Abstract
Problem: When adapting an intellectual property (IP) from one medium to another — book to movie, tabletop RPG to video game — what are the common pitfalls that lead to failure?
Approach: Tim Cain draws on his personal experience developing licensed games (Temple of Elemental Evil, Vampire: Bloodlines, South Park: The Stick of Truth) and his observations of TV/film adaptations to identify three distinct failure modes.
Findings: IP adaptations can fail in three ways: (1) the new product is simply bad regardless of the IP, (2) it diverges too far from the source material's essence, or (3) it follows the source material too slavishly without adapting to the new medium's strengths. Cain admits to making mistake #3 with Temple of Elemental Evil.
Key insight: There is a delicate balance between faithfulness and adaptation — you must preserve the themes and essence of the IP while making necessary changes for the new medium. If you can't find that balance, consider making an original IP instead.
Three Ways IP Adaptation Goes Wrong
Tim Cain identifies three distinct failure modes when converting an intellectual property to a new medium. He emphasizes that learning from failure teaches more than studying successes.
The New Product Is Simply Bad
The first failure mode has nothing to do with the IP itself. A game might crash constantly, run poorly, or have a terrible UI. A movie might have bad acting, awful dialogue, or cheap special effects. In these cases, the quality failure is independent of the adaptation — it would be a bad product regardless of what IP it was based on.
Diverging Too Far From the Source
The second failure mode occurs when the new product changes so much that it loses the essence of the original IP. This is the "that character would never say that" or "that event never happened" reaction. Cain describes watching a TV show based on a book series he loved — it had good acting, good special effects, decent scripts — but it diverged so much from the source material that the underlying theme of the books wasn't even present. Instead, a completely new theme had been substituted.
His reaction: "Why didn't they just make an original movie or TV show?" If you're going to massively change characters, timelines, events, and themes, why use the existing IP at all? The argument that it brings fans on board is undercut by the risk of making those same fans angry.
Cain praises the Lord of the Rings films as a counter-example. While Peter Jackson gave dialogue from certain book characters to different movie characters, it made the films flow better — and crucially, the core theme of the books (absolute power corrupts, regardless of how good-hearted you are) came through powerfully in the adaptation.
Following the Source Too Slavishly
The third failure mode is the opposite problem: refusing to make necessary changes when switching mediums. Every medium has different constraints and strengths. A book can tell you things; a movie has to show them. A book can leave a character's height vague; a movie must commit to showing it. A 400-page book might need characters merged and timelines compressed to fit a two-hour film.
When converting a tabletop RPG to a video game, you lose the human GM who makes rulings on the fly. You must make concrete decisions about things that were previously left to table interpretation.
Cain's Temple of Elemental Evil: A Case Study in Over-Faithfulness
Cain admits that Temple of Elemental Evil suffered from being too faithful to the printed D&D module. He wanted to keep everything "rigidly close" to the source — maintaining turn-based combat (because D&D is turn-based), preserving all the D&D 3.5 rules and skills — but in doing so, he failed to make the adaptation exciting enough as a video game.
If he could redo it, he would:
- Make the village of Hommlet more exciting with more events, quests, and dramatic happenings
- Restore cut content from the village of Nulb
- Add more personal storylines involving the Temple's priests and creatures
- Create NPCs with their own agendas — like a lower priest in the Earth Temple who offers the player keys and safe passage in exchange for assassinating the high priest (a quest that could unfold in multiple ways depending on party composition and player choices)
- Make quests resolvable in multiple ways, bringing back the reactivity present in his other games
The irony: his devotion to preserving D&D's essence made him too devoted to the specific printed module, and the game suffered for it — independent of its bugs and writing issues.
The Takeaway
When using an IP in a new medium, you face a minefield of potential failures beyond just making a bad product. You can be too faithful or too unfaithful to the source material. The key is preserving themes and essence while adapting mechanics and presentation to suit the new medium.
Cain's personal preference: make original IP whenever possible. With an original IP, you avoid the risk of alienating an existing fanbase entirely. If your only reason for using a licensed IP is to attract its fans, remember you're equally risking their wrath.
"Don't yuck their yum" — even adaptations universally panned by critics have defenders. But as a creator, you should ask yourself honestly whether you're the right person to adapt this IP, or whether your creative vision would be better served by something original.
References
- Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEIOUsAB-xU