Quote from: Malcolm Douchey1. Please the old fans and ask them to perform outreach to new fans in exchange for cookies and ego stroking.
   2. Gradually alter the game to get new fans and migrate old fans (Helooooo new edition! Metaplot!)
   3. Hit the new fans hard; invite the old ones to come along for the ride, but don’t hold up the bus for them, so to speak.

This guy needs a reality check. Like. Real bad.

The vast majority of new gamers are introduced to role playing by people who already are gamers. It's been like this since the hobby's infancy, and it is still going on to this day (uncles, dads and moms, cousins, brothers and sisters, friends, friends of friends, etc). This guy doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.

And yes, he's an idiot.

I've worked with Malcolm Sheppard before. It's a weird experience. He doesn't really discuss his ideas with other people, he just writes his section and walks away. His section likely doesn't synch well with the other sections, and he expects that to be handled by other people. He did part of the Nanotech chapter in Augmentation for Shadowrun, if that gives you any idea of what I mean.

But the short answer is: Malcolm Sheppard is one of the major writers behind NWoD Mage. I wouldn't take his opinion on how to grow an audience as gospel or even particularly well informed. When he got his chance to do things the way he wanted, he... made a bloated and sprawling rant the length of Remembrance of Things Past that no one understands and almost noone even in the fandom has actually completed reading.

You might as well be asking the guy who engineered New Coke to explain what beverage companies need to do to keep their market share. We aren't looking at a guy who had radical ideas but was never given a shot by a major publisher - we're looking at a guy who was pretty much allowed to do whatever he wanted and given basically as many 20,000+ word chapters as he wanted to do it with. And the result was a grinding failure.

He's trying to tell us that NWoD was the right way to go, because alienating the Camarilla Society was the best way forward. And that's... totally insane. The data does not support that hypothesis.

-Frank

Quote from: Koltar;389245Actually its VERY large demographic - some few people are starting to recognize that truth.


- Ed C.

Really? How large do you think it is then, and what's that thinking based on?

Quote from: Grymbok;389252Really? How large do you think it is then, and what's that thinking based on?

Wizards of the Coast said this year that the "lapsed D&D player" demographic was 24 million people. I don't know how good their market research was, but I am willing to call it better than some pontifications from a guy who wrote for a poorly performing edition of a White Wolf Game.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;389253Wizards of the Coast said this year that the "lapsed D&D player" demographic was 24 million people. I don't know how good their market research was, but I am willing to call it better than some pontifications from a guy who wrote for a poorly performing edition of a White Wolf Game.

-Frank

Err... I'm the one saying RPG gamers are a small demo, not Malcolm. I certainly haven't written any White Wolf Games that I recall...

Anyway - if we're defining "RPG Gamers" as "People who used to play D&D but now don't" then yes it's a big demographic. I'm not sure it's a useful one - don't know how you'd reach it or what level of commonality of interests/behaviour you'd find.

But that doesn't seem to be the usage of the term that Sheppard and Skarka were using though.

Quote from: Werekoala;388987Guess I got lucky with my Sunday group. We got together through Meetup.com, exchanged some emails, and met at Applebee's first to chat and get a feel for the group. No wierdos besides me, and we've even got three girls (hee! boobies!) in the group. So I guess it can be done, but you just have to roll well.

Good hell, the Meetup group from around here was entirely populated with mouth-breathers.  One dude, honest to God, advertised for players by boasting of 'ROLEplayers, not ROLLplayers'.  I was thinking, did you post this from a super-luminal modem back in the 90s or something?

I swear, just about all of them were looking for some kind of non-rules based round-robin story session.  Fucking pussies.  

Quote from: Melan;389107I am also seeing something of a trend here on TheRPGSite: peoples' critical thinking ability has decreased to the extent that they take this clown at face value and don't call out his obvious bullshit.

I tried the bullshit calling for a while, but everyone seemed to think I was being an asshole.

Quote from: jeff37923;389140Had to deal with a creep who acted like this last year. Had a woman join our Labyrinth Lord group and the DM started hitting on her, even though she was engaged to be married and showed no interest in becoming romantic with anyone but her fiance. It got to the point that she felt so uncomfortable by the unwanted attention from our DM, that she left the group. At which point, our DM went completely emo and quit the game and gaming because, "his muse had left and he just couldn't go on anymore."

I am pretty sure that guy would not have made it out the door with my old group in high school.  

"Your... muse?  Fucking... what the fuck?"

Quote from: CRKrueger;389158People don't care that the movie sucks, they want to see robots and Megan Fox's sweaty abs.

You were looking about a foot too low, my friend.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.  

Quote from: Benoist;389190Wait. You've been playing LL lately?

And he hasn't been over to the Citadel to talk about it.

You are a cock, Jeff.  

Quote from: Melan;389107I am also seeing something of a trend here on TheRPGSite: peoples' critical thinking ability has decreased to the extent that they take this clown at face value and don't call out his obvious bullshit.

I tried the bullshit calling for a while, but everyone seemed to think I was being an asshole.

Quote from: jeff37923;389140Had to deal with a creep who acted like this last year. Had a woman join our Labyrinth Lord group and the DM started hitting on her, even though she was engaged to be married and showed no interest in becoming romantic with anyone but her fiance. It got to the point that she felt so uncomfortable by the unwanted attention from our DM, that she left the group. At which point, our DM went completely emo and quit the game and gaming because, "his muse had left and he just couldn't go on anymore."

I am pretty sure that guy would not have made it out the door with my old group in high school.  

"Your... muse?  Fucking... what the fuck?"

Quote from: CRKrueger;389158People don't care that the movie sucks, they want to see robots and Megan Fox's sweaty abs.

You were looking about a foot too low, my friend.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.  

Quote from: Benoist;389190Wait. You've been playing LL lately?

And he hasn't been over to the Citadel to talk about it.

You are a cock, Jeff.

Quote from: Grymbok;389244GMS's "transmedia" rants seem predicated on the assumption that because RPG companies have the skills to create transmedia products (probably true, at least the ones who have done lots of work with metaplots), this must obviously mean the RPG gamers would make great transmedia customers and would engage actively in transmedia communities etc. Which is such an odd assumption I'm still confused as to how exactly he made it.

Transmedia is old news for RPGs. At least for D&D. It's just traditionally handled by third party publishers. This is also ignoring the steady stream of paperback fiction they've been churning out since before the internet. And the tv show. And the movies. And remember how many RPGs are actually licensed properties of other franchises.

Odds are, if RPGers had complaints, it might have been the bad content and not the distribution model.

Quote from: beejazz;389266Transmedia is old news for RPGs.

Looking at the various Transmedia sites it reminds me of my sons when they were babies and discovering their navel. They marvel at something that already there.

It not that revolutionary what they "discovered". Main difference today is that the internet has driven down the cost of distribution and computers the cost of production down to the point where folks can reasonably attempt to tell a story using multiple formats at once. Or a related set of stories, Or whatever. It is little different than something like Jim Butcher's Dresden file where each novel about Harry Dresden add to an overarching meta plot. Or JMS' Babylon 5 with it's individual episodes mostly standalone but also building up a larger picture of the B5 universe.

Quote from: StormBringer;389255And he hasn't been over to the Citadel to talk about it.

You are a cock, Jeff.  

I thought The Citadel of Chaos only dealt with vintage games and not retro-clones.

Quote from: estar;389275Looking at the various Transmedia sites it reminds me of my sons when they were babies and discovering their navel. They marvel at something that already there.

It not that revolutionary what they "discovered". Main difference today is that the internet has driven down the cost of distribution and computers the cost of production down to the point where folks can reasonably attempt to tell a story using multiple formats at once. Or a related set of stories, Or whatever. It is little different than something like Jim Butcher's Dresden file where each novel about Harry Dresden add to an overarching meta plot. Or JMS' Babylon 5 with it's individual episodes mostly standalone but also building up a larger picture of the B5 universe.

While I agree that the whole transmedia thing is not a new thing, your examples are bad. Transmedia is about tie ins, while you are talking about planned story expandability. Transmedia is about selling or distributing related products in other media, your examples are just leaving room for sequels within the same medium.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;389278While I agree that the whole transmedia thing is not a new thing, your examples are bad. Transmedia is about tie ins, while you are talking about planned story expandability. Transmedia is about selling or distributing related products in other media, your examples are just leaving room for sequels within the same medium.

-Frank

Yeah... the Babylon 5 example struck me as a bit off too, but considering that the Star Wars RPG (in all its iterations) was itself a tie in of a very large franchise... and then considering things like dragonlance novels and the D&D TV show, several popular computer games, the crappy movies, etc. transmedia is still old news as of the 80s.