This is from a UK perspective...

I think the whole video game argument for RPGs fading (and I think it is) is bullshit. Throughout D&D there have been video games! In the 80s to early 90s I had, at varying points, a Spectrum, Commodore, Nintendo, Sega and Amiga machines. I also remember video games being massive at high-school with a black market for Commodore and Amiga games! Additionally, I had Comics, Star wars, Transformers, Zoids, Fighting Fantasy books, music and lots of other things of interests AND RPGs. I don't buy the kids are doing not playing RPGs because of X.Y and Z; they aren't playing them because they have no presence, drive, market OR any company pushing them.

Think back to the 80s and 90s. You had in the 80s a D&D cartoon. You could walk into a hobby store, I mean a general hobby store and they would be there! They'd also be in comic stores AND toy stores. In fact the Virgin Megastore and Hamleys in London and Sheffield UK both carried such products in the 80s and 90s. Nowadays - nothing but the rare RPG shop and some comic stores. Also, Games Workshop (throughout the UK) carried D&D products to begin with but even in early 90s their own products.

So today. Games Workshop is still around and they are making profits; why? If we can compare a fantasy wargaming operation to D&D then why is Warhammer (at least in the UK) still huge and D&D not? The reason is GW knew that just paying attention to select crowd meant no expansion or profit you have to appeal to the incoming KIDS and their parents with £$£. Today I went to the supermarket - there in the magazine section were SEVEN copies of White Dwarf! In a supermarket, in the outer belts of London. No Dragon magazine, no Dungeon magazine they are gone. Want to know why the hobby isn't as big as it should be; blame WOTC.

Quote from: jeff37923;611929Knowing 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.

I agree with this sentiment.  D&D is unique in that it's continuing the legacy of the "3 Core Books" format, where most other RPG systems just have one.  Even then, particularly weighty books such as Pathfinder (500+ pages) are chock-full of rules and mechanics which intimidate many interesting newcomers.  The Pathfinder Beginner Box, which is sort of like the "Basic Set" for it, did wonders for getting fresh blood into the hobby with its short and simple outline of the rules.

Quote from: elfandghost;612019This is from a UK perspective...

I think the whole video game argument for RPGs fading (and I think it is) is bullshit. Throughout D&D there have been video games! In the 80s to early 90s I had, at varying points, a Spectrum, Commodore, Nintendo, Sega and Amiga machines. I also remember video games being massive at high-school with a black market for Commodore and Amiga games! Additionally, I had Comics, Star wars, Transformers, Zoids, Fighting Fantasy books, music and lots of other things of interests AND RPGs. I don't buy the kids are doing not playing RPGs because of X.Y and Z; they aren't playing them because they have no presence, drive, market OR any company pushing them.

Modern video games are also completely different from that era. The megahits - CoD, WoW, etc. - are the results of a lot of research on addicting players to them. They're ridiculously easy to play, much more socially accepted than they were then, and evidently provide enough online social interaction for a sizable chunk of the age range that would have been playing RPG's.

Nobody has yet done, to RPG's, the amount of streamlining and mainstreaming that video games have gone through over the last two decades (Because, really, it was Sony that started it, with the PS1). And the RPG market is too fractured for anyone to really take the initiative required.

Quote from: ggroy;611930For 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).

Well, I must say those are pretty demanding hobbies. Liver masochism and singing about losing stuff takes real time and effort. So I understand if that person's time is wholly occupied.

However I just wanted to rejoinder that the already mentioned issues of high exposure and entry simplicity really matter. There's a reason why Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, et al, had cartoons. There's a reason why many successful games keep their terms and mechanics relatively straight forward.

Advertising works. It doesn't need to be successful, it just needs to be everywhere.

KISS design works. It doesn't need to be elegant, it just needs to be easy.

The hobby has had well over a decade of the big industry players disobeying these two pop culture edicts. The results are predictable. Submit and thrive or disobey and shrivel. 'Stop hyper-focusing your product line to a niche customer' is the solution.

Quote from: elfandghost;612019Games Workshop is still around and they are making profits; why? If we can compare a fantasy wargaming operation to D&D then why is Warhammer (at least in the UK) still huge and D&D not? The reason is GW knew that just paying attention to select crowd meant no expansion or profit you have to appeal to the incoming KIDS and their parents with £$£. Today I went to the supermarket - there in the magazine section were SEVEN copies of White Dwarf!

GW is a company I admire for their business sense. Amazing really that they have made a single game of fantasy battles into a recognised "hobby" with a worldwide chain of stores and are a publicly listed company.

Their strategy is based on selling loads of highly-priced components, so I'm just not sure how this would work for RPGs. GW recognised this in the 80s, thus they got out of the RPG market to focus on the bottom line.

I guess WotC tried to do something similar in the 21st century: sell loads of electronic product by subscription. But the results have been as we know.

GW is also utterly, utterly ruthless from a legal standpoint; they make 90s TSR look like punters when it comes to protecting IP.  If I did for WHFRP what I did for AD&D in terms of the many adventures I've written*, they'd have C&D'ed me out of existence.


...


*=SHUT UP 5 IS TOO "MANY".

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;612126GW is a company I admire for their business sense. Amazing really that they have made a single game of fantasy battles into a recognised "hobby" with a worldwide chain of stores and are a publicly listed company.

Their strategy is based on selling loads of highly-priced components, so I'm just not sure how this would work for RPGs. GW recognised this in the 80s, thus they got out of the RPG market to focus on the bottom line.

I guess WotC tried to do something similar in the 21st century: sell loads of electronic product by subscription. But the results have been as we know.

The strategy is also based on discarding customers at regular intervals. GW does its damnedest to pump as much money out of a person for a few years and then they throw them under the bus.

Business wise it's not a bad plan (obviously) but sucks as a player (witness the endless bitching about GW Everytime a new anything comes out).

Yup for introducing people you can't give them a freaking textbook to read. In my last CoC game we had two new players and they were a bit put off by the complexity of chargen (I shutter to think what WotC-D&D would've been like) but the French gun nut newbie took right to it immediately and by the end of the game was teaching us the gun rules despite not knowing what 3d6 meant at the start of the session (the GM and I had only played 1920's CoC and hadn't played Delta Green and didn't know the modern gun rules well) and telling all of our characters what guns we should buy for the next session.

For the elementary school kids that I ran a dungeon for recently I didn't teach them anything besides what the charisma, constitution and constitution meant and told them "these are your hit points, they go down when you get hurt and if they run out you die."

It's really easy to bring people in if they only have to learn the rules they're interested in or can just play without having to worry about what a daily is or what's the best way to distribute skill points.

People are so used to playing with a bunch of players who've played for years that I think a lot in the industry have forgotten what it's like to run a game for a party in which not a single one has ever played before. But if you approach them in the right way it's easy to draw them in once they start playing since it's so much fun

Quote from: Piestrio;612131The strategy is also based on discarding customers at regular intervals. GW does its damnedest to pump as much money out of a person for a few years and then they throw them under the bus.

Games Workshop's business model is thus: GW wants and expects a customer base with a median age of 17. Yes, that's right. I know what you're thinking, "But Delver, that's ridiculous, look how expensive their stuff is! What seventeen year old has the wherewithal to buy a whole army?" Well, they don't but mom and dad do. So little Johnny Chaosarmy hits mom and dad up 'round the holiday season and asks for a 5000 point army box set (or whatever they're onto), a shedload of paint, brushes, "official" terrain and modeling tools and so on (like their $20 wondercutter for foam sculpting that you can buy at a craft store for $2.00), plus various rulebooks, and Mom and dad comply and the fix is in for $300-$500.

Now comes the really cool part. Little Johnny Chaosarmy spends eighteen months (GW's ideal mean for players to play) going to this show or that, maybe taking a passing interest in trophy painting, and so on, buying an extra model kit or four here or there, plus the inevitable monthly catalogue for $10 (you know, the one that masquerades as a gaming mag?) When all is said and done, Johnny has been painlessly separated from $2000-$3000 of his parents' largesse and then they quit. They piss off, get interested in girls in a serious way, decide they want a car more than more WH40k/WHFB stuff, and either ebay the whole shebang for 10% of what they paid for it, give it away, throw it out, let it sit on a shelf and gather dust, etc. but they do not stick around playing after that eighteen months.

GW wants this churn, this turnover, because guys like "us" screw up the equation. Here's what "we" do: we very carefully build up an army $10 - $20 at a time, never throwing down for an army deal. We cherry pick the "hero" minis we want, and we use everything but the shittacular GW crap paints, brushes, glues, etc. What's worse is we tell other gamers that we do that and then they (potentially) start bucking the system too. The penultimate insult though comes when we've got our armies we've gamed with for years and years and years without upgrading, without spending $1000 in a single whack, etc., and we cleave to the older versions of the rules and don't supplement, or we just grab back-issues of WD to get the new rules, and so on. The REAL thing "we" do then to piss off GW is we stick around for years, dribbling out a tiny, tiny, insignificant amount of money into their coffers if any at all. Content to show up at GW "events" or stores that simply have a huge GW draw, we'll use proxies, ("That stand of Reaper orc archers are Black Orc bowmen," etc.) we'll basically not bend over and offer our rosy behinds to GW weekend in and weekend out and act like we're happy about it.

This is all that GW wants out of the consumer. All. Not to enjoy, not to be a die-hard for years, but to kindly fuck off and move out of the way for someone to burn through another two or three grand. The rare specimen who toes the party line and stays for years get the exalted job of paying to be a GW employee, pushing events, judging, etc.

QuoteBusiness wise it's not a bad plan (obviously) but sucks as a player (witness the endless bitching about GW Everytime a new anything comes out).

GW wants your business - for 18-24 months.  Then they want you to leave the hobby forever.

Yes, the hobby is dying, according to plan.  Now how can we speed that up?

Quote from: Daztur;612143Yup for introducing people you can't give them a freaking textbook to read. In my last CoC game we had two new players and they were a bit put off by the complexity of chargen (I shutter to think what WotC-D&D would've been like) but the French gun nut newbie took right to it immediately and by the end of the game was teaching us the gun rules despite not knowing what 3d6 meant at the start of the session (the GM and I had only played 1920's CoC and hadn't played Delta Green and didn't know the modern gun rules well) and telling all of our characters what guns we should buy for the next session.

For the elementary school kids that I ran a dungeon for recently I didn't teach them anything besides what the charisma, constitution and constitution meant and told them "these are your hit points, they go down when you get hurt and if they run out you die."

It's really easy to bring people in if they only have to learn the rules they're interested in or can just play without having to worry about what a daily is or what's the best way to distribute skill points.

People are so used to playing with a bunch of players who've played for years that I think a lot in the industry have forgotten what it's like to run a game for a party in which not a single one has ever played before. But if you approach them in the right way it's easy to draw them in once they start playing since it's so much fun

This.

TSR (and thus the rest of the hobby) reacted to the decline in the late 80's by focusing more and more on the "hardcore" fans and abandoning the casual market. More splats, more rules, more details, more more more.

And here we are today

Quote from: This Guy;612148Yes, the hobby is dying, according to plan.  Now how can we speed that up?

Well, I want the industry to die, but I'd like the hobby to live.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;612150Well, I want the industry to die, but I'd like the hobby to live.

No, both must die.  From the ashes shall arise a new hobby or something.  I'm still sorting out the details.

Though even if the hobby were to live, I don't think it would exist in a form that most of the posters here would want to see anyway.

Quote from: This Guy;612155Though even if the hobby were to live, I don't think it would exist in a form that most of the posters here would want to see anyway.

I often thought that "mainstream" popularity could only be achieved by making the game completely unacceptable to a huge portion of current RPGers.

Quote from: Piestrio;612156I often thought that "mainstream" popularity could only be achieved by making the game completely unacceptable to a huge portion of current RPGers.

Pretty much.  I think if Ron Edwards had been able to successfully market his ideas to a broader audience and using a popular license, probably involving melodramatic supernatural romance, and maybe thrown some board game mechanics as well, then the tears would have flown freely, and the hobby put quietly to sleep so as to spare it further suffering.