D&D spread originally because it was fun. It was the game where you could do anything. College students and wargamers broke out of the old frameworks; it passed on to smart high schoolers; and from there became the odd part of the popular culture it still remains.

How does it spread?

A game that will take off 'virally' has to do two things.

(a) It has to recruit new hosts. In the case of D&D, this was the smart kids who chose to be DMs, or even contribute to APAs or design their own games. They were total addicts, they played and played and played, etc.

(b) It has to infect people beyond the host population. In the case of D&D, this was all the people who played it and enjoyed it but didn't fall into the DM/designer well of no return.

Side note 1: OK, now, the theory about CRPGs siphoning off tabletop players. CRPGs typically do little or nothing for group a. But it's possible that they provide something to group b that's roughly as satisfying, in some cases more satisfying.

Side note 2: (b) appears to have been two distinct groups over time. The wargamers, powergamers, strategic players I came up with in the seventies, some of whom became awesome roleplayers in any sense you care to define, have almost nothing to do with the Forgotten Realms/Dragonlance/Vampire:the Masquerade setting fanboys (and girls). Except of course they played together and helped to make this subculture together, and again, the second group produced some awesome roleplayers in any sense you care to define. So it may be that there's more than one way to skin a cat here.

Anyway. To make a tabletop RPG successful - selling millions of copies successful, making people who didn't game before game successful, not some bullshit that pays for beer - you need to have your group a and group b in place in society and you need to give them something that they'll want.

Fantasy is out there but there's a million things feeding it and evidently RPGs are not enough, though I think there's a ready audience out there.

RPGs were subversive back in the day. I don't know if you can do that any more either: hardcore porn and satanism are a webclick away at any moment for your average smart 10 year old, and I don't think RPGs can be the kind of vector for subversion that they once were. If I'm wrong then there's a good vector, appeal to working-class antinomianism.

Here's another place I think AD&D1 was better than it looked. There was this idea of the GM as a creative force, as a fantasist, as someone who made worlds and adventures and people and politics. (As a sandbox for the players to mess with if he was a decent GM, but let's not go there.) None of that had much more than a peripheral relationship to what happened in play 90-99% of the time. But it was a draw for the smart kids, for group a: we were the ones who would make our own fantasy worlds.

(GMing itself and the power trip that goes with it, being a social facilitator, helping people realize their fantasies, challenging them, those are all draws for group a too.)

But the game was actually pretty simple to play, especially if you did what the vast majority of groups I ever played with did and ignore segment movement/initiative, ignore weapon vs. armor (even Gygax didn't use those charts), and played the simpler game that was basically OD&D and was basically there all along.

And you got this character who did things and got a big long list of cool imaginary stuff and exploits and sometimes powers. So how cool is that? Group b gets to

b1) compete - I did this, I did that, I got this, check out my magic sword, etc., if they want, and/or

b2) fantasize - I am this, I have experienced that, I have been there, I have met the Lords of Nyarn, I did it doggie style with Raistlin Majere, whatever it is that gets you off.

And this is stuff that you don't have to be that smart to enjoy. You just need to have basic social skills (sometimes not even that), the ability to pretend, to roll dice when someone tells you to, and

a good GM from group a.

I actually think the biggest problem facing TTRPGS today isn't computer games. I think it's the changes in social relations. The seventies were a time when Bob Dobbs seemed like he might be the messiah and slack was everywhere. There was free time and community gathering. That's when this stuff took root.

People are more scheduled now (in the case of the middle classes) and more isolated (in the case of the working classes) and there is much less trust in the shared social spaces that allowed D&D to spread like a virus.

But. They're still out there.

And the challenge is to figure out how to get something to spread through them.

You need your hosts and you need your infectees. The virus has to work on both. Go to work.

(I hope I'm wrong, but I think the ideal you sometimes see in Forge-inspired circles of groups of egalitarian friends getting together to play games in the way they play Catan or whatever won't work for RPGs. Like I said, I hope I'm wrong, but I think you need to generate the crazy obsessives, the fantasists, to spread the disease. Which means you need to give them something to obsess on. As defense for my side I'd point out that it's the only thing that has worked so far.)

Ok, my belief is possibly offensive.

You know why everyone started playing Magic: The Gathering back then?

Because in Magic: The Gathering, you don't have to act.

You don't have to talk in character, or come up with stuff when your'e playing M:TG. It's "just" a game. It's also a game you can be good at, and there were other elements. People really focused in on the collectibility as the reason MTG took off, but I think that was only one factor. The other is, it was truly fun to play, and it didn't require you to suddenly become some kind of Master Thespian. I kinda sucked at it myself and I only had about 300 cards at my height.. but I always had fun, even when i was losing.

Well, that was how roleplaying games used to be as well. You played them As games. The Fantasy Trip. Melee. Chitin I (remember that one?), etc.

And some people added more performance and 'in-character' stuff and acting and stuff into their game too, and it was interesting as hell and cool.. but it wasn't mandatory.  Anyhow, it eventually became mandatory. By the time the 90s rolled around, roleplaying was all about performance. I noticed that some people have a hard time thinking about it any other way now.

So in order to 'save' roleplaying games? I have no idea, but I do know that when I'm not up to being a master thespian, I can still run some combats or play out puzzle encounters.

In any case, my idea is to deemphasize "acting in character" as a mandatory activity in roleplaying games, and refocus on the gaming part.

I'm basically with you on that, Maw.

Although, if characters are self-inserts, and if situations aren't forced to be any more complex than you want them to be, a little acting comes pretty naturally to most folks, without performance anxiety. If it's 'what would I do' instead of 'what would he do'. (I honestly think the second question is a variant of the first anyway, but I do agree it's harder for a lot of folks to wrap their head around.)

And the potential to take it towards roleplaying needs to be there as well, if you want it.

But actually these 'simming' games show that you can emphasize the acting/roleplaying thing and make it popular to a different segment (arguably, these were the folks who loved dragonlance and vampire and didn't mind the metaplot). I think the important thing is that you give people something fun and manageable as a core activity. But also give the viral hosts something to obsess on so they'll want to spread it.

I tihnk the one thing I can agree with you on, just in my own personal taste, is in the importance of leaving room for world building.

I hate, hate, hate, hate games with overdefined settings.  I want the opportunity to make my own version of the world.  If it's a modern or future Earth setting, I want to have the freedom to make my OWN decisions with my group as to what this alternate Earth version of my hometown is like, rather than some other guy making the decisions for me.

I want high concept.  I want the basic idea, the basic theme of the setting, and less in the way of overspecific details about places and people.  Because people and places mean a hell of a lot more when they're your own people and places.

I've seen Rifts players who refused to play in a part of the world that hadn't gotten it's own sourcebook yet, simply because they were afraid to get creative and roll their own, because they knew they could be pre-empted at anytime by the latest sourcebook, and then suddenly their version of that region was "wrong".  

That just doesn't seem right to me.

Quote from: Abyssal MawIn any case, my idea is to deemphasize "acting in character" as a mandatory activity in roleplaying games, and refocus on the gaming part.

In what games are "acting in character" mandatory , AM ? And what exactly is the "gaming" part ? It seems to me you can't be an rpg without the rp part.

Regards,
David R

"Saving" rpgs? What are we being asked to save them from?

Fantasy, that's D&D. And D&D exists. So, the next big thing, which will surely come, will be anything BUT D&D, just as it will be anything BUT whatever else currently exists and has been unable to challenge D&D. In all likelihood, it will therefore feel a tad odd. To us.

As I keep saying, pop culture reboots itself every couple of decades. Currently we're looking at the tail end of the Age of Anime. That didn't produce an RPG that could dethrone D&D. Well, until the next wave.

(The Forge is not it. Rather, they're in a phase of consolidation already, not unlike the scene in the age of FGU--de-differentiation of earlier paradigms, which in FGU's case boiled down to lots of tables and any genre they could think of, so long as it wasn't D&D fantasy.)

QuoteFantasy, that's D&D. And D&D exists. So, the next big thing, which will surely come, will be anything BUT D&D, just as it will be anything BUT whatever else currently exists and has been unable to challenge D&D.

I think this is somewhat correct.  The games I know of that actually made a sizeable enough splash to compete directly with D&D, were also not fantasy or too much like D&D.

Traveller, for instance.  Or Vampire.  I feel the urge to suggest WEG's Star Wars as well, I know it was at least pretty successful.  

I think it could still be a sci-fi game that's the next one, mainly because it's underrepresented at present, and there really hasn't been a break out sci-fi game since Traveller.

But at the same time, sci-fi isn't the big public phenomenon it has been in the past either.  It's been turned into a niche interest at best, and in many ways subverted by anal retentives who've lost sight of the adventure elements that really drew people to it in the early days.  

Superheroes don't really work, because that's all about idolatry, and that doesn't mesh with the goals of an RPG, which is I think why supers have always been a niche interest in RPGs.  

Pirates could've been lept on maybe, but with the last PotC movie now out in the theatres and with a very LotR-ish ending, I dunno if you could really make an RPG of that now.  I think the crest of the wave was realyl the first film, and now it's just a matter of time before the tide rolls back completely.

Well, my own theory is that you can't be counter culture and expensive.  No I don't care to debate whether rpgs are a good value for the dollar.  I think they're not bad, but in today's youth culture they're far to close to the cost of video games.

Not to mention costing a lot more than some pot.

Quote from: David JohansenNot to mention costing a lot more than some pot.

I'm of the opinion that pot was essential for the success of D&D.  Maybe RPGs need a new drug.

Quote from: JimBobOz"Saving" rpgs? What are we being asked to save them from?

Obscurity? Old age?

Maybe "saving" wasn't the best of terms, but it certainly couldn't help to figure out new ways to promote RPGs.

RPGPundit

Oh, promote them?

Well, best way to do that is to invite non-gamers into your game group. If you can get one person every three months to give it a go, then each year you'll have created a whole group's worth of people who've at least tried out roleplaying games. Some of them will stick with it.

It's like, that's how most people are recruited into the Army, at least here Down Under. They know someone who's in, or has been in, and who speaks well of it and recommends it to them. It's pretty rare for people to respond just to some Army advertisment and walk in off the street.

It's the same with restaurants. A person is much more likely to go to a restaurant recommended them by a friend, than to respond to an advertisment. It's why customer satisfaction is so important - one happy customer tells one other person, one unhappy customer tells ten others. So if only one out of ten of your customers are unhappy, about half your potential customers will have a negative report of your place. So you have to invite them in, and try to make them all happy, or at least not unhappy.

Same with roleplaying. However it's advertised or presented by the companies and shops, however prettily-drawn, well-edited, brilliantly-written the books are - in the end, you'll usually give it a go because someone you know, someone you trust or at least like, says, "it's fun, try it out, come next Monday night."

You want more gamers, make them. Our hobby can be pretty insular. Me, I try to make one non-gamer into a gamer each year - not just someone who's tried it once or twice, but someone who takes it on as a new hobby. Looking back, since I started gaming in 1983, to the best of my knowledge I've made a couple of dozen new gamers. And I'm not particularly charismatic or anything like that. It's just effort. Of course, most people can't be arsed doing that, so instead they say, "oh no I'll stick to my little group, fuck off n00bs stranger danger! But what can the companies do?"

Quote from: HalfjackI'm of the opinion that pot was essential for the success of D&D.  Maybe RPGs need a new drug.

I disagree.  About 70% of the people I've roleplayed with are potheads.  Pot'll do the job just as good now as it did then, and it's better in quality these days, to boot.

:hehe:

I agree with you on both points, JimBob. But I do think rulesets that give both the smart obsessives and the casual hobbyists easy entry can help with this.

Viral marketing is tricky business and not appropriate to every product and service. Focusing on regular ol' marketing will probably have to do...

Moreover, the world has changed enormously since the 70s. Best to forget about the factors that might have made D&D and AD&D a success back then.

Particularly since the niche who would be most interested in RPGs now have other creative outlets, such as MySpace pages, CRPGs, etc..

I'd try to attract older folks who'd never played.

Seanchai