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Monetizing D&D Fanfic

8/23/2019

4 Comments

 
This little nugget came across my Twitter feed earlier today:

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​I don't know M.T. Black, but a quick look at his Dungeon Master's Guild page shows about 70-odd publications. You can follow this hyperlink (or the image link) to see the thread his post generated. 

Suffice to say, there's a lot of support for the idea.  

Before seeing this tweet, I actually had no idea the D&D novel line had been discontinued. A little googling reveals it was killed off quietly, with Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro making no official announcements and enforcing NDAs against the writers involved.

Anyway, Black has a good point in regards the potential benefit of a program like this, at least from the WotC/Hasbro perspective. If the reason for shutting down the novels was financial, this would serve as an alternative with no production cost, funneling money into a revived fiction publishing arm. They could use that to fund the bigger "official" releases. Not to mention the ability to use the platform as a sort of "farm team" to scout for new talent. And he's right that thousands of writers would benefit from having such a big, name-brand platform to showcase their work.

But let's be real. 

What Black is suggesting here is that Hasbro give "official" recognition to D&D fan fiction, in turn for split profits/monetization.
 
I'm not against fan fiction in principal. I think any SF/F writer with a shred of honesty will admit to writing it in one form or another. Hell, one of my very first "serious" attempts at fiction was a Castlevania/Ravenloft mashup, based on a weekend campaign I ran for my brother and his friends.

What rubs me the wrong way about this is the conciliatory, "mother, may I?" dynamic it encourages between the fan writers, and the corporate overlords in charge of the IP.    

In this model, writers aren't encouraged to break out and build their own sandboxes. They're encouraged to keep playing in the one owned by the multi-billion dollar entertainment company, in hopes of getting some kind of official seal of approval at the end.

That kind of closed feedback loop is the enemy of long-term creativity. 

If you write D&D fanfic, and you want other people to see it, there are plenty of sites and boards available. One of them even won a major industry award, if you're after a little name-brand prestige.

But if you want to earn money for your D&D fanfic, then you're better off doing it the old fashioned way: by taking the storytelling skills you've learned, and using them to build something new.

4 Comments
Fractal Rabbit
8/26/2019 03:02:14 am

When we speak of D&D fan fiction. are we speaking of writers writing stories in the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, etc.?

Or any fantasy that contains all the tropes like halflings and chromatic dragons and Vancian magic systems? I am sure there are plenty I missed.

It just seems like writing fan fiction of a system that is already extremely derivative, already a mish-mash of other authors' creations and worlds (Not that there's anything wrong with that!) is...I don't know. It's something I can't quite put my finger on.

Maybe I am not quite understanding fan fiction. Maybe the people writing it need to avoid mention of beholders and illithids and Elminster.

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Daniel J. Davis (admin) link
8/27/2019 11:40:26 am

In this sense, I mean writers using the licensed settings and characters owned by Wizards of the Coast.

As I understand it, the DMs Guild lets anyone upload and publish an "official" adventure, up to and including use of established characters and slapping official Forgotten Realms logos on the cover. It's sort of like the old Kindle Worlds thing they experimented with a couple of years back, but with RPG adventures.

The guy quoted in that tweet above is a fairly prolific writer of DMs Guild products. He's suggesting that WotC should create a similar platform for licensed D&D fiction, essentially opening the gates for fan creators to earn some money for writing stories about Elminster.

If you have the time, check out the comments in the tweet thread. Seems lots of people are behind the idea. I'm just not one of them.

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Alzrius link
9/9/2019 09:50:27 am

I was at Gen Con a few years ago, at a Candlekeep Seminar, where none other than James Lowder showed up and talked about the cancellation of the novels. He mentioned how the novel division had been turning a tidy profit up until Hasbro pulled the plug, including at one point being responsible for up to 50% of the profits (I think he was referring to the D&D brand as a whole, since there's no way that's true if you take Magic: the Gathering into account).

Naturally, a member of the audience asked him why Hasbro would shut down an enterprise that was making more money than it spent. "Because it wasn't making ENOUGH money" was Lowder's answer.

Basically, big corporations don't judge profitability the way you or I do. If we're making $10 back for every $1 spent, then we consider it a success. But for Hasbro and similar business entities, if they aren't making back something like $10,000 for every $1 spent, then it's a waste of resources that could be better spent elsewhere. "Return on investment" is what they live by. It's like what Ryan Dancey told us in that interview he gave several years ago; if D&D as a brand isn't returning at least $50 million a year (preferably $100 million), then it's likely to be "mothballed" for years until someone as Hasbro greenlights another attempt in a generation or two.

The bottom line is that opening the DM's Guild to D&D fiction isn't going to change anything about the state of official D&D novels. Short of another situation where HarperCollins negotiates with WotC/Hasbro to license more of Salvatore's Drizzt books, we aren't going to see anymore (barring some truly extraordinary circumstance).

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Daniel J. Davis (admin) link
9/10/2019 11:32:42 am

Really appreciate this insight. Thanks.

Even with that reasoning, it still blows my mind that Hasbro would look at the D&D line as "not profitable enough." Most publishing houses would kill to have the numbers they must have been pulling in.

That said, I think the need to earn at least $50 million a year explains the state of 5e. To me, it's always felt something like the big budget remake of a cult 80's horror movie. It's slick. It's got great production values. It even hits a lot of the same notes, and has some great call-backs and Easter eggs.

At the same time, it's really not designed to appeal to fans of the original. It's designed to appeal to the non-gaming masses and lure them into the hobby.

I can't fault WotC for going that route. On the other hand, I just feel like a lot of what made D&D special in the first place seems to have been left behind.

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    I'm an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer based out of North Carolina. This is where I scream into the digital void. I like cookies.

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