Is D&D Under-monetized?

 

Is D&D under-monetized?

 

Hell yes. 

 

Listen, D&D has insane levels of brand recognition.  Everyone knows what it is (or thinks they do) and it defines its niche the way Kleenex and Coke define theirs.  This should be a huge cash cow.

 

And nobody has figured out how to monetize it.

 

During the TSR years, all sorts of crazy schemes were tried, and one of them, pushing out lots of product, was a big part of what killed TSR.  (Here’s a dirty little not-so-secret of the RPG business: the more you publish for your RPG, the worse it gets.  Every book makes it that much harder to get into and that much harder to run as a GM.  That’s why in early 5e under Mearles & Co they had a PHB+1 book rule and they dripped out new official material slowly.  If you really needed new stuff, there was Unearthed Arcana, but that wasn’t official, and if you were not feverishly mainlining D&D, you probably didn’t even know it existed.)

 

This weekend, my wife and I played B/X D&D, using some house rules and the same blue-and-red books I got for Christmas back in the early ‘80s.  Thanks to the OSR, there is now so much material for that edition of the game that I doubt anyone could possibly play all of it.  I don’t have to ever buy another D&D book ever again, and I can have untold hours of fun playing the game.

 

Is D&D undermonetized?  Hell, yes, and the disconnect between playing the game and WotC cashing in is a big reason for it.

 

Publishing new books is bad for an RPG, but publishing books is about the only way anyone knows to monetize an RPG.  This is why WotC is casting about for some other way, any other way, to monetize D&D.  If past performance is any guide, when 6e comes out, roughly half the current player base will adopt it, and the other half will stick with 5e.  Because the 3e OGL exists, someone will likely create a 5e emulator and suck up all those “abandoned” players and do to 6e what Pathfinder did to 4e. 

 

You can’t grow your income via printing new books, and you can’t really grow it by not printing new books.  So how to monetize D&D?  You can try to sell the IP, but what is the D&D IP?  It’s mostly the beholder.  Sure, it’s also the mindflayer and some named gods and Elminster, but the mindflayer looks like a sci-fi refugee, nobody cares about gods who isn’t playing a cleric, and Elminster is Gandalf but randy (and he’s not all that randy since Greenwood stopped writing him). 

 

So what does that leave?  Squeezing some pennies out from licensing?  Been there, done that.

 

The current crew running D&D has a lot of background in Microsoft, I think?  Doesn’t exactly bode well for innovation.  And now people are paying attention to D&D, which makes real innovation even scarier.  Maybe they can make the digital push work this time? 

 

I really don’t think WotC is planning to do what the gloom-and-doomers are wailing about right now: going all digital, micro-transactions to get all the core rules, etc.  I doubt they’re going to do much to the OGL (though I fully expect them to include digital resources in it, and methods to sell through their new online portal thingy).  The kind of money they are “leaving on the table” is the sort Hasbro loses in its couch cushions. 

 

I absolutely see them pushing the “lifestyle brand” thing.  There’s no reason for them not to, and if it takes off, they’ll be able to move a lot of merch.  But I don’t see that having any effect on the game itself; I doubt there will be a drinking-shots mechanic added to the game in order to sell official D&D bar accessories. 

 

That being said, I certainly did not expect the debacles leadingup to the release of 4e, so I could be completely wrong here.  However, I’m not overly concerned.  Turns out, my 40+ year-old B/X books still play just fine, and signs are promising for a whole lot of new content over thecourse of ’23.