Quote from: JimLotFPWhich town are you in? What section are RPGs in?

Jyväskylä. Wherever you are, the usual arrangement appears to be that for adults the books are available under "games" in general, just like any chess manual might be, but in the children's section they'll be set apart from everything else on a shelf of their own.

Quote from: HaffrungHowever, I have to wonder how useful it is to able to borrow an RPG for a couple weeks at a time. I mean, if you're going to actually play the game, you need the books on-hand every session.

That depends on the game, naturally enough. If it's something light like Prince Valiant, you can easily master the mechanics and learn to play without the book itself long before the month is over.

Quote from: HaffrungIt's cool that Finnish libraries have enough funding that they can buy gaming books that hardly anyone will read just because, I suspect, one of the guys who works there is a hardcore RPG player.

However, I have to wonder how useful it is to able to borrow an RPG for a couple weeks at a time. I mean, if you're going to actually play the game, you need the books on-hand every session.

If there were a game library near me where I could borrow manuals for a while, read them through, and perhaps run a few sessions before giving the manual back, I'd use that. It'd be a great way to test the waters before spending money on a game.

Quote from: KrakaJakBut just as White-Wolf filled the void in the late 90's

There was no void in the late '90s.  D&D never went anywhere.

KoOS

Quote from: KoltarLook - Its a BIG fucking chunk of the industry and the "entry point game" for most people when they try RPGs for the first time.

 So - I don't think it can "Die". The hour HASBRO/WotC gives up on supporting it - you just know some other publisher will try to get the rights cheaply or at least affordably.

 Not to be an 's' about this minor detail : But is there an "s" missing from one of the words in the thread title?


- Ed C.

Doe!

Quote from: RPGPunditDude, its Finland. Making statements about gamer-trends based on what's going on in Finland, or that Finland has any kind of protagonism in the RPG Industry at all, is a bit like claiming that "Madonna must be very unpopular because relatively few people in Burkina Faso know who she is", or "my poll taken at a BDSM Fetishists Convention indicates that vanilla sex is relatively unpopular worldwide these days".

So in other words, Finland is just as irrelevant as Uruguay?

KoOS

Quote from: KoOSThere was no void in the late '90s.  D&D never went anywhere.

However...D&D did suck ass, and many of the players fled to different games, or went back to playing their old books and new players in the hobby started on Vampire or RIFTS. When White-Wolf was the top publisher in the business (because TSR/D&D had dropped the ball), the business was as healthy as it always was.

That's also kinda my point. D&D leaving would not actually leave a void. People would move on and play new/different things. People would still be playing RPG's and as long as people get invited to games, they will continue to attract new players.

Which is to say D&D does not matter as much as people think it does!

Quote from: KrakaJakThat's also kinda my point. D&D leaving would not actually leave a void. People would move on and play new/different things. People would still be playing RPG's and as long as people get invited to games, they will continue to attract new players.

Yeah, but if every RPG ever published to date was collected in a pile and burnt, people would still move on and play new and different things.  The adaptability of the hobby (and thereby of the market) doesn't mean that D&D isn't the driving force in it right now.

Quote from: KrakaJakWhich is to say D&D does not matter as much as people think it does!

Okay.  Some people may think that D&D makes the planets stay in their orbits and the sun give light.  It is true that D&D does not matter as much as those people think it does.

But the people who just think it's the totally dominant game in the market, and that it can rearrange the marketing landscape unilaterally and leave everyone else scrambling to adapt?  Those people are right.  D&D matters exactly as much as they think it does.

Quote from: KrakaJakWhen White-Wolf was the top publisher in the business (because TSR/D&D had dropped the ball),

Which was what, like 1 month when WW was at their Zenith and TSR at their nadir?

Quotethe business was as healthy as it always was.

This sounds like a pretty naked, unsupported statement. By what do you judge how "healthy" the business was?

Quote from: Ceasar SlaadThis sounds like a pretty naked, unsupported statement. By what do you judge how "healthy" the business was?

Given there are no major data of sales history to go by...I have to go by my local observations.

Pretty much by basing it on the happiness of my local game stores combined with the availability at local/chain Bookstores/Comic Shops in my area:)

15 Years ago, the one hobby gameshop was doing almost exactly as well as it is now (2 Employees, one owner, labor of love, staying afloat, gotten to know the people there pretty well), the market has grown enough to support 2 gameshops in my town. The second gameshop is mostly supported by CCGs.


The big bookstores used to carry D&D and Battletech in the early 90's. In the mid to late 90's they no longer carried D&D, but carried Vampire/Werewolf/Mage and Shadowrun and maybe a Gurps or RIFTS corebook.

They usually always had 2-3 shelves of stuff. Today it's about half D&D books, a third White-Wolf books (Exalted, WoD, McWoD) and whatevers left goes to the occasional smaller press books (Kobolds Ate My Baby, Gurps, Shadowrun, RIFTS) . It's, however, still 2-3 shelves of stuff.

Any non-english speaking country (with a few exceptions of cases where specific countries were targeted by a company, like Shadowrun and CoC apparently did in Germany or GURPS did in Brazil) is pretty much going to be very skewed based on what the local community ends up "importing" and nothing more.

So for example, here in Uruguay, you see Amber being played, and Shadowrun, and you'd think that games like 7th sea and Deadlands were far more popular than they really are worldwide, just because certain fans of those games ended up introducing them to the Uruguayan "market"; on the other hand if Uruguay was your only point of reference you'd think Exalted was a miserable failure, because absolutely NO ONE plays it (even though plenty of people play other WoD games).  The only reason for this is because no one bothered to bring any Exalted books into Uruguay, hence its a nonentity here.

Its notable that, in just about every country where RPGs are played at all, D&D IS played and is popular.

RPGPundit

I think it takes a great deal of willful blindness not to see that D&D is clearly the vast majority of the industry.

And if the vast majority of any industry died off, you'd be left with no real industry to speak of.

If D&D/WotC went away, RPGs would effectively go away.  Sure, you could still order them as specialty products direct from the manufacturer, but that'd be about it.  There's no way the distributors or gaming stores would survive a loss of 60+% of the market.

That market loss would not be recovered by competitor products at any real level.  The White Wolf situation pretty much proved that one.  They managed to bring in a completely new market segment by hitting on a cultural zeitgeist, which is a pretty rare thing to do, and they still only managed to capture something like 30% of a market that was incredibly stagnant at the time (TSR on its deathbed, most mid-tier companies died off, etc).

Was TSR putting anything out in the later 90's?  I mean I think that if D&D goes, that's pretty much it, but I wonder if there are any facts on D&D publishing in the late 90's?

Quote from: chucklesWas TSR putting anything out in the later 90's?  I mean I think that if D&D goes, that's pretty much it, but I wonder if there are any facts on D&D publishing in the late 90's?

Yes there ARE some facts.....but I posted them in that OTHER thread, that is very similiar to this thread.

 Take a look:


http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=138182&postcount=36


- Ed C.

Quote from: jgantsI think it takes a great deal of willful blindness not to see that D&D is clearly the vast majority of the industry.

And if the vast majority of any industry died off, you'd be left with no real industry to speak of.

If D&D/WotC went away, RPGs would effectively go away.  Sure, you could still order them as specialty products direct from the manufacturer, but that'd be about it.  There's no way the distributors or gaming stores would survive a loss of 60+% of the market.

Eh?  As far as I know, no distributors or gaming stores depend on RPGs for the majority of their sales.  Miniatures, trading card games, and others are more at the core of their businesses.  They'd take a hit from the loss of official D&D products, but RPGs are just a small fraction of their base.  

Quote from: jgantsThat market loss would not be recovered by competitor products at any real level.  The White Wolf situation pretty much proved that one.  They managed to bring in a completely new market segment by hitting on a cultural zeitgeist, which is a pretty rare thing to do, and they still only managed to capture something like 30% of a market that was incredibly stagnant at the time (TSR on its deathbed, most mid-tier companies died off, etc).

I don't see what that proves.  Yes, it seems like the goth role-playing market that has been the core for White Wolf is only roughly half as big as the fantasy geek market that's at the core of D&D.  However, that doesn't say anything about how nearly-identical D20/OGL stuff will sell to that same core audience in the absence of official D&D material.  

TSR may have been on its deathbed in the mid-90s in terms of finances, but it was still publishing a big pile of products -- which isn't the same thing as D&D going away.