How badly has D&D been mismanaged?

[TJS]

White Wolf had a big effect on popular culture. It's just that like D&D the actual specific game title was not necessary for that.

That's the kind of the issue. Without a story, you don't really have the kind of intellectual property you can leverage.

(Well I guess there's Barbie or Lego - but D&D or White Wolf don't really have the status for that I guess).

 

[carpocratian]

I think the zeitgeist passed WW, too. I was clubbing all the time in those days and half the people at some of the clubs thought they were a vampire.

That was definitely an issue. They also wrote themselves into a corner when they decided to tie everything into a progressive metaplot with a decisive end (Gehenna), then made the rather bizarre decision to just try to do everything all over again, from scratch. That was the start of a chain of bad business moves.

 

[carpocratian]

White Wolf had a big effect on popular culture. It's just that like D&D the actual specific game title was not necessary for that.

That's the kind of the issue. Without a story, you don't really have the kind of intellectual property you can leverage.

Unlike D&D, though, they did have a larger story and fairly consistent setting, and put a lot of effort into leveraging it. They weren't able to pull it off in the long run, but at least they had something resembling a realistic plan to do so, for a while. They had some understanding of what they needed to do and how to go about it, but it just didn't work out for them, for several reasons.

 

[Sharrow]

It's not just the quality of the writing though. Perhaps it's because the coming of age story is such a straightforward structure, but it seems like Young Adult novels are a lot more creative when it comes to setting ideas. I also suspect that the nature of the genre is that it's a lot more free of the stultifying nostalgia that permeates so much of popular culture more generally.

A large number of the readers of adult fantasy get all hot under the collar if the setting doesn't make sense (in their opinion), which doesn't help, because it means authors that want good sales need to be conservative. YA and children's fiction can be more fantastic without drawing criticism for being 'unbelievable'.

I think that a lot of adults have grown to become afraid of their imagination, and of others' as well, and to see flights of fantasy as something wrong. You see it in things like the way people look at some work and say of the creator "They must've been on the Good Stuff!", when quite often they just let their imagination go where it would without shutting it down.

 

[lategamer]

D&d doesn't have the deep cultural penetration of Marvel.

I dunno, man. It was front and centre in ET and Stranger Things.

Guardians of the Galaxy was one of the more obscure Marvel comics. And out of nowhere,..

The characters thing that a lot mention is an example of the mismanagement.

I didn’t like “Honor Among Thieves” because of a lot of reasons. But yeah one of them was lack of characters.

Now, D&D has oodles of IP and identity and story. There’s like a million published modules.

We might be happy with the couple of utterly forgettable movies D&D has managed to spawn but just remember that BATTLESHIPS also got a movie. (Not a good one but still).

 

[lategamer]

They've TRIED monetizing it. They sold movie rights, tried to do a cartoon, comics, novels, so many novels, none of it stuck BECAUSE like American Superhero Comics, it's seen as something 'uncool'. And public perception is VERY hard to change.

Whatever you think of the MCU, Marvel did a masterful job of turning an also-ran character (Iron Man) into an amazing story arc.

Whether RPGs are cool is the same issue as whether comics are cool. It doesn’t bloody matter when there’s an amazing movie series.

They should have got Vin Diesel on board for Dark Sun. Done a multiverse with Planescape. Had Cavill as a paladin.

I can name the characters from Poor Things or Page Eight off the top of my head. I have no idea what the characters in Honor Among Thieves were called.

 

[lategamer]

The points they all seem to agree on are:

- The monetary return versus the time spent is very low. Some of them have been able to get into the range of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association "professional rate" of 8 cents a word (or Horror Writers Association rates of 6 cents a word) when you take long-tail sales into account,

I’m an amateur but I’ll blast past 8c a word for a book in the first year. I don’t have enough books out there to completely give up work - especially as my wife is just finishing her first year of university.

but the actual time invested in producing the products pays significantly less than kids make mowing lawns for neighbors. They do it because they enjoy it and would be making that sort of content anyway, for their own games.

I pay rent at the moment writing documents for a government entity in healthcare. The pay is terrible here. I could make more money doing the same thing in almost any other European country. I could make more money working in the gambling tech companies here. But I don’t.

Doing work you enjoy (or at least what would let you sleep at night) has immense value.

Plus, I wrote four books sitting on my yacht in the Mediterranean. That beats the shit out of retail, mowing lawns or …. Frankly … whatever the heck it is that anyone else thinks is a good job.

 

[pawsplay]

Yeah, people acting like D&D wasn't widely popular in the early 80s were clearly not there. One of the reasons it was considered uncool later was precisely because it was so big with kids in the early 80s, so it was considered 'for kids' by the time you were in your late teens or older.

D&D was cool inn the 1980s, I was there. I bought the action figures, I had the Basic through Companion sets. I watched the cartoon. I played with my friends during recess.

And sales were a fraction of what Third Edition did. And 5e did a little bit better yet.

D&D was wildly popular. With freaks and geeks. Most of the D&D players who were kids in the 1980s either went on to study computer science in college or joined the Marines. That's a joke, but also kind of true. With all the troubles with TSR, D&D was "out in the wilderness" for several years, during which time interest was mainly maintained on college campuses and on Usenet.

It is the Internet that made D&D cool, because the Internet was cool, and in the early days, you needed nerds to find and use the Internet.

 

[lategamer]

When it comes to film adaptations, I put that 90% on Hollywood which has yet to figure out the deal with fantasy movies.

Meanwhile we have Game of Thrones, the Witcher, Harry Potter, the Tolkien movies, …

It took 40 years for the Hobbit to have a "film" adaption (Rankin / Bass TV special) and 24 years for LotR (and only 2/3 of it got made). It took another 23 years for a proper length live action film series to get made (Peter Jackson) and he had to fight the studios the whole way. There has been one good Conan film, and a couple of mediocre to bad versions.

Fighting the studios perhaps but just as much dealing with an IP holder who was extremely controlling.

Since movies have existed as a medium there have been what, maybe 2 dozen decent fantasy films? Of the thousands of movies made, fantasy is pretty thin on the ground.

You say where are the D&D movies? How about Elric, Thieves World, Conan, Fafhard & the Grey Mouser any of which could be used to churn out sequel after sequel.

No argument there. LotR and GoT would suggest that the public do want fantasy. They just want it done well.

The Witcher and Rings of Power series’ would suggest the actual problem is the die-hard fan base.

 

[Kage2020]

Meanwhile we have Game of Thrones, the Witcher, Harry Potter, the Tolkien movies, …

Perhaps the difference is in telling a good story versus telling a property?

 

[pawsplay]

The LOTR movies were so good because the Tolkien estate had such resistance to Hollywood. They held out until they could get an arrangement they could work with, and the movie was placed in the hands of people who treated the material reverently. And we got beautiful movies. This is all the result of treating the source material, and the quality of the adaptation, as the highest concern, and "IP monetization" as a secondary concern.

Contrast that to GoT... "Well, we have to finish the series. So, whatever."

 

[lategamer]

Perhaps the difference is in telling a good story versus telling a property?

And I’ll say again.

This is the evidence of mismanagement.

In fifty years of D&D the best we can come up with for ‘characters’ is Raistlin and Drizzt?

 

[pawsplay]

Honestly, the iconic D&D character I care the most about is Aleena the cleric.

NOOOOOO!!!

 

[Parkaboy]

I dunno, man. It was front and centre in ET and Stranger Things.

Guardians of the Galaxy was one of the more obscure Marvel comics. And out of nowhere,..

The characters thing that a lot mention is an example of the mismanagement.

I didn’t like “Honor Among Thieves” because of a lot of reasons. But yeah one of them was lack of characters.

Now, D&D has oodles of IP and identity and story. There’s like a million published modules.

We might be happy with the couple of utterly forgettable movies D&D has managed to spawn but just remember that BATTLESHIPS also got a movie. (Not a good one but still).

You're citing two films set at the height of D&D's popularity. Guardians rode the tide of Marvel doing no wrong at the box office. Lack of character and storyline isn't mismanagement, it's the purpose of the game. Modules are only known to fans and most don't have stories adaptable well to film. D&D does not have the cultural cache to support a film franchise like Marvel. It doesn't have the storylines nor the characters and it is, as designed, not supposed to have either. What you seem to propose is a codification of D&D into something that is one-way transmission instead of totally interactive. That's no longer D&D. Could D&D become a mega franchise if it dropped many of the core things that make it D&D? Maybe.

 

[TJS]

I feel it is fair to say that if TSR had done a better job with the novels back in the day, it might be easier to monetise the property for movies and TV now.

But at the same time, there's a reason the best authors didn't generally write D&D novels.

 

[lategamer]

You're citing two films set at the height of D&D's popularity.

ET 1982
Stranger Things 2016

D&D does not have the cultural cache to support a film franchise like Marvel.

Because of mismanagement.

It doesn't have the storylines nor the characters and it is, as designed, not supposed to have either. What you seem to propose is a codification of D&D into something that is one-way transmission instead of totally interactive. That's no longer D&D. Could D&D become a mega franchise if it dropped many of the core things that make it D&D? Maybe.

What I’m proposing is that the people who owned D&D have, through incompetence and perhaps even malice, allowed it to languish as some sort of short-sighted niche.

People said that Honour Among Thieves was a good movie for D&D. I disagree because it didn’t show a hero’s journey. We never got to see these folks get better. D&D movies should be about the progression of someone from zero to hero. Like the game itself.

The idea that D&D is somehow faceless without characters and plot is evidence of mismanagement and lack of imagination on the part of the owners. There should have been more - at the very least as a model of how your PCs should evolve.

Thing is - it would have made the hobby better. Less closeted. (Yes, I know some people went to thrive on the exclusiveness but that sort of gate keeping is not interesting to me). I recently introduced my wife to RPGs and she’s very interested. Just never knew these things existed. (She grew up as a boarding school military brat).

The first 50 years of D&D have been mismanaged and with another fifty years ahead, it seems that the current owners response is “hold my beer”

 

[pawsplay]

People said that Honour Among Thieves was a good movie for D&D. I disagree because it didn’t show a hero’s journey. We never got to see these folks get better. D&D movies should be about the progression of someone from zero to hero. Like the game itself.

The sorcerer visibly improved in his spellcasting abilities and his ranks in Use Magic Device. Edgin the bard learned valuable life lessons. Holga obviously didn't improve, because you can't improve on perfection, but did maybe take some steps in moving on from her ex-.

 

[TJS]

Trying to think of a D&D novel we could realistically expect I just come up with Feist's Magician and Riftwar series. They are not really good novels but they were very popular, generally more popular than the offical D&D novels and they basically are D&D novels.

If they'd been able to attach the D&D branding to them would it have made any real difference?

 

[James Gillen]

I disagree. Cocaine makes everything better.

I have nothing else to add to this conversation.

As in the specific case of '80s D&D, that's only true up to a point.

JG

 

[Edgewise]

I think there's a ton of untapped potential for D&D and the hobby in general, but so far, nobody has cracked the code on how to market and sell this stuff. It's tricky. How many D&D books do people really need? Everyone needs a rulebook, and the DM/GM/referee/fun-facilitator occasionally needs to buy another adventure if they can't make enough of their own content. And then?

Sure, you can theoretically sell D&D movies, t-shirts, waffle irons, etc. But that's mostly selling the brand and not the product. If you come up with some great D&D fiction that people love to watch, well, that's not really D&D. You don't need the game to create that stuff. Maybe that will bring more people back to the game, but then you're back to the first problem (i.e. saturation). On the other hand, if you have a great game that everyone plays, you can make a lot more money on all those other streams. They're trying to push the horse with the cart.

I think the best way forward, from a purely profit perspective, would be selling a great digital platform. Wizards has been trying to do that, but they've been doing it all wrong. They're marketing the platform to players. Look how cool everything looks! It's like a video game, but way slower!

But who would really drive the adoption of a digital platform? That's right, DM's. You've got to sell them on flexibility, ease of use, etc. If there was a platform in which it was truly easy to throw stuff together on the fly, to the extent that it beats what a DM can do with rulebooks, a notebook and theater-of-the-mind, then you have a killer app. Making it look great is an awesome cherry on top, but that's probably the easiest part and not the most important thing.

The next thing I would do is create a DM's Academy, i.e. a platform for training people on how to be great DMs. People have said that 5e suffers from a DM drought, and I'm assuming this is true. DMs make the game happen, they buy the products, and they evangelize it all. A good training program would be like having a service where people pay to learn how to become the best salesmen for your company. What's not to love? And if you have a great digital gaming platform that they're being trained on, then you've made your products very sticky.

The thing is, to do all this right, you have to understand gamers, understand the game, and have really really excellent designers and engineers who also understand these things. Wizbro has demonstrated, time and time again, a contempt for their players, and most of all their DM's. They lack the culture to pull this off. It's truly sad.

 

[Triumvir]

You could argue we've already had a very successful D&D franchise - Discworld. Started as (or at least had deep roots in) Pratchettt's D&D game. But D&D itself didn't add much of anything that people love about those books.

I can't see anything inherent to D&D as a product or game or experience that has anything to do with a successful fiction franchise. Fiction is about character and plot. D&D creates a framework within which character and plot might happen, although not necessarily to any great quality. That said, some of the D&D settings might be useful fodder for a film or series.

WotC/Hasbro might conceivably manage to crank out a decent fantasy franchise (admittedly seems unlikely currently), and said franchise might even have its roots in a D&D campaign or setting, but the only benefit to the "D&D brand" would be cross-marketing.

To come back to the OP's question, I think it's surprising that opportunity hasn't been realised, especially given the bulk of D&D-linked fiction. I haven't read much of the D&D fiction but I suspect this means most of it isn't actually any good.

 

[opaopajr]

I disagree. Cocaine makes everything better.

I have nothing else to add to this conversation.

So that's why I love AD&D 2e...

 

[lategamer]

ISure, you can theoretically sell D&D movies, t-shirts, waffle irons, etc. But that's mostly selling the brand and not the product. If you come up with some great D&D fiction that people love to watch, well, that's not really D&D.

D&D is the brand. There’s nothing else there. Every other aspect has been cloned, retro cloned, copied, clean roomed and reinvented. All that’s original is the content and the brand.

They’ve been hoovered/kleenexed/googled already and their hegemony is based entirely on people referring to <your game> as “D&D”.

We are all playing D&D. And that’s how they hook new people. But it should be a media behemoth because it’s the content that sells. Not the rules themselves.

to the extent that it beats what a DM can do with rulebooks, a notebook and theater-of-the-mind, then you have a killer app. Making it look great is an awesome cherry on top, but that's probably the easiest part and not the most important thing.

This seems like a faster horse solution.

While we are locked into the idea that D&D has to be **this way** we aren’t doing any better than the suits who mismanaged it in the first place.

 

[TristramEvans]

I heard the Novels and Comics were not. At least not in the way TSR wanted.

From what I understand regarding the novels they were essentially keeping TSR afloat during the early 90s, regulars on the NYT's best seller lists.
The comics were decent selling for DC, enough to be considered "popular", and this is the 90s, which is when the best-selling modern comics would do numbers that got books cancelled back then. But that was a license, so I don;t know they were making a lot of money for TSR per se, or at least they must have had some motivation, most likely seeing the success during the 90s boom, to blatantly break their contract with DC and try to publish their own comics (which were godawful).

But I guess my notion of success is simply "profitable enough to be financially sustainable and provide good living incomes to the creators". In this thread the OP is using pop culture phenomenons for comparison, which I think is kinda like asking "why didn't D&D win the lottery"?

 

[Telok]

I could go for a movie or short series following the Tomb of Horrors. A campy splatter-fest along the lines of Bloodbath at ythe House of Death. Its just a shame we wouldn't have Vincent Price to run as the snarky repeat henchman who is always the lone survivor.

 

[Baulderstone]

While we are locked into the idea that D&D has to be **this way** we aren’t doing any better than the suits who mismanaged it in the first place.

What is better?

All the successful game designers I know are making products for the actual RPG community, unlike Hasbro, which is making products to convince non-gamer investors that D&D is an infinite well of money that going to go a-gusher any second now. Just you wait!

Hasbro fails because it has a delusional idea of what D&D is and could be. It's a failure because it's it's set unrealistic goals. It may be making more money than anyone else, but it's promised investors it would make much more money than that, so it's a failure. Hasbro's pitch to investors is really no different than an overpromising kickstarter.

Meanwhile, plenty of small companies and individual designers are succeeding, making RPG products with a specific, existing audience in mind. Their revenue numbers might be a lot smaller, but they didn't promise to make anyone rich. They are using sound business practices rather than just engaging in zeitgeisty spin.

 

[lategamer]

Hasbro fails because it has a delusional idea of what D&D is and could be. It's a failure because it's it's set unrealistic goals. It may be making more money than anyone else, but it's promised investors it would make much more money than that, so it's a failure. Hasbro's pitch to investors is really no different than an overpromising kickstarter.

I don’t disagree. Hasbro fails because it thinks in terms of everything being a game that can be sold and re-sold. The Barbie movie is an example of how they don’t cherish it. They don’t cherish D&D either.

 

[pawsplay]

All this digital talk is really ignoring the obvious solution that the real money is in dice. Clickity-clackity-clack.

 

[Voros]

I've used D&D Beyond and it's quite good on the player side. Haven't used it to GM. I also haven't read or played the most recent adventures as the reviews from reliable sources aren't promising but even during these troubled times I've found the setting supplements (Spelljammer, Planescsape, Dragonlance) have been solid.

Expanding the digital side is a fine goal my main issue with WotC is that on the design side no one seems to be guiding the ship.

In a recent podcast Ben Riggs who wrote Slaying the Dragon (a history of post-Gygax TSR) says that the recently departed CEO brought in a bunch of Amazon staff who knew nothing about rpgs and were very arrogant towards the rpg and long time staff.

Interestingly enough he also says one of the former people in charge of marketing told him they had a very small budget for promotions of releases, so they had to focus on just promoting the 'brand' as that was the most effective use of their limited funds.

All of this should sound familiar to anyone who has worked in a larger organization: clueless fail-ups as Executive leadership; their favourites with little history with the org getting plum positions; being given less and told to do more.

With that CEO gone, hopefully those Amazon folks will move on, pretty likely as I'm sure there are better, higher paying opportunities for mediocre, middle management careerists elsewhere in the tech sector.

Sounds like a lot of long time employees were laid off at the end of December, hopefully the new CEO hires someone with a strong rpg background to rebuild the team.

 

[Chris Brady]

Whatever you think of the MCU, Marvel did a masterful job of turning an also-ran character (Iron Man) into an amazing story arc.

They did. But they also tried to make Comics tied to the MCU. There was a series with Stark and Stane and SHIELD in 2008. You know what happened?

NOTHING. No new comic readers showed up. At least not in any appreciable numbers.

And no, the disliked Riri Williams cannot be blamed. She was created in 2015, 2 years after Iron Man 3 aired in theatres. Marvel had 8 years to get new readers, but the Movie Audience (As in the those who primarily watch movies as their main form of entertainment, as opposed to Comic Readers) think that Comics (not Manga) are for losers and children.

Sound familiar?

 

[TristramEvans]

Marvel comics have the same barrier as modern D&D: they are impenetrable to newbies.

The comics have all but given up self contained single issue stories with archetypal versions of the characters that any reader can jump into and not need to invest months to get a full story (if that, and not just an ongoing shaggy dog tale).

Modern D&D is a ridiculously overwrought system that requires an autistic level of engagement from players. 5e is slightly better than 3rd-4th ed, but it's still needlessly complicated, making itself as much of a chore for players to assimilate as Advanced Squad Leader. There is no modern equivalent to Holmes/The Red Box.

This isn't an issue of monetization tho, simply fans writing stuff for fans. We are in the "fanfic" era of the nostalgia-mined IPs of our youth.

 

[lategamer]

And no, the disliked Riri Williams cannot be blamed. She was created in 2015, 2 years after Iron Man 3 aired in theatres. Marvel had 8 years to get new readers, but the Movie Audience (As in the those who primarily watch movies as their main form of entertainment, as opposed to Comic Readers) think that Comics (not Manga) are for losers and children.

That’s very fair. The market for the MCU is not the comics market. Because comic fans are weird.

For the same reason, the Marvel Multiverse game is poorly pitched because it should have been the game of the MCU* rather than the game that was produced which emulates the comics except it doesn’t.

But to me that says D&D should be out of that niche, not embedding itself in the niche of exclusiveness or feigned snobbery.

Same snobbery there was when GIRLS started getting interested in RPGs in numbers (around VTM). Purists, just like comic book fans, wanted these weird creatures to not be a part of the game.

Sound familiar?

No. That’s a false premise. Just because Marvel couldn’t sell a MCU comic to comic fans doesn’t mean anything other than comic fans are weird


*it’s a lot of things. It’s definitely not the MCU and it’s definitely not very good.

 

[Parkaboy]

That was definitely an issue. They also wrote themselves into a corner when they decided to tie everything into a progressive metaplot with a decisive end (Gehenna), then made the rather bizarre decision to just try to do everything all over again, from scratch. That was the start of a chain of bad business moves.

The 90s-00s metaplot bonanza did in a lot of cool settings like Planescape and Dark Sun. For some reason, there was this Freudian death drive creators had to tear apart what they built.

 

[T. Foster]

I think D&D might work as a sort of anthologized procedural TV show with a common setting and recurring secondary characters (the NPCs). I’m picturing like an 8 or 10 episode series where each episode starts in the same tavern and introduces a new set of adventurers and follows them on different types of adventures. Some of them don’t survive. Season two would introduce some new characters (maybe played by the same actors as some of those who died in season one) and bring back favorites from season one for further adventures, including maybe a two-parter for a more involved adventure. Then the same for season three and eventually a feature film with whoever becomes the breakout most popular character(s).

 

[Parkaboy]

Modern D&D is a ridiculously overwrought system that requires an autistic level of engagement from players. 5e is slightly better than 3rd-4th ed, but it's still needlessly complicated, making itself as much of a chore for players to assimilate as Advanced Squad Leader. There is no modern equivalent to Holmes/The Red Box.

This isn't an issue of monetization tho, simply fans writing stuff for fans. We are in the "fanfic" era of the nostalgia-mined IPs of our youth.

I think the perception some have of latter D&D being overly complex is an effect of some of us having grown up on 1E AD&D. That was complex. It really makes no sense. %E is a much simpler and more logical system. But we know AD&DNlike we know multiplication tables. It;s our native language, It;s like learning English as a non-native speaker: it makes no sense and it's hard. AD&D is similar. B/X is a different matter, but it still isn't as logical as newer systems. I love it, but it also is a bit like Atari versus PS5.

 

[David Johansen]

The 90s-00s metaplot bonanza did in a lot of cool settings like Planescape and Dark Sun. For some reason, there was this Freudian death drive creators had to tear apart what they built.

In the same time frame we got Traveller and Silent Death doing the same kill the setting metaplot thing.

Anyhow, a good rpg is a terrible product. Most people who try D&D will never use the content in the Players Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual. Most people don't stick with it for the rest of their lives. The problem is that once you've sold most people more than they need, they don't need more. This is where merchandise, novels, comics, T Shirts, mugs, miniatures, and dice come in.

 

[Voros]

I think as usual a lot of people overthink why MCU fans didn't embrace the comics: most of them don't like to read. One need to only see the reaction of many MCU fans to the brightly coloured, psychedelic Kirby art for The Eternals to know that the average MCU fan is not ever going to like comics.

The quality of modern superhero comics, with some big exceptions like Hickman's recent run on X-Men and FF aside, isn't high but it was even worse in the 90s and a good portion of the 'fandom' hoovered that garbage up with enthusiasm.

The US comic industry has experienced numerous booms and busts throughout its history going back to the 40s, a lot of the doomladen talk is wishful thinking from emotionally arrested manchildren who need to move on and let superhero comics be for kids again.

 

[Voros]

I think the perception some have of latter D&D being overly complex is an effect of some of us having grown up on 1E AD&D. That was complex. It really makes no sense. %E is a much simpler and more logical system. But we know AD&DNlike we know multiplication tables. It;s our native language, It;s like learning English as a non-native speaker: it makes no sense and it's hard. AD&D is similar. B/X is a different matter, but it still isn't as logical as newer systems. I love it, but it also is a bit like Atari versus PS5.

5e is signficantly cleaned up and yes, I've seen new players understand it much quicker than older editions, but I think it is still more complex in parts than it needs to be and that prevents it from being an ideal introduction for new players.

But that's inevitable, if they had stripped 5e down to B/X levels of simplicity, like Into the Unknown does, the screams of rage from those who prefer higher crunch, from 1e through 4e, would have been deafening. A lot of 3e/4e players still complain that 5e is too 'dumbed down' without enough mechanical options.

Mearls had mentioned wanting to release an even more streamlined 5e for kids. I think that's still a good idea.

One smart thing I think they've done is have a steady stream of starter boxsets, the Essentials box is a good introduction to levels 1-5 and a concise statement of the ruleset in 64(ish) pages. They should keep that up.

 

[TristramEvans]

I think as usual a lot of people overthink why MCU fans didn't embrace the comics: most of them don't like to read. One need to only see the reaction of many MCU fans to the brightly coloured, psychedelic Kirby art for The Eternals to know that the average MCU fan is not ever going to like comics.

I have anecdotal tales from comicshop owners of people coming in and wanting to get into comics during the height of the MCU craze, only to find that none of the characters they liked from the films in the comics themselves, and multi-issue Events that required readers to shell out for dozens of comics a month just to follow a storyline.

But that aside, the main issue I have with this argument is that the opposite has happened numerous times throughout history. Batman '89 led to a huge increase in readership of Batman comics. Superman: The Movie led to a demonstrable increase in sales of Superman comics. The relationship of cross marketing CAN exist, so to simply write it off as "people don;t like to read so of course no MCU fans buy comics" doesn't ring true to me. I think Marvel comics had an opportunity and simply were incapable or unwilling to capitalize on it.

The quality of modern superhero comics, with some big exceptions like Hickman's recent run on X-Men and FF aside, isn't high but it was even worse in the 90s and a good portion of the 'fandom' hoovered that garbage up with enthusiasm.

Well, discussing the success in the 90s is a difficult topic for comparison because it was a Collector's Boom, meaning the majority of comic buyers were not comic book readers. However, while it was concurrently a time of high fan engagement, that's kind of the issue - what appeals to longtime, older fans isn't what draws in new readers and my perception is that the 90s is both when the average age of comicbook readers increased (to 20s-30s). but also continued a trend that began in the 80s where the generation of new readers drastically shrank.

The US comic industry has experienced numerous booms and busts throughout its history going back to the 40s, a lot of the doomladen talk is wishful thinking from emotionally arrested manchildren who need to move on and let superhero comics be for kids again.

That seems a bit backwards, since the "doomladen talk" is generally coming from folks specifically against comics being written by and targeted at "emotionally arrested manchildren", instead of, y'know, actual children. (and "womenchildren" obviously, who are somehow even more pathetic. #girlsgetitdone).

And the boom/bust argument would carry more weight if there wasn't the vast discrepancy between the (not) success of current superhero comics and the monstrous success of comicbooks overall worldwide at the moment. Comics are in fact doing great. It's Marvel and DC that are failing, specifically.

Because people don;t like superheroes? We know that's not true. Because manga are so better written/drawn? Fuck no.
So, just basic logic: Marvel and DC's current output doesn't have wide appeal. That's not a doomladen prophecy, it's an inevitable logical conclusion by looking at sales. And I likewise think it's a completely reasonable assertion to suggest the reason that they are failing is tied to the way modern comics are different from superhero comics that were successful.

No, I don;t think every MCU watcher is ever going to read a comic. But I also would say 90% of kids who grew up reading comics in my generation, were introduced to those characters through other media, and there is definitely a reason that isn't happening now.

 

[TristramEvans]

5e is signficantly cleaned up and yes, I've seen new players understand it much quicker than older editions, but I think it is still more complex in parts than it needs to be and that prevents it from being an ideal introduction for new players.

Absolutely. I mean, just compare the presentation of the 5e rulebook to WEG Star Wars 1e or MSH. 5th edition being "better presented" than prior WotC editions is damning with the faintest praise. It is still woefully overwitten, badly presented, and a huge barrier to anyone who isn't a voracious bookworm.

Not that I'm saying games shouldn't be written for voracious bookworms. Those are my people.

But my people aren't populous or popular.