I can't speak to that because I've never played an MMO. I just can't believe they can deliver something like a substitute for a tabletop experience, or even an imaginary tabletop experience, like reading the 7th Sea metaplot or whatever.

But if they can, then, well, we're all fucked, frankly. Like the wargamers twenty years ago.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityI just can't believe they [MMOs] can deliver something like a substitute for a tabletop experience, or even an imaginary tabletop experience, like reading the 7th Sea metaplot or whatever.

MMOs are for people without any friends.

We have a very alienated society, lots of lonely people out there, sitting alone playing on their computers, watching Everybody Loves Raymond and eating bad takeout meals.

Strange.

 Two of the players from my campaign play WoW online. (a married couple)
 They also enjoy our around-the-tabletop RPG every other week...AND their "Guild Group" is about to meet in-person, here in Cincinnati on the weekend of June 24th.

 They seem to break a couple of the assumptions that I read earlier in the thread.

- Ed C.

Quote from: JimBobOzMMOs are for people without any friends.

We have a very alienated society, lots of lonely people out there, sitting alone playing on their computers, watching Everybody Loves Raymond and eating bad takeout meals.

Dude.

WoW only has about 8 million players. This means that there will be all sorts of people. While I can agree on some of your points about our alienated society (which I don't think is as different as it was before Internet), I think that statement is preposterous.

Whether its MMOs or not is irrelevant. The vital truth is that it all comes down to Network Externalities, whether Skarka and co. like it or not.
There is a diminishing base of aging RPG fans, divided into gamers who like one game or gamers who like another; assuming that all of these reduced equally in number, the group with the most popular Game, and thus the greatest number of players, has the biggest buffer to allow people to keep playing. The ones with smaller numbers will end up suffering.  

If you have a million people playing an RPG (lets call it Game X), then losing 2000 players from your base in a year will end up hurting you relatively little (especially if you're also bringing in 1500-3000 each year, because you actually still have some kind of appeal with the kids, and you're the name that's thought of by most people when they think of pen&paper RPGs).

If you are some other RPG, and you have 50000 active players, then losing 2000 in a year will be much more devastating; because if you're in a group that broke up because of one or more of those losses, and you'd like to keep playing "Game Y" (which now has only 48000 players), it'll be much harder to find new players than for Game X which has a million players. Which means in turn, you or others like you will end up either giving up RPGs altogether or giving up any hope of getting to play Game Y.  Maybe you move onto Game X, making game X even more popular.

Or maybe you leave and start playing WoW. It doesn't really matter.

What matters is, Game Y starts a death spiral. The loss of 2000 players this year means it'll lose 2500 players next year.  The fact that Game Y's company are a bunch of bozos who don't advertise and make no effort to bring in the youngters, because its faster and easier to sell a deluxe hardcover $300 book with 3400 pages to the few fans it has left means that no one comes in to replace those lost.

Within a couple of years, there's only 4000-5000 players of Game Y left, and all of these are basically guys hiding out in their little game groups, in holes, away from the world. Its virtually impossible for someone outside of these groups to find a group of people playing or wanting to play game Y (but everyone's heard of game X...). Meanwhile, the company that made Game Y has fired everyone but the owner, and he's churning out new "editions" of his RPG (made of 89% reprinted material) on a cheap printer to sell by mail-order or on PDF.  In most game stores, they assume Game Y ceased to exist years ago (but they have every new book Game X puts out).

That's the issue here, that's Network Externalities described in a pinch, or more accurately, the explanation of why NE is so significant in a market where the hobby is rapidly aging, experiencing attrition, and only one or two game companies are seemingly willing or even capable of bringing in new blood at all.

RPGPundit

Whether its MMOs or not is irrelevant. The vital truth is that it all comes down to Network Externalities, whether Skarka and co. like it or not.
There is a diminishing base of aging RPG fans, divided into gamers who like one game or gamers who like another; assuming that all of these reduced equally in number, the group with the most popular Game, and thus the greatest number of players, has the biggest buffer to allow people to keep playing. The ones with smaller numbers will end up suffering.  

If you have a million people playing an RPG (lets call it Game X), then losing 2000 players from your base in a year will end up hurting you relatively little (especially if you're also bringing in 1500-3000 each year, because you actually still have some kind of appeal with the kids, and you're the name that's thought of by most people when they think of pen&paper RPGs).

If you are some other RPG, and you have 50000 active players, then losing 2000 in a year will be much more devastating; because if you're in a group that broke up because of one or more of those losses, and you'd like to keep playing "Game Y" (which now has only 48000 players), it'll be much harder to find new players than for Game X which has a million players. Which means in turn, you or others like you will end up either giving up RPGs altogether or giving up any hope of getting to play Game Y.  Maybe you move onto Game X, making game X even more popular.

Or maybe you leave and start playing WoW. It doesn't really matter.

What matters is, Game Y starts a death spiral. The loss of 2000 players this year means it'll lose 2500 players next year.  The fact that Game Y's company are a bunch of bozos who don't advertise and make no effort to bring in the youngters, because its faster and easier to sell a deluxe hardcover $300 book with 3400 pages to the few fans it has left means that no one comes in to replace those lost.

Within a couple of years, there's only 4000-5000 players of Game Y left, and all of these are basically guys hiding out in their little game groups, in holes, away from the world. Its virtually impossible for someone outside of these groups to find a group of people playing or wanting to play game Y (but everyone's heard of game X...). Meanwhile, the company that made Game Y has fired everyone but the owner, and he's churning out new "editions" of his RPG (made of 89% reprinted material) on a cheap printer to sell by mail-order or on PDF.  In most game stores, they assume Game Y ceased to exist years ago (but they have every new book Game X puts out).

That's the issue here, that's Network Externalities described in a pinch, or more accurately, the explanation of why NE is so significant in a market where the hobby is rapidly aging, experiencing attrition, and only one or two game companies are seemingly willing or even capable of bringing in new blood at all.

RPGPundit

Wargaming didn´t die because of Computers. The Wargaming Network (+Externalities) was destroyed  by TSR via the SPI desater-buyout and subscriber execution.

Wargamers didn´t move to computer wargames in large numbers. They dropped out, never to be seen again.

There´s an article by Greg Costykian which points it out very nicely.

Quote from: SettembriniWargaming didn´t die because of Computers. The Wargaming Network (+Externalities) was destroyed  by TSR via the SPI desater-buyout and subscriber execution.

Wargamers didn´t move to computer wargames in large numbers. They dropped out, never to be seen again.

There´s an article by Greg Costykian which points it out very nicely.

I was at Salute a week or so ago, a big UK wargaming con, it was far more vibrant than the UK rpg cons I attend.

For a dead hobby, it sure looked healthier than ours does.

Well, commercially speaking. The Grognards didn´t switch to PCGames. neither did they stop buying because of them. The Wargaming Network was annihilated, thusly it has become was it is now.

I like Wargames myself a lot, but have difficulties finding players, which is why I don´t buy new Wargames. Nobody there to play them with, and my three pristine copies of Empires in Arms are racing World in Flames in regards of dust-collection.

I´m happy I can play Battletech or BattleLore once in a while, but it´s not the same, not the same at all.

North America´s college wargaming clubs are also a thing of the past, no?

But the British Isles  definitely  are a place blessed more than one time in their history.

Quote from: BalbinusI was at Salute a week or so ago, a big UK wargaming con, it was far more vibrant than the UK rpg cons I attend.
 
For a dead hobby, it sure looked healthier than ours does.

Location, location, location.  There are definitely games/divergent gaming hobbies that are stronger in various locations than others, which is why folks using anecdotal evidence of "nobody plays that anymore" usually aren't lying, they're just going on how things are in their local neck of the woods/lost tribe locale.  
 
For example, in my own little corner of Indy, it's tough to find Warhammer players, but Warmachine is well alive.  I know stores where GURPS kicks the crap out of everything else.  Hell, at my gaming store, Palladium is completely running roughshod in terms of sales (and actual gaming) versus Wizards and everyone else.  And up the road in Fort Wayne, it seems like they play Darkus Thel more than anything else (and if you don't know what that is, good for you!).   I always think it's fascinating how a hobby can be so vibrant in a smaller town and seemingly near-death in a larger one.  Guess it's just on where you hang, what you do, and who you do it with.

Quote from: JimBobOzMMOs are for people without any friends.

I don't play MMOs but I know people who do - based on them, that doesn't fit.  It's a shared social experience.  They logon at preset times to play with friends, bullshit, and kill things.  

For such players MMOs have 2 big advantages:
1. You don't have to by physically co-located, so you can play with friends who have moved to other parts of the country.
2. No one has to DM, and spend time prepping.  Based on bulletin boards, it's hard to believe (because it's mainly DMs who go online), but many groups don't have anyone who really wants to/has time to run something.

I'm sure there are many loners filling voids in their life as well.  But losing them is not much of a threat to gaming.

Quote from: SettembriniWargaming didn´t die because of Computers. The Wargaming Network (+Externalities) was destroyed  by TSR via the SPI desater-buyout and subscriber execution.

Wargamers didn´t move to computer wargames in large numbers. They dropped out, never to be seen again.

There´s an article by Greg Costykian which points it out very nicely.

I really don't think this is true.  Polls done by both SPI and AH showed that most wargaming was done solitaire.  That's why they starting rating the solitaire playability of games on the back of the box.  

The main reason that wargaming died in the 80's was due to computers offering a much better solitaire playing experience and also to wargames becoming so complicated that they couldn't be easily played solitaire.

I used to love playing Russian Front, D-Day, PanzerBlitz, Ogre, etc. by myself.  But wargamers and designers kept pushing for games to be more realistic and complex.  This culminated in games like ASL.  Who the hell can play that by themselves?  Hell, I couldn't even understand the rules anymore.  I didn't want games that took hours to set up and weeks to play.  I didn't want to play a game that had a rulebook that makes physics textbooks seem simple in comparison.  So I, like many others, switched to rpg's and computer wargames.  No more PanzerBlitz.  I played Panzer General.  

RPG companies should take note and see that the road of ever increasing complexity in their games is not one that they should travel.

Quote from: Nicephorus2. No one has to DM, and spend time prepping.

True, but imagine how awesome, in admittedly limited ways*, it would be if you could DM like this. Presumably you'd all sign up for accounts like an MMORPG, and this would provide DM tools like stock models for buildings, characters, locations and so on.

The DM would make some locations, drop NPC characters and buildings and what have you into the locations, and the PCs could run around and interact with them, with the DM dropping into the persona of characters the PCs interact with. (That latter part could get difficult when the PCs split up (perennial bugbear!) so maybe you'd end up with something like a freeform instead.)

Obviously there are still things that wouldn't work too well ("We disguise ourselves as orcs!" "Er... yeah, hold on while I adjust the orc AIs to think you're one of them. And change your avatars." (Bad example, I know)) but even with kludges between scenes, it would be pretty cool.

I can already think of half a dozen things that traditional RPGs would still do better, but still. It would be ideal for, say, someone who wants to play with their old group but has moved to another city.



* Until something lets us program game AIs/models with the same ease Photoshop lets us manipulate pictures.

Quote from: mhensleyRPG companies should take note and see that the road of ever increasing complexity in their games is not one that they should travel.

I think that has already happened.  The really complex games are very much niche games.  Hero sells some but it's not a big market presence.

I understand what you mean about wargames.  I really liked Federation and Empire but they released a bunch of addons that added complexity and time to make it even more unplayable without adding much fun.

But I also think that SPI's own mismanagemnt and poor business skill combined with TSRs shady move cut off a big source of games and got some people fed up enough to stop buying.

Quote from: CaudexTrue, but imagine how awesome, in admittedly limited ways*, it would be if you could DM like this. Presumably you'd all sign up for accounts like an MMORPG, and this would provide DM tools like stock models for buildings, characters, locations and so on.

I think that was the thought behind Never Winter Nights.  But it seemed to not pan out as great as expected.  My understanding is that you needed a decent amount of programming skill to set up your own stuff and it wasn't any quicker to set up than a paper game.

If done well, it would be cool.  I'd still like paper for the sharp turns in a game and the general bulshitting aspect.