When I Buy The Rights To TSR From WotC

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David Johansen

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I will bring back Star Frontiers, Marvel Superheroes in a new generic supers game, Dragon Quest and SPI's Universe will also return. I think I might use the Universe world generation stuff as a Star Frontiers supplement I don't recall Universe having a really great game system. Bug Hunters will be an officially supported setting and we'll try to get the original authors of Star Frontiers to actually build a setting guide. Dawn Patrol will get a new edition that uses Boot Hill as the basis for ground combat. Boot Hill will get a mega campaign covering American history from 1800 - 1900. These will be boxed games with multiple booklets a big map sheet, counters and dice. There would also be $20 mini games and $50 boxed wargames with counters. I might even bring out fifth dimension.

And I will find the guy that did that 1.5 AD&D variant that they made him take down and that will very likely be the only edition of D&D though a 100% compatible Holmesesque basic boxed set will also exist. Then again, I might be able to make D&D and Dragon Quest internally compatible. I've got some thoughts there. Well, maybe, I've always thought a 1 book core with three supplements might be the best way to go. Make getting in affordable. Make sure the supplements don't supplant the core book.

There will be in house plastic miniatures designed to be modular and inexpensive. I honestly believe that $0.25 a figure is possible in today's marketplace. I will kill Games Workshop by being cheaper, smarter, and cooler.

Oh well, that's my unlimited budget plan, what's yours?
 
If I were to buy a company with an unlimited budget. it'd be White Wolf, not TSR/WotC.

If I bought White Wolf, I'd officially retcon all of the Classic World of Darkness's metaplot and declare all of Revised Edition and the changes By Night Studios made to their new LARP adaptations to be non-canon (as well as revoke the LARP licenses from By Night Studios as well). I'd yank any licenses from Onyx Path as well, given how they fucked up Mage 20 and the Second Edition of Chronicles of Darkness.

I'd bring back Big Eyes Small Mouth and Mind's Eye Theatre in full force, and shell out the extra money to release a new version of the Sailor Moon Role-Playing Game and Resource Book, covering both the 90's anime and Sailor Moon Crystal. I'd also shell out the money to re-license Street Fighter for a new version of Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game.

I'd reset the clock on WoD back to 1st Edition, but in 2017 instead of 1991 and downplay the whole Gothic-Punk nonsense.

There would be video games for WoD again (I'd love to see a Vampire game with gameplay similar to Fallout or The Elder Scrolls) and like I said before, I'd bring back Mind's Eye Theatre in full force, giving new LARP adaptations of Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Wraith, Changeling, and Hunter along with Mind's Eye Theatre adaptations for Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game, Big Eyes Small Mouth, and Sailor Moon as well.

I'd also blacklist the people who ruined the franchise in the first place. You wouldn't be seeing any WoD material from Justin Achilli, Satyros Brucato, Martin Ericsson, or David A. Hill if I bought White Wolf.

Finally, if I bought White Wolf, I'd do a Vampire: The Masquerade Netflix series set in 1990's Chicago. Sort of like Kindred: The Embraced meets The Sopranos.
 
For D&D5, get one campaign setting out a year, complete with an "adventure path"-like campaign to support it. Successful ones will get revisited.
  • For Forgotten Realms, I'll have Ed turn back the clock to the 1e boxed set with yet another continuity crisis (these things sell, just ask DC).
  • For Greyhawk, I will hire Jeff Talanian, Allan Grohe, Ernie Gygax and Benoist so they can give us a Castle Goddamn Motherfucking Greyhawk that does the title justice.
  • For Dragonlance I will re-edit the original adventures for D&D5 because fuck everything.
  • For Ravenloft I will get Ken Hite and Jack Shear and let them brainstorm something.
  • For Dark Sun I'll get Brom, but the writer will be Mike Evans (Hubris) and I'll let him do whatever he wants.
  • For Birthright, I have no idea, but the adventure path will see Anuire reunited against The Gorgon and/or The Cold Rider.
  • For Eberron, no idea either.

Reissue Star Frontiers using a D&D5-meets-SW-saga just to piss off Paizo and their weaksauce Starfinder.

Issue a D&D RC reprint and keep all editions available via OBS PoD.
 
I'm really trying to picture that and all I can come up with is constant and repetitive games of rock paper scissor while shouting "Hadouken!"

I've written homebrew MET rules for Street Fighter and the fan game Senshi: The Merchandising during my senior year of high school. Unfortunately they were all hand-written and I never got to test them out.
 
If I were to buy a company with an unlimited budget. it'd be White Wolf, not TSR/WotC.

Well, if we're buying other companies, I'm taking Palladium. Simple plan really.

Keep Kevin on board as a consultant and sometimes writer. But only making it clear that we can and will actually edit his stuff.

Bring back Bill Coffin. Let him have the run of Palladium Fantasy and Heroes Unlimited.

New editions for every game — not much in the way of rules changes but better writing, better layout and much needed clarifications.

Re-release Ninjas & Superspies with updated world information.

Release Mystic China as a stand-alone RPG.

Release a new edition of Mechanoid Space, plus the classic trilogy.
 
Hm, well FASERIP is available for free and I wouldn't want to deal with a modern Marvel license, and I have no real interest in D&D beyond Planescape and the cartoon, so I don't think TSR would be the best company for me. White Wolf for me doesnt extend much beyond some 90s nostalgia, so I don't want them.

Fuck it, I'd buy FASA. My overall design goal would be "80s Retrofuture". Simplify and cleanup Shadowrun based on a revision and simplification of the original system, make it cross compatible with a new edition of Earthdawn. New edition of Mechwarrior, A large volume history of Battletech that collects and collates the majority of information between two covers for the first time in forever. A new edition of Legionnaire.

Hmm, did they do anything else? Well, cleaning up Battletech would probably keep me busy. Maybe expand into some other miniature wargames.
 
I'd buy Atlas Games, and make them have a simpler chargen system for Ars Magica. Most of the system isn't that bad, but dear god, chargen.

Tweak other things here or there for simplicity.

Do much the same thing with Steve Jackson and GURPS.
 
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I'd buy Atlas Games, and make them have a simpler chargen system for Ars Magica. Most of the system isn't that bad, but dear god, chargen.

Tweak other things here or there for simplicity.

If you could streamline the character generation and get the core book down to the slim size it was back in the 2E days, I would buy that in an instant.
 
Many of mine have been taken, though I like Mr Brucato's Mage stuff mostly.

Since palladium and others have been taken, I'll go with Chaosium. I'd stop this fucking ridiculous Runequest = Glorantha, oh wait no, we can to what The Design Mechanism is doing exactly horseshit. I'd bring back Adventures in Glorantha. I'd not fuck with Pendragon, and in fact I would make a China wuxia version and a samurai version, and probably a couple of others. I'd hire a staff of historians just to make sure it was good. The big gold book would get a new revision with new house rules and with lots of explanation of how to use what to make that particular style you are looking for. Id make lots of sections on how to translate particular mechanics from other systems into d100 percentiles. I'd focus on making some free electronic tools to make this stuff easier. And I'd make a BRP Mythras compatible superheroes game that was most excellent.
 
If you could streamline the character generation and get the core book down to the slim size it was back in the 2E days, I would buy that in an instant.

Funny thing is the core system is not that complicated. It's just character building and how that interrelates to the various Seasonal activities that makes it a bear. :smile:
 
Funny thing is the core system is not that complicated. It's just character building and how that interrelates to the various Seasonal activities that makes it a bear. :smile:
Yes, it is very simple core mechanic. It is the forerunner of the D20 mechanic, but it works a lot better scaled to a d10.

I also feel that Ars Magica can work best approached as a sandbox around the area of the covenant. Much of the 1st and 2nd edition supplements gave you things to help fill that sandbox. Location-based adventures like The Broken Covenant of Calebais, the Covenants book which gave you a number of covenants to drop into play, the Mythic Places books, etc. Starting with third edition, they started focusing on things like the Tribunal books which were mostly fluff setting books that detailed large areas. They were interesting to read, but offered little you could immediately use in play.

They also began cranking out more crunch in the form of alternate magic books, like the ones for shamans, kabbalists, and natural philosophers. It was annoying as part of the appeal of Ars Magica was that it had this incredibly versatile magic system. It took a little while to learn, but once you did, there was so much you could do. No game needed alternate magic systems less than Ars Magica, but we got a lot of them.
 
So what hasn't been taken? WEG, GW, FGU, HERO, GURPs,ICE and large number of one offs?
I think I'd go with FGU. It's got so many good ideas saddled with needlessly complex systems that could be so much more fun if they had better editing, play testing and support.
 

1/72 stuff comes in at that cost and even cheaper. Mantic manages $1 a figure on orks, men at arms, goblins, skeletons, and zombies but I think if you organized it right you could take it even farther.

Let's talk about costs. Last time I checked with Wargames Factory getting a mould cut in China is about ten grand but by the time you get it produced, packaged, and shipped you're looking at around $30000. I can't remember the number of sprues that the $30000 gets you but the more sets you produce the more the mould cut is divided down though not the shipping and production costs. Take a 4x markup on that and we're at $480000. Let's say we squeeze ten figures on each sprue. Take a look at GW's Lord of the Rings Sprues for what I'm talking about. Now we're down to 48000 / figure so to get down to $0.25 you'd have to buy 192000 figures or 19200 sprues. The modularity would be separate hands and heads. There'd be a lot of compatiblilty between the sets, for instance, Halfling and goblin bodies would be interchangeable. This would make it so you could do a wide variety of combinations off of one sprue so you could pack maybe ten in a box so you'd have to sell at least 1920 boxes. Fortunately the box says Dungeons & Dragons and that's a manageable volume if we put them in the big fancy, starter box too. Personally you can't compete with GW on their mould making technology and model design. I would go for a detail and quality level more on par with the early GW plastics they're easier to paint and at a dirt cheap price expectations would be lower.

Yes the numbers are soft but the cost of producing the mould itself dropped by an order of magnitude over the last twenty years.

So ten figures

ork compatible with lizard man with separate pouch or tail
dwarf compatible with dark dwarf
halfling compatible with goblin
female warrior compatible with elf (in this case the bodies would be different but heads and hands are interchangeable.
human warrior & cloaked figure that could be a wizard, thief or ranger

If I could get two more figures on I'd do a skeleton and a zombie.

The hands + weapons for human males, goblins, and halflings would be interchangeable and ideally the dwarf, ork, and lizardman hands + weapons would be interchangeable.

If it worked out and sold well I'd follow on with a modular monster sprue and then another sprue with new variants on the same themes as the first. But the main goal would be to sell as many of the same sprue as possible rather than expanding the range of sprues. Inflexible costs like shipping, labour, warehousing, and packaging would need to be kept down, those are the things that drive costs up. It might even be possible to spit up sprues to sell boxes of just one race though the labor on that would certainly drive the price up.

Maybe I should kickstart it. :grin:
 
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So what hasn't been taken? WEG, GW, FGU, HERO, GURPs,ICE and large number of one offs?

No need to take a new one! (In fact the thread's supposed to be about WotC, everything else is a threadjack ;))
 
No need to take a new one! (In fact the thread's supposed to be about WotC, everything else is a threadjack ;))
You're not the boss of me!

...because I now own Games Workshop.

My strategy starts with getting a new BIG thing, like a boxed game or entirely new army, on the shelves every June and November. Why those months, you say? Well, UK school holidays start in June - so I want there to be something for kids to get excited about - and November gives enough time for kids to bug their parents to go and buy the new thing for them for christmas. Releases the rest of the year carry on as normal, with army refreshes and new models and the like.

Game-wise, I'd have three tiers; your traditional "endless purchase" wargame (Infantry-scale and army-scale for each setting), "limited purchase" games like Blood Bowl (Where you could literally buy everything) and one-off games like Space Hulk (I'd be shameless about hiring designers to do licensed versions of their popular titles, too). While I'd obviously rather people bought the endless games, I'd
push the "limited purchase" games quite heavily, because they make good access points to my hobby (It's easier to convince someone to own five Blood Bowl teams than a small army, until they get hooked).

For the big games, I'd try to do as much of the design work in batches as possible, to make things easier; so I'd have all of the armies ready, and could then launch them as desired commercially. I'd get "living rulebook" apps out ASAP and update them regularly; I'd probably also publish all my books in softback, just to make transportation easier on the back (And the parental wallet...).

I'd also get into supporting clubs. For the "limited purchase" games, I'd have Club Editions with all of the "You need this to play" stuff, except the models - because players bring those themselves. I'd also try to implement a system for recognising competitions in those venues, and sending them limited edition figures for the winners.

I would also be ruthless about dropping something that isn't working commercially, and be quite open about it. I'd probably have dropped WHFB a year or two before they did, maybe not even giving it an eighth edition.

I'd bring back Adventures in Glorantha. I'd not fuck with Pendragon, and in fact I would make a China wuxia version and a samurai version, and probably a couple of others.

I'd like to license Pendragon to do a 40k : Space Marine RPG, please. Here, have a bag of money. We have so much of it, I can't even give it away.
 
Regarding unlimited budget: Given how much I've bitched about it, I'd feel obligated to finally get 7th Sea right.

I would also be ruthless about dropping something that isn't working commercially, and be quite open about it. I'd probably have dropped WHFB a year or two before they did, maybe not even giving it an eighth edition.

Goodness, was it really doing so bad as to deserve such an ignominious flushing without closure?
 
Goodness, was it really doing so bad as to deserve such an ignominious flushing without closure?

Well, it did get closure; there was a year-long campaign before the planet got smashed. And the world still exists for gaming in; there are quite a few decent licensed games out and coming for it (Total Warhammer, Vermintide, Mordheim, Man o' War, plus a tabletop WFRP 4e). There's just no more large-scale wargame.

But apparently, yeah; the entire game line was getting outsold by the Space Marines. And you can come up with all sorts of reasons for why this was the case - the size of armies (WHFB did not scale down well), veteran players not buying enough new models, the gameplay style not being popular enough (WHFB being a game about the Movement phase, not the Combat phases) - but it's fixing those that is the problem when you're GW. There's clearly a market for that sort of game (As, say, Mantic, are finding out), it's just too small a market for GW to concentrate so many resources on.

Sometimes, the most economical option is just to scrap something and start again.
 
One other thing about unlimited money is you never have to carry credit, which also feeds into making cheaper products. And you can afford to lose money just for spite.

So, let's say I owned ICE. Well, this is a problem because they've just spent five years promising a new edition of Rolemaster and the open playtest just keeps dragging the rules down the rabbit hole. 600+ attack tables...

Alright, anyhow, RM 2 was more popular than RMSS because RMSS character creation is a bit convoluted but I personally never cared for RM2 and it was the changes in RMSS that brought me in.

Well, the first thing I'd do is a miniatures game in the Spacemaster Privateers universe. I've always thought it would be better as a miniatures game. The main setting for it would be the world Defiance where the knightly, wolf-like Tulgar are fighting a brutal last stand against the genocidal Jerronian Empire. The game would be in 15mm scale and the plan would be to have an integrated Armored Assault / Star Strike aspect to it. And yes, it'd use full page attack and critical tables. The vehicles would be plastic but the infantry would be metal. I want a lot of variety in the figures. But even the plastic vehicles would be modular so you could put a tank top on a hover chassis or an APC top on a six legged walker.

While driving a truck load of money up to Tolkien Enterprises might get the MERP licence back, I'm betting they'd want more than a million dollars and I'm bitter enough about the way they drove the original ICE into the ground just before the movies came out so I don't think they deserve a million dollars. Just for spite I'm going to bring out a Dennis L McKerrin's Iron Tower based MERP but it'll be 100% compatible with the new Rolemaster. No, I don't care if it's popular or successful, I just want to spite people with the closest Tolkien rip-off I've ever seen.

So, the new Rolemaster will actually bridge the gap between RM2 and RMSS instead of being turned into a Frankenstein's monster version of somebody's homebrew. The training and culture packages will be set up so that you can play with only skill categories, only skills, or both by simply matching the number of category and skill ranks in the packages and handing out two or four times as many development points. Category ranks would stack with skill ranks rather than having a new progression. Special skill development rates would be gone, dead, and forgotten. There would be a great deal of rationalization of the skill categories and the talents and flaws.

I'd give the rights to HARP to Tim Duger / Rasyr and hand him enough money to set up in the industry if he wanted. I don't think he'd want at this point, but I'd also hire him as a lead designer.

Eventually I'd do a War Law boxed set with a million 15mm plastic figures in it :grin:
 
No need to take a new one! (In fact the thread's supposed to be about WotC, everything else is a threadjack ;))

Hey you lost that fight back at post two. Get with the newvprogram. FGU is mine and you can't have it!.

Re WotC: I'd start buy putting all old stuff up as print on demand as soon as the digital document quality supports it. I'd open a fan submission work que similar to what was done with the digitizing of all Talislanta products to get things moving forward. I'd use sales from that process to determine what products to update to a new edition.
 
I think WFB could have done better but eighth edition pushed it towards bigger armies and units as was GW's general approach at the time, so it didn't sell as well. I think it needed to move back towards smaller games in the 30 - 100 figure range. Eighth just got too cluttered. It should have gone cleaner and less complex not messier and more convoluted. Oh yeah, and there would be always strikes first and inititiative order and always strikes last and the two exceptions to initiative order would resolve in initiative order if they encountered each other. No, chargers wouldn't strike first.

With unlimited money there'd be armies for Hind, Cathay, and Nippon human and a themed monster set for each, that's what I'm talking about. I'd be tempted to do a native American list for Naggaroth but that's just so I can do Little Bighorn with Dark Elves on Cold Ones :grin:

40k? Who likes 40k? I've got unlimited money so I'll kill the line in hopes that Mutant Chronicles will capture the fanbase.
 
Unlimited budgets, you say?

First up, I'd buy up SJG and get them to roll back much of GURPS 4th edition to 3rd edition rules. With a few select bits from 4 because they work better. Then rebrand the whole damn thing because to the wider gaming world, GURPS is about as enticing as a dog food sandwich. Without mustard.

Then I'd pay Michael Moorcock those pesky agreed on license fees from back in the day and get a whole Eternal Champion range, based on Stormbringer 1-3rd edition rules but cleaned up a little. And make sure the entire range was cross compatible.

And then to finish off, I'd get the rights to R Talsorian's Cyberpunk 2020. Move the timeline on by a century and eveolve the system into a full fledged 4th edition that brought the themes and technology up to date, but didn't compromise the high tech lowlife concept of the original game.

Then I'd watch my new and shiny gaming empire collapse into chaos as nobody bought my re imagined retro games :smile:
 
Second mad dream would be to buy several of the settings WotC are letting rot and marry them to better systems.

This. I don't even want to try fixing the mess that is WotC D&D, but I'd definitely love to take some of their neglected IP off their hands.

Spelljammer. Star*Drive. Gamma World. Urban Arcana. Mystara.
 
Unlimited budgets, you say?
Then rebrand the whole damn thing because to the wider gaming world, GURPS is about as enticing as a dog food sandwich. Without mustard.

It's a papermache sandwich on cardboard without white glue. I'd reorganize to the 3e format and cut anything cinematic or supernatural out of the core advantages, disadvantages, and skills but not return to Snap Shot penalties and Hit Points based on Health. I'd fix super strength and innate attacks. Though really, unlimited money, I'd build an app where you click the switches you want and it'd print you a custom rulebook that only contains exactly what you need for your current campaign.
 
I'd buy Cakebread and Walton. And then stand over them with a large stick until the lazy steampunk gits get the rest of the Kingdom and Commonwealth campaign finished.
 
It's a papermache sandwich on cardboard without white glue. I'd reorganize to the 3e format and cut anything cinematic or supernatural out of the core advantages, disadvantages, and skills but not return to Snap Shot penalties and Hit Points based on Health. I'd fix super strength and innate attacks. Though really, unlimited money, I'd build an app where you click the switches you want and it'd print you a custom rulebook that only contains exactly what you need for your current campaign.
Hit points based on Health is one of the things I'd go back to, oddly enough. Otherwise Strength and Dex are all a warrior needs. And I'm not a fan of God Stats. Cutting back on the number of attack options, too. Do we really need Determined Attack as well as All Out Attack?
 
I'd give the rights to HARP to Tim Duger / Rasyr and hand him enough money to set up in the industry if he wanted. I don't think he'd want at this point, but I'd also hire him as a lead designer.

I was looking back into HARP earlier this year, and I found some comments by Tim Duggar that suggest he regards it as a bit of failed experiment design-wise. I think you'd have better luck convincing him to run Rolemaster Express as an alternative to your own RM. :grin:

Put me in charge of WotC, and I'd be more reactionary than radical--accelerate the PDF and PoD sides a bit, and open up the DM's Guild to all variations and systems, settings, and combinations thereof. Throw a bunch of money at the various artists to get rights to assemble design and clip art packages that people can use for building their own D&D products, and talk to some of the older design teams and freelancers to do the products they always wanted to do but never could, with 'non-canon' variations, alternate timelines, etc. Bruce Heard seems like he'd be quite happy to revisit Mystara, and I'd love to see the War of Souls that the Fifth Age was building towards before Peter Adkison essentially offered Dragonlance to Weis & Hickman on a silver platter.
 
Tim got hurt pretty badly by the change in management, though I think he was the only remotely innocent party in the whole affair. But no, there's going to be one Rolemaster and RMX isn't it. He and I spent a lot of time arguing these things but if it's my money it's going where I say. I don't think I'd actually do it though. The current owner doesn't deserve millions of dollars for a game he's done so much to ruin.
 
Tim got hurt pretty badly by the change in management, though I think he was the only remotely innocent party in the whole affair. But no, there's going to be one Rolemaster and RMX isn't it. He and I spent a lot of time arguing these things but if it's my money it's going where I say. I don't think I'd actually do it though. The current owner doesn't deserve millions of dollars for a game he's done so much to ruin.

Fair enough. MERP/Rolemaster was my first post-D&D system, but I stopped following the game just before the transition, so I don't have any real familiarity with RMSS. What I've glanced at in the two decades since hasn't really attracted me, although Gamemaster Law and Nightmares of Mine are full of fine advice. But I think my tastes would run more towards HARP or even Novus (any thoughts on that?).
 
Novus? Not really, it's clean and simple enough and Tim's a good designer but it's one of a million games in the same rough territory and one of them is D&D. One of the things I like about Rolemaster is that it's in a league of its own. The closest thing is Phoenix Command an it's more like Aftermath. Really, one of the problems with my Arcane Confabulation rules is that there's nothing really unique or noteworthy about them.
 
It is a pity about Novus. I like the system (from reading it anyway), but it could really have used a second edition that incorporated the changes made in the PDF mini-supplements. As David pointed out, timing didn't help either as it came out right around the same time that D&D 5E began public testing and then published. That seemed to have killed what little momentum the game had.

It's still worth checking out though if you're looking for a skills and level-based generic fantasy RPG. Just be sure to buy the eleven Libram Novus PDF mini-supplements as well, as they really do seem to make the game better.
 
So, let's say I owned ICE. Well, this is a problem because they've just spent five years promising a new edition of Rolemaster and the open playtest just keeps dragging the rules down the rabbit hole. 600+ attack tables...<snip snippetty snip snip snip>

I'd also buy ICE. They've approached Dennis in the past, but they don't have enough money. If I did, that would be one of my plans. Regardless of that outcome, I'd make sure RM had a rocking setting that reflected the rules and lots of great art.

I'm more of an RM2/C guy, but I played a lot of RMSS too. First off, a simplified, MERP-esque intro game very much like RMX. However, I'd make chargen template based, so you're up and running in 20 minutes. Or even pregens.

The new RM would use the intro as a base, to which you could add any of the "Law" books you liked. It would mirror RM2, with the cool classes added from RMSS, as well as some of the more elegant rules, mostly the advancement schemes and magic sections.

Then I'd buy Hârn. I'd ditch HârnMaster (even though I personally like it) and have a core Hârn book using the d6 system, and a slick adventure right in the core book. Everything you need in one book. Again, get people up and running in 20 minutes is the goal.
 
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