Magic in D&D

Something gives me the feeling why we have seen so much Magic the Gathering in D&D is Wizards wants to "cross-pollinate" D&D with so much Magic: The Gathering so that D&D can't be split off from Wizards and sold. They also want some of the "Magic money" to drive interest in roleplaying, which from my experience in the 90s, never worked at scale - people left D&D to play Magic.

Magic was the "easier" D&D.

When you are talking about "getting players around a table for X hours," nothing does it as quickly and as profit-driven as a card game. Face it; everyone has to buy a copy of a spell, monster, and hero - and they don't all come in one book for everyone to borrow from.

Magic makes all the money and is really the only thing worth keeping for Hasbro. D&D is under-monetized, and you have to ask yourself, with this many years at Hasbro, why hasn't it been monetized? If it has failed at monetization this many years, the next question is, can it ever be monetized effectively?

And I can see beyond my love of the game and see Wall Street at work. Replace D&D with "Brand X," and you take the emotion out of the discussion. If a company has owned Brand X for years and failed to turn it into a profit center, it drains the company of resources and energy and should be turned into an asset through a sale.

The problem is, roleplaying games are terrible profit-creation machines. The entire game is given away in the first three books, or at least 90%. I can enjoy almost all of D&D with the first three books. Add-on books depend on your big splash and sell less and less as time goes on due to the required investment.

To make money the company wants to make with "Brand X: the RPG," you need to sell every magic item, class, species, spell, and monster in the game as a paid booster pack. I don't see digital services as a saving grace, only as a way to maintain current returns. You would need to get a considerable percentage of "invested players" - the ones in the current expansion book market - to convert to digital.

And once you convert to digital, you compete with mobile phone games a thumb press away. The cost of competing in that space is another huge cost. Digital services are not free, creating an expected "rate of growth" to justify the cost the company sinks into them.

Re-releasing the game as-is will only get a percentage of players to convert. Many will stick with what they own. It will take a disproportionate amount of marketing budget to drive acceptance of a new edition, especially when the old one is so loved. I do not see the marketing today, when the new version needs it most, so I need to see a strong vote of confidence.

D&D may need to be sold to someone who understands the market. Or can at least caretake the brand effectively at a lower profit level. Some brands feel like they are in curator mode and out of the Wall Street spotlight, and Battletech is an excellent example that feels successful and promoting cross-market initiatives (novels, video games, etc.).

But then again, the companies D&D could sell to would include a who's who of predatory ventures, and you risk the brand turning into a "DC Comics" sort of perpetual monetization failure, despite having some of the most iconic heroes in the history of comics.

One D&D feels like a "last gasp at monetization" to me. The game will always be around, and there is always the OSR, so this is more of a Wall Street money game being played here. The only fundamental mistake players can make is buying into a failed service. If it succeeds and is fun, congratulations, and I will be on board - depending on the value delivered for the money spent. The game will be fine, but the fandom and hype around it may be in for a rough ride.

One problem is that traditional D&D has been very cheap to enjoy.

Most everything is in those first three books.

You don't need to buy a card for everything and collect and resell.

And the most successful version of the game is out there in the wild.

It feels like an uphill battle not only against itself but against every other mobile game and distraction as well.