As I promised a couple days ago, for this lounge, I have concluded a case study of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise, as it relates to transmedia. This is very instructive, as D&D has over 50 years since its creation, and has been and remains a transmedia phenomenon. I encourage everyone interested in the "transmedia" world to read the full article, which links at the bottom of this post. Here, I include only the executive summary. HOWEVER, before that, I invite your comments and I also want to make a couple observations not directly addressed in the case study but which is fundamental to the success of D&D: it was and remains a unique and original contribution to both gaming and narrative structure. The latter even has a label: "emergent narrative" - which is a topic all its own. But the lesson here is, if you want to be a successful transmedia franchise, you need to do Ph.D. level work, in that you create something which is an original and unique contribution to media and story. Most of us are not capable of that. And now, the summary (link to full paper at bottom of page):
Overview and Financial Evolution
Since its creation in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons has evolved from a niche tabletop wargame produced on a $2,000 budget into a massive transmedia lifestyle brand. Today, the property is a primary financial engine for its parent company, Hasbro; in recent reports, the Wizards of the Coast (WotC) and Digital Gaming segment generated over $1 billion in operating profit, driven heavily by digital licensing and video game sales.
Creation, Ownership, and Legal Battles
The game was originally co-created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and published through their company, Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). The property's history is defined by corporate consolidation and bitter legal friction. Arneson was ousted early on and spent years suing TSR to secure his royalties and co-creator credit. Gygax was similarly ousted in 1985 following a stealth stock buyout by executive Lorraine Williams.
Teetering on bankruptcy, TSR was acquired by WotC in 1997, which was subsequently bought by Hasbro in 1999. The brand's history of legal turbulence continued into the modern era, most notably with the 2023 Open Game License (OGL) crisis, where massive community backlash forced WotC to abandon plans to extract royalties from third-party creators and instead place the game's core mechanics into the Creative Commons.
Creative Influences
The foundational lore of D&D operates as a postmodern pastiche. Its mechanics and world-building were heavily inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien (which sparked early copyright disputes over terms like "hobbit"), as well as global mythologies and a specific list of pulp fantasy authors—such as Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and H.P. Lovecraft—codified by Gygax in the game's famous "Appendix N".
Transmedia Adaptations
Because D&D is fundamentally a world-building engine, it became highly adaptable across various media:
Literature and Comics: The franchise proved the viability of shared-world fantasy fiction through massive bestsellers like the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms series, alongside decades of licensed comic books.
Film and Stage: After a critically panned film attempt in 2000, the brand successfully translated to the silver screen with 2023's critically acclaimed Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. It has also entered the theatrical space with the officially licensed, interactive Off-Broadway and touring production, The Twenty-Sided Tavern.
Video Games: D&D's ruleset translates perfectly to computer RPGs. The Baldur's Gate series, originally developed by BioWare in 1998, revitalized the genre.
The Baldur's Gate 3 Phenomenon and IP Control
The 2023 release of Baldur's Gate 3 by Larian Studios represented a massive cultural and financial windfall, selling tens of millions of copies and sweeping global industry awards. The game's success was driven by its acclaimed cast of companion characters, such as Astarion and Karlach. However, the project perfectly illustrates the harsh realities of transmedia franchise control: while Larian Studios engineered the cultural phenomenon, Hasbro and WotC retain absolute ownership over the intellectual property and all the original characters. This absolute corporate control was recently highlighted when HBO announced a live-action Baldur's Gate television series helmed by Craig Mazin, a production from which Larian Studios and the game's original writers were completely excluded.
Read and download the full paper here: https://independentproducersguild.org/paper-D&D-history-of-a-%20transmed...
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Dwayne Williams 2 Baldur's Gate is certainly not any kind of template, depending on what you mean by that term. However, Dungeons & Dragons is an important case study for anyone who wants to understan...
Expand commentDwayne Williams 2 Baldur's Gate is certainly not any kind of template, depending on what you mean by that term. However, Dungeons & Dragons is an important case study for anyone who wants to understand what has become "transmedia" - and I will do a separate post or posts on that this week.
2 people like this
This is such a perfect case study in organic video game growth. It earned its television adaptation through decades of genuine audience love, evolving from tabletop to PC to cultural phenomenon. The k...
Expand commentThis is such a perfect case study in organic video game growth. It earned its television adaptation through decades of genuine audience love, evolving from tabletop to PC to cultural phenomenon. The key takeaway for writers is that the world expanded because fans demanded more, not because a corporation mapped out a ten-year plan. What do you think is the single most important storytelling lesson from watching the Baldur's Gate universe evolve across formats, and how might that inform the way you approach building your own IP?
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Sam Rivera Yes, it will be very informative, for more reasons than one!
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As promised... A full and very exhaustive case study posted in this lounge.
That is huge news for fans. Seeing Baldur’s Gate III being adapted into TV by a creator from The Last of Us is the sort of crossover a lot of us didn’t expect but have wanted for years ( me, at least )