Quote from: James J SkachThere will, of course, be people who leave PnP RPG's for WoW et al, but it's no more than left for Mario Brothers. Is that right?

Mario Brothers hardly requires the level of time commitment most MMORPGs require.  Mario is costing me the same if I play it now and don't touch it for six months. MMORPG is costing me $15 a month, so if I'm not actively playing that's money down the toilet. Since you are paying if you play or not there is an active incentive to play more so that you get more value out of your subscription money.

Most games stores I've seen also sell comics.  The health (or lack thereof) of the comics industry plays heavily into the success (or failure) of comic + game stores.

It's worth remembering that WotC had an ad campaign a couple of years ago trying to recruit new players from WoW: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20050929a

This was a good ad campaign -- it got attention outside of the usual RPG community.  Here's the post on BoingBoing: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/29/antimmorpg-ads-from-.html

Quote from: BoingBoingThis anti-MMORPG ad from Dungeons and Dragons is STONE BRILLIANT. It reads "If you're going to sit in your basement pretending to be an elf, you should at least have some friends over to help. Dungeons and Dragons: Get together. Roll some Dice. Have Fun." Way to play to your core strength.

My advice to WotC, and Ryan Dancey, would be not to forget what that core strength is...

Exactly in this blog post he compares the recent 4e post about fighting a red dragon with a strategy guide on fighting a dragon in WoW.

While he doesn't say it himself he invites the reader to say "DnD is mimicing MMORPGs and it isn't going to win by copying them".*

Later on in the comments he makes his comparison and reasons for it more plain.

QuoteThe larger point is:  Would you rather have this battle in fully rendered 3D, all rules handled automatically, with up to 30 of your friends along, or have the exact same experience on a tabletop, with 3-5 people, where you have to deal with all the rules yourself, and probably a lot of work with miniatures as well?

This is EXACTLY where the MMORPG experience beats the tabletop experience.  And it is the part of the MMORPG experience that gets better and better simply through the application of time, money, and Moore's Law.  TRPGs are already behind the "fun curve" here, and they cannot catch up.

Ryan

He expects people to say ooh the MMORPG looks way better.

The problem I see is the vast majority of people that play tabletop games are going to say, actually I'd rather have an evening with 3-5 real friends playing DnD. Than an evening sat on my own in front of a monitor with 30 odd virtual friends most of which I've never met in real life and wouldn't even noticed if I died tomorrow.

He doesn't seem to realise the game itself (it's mechanics and how it plays) is only a fraction of tabletop RPG hobby experience. I wonder how many friday night poker games have been cancelled since online poker became available?

*Lets ignore the holes in his conclusions for now.

Quote from: BagpussI wonder how many friday night poker games have been cancelled since online poker became available?

The guys from work with whom I started to play poker on occasion are dead serious players.  Most of them know the odds, the tips, the tricks, the terminology, have read the books, etc. These guys play just about every weekend - at their height they would play during lunch at work. (I'm the fish in the sea of sharks.  But I do get good cards sometimes and have even won once - and it's fun!)

At best they play on-line once in a while.

What's the advantage of the Friday night game?  Well, much like PnP, you are sitting at the table with the others involved.  In poker, that can mean tells and stuff you'd never get online - at best you could recognize betting patterns. Are there any significant issues for PnP RPG's, other than the social aspect, that make in person more advantageous? Perhaps rules arbitration? Fudging?

I don't play MMORPG's so I'm not familiar enough to know...

Quote from: CalithenaOne thing that isn't brought up enough here is that with MMO's being so incredibly huge, there's actually a big opportunity for fun RPGs to attract a whole new pool of players, in the right social circumstances.

Especially those who like MMOs OK but would like to focus more on roleplaying, creative problem-solving, etc. I'm sure there are a lot of those.

What I'm suggesting is that even if there's an RPG -> MMO drain, it may not be all bad news. If the total number of gamers grows by 100x and we get just 2% of those over time from drift back the other way, we double the number of RPG players.

I think this is a very interesting point.

In my opinion, MMOs have proven that there are vast numbers of people that are interested in fantasy, combat-oriented games with reasonably complicated character building mechanics and gameplay. We have tons of those!!! For some of those people, the lack of a competitive mode, or the social aspects, or the logistical aspects of tabletop games will be deal breakers, but not for all. There are 1-4 million South Koreans that play some version of Lineage (not exactly sure of that statistic). I wonder if there is a translation of D&D over there? Imagine the possibilities of the marketing campaign, "The Game that Started It All!!!"

Of course, I might have just fallen into my own fallacy... The Myth of the Untapped Market.

Quote from: James J SkachIn your opinion, at what point will an MMO be a significant threat? Ever?  Is there some technology advancement that you could see occurring that would make it direct competition?

Oh, I think MMOs are in direct competition with tabletop games now, just not for the reasons Mr. Dancey thinks they are. MMOs can provide only the shell of the RPG experience. They are superficially similar, but in every way, including the elements that MMOs excel at such as combat and character building, the tabletop game provides a richer experience. They mainly draw tabletop gamers away because they are logistically easy to play and addictive.

I can only offer personal experiences to the discussion. I love both types of games, but I will readily admit that tabletop RPGs are infinitely cooler in all ways than MMOs. Still, there are periods of my life where MMOs "took over", pushing out RPGs. Why? Lots of reasons really, but the main one is that MMOs scratch that gaming/social itch any time, on my terms. I want to game right now... If I wanted to, I could be playing EQ2, WoW, CoH, or any number of others in 5 minutes. Fire up that credit card and BAM!! Instant gratification.

Also, I think RPG campaigns require momentum to keep healthy. People have to remain interested week to week. Otherwise, the logistics of prepping a game, getting out of the house and to the game store and staying up late and feeling crappy for work the next day just becomes too much. How many weekly games have started to fall apart after cancelling a couple sessions? On a similar note, I usually cancel an MMO subscription once I stop playing for a week or two... but that means 7-14 possible sessions missed as opposed to 1-2 tabletop sessions.

Quote from: John MorrowWhat Dancey probably doesn't realize (and most story game advocates don't seem to get it) is that "simulationist" role-players who play for the experience of being their characters not only don't get a lot out of story games but the sort of fiddly player-level mechanics that he's been talking about actually ruin the game for them.  So he winds up alienating a group at least as large as the story gamers by going in that direction.

Exactly. As much as the story crowd hold gamism in contempt, their real blind spot is simulation. They don't really get that a lot of people like to be immersed in an environment, and giving them metagame control over story spoils that immersion.

QuoteThe larger point is: Would you rather have this battle in fully rendered 3D, all rules handled automatically, with up to 30 of your friends along, or have the exact same experience on a tabletop, with 3-5 people, where you have to deal with all the rules yourself, and probably a lot of work with miniatures as well?

The later. Because:

A) I like hanging out with my friends, and the guys I play D&D with have been close friends for 25 years.

B) I don't have to deal with lots of rules, because we play a rules-light style of game.

C) The scenes we conjure up in our imaginations are way, way cooler than the stuff you see in a WoW game.

Quote from: HaffrungExactly. As much as the story crowd hold gamism in contempt, their real blind spot is simulation. They don't really get that a lot of people like to be immersed in an environment, and giving them metagame control over story spoils that immersion.

* aka "brahmin" from Fallout 2. By an amazing coincidence, "brahmin" is the name of the Hindu sacred cow, though those don't have two heads. I think.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron

The GNS sacred cow *:

the left head is Gamism, the right head is Narrativism
we don't talk about the third head you can't see, Simulationism.
You must cut off one of the heads and play with that
or else your game is Incoherent

I assume the more normal looking head is Narrativism and the smaller side-looking head is Gamism and that Simulationism is down there in the misshapen belly where it can pop out from time to time like Kuato from the Total Recall movie or Tiny Attorney from the Venture Brothers.

Quote from: cmagounIf I wanted to, I could be playing EQ2, WoW, CoH, or any number of others in 5 minutes. Fire up that credit card and BAM!! Instant gratification.

Well not really if you haven't played them in ages you are probably going to have to wait an hour or so at least for all the patches and updates to download and install....

Quote from: James J SkachAre there any significant issues for PnP RPG's, other than the social aspect, that make in person more advantageous? Perhaps rules arbitration? Fudging?

Outside the social aspect (which I must add includes deciding who not to play with), there's the simple matter of control, simulation, and individuality.

I run Middle Earth as a campaign setting with a set of rules I designed specifically for it. It's a long lived campaign going on 27 years although it's had break for other games.

I also play Lord of the Rings Online. I didn’t' design the rules and have no real choice in what they are. That by itself is very significant IMO.

Here are some other differences:

1. My PnP game doesn't have 10s of thousands of Heroes who have all defeated the Red Maid in the Lone Lands. My PnP game doesn't have 10s of thousands of heroes called ", Wolf Slayer" (gained by killing less than 100 wolves in a certain zone). My PnP game doesn't have hundreds of people owning a flaming sword. etc. (actually, it doesn't even have one), the examples of lack of individuality are almost without count.

2. My PnP game not only allows Marriage, it's a major cornerstone of the campaign. LotRO doesn't allow Marriage at all because if they did, they have to allow gay marriage to prevent whining and they felt that broke the spirit of the setting. Thus my PnP isn't subject to culture shifts or politically correct rulings.

3. My PnP game doesn't have hundreds of characters with hundreds of gold coins to spend, nor auction houses where that kind of cash could be dropped in a handful of mouse clicks.

4. My PnP has children.

5. My PnP can if needed make a rule change instantly to handle a 'bug'

6. Tactically my PnP is focused on maneuver, LotRO is focused on resource management.


I could go on for quite a while, but I think the point is made.

All the MMORPGs offers that my PnP can't is 3D graphics (but of a limited set- I fight boars for example in every zone in the game that aren't a specific instance), and the ability to log on without arranging the get together of live players.

That last is their most significant advantage.

Quote from: BagpussThe problem I see is the vast majority of people that play tabletop games are going to say, actually I'd rather have an evening with 3-5 real friends playing DnD. Than an evening sat on my own in front of a monitor with 30 odd virtual friends most of which I've never met in real life and wouldn't even noticed if I died tomorrow.

You do know that a lot of WoW players do play together with people they know IRL, right?  Just like people who play Halo on the X-Box or whatever.  Not everyone who plays is playing with random strangers.

That's sort of why its more of a concern now than before.  Previously, there was no socialization involved in these kinds of games.  Now, you have groups of people that actively socialize with their friends while playing on the computer.

Now maybe you or I don't choose to go down that route, but there's no question its becoming more and more popular, especially for younger generations.  There are widely documented trends of youths using computers to socialize more at the expense of face-to-face gatherings.  Studies on this stuff show up in the news from time to time.

Not being a WoW (or any of these) player, I'm curious.  While you are playing, do you run into other players in other groups? Is it by server?

Quote from: jgantsYou do know that a lot of WoW players do play together with people they know IRL, right?  Just like people who play Halo on the X-Box or whatever.  Not everyone who plays is playing with random strangers.

A few points here.

I play LotRO with my wife, her uncle, my twins, and a couple of friends from my PnP group.

I'm also playing with the guy who reached that scholor node before me and got the crafting materials before I did. I'm also playing with the Hunter who just tagged the MOB I was charging to attack and thus delayed the completing of my quest by who knows how long. I'm also playing with crafters who set their prices far above their costs or my casual play style. I'm also playing...

I think you get the idea. And we haven't even considered games with more open PvP.

They are called MMORPGs for a reason. You can't avoid the impact of it being one even by playing with your real life friends.