Missed Opportunities

A thread for something you seem publishers may have missed out on.

I've always said if i could have one look at a DQ expansion I may get on board. Still not sure why one never materialized if it was such a hot seller. With the cross title material I'd have thought they would have done somehing with/for Descent 2. Why haven't any of the Descent 2 expansions included character cards for DQ? Or, if they wanted a DQ expansion to sell, why haven't they made one that included components to use the characters in Descent 2?

I always wonder why this sort of stuff isn't further realized.

And why WotC have never done a small box expansion of heroes for the DDAS? It would work with any of the three games, so would seem to have a potentially wide buyer base. Who doesn't love more characters? And like I said before...if they released a set with the kids from the cartoons as playable characters...it may be my final word on dungeoncrawlers. Oh, add a fun 'portal to get home' scenario to use in any of the games (as they all seem to have the components to handle it, this would only require a little write-up) and this would go over pretty well....I would think. Perhaps it would only be a nostalgia sale though...

Heroes for DungeonQuest made that game for me. I loved being able to take more, and more interesting, adventurers into the dungeon. I never could survive with the Chaos Warrior, but I enjoyed trying.

I'm perennially sad when I see the newer DQ boxes with six characters or whatever it is.

More crossovers, why not. I'd jump in on "Eldritch Dungeon" with a fistful of Arkham Horror/Mansions of Madness character figures.

Mr. White wrote: And like I said before...if they released a set with the kids from the cartoons as playable characters...it may be my final word on dungeoncrawlers. Oh, add a fun 'portal to get home' scenario to use in any of the games (as they all seem to have the components to handle it, this would only require a little write-up) and this would go over pretty well....I would think. Perhaps it would only be a nostalgia sale though...

Why stop at the kids? With the lack of any sort of content expansions for the D&DAS games (not counting Dungeon Command) I think you could get away with releasing a D&D Cartoon figure expansion that not only has the kids, but also Venger, Shadow Demon, Tiamat, those pig-nosed orcs, and some other monsters and NPC tokens from the show.

FFG's disastrous 54mm Mutant Chronicles game will always be one of the first things I think of when missed opportunities are brought up. They not only immediately alienated anyone hoping to use the minis in Warzone or the OOP Mutant Chronicles games by going with that wonky scale, but they compounded their error with godawful sculpts and paint jobs that were a turn-off for everyone else. It's been six years since it was released and every once in a while I still see dusty boosters at hobby shops.

We talked about these years ago, but I think FFGs Twilight Imperium should have been further fleshed out. For years, prior to the SW license going buck wild, there weren't many sci-fi settings being developed in the tabletop world outside of the minis games such as 40K.

Eventually, FFGs Star Wars license will run out, will they wish they had built up their TI universe with the Attack Wing system, the Decent system, battlelore system, lcgs, novels, etc?

GW built their brands up enough that they can develop games for them as well as license them out to other companies. Wouldn't FFG have rather been in that position?

It sounds silly, particularly if you don't like the TI universe, but I believe this could have been done. And to be honest, I think it would have been a breath of fresh air. I don't mind TI, but I think the cover of TI III and Rex provide a glimpse to what could have been a neat universe. A great alternative to the grim-dark of 40K.

Mr. White wrote: And why WotC have never done a small box expansion of heroes for the DDAS? It would work with any of the three games, so would seem to have a potentially wide buyer base. Who doesn't love more characters?

This was the first thing I thought of when I read the thread subject. I would have loved some small expansions to the DDAS games.

I always wanted an expansion to the first Adventurers board game. That game was a lot of fun ... for a while. It got pretty same-y once you'd gone through the temple a few times. I thought a small expansion to add more rooms or side corridors would be fun. Especially if they were high-risk / high-reward type things.

Mr. White wrote: We talked about these years ago, but I think FFGs Twilight Imperium should have been further fleshed out. For years, prior to the SW license going buck wild, there weren't many sci-fi settings being developed in the tabletop world outside of the minis games such as 40K.

I agree with this 100%. I've been hoping to see some surprise announcements at Gencon for the last two years for anything TI related. In my mind I envision an LCG, a smaller Elder Sign-like game and things like you described like X Wing. I don't know sales numbers or popularity but I almost never see Rex spoken about. Maybe poor reviews and less than stellar sales scared them off that route.

Having said that, I can totally understand why they are milking the Star Wars stuff for all its worth. That is pretty much a license to print money.

I have a missed opportunity with the D&DAS as well, though not related to characters. I'd really like to see some official stuff about creating campaigns and growing characters for the game. I guess what I'm thinking is like a "Road To Legend" equivalent for the system, scaled accordingly in terms of simplicity. They touched on that a little, but I would have loved something more comprehensive.

Also, I know that Rex is mostly considered a dud here, but I'm not sure that it totally answered the question of whether the game could work without its license. I say that not because I don't believe the license to be important, but because I think the real issue that did the game in for me were all of the changes the made to the design. Making the map smaller, increasing the amount of currency in play, all of those things made the game sped up and borderline unplayable in the long run. I have always wondered if a straight re-skinning of the game might have fared better.

Didn't I see that WotC was licensing out a new set for D&DAS? Granted, the last thing that system probably needs is a fourth "base set," but at least maybe it's still kicking.

www.clevermovegames.com/2014/08/15/dd-fo...dition-not-dead-yet/
www.clevermovegames.com/2014/09/24/more-...-board-games-coming/

... but it's with WizKids, so ... there's that, too.

There was a real opportunity to make a "system," but the variegated power levels and components of the sets (working against the obvious integration possibilities) and the lack of initial follow-up support may have ended that as a real possibility.

i think they missed the mark with Rex a bit. I don't actually object to the retheme or some of the mechanical changes. Dune is a bit unforgiving of early errors but Rex went way too far the other way. You can blow through quite a lot of troops and if the cash flow is there still recover. The map and the slightly vanilla nature of the TI franchise probably didn't help though.

Didn't I see that WotC was licensing out a new set for D&DAS? Granted, the last thing that system probably needs is a fourth "base set," but at least maybe it's still kicking.

Now they just need to get off their asses and put out some more Dungeon Command sets. They've already got all the figures done from DDM, they just need to design some more cards to go with them.

Mr. White wrote:
It sounds silly, particularly if you don't like the TI universe, but I believe this could have been done. And to be honest, I think it would have been a breath of fresh air. I don't mind TI, but I think the cover of TI III and Rex provide a glimpse to what could have been a neat universe. A great alternative to the grim-dark of 40K.

Too much furry.

oh cool, you're into furries too?

It irks the shit out of me that RGG won't sell the San Juan expansion outside of that stupid Treasure Chest.

People still don't seem to understand the point of the D&D boardgames. The point wasn't to compete with their own rpg product line with an rpg-lite product line. The idea was to get boardgamers interested in D&D 4th edition. Yes, they could have done a lot of expansions on the boardgames, and I think that a character pack expansion would have been especially popular. But they didn't do lots of expansions because it would have undermined their strategy.