The Business: A Competent Commercial Product Begins With The Outcome

Friend of the Retreat Jon Mollison is on my wavelength here.

The context here is between two iterations of Dungeons & Dragons (with the d20 version of Call of Cthulhu standing in for Magic-Users' editions), but the substance of the discussion is that failing to account for the consequences of how the machine operates has unwanted effects for both the publisher and the audience.

If you are in the business of building up a Brand basing itself around a Setting Bible, then choosing which Game to use associate with depends a lot on picking the Game that is meant to deliver the experiences--the outcomes--that your Brand audience desires.

It also means that when a Brand reskins a Game, that Brand does not make changes to the Game's operations that produce outcomes detrimental to either the Game or the Brand.

• Good: Introduce an opposed Trait system that compels action from a man in moments of stress, further defining and refining a characer's moral development or degeneration over time. (Pendragon reskinning Runequest)
• Bad: Introduce a scaling mechanic to keep the math down to managable numbers between objects of the same scale, then (a) fail to keep the scaling consistent and (b) make the higher scale the only one that matters. (Palladium's Robotech reskinning D&D.)

The consideration goes the other way. A Brand needs to avoid using a Game that encourages specific approaches to play that are contrary to what the Setting Bible outlines, and thus contrary to what the audience is meant to enjoy.

• Good: Using the same principle as a cardgame mechanic to handle contests of intense focus, such as a sword duel or a quick draw contest. (L5R 1e reskinning Runequest and adding a lot of CCG ideas.)
• Bad: Using a Game, even with signficant modifications, that cannot handle mass combat natively despite the Brand featuring it frequently in other media. (Every Star Wars adaptation- be it reskinning Traveller, D&D, or Runequest.)

Using the wrong Game for a Brand--and using that Game wrong--damages both and satisfies the audience for neither, even--especially--if the Branded product features significant customizations to the original Game's prodecures of play.

This is why Games and Brands must be recognized as separate and distinct things. The needs of one are not the needs of the other, and only when they align can they be used to the desired--mutually beneficial--end.

This coming week will be more on this concept of Brand, and how some of the best-known products are Brands- including some terrible products out there.