Dungeons & Dragons Movie

Nimey writes "IGN has an interview about the Dungeons & Dragons movie, due out later this year." Damn. I was hoping they'd take a storyline from the animated D&D show from the eighties. I'll see it anyway.

Comments

Choose your own ending?

[TallG]

Do we all get to take our d20's and d4's to the cinema and get to roll our own endings?

Re:PG rating? But of course.

[Bieeardo]

A PG rating? But of course. There is an excellent reason for it, and the reason is merchandising. Most of this post is a capsule history of AD&D over the last ten years, to illustrate my final point, so if you just want to skip to the end, scroll down to The Present.

Simply stated, T$R has a long, illustrious history of circling the proverbial bowl. When one of its founders (Gary Gygax) was divorced, his ex-wife (known in some circles as "The Bitch") won a controlling share of the company. Almost immediately, the entire product line was retooled into AD&D Second Edition: gone were the piles of rulebooks that had accrued over years of rules amendments and neat ideas; gone were the (very) occasional pieces of naughty artwork; and gone was everything that could be perceived as "evil" or "controversial" (the Assassin class, demons, and devils, to name a few). Granted, some of the things that were removed were unbalancing (the Cavalier and Barbarian classes, for example). Second Edition was supposed to be a fresh start, a distillation of the best of First Edition and (major selling point) compatible with the original rules. Of course, things broke down quickly.

The 2ndEd product line started off fairly well, with monster packs, books detailing new rules for the four basic character types, and retoolings of older game worlds that had presumably become stale. This wasn't making enough money. Sourcebooks of dubious worth were published, new settings of interest only to very particular types of players were introduced, and campaign settings suffered terrible Dubious Cataclysms That Changed Everything (TM) in order to invalidate old sourcebooks and campaign sets. The bean-counters and lawyers took over, uttering threats (and sometimes making good on them) to buy or sue anyone who so much as looked at them strangely (including anyone who published home-grown rules or campaign information on the Web). The Ty-D-Bol Man beckoned. Luckily for them, Wizards of the Coast scooped them up before it was too late.

During the takeover, WOTC played up their historical connections with AD&D, T$R, etc., proclaiming that their name was originally from an AD&D campaign that the company's founders were involved in. That tidbit was apparently supposed to convince gamers of two things: one, that WOTC was on "their side"; and, two, that since they were gamers once, too, the WOTC brass had innate knowledge of how to make T$R the titan it used to be. This was, of course, bulls**t. WOTC bought T$R because of their excellent distribution network, their pre-existing product lines, and because they were desperately seeking a safety net for when Magic: The Gathering finally lost its popularity: WOTC's homegrown RPG, Everway, died a quick death, and M:tG has always been in danger of losing its popularity in the same sort of shocking surge that it became popular with in the first place. WOTC then discovered one of T$R's biggest problems: its writers were old-school AD&D players, and naturally had a difficult time relating to the current generation of Vampire: the Masquerade players. Worse, M:tG's popularity was beginning to hurt: each new expansion strangled sales of WOTC's other products, leaving them in increasing amounts of debt. The Pokemon card game was just as dangerous to them as Magic, for the same reasons. One flurry of bad product and Magic: The RPG rumours later, Hasbro took over.

Hasbro was nervous. Sales of traditional toys were down, in favour of multimedia and interactive games. Their rival, Mattel, was making inroads into the interactive entertainment market, leaving them in the dust. In response, Hasbro purchased MicroProse. Having their own computer game company was all well and good, and Hasbro Interactive produced a lot of simple, mass-market computer games and crossover products (like the execrable Star Wars Monopoly). The only problem was, they didn't have any "traditional" computer game licenses. Enter WOTC, stage left, wearing a "buy me!" sign.

Hasbro's buyout was beneficial for both companies (or their execs, at least). The owners of WOTC made a killing, and were no longer waking from nightmares of being crushed by unsold boxes of Magic cards. Hasbro was especially happy: They gained a monopoly on domestic Pokemon merchandise, a half-decent novel publishing arm (TSR Books), and control of the AD&D computer game license (to go with their own computer game production house; it is highly unlikely that Hasbro will license another company to produce AD&D computer games after the current batch have finished production). Then, the fun began.

WOTC recently announced the production of a third edition of AD&D (now referred to as D&D, since the original "Basic" D&D was no longer in print). This edition was intended to appeal to the current generation of gamers, and was disturbing both in that the game mechanics had been altered enough that an expensive "conversion book" had become necessary to bring Second Edition characters into line with the new rules, and that WOTC decided to publish the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide in such volume that they could sell them at a cut rate. From this, one could be led to believe that WOTC has a lot riding on the success of Third Edition D&D. One would be correct.

The Present:

The D&D movie is rated PG because WOTC desperately wants young people to see the movie, and then buy the (relatively) cheap 3rd Edition core rulebooks shortly thereafter (I would be willing to wager that they will be available for sale at kiosks in most large theater lobbies, along with "What is D&D?" programmes). The movie is both a test of the feasibility of (gods forbid) more D&D movies, and a massive advertisement for 3rd Edition. They are going to such an outrageous length to promote the 3rd Edition rules because if they aren't massively popular to begin with, D&D will probably go out of print (and incidentally, a lot of writers will be canned). This is hardly a surprise: the product line has been tanking for years, and Hasbro could care less about keeping it around for the sake of "tradition". Hasbro already has what it wants out of WOTC: Pokemon; a perennially strong computer game license; and a group of captive RPG writers to pen the next Star Wars RPG.