Tabletop Game Companies Are Rushing to Snatch Up Hollywood Names

In the Gothenburg of the 1980s, decades before Tomas Härenstam would become CEO of the tabletop role-playing game company Free League Publishing, he discovered American games in a hobby shop. “I was completely blown away as a big comic book nerd,” he admits. Although Sweden has a rich and storied history of tabletop role-playing, often the most recognizable worlds and characters come from further West. Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Marvel superheroes all could be played in licensed ’80s TTRPGs.

These licensed games not only shaped the role-playing mechanics we see today, they created many fond memories for players like Härenstam—you could bring Hollywood to your home in a rule book long after the film left your theaters and you memorized all the famous quotes with your friends.

The tabletop gaming industry has transformed since the ’80s, and if tabletop players vote with their dollar, there’s never been a better time than the present day to play in licensed games. After Free League Publishing worked with analog game designer Francesco Nepitello and intellectual property holders to Kickstart The One Ring, a Lord of the Rings TTRPG, it broke records to become the highest-funded game of its kind in history, raising nearly $2 million. That high-water mark lasted only six months before Magpie Games raised $10 million for an Avatar: The Last Airbender  TTRPG (they were expecting around $3 million, Dicebreaker reports). Trade publication ICv2 estimates 2020 TTRPG sales at $105 million and growing rapidly.

While Francesco Nepitello developed the newest, expanded edition of The One Ring, Härenstam and his team were releasing modules for their newest licensed game—an Alien adaptation—and secretly began to write and test what Härenstam believes is their biggest acquisition yet, the intellectual property rights to a Blade Runner game. “Blade Runner is more of a state of mind, a place to go, more than a story,” Härenstam tells WIRED. It’s a great fit for an improvisational, setting-driven medium like a TTRPG. But designing these Hollywood games often requires Hollywood rules, and a new set of relationships to property brokers, cross-platform world-builders, setting designers, and custodians of cult classic films.

Licenses have an initial cost of purchase, followed by a royalty to the license owners, alongside the tick-tick-ticking countdown until a license has to be renewed. Renewals, Härenstam explains, create situations where designers are never entirely confident in the future of their game in the ever changing world of big media spending. Will an IP holder let all the licenses expire so they can negotiate rights at a higher price after a reboot is released? Will a movie studio restrict designers to only exploring a fantasy world after their movie ended, so that the early lore can be saved for prequels?