a Waldenbooks in the Georgia Square Mall in Athens, GA.
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Yeah, we didn't have a FLGS, and most of my game stuff came from bookstore chains, until I got a Wargames West catalog.
 
Why did Vampire do so well?

- Vampires were having a cultural moment (although it should be noted that vampire also contributed to this).
- Clear easy to understand archetypes for character creation.
- Setting building was very easy. You just need a city you know - a basic feudal structure (who is the prince?) and a lot of the politics flows from the character archetypes. You don't need a large cast of NPCs as the humans are not so important, making it relatively unintimidating to GM. (and if the PCs need to interact with someone like a police chief they can just be filled in with broad stereotypes).
- System was very intuitive and not math heavy (this seems to be a big commonality with 5e which is perceived as being much more easy in terms of math than it's predecessors).
- Character sheet that measures everything in terms of 3 to 5 dots was genius in terms of being easy for working memory to deal wtih.

Obviously there are major issues with Vampire as well, but this is just accounting for things that likely contributed to it's success.
 
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Voros said:
Being able to get D&D into the big chain bookstores, featured prominently and consistently stocked not just a lone copy filed somewhere, is the real killshot.
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I agree with this. It appears to me that the book trade distribution deal TSR did with Random House in 1979 was a very big deal and something none of their competitors at the time could match. I.C.E., Mayfair Games, and maybe a couple other publishers also got bookstore distribution in the 80s but by then TSR’s dominant position was already firmly established and effectively unassailable - especially since Mayfair’s RoleAids and the early I.C.E. books were supplements to D&D rather than stand-alone games, so their presence alongside the TSR stuff actually helped bolster D&D’s dominance. Unless you were reading Dragon magazine or going to specialty hobby shops you’d have no idea that games like RuneQuest, T&T, The Fantasy Trip, Adventures in Fantasy, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, etc. even existed.

I was surprised that Jon Peterson pretty much glossed over it entirely and placed no importance on it in his Game Wizards book. I asked him about that and his response was that the Random House deal didn’t go into effect until after the Egbert Incident (it was inked in the fall of 1979 but didn’t actually go into effect until 1980) and the press around that made D&D such a hot commodity that a deal like this was inevitable to meet the new demand and therefore it’s not really interesting or noteworthy.

I don’t really buy that, though - sure the news stories created more exposure and demand for D&D, but I don’t think TSR would’ve been as well-positioned to take advantage of it (and to do so in a manner that absolutely swamped all of their competitors) had people who wanted the game had to go to specialty shops or order it by mail instead of being able to pick it up anyplace that sold books.
 
If TFT had beat the DMG out and had better production values and marketing could have been a contender. TFT could have also sold themselves as the non-satanic RPG :smile:.
 
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