Feargus Urquhart Talks State of D&D and Pathfinder CRPG

Speaking with Polygon’s Brian Crecente, Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart expressed his worry at the current state of the Dungeons & Dragons brand, going as far as openly wishing the brand would be bought by a smaller company that could focus on it completely, something he argues Hasbro can’t do by necessity:

“I think whenever you have that, when you have this company which has this brand which in some weird way is comparable to this evergreen thing like Monopoly, in that it’s a board game and it’s sold in certain of the same places, it can be difficult.

“D&D is different, it needs a lot more support, it’s community driven, it needs conventions and all of this stuff, and it’s not going to make a billion dollars.”

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“A part of me would love to see D&D be bought by someone and become what it was before,” he said. “Become TSR again. TSR did other games, but D&D was their thing, their main focus.

On the other hand, Urquhart seems satisfied with the relationship his company is currently enjoying with Paizo, and made clear to Crecente that discussions are already underway for a CRPG based on the property. Don’t expect it anytime soon, however, given a lot of things have yet to be figured out, including a source of funding:

“We’ve had a ton of ideas,” Urquhart said. “Obviously we could do something like Pillars of Eternity. Obviously we could do something like Neverwinter Nights 2. We’re going through all of those things to figure out what would be the best thing to do.

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“Part of it has to do with how much we have going on and how it would get funded,” Urquhart said. “That’s going to be the big conversation with Paizo, what they want to see, what they want to do.”

Urquhart said the team just knows they want to create a role-playing game in that universe.