Quote from: RSDancey;426273When I talk about "MMOs", I'm going to be talking about MMOs primarily played by people in the West.  Eastern MMOs are a whole different kettle of fish.  They have a different business model, different value propositions, are played in public rather than in private, are highly segmented by nationality, etc.

I am interested in this Eastern vs. Western MMO.  Where can I find some good info breaking down the differences?

Quote from: RSDancey;426273That's too much damage to do to the audience of tabletop RPGs to continue with the games in their current format as anything other than an aging hobby with dwindling numbers.

Bingo.

It will stay a niche.

Quote from: Benoist;426366"It reminds me of one time where I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said, "Because the pictures are so much better."

RPGs!  The hot new hobby for blind kids!

Quote from: danbuter;426393In my experience, there is one reason why MMO's are killing tabletop.

When I want to play WoW, I log in and play. I don't have to call my friends, set up a time, get food and drinks, do all the prep work for the adventure, and then find out someone can't make it at the last second.

The "ease of play" for both computer/console RPGs vs. TTRPGs is a major factor.  Quite possibly the numbero uno factor in the equation.

Easy = Better for 99% of people, even if the Easy option is a somewhat lesser experience.

Quote from: RSDancey;426404Anyone who thinks that social contact is a unique value proposition of tabletop games has to question why people's actual behavior doesn't seem to back that up.

Unfortunately, you are 100% correct.
 

Quote from: Benoist;426435I'm kind of flabbergasted that it didn't occur to anyone that the type of socialization that exists in role playing games is not the same that exists amongst players of MMOs.

Of course its different.  But apparently for most people, the tradeoff is just fine.  Their need for socialization is being fulfilled by the MMOs.

Quote from: David Johansen;426480Really, it's ridiculous.  Mporgs will NEVER get there.

I wouldn't bet against technology.

Quote from: Omnifray;426493But I'd hazard a guess that the total numbers of TTRPGers playing now are still comparable to the numbers in the 1980s and won't dip much going forwards.

Somebody has really good drugs!!!

Quote from: Benoist;426500But then, one day, sooner or later, a guy would come in and ask: "why the hell do we need the machine to translate what I see in the first place? It's prettier in my mind!" So it'd still be a win for TRPGs in the end.

And you prove why RPGs will be a diminishing niche.    You can't build an energetic, growing hobby on that population.

Quote from: David Johansen;426480More realistically I want WOW Kinect.  I want 15 minutes of cardio when I run from Goldshire to Sentinel hill.  I want to build muscle by wearing arm weights as I swing my sword.  Because combined with a headset for talking that would be really really cool.

Fucking hell yes.

Quote from: RSDancey;426404In fact, the MMO network is actually much more focused on community than the TRPG audience.  TRPG networks rarely extend to more than a dozen people or so (but there are many links to other networks).  MMO networks rarely have less than a hundred.  In EVE, there are multi-thousand person organizations.  This sense of larger community is actually more social and more likely to produce off-line friendships than the tighter knit, smaller TRPG network.  Its extremely attractive to people with poor social skills but who crave social contact.  Plus, it's where the girls are.

My experience in MMORPGS (been play various MMORPGS since the release of Ultima Online) and LARPS (NERO from 1992 to 2005) is that these groups are more ephemeral then the social groups growing around tabletop games.  

My observation that on the average they follow a three year rule. A first year of initial participation consisting mostly of the user gaining experience both with the group and the game. A second year of intense involvement. Then a third year of the group scattering and fissioning. Some groups can maintain a core and have continuity over multiple cycles.  LARPS follow much the same pattern.

I feel this is because the activity viewed as highly optional and that for the average gamer the slightest pressure from the rest of the life results in decreased involvement. Note I am being generic here for most folks just mundane stuff like having a kid, a new job, graduating etc, etc.  The reason it is three years is because by then enough of the original group had this happen to them to cause it to disappear or change beyond all recognition.

Tabletop roleplaying in my experience is more subject to the poker night syndrome. Because of the continual face to face contact during the intense phase of table roleplaying lasting friendship have a better chance to develop.  This is especially true if we are talking weekly gaming.

LARPS has the next best chance as it too is face to face. But my experience with NERO is that the face the events revolve around large groups of people which has it own problem if an issue being divide the community.

MMORPGS are the most ephemeral because of the lack of face to face interaction and that for the most part to walk away all you have to is log off unless you gave out personal information. But MMORPGS social group have the all the advantages of the internet the most important of which is the ability to draw off a large pool of people. They are not limited to a specific geographical area like Tabletop and LARPS. MMORPGS groups can grow very large and very fast.

This is based off of my experience being involved in gaming in Northwest PA for 30 years, and having owned a successful NERO LARP chapter ARGO which had an average attendance of 30 players per event from 1999 to 2005 (the last year I was involved).

Quote from: Benoist;426500You think I haven't thought about that? It's still an accurate comparison (quoted from Gary Gygax, by the way).

Yes, but we have two arguments going on here. One is, "Is TV better than radio?" That's a subjective judgment, even if, don't get me wrong, I actually agree with you that radio plays can be extremely enjoyable. The other is, "What's going to happen to the market?" If you can't separate the first from the second, you're talking nonsense.

Basically, I don't have any doubt that electronic gaming is going to become more and more compelling over time, and that kids in particular aren't even going to know or care what they're missing when it comes to TRPGs.

The blind spot in Ryan's analysis is that he, himself, only sees RPGs in a limited fashion, such that once the portion that he understands gets cannibalized by MMOs, all that's left is story games. We've gone over this before:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=7786

It's actually very typical of the most zealous Forgites, that they they themselves are so used to viewing RPGs as either a series of combats or as railroady story, that they see the Forge approaches as a huge revelation...so huge in fact that it eclipses the possibility that anyone could have ever thought of anything else.

Quote from: Spinachcat;426521Bingo.

It will stay a niche.

The underlying thing that bothers me about this is that there seems to be this will to change RPGs into anything and everything under the sun to somehow make them appealing to just about anyone.

I guess... I just don't see what's so wrong about RPGs being a niche hobby?

Why the hell should we worry about RPGs being popular with the cool kids, somehow?

Fact is, it's already a hobby that does not generate a lot of income, that mostly people who are passionate about participate in and produce products for... the world is changing, FLGS close, but in the end, I don't see RPGs under any form just overcoming the "easy" factor MMOs represent, or changing so drastically as to become "un-nerd", or "mainstream." That's just silly talk. That's never going to happen.

What the hell is wrong with this hobby being a niche hobby, if it can sustain itself in its current form? If the answer is "well it does not sustain itself right now," I guess a better debate to have is how we could make RPGs more sustainable with the limited, dwindling size of the hobby, and not whether or not we could maybe change D&D into something "other" that would appeal to MMO-playing types, Forge adepts and otherwise.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;426525...

The blind spot in Ryan's analysis is that he, himself, only sees RPGs in a limited fashion, such that once the portion that he understands gets cannibalized by MMOs, all that's left is story games. We've gone over this before:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=7786

It's actually very typical of the most zealous Forgites, that they they themselves are so used to viewing RPGs as either a series of combats or as railroady story, that they see the Forge approaches as a huge revelation...so huge in fact that it eclipses the possibility that anyone could have ever thought of anything else.

Or to put it another way:-

Dancey's Storytellers are VERY ROUGHLY a bit like Edwards's Narrativists
Dancey's Character Actors are VERY ROUGHLY a bit like Edwards's Simulationists
Dancey's Power Gamers and Thinkers are VERY ROUGHLY a bit like Edwards's Gamists

In the World According to Dancey, the Simulationists/Character Actors and the less sophisticated half of the Gamists/Power Gamers really ought to be playing MMOs, and RPGs are best-suited to Narrativists/Storytellers and the more sophisticated half of the Gamists/Thinkers. Pretty much exactly as Edwards would see it I imagine, since Edwards seems to think that Character Actors are basically running a tedious simulation of something, and we all know that flight simulators and simulation games in general are best done on computer where the physics of the world can be accurately modelled.

OK, I'm being a bit facetious, but Dancey's argument does kind of lead to telling the Character Actors and Power Gamers to fuck off, and hogging the TTRPG territory for Narrativists and Thinkers, including playing down the importance of the central 12% from the WotC study, who would on Dancey's own model represent more than a fifth of the new TTRPG core market.

Quote from: Benoist;426528T
 If the answer is "well it does not sustain itself right now," I guess a better debate to have is how we could make RPGs more sustainable with the limited, dwindling size of the hobby, and not whether or not we could maybe change D&D into something "other" that would appeal to MMO-playing types, Forge adepts and otherwise.

1) Embrace any technology that compliments tabletop gaming and increase opportunities for gamers to meet and play games. This can be either tech that makes it easier to play a tabletop game or tech that make easy to get together and play. Virtual Tabletop Software is an example of technology that makes it easier for gamers to get together and play tabletop.

2) Train and help referee make exciting campaigns that alternative forms of roleplaying (LARPS, MMORPGs, etc) can't match. In effect this is the solution adopted by movies in response to television.  They took advantage of their bigger screen and pushed other technique to make an experience that television still have trouble matching. In effect turning each into their own "thing". For similar reasons theater continues to thrive doing their own thing in the face of movies and tv.

Tabletop roleplaying likewise has it's own strengths and should play to them to develop it own experience that differs from the alternatives. Because of the investment and limited audience at each sitting it will never likely be THE form of gaming like in the 70s and 80s but like Theater be a small but thriving niche of it's own. Like theater in relation to film and tv, tabletop can embrace technology and techniques that complement it rather than supplant it.

Quote from: estar;4265351) Embrace any technology that compliments tabletop gaming and increase opportunities for gamers to meet and play games. This can be either tech that makes it easier to play a tabletop game or tech that make easy to get together and play. Virtual Tabletop Software is an example of technology that makes it easier for gamers to get together and play tabletop.

2) Train and help referee make exciting campaigns that alternative forms of roleplaying (LARPS, MMORPGs, etc) can't match. In effect this is the solution adopted by movies in response to television.  They took advantage of their bigger screen and pushed other technique to make an experience that television still have trouble matching. In effect turning each into their own "thing". For similar reasons theater continues to thrive doing their own thing in the face of movies and tv.

Tabletop roleplaying likewise has it's own strength and should play them to develop it own experience that differs from the alternatives. Because of the investment and limited audience at each sitting it will never likely be THE form of gaming like in the 70s and 80s but like Theater be a small but thriving niche of it's own. Like theater in relation to film and tv, tabletop can embrace technology and techniques that complement it rather than supplant it.

Bingo.

I would just add that if we could somehow overcome the incestuous gamers play with gamers paradigm and just somehow make it easier for gamers to play games with other people, whether they themselves become gamers or not, that would be a big win for the hobby. It would take a change in culture, for one thing, and games that complement this change in paradigm (which may, or may not, already exist), for another, but that's not impossible, in my opinion.

Quote from: Omnifray;426532Or to put it another way:-

Dancey's Storytellers are VERY ROUGHLY a bit like Edwards's Narrativists
Dancey's Character Actors are VERY ROUGHLY a bit like Edwards's Simulationists
Dancey's Power Gamers and Thinkers are VERY ROUGHLY a bit like Edwards's Gamists

Roughly those categories and the four that showed up in the WotC survey were being discussed back in 1980.  I think it's no mistake that Glenn Blacow, rec.games.frp.advocacy, and WotC's survey all came up with similar categories.

Quote from: Omnifray;426532OK, I'm being a bit facetious, but Dancey's argument does kind of lead to telling the Character Actors and Power Gamers to fuck off, and hogging the TTRPG territory for Narrativists and Thinkers, including playing down the importance of the central 12% from the WotC study, who would on Dancey's own model represent more than a fifth of the new TTRPG core market.

While I don't agree with everything Ryan is saying, I don't think he's trying to toss anyone out of the hobby.  He thinks they are leaving on their own.  Argue to his argument, not what you think his motives are.

I made a couple of replies now but didn't directly address Dancy's OP of #5, and #6.

For my answer I am not going to debate the categories. I concur with the assessment that Power Gamers are largely lost to Tabletop Games. I ran into a precursor of this with NERO, a boffer LARP that allows Player vs Player combat in-game as their character (like early Ultima Online). I played and managed NERO LARP from 1992 to 2005 and spanned the rise of computer RPGs and MMORPGs.

Nearly every player I would classify as a Power Gamer found NERO LARP more satisfying than tabletop. Their athletic ability determined the route they took but they all to a person relished the challenge of taking out another player with all their skill. Late in the 90s when First Person Shooters came into their I heard many liking that. The same for MMORPG but most found it cheesy when Everquest and WoW limited the PvP options at first.

It been a long time since the last time I found a tabletop gamer a problem because he preyed on his fellow players.

MMORPGs are not the problem with the loss of Character Actors, shared fiction. MMORPGs are but the icetip of what going on with people writing and sharing stories and drawing. You would think this be a problem with Storytellers but many of these folks put themselves in the stories as their alt characters. LARPS likewise are filled with players that adopt a deep personae. Managing the interactions between these two groups caused my hair to fall out. (just kidding but it was a pain).

I could go on about the other groups. But the general gist is that in the 70s Tabletop was IT and had the means to satisfies the interest of many these groups. Since new forms of entertainment evolved each paring the original audience of roleplaying games.

It doesn't matter what categories for players you use there is simply more competition for everybody entertainment attention. Let me put in another way. My mother was the first girl's swimming coach in Meadville, PA. She was also the first women to coach a boy's swimming team in Pennsylvania. This happened in the 70's. While she was Girl's Swimming coach the team was undefeated for all five years she coached. Some like like 80 wins. Today girls (and boys) swimming team isn't so dominating.

The reason because now you have girl's basketball, volleyball, and a dozen other sport all competing for the same pool of girls in Meadville. The chance of another series of seasons like in the 70s for swimming is very low. Yet Meadville still has swimming and they still produce the occasional champion and have good years.

The pool of gamers has grown considerably but chances of tabletop returning to it's former dominance is very low. Even if it did it would likely be a result of a fad and within years or a decade return to it's former levels of participation.

So like Benoist and other asked earlier what does it take to make tabletop hobby and industry healthy.

The simple answer is to focus on the human elements of the games. The fact that tabletop sessions are a SMALL group of people gaming together. Which can be a more personalized game where people can do their things REGARDLESS of what category you dice them up into.

Rather than focusing on the elements that divide us. I want to focus on the elements that unites. The interest in drama, conflict, the feeling of triumph of overcome challenges, all happening because you are describing what your character is doing and a human referee is telling you the result.

I was not a brand manager of anything, I only ran a small LARP group in rural NW PA, and only have a small library of professionally written products.  So what do I know compared to those who have more experience in the industry?

I am not trying snarky at Mr Dancey's expense. He has hard earned experience and I respect. What I can offer is where I am come from let Mr. Dancey and the rest of you decide whether I am talking out of my ass or have a point.

The single biggest influence on my thoughts isn't my LARP experience or my publishing experience. But the simple fact that I am a GURPS referee in the middle of rural NorthWest Pennsylvania. Boom or bust in the RPG hobby I am alway lacking players. So I have to take what I can when the opportunity arrive.

So I had to deal with a lot of different types of players of different interest and abilities. Most gamers don't like a complicated game like GURPS. The single reason why I am able to be successful as a GURPS referee is that I run a compelling campaigna.

I don't care what you are interested in I can find a place for you in my campaign that is interesting and fun.  Since I started running Swords & Wizardry campaigns (I think it best if the author plays the games he writes for) two years ago I found what works in my GURPS campaign works in my S&W campaigns.

So I am thinking that there something about the roleplaying game that cuts across genre and system. For a lack of a better term I called this the roleplaying element. Too many in the industry focus on the games and the gamers themselves and not on the roleplaying. The idea that you are playing a character in a interesting setting with compelling adventure run by a human referee.

And not enough to have general advice even as good as those found in the 4e DMG or Robin Law's book. We need specific concrete advice, and aides to help referee create the roleplaying side of tabletop. Like my Steps to make a Sandbox, like the Adventure Design steps and tables like Benoist mentioned and so .

I consider good refereeing the most important tool in tabletop. A good referee is Tabletop's equivalent of a blockbuster. In the end a good referee can craft a game that uniquely suited for the players sitting at his table. Something that a LARP and MMORPG can never do by their very nature. So if you want to make Tabletop sustainable then make good referees.

Finally while I am focusing on referees in this post. There a bunch of stuff that can be written to help the players with the roleplaying side of tabletop.

Quote from: John Morrow;426550Roughly those categories and the four that showed up in the WotC survey were being discussed back in 1980.  I think it's no mistake that Glenn Blacow, rec.games.frp.advocacy, and WotC's survey all came up with similar categories.

At a staff meeting at a NERO LARP in the 1990s somebody read us the killer, achiever, roleplaying, explorer article and we are all nodding our heads.

But when we talked about it we quickly came to agreement that it's biggest flaw was that people are not just one thing at one time. People's interest change over time and depending on circumstances.

The only thing we universal agreed on that Killers sucked to no end. Which was ironic as there were several known killers at that staff meeting.

Quote from: John Morrow;426550While I don't agree with everything Ryan is saying, I don't think he's trying to toss anyone out of the hobby.  He thinks they are leaving on their own.  Argue to his argument, not what you think his motives are.

I get that and my main disagreement that that rather appealing to specific segments you should look for things of universal interest and use the roleplaying side of tabletop to make campaigns that are compelling regardless what category you fall in.

Sidestep the problem by focusing on what make tabletop unique.

Quote from: RSDancey;426273Right off the bat we know that the Power Gamer segment is going to have a better play experience in general in the MMO environment than on the tabletop.

OK.  I agree with you on this one.

Quote from: RSDancey;426273There's another group that's being seduced by the MMOs: The Character Actors.  These people are getting tremendous value out of the current generation of MMOs.  I've seen people who have filled up every available character slot on every available server with City of Heroes characters, for example.  I know people who have produced (and I kid you not) tens of thousands of message board posts in character, about their character and interacting with others also in character.

This doesn't match my expectations, but I think you raise some good points.

Quote from: RSDancey;426273These people are getting crack cocaine in the form of a mutable, controllable graphic representation of their character.  For tabletop RPGs the best they could hope for was a hand-drawn "character portrait" and maybe a metal miniature, which might or might not be painted.  In the MMO realm they get a living, breathing, 3-D avatar who moves, dances, emotes, and does all the other things these people can dream of.  And, not to keep hammering this point home, the technology about to come on-line will blow these people's minds.

The problem is that I would identify myself as a character actor (note the 100% Method Actor in my signature) and none of that interests me.  Why?  Because I have to fiddle with a game interface to make it happen.  For all it's flaws when it comes to information bandwidth, just describing what my character says and does is far superior, for me, than fiddling with computer controls and watching an external figure dance for me.  I say this as a person who can touch type at fairly high speed and who programs computers for a living.  Yes, it looks pretty but it's a lot of work to make it happen.  And despite your claims about AI and not being able to tell the difference, I think we're still a long way from anything near the depth that a real person provides.

But I can see that appealing to a certain segment of people who fall under the "Character Actor" umbrella, particularly those interested in the performance aspect of it.  I can also imagine kids who have grown up with MMOs might be bothered by interface issues less than I am.  So I'm willing to believe that some segment of Character Actors may be drawn away by MMOs, but I think it may be premature to write the whole segment off, perhaps simply because of categorization issues.  It's entirely possible that even though Character Actor seems to match what a lot of character focused players do, that we would have shown up as Storytellers in your survey results, because our perspective is more Strategic than Tactical.  But either way, I think the problem is that "Story Focus" suffers from the problem that seems to plague all role-playing theory discussions, which is what is meant by "story" and what's the best way to get it.  

Quote from: RSDancey;426273With the Power Gamers out, and the Character Actors leaving, that leaves us with a 2 segment audience, plus the "generic RPG players".  Basically, the Storytellers and the Thinkers.  It just so happens that the tabletop RPG format is nearly perfect for these people.

If that's the case and the hobby is left with Strategic/Combat Focus and Strategic/Story Focus, the common ground is "Strategic", which you defined as "'Strategic' means 'a perspective larger than the immediate future and surroundings'."  And if that's the case, then suggesting the hobby move in a Forge game direction is full of fail because the vast majority of Forge games, including Dogs in the Vineyard, are Tactical.  They are meant to be played as one-offs or at conventions or as mini-campaigns.  They often revolve around a particular limited scenario and limited character type.

I asked elsewhere in these discussions if anyone knows of any Dogs in the Vineyard campaigns that have lasted for years, or a year, or even for a dozen sessions with the same characters, the way many D&D games do (if I'm not mistaken, D&D 3.5 was designed with the assumption that a year of play would bring a character from 1st to 20th level, right?).  And even if one game did last that long, would they start another one?

It's my impression that Dogs in the Vineyard (and others like it) just aren't played that way.  In fact, the whole idea of "Story Now!" is Tactical, about story happening immediately, not over the long haul.  Dogs in the Vineyard drives tactical escalation in a tightly focused tactical setting where everything is immediate and accessible (If I'm not mistaken, doesn't the game even suggest that they players should be able to find anything that they look for?).  So how is this supposed to appeal two two segments of players that you've identified as "Strategic"?  Don't traditional games have far more to offer in that regard?

Quote from: estar;426556I get that and my main disagreement that that rather appealing to specific segments you should look for things of universal interest and use the roleplaying side of tabletop to make campaigns that are compelling regardless what category you fall in.

Well, that was Ryan Dancey's argument in 2000 (I've posted those quotes elsewhere) and how D&D 3e was designed so he's not inherently opposed to that idea at all.  And that's been my own stance, as well.  I'm a big fan of Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering, which is all about running a game for disparate player types.  But it's also clear to me that there is a certain amount of tension between the various styles of play (and present in your own characterization of the Killer player type) and that things that appeal to one play style can detract form another.  And it's also clear that dialing an element of play that might normally be tolerable to everyone up to 11 to please one style of play can ruin the game for everyone else.

In particular, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, game mastery appeals to certain segments of players but it is also behind many of the biggest complaints that other types of players make and is one of the key problems facing casual players.  If the segment that finds game mastery is leaving the hobby, then perhaps reducing or even eliminating that element of play and providing players with transparent rules that one doesn't have to master to use effectively would draw in new players that might be turned off by that aspect of the game.

John's sentiments regarding "character actor" mirror my own -- I played Neverwinter Nights online on role-play/persistent world servers before I played tabletop 3e with any consistency, and I much prefer the immediacy and flexibility of tabletop.

Of course, that's just me, but I remember it being hella hard to coordinate people for real "role-play" sessions on the servers.

Quote from: Benoist;426500But in any case, my second point is that radio DOES have better pictures than television, if you think about it a certain way, which happens to be completely compatible to what TRPGs are, appealing to imagination, your own personal view of the game world, and not the passive submission to the way designers choose to represent said world on a screen.

I think it is valid to wonder whether what applies to people in their 40s, 50s, or even older applies to younger people.  When I was a child, we went outside and played.  All day.  Usually without adult supervision.  Often in ravines and vacant lots.  Often doing dangerous or stupid things.  Lots of kids today don't have that experience.  Their activities are planned.  They have computers, video games, iPods, and cell phones.  They often don't seem to just go outside an play.  

A few years ago, there was a power failure in my neighborhood on a nice weekend day.  After a few minutes, I started hearing children playing outside.  Those children were always there, but I'd never heard them before because they usually weren't outside playing.  It was like the scene in the Simpsons where the parents turn off all of the TVs in Springfield and the children slowly and reluctantly go outside, where they squint in the unfamiliar sun.  When I was growing up, we were always outside playing or inside playing with physical toys  and a lot of that play was a precursor to what I do in role-playing games.

I also find myself wondering whether a child who has grown up with ILM special effects, computer graphics of the sort Ryan showcased earlier in this thread, and the ability to access a world of information at their fingertips really exercise their imagination or think it's better than what a computer gives them.  

Maybe kids today are the same as they've always been but maybe they aren't.  And I find myself wondering if a lot of what you are saying isn't analogous to people who wax poetic about the joys of longhand writing and cursive script and how it made people better writers because they had to think through what they were writing rather than counting on a quick edit with a computer.