How badly has D&D been mismanaged?

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Voros said:
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.
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In '82, E.T. (one of the top ten grossing movies of all time) showed the kids playing D&D and it was nothing special, just something kids did. I remember Dr. Joyce Brothers talking about playing D&D on...Donahue or one of those popular interview shows. D&D hit the mainstream for sure.
 
The Mad Hatter said:
I like Kindred: The Embraced. It was good enough for what it was; a drama show with vampires. It had pretty women and hot men. Damm Mark Frankel (Julian Luna) was hot.

latest
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Brigid Brannagh was hot too. The setup with her as a descendant of the Ventrue Prince being rape/embraced by a Brujah hit the key aspect of the Byronic Vampire and laid the groundwork for a R&J "star-crossed lovers" story. Way better than what I expected from an Aaron Spelling soap opera. Just one of those shows strangled by Fox in its crib.
 
CRKrueger said:
In '82, E.T. (one of the top ten grossing movies of all time) showed the kids playing D&D and it was nothing special, just something kids did. I remember Dr. Joyce Brothers talking about playing D&D on...Donahue or one of those popular interview shows. D&D hit the mainstream for sure.
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Don’t forget Cloak and Dagger
 
It's important to remember that that Stranger Things moment when "D&D" was a buzzword was eight years ago. An attempt to cash in on supposed mainstream interest now is like trying to cash in on the mention in E.T in 1990.
 
sharps54 said:
Not RPG related but it is a pretty fun movie if you like direct to video shlock and W.A.S.P.
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None of the RPG media in the early 80s was actually RPG related because Boomers couldn't figure out what D&D actually was. The best example of which, besides Mazes & Monsters natch, was the D&D episode of Greatest American Hero, where you can actually see onscreen the writers struggling to create some sort of comprehensible synthesis from unrelated buzzwords.
 
TristramEvans said:
None of the RPG media in the early 80s was actually RPG related because Boomers couldn't figure out what D&D actually was. The best example of which, besides Mazes & Monsters natch, was the D&D episode of Greatest American Hero, where you can actually see onscreen the writers struggling to create some sort of comprehensible synthesis from unrelated buzzwords.
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Don’t forget my favorite D&D tie in movie, SHAKMA! The trailer tells you all you need to know…
 
RPGs in general big?

Sure but with the qualifier of “sorta.”

I think it’s influence is felt across video games and other media but TTRPGs like the war games before it were always a niche. The only real arguing is just how big was the niche?
 
TristramEvans said:
None of the RPG media in the early 80s was actually RPG related because Boomers couldn't figure out what D&D actually was. The best example of which, besides Mazes & Monsters natch, was the D&D episode of Greatest American Hero, where you can actually see onscreen the writers struggling to create some sort of comprehensible synthesis from unrelated buzzwords.
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And yet the D&D scene in E.T. (which, admittedly, is only about 2 minutes long) is pretty much 100% accurate. Melissa Mathison (the screenwriter) must have known some kids who were players, or maybe the kid actors were players and were allowed to ad-lib that part.
 
lategamer said:
Blade
Budget$45 million
Box office$131.2 million

Blade 2
Budget$54 million
Box office$155 million

Blade 3
Budget$65 million
Box office$132 million


Pretty respectable for wall-spaghetti.
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Considering the fact that trinity is pretty much a mess and they'd lost all good will, if we'd gone on from there you would have seen them reap the whirlwind in those numbers
 
lategamer said:
They opened with a nice taster of the violence to come and a massive exposition about who Tony Stark was.

I mean, characters are part of it but as the DCU shows, writing is more important.



Yup. But we know with the end credit scenes that it was building to something.
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If you're a comic nerd. Those not in the know had no idea and it didn't affect enjoyment
 
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T. Foster said:
And yet the D&D scene in E.T. (which, admittedly, is only about 2 minutes long) is pretty much 100% accurate. Melissa Mathison (the screenwriter) must have known some kids who were players, or maybe the kid actors were players and were allowed to ad-lib that part.
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www.looper.com

Why Steven Spielberg Played Dungeons & Dragons Before Filming E.T. - Looper

How does a filmmaker prepare to capture the sort of true-to-life adolescent experience that Steven Spielberg was after when filming E.T.? With game night, apparently. Actor Robert MacNaughton shared some memories of working on the extra-terrestrial adventure, including a game of Dungeons & Dragons.
www.looper.com www.looper.com

Relevant quotes:
In a 1986 interview for Orange Coast Magazine, actor Robert MacNaughton, who played older brother Michael in E.T., opened up about director Steven Spielberg's methods. After learning during MacNaughton's audition that he was a fan of Dungeons & Dragons, Spielberg arranged for all the younger actors to play D&D together prior to the start of filming. He hoped the cast and crew would feel as if they were family during the making of the film.

MacNaughton mentioned this again during an interview with Yahoo! News in 2017, in which he explained that they played at the home of Harrison Ford as part of the audition process.

"One of the auditions was at Harrison Ford's house because he and Melissa Mathison, who wrote the script, were together, and his kids Ben and Willard played Dungeons & Dragons," MacNaughton recalled. "So one of the auditions was at Harrison Ford's house with all of us playing Dungeons & Dragons. So it was always a part of the whole, of the script, an integral part."
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Fans of the film may recall that, in the beginning of the movie, Michael and his friends are playing a game that seems to pretty similar to D&D; the characters mention "melee points" and "death spells," and seem to be acting out an adventure with the help of a "game master." However, it very pointedly was not intended to be a direct D&D reference because the production couldn't secure permission to use the game's trademarked elements, MacNaughton explained in 2017. If they had, the ending of the film may have turned out much differently.

"In fact, the last scene in the movie wasn't supposed to be the scene that ends up in the movie," the actor revealed. "The last scene was going to be all of us playing Dungeons & Dragons again, except this time, Elliott's the dungeon master. Because he was the one that found E.T., he sort of got in with the group. And so that was supposed to be the final scene, it was in the script and everything, and then they would pan up to the roof and you'd see the communicator and it's still working — in other words, Elliott is still in touch with E.T. But after they did the score, the music, and they saw what they had with the spaceship taking off and everything [laughs] — how can you follow that? I mean, it was a wise choice."
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chuckdee said:
Considering the fact that trinity is pretty much a mess and they'd lost all good will, if we'd gone on from there you would have seen them reap the whirlwind in those numbers
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there was a short lived Blade TV series after Trinity, wasnt there?
 
TristramEvans said:
there was a short lived Blade TV series after Trinity, wasnt there?
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There was, and unlike S sharps54, I thought it was decent. It mainly suffered from not having Snipes playing Blade. Sticky Fingaz played Blade and wasn't good, it mostly seemed like he was trying to do an immitation of Snipes Blade. All of the other actors were good however. I distinctly remember Emily Hirst playing a very terrifying, seemingly 12 year old girl, but actually an ancient vampire.
 
The Mad Hatter said:
There was, and unlike S sharps54, I thought it was decent. It mainly suffered from not having Snipes playing Blade. Sticky Fingaz played Blade and wasn't good, it mostly seemed like he was trying to do an immitation of Snipes Blade. All of the other actors were good however. I distinctly remember Emily Hirst playing a very terrifying, seemingly 12 year old girl, but actually an ancient vampire.
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That’s fair, I didn’t mean to slander the entire cast. And while I haven’t watched any making of or read any behind the scenes notes I wouldn’t be surprised if Sticky Fingaz was directed to act in that way and not allowed to make the character his own.
Imagine if SMG had to act like Kristy Swanson for the Buffy tv show?
 
Baulderstone said:
It's important to remember that that Stranger Things moment when "D&D" was a buzzword was eight years ago. An attempt to cash in on supposed mainstream interest now is like trying to cash in on the mention in E.T in 1990.
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And the recent movie was at least five years too late. It needed to come out before the pandemic.

No doubt it suffered because it looked like a Marvel style franchise film in an era when most people are sick to death of them.
 
Baulderstone said:
www.looper.com

Why Steven Spielberg Played Dungeons & Dragons Before Filming E.T. - Looper

How does a filmmaker prepare to capture the sort of true-to-life adolescent experience that Steven Spielberg was after when filming E.T.? With game night, apparently. Actor Robert MacNaughton shared some memories of working on the extra-terrestrial adventure, including a game of Dungeons & Dragons.
www.looper.com www.looper.com

Relevant quotes:
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I was going to say a filmmaker like Spielberg would have probably have gone the extra mile to make sure he got the details right and this story confirms it.
 
Of all the bad business decisions TSR made in the 80s, denying permission for the D&D name and book covers to be used in E.T. (which became the highest-grossing movie of all time and held onto the title for about a decade) is surely among the dumbest. As is, only people who already know D&D know what the kids are doing in that scene so TSR got no promotional value out of it (contrast to the benefit Reese’s Pieces got from their product placement in the movie, or WotC from the prominence of D&D in Stranger Things decades later). Supposedly TSR objected to the pizza money on the table since they said it made it seem like the kids were gambling which they thought “sent the wrong message”

Edit: srsly, in addition to increased visibility and sales it also would’ve helped insulate the brand from the “B.A.D.D.”/William Dear/Satanic Panic charges that started afflicting the game a couple years later. It seems unlikely those sensationalistic claims would’ve gotten the same amount of traction if more parents had recognized that “oh, that’s just the game the kids were playing at the beginning of E.T.; nothing scary there,”
 
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lategamer said:
It’s not just a TTRPG though. It’s fifty years of IP. It’s been in the hearts of millions. We wouldn’t monetise it the same way as a video game or movie but damn, if Marvel can monetise comics to an unending cash factory then D&Ds owners should have managed it.

It won’t affect me. I don’t play it. But it’s still wasted. The shareholders should be up in arms.
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I think that is the disconnect. D&D was played by millions, was in the minds of millions, has a huge nostalgic component of a certain time for millions, but it is not in the hearts of millions. The "worlds" D&D created have a much smaller number who have it in their hearts. They were fine as a two dimensional backdrops for hack & slash campaigns but they don't support well a story or hold up to much scrutiny.

That is, official D&D settings seriously lack internal consistency so they don't hold up to much scrutiny and certainly can't recruit those who are not the faithful. So there is not much there to turn into movies. Compare Marvel, it's soap opera with super powers; and very compelling how super powers don't make a super life, plus more. Compelling themes to those who never even thought of comics, it has more story than it knows what to do with.

All that said, I really like the D&D movie, It didn't take itself too seriously and was a fun romp with a lot of easter egg like stuff for those familiar with the game.

Now I do agree with you on computer games. Why not monetize the crap out of it. I suspect though it is more a business decision given the barrier to entry these days and existing competition.

A good game requires investment, serious investment, and you have to compete with Call of Duty, Skyrim, etc. etc. A D&D computer game can be great, Baldur's Gate, and Icewind Dale are great examples, but unlike the table top market where the first mover advantage is massive for D&D, it doesn't have that in computer games.

Computer gamers don't assign D&D sacred status as the ur progenitor and standard by which all that follows is to be judged. So D&D computer games have to fully compete against more established titles. Sure you will certainly sale D&D computer games to those who hold D&D as the ur progenitor and agree with the edition you are using :smile:, but will it cannibalize your TTRPG sales or drive them? Lots of investment, with risk, and an uncertain net revenue gain.

I suspect the owners of D&D don't want to invest and build, they want to milk.
 
T. Foster said:
Of all the bad business decisions TSR made in the 80s, denying permission for the D&D name and book covers to be used in E.T. (which became the highest-grossing movie of all time and held onto the title for about a decade) is surely among the dumbest. As is, only people who already know D&D know what the kids are doing in that scene so TSR got no promotional value out of it (contrast to the benefit Reese’s Pieces got from their product placement in the movie, or WotC from the prominence of D&D in Stranger Things decades later). Supposedly TSR objected to the pizza money on the table since they said it made it seem like the kids were gambling which they thought “sent the wrong message”

Edit: srsly, in addition to increased visibility and sales it also would’ve helped insulate the brand from the “B.A.D.D.”/William Dear/Satanic Panic charges that started afflicting the game a couple years later. It seems unlikely those sensationalistic claims would’ve gotten the same amount of traction if more parents had recognized that “oh, that’s just the game the kids were playing at the beginning of E.T.; nothing scary there,”
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so true
 
TristramEvans said:
Didn't I hear the latest Baldur's Gate videogame was very successful?

I remember a crapton of D&D computer games in the early 90s.
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I heard the same. Maybe it's true and they can keep it up. If they are doing that and smart will announce in the summer and release before Thanksgiving break in the US.
 
Didn't that scamguy who tried to do a KotDT TV series also have a KS for a Traveller TV series?
 
Savage Schemer said:
Uh...what's your source for that information? The way Larian Studio's Swen Vincke tells it, they walked away from their relationship with Hasbro (after canceling plans for a BG3 DLC) so they could work on their own IP.
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Internet rumor, and I’m willing to admit to being wrong. However the end result - that the company that produced BG3 to great acclaim and success will not be producing any further D&D-branded games - is still true, regardless of which side made the decision.
 
T. Foster said:
Internet rumor, and I’m willing to admit to being wrong. However the end result - that the company that produced BG3 to great acclaim and success will not be producing any further D&D-branded games - is still true, regardless of which side made the decision.
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That much is indeed true. No follow-up in any form to BG3 from the studio that made it.
 
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