Basic rules for starting and advertising 5th Edition D&D

[Maj]

Note: I don't think that a character making program is the keystone issue of the next edition of D&D.

That being said, I'm totally with Frank. I have a folder on my computer with images I find off of various websites that I've saved for the purposes of using as character inspirations. And I photoshop them and twist them to fit on my cool custom watermarked character sheets. It's awesome.

And even though I based my current character on a gorgeous image courtesy of Artgerm over on deviantart, the minute I got my hands on that little doll website Frank linked to, I was all up in there making a bajillion versions of my character, print screening like a fiend to save each iteration so I could have the perfect set of images for my character sheet.

While a lack thereof wouldn't keep me away from the game, if I could have a cool character generator that included an awesome character sheet and the ability to add an image or two, I would be happy as a clam. And for someone who isn't as computer literate as I am, I can see them being even happier.

[Saxony]

I don't like having pictures for my characters. I use my imagination for their appearance; and the appearance comes after I've planned out mechanics.

[Fuchs]

I use DAZ Studio for character pics (PCs and NPCs). And then I do illustrations for the campaign log with them.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So for the sake of argument let's just go with a 2D paper doll program. Honestly, it doesn't matter. Hell, it might even be a good thing because you could have a program where you print out stickers and then slap it onto a cardboard token. And now you're playing Sailor Moon in Greyhawk.



But anyway, 5th Edition needs a party line. A collection of marketing soundbites for fans and fanboys to bleat in order to get people thinking '5E is good!' while crowding out knee-jerk criticism. So in bold is the blanket statement, in regular font is the quick-and-easy justification. Now I know that sections one and two seem almost diametrically opposed (the more customization you have, the less action)... but first of all every edition is so suboptimized that you CAN actually achieve both goals and second of all most customers won't look at them very closely anyway. The trick to picking your marketing statement is not to bump up against another edition's claims, otherwise you'll have edition wars. So even though 5E will be more balanced than 4E, you pointedly AVOID saying that 5E is the most balanced edition yet, otherwise you'll have upset fanboys.

5E has a greater emphasis on action than ever before. Combat takes less time to resolve than in 4E while still having the inflated battle lists. A 4-person party can seriously take on a squad of 20 orcs and goblins at first level and resolve the combat in 90 minutes. Effects are streamlined to require less tracking and less rolling.

5E has a greater emphasis on customization than ever before.
Point out all of the sweet applications 5E comes with, such as the paper doll generation. Point out that people get to select kits at first level. Point out the increased number of races at CharGen and an improved 'non-rubber forehead alien' monster playing system (you can totally play a red adult dragon and have it be balanced!). People have backgrounds and contacts now.

5E combines all of the best elements into one super edition.
Whenever possible, 5E will refer to a new or revamped mechanic by the name of its closest-fitting one. People will seriously namedrop stuff like kits and dual-classing. Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Eberron, and Ninter Vale also get mentioned and emphasis. The books will liberally sprinkle in 2E, 3E, and 4E-styled artwork in about equal measures.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So let's assume that the starter kit you provided was an unexpected hit with the masses. The temptation would be to make another kit that combo'ed off of that one, right? Well, I'm of two minds about this.

I mean, the kits inherently have a smaller profit margin than your main line. That's fine, because they were supposed to be a gateway drug into 'regular' 5E D&D. Someone plops down twenty bucks to enjoy your starter kit with some friends and hopefully one or two people from the group will like it enough to make it a regular thing and that's when they start popping down 70 bucks for some core/sourcebooks.

The thing is, if you keep providing iterations of the gateway drug, they won't ever get hooked on your mainline. You'll keep scratching their gaming itch with cheap products. On the other hand, I don't know exactly how large of the potential customer base will ONLY by the gateway drug and other associated products. In this case, you won't ever sell the Big Boy's version of D&D to them and not releasing new boxed sets will cut into your profits.

What do you guys think?

[Blasted]

5E has a greater emphasis on action than ever before.

5E has a greater emphasis on customization than ever before.


5E combines all of the best elements into one super edition.

The books will liberally sprinkle in 2E, 3E, and 4E-styled artwork in about equal measures.

I think that your target audience would be very wary of claims about action, given the perceived 'action orientation' of 4E. There are two ways you could go: full on nostalgia:

5E is a return to the great D&D games of the past
That would probably bring in the players who had moved to other fantasy D20 games such as Pathfinder.
The other option would be to appeal to the gameplay, which I understand is the action tagline you had earlier, but we're going to avoid the word action and go with something more obviously related to gameplay itself.

5E is streamlined, for enjoyable gameplay without losing complexity. That's a little tortured, but it achieves what I want.

In reality, you go for the single tagline (I like the 'return' one) and a collection of sell points:
5E is a return to the great D&D games of the past

• * Greater customization than ever before
  * Streamlining of gameplay to provide greater action
  * A return to the classic worlds of ...(forgetten realms/darksun/whatever)
  * Classes which everyone can enjoy
  * Lots of stuff in the box

Lots of different art styles? That's bad, mmkay? Pick one for coherency. I think good art >>> nostalgic art.

So let's assume that the starter kit you provided was an unexpected hit with the masses. The temptation would be to make another kit that combo'ed off of that one, right? Well, I'm of two minds about this.

The other option is to provide an 'upgrade' kit, which is a mid cost version to bring the starter set up to scratch enough to use the more expensive addons. You might price it at $40, I guess, such that the player could have bought the more expensive option in the first place. It gives them somewhere obvious to go after buying the starter set, without getting you stuck on the cut price treadmill.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I think that your target audience would be very wary of claims about action, given the perceived 'action orientation' of 4E.

Again, I'm of two minds about this.

1) I totally see where you're coming from; a lot of people get all small in the pants over the slightest hint that you're not going to indulge their basket-weaving fantasies. So they might warp the 'easier and more exciting to run' adjective into 'OMG overly combat focused and munchkin!'

2) I think that this contingent of people is small to begin with. There's a reason why Michael Bay still has a job. To newbies or casual fans of the product, action sells. Will the amount of people an 'action' emphasis brings in outweigh the people it alienates? I think so. But then, you could just pick a different word and dodge the dichotomy entirely.

How about dynamic and more epic? I like the word epic because it brings to mind legendary action sequences like the Matrix lobby shootout, but also tricks the basketweavers into thinking that combat will be more meaningful (and less rare, meaning more time for basketweaving). But then again, see the next post below.

5E is streamlined, for enjoyable gameplay without losing complexity. That's a little tortured, but it achieves what I want.

I don't like that term, because it directly contradicts one of 4E's claims and risks making 4erries upset; remember that one of the marketing soundbytes of that edition is that the math works and it's easy for new people to get into. You ideally want to pick soundbytes that won't give the audience a reason to investigate them or try to counter them; indirectly denigrating the previous edition is a good way to do that.

5E is a return to the great D&D games of the past

I don't like this one either, because it also indirectly slams 4E. It implies that there was something wrong with the previous edition and that's why you're pretending that it doesn't exist. In other words you'll have upset fans.

I think a better approach would be to state upfront that you (as the design team) liked many things that 4E and 3E and 2E did in about equal measures--and you had the bright idea to combine ALL of the good things from those editions into one mega product, along with a few personal touches.

This of course means that you take the opportunity whenever possible to talk positively about a previous edition. Or at least provide a compliment sandwich. For example, instead of going 'we were unsatisfied with the daily use system for magical items 4E did', you go '4E had a good idea in not just grabbing all magical items and forming Voltron and we're going to take it a step further'.

I mean, what you're saying is pretty much the same thing, but it's all in the presentation.

Lots of different art styles? That's bad, mmkay? Pick one for coherency. I think good art >>> nostalgic art.

Fair enough. Actually thinking about it, you only really need to appeal to grognards and oldbies when your edition is trying to get a foothold. Once you do you can just shed all of that old baggage and do your own thing. While naming new mechanics old things is a good way to do that, it's a lot less permanent than switching over to a hybrid art style.

I had a thread a couple of months ago discussing the visual theme for 4E. I wonder where that went.

[Blasted]

because it also indirectly slams 4E.

This is the point, you hve 2 distinct players, the 3ees and 4ees and I think that a more subtle dig at 4E will bring results without bringing the eire of the 4erries.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Or more likely 4E fans will see right through it and get upset. Seriously, go to rpg.net or ENWorld sometime.

[Bihlbo]

From my perspective (i.e. from the people with whom I discuss RPGs) 4e's biggest failure is the inability to play a game that focuses on anything but skirmish combats. It isn't that you can't, it's just that if you try, you aren't using 4e for it so you might as well skip the books entirely.

I mean, in the 3.5 game I'm playing now I'm the only one who likes combat at all.
One avoids combat because he doesn't like rules mining to find good options and gets tired of fireball being his only fun spell (read: spell that doesn't result in rules questions or arguments).
One avoids combat because when he thinks of something awesome, epic, and exciting for his character to do while punching things in the face, the rules say he can't do it. Every single time.
One avoids combat because as soon as combat starts he's prevented from roleplaying. And besides, in combat that's when you run the risk of losing your character. Building a wizard's guild and managing your silver mine doesn't result in PC death. This doesn't have anything to do with basket-weaving fantasies, but everything to do with the fact that in combat you can lose the whole game and feel bad.
One avoids combat because making people laugh or impressing them is his motivation. Even if you can force the other players to divert their attention away from the complexity of their own choices long enough to pay attention to what you're doing, the complexity of what you're doing sucks all entertainment out of it for others. Which means combat is the least rewarding way for him to experience the game.

So if you're building a game which allows for awesome action-oriented gameplay, it needs to have a point. In 4e, combat is its own reward - it doesn't reinforce anything and it doesn't resolve conflict which resulted from anything but the previous combats and the most basic genre tropes. Unless you're a juvenile action junky like me who jazzes on the fights enough to overlook the legitimate problems (the ones my friends can't get past), a combat-oriented game is going to attract the narrow margin of players who never bother with anything but combat, but it will not retain the other people who try the game because they're Michael Bay fans who are easily attracted by someone saying "booyah" at the next table.

And I think they key difference is a player's ability to become emotionally invested in the game. 4e discourages emotional investment and because of that is very easy to pick up and put down at a moment's notice. Then, if you put it down and never feel the need to come back, you won't. In a game which encourages emotional investment, even years later you're going to be thinking about the characters, the epic stories they told, and the connections you made with the other players... to the extent that you feel nostalgia and try to get back into the game. I will never again feel the need to play the first Metroid game, because better games are out there and I was never emotionall invested in it. But I will never lose the desire to play Ultima Online again - the experience was as painful as stabbing the same wound over and over, but I made friends, we built a history together, and I was emotionally invested in far more of the game than how exciting it was to see kal ort por.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So are you recommending that as a fourth advertising slogan, Bihlbo?

The non-combat portions of the game have been greatly expanded and tightened.

Something like that? Mind, you actually have to follow through on that but people want to anyway.

[Lago PARANOIA]

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=451748&page=14

The going rate for professional Japanese-to-English translation starts at about 10 cents per character, and a typical page has something like 400 characters. So, 400 pages times, say, $40 at minimum, for about $16,000 if you do it through an agency?

Mind, it will probably be more expensive to translate English to Japanese and of course the kinds of gamebooks they're talking about are smaller in dimensions than EU/NA ones. However, JP gamebooks have much less artwork to them, so it probably balances out.

Judging by one of the pictures in the thread, I'm actually rather charmed by the tokens as opposed to miniatures. I'm becoming more partial to that, especially if 3D printing won't be up to snuff anytime soon.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So. Cross-cultural appeal.

Ideally the product would focus on the China / India / Japan / Russia quadfecta while also targeting South America if possible, that way you wouldn't have to worry about competing with the much tougher EUR market until you're ready to take them on.

But frankly, I have no idea how you would accomplish this. I'm not even sure if the current strategy for selling NA books (high-quality, color art with hardcovers for the more important) would even go over well. You could probably avert this by having a cheaper softcover edition, but the basic problem is even knowing what people in those markets want.

Thoughts?

[Username17]

People in Japan seem to have wildly different expectations of print quality. They seriously buy cut-sized softcovers that are printed on newsprint. Shit that simply would not fly in the US at all. On the other hand, they also buy large, glossy, hard cover, fully illustrated manuscripts at prices that would make an American laugh out loud before walking on. China seems to be the same way.

The Asian market really does seem to want there to be a minimally functional pocket-book version of your game, and a fully illuminated tome sold as the premium edition. The American thing of just putting the basic book in a fucking slipcase and calling it a collector's edition would not fly.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Wouldn't those cut-sized versions be likely to get replaced by e-book versions given how much Japan likes tech, and has smartphone novels already?

[FatR]

About Russia: it will not be easy to marked RPGs here. You want your game to be easily accessible to kids and teenagers, money-wise, because you need to create the market from zero (all veteran roleplayers use English books, and almost all of them are used to pirating stuff). This means that around 20$ is probably the absolute top price you can charge for your game. Anything more, and it will probably be adult's toy, and, again, you don't want to aim for RPG geeks, because there are few of them, and they are unlikely to be interested. Heck, even MtG practically withered and died outside of Moscow because it was too pricey (and because this caused the spiral of negative selection, making whatever the handful of existing clubs there were increasingly hostile to casual players, and thus raising the amount of cash you needed to shell out if you wanted to play against people you meet there and not be curbstomped).
On the other hand you want your product to be shiny and glossy, with enough eye candy for the same kids and teenages to be actually drawn to it. The first pseudo-RPG to appear here in late 80s actually had kick-ass art (compared to the standards of the times), and this probably was the main reason why quite a few schoolkids (myself included) were drawn to it.
I'm not sure if it is possible to make your books sufficiently gorgeous while remaining under the above-mentioned price tag. You will need to advertise your stuff too, although considering how many shitty books had at least some advertising campaigns here, this probably won't take much money.
Oh, and of course your game should be simple enough for teenagers in the first place, or you will fail.

[hogarth]

People in Japan seem to have wildly different expectations of print quality. They seriously buy cut-sized softcovers that are printed on newsprint. Shit that simply would not fly in the US at all.

Yes, according to the guy who writes this blog, a common complaint about 4E D&D and other Western RPGs in Japan is that the books are too expensive. They just don't expect glossy full-colour hardcover books for RPGs.

[shadzar]

facebook apps, flash RPGs.....sounds like Lorraine Williams wet dreams to spread yourself so thin you have no real decent product.

drop all the cross-promotion and cross platform crap and make a TTRPG and focus on that. license the brand out to other people to make other things and take in royalties and let them do the work and shoulder the burden of failure and loss while you still get your money form the licensing fees.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yes, according to the guy who writes this blog, a common complaint about 4E D&D and other Western RPGs in Japan is that the books are too expensive. They just don't expect glossy full-colour hardcover books for RPGs.

Thanks for the link, hogarth; 'twas a good read.

In all seriousness, though, I do think that having a cut-sized paperback version of a rulebook that you can buy on the cheap does have some value to it. People would be much more willing to spend 9.99 on a rulebook that had the PHB + a few supplements packaged in that had a few B&W pictures than roll the dice with a $30 PHB like we already do.

I'm not saying stop the sales of PHB, I'm just saying that there's probably some merit in selling a stripped-down version of the core rulebooks to people who aren't already fans. People who ARE fa

About Russia: it will not be easy to marked RPGs here. You want your game to be easily accessible to kids and teenagers, money-wise, because you need to create the market from zero (all veteran roleplayers use English books, and almost all of them are used to pirating stuff). This means that around 20$ is probably the absolute top price you can charge for your game.

Well, the only way you could release the core rules-set for under twenty dollars would be one or more of:

1) Cut down on the post-NA content. This means either cutting people off of levels, releasing fewer classes, or having fewer powers and such. If I had to choose, I would release fewer powers.

2) Cut down on the product in the mainline product. This means taming word-inflation and such.

3) Resort to nothing but B&W artwork. Even if you did that, though, I doubt you could get an entire set out for <20 U.S. buckaroos. You could probably get a PHB or a DMG/MM set, but not all three. You'd have to trim content somewhere.

drop all the cross-promotion and cross platform crap and make a TTRPG and focus on that.

Or, you know, since when D&D was at its height it cross-promoted a lot you should ignore all of this advice and do it anyway.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I also probably need to edit that list on the front page, because I'm becoming more partial to 2D paper dolls (mostly because it's way cheaper) and would interface better with tokens.

Also, ignore that contradiction I made with the stupid-ass wiki thing. That thing should be editable by the public, with only the Sage Advice/FAQ part of the wiki being protected.

[shadzar]

drop all the cross-promotion and cross platform crap and make a TTRPG and focus on that.

Or, you know, since when D&D was at its height it cross-promoted a lot you should ignore all of this advice and do it anyway.

When the Blumes did that with LW, they were heading the company and line into ruin, and how WotC got it to begin with.

Anyone remember Motorola Razor? great phone and advanced beyond anything at the time, but they blew the money on R&D on advertising the brand name, rather than making the product better. The better the product, the less advertising and cross-promotion you need to do in order to get it out.

who left is there that doesnt know about D&D? if you got money to hire someone to write a facebook app, then have that person playtest and proofread the game instead to make better use of the time.

i have to ask which "its height" are you talking about?

[Lago PARANOIA]

The better the product, the less advertising and cross-promotion you need to do in order to get it out.

You're under some mistaken dichotomy that D&D can't do both.

who left is there that doesnt know about D&D? if you got money to hire someone to write a facebook app, then have that person playtest and proofread the game instead to make better use of the time.

Um. WotC has staff members or can call upon people that specialize in things other than rules creation and number crunching. Where the hell do you think they got they people to make the current Facebook application? Or how they ended up making the Online character builder?

This is beyond the scope of licensing, too. WotC needs to specifically create a division to make this happen or hire a team of programmers to do so. When 4E dies like a gutshot fawn, no one is going to be beating a path to their door begging for whoever holds the license to slap their tropes onto their game for circle-jerking synergy. If these things are going to be done at ALL they need to initiate them. D&D just won't be popular enough going out the door to do otherwise.

i have to ask which "its height" are you talking about?

2nd Edition, duh. This was a period of time in which Dungeons and Dragons was popular enough to get its own movie.

[shadzar]

The better the product, the less advertising and cross-promotion you need to do in order to get it out.

You're under some mistaken dichotomy that D&D can't do both.

Just because you CAN do a thing, doesn't mean you SHOULD do that thing....

as for the facebook app, didnt they fire those people? or ones making things similar for wotc.com? J Tweet made a few of the little DM Tools for 4th and he no longer works at WotC....the Dungeon Tile Mapper creator also left and got into some fight over his software and who it belonged too...

still, is D&D a facebook game? i havent played the facebook app, does it in any way translate to the tabletop RPG? people years ago played some of the video games (SSI gold box series) and then went to try to play the tabletop game and were confused because the differences.

lose the ADD(ADHD) design and gain focus. make one thing and make it well.

D&D didnt get any movies under 2nd edition. the D&D Movie was under 3rd edition...all attempts prior had failed, and the only things close were the Tom Hanks Steam Tunnels movie that degraded the game as dangerous due to JAck Chick.

Yes its height, i agree, was 2nd edition, but it was then that the biggest fuck-ups were made:

Splatbooks (Complete handbook of X)
too many settings
changing settings too much (Dragonlance anyone? cataclysm/5th age)

they completely lost focus. then making other things just to have the brand name on things....using the carton characters for those paper rub-off things, stickers...and dont forget the warehouse full of rotting backstock.

yes 2nd was the best because it took all the good from 1st and organized it into easier to read format. but that is when they got too big for their britches also. if not, then how could WotC have been able to purchase the FAILING T$R?

again the reason because they made too many tie-ins and cross promotions.

when was the last time you saw an Oscar Meyer Wiener commercial? they figured out they didnt need to advertise anymore because it was a household name...and people were going to buy it without having to be told about it....D&D already has that status as well. Most people have heard of it who care and some that dont...others can learn from word of mouth.

let me ask this...what benefit could a facebook app offer 5th edition? what will it do for the tabletop game?

[Lago PARANOIA]

shadzar, I try not to get bent out of shape about grammar, but proofread your fucking post. It's embarrassing.

D&D didnt get any movies under 2nd edition. the D&D Movie was under 3rd edition...all attempts prior had failed, and the only things close were the Tom Hanks Steam Tunnels movie that degraded the game as dangerous due to JAck Chick.

The D&D movie was released in 2000, meaning that it was being produced near the tail end of 2nd Edition.

If the movie didn't suck all that is ass, it could've been a pretty big hit and would've helped out a lot. But it's not really anyone on D&D staff's fault that the movie ended up hurting the product. But the overall point that cross-promoting the product is good still stands. D&D doesn't really have the clout or popularity to get anyone to buy their license for a movie anytime soon, let alone produce one, but the overall point is that cross-promoting is a good idea.


Mazes and Monsters was a straight-up hatchet job of TTRPGs and doesn't count.

still, is D&D a facebook game? i havent played the facebook app, does it in any way translate to the tabletop RPG? people years ago played some of the video games (SSI gold box series) and then went to try to play the tabletop game and were confused because the differences.

No. It's just straight-up boosterism. It's barely a step above Progress Quest actually. It actually held my interest for about a week, but I lost interest in it because it moves too slowly and doesn't have enough unique text. While positive reinforcement can be sporadic (and actually works best when it does) if the person isn't addicted to the process taking too long between decision points will cause the person to lose interest. But that's another story.

The moral of the story is that while the D&D Facebook game was no Farmville, it had fairly wide circulation. If it came in earlier in 4E's life and was coded to have more prose and to stimulate the reptilian cortex of peoples' brains more, it could've been a pretty big hit IMO. That kind of thing is advertising gold for D&D--it's cheap, appeals to non-D&D nerds, and leaves people with warm feelings.

D&D already has that status as well. Most people have heard of it who care and some that dont...others can learn from word of mouth.

Or you can advertise like a non-brain dead person, because D&D doesn't have that status and even if it did name recognition does not translate into sales. Monopoly does, Scrabble does, even Risk does but D&D sure as hell doesn't. Most people could tell you what D&D is and even name a few tropes--big fucking deal! Most people could do the same for friggin' Mouse Trap.

[shadzar]

shadzar, I try not to get bent out of shape about grammar, but proofread your fucking post. It's embarrassing.

D&D didnt get any movies under 2nd edition. the D&D Movie was under 3rd edition...all attempts prior had failed, and the only things close were the Tom Hanks Steam Tunnels movie that degraded the game as dangerous due to JAck Chick.

The D&D movie was released in 2000, meaning that it was being produced near the tail end of 2nd Edition.

If the movie didn't suck all that is ass, it could've been a pretty big hit and would've helped out a lot. But it's not really anyone on D&D staff's fault that the movie ended up hurting the product. But the overall point that cross-promoting the product is good still stands. D&D doesn't really have the clout or popularity to get anyone to buy their license for a movie anytime soon, let alone produce one, but the overall point is that cross-promoting is a good idea.


Mazes and Monsters was a straight-up hatchet job of TTRPGs and doesn't count.

still, is D&D a facebook game? i havent played the facebook app, does it in any way translate to the tabletop RPG? people years ago played some of the video games (SSI gold box series) and then went to try to play the tabletop game and were confused because the differences.

No. It's just straight-up boosterism. It's barely a step above Progress Quest actually. It actually held my interest for about a week, but I lost interest in it because it moves too slowly and doesn't have enough unique text. While positive reinforcement can be sporadic (and actually works best when it does) if the person isn't addicted to the process taking too long between decision points will cause the person to lose interest. But that's another story.

The moral of the story is that while the D&D Facebook game was no Farmville, it had fairly wide circulation. If it came in earlier in 4E's life and was coded to have more prose and to stimulate the reptilian cortex of peoples' brains more, it could've been a pretty big hit IMO. That kind of thing is advertising gold for D&D--it's cheap, appeals to non-D&D nerds, and leaves people with warm feelings.

D&D already has that status as well. Most people have heard of it who care and some that dont...others can learn from word of mouth.

Or you can advertise like a non-brain dead person, because D&D doesn't have that status and even if it did name recognition does not translate into sales. Monopoly does, Scrabble does, even Risk does but D&D sure as hell doesn't. Most people could tell you what D&D is and even name a few tropes--big fucking deal! Most people could do the same for friggin' Mouse Trap.

i try not to get the flu and have to take narcotics so get the fuck over it.

the problem about the "warm feelings" and wh9o it appeals to not only confused yourself, but your audience as to who your audience for your product is. they come from facebook with this little app, then try the product and find it to be nothing similar and come to conclusions...

either they like the real product, they are confused why they are so dissimilar, stick with the app and ignore the product with cost,.....all you are doing there is selling a name, just like WotC has ben doing for years...you need to sell a game, not a name.

as for the movie...WotC bought TSR in 1997, where TSR was already working on A 3rd edition, that was altered once it got into WotC's hands. while the movie was 10 years in the making, with LW not wanting to do it because she hated gamers, and incompetence in the business runnings...it was still brought out FOR and AS a boost for 3rd edition.

it was a giant advertisement for 3rd edition is all it was...as you can see the promotion did work, and people took note of 3rd...but many say the movie just sucked. so can there be more now? 4 and none have done well...wrath of the dragon god...the choose your own adventure one, and dragonlance....none have done really well because faith and trust in storytelling has been lost and damaged. this is something else when you branch out too much, you could tarnish future products and tie-ins, buy screwing up existing ones. just look at the D&D tools in some "cloud" basically requiring internet access to use them for 4th edition now as the downloadable versions have been discontinued. which invalidates their ease of use.

Or you can advertise like a non-brain dead person, because D&D doesn't have that status and even if it did name recognition does not translate into sales. Monopoly does, Scrabble does, even Risk does but D&D sure as hell doesn't. Most people could tell you what D&D is and even name a few tropes--big fucking deal! Most people could do the same for friggin' Mouse Trap.

and what is funny is that MANY people some here, many on ENWorld...spout out about playing D&D even though they have never touched an RPG book, because the term has become generic for TTRPGs...so the name is that well known, that it has been distorted and has name recognition, but sadly not product recognition. people just want to say they are playing D&D to be with the "in crowd". this again could cause confusion by spreading yourself too thin.

you start talking to someone about D&D and such that you meet and mention playing and such, and you come to find out, they only play the facebook app and have no interest in non-computer games...so you are diluting the product by making it too vauge as to what it is.

take the original D&D and how popular it became. there was no multi-billion dollar ad campaign. it grew by the most powerful thing ever...word of mouth. those $5 books ran out fast...and then things grew and snow-balled. so you dont need to be annoying to be seen, just be a decent product for the people to want to see you...and people will tell each other.

the only reason for all these multi-platform ad campaigns with the facebook apps now and such, is because everyone is playing the same game, and only those with the most money can win it. don't play there game, and make your own rules to break from the cycle or wastefulness.

if 5th edition is to be worthy, then it must stand on its own. magazine ads...if they still exist by then...could just be simply a page showing a logo and under it read "5th edition is coming". then let ICV2, slashdot, somethingawful.com, etc report on it, and do the advertising for you rather than wasting money on frivolous things to get peoples attention. the number of blogs out there will pretty much get the information out for you...and a quick google search would return more than any one ad could give people as far as info or speculation about it.