- Joined
- Aug 20, 2017
- Messages
- 8,319
- Reaction score
- 24,025
To be fair, on paper Dragon Dice wasn't a bad idea and I suspect most people at the company wouldn't have thought so.
Designed by Lester W Smith who has a decent pedigree in RPGs. Great reviews, Origins award winner.
Where I think the problems lie were:
At a time where CCGs were the big thing, collectible dice may have been just a little bit too innovative. Not normally a bad thing, but a company in TSR's financial position probably shouldn't be taking risks like that, especially as a primary product.
Similarly, making it a unique setting (rather than Greyhawk or Dragonlance) was likely a mistake.
TSR's financial issues lead to them staking to much on it that lead to overproduction that made the issues worse.
It's worth noting it's still produced today (with more expansions ) which suggests it has the fanbase to support a smaller company at least.
Generally, I think it was a decent product that failed to catch on. We're not talking about something objectively terrible like the ET video game.
Designed by Lester W Smith who has a decent pedigree in RPGs. Great reviews, Origins award winner.
Where I think the problems lie were:
At a time where CCGs were the big thing, collectible dice may have been just a little bit too innovative. Not normally a bad thing, but a company in TSR's financial position probably shouldn't be taking risks like that, especially as a primary product.
Similarly, making it a unique setting (rather than Greyhawk or Dragonlance) was likely a mistake.
TSR's financial issues lead to them staking to much on it that lead to overproduction that made the issues worse.
It's worth noting it's still produced today (with more expansions ) which suggests it has the fanbase to support a smaller company at least.
Generally, I think it was a decent product that failed to catch on. We're not talking about something objectively terrible like the ET video game.