Quote from: Warthur;611774So exactly how much of your spare time do you spend hanging around, say, 18-25 year olds?

This is not a facetious question; I ask because your experience might simply reflect the fact that people of a certain age with a peer group of a certain age might not necessarily expect their observations to be entirely objective.

One of my tabletop campaigns is run at Gold Star Anime in Edinboro PA a small rural college town in NW PA. I have regular contact with a bunch of twenty somethings. What they mostly play is Magic the Gathering, Heroclix, and a small amount of tabletop role playing mostly 4e organized play. This is similar what I see in other stores in the region. Warhammer may be played instead of Heroclix, or Euro boardgames,etc.

Physically getting together and gaming seems to me to be quite healthy. If anything even stronger than the 1990s. Also it seems to me that tabletop RPGs are the low man on the totem pole, lifts a finger, at the moment. Until A Warhammere miniature wargaming was perceived as a dying hobby relegated to a niche.

What I think is that mass gaming is now the province of MMORPGs, first person shooters and other computer games. That physical gaming is a large niche hobby. That among those who play in person the popularity of various game types rise and fall in a cycle.

The RPG Industry can influence things. A strong organized play program is a great way to increase visibility. As long as you don't wind up thinking that how all tabletop gamers play. I think Paizo gets this while Wizard didn't.

Creating products that play to the strength of tabletop over other forms of gaming namely the ability to attempt anything combined with the flexibility of the human referee. Killing tabletop is easy just try to make it like another form of gaming. Then the hassles of having to assemble a group at a specific time combined with the burden of work on the referee will lose out to the conviences of the alternatives.

RPG Tabletop may not be popular among the masses but that OK thanks to the Internet's ability to effortlessly allow people to connect and communicate. This has allowed the revival and survival of all sort of niche hobbies.

Quote from: Sigmund;611790I have to agree with this. Seems to be the worst thing that could happen is that the Earth is destroyed by a rogue asteroid.... that would lay a serious buzz-kill on the whole TTRPGing community I'm thinking.

Yeah but one poor bastard will finally get to use his "stuck on a desert island" RPG list, only it will be his "Last man on earth" RPG list and he'll be playing with Wilson.

Changing, yes, Dying, no. If I had to guess I'd say it's going to be smaller and we'll probably see less and less lush, photoglossy, colorfully illustrated books like Pathfinder or Eclipse Phase; but the torrent of small-press and amateur material should remain steady for a long time.

Quote from: CRKrueger;611763You may as well talk about the slow decline of the MMORPG industry because there will never be another WoW, just a couple hundred smaller games sharing the same market space.  The new kids are playing shooters, soon as the "born in 1980" group dies, so will MMORPGs.

We're stuck with tabletop, crpgs and MMORPGs for a while, thank god, until simsense comes along and we can do it "for real". Of course at that point 99% of the population will die of starvation while plugged into porn.

Spot on, and made me actually laugh out loud.

Quote from: CRKrueger;611841Yeah but one poor bastard will finally get to use his "stuck on a desert island" RPG list, only it will be his "Last man on earth" RPG list and he'll be playing with Wilson.

Mythic GM Emulator and multiple characters for "each" PC should do the trick.

I think the hobby goes throug peaks and valleys of popularity. Right now it does look like many rpg companiesare hurting but I do think much of that is because publishing in general is having trouble as things like ebooks ad print on demand change the game coupled with a prolonged recession. In fact I think the recession really makes it hard to decipher things.

I feel like we have had two huge surges in popularity: the early 80s and the early 2000s. Both were times when a lot of other elements in the popular culture made a game like D&D more palatable to a general audience. It seems like we are getting a lot of that stuff fin the media again (this time with tons of super hero movies and interest in geek culture with shows like the big bang). In some ways, I suspect we are going through another upsurge but it is concealed by the changes going in in publishing and the slow economic recovery. This is only based on my own observations, but I have just seen alot more early 20-somethings of late, who dont strike me as typical gamers, getting into rpgs. Interestingly a lot of them are coming to rpgs through games like skyrim or shows like big bang theory and the new doctor who. They are more casual about table top games (not needing that once to twice a week fix a lot of us expect) but they are still excited to play, and having people like that participate is helps generate interest and sales.

Everyone I introduce to AD&D is taken with it, but that's the thing: I seek them out.  It's not a phenomena any more; people know of it, at least in the remotest sense, but aren't drawn to it.  When you get a few imaginative people sitting down to play you can have a blast and maybe possibly "create" some new gamers, or at least people who will play when you ask.  Generally, with younger people the reaction is "Wow, you mean I can do anything?" and with people around my age the reaction is "This is neat; it's like The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones except we're the ones making the decisions" (that's a broad generalization, but there it is).

But the dedicated attraction, the desire to go out and seek out someone who plays D&D isn't really there, I don't think.  In that respect, TTRPGs aren't growing and indeed are dying.  The last "brand new gamers" I ran through part of A1 (they died at the hands of the ghouls in the ruined temple/slaver's hideout) were recruited by one of my group.  They fell in love with it, thought it was a blast.  But, by that same token, they didn't come to me/us.

So take away what you will from that.

Folks doesn't have the time or perhaps inclination to write and create. People like video games because character creation is visual and simple and the quests are created and ready to go. Simialrly no one wants to sit down and write an adventure, and games almost universally suck at explaining how you, as a prospective GM, go from reading the rules to writing and running adventures. It's a secret knowledge gleaned only from experience.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;611855Everyone I introduce to AD&D is taken with it, but that's the thing: I seek them out.  It's not a phenomena any more; people know of it, at least in the remotest sense, but aren't drawn to it.  When you get a few imaginative people sitting down to play you can have a blast and maybe possibly "create" some new gamers, or at least people who will play when you ask.  Generally, with younger people the reaction is "Wow, you mean I can do anything?" and with people around my age the reaction is "This is neat; it's like The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones except we're the ones making the decisions" (that's a broad generalization, but there it is).

But the dedicated attraction, the desire to go out and seek out someone who plays D&D isn't really there, I don't think.  In that respect, TTRPGs aren't growing and indeed are dying.  The last "brand new gamers" I ran through part of A1 (they died at the hands of the ghouls in the ruined temple/slaver's hideout) were recruited by one of my group.  They fell in love with it, thought it was a blast.  But, by that same token, they didn't come to me/us.

So take away what you will from that.

You seem to have better luck in introducing people to D&D.

These days whenever I introduce people to D&D, the typical response is stuff like:

- "Why are you wasting my time?"
- "So what?"
- "What are you willing to do for me?"
- "How much are you going to pay me?"
- etc ...

This is the main reason why I don't bother asking anyone anymore (offline unsolicited), about playing D&D or any other tabletop rpg games.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;611868Folks doesn't have the time or perhaps inclination to write and create. People like video games because character creation is visual and simple and the quests are created and ready to go. Simialrly no one wants to sit down and write an adventure, and games almost universally suck at explaining how you, as a prospective GM, go from reading the rules to writing and running adventures. It's a secret knowledge gleaned only from experience.

And yet my Labyrinth Lord group, none of whom are over 25 years old and never gamed before outside of the computer, love it and cannot wait for the next session.

Quote from: ggroy;611873You seem to have better luck in introducing people to D&D.

These days whenever I introduce people to D&D, the typical response is stuff like:

- "Why are you wasting my time?"
- "So what?"
- "What are you willing to do for me?"
- "How much are you going to pay me?"
- etc ...

This is the main reason why I don't bother asking anyone anymore (offline unsolicited), about playing D&D or any other tabletop rpg games.

*boggle*

Do those people ever have any free time at all?

Quote from: vytzka;611888*boggle*

Do those people ever have any free time at all?

From what I could tell, these particular individuals do have a lot of free time.  (A few of them are unemployed).

Though the issue seems to be that they are highly resentful about anybody intruding in on THEIR free time.

The only real evidence I can provide is that the local University RPG society in 2007/2008/2009 was bigger than in 1994/1995/1996.

Quote from: ggroy;611893From what I could tell, these particular individuals do have a lot of free time.  (A few of them are unemployed).

Though the issue seems to be that they are highly resentful about anybody intruding in on THEIR free time.

Intruding, what the fuck, how does inviting them for shared entertainment count as intruding? I hope they have fun sitting at home watching TV and by have fun I mean I hope they get bored to death.

Part of getting people interested is sales pitch, and knowing who you're selling to (if you will).

The "This is like LOTR/Thrones" couple were fairly well-read; we eschewed miniatures altogether and I used a lot of narrative, and there was a lot of "Wait, go back and describe that again" sort of stuff.

When I'd run my 10-15 people games (always overbooked, always drew a huge crowd of onlookers) at the local cons, the convention itself was based mostly on historical wargaming: I always always used Dwarven Forge, miniatures, the whole schmeer.  Same for running games for younger players.

You just have to know your audience.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;611923Part of getting people interested is sales pitch, and knowing who you're selling to (if you will).

The "This is like LOTR/Thrones" couple were fairly well-read; we eschewed miniatures altogether and I used a lot of narrative, and there was a lot of "Wait, go back and describe that again" sort of stuff.

When I'd run my 10-15 people games (always overbooked, always drew a huge crowd of onlookers) at the local cons, the convention itself was based mostly on historical wargaming: I always always used Dwarven Forge, miniatures, the whole schmeer.  Same for running games for younger players.

You just have to know your audience.

Knowing your audience is key.

My current Players were very resistant when a friend showed them the Pathfinder Core Rules because the size of the book just turned them off. Loaning one of them a copy of the 64 page Basic D&D rules won them enough over to give it a try. Never underestimate the benefits of a good introductory game.

Quote from: vytzka;611910Intruding, what the fuck, how does inviting them for shared entertainment count as intruding? I hope they have fun sitting at home watching TV and by have fun I mean I hope they get bored to death.

For one person, they don't watch tv at all.  This particular individual spends most of their time snorting cocaine, smoking weed, and drinking booze all day, while attempting to write country music songs.  (It's an old friend from decades ago).