How much value does the WOD being a Huge Brand has to you?

[AnubisXy]

D&D 4e, despite how divisive it was, was actually profitable. Mostly because to a lot of the world RPGs = D&D, and whatever edition is on the shelf right now is what people buy. All of the edition wars represented a very small portion of D&D customers that occupy spaces like dedicated RPG forums. WotC has a problem that pretty much no other company gets to dream of having: making more money on an edition of a RPG than most RPGs will ever make, and still not making enough to make corporate happy. D&D 4e's big problem was supplements, as the farther along the edition got, the more it got into the stuff that's more focused on the niche and more hardcore fans, where the divisiveness started to hurt sales compared to the core books. D&D 4e, by WotC's released numbers, sold more core books than 3.X did, but consistently lost ground when it came to setting material, modules, secondary merch, and so on.

Worth noting that 4th edition D&D was profitable, but nowhere near where it the designers thought it would be. Pathfinder ended up surpassing it in terms of yearly profit, and it was the first time that any other RPG line pulled in more profit than D&D. Even back in its heyday, when White Wolf was the second most profitable RPG company, it was always a fairly long way behind pulling in the kind of profit that AD&D 2nd edition and 3rd edition pulled in (barring that moment where TSR went bankrupt because of poor business decisions and even then D&D still made more money than White Wolf).

The fact that D&D 4e sales were so poor, comparatively speaking, that they ended up falling behind a competitor (who was using the older 3rd edition D&D engine no less) was a pretty seismic moment in the RPG industry. It's also why 4th edition is largely considered a "failure" even if, in terms of pure profits, it was a still a success.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Also in game design, as no small number of folks are discovering when they look back and find that 5e did an awful lot of cutting off its nose to spite its face.

[Heavy Arms]

Considering how Onyx Path has been handling Exalted, I'm honestly not sure that they would be able to handle the entirety of the World of Darkness lines much better than Paradox has been.

Eh? Almost all of Exalted's current problems stem from the 3e core Kickstarter, the prolonged development process, and what happened with Holden and John Morke. Since the current dev team took over, Exalted's been going at a vastly improved clip (even if slower than people would like, but it's never going to return to the old WW treadmill days). Most of the issues Exalted has (even how long it takes to make books for it) go back to the issue of 3e's initial development opting to keep 3e as a giant Charm-list focused game that has lots of subsystems to give Charms mechanics to hook into. Crucible of Legends is in active development and is supposed to at least ease some of the issues with stuff the current devs are stuck with just like the Exalted fans because of what the original 3e devs decided to do.

Worth noting that 4th edition D&D was profitable, but nowhere near where it the designers thought it would be.

That's kind of what I was saying?

But the big point is that D&D can endure that like no other RPG can. For 99% of RPGs, getting nowhere near your projected sales figures means you're massively in the red, and if you're big enough to be a company, you're probably facing bankruptcy. Any other brand besides D&D would have been toast or ripe for being bought up by someone else if that happened to them.

[MyWifeIsScary]

I can't pretend to understand: Budgetting nowadays puzzles me because people'll put a billion dollars into a film and still somehow not have a script that can be described as passable. Yes, yes, studio politics are a pain, I'm half convinced that's the reason why VTM is struggling so much now because the medium they're in is 90% writing but anyhow...

I think a great VTM show could be done with a minimal budget. Hell I think they could be so cheap that they could be churned out endlessly.
-midnight shooting keeps permit costs down. Darkness keeps special effects costs down.
-unknown actors are cheap and work great in a setting where anyone can die anywhere. Not using big names, unless they play themselves, also helps the idea that this is our world.
- bar perhaps animalism, Transformation disciplines are really the only disciplines that require expensive special effects, and it's pretty easy to omit those for a season. As much as I'd love a Presence Gag where the music plays, the screen turns pink and flowers frame the character using the discipline, which isn't a terribly expensive thing to do, it's not necessary. most disciplines would be cheaper than using firearms or producing wound makeup.
-using a new city means writers can write what they want and respond to the audience: everyone hates this character? Kill him off. Everyone loves this character? Keep him longer, or even bring him back and claim the time you killed him was trickery since vampires are great at faking their deaths.

[adambeyoncelowe]

Anyone making a WoD TV show would likely have to pay Paradox for licensing the IP. That's already going to make it more expensive than original ideas.

The alternative would be Paradox setting up their own production company to exploit their own IP for free. Which... also costs millions.

Radio is a good shout. Yes, radio shows aren't broadcast much anymore, but Amazon's original dramatisations definitely count. Half of the SF/F ones seem to involve Dirk Maggs, who is well known for his BBC Radio 4 adaptations (the later Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, the Dirk Gently series that preceded both TV adaptations of that book series, Judge Dredd, Doctor Who, etc).

An Amazon dramatisation would be a very good shout. You can also make decent money on Audible referral fees if people sign up from one of your affiliate links. My friend was lucky enough to get an endorsement for his poetry collection from Sigourney Weaver (she was in Oxford filming a TV show while he was doing poetry tours of the city), and says he often makes more money from the signups than the book itself.

Audiobooks do seem to be doing well at the moment.

[ArcaneArts]

I can't pretend to understand: Budgetting nowadays puzzles me because people'll put a billion dollars into a film and still somehow not have a script that can be described as passable. Yes, yes, studio politics are a pain, I'm half convinced that's the reason why VTM is struggling so much now because the medium they're in is 90% writing but anyhow...

I think a great VTM show could be done with a minimal budget. Hell I think they could be so cheap that they could be churned out endlessly.
-midnight shooting keeps permit costs down. Darkness keeps special effects costs down.
-unknown actors are cheap and work great in a setting where anyone can die anywhere. Not using big names, unless they play themselves, also helps the idea that this is our world.
- bar perhaps animalism, Transformation disciplines are really the only disciplines that require expensive special effects, and it's pretty easy to omit those for a season. As much as I'd love a Presence Gag where the music plays, the screen turns pink and flowers frame the character using the discipline, which isn't a terribly expensive thing to do, it's not necessary. most disciplines would be cheaper than using firearms or producing wound makeup.
-using a new city means writers can write what they want and respond to the audience: everyone hates this character? Kill him off. Everyone loves this character? Keep him longer, or even bring him back and claim the time you killed him was trickery since vampires are great at faking their deaths.

On the particular projects you're probably talking about, they're the things wherein the loyalty to the brand or just the general need to be in on the conversation without someone sayign "If you haven't seen it, you don't get a say" is going to be doing all of the work.

Controversial subject that it is, and let me start by saying I was a fan of The Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker from Star Wars is kind of a good example for this sort of thing. People who had been let down by Force Awakens and Last Jedi had no real reason to assume Rise of Skywalker would suddenly make it all work, and people who were fans of the way the story had gone, particularly after Last Jedi, were pretty quickly getting deterred by all the ways media buzz was indicating a rollback of everything they had liked from the previous two films (Last Jedi, I really mean Last Jedi). If you had that sort of a response to a new show, the likely result would probably have been more of a bomb, or at least left on critically wibbly legs that's gonna have all the people making money off of it debating it's continuation a lot, but while Rise certainly underperformed, it still met all of it's major financial goal because.....People were just gonna see that fucking Star Wars movie-so they could love it, so they could hate it, so they could go "huh", because it's the holidays and Star Wars for the Holidays is a nice little tradition, for reasons that honestly just wouldn't exist for any other project, particularly one where the before-and-after has a lot of "Meh" around the evaluation.

Admittedly there's a lot to argue here, I am giving what is my best fair read of the experience while still keeping a bias open, and I'll note I am one of those people who just said no to that film (again, Last Jedi now being my favorite Star Wars film). I'm probably going to regret using that as my example, hopefully we can be mature about it going forward.

But my point is is that a lot of billion dollar projects that make stuff back regardless of the quality of their scripts often have something else going into and keeping it up-ideally, it's other elements like simply good character acting or really inventive visual design or charm or what not, but sometimes it all just simply reduces down to "This is the big thing, People are going to give money to the big thing regardless of it deserves it, strictly speaking" That last one is a dangerous place to be, and you never want to rely on it because it does eventually burn out, but it does sometimes happen-actually, a startling amount of sometimes, depending on your read of whatever properties you think that applies to.

TO the particular points:

-Midnight shootings are hard on the entire staff and introduces the need for what can be costlier technical support, a lot of things you think are shot at night in film are actually very creatively shot during the day for these reasons.
-unknown actors are also more unreliable, and reliance on a revolving door if someone doesn't work out makes you less appealing as a gig to take up (not to mention that, absent reliability as a pay day leads to higher individual checks, which can be good but can be bad if not handled right, and if hte premise is on "You can die at any time", that just increase the asks), also reliance on "anyone can die at anytime" tend to result in bad storytelling due to a fundamental misapprehension of how dramatic tension works.
-Again, I think you might be misapprehending how much special effects go into a modern vampire show-you'd have to sell the show as campier than people aim for with World to make that work.
-THis creates a bit of a teneuous situation where in you have to be careful about how and why you pick your settings, because eventually people are going to get tired of just places and want places that either readily sellf their appeal or can be strongly forward presented with a mystique by the story writers (Sure, you can see why someone might want to tell a story in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, and you can see how a strongly presented argument for Eerie, Indiana[yes, not a real place], Independence, Missouri, or Belle Fourche, South Dakota, but if you keep getting places like Enterprise, Utah in your show, at some you have to wonder why you aren't watching farming documentaries.)-and if you ever go back, particularly if you keep going back, you can expect the audience to start asserting that there is a canon and will take you to task for it.
-Also, trying to talk about a low budget Mage, even with coincidental magic, is a joke, let's stop entertaining that.

And mind you, all of those are still really expensive. Onyx Path has managed to swing a deal for Scion, and while I will not speculate on the nature of that, I will also note it's been very quiet. And Scion is not World of Darkness.

THis is one of those problems that exists. World is big enough, that you can see how and why someone would want to try and make a prestige television series out of it-certainly I think Paradox thought it could really swing that-but it's also small enough that just making any kind of show for it is risky if it doesn't perform. It has the potential to play high risk, high stakes, but that risk needs money to back it, and there's a floor to how low budget a World of Darkness show can go before you ruin the chance to make it any kind of big, and more importantly impede any future attempts to try and make it big.

By contrast, it's also worth noting that, for as big as DnD is (again, so large it has exceptions other RPG properties don't), it's film multimedia attempts have never really done well. They tried low and cmapy with the Sci-Fi direct movies, no one cared about that, they went for a big budget movie that clearly producers weren't sold on because we got Jeremy Irons hissing at PS1 Cutscene graphics, and now we have their more recent take to film which....okay, we'll see how it goes (I personally do not have faith in it, though Chris Pine As Bard is an inspired choice). Oh, and Legend of Vox Machina, which seems to be doing fine, but is also riding on the coattails of Critical Role.

But, really going back to it, I think the best reasons why Onyx Path couldn't afford a World of Darkness show on their own comes from just simply what we're seeing from the TV projects they have licensed are like and doing. I'm not saying anything bad about those, I'm just saying we can't really say anything about those, and that kind of says something in it's own way.

[Koronus]

I would lie if I would say none but it is not really important for me. Most important for me is that there is more of stuff that I like and this is currently not the case. For me W5 is not worthy of being called the fifth edition cause it is more to being wtf and if stuff like this happens than I prefer WoD being a small niche (again).
Big Brand could be nice as it means we could get more money for city books so cities are described in whole books instead of whole pages but if the content is not compatible with the rest than I would prefer they would instead do a whole new thing unlike trying like Natsume riding on the name and the expections it come with while it is actually not inside.

[adambeyoncelowe]

TBH, I'd expect a Shadowrun TV series or film before another Vampire one. They're on their sixth edition and are still ticking along at a fast pace, so there's obviously still an audience buying things.

Warhammer would be another one. Games Workshop is always in the financial news for its big bucks. Here in the UK, which is GW's home turf, Warhammer, as a brand, would probably be more instantly recognisable than D&D -- even if the RPG might be less popular.

That's because every city and moderately large town had a Games Workshop store with models in the window until at least the last recession. GW stores are rarer now, but you still see them in the big cities.

If GW, who have WH40K fiction in train station WHSmiths and every Waterstones around the country, can't get a TV show or film together, and D&D can but without making much of a splash for any of them, then I have to concur that a screen version of Vampire is risky and/or unlikely at the moment.

Of course, I would love there to be a VTM show. But I'd prefer no show to a bad one (although "so bad it's good" might work, it's also very risky).

[Dogstar]

That's because every city and moderately large town had a Games Workshop store with models in the window until at least the last recession. GW stores are rarer now, but you still see them in the big cities.

As a fellow UK dweller I can confirm this. It might seem strange but often there would be a local friendly RPG store AND a Games Workshop in the same town - rich pickings until recently

[TwoDSix]

As a fellow UK dweller I can confirm this. It might seem strange but often there would be a local friendly RPG store AND a Games Workshop in the same town - rich pickings until recently

I mean, I don't think I've ever seen a store with a serious RPG selection outside of a major city, in my hometown you got D&D and the 40kRPGs at the local Waterstones and that was it, except for the brief period where they had nWoD. But there was a Games Workshop store, a Warhammer club at pretty much every school, as well as one at the local library on weekends (I think Saturdays, Sundays was chess club). It probably helps that GW stores are setup to entice kids with the pretty models, while more generalist game shops are generally aimed at adults, so we got hooked on Warhammer before hearing about D&D.

I mean, half the reason Fantasy got rebooted was because it didn't resonate with the 14 year olds as much. Conversely though WFRP4e got released a good chunk of time before the Age of Sigmar RPG, which I suspect is because the adults into RPGs were more likely to buy it.

Of course where I live now there's two whole stores with RPG book selections 😱 only one with any table space though.

[adambeyoncelowe]

As a fellow UK dweller I can confirm this. It might seem strange but often there would be a local friendly RPG store AND a Games Workshop in the same town - rich pickings until recently

Them were the days! We are lucky to have two FLGS here in Manchester, but it's still hard to get the stuff I like.

[Kakost]

A simple story like Bloodlines game could easily become a movie or TV show, and that was a very well written story. And the game is surprisingly good, mostly because of the story. No super fancy antidiluvians crap, nothing over the top, just a good characterization of the world and consistent characters.

A Bloodlines 2 in the same vein could become a massive propaganda for the brand.

There are countless of things to be done that could turn WoD into a huge fever. Heck, Interview with Vampire is still highly regarded to this day