We have board members (and lurkers) from Spain, Brazil, Mexico and of course, RPGPundit is in Uruguay. I suspect we have members living and gaming in other Spanish speaking countries as well. Yes, I know the language situation is different for Brazil and Portugal, but jump in and tell us your scene as well.

Please educate us on the RPG scene in your countries. Assume we have total ignorance of your country's RPG past and present.

In addition to understanding your RPG scene, I'm also interested in:

a) a great local RPG that needs to be translated into American (or has been).

b) how RPGers mostly buy RPGs in your country (aka, by mail order, at local stores, DriveThru downloads, etc)

c) your thoughts on what's needed for your country's RPG scene to grow.

d) your thoughts on the profit potential for small press publishers translating their games and selling into your country.

México City Present.

The scene is tiny, we used to have one or two mexican RPGs now in development one based on precolombine myths, my guess the maket will be mainly outside México, and another one I can remember. (Not counting my own Teknotopia game of course).

a) I'm not aware of any game that needs to be translated (but I know of two Spanish ones, one had the core rules translated {Adventures in the Eastern March})

b) There are some Game Stores and some Comic Book Shops also sell them, but mostly the more known ones, for the rest you need to go buy in the web, and most are in English, {hell I believe there's no current D&D spanish translation.} EDIT: There's a spanish version, the Spanish one each book 48 euros.

c) Cheaper books in spanish, sadly most mexicans can't fucking read english and or hate doing so.

d) 130 million people let's say 1% of that is your potential market = 1,300,000 Lets say 1% of that actually buys your book = 13,000 Lets say not even that but 1% of that = 1,300
Now lets go world wide 560 million as of 2015 let's say 1% of that is your potential market = 5,600,000 Lets say 1% of that actually buys your book = 56,000 Lets say not even that but 1% of that = 5,600

(And I'm willing to translate your books for cheap)

(De-lurks)

Hello! Buenos Aires (Argentina) here.

Mainly I run home games with friends, but I am aware of a thriving RPG club scene (I´ve attended once or twice). Most people I´ve met have a good enough grasp on english to use english language games (Historically the spanish versions have been horrible. Now there are better but The South Remembers).

There are some stores but most people that I hear of buy by mail order or download it from drivethru or such (Inasmuch as the actually pay for things cofcoftorrentscof)

Potential for small press rpgs? mmm not sure. The people are there and they are willing to try things outside the mainstream but there aren´t many people willing to pay even a couple of dollars for such things.

I usually don´t hang out with the wider rpg scene. Tipically I find friends and then invite them to my games rather than look for roleplayers :-)

Hope that helps. Cheers!

Does Florida count as part of the Spanish-speaking world?

Quote from: HappyDaze;1089574Does Florida count as part of the Spanish-speaking world?

More Portuguese and Quebecois in my immediate neck of the woods, but sure.

I'm curious which country is more likely to have tabletop role-players speaking Spanish at home and in game stores? I'd argue that the US is high up there.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1089593I'm curious which country is more likely to have tabletop role-players speaking Spanish at home and in game stores? I'd argue that the US is high up there.

I rarely see RPGs getting played in stores in Florida, regardless of language. I have heard mini wargamers and cardgame players speaking Spanish in stores.

When I lived in Florida, which admittedly was the mid 90s and a college town, there was a lot of gaming but all English.  Even though the biggest game store in town was run by a guy named Carlos

(With that said, we've had a lot of immigration since then, to the point where I hear far more Spanish in St. Louis than I ever did in Florida.)

This is a humble attempt to answer the questions for Chile. Please, consider that I might be wrong.

a) a great local RPG that needs to be translated into American (or has been).

AFAIK, most RPG are homebrew with limited distribution. Recently I heard some hacks for story games (as we say here) wrote in English for a wider audience. I remember a professional attempt a few years ago, but it didn't work.

b) how RPGers mostly buy RPGs in your country (aka, by mail order, at local stores, DriveThru downloads, etc)

A few board games stores bring translated RPGs. I think stores dedicated exclusively to RPGs (and collective cards) are fewer than 10 years ago.  But a new interest in boardgames allows finding games in these stores.

People I know get things from Amazon and read it in English.

c) your thoughts on what's needed for your country's RPG scene to grow.

Difficult to answer. The most RPG players I saw was back in the mid-90s. I saw AD&D boxset in the supermarket next to Monopoly. I think is a chicken or egg paradox: you need stores an publishers to promote games, but you need consumers to support them

d) your thoughts on the profit potential for small press publishers translating their games and selling into your country.


I like to believe that cheaper pdfs in Spanish with the right promotion could make a profit in my country. As Solinvicto mentioned in his post, many people are interested in play new games but not willing to pay for it.

The advantage is that in Argentina and Chile you could sell the same translation (and also, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia, etc)

I have the impression (and this is a personal bias) that you will find more people interested in buy story games from independent press rather than more OSR or traditional RPGs.

I hope this help!

I have mentioned the RPG magazine Dragão Brasil many a time here. It is a vast trove of conversions of various movies and settings to various systems like White Wolf and D&D. Also home of the Defensores de Tóquio RPG system. Tormenta and other interesting stuff.

There is also RPG Quest which seems to be inspired by HeroQuest board game. Apparently was and may still be fairly popular.

And of course the Brazillian rip off of Tom Wham's Awful Green Things From Outer Space as Alerta Vermelho. I had a friend translate the rules comic and it cleaves very closely to the Green Things comic. Rules are near identical too.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1089562Please educate us on the RPG scene in your countries. Assume we have total ignorance of your country's RPG past and present.

a) a great local RPG that needs to be translated into American (or has been).

b) how RPGers mostly buy RPGs in your country (aka, by mail order, at local stores, DriveThru downloads, etc)

c) your thoughts on what's needed for your country's RPG scene to grow.

d) your thoughts on the profit potential for small press publishers translating their games and selling into your country.

There have been several distinct periods of the RPG hobby here in Brazil.

When I started playing Fighting Fantasy games in the mid-80s, all the way up to the early 90s, we lived what was called the "Xerox Generation". My first Call of Cthulhu rulebook was a fully xeroxed tome, and most people had their main rulebooks as xerox copies. I was a rare case in that I owned the three AD&D 2nd Edition core rulebooks, instead of simply xeroxing someone else's book.

This started to change around 1992-93, with the economy starting to open due to governmental reforms, and imports suddenly became more accessible (not cheap, mind you, but actually manageable as a hobby). FLGS started popping up, even in some small towns (as long as they had a university or two, to supply enough customers). Boxed sets started appearing on the shelves, and the RPG scene started to flourish. It was also at this time that Devir, a publisher, decided to start translating AD&D2E to Portuguese, and that really fired up the scene.

At the same time, the popularity of GURPS and WoD skyrocketed, to the point where it was often easier to find Vampire groups than AD&D ones. in the mid-90s to about 2000, the International RPG Meeting in São Paulo grew so fast that it actually surpassed GenCon for a few years as the largest RPG convention in the world (in terms of visitors at least). I met and talked to Peter Adkison when he was Guest of Honor at the Con when D&D 3rd edition was in development (he struck me as an enthusiastic nerd, which was great to see - at that time, enthusiastic nerds usually weren't CEOs of major companies).

D&D3 essentially took the local RPG market to its peak. Sales were strong, the game was again translated into Portuguese, and FLGS were still everywhere, major cities often having one per neighborhood.

And then the two hammers of the 2008 crisis and D&D4E hit. In a couple years, FLGS started closing, I'm not even sure the edition was even translated, GURPS and Vampire were already dying out (having been drowned by the power of D&D3) and as a whole, the situation was dire.

The RPG market has been dying a slow death since then, with not even the massive hit that D&D5E has been helping at all. It still hasn't been translated, which makes the market enormously smaller than it could be, and prices are still way too high for most teenagers and even some adults to handle (a high-school teacher working for the government barely earns 1000 dollars a month). Prospects are terrible, and in the Grim, Dark future there is only war.

A) The best local RPG was called Desafio dos Bandeirantes (something like "Explorer's Challenge"), but it died out in the early 2000s and there has been nothing of note since then.

B )People who can buy the books usually do so by ordering from Amazon. FLGS have essentially disappeared and major bookstores (the ones that are left) rarely carry the imported books (and there's no translation of 5E). PDFs are essentially acquired by pirating. Almost nobody that I know has any idea PDF stores even exist. When I mention DTRPG or some such, usually there are blank stares facing me.

C) A translation of 5E would help. Other than that, an act of God. The problem for those that have access to the books and can read them in english is the currency exchange involved in purchasing them. The current rate is 1-to-4, which means a regular 30 dollar WotC book actually costs 120 Reais, which is a lot of money. Brazil also has a massive historical issue with piracy. In software terms, it used to be absolutely rampant, with street vendors carrying all the latest games and office software right in front of software stores. Steam essentially killed the PC games piracy market here by lowering prices to reflect the local economy. Today, if a game releases for 60 dollars, we pay anything between 90 and 150 reais on Steam, instead of 240 (which would be the price if the exchange rate was followed). Unfortunately, this will never happen with physical books, and I doubt any PDF stores would do anything similar, so there's no hope as far as I can see.

D) Don't even try. You will lose all your investment, guaranteed.

Quote from: solinvicto;1089571(De-lurks)

Hello! Buenos Aires (Argentina) here.

Mainly I run home games with friends, but I am aware of a thriving RPG club scene (I´ve attended once or twice). Most people I´ve met have a good enough grasp on english to use english language games (Historically the spanish versions have been horrible. Now there are better but The South Remembers).

There are some stores but most people that I hear of buy by mail order or download it from drivethru or such (Inasmuch as the actually pay for things cofcoftorrentscof)

Potential for small press rpgs? mmm not sure. The people are there and they are willing to try things outside the mainstream but there aren´t many people willing to pay even a couple of dollars for such things.

I usually don´t hang out with the wider rpg scene. Tipically I find friends and then invite them to my games rather than look for roleplayers :-)

Hope that helps. Cheers!

Hey, welcome to theRPGsite!

I like your username too, btw.

I visit B.A. fairly frequently (for masonic reasons) but haven't ever done any gaming there. I know there's a fairly big community, though it seemed at least a few years ago that it had a lot more storygamers than Uruguay does.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1089562We have board members (and lurkers) from Spain, Brazil, Mexico and of course, RPGPundit is in Uruguay. I suspect we have members living and gaming in other Spanish speaking countries as well. Yes, I know the language situation is different for Brazil and Portugal, but jump in and tell us your scene as well.

Please educate us on the RPG scene in your countries. Assume we have total ignorance of your country's RPG past and present.

In addition to understanding your RPG scene, I'm also interested in:

a) a great local RPG that needs to be translated into American (or has been).

b) how RPGers mostly buy RPGs in your country (aka, by mail order, at local stores, DriveThru downloads, etc)

c) your thoughts on what's needed for your country's RPG scene to grow.

d) your thoughts on the profit potential for small press publishers translating their games and selling into your country.

a) There have been a few locally-made Spanish-language RPGs. None of them have overwhelmingly impressed me.

b) They mostly pirate. Though recently there's been some uptick in people using DTRPG, and also some ordering online.

c) Nothing much. The scene is very big here.

d) I wouldn't try it because again, the majority of gamers here tend to just pirate stuff.