Quote from: jibbajibba;477379But that is the point no?

If you are looking for new players then you want new players not lapsed players or people who are actively playing you want new players.
I agree its a terrible license and I am still pretty sure that the game probably started out as something totally different but was fit into the Dallas template as a way to exploit the license (you know like they tried to squeeze fury of dracula into a Strontium Dog game).

So most popular TV show of its day. If there was any mainstream appeal to RPGs surely that would have picked it up.

Oh I agree about that. It just seems to me that the audience for the Dallas TV show was the kind of demographic that would never be interested in RPGs no matter what the licence or genre they catered to. It's not that it was popular, it was who it was popular with. Now if they had done a Planet of the Apes RPG back then, I'm guessing it would have performed far differently.

Quote from: jibbajibba;477379I am still pretty sure that the game probably started out as something totally different but was fit into the Dallas template as a way to exploit the license

As someone who followed as SPI at the time, this strikes me as a pretty ridiculous supposition. For one thing, if the game had originally been designed for a different premise, SPI would have had no problem publishing both the original and the licensed version. Or if after Dallas failed, they still felt there was some merit in the concept, they could have gone back and reskinned it. (E.g., Empires of the Middle Ages/The Sword and the Stars--not a perfect analogy, but an example of their willingness to recycle systems & mechanics.)

Going back through old issues of Moves and Strategy & Tactics would probably settle the question, as they had various columns covering their works in progress.

Nevertheless I think the broader point, that Dallas was, in a way, more suited to bringing in fresh blood than e.g. Planet of the Apes, has merit. I mean, at the time, there was already a high degree of awareness of RPGs among SF&F fans, so a PotA RPG would be competing directly with D&D. Perhaps cop or private detective fandoms would have been more receptive, though personally I don't recall them having that certain level of obsessiveness that seems necessary for RPG-level interest & activity. Literary private eyes seem to have more devoted fans (especially at the time): Holmes, Poirot, etc. But (a) mystery has always always been problematic, (b) IMO it's not well-suited for group play in an RPG format.

There were some board games:

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2511/sherlock-holmes-consulting-detective
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1275/221b-baker-street-the-master-detective-game

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;477425As someone who followed as SPI at the time, this strikes me as a pretty ridiculous supposition. For one thing, if the game had originally been designed for a different premise, SPI would have had no problem publishing both the original and the licensed version. Or if after Dallas failed, they still felt there was some merit in the concept, they could have gone back and reskinned it. (E.g., Empires of the Middle Ages/The Sword and the Stars--not a perfect analogy, but an example of their willingness to recycle systems & mechanics.)

Going back through old issues of Moves and Strategy & Tactics would probably settle the question, as they had various columns covering their works in progress.

Nevertheless I think the broader point, that Dallas was, in a way, more suited to bringing in fresh blood than e.g. Planet of the Apes, has merit. I mean, at the time, there was already a high degree of awareness of RPGs among SF&F fans, so a PotA RPG would be competing directly with D&D. Perhaps cop or private detective fandoms would have been more receptive, though personally I don't recall them having that certain level of obsessiveness that seems necessary for RPG-level interest & activity. Literary private eyes seem to have more devoted fans (especially at the time): Holmes, Poirot, etc. But (a) mystery has always always been problematic, (b) IMO it's not well-suited for group play in an RPG format.

There were some board games:

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2511/sherlock-holmes-consulting-detective
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1275/221b-baker-street-the-master-detective-game

Seems to me if Dallas had had more merit for bringing in fresh blood, it might have actually done that. History is seeming to tell us that the Dallas RPG had very near zero merit to bring in blood, fresh or otherwise. What did, in fact, bring in fresh blood was Dungeons and Dragons. I was one of them, actually. What Dallas seemed to have been going for was an entirely different demographic. It failed miserably. I contend that it's because the demographic that were fans of Dallas had near zero interest in roleplaying games of any kind, no matter what the subject matter included in the game. Do you think the General Hospital RPG or Beverly Hills 90210 RPG or Sanford and Sons RPG would have brought in fresh blood too? I'd be far more inclined to look at what kinds of shows would be popular with the kinds of people who would have any kind of interest in playing RPGs. There seems to be this belief that if any human on the planet were just exposed to RPGs, they would automatically like them and want to play. I don't agree with this belief. I feel there may be some folks who might like them who have not yet experienced them, but not anywhere near everyone. It seems to me, and history seems to be supporting me in this, that the vast majority of folks who LOVED Dallas were not interested in the slightest in a Dallas RPG. It also seems to me that if there had been some interest, the Dallas RPG would have become much more popular than it did, even if PR for the game were non-existent. All it would take, like it did for D&D, is for a few folks to find and play it, then talk about it, and share it, and it would have sold. Certainly more than it apparently did. That's IMO anyway.

Sorry, I didn't make my point very well.

Clearly, Dallas is empirically crap at getting new people to play RPGs, because the people who like Dallas aren't the sort of people who like RPGs.

What I was trying to say, though, was that if you could make a game to attract Dallas fans, you'd get a lot of new players, while if you made a game to attract Planet of the Apes fans, you might generate interest, but much more strongly in people who were already RPG players. So you'd be competing with D&D, Traveller, etc. for their attention.

The main RPG that tapped into an entirely new source of players, after D&D which created the market, was Vampire. There, there was an existing fandom/subculture, thus a bunch of obsessives, who weren't at that time well-served by existing RPGs.

Today it's harder to see the distinction, because geek-culture and geek-type obsessiveness over even notionally mainstream products has become far more widespread.

Interestingly the first thing that comes up when I google CSI RPG is this: http://csi-ny-rpg.forumotion.com/

There's your entry-level RPG for non-RPG adults.

Quote from: Sigmund;477370I don't entirely agree. I feel it had as much to do with the specific licence (Dallas? Really?). Perhaps a Magnum PI or Rockford Files or Quincy RPG (McCloud, Columbo, hell... MASH) would have done better. I remember Dallas, and I'd bet the audience for that show had absolutely zero interest in RPGs of any kind, no matter the genre or licence. Not sure my suggestions would have done much better, but the point I'm trying to make is that I'm not sure the audience who would be open to RPGs of any kind and the audience for Dallas overlapped all that much.

Maybe. But Dallas gives a very focussed set of goals for multiple players, that allows everyone to be proactive. Title Character shows of the era didn't really have that for the secondary characters to do, with them basically being there to point the Title Character towards the next scene; that's a lot of fun for the player of the Title Character, but less so for everyone else.

(We still haven't really worked out how to handle Title Characters and secondary characters in the same game together even today; it can be done, but it requires significant system, GM and player co-operation. I'm also not saying that Title Character Shows Are Bad Shows With Bad Stories, certainly not, they're just not something that adapts to RPG play well. Different medium, different stories.)

In addition, a Dallas-style game can also have individual "winners" and "losers" of a session; for an audience not used to the "everybody wins!" concept, that's a really important distinction between it and more traditional RPG designs of the time and makes it feel more like "a game" to them. Title Character shows only tend to have one winner, and it's the same one every week, while ensemble shows like The A-Team or M*A*S*H are "everybody wins!".

(Never having seen the Dallas RPG and being on the wrong side of the puddle to have much of a hope of ever seeing it, I may be building it up excessively in my mind, but it's sounding to me like a design ahead of it's time.)

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;477425As someone who followed as SPI at the time, this strikes me as a pretty ridiculous supposition. For one thing, if the game had originally been designed for a different premise, SPI would have had no problem publishing both the original and the licensed version. Or if after Dallas failed, they still felt there was some merit in the concept, they could have gone back and reskinned it. (E.g., Empires of the Middle Ages/The Sword and the Stars--not a perfect analogy, but an example of their willingness to recycle systems & mechanics.)

Going back through old issues of Moves and Strategy & Tactics would probably settle the question, as they had various columns covering their works in progress.

Nevertheless I think the broader point, that Dallas was, in a way, more suited to bringing in fresh blood than e.g. Planet of the Apes, has merit. I mean, at the time, there was already a high degree of awareness of RPGs among SF&F fans, so a PotA RPG would be competing directly with D&D. Perhaps cop or private detective fandoms would have been more receptive, though personally I don't recall them having that certain level of obsessiveness that seems necessary for RPG-level interest & activity. Literary private eyes seem to have more devoted fans (especially at the time): Holmes, Poirot, etc. But (a) mystery has always always been problematic, (b) IMO it's not well-suited for group play in an RPG format.

There were some board games:

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2511/sherlock-holmes-consulting-detective
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1275/221b-baker-street-the-master-detective-game

I have no idea how SPI ran at the time but I do know how GamesWorkshop was running.
They obtained the license to produce games for the 2000AD brand in the early 80s and they produced a series of board games and the Judge Dredd RPG as a result. Stephen Hand who was a big Dracula fan bought them the game in the mid 80s as a labour of love. They liked it but couldn't see a tie in to anythign else they were doing so suggested he replaced Dracula with a mutant Criminal and the Hunters with Strontium Dogs. The map of Europe becomes a map of the galaxy you swap bats and holy water for robo bats and a number 4 cartridge. You can totally see how the game would convert and GW had the 2000Ad license and could mine the comics for artwork etc.  Now Hand stuck to his guns and eventually GW figured wht the hell and released it.
Now I could totally have seen him not doing that and a SD game coming out and if that game had not sold well what do you think the chances would be of GW saying okay we'll release it as a Dracula game instead......

Now I might be totally wrong about SPI but its my understanding that most game companies are flooded with product from want to be game designers all the time. If something doesn't work they rarely revisit it they just get hte next thing and move on. This was true until FFG started to take old games with great concepts and big them up , like Arkham Horror, Fury of Dracula and sort of Tannhauser where they very cleverly retro-fixed the rules but left the board and cards and stuff the same.


I can see where you are coming from in the rest of your post. A new game that opens up the market wants to tap into that obsessive zeal with which people read Anne Rice novels, or watched episodes of Lost or indeed collect anything to do with Harry 'obvious saviour of the RPG industry' Potter

Oh and I have Consulting detective and its pretty good but possibly the hardest game int eh world ever written to actually win but i have used elements in my murder mystery work.

Quote from: jibbajibba;477457I have no idea how SPI ran at the time...[snip]Now I might be totally wrong about SPI but its my understanding that most game companies are flooded with product from want to be game designers all the time.[...]

Jim Dunnigan, the designer of "Dallas", was the head of the company and one of their chief designers. RPGGeek lists Austin Bay as co-designer but I believe that's an error. Again we (I) could probably go back to old issues of S&T/Moves and look for references to the work in progress, but I really think you've been misled by your knowledge of GW into generalizing about SPI.

Anyway, I think the more interesting point is the one that we seem to be agreeing on.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;477430Sorry, I didn't make my point very well.

Clearly, Dallas is empirically crap at getting new people to play RPGs, because the people who like Dallas aren't the sort of people who like RPGs.

What I was trying to say, though, was that if you could make a game to attract Dallas fans, you'd get a lot of new players, while if you made a game to attract Planet of the Apes fans, you might generate interest, but much more strongly in people who were already RPG players. So you'd be competing with D&D, Traveller, etc. for their attention.

The main RPG that tapped into an entirely new source of players, after D&D which created the market, was Vampire. There, there was an existing fandom/subculture, thus a bunch of obsessives, who weren't at that time well-served by existing RPGs.

Today it's harder to see the distinction, because geek-culture and geek-type obsessiveness over even notionally mainstream products has become far more widespread.

Interestingly the first thing that comes up when I google CSI RPG is this: http://csi-ny-rpg.forumotion.com/

There's your entry-level RPG for non-RPG adults.

Ah, ok.

Quote from: Ladybird;477432Maybe. But Dallas gives a very focussed set of goals for multiple players, that allows everyone to be proactive. Title Character shows of the era didn't really have that for the secondary characters to do, with them basically being there to point the Title Character towards the next scene; that's a lot of fun for the player of the Title Character, but less so for everyone else.

(We still haven't really worked out how to handle Title Characters and secondary characters in the same game together even today; it can be done, but it requires significant system, GM and player co-operation. I'm also not saying that Title Character Shows Are Bad Shows With Bad Stories, certainly not, they're just not something that adapts to RPG play well. Different medium, different stories.)

In addition, a Dallas-style game can also have individual "winners" and "losers" of a session; for an audience not used to the "everybody wins!" concept, that's a really important distinction between it and more traditional RPG designs of the time and makes it feel more like "a game" to them. Title Character shows only tend to have one winner, and it's the same one every week, while ensemble shows like The A-Team or M*A*S*H are "everybody wins!".

(Never having seen the Dallas RPG and being on the wrong side of the puddle to have much of a hope of ever seeing it, I may be building it up excessively in my mind, but it's sounding to me like a design ahead of it's time.)

The system certainly sounds interesting, it's just the licence they married it to that is unfortunate... at least for their bottom line. I wouldn't mind seeing a copy someday myself, but I'm not gonna hold my breath. As to the win thing, especially for MASH, I'd say that whether an individual character "wins" or not depends on the character... Frank, Hot Lips, and Winchester didn't "win" all the time, although even they had their moments. I think a MASH game might be interesting, at least for one-shots or short campaigns. I can't think of any licences of that nature that would actually replace my favorite games though.

From what the OP seems to suggest, the Dallas RPG mechanics would work extremely well in a Dune RPG setting.

Having talked to a large number of people who don't play RPGs about RPGs and why they don't play them, there's a crashingly huge disconnect that I don't think I've ever seen any gateway game designer address:

RPGs are fundamentally about some form of fantasy projection.  Adolescent power fantasy, for most of them, but the primary appeal of them is that you get to make the decisions, you get to be the main character, you get to succeed or fail on your own merits.

For a very, very large number of people who are not gamers, this basic concept is Not What They Want from their entertainment.  They want to be passively entertained, or they want a well-crafted, tight story with sympathetic characters told by professionals, and ideally in less time than it takes to roast a turkey.

Most "mundanes" understand on some level that in, say, a Dallas RPG, they're not going to be playing Sue Ellen.  They're going to be playing a Dallas screenwriter, and they have no interest in that.

Quote from: daniel_ream;477530Having talked to a large number of people who don't play RPGs about RPGs and why they don't play them, there's a crashingly huge disconnect that I don't think I've ever seen any gateway game designer address:

RPGs are fundamentally about some form of fantasy projection.  Adolescent power fantasy, for most of them, but the primary appeal of them is that you get to make the decisions, you get to be the main character, you get to succeed or fail on your own merits.

For a very, very large number of people who are not gamers, this basic concept is Not What They Want from their entertainment.  They want to be passively entertained, or they want a well-crafted, tight story with sympathetic characters told by professionals, and ideally in less time than it takes to roast a turkey.

Most "mundanes" understand on some level that in, say, a Dallas RPG, they're not going to be playing Sue Ellen.  They're going to be playing a Dallas screenwriter, and they have no interest in that.

See this is kinda what I was getting at, except much more clear and articulately expressed. This is why I feel it would have been (and still would be) more productive to create a game based on a licence (or genre) that has the potential to have a demographic with more overlap with RPGers. I think folks who truly enjoy shows like PotAs and PI shows like Magnum or Rockford (or for today Burn Notice or Psych or Monk even) would be more likely to also potentially enjoy roleplaying games. I could be wrong, but it's just the way it seems to me.

Quote from: jibbajibba;477367A fair and well made point.

This is an entry level RPG for non RPG adults as a result it flopped horribly a lesson for all starter sets.

The lesson as far as I can see is that you need to get new gamers at a relatively young age.

RPGPundit

But pandering to adults and an aging demographic worked out so well for the American comics industry.

Quote from: danielFor a very, very large number of people who are not gamers, this basic concept is Not What They Want from their entertainment. They want to be passively entertained, or they want a well-crafted, tight story with sympathetic characters told by professionals, and ideally in less time than it takes to roast a turkey.

Most "mundanes" understand on some level that in, say, a Dallas RPG, they're not going to be playing Sue Ellen. They're going to be playing a Dallas screenwriter, and they have no interest in that.

Games like Fiasco seem to do exceptionally well with the non-gamer crowd because it's very directed, easy play even for a GM-less game, but it runs kind of counter to the types of games people here like, so...yeah.

Quote from: RPGPundit;477595The lesson as far as I can see is that you need to get new gamers at a relatively young age.

RPGPundit

I agree with you to a degreee, but there is a growing boardgame 'movement' amongst adults and adult party games like articulate, Cranium etc and a lot of adults now openly enjoy console games, dancing round their lounge, or hunting down rogue terrorists in fcitional former Soviet republics,  and MMOs like WoW have millions of adult players.
Then you look at the boom in Poker, both online and face to face and the continued success of MtG,  all games.
Then I look at my Murder mystery business. I have been asked to do a charity Regency Murder mystery for a large corporate. None of those people will be roleplayers but all of them are prepared to engage in what is basically a LARP for 6 hours and pay a chunk of change for the priviledge.
I run a monthly poker night for my work mates. About 8 guys will turn up and play cards for 4 hours, now we are playing for very very low stakes (£5 worth of chips each) such that the snacks and beers cost more than the money on the table but they are still willing to play. I am tempted to see if they will make the move from Poker to Arkham Horror or Tannhauser and then see if there is an RPG opportunity but I doubt there would be from their personalities.

The reason why you want to sell things to adults is cos they have money to buy them. Selling games to kids you really have 2 options, make it a buzz that the kids want o spend their own money on, like Moshi Monsters, or make it a product that appeals to their parents, aunts and uncles, like Monopoly, so they get bought sets as a gift and then develop their own interest. The days when RPGs were this new buzz are long gone and I think RPGs as collectibles are out of the reach of most kids so they will spend their $10 a week on comics, moshlings, pokemon cards etc etc and no look to buy an RPG product a month, so you are really looking at the gift market and that almost feels like a trick. You have to trick the kids into playing by getting their relatives to buy them something that 'gets them away from those bloody game consoles'.