4) Purchase HeroForge or some other 3D miniature design tool and incorporate it into D&D Beyond. People make their characters, why not design a mini and/or VTT token for your character as a finishing step? [...]
I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve here. What could HF do under DDB management that it doesn't already do or couldn't do?
I made this point when a lot of posters tried to claim that nothing would change for DDB when it was bought by WotC, we're seeing how it's being changed to suit purposes that DDB.being independent wouldn't have been able to serve. Companies are expensive, and buying one takes a lot of capital out of the purchaser. Capital that could be used to expand the purchasing business - more books, adventures, more merchandising, films, etc. If you keep the purchased company the same, you're just buying another source of income in return for significant risk and loss of capital. You generally don't do it unless you can get a bargain or you think you can run it in a way that the current owners can't.
So what purpose would HF serve under the WotC umbrella that it doesn't now? It already does VTT tokens. it could be revamped to animate the digital minis for their super VTT theyre producing, but to my, admittedly amateur, eyes, that would take redoing practically all of it anyway. I'm not sure what shelling tens or hundreds of millions on purchasing HF would do for WotC that they couldn't get just by building a closer relationship, franchising with them or just paying them to create the program for them. Sure, in the long run it might be cheaper to buy them...but that's a lot of capital that could be better spent on your other points. I think if they used that money to fill out Eberron and other settings with adventures etc, that would lead to better over growth.
One word: Convenience. What purpose does it serve to have your appliances connect to the internet? From a security standpoint, there are far more negatives than positives. And yet, the trend continues to be 'The Internet of Things', simply for the sake of user convenience. Having HF or any other 3D design system that can pump out .stl files on Beyond is more about convivence and impulse buying that 100% efficiency. There's a reason why you have, say, candy and soda end caps in front of registers at Home Depot. By having something like HeroForge be part of the Beyond process up front, you're getting a 'first chance' to get the consumer to putting their dollars in your coffers before they go shopping around.
You'll note that there's precious few high fantasy stories on the big screen. The fact that there are several do prove it's not impossible, but the fact that I can only think of one or two names that I don't know for certain are some form of adaptation/retelling of another story suggests the market just isn't there for them, relative to the capital required.
Lord of the Rings
Pirates of the Caribbean
That whole Game of Thrones thing (which, true, isn't big screen)
And a ton of other, lesser titles. And in exactly the same vein, until Marvel was the biggest thing in movies - it wasn't.
Arguably, Avatar and Starwars are also entirely fantasy productions, just not placed in a quasi european past, but a space wizards future. Avatar, less so, but still clearly magical.
I specifically said “high fantasy” for a reason. There’s a great many movies with fantasy/magic elements, but precious few that play into the core D&D theme/setting. And, as noted above, a good portion of the ones that do exist are obscure B-movies that went straight to TV/DVD. Not exactly big earners, those. It’s not objectively impossible for D&D to break into the big screen, but sure looks like long odds.
Things that will make or break D&D film projects; including Honor Among Thieves
-Passion -Quality -Flexibility
Previous D&D media attempts have failed because they were lacking all of those things. The movie is only worth watching for Jeremy Irons chewing the scenery. The animated Dragons of Autumn Twilight has a big name voice cast, but cheap animation and you can tell the actors are just there for the paycheck. D&D as a live-action franchise can be successful, but only if they have someone in charge like a Kevin Feige or Peter Jackson with passion for the project, flexibility to know what to cut for a general audience while keeping the core fans excited and engaged, and a solid budget from the studio to bring it all together. This is why the MCU and LOTR succeeded. It's why Bruce Timm & Paul Dini's DC Animated Universe is more acknowledged and thought highly of compared to the DCEU.
Honor Among Thieves is going to be what it is. That doesn't mean that Hasbro can't start making more plans with Paramount for the future right now.
4) Purchase HeroForge or some other 3D miniature design tool and incorporate it into D&D Beyond. People make their characters, why not design a mini and/or VTT token for your character as a finishing step? [...]
I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve here. What could HF do under DDB management that it doesn't already do or couldn't do?
I made this point when a lot of posters tried to claim that nothing would change for DDB when it was bought by WotC, we're seeing how it's being changed to suit purposes that DDB.being independent wouldn't have been able to serve. Companies are expensive, and buying one takes a lot of capital out of the purchaser. Capital that could be used to expand the purchasing business - more books, adventures, more merchandising, films, etc. If you keep the purchased company the same, you're just buying another source of income in return for significant risk and loss of capital. You generally don't do it unless you can get a bargain or you think you can run it in a way that the current owners can't.
So what purpose would HF serve under the WotC umbrella that it doesn't now? It already does VTT tokens. it could be revamped to animate the digital minis for their super VTT theyre producing, but to my, admittedly amateur, eyes, that would take redoing practically all of it anyway. I'm not sure what shelling tens or hundreds of millions on purchasing HF would do for WotC that they couldn't get just by building a closer relationship, franchising with them or just paying them to create the program for them. Sure, in the long run it might be cheaper to buy them...but that's a lot of capital that could be better spent on your other points. I think if they used that money to fill out Eberron and other settings with adventures etc, that would lead to better over growth.
One word: Convenience. What purpose does it serve to have your appliances connect to the internet? From a security standpoint, there are far more negatives than positives. And yet, the trend continues to be 'The Internet of Things', simply for the sake of user convenience. Having HF or any other 3D design system that can pump out .stl files on Beyond is more about convivence and impulse buying that 100% efficiency. There's a reason why you have, say, candy and soda end caps in front of registers at Home Depot. By having something like HeroForge be part of the Beyond process up front, you're getting a 'first chance' to get the consumer to putting their dollars in your coffers before they go shopping around.
Read my post again. We have IoT because it costs them next to nothing to add to a device, buying HF would cost a lot to buy. To give an idea, when the financials ofnWotC surfaced for the period covering their acquisition of DDB, we had several people post about how WotC was doomed and making massive losses. That was because they had bought DDB, a pretty small company with little money, had, to someone unaware of the acquisition, made it look like WotC was in trouble. I don't know what HF is worth, but I'd guess it's at the very least comparable to DDB and most likely quite a bit more.
WotC isn't going to go through that to save you a few clicks. If they decide to have something on the website like that, then they'd just do one if the options I mentioned; hire HF to make one for them, lease one from them or just develop one in-house. All three of those options gives them the same benefits without sucking out all the capital that purchasing a company would require and preventing investment in their own products.
So, what does owning HF gain them that they can't do on better terms by keeping them independent?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I disagree. Lorraine Williams deliberately sabotaged TSR by things like...
-Shutting down game testing in the office. Playtesting under her regime was done completely off company time
-An endless search for the next 'Magic The Gathering'. Lots of money poured into developing games like Spellfire and Dragon Dice that went absolutely no-where
-Cancelling Star Frontiers in order to create a sci-fi RPG based on Buck Rogers to create royalties for her family (related to the Dille Family Trust, which owns the rights to Buck Rogers).
TSR in the 80's wasn't just controlled by apathetic corporate greed; Lorraine was pretty openly contemptuous of gamers themselves and didn't care about crashing the company so long as she and her brother made some bank along the way. And they certainly did.
Dude, TSR was already a financial disaster long before she took ownership of it thanks to horrible investments and bad bets. Hell, she was only able to take over largely because of years of bad financial decisions. Stewardship under her of course wasn't good, either.
2. maybe but that is pretty niche as far as market goes
3. they are trying to. However, they have to it right, otherwise you get less of a Marvel, more if a DC
Producing great quality content in house did not kill TSR. There were many factors. Let's be honest, aside from the core content, WoTC's products are garbage. 3ps aren't losing money off of making quality content. No reason WoTC can't do the same.
Things that will make or break D&D film projects; including Honor Among Thieves
-Passion -Quality -Flexibility
Previous D&D media attempts have failed because they were lacking all of those things. The movie is only worth watching for Jeremy Irons chewing the scenery. The animated Dragons of Autumn Twilight has a big name voice cast, but cheap animation and you can tell the actors are just there for the paycheck. D&D as a live-action franchise can be successful, but only if they have someone in charge like a Kevin Feige or Peter Jackson with passion for the project, flexibility to know what to cut for a general audience while keeping the core fans excited and engaged, and a solid budget from the studio to bring it all together. This is why the MCU and LOTR succeeded. It's why Bruce Timm & Paul Dini's DC Animated Universe is more acknowledged and thought highly of compared to the DCEU.
Honor Among Thieves is going to be what it is. That doesn't mean that Hasbro can't start making more plans with Paramount for the future right now.
Yeah, and superhero movies were very hit and miss before the MCU, but they were also generally profitable as long as the people involved wanted to make a superhero movie. While I am completely enraged by the OGL debacle I really want Honor Among Thieves to be as good as the trailers make it look and very successful so that it is an example of how they can expand the brand in a positive way.
Create and license official tokens, npc’s with stats and other info, adventures, etc. for use on all VTTs. Work with all VTTs to license and sell non-SRD content for use in the VTTs.
You know I could actually see there being a pretty decent market for something like this.
Buy the LoTR Two Towers Adventure - comes with Frodo, Samwise, Aragorn and Legolas digital minis, tokens, and 3 maps, 10 NPC's with voice actor recorded dialogue popups that you can code to happen when players approach them. Shadowfax mini is an extra .99 cents, but optional because you could just use a horse, that kind of a deal.
If they put a little time into like, small adventure packs that encapsulated various fantasy franchises like LotR or Narnia or whatever I could see people really getting into that, or at least buying stuff from their favorite franchises so that they could play their favorite moments or characters and have some fun with it. They could honestly make it very polished and encapsulated, make multiple adventures for each IP thus making the minis and everything they made for it worth more because they're using it over and over again; hell, with Lord of the Rings alone you could easily pop out 10, 12 adventures of various types with various characters and people would eat that up.
Actually the guy that made the first D&D movie was incredibly passionate about it, the whole thing kind of came into being purely because this one dude loved Dungeons and Dragons so much that he saved up enough money to buy the rights to make the film - and he wasn't a filmmaker or anything from what I remember, he was just a guy. Which is probably why the movie is kind of a hot mess tbh, because even if you desperately love something it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have all the expertise that a film career or schooling would get you, and I bet that makes a lot of difference when making executive decisions in terms of movie making.
I mean it is a hot mess for a lot of reasons I'm sure, I just remember seeing a little documentary thing about how he worked really hard to get it made and it was touching because it was clearly something he really just wanted to exist, and I can really sympathize with that. He tried really hard, and like... IDK I think I appreciate that more than these soulless corporations that just throw money at greenscreen everything and call it a day y'know.
I'm reluctantly saying goodbye to D&D. I was a subscriber here in D&D Beyond for years, own approximately $1000 USD in digital content purchased here in D&D Beyond and I'm ready to cut my losses and move on.
I made the switch away from 5e and WotC, BEFORE this OGL nonsense hit the news. And here's the reason WHY: I'm a middle aged man with two young children, a job, my own house that requires maintenance and upkeep, a wife that requires even MORE maintenance and upkeep (pardon my sense of humor), etc, etc, etc. I ran Out of the Abyss (OotA) as my second GM experience (my first with 5e) and even though I enjoyed the content just fine, I did not enjoy the preparation time each session required. COVID hit mid OotA campaign and forced my group to go mostly digital and remote. Now that we've made that transition, we found we like it and are not going back to sharpie maps on gridded mats with token stand-ins or paper character sheets with rubbed out holes where HP should be, even now that we're back to in person gaming.
I started with Roll20 and didn't enjoy the experience. I moved on to Foundry VTT. I am not incapable when it comes to code, so I very much enjoyed the Foundry experience, allowing me to customize my game to play it my way. I did some pretty amazing things (at least I think so): I made The Vast Oblivium a truly vertical experience that would not have been possible in any practical way at a physical table. I made The Labyrinth a maze that rebuilt itself each time players turned a corner so the players couldn't memorize the map to make their way around and had to rely on their character's skill checks to find their way. All great stuff that really put a shine on the TTRPG experience (even if it was digital).
When OotA was done, I took a break. We played in other settings, but still used 5e and D&D Beyond for the character builder. Those were short campaigns though, and now I'm back as DM again. But this time I chose to run a pre-made campaign... and WoTC doesn't offer that on the platform of my choice. WHY!!?
So as I said earlier, I cut my losses and bought a pre-made, ready to go, impressive module for Foundry VTT that I could run with 15 minutes of prep time before each session. And it's not a WotC product. Now that I've seen this is a thing, there's no way I'm going back to anything lesser. I am doing well enough that I can justify spending money on this hobby that I enjoy (at least the parts that I enjoy), including subscriptions like D&D Beyond that allow my players to use the content I own. However, I'm going to spend my money wisely, and I am not a hardcore WotC fanboy.
Give me what I want, and I will give you my money.
As an aside regarding WotC's own VTT... I've looked at the marketing videos and I see a 3d engine, probably running in an app. When I made my Foundry VTT module to build The Vast Oblivium, in my ignorance, I implemented it in a way that was moderately intensive on video cards. On my gaming rig, it ran smooth. On the lesser computers in my group, it ran a bit choppy, but plenty adequate for a TTRPG. But for one player computer, it didn't run at all. I have been very careful since then to make sure I don't mod Foundry such that someone can't participate. And that is the crux of why I don't think I'll be using WotC's VTT.
Foundry VTT is basically a website. It runs in a browser. There's nothing for the players to install, they just navigate to a webpage and sign in. All free for them and only a one time cost for me.
Foundry has very acceptable minimum requirements, which makes it accessible to a lot of people who can't afford powerful computers. If everyone in my group can't use a VTT, then no one in my group is going to use that VTT.
I'm not here to sell Foundry VTT. I'm just pointing out the obvious; I'm not going to use anything that doesn't meet those requirements. And seeing as WotC's VTT looks to be 3D, I'm pretty sure it won't run for everyone. So its a non-starter for me.
In conclusion, if you want my money, which I want to spend on your products, then give me your products in the format I'm asking for. Don't force feed me your walled garden that I will most likely not want to enter.
Hollywood movies are not for snobs; they are traditionally for (romantic) dates, selling mechandise and lifting the spirits of the downtrodden.
The ticket cost was negligible in the golden age of cinema because the profits were originally about the concession stands for theater owners selling candies, popcorn, etcetera.
Today, the concession stands have been placed aside and the movie ticket increased exponentially.
The retail market has now taken the role of the concession stand for selling merchandise.
Things change over time according to necessity.
Anyway, that lady tiefling character in 'Dungeons & Dragons' is so darn cute. ❤
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
One word: Convenience. What purpose does it serve to have your appliances connect to the internet? From a security standpoint, there are far more negatives than positives. And yet, the trend continues to be 'The Internet of Things', simply for the sake of user convenience. Having HF or any other 3D design system that can pump out .stl files on Beyond is more about convivence and impulse buying that 100% efficiency. There's a reason why you have, say, candy and soda end caps in front of registers at Home Depot. By having something like HeroForge be part of the Beyond process up front, you're getting a 'first chance' to get the consumer to putting their dollars in your coffers before they go shopping around.
Things that will make or break D&D film projects; including Honor Among Thieves
-Passion
-Quality
-Flexibility
Previous D&D media attempts have failed because they were lacking all of those things. The movie is only worth watching for Jeremy Irons chewing the scenery. The animated Dragons of Autumn Twilight has a big name voice cast, but cheap animation and you can tell the actors are just there for the paycheck. D&D as a live-action franchise can be successful, but only if they have someone in charge like a Kevin Feige or Peter Jackson with passion for the project, flexibility to know what to cut for a general audience while keeping the core fans excited and engaged, and a solid budget from the studio to bring it all together. This is why the MCU and LOTR succeeded. It's why Bruce Timm & Paul Dini's DC Animated Universe is more acknowledged and thought highly of compared to the DCEU.
Honor Among Thieves is going to be what it is. That doesn't mean that Hasbro can't start making more plans with Paramount for the future right now.
Read my post again. We have IoT because it costs them next to nothing to add to a device, buying HF would cost a lot to buy. To give an idea, when the financials ofnWotC surfaced for the period covering their acquisition of DDB, we had several people post about how WotC was doomed and making massive losses. That was because they had bought DDB, a pretty small company with little money, had, to someone unaware of the acquisition, made it look like WotC was in trouble. I don't know what HF is worth, but I'd guess it's at the very least comparable to DDB and most likely quite a bit more.
WotC isn't going to go through that to save you a few clicks. If they decide to have something on the website like that, then they'd just do one if the options I mentioned; hire HF to make one for them, lease one from them or just develop one in-house. All three of those options gives them the same benefits without sucking out all the capital that purchasing a company would require and preventing investment in their own products.
So, what does owning HF gain them that they can't do on better terms by keeping them independent?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Dude, TSR was already a financial disaster long before she took ownership of it thanks to horrible investments and bad bets. Hell, she was only able to take over largely because of years of bad financial decisions. Stewardship under her of course wasn't good, either.
There it is.
Thank you.
Producing great quality content in house did not kill TSR. There were many factors. Let's be honest, aside from the core content, WoTC's products are garbage. 3ps aren't losing money off of making quality content. No reason WoTC can't do the same.
Yeah, and superhero movies were very hit and miss before the MCU, but they were also generally profitable as long as the people involved wanted to make a superhero movie. While I am completely enraged by the OGL debacle I really want Honor Among Thieves to be as good as the trailers make it look and very successful so that it is an example of how they can expand the brand in a positive way.
A prediction:
Dungeons & Dragons will do well...
Very well... you'll see.
You know I could actually see there being a pretty decent market for something like this.
Buy the LoTR Two Towers Adventure - comes with Frodo, Samwise, Aragorn and Legolas digital minis, tokens, and 3 maps, 10 NPC's with voice actor recorded dialogue popups that you can code to happen when players approach them. Shadowfax mini is an extra .99 cents, but optional because you could just use a horse, that kind of a deal.
If they put a little time into like, small adventure packs that encapsulated various fantasy franchises like LotR or Narnia or whatever I could see people really getting into that, or at least buying stuff from their favorite franchises so that they could play their favorite moments or characters and have some fun with it. They could honestly make it very polished and encapsulated, make multiple adventures for each IP thus making the minis and everything they made for it worth more because they're using it over and over again; hell, with Lord of the Rings alone you could easily pop out 10, 12 adventures of various types with various characters and people would eat that up.
Actually the guy that made the first D&D movie was incredibly passionate about it, the whole thing kind of came into being purely because this one dude loved Dungeons and Dragons so much that he saved up enough money to buy the rights to make the film - and he wasn't a filmmaker or anything from what I remember, he was just a guy. Which is probably why the movie is kind of a hot mess tbh, because even if you desperately love something it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have all the expertise that a film career or schooling would get you, and I bet that makes a lot of difference when making executive decisions in terms of movie making.
I mean it is a hot mess for a lot of reasons I'm sure, I just remember seeing a little documentary thing about how he worked really hard to get it made and it was touching because it was clearly something he really just wanted to exist, and I can really sympathize with that. He tried really hard, and like... IDK I think I appreciate that more than these soulless corporations that just throw money at greenscreen everything and call it a day y'know.
I'm reluctantly saying goodbye to D&D. I was a subscriber here in D&D Beyond for years, own approximately $1000 USD in digital content purchased here in D&D Beyond and I'm ready to cut my losses and move on.
I made the switch away from 5e and WotC, BEFORE this OGL nonsense hit the news. And here's the reason WHY: I'm a middle aged man with two young children, a job, my own house that requires maintenance and upkeep, a wife that requires even MORE maintenance and upkeep (pardon my sense of humor), etc, etc, etc. I ran Out of the Abyss (OotA) as my second GM experience (my first with 5e) and even though I enjoyed the content just fine, I did not enjoy the preparation time each session required. COVID hit mid OotA campaign and forced my group to go mostly digital and remote. Now that we've made that transition, we found we like it and are not going back to sharpie maps on gridded mats with token stand-ins or paper character sheets with rubbed out holes where HP should be, even now that we're back to in person gaming.
I started with Roll20 and didn't enjoy the experience. I moved on to Foundry VTT. I am not incapable when it comes to code, so I very much enjoyed the Foundry experience, allowing me to customize my game to play it my way. I did some pretty amazing things (at least I think so): I made The Vast Oblivium a truly vertical experience that would not have been possible in any practical way at a physical table. I made The Labyrinth a maze that rebuilt itself each time players turned a corner so the players couldn't memorize the map to make their way around and had to rely on their character's skill checks to find their way. All great stuff that really put a shine on the TTRPG experience (even if it was digital).
When OotA was done, I took a break. We played in other settings, but still used 5e and D&D Beyond for the character builder. Those were short campaigns though, and now I'm back as DM again. But this time I chose to run a pre-made campaign... and WoTC doesn't offer that on the platform of my choice. WHY!!?
So as I said earlier, I cut my losses and bought a pre-made, ready to go, impressive module for Foundry VTT that I could run with 15 minutes of prep time before each session. And it's not a WotC product. Now that I've seen this is a thing, there's no way I'm going back to anything lesser. I am doing well enough that I can justify spending money on this hobby that I enjoy (at least the parts that I enjoy), including subscriptions like D&D Beyond that allow my players to use the content I own. However, I'm going to spend my money wisely, and I am not a hardcore WotC fanboy.
Give me what I want, and I will give you my money.
As an aside regarding WotC's own VTT... I've looked at the marketing videos and I see a 3d engine, probably running in an app. When I made my Foundry VTT module to build The Vast Oblivium, in my ignorance, I implemented it in a way that was moderately intensive on video cards. On my gaming rig, it ran smooth. On the lesser computers in my group, it ran a bit choppy, but plenty adequate for a TTRPG. But for one player computer, it didn't run at all. I have been very careful since then to make sure I don't mod Foundry such that someone can't participate. And that is the crux of why I don't think I'll be using WotC's VTT.
I'm not here to sell Foundry VTT. I'm just pointing out the obvious; I'm not going to use anything that doesn't meet those requirements. And seeing as WotC's VTT looks to be 3D, I'm pretty sure it won't run for everyone. So its a non-starter for me.
In conclusion, if you want my money, which I want to spend on your products, then give me your products in the format I'm asking for. Don't force feed me your walled garden that I will most likely not want to enter.
>>>Into_the_Oddities
Hollywood movies are not for snobs; they are traditionally for (romantic) dates, selling mechandise and lifting the spirits of the downtrodden.
The ticket cost was negligible in the golden age of cinema because the profits were originally about the concession stands for theater owners selling candies, popcorn, etcetera.
Today, the concession stands have been placed aside and the movie ticket increased exponentially.
The retail market has now taken the role of the concession stand for selling merchandise.
Things change over time according to necessity.
Anyway, that lady tiefling character in 'Dungeons & Dragons' is so darn cute. ❤