Quote from: SosthenesWas the RuneQuest 3 box ever sold next to Monopoly?

You know, if you put D&D or RQ or something on the shelf next to Heroscape, it wouldn't even stand out.

Peace,
-Joel

All those long posts...the theories, the speculation, the figuring.

And that's the most brilliant fucking point I've seen you make here on TheRPGSite...absolutely fucking brilliant observation...

Quote from: SosthenesMain reason: Boxes can be sold below price, whereas we have this stupid law where books can only be sold at the list price.

We use to have a similar law in the UK, until it was deemed illegal, as it was effectively price fixing.

The last boxed game I've seen in a toy store was the Star Wars Introdutory Adventure Game by WEG. I think that they should be sold in toy stores, but I also think that they are not because of market realities.

Only some of the bigger name games are sold in chain bookstores because of how the book trade works (mainly that if your book doesn't sell, the publisher has to buy back the book from the store). I'm not sure, but I believe that toy stores operate the same way.

I also wonder about customer perception on the games affecting overall sales. When I worked in the local GameBoard FLGS here in Knoxville a few years ago, we'd sell a ton of stuff with LotR plastered on it - much of it overpriced crap, but sold by being affiliated with the movie. Now when a customer asked about a game with good vs evil, knights, dragons, and wizards then I'd show them the Basic D&D boxed set. Now it was the parents who would look at the game and see Dungeons & Dragons on the cover and immediately lose interest. One woman told me that she disapproved of the game because it "introduced children to the wrong crowd".
Now, as ignorant as this was, it showed me that the spectre of Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons was still alive in the South. Big chain toy stores may not want to associate themselves with the leftover stigmata of RPGs from the 80's because it might affect overall sales in their stores. Online, sure - the customer has to do a search for them there and probably won't find them by accident.

I do think that tabletop RPGs in general would see an upswing in sales if they were visible and on the shelf at stores other than chain bookstores. People would see them and impulse buy, for instance.

Quote from: jeff37923Now it was the parents who would look at the game and see Dungeons & Dragons on the cover and immediately lose interest. One woman told me that she disapproved of the game because it "introduced children to the wrong crowd".
Now, as ignorant as this was, it showed me that the spectre of Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons was still alive in the South.

Are you sure the "wrong crowd" she was referring to was satanists, and not, say, 40 year old virgins who still live in their parents' basement?

Personally, if I were a parent I'm not sure if I would want my kid introduced to half the roleplayers I knew from North America.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditAre you sure the "wrong crowd" she was referring to was satanists, and not, say, 40 year old virgins who still live in their parents' basement?

Personally, if I were a parent I'm not sure if I would want my kid introduced to half the roleplayers I knew from North America.

RPGPundit

The impression I got was that she remembered the anti-D&D hysteria from the 80's and didn't want to touch the game because of it. Of course, I live in Knoxville, TN - the buckle of the bible belt so I'm pretty sure that sentiment isn't universal. Chain toy stores would have to keep that attitude in consideration, though.

As for creepy gamers, I've met more than my fair share of them, but for every socially retarded nitwit I've run across there have been two to three OK guys and a real decent person who has become a friend. Let's face it, we tend to remember the creepy ones because they are so fucked up.

Quote from: jeff37923As for creepy gamers, I've met more than my fair share of them, but for every socially retarded nitwit I've run across there have been two to three OK guys and a real decent person who has become a friend. Let's face it, we tend to remember the creepy ones because they are so fucked up.

Yep, same here.  I've met a lot of cool people through my old gaming club and going to cons.  Of course there's people I don't like, but everything is like that, for the most part.  The creepy gamer thing is overstated, in my opinion.

I can remember RPGs being in the toy section but at the time I was starting the hobby, they were being discounted very heavily in the late 80s (if I remember right).  I can also hear the talk from certain groups that they took out D&D from the marketplace.   I wonder what would have happened if TSR took the "banned in Boston" approach with it.

Anyway, the only books in the toy store seem to be the occassional strategy guide for PC Game X.  I think the only way to have RPGs in the toy store would be to make them part of a package...either with the latest craze (DVD and other trinkets inserted into a box or, if not riding on the coat tails of the latest cartoon, as part of an elaborate board game (Heroscape + or something like that.)

I picked up a copy of Powers & Perils from Toys-R-Us a long, long time ago.  I found oodles of Dark Sun stuff at a KayBee Toys in a mall, too.

Not so much in the past decade and a half, though...

-O

Quote from: jeff37923The impression I got was that she remembered the anti-D&D hysteria from the 80's and didn't want to touch the game because of it. Of course, I live in Knoxville, TN - the buckle of the bible belt so I'm pretty sure that sentiment isn't universal. Chain toy stores would have to keep that attitude in consideration, though.

As for creepy gamers, I've met more than my fair share of them, but for every socially retarded nitwit I've run across there have been two to three OK guys and a real decent person who has become a friend. Let's face it, we tend to remember the creepy ones because they are so fucked up.

I don't think that old D&D scare should be as much of a problem today as in the 80's and early 90's. Both points of view is just too readily available for anyone to mistake it for anything other than what it is. Even if that does not apply directly to the congregation of One Horse, NW, then at least it applies to journalists and other infoworkers.

While I have the impression that the gaming culture's a bit different here in norway, there's been some small-scale success targeting local-made games to bookshops and schools. But the business model of the local publishing industry just isn't geared to support RPG's. What seems to work for a broad appeal here is stuff like Mørkrid's Fabula. It has a simple D20 system (designed while D&D was still Advanced) - three stats, and a class-fixed selection of derived skills in a basic fantasy world, using general terms from local folklore rather than translated gaming-style names for monsters and features (This was before LOtR). The system works for more adult settings too, but turned out to be very popular with the kids.

From where I am, I can't quite picture parents seeing those horribly awkward teenagers (and occasional adult of similar demeanor) who sometimes turn up at gaming venues as a "wrong crowd". I suspect if anything that gaming turned me off the path to becoming a 40 year old virgin living in my parent's basement.

I can, however, picture parents blaming the "wrong crowd" or "wrong books" for making their own teenagers become interested in "scary" stuff like paganism, vampire LARPS and heavy metal music. Rather than admit to themselves that their kids probably sought all that stuff out all by themselves, for reasons of puberty, rebellion or both.

(Don't know about the americas, but in europe, as in japan, the phenomenon of children leaving home very late has mostly economical rather than psychological causes. I'm 26, and while both me and my fiancé has been out of the nest for years, those years have been a continual struggle to keep a hold in the adult world, and we're far from financially independent yet. There just aren't enough "spare slots" for the coming generations out there, because the previous generations are still occupying them.)

Things were different here in America back in the 80's, and even that depended on where you lived. The anti-gaming hysteria wasn't nearly so bad in California and Washington as it was in Tennessee. Unfortunately, people tend to remember that shit around here (it also doesn't help that the morning talk radio guy loves to drop the opinion that "gaming causes violent behavior" on his show every once in awhile). So while tabletop gaming is considered more acceptable than it was, it still gets lumped in with the "bad influences" crowd.

I can't cut and paste a link here at work, but if you Google The Pulling Report by Michael Stackpole  and read it, that will give you an insiders view of the situation as it was happening in America back then. Also if you hunt through the reminiscance of Loren Wiseman on the Steve Jackson Games forum, he talks about that time as well.

The old Ghostbusters RPG (1st ed) was apparrantly sold in toystores in its boxed form, since I found it in this weird little toystore in Vancouver which had had it on the boardgames shelf for 20 years, anyone else care to confirm this for me?  They also had the old "Prince Valiant" game, but I digress...  The D&D board Game tempted me to the point of almost buying it just to see what it was like, but the thing that turned me off?  I found it in a store called "the Works", which is a chain of UK-wide liquidation shops.  The fact it was there implies that it didn't sell remotely well...

I do think the earlier idea about the Manga-packaged cross-marketed game wouldn't be a bad one.  The Pokémon CCG having made a decent comeback as well as the launches of ones for Bleach and Naruto implies that there's a gaming-receptive crowd that might well be interested.