Quote from: mearlsThe earlier wave of WotC acquisitions (Ars Magica, SLA Industries, Talislanta) was a genuine attempt to form a viable RPG arm of the company. Sales simply weren't there, so the division was dissolved and the games returned to their original owners.

How could they have known there weren't sales without any real effort to do anything with any of what they acquired? The scent is a little piscine around that for my taste.

Quote from: GRIMHow could they have known there weren't sales without any real effort to do anything with any of what they acquired? The scent is a little piscine around that for my taste.

In the case of Ars Magica 4e the core rules were ready for publication when WotC finalized the purchase of TSR. As a matter of fact, the printer was about to start the first print run when word came down from Wizards that the printing order was being cancelled. Later Jonathan Tweet was able to get publication rights transferred to Atlas games, which then published AM as developed by Wizards of the Coast.

The decision to not publish non-D&D games came because Adkinson saw more potential in publishing D&D than other RPGs and decided to focus company resources on D&D.

Quote from: T-WillardTwo words and an abbreviation:

Gamma World d20

Nuff said.

Here, here!

I've still got my first edition box set. They can't take that away from me.

In my opinion, the lack of support was the major problem with the Serenity RPG, not the system itself. It's nothing to write home about to be sure, but not what I would consider a godawful abomination.

I'm a Firefly/Serenity fan, I guess you could probably call me a Browncoat. I don't think that the folks who enjoy this franchise are any worse than folks who enjoy Star Wars, Star Trek, any one of a hundred pro football teams, or just about any other pop culture phenomenon.

Quote from: mattormegI'm a Firefly/Serenity fan, I guess you could probably call me a Browncoat. I don't think that the folks who enjoy this franchise are any worse than folks who enjoy Star Wars, Star Trek, any one of a hundred pro football teams, or just about any other pop culture phenomenon.

The problem with the Browncoat phenomenon is that it's acquired a collective messiah complex wherein Browncoats feel compelled to purchase Firefly/Serenity merchandise in an uncritical, matter-of-faith manner as a means of "saving" the show.  This renders any discussion of sales numbers as a measure of quality pointless, because "real Browncoats" specifically don't care about quality when buying a Firefly/Serenity product (or if they do care, it's a secondary consideration at best).  You can see this effect in any sizeable Browncoat community, the exhortations to "buy [product X] and help save Firefly, buy [product X] if you're a real Browncoat."  Well that's fine, but if you're buying the Serenity RPG because its your moral duty as a Browncoat then your purchase says jack-shit-all about how good a game it is.

I'm not aware that this is true of anything but the fringe in any of the fandoms you mentioned.  And yes, Browncoats are themselves a fringe of the Firefly/Serenity fanbase but they're a much, much bigger fringe in relative terms than, say, hardcore Trekkies.

KoOS

I just thought of a couple.
 
Starcraft: Alternity and Diablo D20. Also D&D Warcraft.
 
The D&D: Warcraft RPG was excellent, and it didn't have polygon player models in the guides (ack!). They were running excellently until WoW came around. The World of Warcraft liscense has done nothing for the game as no-one I know wants to play it. It relegated to an Everquest:the RPG.
 
As for the others: Starcraft fans are chomping at the bit for ANYTHING about ANYTHING Starcraft. Same with Diablo. Both these settings are rife with characters, combat, badguys, settings and politics. Perfect for any RPG. Toss in some Mass combat rules and you're golden!

I see your point, and largely agree with you. "Saving" the show could be a strong drive for a lot of folks, even if it is an erroneous or fruitless avocation. However, "saving the show" is only one aspect of the extreme personal identification obsessive fans of any phenomenon tend to demonstrate.

I've always held strongly to the idea that "true believer" lunatic
fringe types exist in every organized body of people, and those that cluster around more acceptable objects of fixation, like pro sports, tend to stand out less than their similiarly-nutty peers involved in less socially acceptable hobbies or interests, like gaming, SCA, etc.

There are a lot of people in my town who would probably be called "catpiss men" if they were involved with gaming, but escape this label because they are fixated on football instead. There's a woman down the street that painted her house in her favorite team's colors, and has a wooden cut-out of the mascot on her lawn. Still, no one gives her as much as a second look.

Same with the guy who dresses in his team's colors and owns a team-colored SUV plastered with about half a dozen team bumper stickers, with a team-themed vanity plate.

I think that if either of those people were Star Trek nuts, they'd be the talk of the town, but the perceived worth of the object of their fixation allows them to dip under the radar.

Yeah, I don't disagree with you at all.  It's why the term "fandom" makes my teeth ache, and I look askance at anyone who self-identifies as a member of a fandom (as opposed to a fanbase).

As far as professional sports versus RPGs, I'd agree that the social acceptability of sports relative to RPGs is a big factor in differing perceptions.  OTOH, I'd argue that a big part of that lack of social acceptability for RPGs is the perception that the hobby is dominated by socially retarded fatbeards and catpiss men to a relative degree that far, far outweighs their analogues in pro sports.  Is this perception accurate?  Sadly, I'd have to say it has a pretty damn strong basis in reality.  Freakazoid fatbeard-types are relatively rare among the totality of sports fans, but fatbeards abound anywhere gamers gather.  Fatbeards, not "Swine," are the true achilles heel of the hobby.

Apologies for dragging the thread off-topic with this aside.

KoOS

Nightfall is alive and well and working under hogshead last time I checked. Of course, their release schedule is insanely slow, in oh, 13 years I think they've released four books and one very slim adventure.

They are scottish, so it might be they are drunk...

Quote from: King of Old SchoolOTOH, I'd argue that a big part of that lack of social acceptability for RPGs is the perception that the hobby is dominated by socially retarded fatbeards and catpiss men to a relative degree that far, far outweighs their analogues in pro sports.

I think it might actually be the opposite.  The stereotypical Joe Sixpack sports fan is so common that they don't stand out.  The world has learned to work around their low education, bigotry, and poor social skills.  They're a marketing niche unto themselves.

Despite the its mythological proportions, I rarely get approached by gamers who go on about their characters, even in game stores and gatherings of gamers.  But almost daily, I run into strangers who want to start up a conversation about the game last night or their theory on what the team can do to win.  

Long ago, I've realized that if something has been around long enough and become common enough, it just stops being weird to most people no matter how objectively silly it is.  If you were to spend $20,000 on a boat (that is not part of your job), your neighbors would ooh and ah.  If your neighbors found out that that you spent $5,000 on Magic cards, they would whisper behind your back.

I have been gaming continuously since 1978. Personally, I've never met a catpissman involved with RPGs. Most of the gamers I've met have been young, personable, and friendly. I've only gamed with one person I would call mentally unstable, and he was an ex-marine whose problems came from his experiences in 'Nam, not gaming. The rest have been perfectly normal, either going to school or with good jobs. I realize I must be a statistical fluke, but KoOS must be as well.

-clash

Quote from: SpikeNightfall is alive and well and working under hogshead last time I checked. Of course, their release schedule is insanely slow, in oh, 13 years I think they've released four books and one very slim adventure.

They are scottish, so it might be they are drunk...

Hogshead closed down and the name was bought out.
SLA is currently under Cubicle 7 entertainment and, hopefully, finally, we'll see some movement on new releases at Dragonmeet.

I said fatbeards abound, not catpiss men.  You'll note the difference.  And if you've never encountered a fatbeard, I can only assume that (a) you have a single, very exceptional LGS and (b) you've never been to a con.  I'm not even a regular con-goer, but in my limited experience the proportion of fatbeards was overwhelming (many female con attendees will back me up on this).  As for stores, I live in a very large city (Toronto) with multiple LGSes and fatbeards abound in our stores on both sides of the counters... which, come to think of it, was and is also true in the city I used to live in.

As for sports, the fact remains that they have achieved sufficient cultural penetration that Joe Sixpack is a small subset of fans -- sports fans also include huge numbers of politicians, business leaders, academics, artists, media figures, etc.  You can't compare the totality of gamers with only the fringe of sports fans, you have to compare the totality of both.  Again, where I live the biggest local team (the Maple Leafs hockey team) are supported by a broad section of society and indeed, only the social and economic elites can afford to regularly attend the games; you can see that a huge proportion of the good seats are filled with suits.  Put another way, in your average office there might be 50 people and 35 of those will be at least casually interested in the local team (including the CEO and most of the directors), and maybe 4 or 5 of those are real fatbeard types.  In the same office, there might be 10 gamers of varying degrees of interest -- and you'll still have 4 or 5 fatbeards.

Fatbeards are representative of gamers to a degree that they simply aren't representative of sports fans.  There's a reason why you'll periodically see discussions of which celebrities are or might be gamers, but you'll never (or very, very rarely) see the same discussions among sports fans: because sports fans already know that the beautiful people are sports fans and don't need the external validation to prove that there's more to their fanbase than the fatbeards and socially marginalized freaks.  Interestingly, computer and video gaming is starting to achieve the same kind of cultural acceptability... perhaps there are lessons there to be learned.

KoOS

I've known a number of catpiss men in gaming.  

One used to make his money growing sun flowers, would never wash or wear shoes and would pick his nose and his feet with any pencil you loaned him during a game.

Another is a short fat bald guy with glasses who spends as much time on WoW a week as he does at work and gaming wise he just runs the big Dragonlance campaign on an eternal loop.

And there was another ginger one who used to cart around this dandelion and burdock bottle with him, he had mad ginger hair a GIGANTIC arse (I mean really, he was a fatbeard but it all went to his posterior) and had thousands and thousands of magic cards.

They very much do exist and it's not just limited to RPGs.  Go to a football match and you'll see a lot of weird people.  What it is is isolation and a lack of female influence.  Those can do strange things to a man.

It's not that I never see fatbeards, just that they are a small minority of the gamers that I see (no, I'm not a big con attendee - come to think of it, I also avoid the store where the warhammer crowd hang out).  I see a smaller percentage of the socially retarded among gamers than I do among sports fans.  By socially retarded, I include things such as starting conversations with people who obviously aren't interested, saying contextually inappropriate things, being clueless about subtle feedback from listeners, and rambling about topics that others aren't interested in.  

Luckily, statistics are on the side of the sports fan.  If they start talking about the QB they have a fetish for, there's a reasonable chance that the average stranger will have some interest in the topic.