Quote from: RSDanceyI think that the matrix of who plays TRPGs is going to change and has already started to change.  A group of people who have been involved with the platform since inception are leaving to play MMORPGs, and they are unlikely to return.  I call those people "Power Gamers"; players who fit onto a two-axis diagram of the player space at the coordinates of "short-term thinking" and "combat focused".  For those people, MMORPGs offer a superior experience to the tabletop RPG, and the MMORPG experience will get better, faster, than the tabletop game could possibly be redesigned to address the deficit (if such a thing were even possible).  MMORPGs also appeal strongly, but not as strongly to the group I call "Thinkers"; players who exist at the coordinates of "short-term thinking" and "story focused".  We can likely make some changes to keep many of these people, and do it fast enough that the MMORPG experience can be countered before they're all gone.  If we're lucky, we might even get some of those who have already left back eventually.

However, in the document Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0 you created while working at WotC you said:

Quote from: Ryan DanceyOne conclusion we draw from this data is that people who play electronic games still find time to play TRPGs; it appears that these two pursuits are complementary or noncompetitive outside the scope of the macroeconomic disposable income competition.

This was back in 2000, and Everquest (aka "EverCrack") was the big MMORPG at the time -- so MMORPGs would have been part of this research and the analysis that went into this report.

So what is different today? What research now points toward electronic games and TRPGs being competitive and non-complementary?

I don't get it. :confused:

Quote from: VBWyrdeWell, Ryan, thank you!   That's quite a bit to mull over.  I still don't quite agree with some of your points, but at least they're clearer to me now.  I'll just comment on a few of your points briefly...
I think you underestimate the Happiness... it wasn't just a mere "generally happy" thing to be Immersed in Telthanar, a world you've never heard of, but was played for many years starting in 1977.  It was *Awesome*.

Probably because you weren't attracted to the game from the same perspective of "collaborative storytelling" that the lumpenrolleplayertariat of Ryan's narrative were.

Put simply, if you thought of an RPG as something like a virtual world to interact with in first-person, or as a kind of neverending gamemastered wargame, then what you got with D&D and other 70's games was perfect for you.

If you took literally some of the fumbling analogies used to describe RPGing as akin to "radio theater" or "interactive novels", then I could see being disappointed with many of those old games, as well as much of the product of the 80's.

Quote from: TimI find myself torn between two responses to this little gem.

1) What.The.Fuck.

2) Oooh...oooh....oooh! Is this Swinery, Pundit and Sett? It really DOES exist.

On a more serious note, do you really think a mystical experience exploring little Timmy Too-right's three-ring binder masterpiece is really what's going to keep the RPG industry healthy? What is this? The Great Restoration for RPGs? I think you're profoundly off base, here.

Why is it Swinery to have a preference for the highest quality experience you can get?  That's my preference.  I prefer Caseblanca to Mission Impossible III.   Is that not allowed in your worldview?  Maybe little Timmy's little three ring binder wasn't enough for you... but I never played with little Timmy.  And apparently you never played in Telthanar.  So?

Quote from: Elliot WilenProbably because you weren't attracted to the game from the same perspective of "collaborative storytelling" that the lumpenrolleplayertariat of Ryan's narrative were.

Put simply, if you thought of an RPG as something like a virtual world to interact with in first-person, or as a kind of neverending gamemastered wargame, then what you got with D&D and other 70's games was perfect for you.

If you took literally some of the fumbling analogies used to describe RPGing as akin to "radio theater" or "interactive novels", then I could see being disappointed with many of those old games, as well as much of the product of the 80's.

I see what you mean.  It's very possible.  I may have simply come in at a time when it was 'just right'... and at the time it was the New Thing, so that pertains as well.   Hmmm... could just be a generational gap.   Entirely possible.  But then again, going back to Casablanca as an example of Quality, I think there's still a lot of people who admire that film because it was simply a great film.  Perhaps there was something great in the games I got involved in early on as well.  I think that is also a big part of it.  Of course, who could ever prove such an assertion empirically?  Not possible.  All I can say is that for me, they were great game experiences in their own right, and if I were to play the same games today I think I would feel the same way about them.  Just as I still feel that Casablanca is a great film.

Quote from: Stuart...

I don't get it. :confused:

I think there is nothing to get.  It's hype.  You can bet if there is a reliable study it would have been trotted out by now.  What we have is just stories meant to sell.  It's a sales pitch pure and simple. It's also getting a lot free publicity.

Waiting to eat crow when a link to the study pops up. :morning:

Quote from: RSDanceyIt turns out that the indie-RPG crowd "got lucky", in that the area of the hobby they felt needed the most work turned out, due to forces beyond their control (i.e. the success of MMORPG) to be the area that is most likely (IMO) to be the path forward to successful games in a changed mixture of player types.  I give them props for having done a lot of wandering in the wilderness, and having laid a lot of groundwork we can all look at and try to understand.  Extracting that value doesn't mean I've drunk the Kool-Aide that says that D&D is an "unfun" game.  It's very fun.  It just may not be fun enough given the existence of the MMORPG tipping point.

Ryan

So who do you see as the market for this new model? As you note, the TRPG industry is small and getting smaller all the time. Do you think the fraction of existing players who could be attracted to the new model is enough to support commercial products? Forge games had been around for a while now, and I'd be surprised if the most successful of them have sold much more than 1,000 copies. Maybe that's the real market for shared-narrative story games.

As for gamist RPGers abandoning TRPGs en masse for online gaming, you only have to look at the thriving boardgame scene to see that face-to-face gaming is alive and well. You can play most pf the popular euro games online, but that doesn't seem to have hurt the social boardgaming scene one bit. Just check out the user base for Boardgamegeek. And boardgames that share some of the target audience of RPGs - games like War of the Rings, Descent, Arkham Horror, and BattleLore, sell in the 10s of thousands. There's clearly a market for face-to-face, gamist, fantasy games, even when technically those games are playable online.

Exactly, Haffrung. Playing mostly roleplaying games are for people with friends, or who want friends. Playing mostly computer games are for people living in their parents' basement.  

Normal people who have some friends and also enjoy time alone do both.

I still want to hear what he has to say in response to Stuart pointing out that he himself had said he Sekrit Resurch had concluded that computer games had taken no-one away from roleplaying games.

Oh, I forgot, roleplaying is dying. But then, roleplaying has been dying for so long it should be a demi-lich by now.

Quote from: VBWyrdeWhy is it Swinery to have a preference for the highest quality experience you can get?  That's my preference.  I prefer Caseblanca to Mission Impossible III.   Is that not allowed in your worldview?  Maybe little Timmy's little three ring binder wasn't enough for you... but I never played with little Timmy.  And apparently you never played in Telthanar.  So?

It's swinery because you've (completely arbitrarily, apparently) decided that any game without hoo-doo-goo-doo immersion as its be-all end-all goal doesn't measure up. There are three problems with this: a) It's a complete bullshit position, b) it's elitist as hell, c) It's completely unwarranted elitism based on nothing but the absolute narrowest cross-section of personal experience.

Actually, I apologize for my inflammatory language. I'm glad you're playing RPGs and having an awesome time doing it.

I do, however, find it incredibly insulting that you've written off my favored style of gaming as fucking Mission Impossible III. I can guarantee you that gaming with player meta-knowledge of the game world, plot, NPCs, and whatever else you want to throw in there is COMPLETELY capable of producing intense, enjoyable, and utterly satisfying gaming with meaningful choices and oodles of the sense of discovery. So, there's my anecdotal experience thrown up against yours.

I don't know if it's Casablanca or Citizen Kane, but it's certainly not tripe.

Tim

Um, I think VBWyrde isn't pulling for immersion in that quote, rather he's talking about canned settings vs. home-made. Partly because RSD has made some sort of argument-thing about canned settings.

VBWyrde, it's not that I'm saying the old games wouldn't stand up now, far from it. I'm saying that as time went by (haha), RPGing picked up more and more people who thought they were supposed to be "making up a story together" and that concept, as they understood it, created requirements and/or expectations regarding player input which differed enormously from the virtual world-exploration/simulation that you and I enjoy.

Where I think RSD goes off the rails is not to acknowledge that folks who are into world-exploration/simulation are (a) different from the "gamists" that D&D 3 tried to cater to, and (b) also different from the storytellers that he's trying to capture.

Hmmm, looks like I was conflating this snippet with the part I quoted earlier.

QuoteIt's a uniquely awesome experience. And I do maintain that such an experience is neigh on impossible if you're co-Creating the World during Play. But I have no proof of that. It's just my feeling.

If the earlier quote wasn't addressing this bit at all, I owe you an even greater apology, VBWyrde.

Tim

Quote from: TimActually, I apologize for my inflammatory language. I'm glad you're playing RPGs and having an awesome time doing it.

I do, however, find it incredibly insulting that you've written off my favored style of gaming as fucking Mission Impossible III. I can guarantee you that gaming with player meta-knowledge of the game world, plot, NPCs, and whatever else you want to throw in there is COMPLETELY capable of producing intense, enjoyable, and utterly satisfying gaming with meaningful choices and oodles of the sense of discovery. So, there's my anecdotal experience thrown up against yours.

I don't know if it's Casablanca or Citizen Kane, but it's certainly not tripe.

Tim

Ahhh... it all makes sense to me now.     I went with MI III *because* it was a great Action flick.  The equal of Casablanca on the Action side.  And to think I've been saying "Play and Let Play", and then I go and screw that all up.  Duh.  Sorry bout that.

EDIT:  yeah, well... I can see how the complexities of this subject are so amazingly vast... it's easy to get yer feet twisted up.   I feel like I'm on a battlefield where everyone is hacking at anything that moves.  Gah.   I blame the D&D industry.   It went off the rails, lost coherency and now we're all staggering around trying to figure out *what* the lay of the land is.   No, I blame the Theory Crowd for mucking this all up.  Wait no.  I blame Ryan!!  No.  Hold on.  Who the hell is to blame?  Damnit.  

If you had said Ronin, my panties would have stayed un-bunched.

Quote from: TimIf you had said Ronin, my panties would have stayed un-bunched.

My bad.  There's probably on 1000 flicks that might have been a better choice, now that I think about it.   All Akira Kurosawa films come to mind.  Yojimbo?  Ran?  Hidden Fortress?  Damnit.

Ryan,

Do you realize, that Story Games make true in-world accomplishment impossible?

"Story" devalues  everything else. RPGs and other Adventure Games are popular, because you can get away from mass-media storytelling. You can get away from idiocy like Spiderman or Pirates of the Carribbean.

Story-Games invalidate the whole strategic axis, to use that partition. They alienate four of your five categories, and the remaining one is ALREADY being served by WW.
And WW is doing a MMORPG also.

Do you realize, that the whole population of gamers, that doesn´t want to explore adolescent self-finding themes and moral dillemmata is excluded by story-games? Because that´s what they are, right now.

Especially Burning Empires.
Do you realize, that in order to save the planet in BE, you HAVE TO adress personal character issues? "Overcome your self-hatred, and the planet is safe." That´s what it´s about in a nutshell.
Can you understand how this devalues the whole game for people who would like to actually save the planet?
Do you see why there is absolutely NO strategy, neither conflict nor story-wise in that game?

Again, the current Story-Games are excluding four out of five categories of the 1999 study. And even the remaining one HAS not picked up any of those games in a major way.

Compare to other groundbreakers:
D&D, Vampire, Twilight: 2000; Traveller; L5R-franchise

All those games became immenseley popular with their new audiences in a timeframe that is just a small fraction of the sotry-games that exist.

Not one of them has taken off. Not a single one of them.