TheRPGSite

Bit of background here. I started playing D&D in 1979. Played RPGs with the same group of guys all my life. We lost all contact with the commercial RPG market in about 1989. I regained contact in about 2002 via the Necromancer Games forum.

I don't play CCGs, or fantasy miniatures, or MMORGPs, or console games. I do play a lot of boardgames, mainly euros and wargames.

The most striking thing I've discovered about today's RPG scene is how much it is all about rules systems, 'crunch' (fuck I hate that word), and the insatiable demand for more of it. Among the people who I played RPGs with, the GM was, almost by definition, the person who was interested in rules and would actually read them. Players are the guys who show up to play, having not read or thought about the game at all since the last session.

While I realize the people I've played RPGs with have always been atypical, I don't recall reams and reams of published supplements expanding the rules to earlier RPGs, like Gamma World (which could have actually used some rules clarification), Call of Cthulhu, and Stormbringer. What I do recall is reams and reams of actual game content in the form of adventures.

Today's RPG model seems fundamentally different. I can see why the big publishers struck on the notion of selling books to players as well as GMs. I'm just a little surprised that they found such an enthusiastic market for these books. Perhaps when RPGs became a much more specialized and geeky hobby after the heyday of mass, casual play, a greater proportion of the remaining player base were indeed gear-heads. And I can also see the influence of Magic: the Gathering, with its reward of system mastery and options that increase player effectiveness.

But what I find difficult to understand is how many of today's small, independent games are also the domain of insatiable system wonks. I mean, weeks after games are published, you see calls for more options, more talents, more feats, more monsters, more spells, when the owners of the game can't possibly have come anywhere near exhausting the existing options. It's simply unfathomable to me how many gamers crave more options for games that they have hardly even played yet.

For example, take Mazes and Minotaurs. It's a simple, home-made, old-school game. From what I understand, only a handful of people have even played it. And yet, in the months after it was released, there was a busy community of contributors eagerly adding more rules, more options, more monsters, more spells. Meanwhile, nobody had actually written any adventures for the game. Heck, nobody was even playing it.

Now, I get the fact that some people just love fiddling with systems. But what I don't get is, is why that population of RPGers seems to dwarf the number of gamers who see encounters, maps, and adventures as the raw material for their games. By my recollection, that wasn't the case 20 years ago.

So what changed? And why?

Great topic!

I wonder if there's any common factors in the gamers who enjoy crunch, that is different from gamers who don't (or gamers who used to play back before the crunch set in).

blame gary?

i'm thinking of the old dragon mag issues, here.  articles would have all of these new expansions you speak of (rules, critters, spells, etc.).  this just wets the appetite of folks who like to tinker with the rules.  then it gets codified, in "best of dragon" issues, and later, UA, and the survival guides.  now you're used to the concept of rules supplements as future releases, not just adventures or setting sourcebooks.

I think the better question is 'when did somebody notice this stuff would move like hotcakes if you made it'. The gearhead tendency has been there a long, long time. Even if it didn't translate to purchases at every table.

Quote from: beeberblame gary?

Indeed, indeed... as early as the Greyhawk supplement for White Box. Also, Blackmoor.

But one ought divide the History of Crunch into at least two phases: "realism" crunch and gamey crunch.

"Realism" = glaive-guisarmes, weapon speed, Rolemaster.

"Gamey" = uhm... err... I dunno... Which RPG first explicitly introduced gamey crunch? Champions?

If Haffrung doesn't object, can I ask Pierce to expand on his division - realism versus gamey?

My memory kinda resembles your description - except that I was always drifting towards some way to decrease the abstraction.  Why? I have no idea - just something in my head that makes me want the world to react in a more "realistic" way. It's always at battle with the voices that are saying, "relax, it's all just an abstraction...relax, it's all just an abstraction..."

But I see where you're coming from, Haffrung...

Maybe something to do with the rise of computers and the crossover between gamers and programmers?

It's far easier to trust a machine than a man.

I'm not quite sure Bradford's statement covers all the bases but it is a large factor.  I also feel that rules like feats and advantages provide ideas for people who lack their own.  If you've ever tried to run an open ended game where nobody had any idea of what they wanted you know what I mean.

From a product perspective more rules = more books = more money.

The business model killed the old 100 page book in a box that was often a fairly complete rpg.

I'll note that many games of the sort were hard to follow and not necessarily simple.  Top Secret anyone?  (ooops there goes another flame war.)

I'm not sure the greater volume of noise to signal equals more readable games.  I've certainly met enough die hard D&D fans who swear by second edition but prove they've never actually read it within five minutes.

Badly written is just badly written.  Overwritten is generally a sign something is badly written.

Quote from: James J SkachIf Haffrung doesn't object, can I ask Pierce to expand on his division - realism versus gamey?

Uhm... not at this point, Skachy... I'm so hung over, it's not funny. Failed my Save vs. Poison. Screw real life--it's too realist!

Quote from: HaffrungThe most striking thing I've discovered about today's RPG scene is how much it is all about rules systems, 'crunch' (fuck I hate that word), and the insatiable demand for more of it. Among the people who I played RPGs with, the GM was, almost by definition, the person who was interested in rules and would actually read them. Players are the guys who show up to play, having not read or thought about the game at all since the last session.

I don't think it's really a "today's RPG scene" thing. Rolemaster (which some would call the undeniable King of Crunch) was first released in 1980. The complete Fighter's Handbook, and subsequent line of player-aimed books filled with new ways to push numbers around on your sheet, came out in '89.

QuoteSo what changed? And why?

The internet showed up and let people know just how many different ways to play there are out there. What was once a book that got flipped through once and subsequently ignored because "nobody would play that" is now an active online community.

Would it be fair to say that an RPG with lots of "crunch" is like a boardgame that is very "fiddly (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/glossary#toc59)"?

Quote from: BGG GlossaryFiddly
adj. Requiring lots of turn-by-turn maintenance which tends to bog down the ebb and flow of the game.

or like a boardgame that is very "heavy (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/glossary#toc86)" ?

Quoteheavy
adj. Having very complex rules and/or complex strategies that require deep thought, careful planning, and long playing times.

Quote from: StuartWould it be fair to say that an RPG with lots of "crunch" is like a boardgame that is very "fiddly (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/glossary#toc59)"?

or like a boardgame that is very "heavy (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/glossary#toc86)" ?

Yes.

Also, if we're discussing why it is that some games have lots of crunch and others have very little, it's because different people like different things, and prudent salesmen see where the holes are and aim there. You can see it in the predecessors to RPGs, the wargames, as well.

Warhammer is (from what I understand, never having played it) fairly rules light and has a seting that's well flushed out. But on the flip side you get things like Advanced Squad Leader and Star Fleet Battles, each of which has thousands of carefully labelled paragraphs full of crunch, and leave it mostly to other products to determine their settings (ASL has history books, SFB has Star Trek).

I guess it's relative -- 40K is lighter.  Generally "light" games seem to be the sort of things you'll get non-gamers to play as well, and "heavy" games tend to be a gamers-game sort of thing.  40K might be in the middle, but it wouldn't be light in the same way something like Risk would be. ;)

Quote from: StuartI guess it's relative -- 40K is lighter.  Generally "light" games seem to be the sort of things you'll get non-gamers to play as well, and "heavy" games tend to be a gamers-game sort of thing.  40K might be in the middle, but it wouldn't be light in the same way something like Risk would be. ;)

Sorry, I don't have a lot of wargaming experience. Mine is mostly ASL, SFB, and Mechwarrior, with a couple games of Warhammer so far back I can't remember them. If there are much lighter rulesets, substitute those instead. :)

I'm looking forward to a time when more of an emphasis is put on setting once again; and where "setting" means more than just "that thing where you get regional feats from".

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditI'm looking forward to a time when more of an emphasis is put on setting once again; and where "setting" means more than just "that thing where you get regional feats from".

Perhaps I could interest you in a White Wolf game? The Storyteller World of Darkness line sounds like it would be right up your alley. Exalted is also overflowing with setting. You may want to check it out. :)

Quote from: James McMurrayI don't think it's really a "today's RPG scene" thing. Rolemaster (which some would call the undeniable King of Crunch) was first released in 1980. The complete Fighter's Handbook, and subsequent line of player-aimed books filled with new ways to push numbers around on your sheet, came out in '89.

Yeah.  Champions / HERO System also started in the early 80s.  Then you had super-complex systems like Aftermath and Space Opera.  

I do think that D20 has pulled the average system towards the crunchier side since it was introduced (compared to the White Wolf model which was more typical of the 90s).  Still, I think there's been a variety of levels of crunchiness since the early 80s.

I started playing back in '79, too, and the desire for crunch was already there. I don't know how many reams of paper the gamers I knew, as well as myself, wasted on modifying games to add in crunch. That generation grew up to be game designers and game buyers who desired more crunch in games right out of the box.

some of the examples in this thread make me laugh.

Warhammer tabletop and Storyteller being used as "crunch light"?

Both games are notorious for piles of special rules, splats, power lists, and all sorts of other fiddly bits.

Quote from: James McMurrayThe internet showed up and let people know just how many different ways to play there are out there. What was once a book that got flipped through once and subsequently ignored because "nobody would play that" is now an active online community.

Insightful, I think.

It certainly explains how Classic Traveller, Tekumel, Harn, Ars Magica and other games hardly anyone plays can have so many websites, discussion forums and so on.

Quote from: HaffrungBut what I find difficult to understand is how many of today's small, independent games are also the domain of insatiable system wonks. I mean, weeks after games are published, you see calls for more options, more talents, more feats, more monsters, more spells, when the owners of the game can't possibly have come anywhere near exhausting the existing options. It's simply unfathomable to me how many gamers crave more options for games that they have hardly even played yet.

It's simple -- cause and effect.
Cause: They hardly ever play the game
Effect: Therefore they crave more.

Someone who loves roleplaying but hardly ever plays has to express that love in some other way, by meticulously painting miniatures, writing exhaustive backstories, constructing intricate houserules, carefuly selecting spell lists, planning feats to level 20 and any other labor-of-love stuff that can be accomplished without actualy playing a game.

Idealy, I like some gaming but not to much. That way I show up to game with a painted miniature, a good backstory and acceptable feats and equipment (or houserules if I'm wearing the viking hat.)

Because nobody demanded anything else than rules and most people still don't do. How many people buy rules books and how many buy setting books in comparison? I am willing to bet that there are a lot more people who buy rulebooks, always have been. No matter whether we played Shadowrun, Das Schwarze Auge or Vampire.
And that of course formed the opinion of the industry of what is needed and what is not so much needed in a rpg. So, the industry puts out more and more rules and what happens... a lot of people buy them. They would be stupid if they wouldn't put out more rules.
And that is ultimately the reason why the rpg market is shrinking, most rpgs at least the meainstream ones, are fucking inaccessible. Ever tried teaching a rules heavy system to a group of people who never played a rpg before? Tried that a couple of times with shadowrun (which isn't even nearly as complex as say D&D) and most of the time only got blank stares when I pulled out the rulebook and started talking.

Here are some popular games and their light<-->heavy rating from BGG.  The higher the number the heavier / crunchier the game.

Clue         1.65 / 5
Risk         2.05 / 5

Ticket to Ride      1.87 / 5
Carcasonne      1.94 / 5
Settlers of Catan   2.37 / 5

Arkham Horror      2.29 / 5
Battlelore      2.77 / 5

Descent         3.17 / 5
War of the Ring      3.77 / 5
Twilight Imperium   4.04 / 5

The lighter the game (less crunch) the more widely popular it has the potential to be.  Heavy (crunchy) games can be popular -- but only within a niche audience.

Quote from: James McMurrayPerhaps I could interest you in a White Wolf game? The Storyteller World of Darkness line sounds like it would be right up your alley. Exalted is also overflowing with setting. You may want to check it out. :)

No, they're not. They're overflowing with pretentious bullshit.  They were in fact some of the first to KILL setting by making Setting an excuse to sell "splatbooks".

SETTING is stuff like what you used to get in the Old World Gazetteers for Mystara. Lots of cool details, random tables for encounters and for fluff material, stuff on local challenges, culture, etc. and really cool hex maps.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditNo, they're not. They're overflowing with pretentious bullshit.  They were in fact some of the first to KILL setting by making Setting an excuse to sell "splatbooks".

Awww, now now. Someone is all cranky and didn't do a lot of white wolf reading in the last half decade.

Seriously, the relaunch of the WoD in 2004 cured the metaplot problem, these days the setting books of the WoD lines are pretty well done and useful.

Quote from: blakkieI think the better question is 'when did somebody notice this stuff would move like hotcakes if you made it'. The gearhead tendency has been there a long, long time. Even if it didn't translate to purchases at every table.

That's probably true.

Maybe my personal experience was skewed towards the casual players. In the heyday of D&D we were 10-15 years old, mostly guys who found the rules D&D already a bit bewildering and hated math and homework to begin with. Even among DMs, game preparation was all about drawing maps and populating dungeons. I don't remember a DM ever adding more rules to a game, nor a player asking for more spells/options. The PHB and DMG kept us going for 20 years.

Quote from: David JohansenFrom a product perspective more rules = more books = more money.

The business model killed the old 100 page book in a box that was often a fairly complete rpg.

That's what I'm talking about. We bought Gamma World, Top Secret, or Call of Cthulhu, and we were done. All we needed were new adventures.

Quote from: HaffrungThat's what I'm talking about. We bought Gamma World, Top Secret, or Call of Cthulhu, and we were done. All we needed were new adventures.

Well, not every gaming group buys the same stuff. Around here people would never touch a published adventure because we thought they were boring and took pride in "making cool stuff up".
Rulebooks on the other hand... we purchased quite a few.

Quote from: James McMurrayI don't think it's really a "today's RPG scene" thing. Rolemaster (which some would call the undeniable King of Crunch) was first released in 1980. The complete Fighter's Handbook, and subsequent line of player-aimed books filled with new ways to push numbers around on your sheet, came out in '89.

I'm not doubting there have always been players who preferred very complex systems and couldn't get enough new rules. I'm questioning why rules expansions went from being the domain of a particular style of RPG to an absolute necessity for all RPG systems.

Six months after Gamma World was published we didn't see the Book of New Mutations, or Gear of the Apocalypse. The only thing you saw were adventures. Same with Call of Cthulhu. And Stormbringer.

The designers published the rules, and then the line survived with settings and adventures. Now for most games, the rules are followed by more rules, and no adventures to speak of.

I was looking up Reign last night. All the supplements published after the core game have been devised after submissions from players saying what they want. And it seems all they want is more rules. How many adventures have been published for Reign? Zero, as far as I can tell. Even after six books of supplements.

Quote from: HaffrungI was looking up Reign last night. All the supplements published after the core game have been devised after submissions from players saying what they want. And it seems all they want is more rules. How many adventures have been published for Reign? Zero, as far as I can tell. Even after six books of supplements.

The problem with designing adventures for REIGN is that for the adventure to make even the slightest bit of sense you'd have to choose what kind of Company to pitch it at - you can't design a module which is equally suitable for the rulers of a kingdom, the kingpins of a thieves' guild, a threadbare theatrical troupe and the hidden leaders of a near-extinct cult. Anything you produce will be entirely unusable in half the REIGN campaigns out there.

Quote from: Malleus ArianorumIt's simple -- cause and effect.
Cause: They hardly ever play the game
Effect: Therefore they crave more.

Someone who loves roleplaying but hardly ever plays has to express that love in some other way, by meticulously painting miniatures, writing exhaustive backstories, constructing intricate houserules, carefuly selecting spell lists, planning feats to level 20 and any other labor-of-love stuff that can be accomplished without actualy playing a game.

This, I think, is the nub of it. When we played D&D three or four times a week, we had no time to sit around at home and study feat chains. All we needed to fuel our game was a steady supply of adventures.

I suspect that a hefty portion of today's RPG market either does not play at all, or plays occassionally and spend a lot of time between sessions writing backstories, planning feats to level 20, etc. That's why a game can have a thriving community, a steady of supply of supplements, and see no adventures published in all that activity. You only need adventures for actual play.

Look at the Ars Magical forum. Thread after thread after thread on new spells, house rules, and rules minutiae. Very occassional a newbie pokes his head in an asks, um, how do I actually run an adventure for this game. A couple cursory responses and it's back to the rules and spells workshop. It makes you wonder how many of the 'active' community are actually playing the game, rather than simply generating huge libraries of spells and making up mages they'll never use.

The same thing happened to wargames during it's maturation as a hobby. The games got bigger, more complex, and less playable. Turns out half of all wargamers play only solo, or never get past punching the counters, reading the rules, and playing through a turn or two. Publishers picked up on this, and started making games that were interesting to read and impressive in their contents, with thousands of counters, multiple maps, and rules chock full of historical chrome.

Strange things happen to a game hobby when most of the market is made up of collectors and system fiddlers.

Quote from: SaphimBecause nobody demanded anything else than rules and most people still don't do. How many people buy rules books and how many buy setting books in comparison?

When are we talking about? Because in the 80s, a typical RPG had no rules expension, and shitloads of setting and adventure material. Now the reverse is true. Something changed.

Quote from: SaphimAnd that is ultimately the reason why the rpg market is shrinking, most rpgs at least the meainstream ones, are fucking inaccessible. Ever tried teaching a rules heavy system to a group of people who never played a rpg before? Tried that a couple of times with shadowrun (which isn't even nearly as complex as say D&D) and most of the time only got blank stares when I pulled out the rulebook and started talking.

 I agree 100 per cent. The preferences of the hardcore gamer run contrary to the needs of the new gamer. Cater to the one and you drive away the other.

Quote from: WarthurThe problem with designing adventures for REIGN is that for the adventure to make even the slightest bit of sense you'd have to choose what kind of Company to pitch it at - you can't design a module which is equally suitable for the rulers of a kingdom, the kingpins of a thieves' guild, a threadbare theatrical troupe and the hidden leaders of a near-extinct cult. Anything you produce will be entirely unusable in half the REIGN campaigns out there.

Sure. But wouldn't much of the crunch also be unusuitable to half the REIGN campaigns out there? Or is the assumption that everyone always wants more crunch?

Quote from: HaffrungSo what changed? And why?

To be glib about it nothing and everything. Seriously early D&D was all about crunch since Greyhawk was released, followed by Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, etc.

Then three AD&D hardbacks, followed by Deities and Demigods, Fiend Folio then ....

nothing until 1985 with unearthed arcana.

The early 80's was the golden era of D&D adventures. Blazed by Judges Guild prodigious output TSR followed suit then came the success of Dragonlance.

However Unearthed Arcana "saved" the company and it's success didn't go unnoticed. But it wasn't until the release of 2nd edition AD&D that splatbooks started to be churned out by the bucketful. 3rd Edition did nothing to change the trend.

You got out in 1989 when 2nd edition hit so you missed the rise of the 2nd edition splatbook.

Quote from: HaffrungWhen are we talking about? Because in the 80s, a typical RPG had no rules expension, and shitloads of setting and adventure material. Now the reverse is true. Something changed.
/QUOTE]


I don't think anything really changed. What are Greyhawk, Blackmoor and the rest of the OD&D books but splatbooks.

Bledsaw, Owens and the rest of the Judges Guild crew are the guys who put adventure and setting products on the map. They were a success because of a) price and b) let's face it a lot of us didn't know what the hell we were doing and appreciated the help. When your world consisted of a handful of books why wouldn't an adventure sell. Plus many of the older adventures were tournament modules from conventions and had a hell of a lot of playtesting.

Basically the early 80's was the golden age and Dragonlance was the height of success for TSR. But changed was the success of Unearthed Arcana, and later the fall of Gygax and the release of 2nd edition.

The splatbooks succeed because everyone buys them (player and GM). Everyone uses them again and again unlike most adventures. However I believe that adventures can succeed if they a) priced right, b) truly save the GM time, and c) written well. If you can make it useful beyond the presented plot then that is a bonus (like a village or town you can reuse.

The Dungeon Crawl Classics succeed because of a,b and c. When you buy a DCC product you know what you are getting as far as quality goes.

Quote from: HaffrungSix months after Gamma World was published we didn't see the Book of New Mutations, or Gear of the Apocalypse. The only thing you saw were adventures. Same with Call of Cthulhu. And Stormbringer.

They followed the lead of TSR. And when TSR showed how splatbooks could pay people followed that. But White Wolf probably sealed the deal with how they published World of Darkness to rise to #2.

Note that Call of Cthulu is still adventure oriented. Probably due to the emphasize on investigation. Also Goodman Games has two distinct brand revolving around adventures. The premise, one of them, Xcrawl, naturally makes the adventure the primary product of the line.

My initial response to the thread title was "about crunch? When did crunch become a bad thing?", because it seems to me that if you had a game that, you know, had answers for questions to a good measure of common occurrences in the game, a vocal segment of the populace decries it for being "too crunchy".

But it appears we are talking about the rules supplement thing here. Which is, yeah, old news.

Quote from: HaffrungBut what I find difficult to understand is how many of today's small, independent games are also the domain of insatiable system wonks. I mean, weeks after games are published, you see calls for more options, more talents, more feats, more monsters, more spells, when the owners of the game can't possibly have come anywhere near exhausting the existing options. It's simply unfathomable to me how many gamers crave more options for games that they have hardly even played yet.

For example, take Mazes and Minotaurs. It's a simple, home-made, old-school game. From what I understand, only a handful of people have even played it. And yet, in the months after it was released, there was a busy community of contributors eagerly adding more rules, more options, more monsters, more spells. Meanwhile, nobody had actually written any adventures for the game. Heck, nobody was even playing it.

Quote from:  Bradford C. WalkerIt's far easier to trust a machine than a man.

I hate me too posts, but I have to say me too to both of these even if they diverge a bit from the main question. I am especially puzzled by the Mazes and Minotaurs example, and the general lack of directly play-relevant material. Most of my output as a fan has been in the form of adventures, and with about two exceptions, all of them saw actual gaming. Yet I am surprised to be almost alone in this respect. A lot of people make free crunch, but I don't know too many people who make free adventures (the DF publications are exceptions, and some OSRIC products may more or less count).

Quote from: Caesar SlaadBut it appears we are talking about the rules supplement thing here. Which is, yeah, old news.

I think a game can be "too crunchy" / "too heavy" for many people's tastes from the outset -- without any supplements.

Quote from: HaffrungThat's probably true.

Maybe my personal experience was skewed towards the casual players. In the heyday of D&D we were 10-15 years old, mostly guys who found the rules D&D already a bit bewildering and hated math and homework to begin with. Even among DMs, game preparation was all about drawing maps and populating dungeons. I don't remember a DM ever adding more rules to a game, nor a player asking for more spells/options. The PHB and DMG kept us going for 20 years.

In my 20 years of running D&D/AD&D1E/AD&D2E, I can say I started houseruling from the instant I started running it, back in 1977 - I played one session in an existing game before starting up my own group as a GM. I was used to kitbashing and houseruling board and war games, and didn't hesitate with RPGs. Each time a new edition came out, I'd take what I wanted from it and can the rest. Some of my players enjoyed the process as much as I did, and between us we made it pretty unrecognizable from a rules standpoint. Other players enjoyed the results, but not the process. They were casual gamers.

All of my players had PHBs, and several had DMGS and other books. At one time I had 14 players in my group coming every week, but I pared that down to a more comfortable 7-8 after a while by attrition. I no longer run D&D because of burnout - 20 years is enough!

My experience seems to have been very different from yours, so perhaps you just happened to have all casual players. I seem to have had an unusually high proportion of non-casual players. It's tough to draw conclusions from limited data. :D

-clash

At least some of this can be the result of the cyclical search for Utopia in gaming.  "What role-playing games need are more rules."  Nope.  No Utopia there.  "What role-playing games need are less rules."  Nope.  No Utopia there.  "What role-playing games need are more adventures."  Nope.  No Utopia there.  "What role-playing games need are less adventures."  Nope.  No  Utopia there.  More setting material?  No Utopia.  Less setting material?  No Utopia.  More meta-plot?  No Utopia.  No meta-plot?  No Utopia.

Quote from: HaffrungLook at the Ars Magical forum. Thread after thread after thread on new spells, house rules, and rules minutiae. Very occassional a newbie pokes his head in an asks, um, how do I actually run an adventure for this game. A couple cursory responses and it's back to the rules and spells workshop. It makes you wonder how many of the 'active' community are actually playing the game, rather than simply generating huge libraries of spells and making up mages they'll never use.

Ars Magica isn't just an example, it's the pioneer. First of all, there is plenty of out of game busywork that's well suited to solitary play. Secondly the rules usualy have at least three ways to achieve the same effect. For example, if you want to see well, you could get (1) a vision virtue, or (2) improve character attributes (perception) with a virtue, or (3) get a virtue that gives you extra character points for your seeing skill or (4) get a virtue that gives you a bonus to your seeing skill or (7) get a virtue that lets you buy farie virtues such as several that improve your vision (8) or get a virtue that gives you a magical item that gives you improved vision and so on.... So if you want to fart around with your unique snowflake eyesight you can do so endlessly. Thirdly, there's a fetishistic aspect to the rules where the tabulating, adding, dice rolling and so forth don't just adjudicate the results, they also simulate the activity. The library, labwork and longevity rolls are especialy like this IMO.

By pioneer I mean that I credit the analogous game-structures found D&D3.x to the Ars Magica to Tweet and Rein*hagan. Erik Wujick's rules have a similar quality, but they have a

Quote from: HaffrungSure. But wouldn't much of the crunch also be unusuitable to half the REIGN campaigns out there? Or is the assumption that everyone always wants more crunch?

Most of the crunch in the supplements (to my disappointment) is culturally specific to the default setting of REIGN, and is mainly character-level stuff - new types of magic to study, new martial paths to master, that kind of thing. Most PC Companies will probably have characters who are interested in that kind of thing; conversely, only a few would be interested in, say, detailed trading rules or mass battle rules.

Quote from: HaffrungLook at the Ars Magical forum. Thread after thread after thread on new spells, house rules, and rules minutiae. Very occassional a newbie pokes his head in an asks, um, how do I actually run an adventure for this game. A couple cursory responses and it's back to the rules and spells workshop. It makes you wonder how many of the 'active' community are actually playing the game, rather than simply generating huge libraries of spells and making up mages they'll never use.

To be fair, Ars Magica is a game where the downtime is at least as important as the actual adventuring; much of actual gameplay involves coming up with new spells and other advanced magical research, so rules discussions and spell ideas are damn useful when you're actually playing a game.

Also, I've never seen an RPG forum where newbies saying "Hey, how do I actually run an adventure for this game?" get more than a cursory response. Experienced players/GMs of a particular game already know the answer to that question, and have probably already answered it on that very forum a dozen times. It's no surprise when regularly-asked questions get a couple of replies and a polite request to search the forum archives; repeating oneself gets very boring very quickly.

Quote from: HaffrungI'm not doubting there have always been players who preferred very complex systems and couldn't get enough new rules. I'm questioning why rules expansions went from being the domain of a particular style of RPG to an absolute necessity for all RPG systems.

Because players like answers to their questions and game designers like to stay in business?

Quote from: RPGPunditNo, they're not. They're overflowing with pretentious bullshit.  They were in fact some of the first to KILL setting by making Setting an excuse to sell "splatbooks".

SETTING is stuff like what you used to get in the Old World Gazetteers for Mystara. Lots of cool details, random tables for encounters and for fluff material, stuff on local challenges, culture, etc. and really cool hex maps.

RPGPundit

Did you skip your Metamucil this morning? It sounds to me like you even want crunch in your setting (i.e. random tables and hex maps).

Quote from: HaffrungWhen are we talking about? Because in the 80s, a typical RPG had no rules expension, and shitloads of setting and adventure material. Now the reverse is true. Something changed.

A typical RPG you played. Several examples of crunch-laden RPG splatbooks and systems from the 80s, including D&D itself, have been given.

Quote from: James McMurrayA typical RPG you played. Several examples of crunch-laden RPG splatbooks and systems from the 80s, including D&D itself, have been given.

Most games had way more adventure material than rules crunch. Even D&D.

Compare the number of adventures and setting books TSR published for D&D between 1980 and 1989 versus splat books. At least 5:1. Probably closer to 10:1.

How about Traveller? 10:1?

Paranoia - Reams of adventures. A handful of splat books.

Stormbringer - Reams of setting books. No splat books.

Talislanta -  Reams of setting books. No splat books.

Pendragon - Setting and campaign books.

Runequest - Settings and adventures, with a few books of cults and so forth throw in. About 3:1 setting/adventure versus splatbooks.

ICE Middle Earth - Settings books coming out of their ass.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 1E - Setting books and adventures. No splats.

I've already mentioned Call of Cthulhu. And Gamma World.

Even Champions was about 1:1 adventures versus new rules crunch.

Against that, you have GURPS, and...

Now look at today's games. How many have more published setting and adventure books than splat/crunch books?

I don't have any data, but I do have an awesome local games store that still has thousands of RPG books from the 80s, and stocks copies of every RPG published in North America. Maybe I'll go through their online catalogue and see if I can back up my observations. But perusing the shelves, as I did on Saturday, there's a dramatic difference in what kinds of book are published for RPG games today compared with  20 years ago.

Quote from: James McMurrayBecause players like answers to their questions and game designers like to stay in business?

I'm not talking about rules clarifications - I'm talking about a mania for player options. I'm talking about buying a game with 8 PC classes and, before you've even played it, clamouring for more classes.

I'm not saying nobody wanted more player options in 1984. But judging by what was published and sold, a lot more people wanted settings and adventures.

Quote from: HaffrungI'm not saying nobody wanted more player options in 1984. But judging by what was published and sold, a lot more people wanted settings and adventures.

In 1984, I just wanted to see a naked girl.

Quote from: HaffrungMost games had way more adventure material than rules crunch. Even D&D.

How many of those game companies survived, even TSR? What was printed didn't necessarily reflect well on what was actually wanted by the customer.

QuoteI don't have any data, but I do have an awesome local games store that still has thousands of RPG books from the 80s, and stocks copies of every RPG published in North America. Maybe I'll go through their online catalogue and see if I can back up my observations. But perusing the shelves, as I did on Saturday, there's a dramatic difference in what kinds of book are published for RPG games today compared with  20 years ago.

There's also a dramamtic difference in the longevity of game companies. It's gone up considerably since they started focusing on what the customers wanted instead of what the authors wanted to write.

For example, we'll take some TSR offerings: Complete Fighter's Handbook + Complete Wizard's Handbook. You're selling to the players, of which there are more. Almost every wizard player is going to want CWH, and almost every Fighter player will want CFH. A lot of players will want both, and GMs will need to have access to both as well. Lots of copies selling.

On the flip side you've Got the Greyhawk Adventures setting book, and the Forgotten Realms boxed set. Few players buy them. Of the GMs, it's rare that someone will buy both, because it's hard to have a campaign set both on Oerth and Faerun. Lots of GMs become GMs because they like to build their own stuff. These guys won't get Greyhawk or FR, but they may still buy Complete *, especially if they're got a player clamoring to use it and they want to pour through it themselves before giving it the ok.

Completists would buy both setting books, but they'd also buy both of the splatbooks, so if you print Complete * instead of DM's Guide to Tunisia, you still get their money.

RPGs from day one have had a setup where catering to the players with new toys would be more fruitful than catering to GMs with new worlds and adventures. You definitely need some of theat, or you lose the gamers that don't want or don't have time to create everything for their campaign from scratch. But if you print too much, you end up with products that compete with themselves.

Quote from: HaffrungI don't have any data, but I do have an awesome local games store that still has thousands of RPG books from the 80s, and stocks copies of every RPG published in North America. Maybe I'll go through their online catalogue and see if I can back up my observations. But perusing the shelves, as I did on Saturday, there's a dramatic difference in what kinds of book are published for RPG games today compared with  20 years ago.

The reason is simple, Haffrung, and requires you only to look in a mirror. If companies stop selling something that used to sell a lot of, then the reason is obvious - it doesn't sell enough now to be worth the bother. Why? Who cared about the adventures? Casual gamers. Most of the casual gamers dropped out of the hobby - example: one Haffrung.

What do non-casual gamers need with adventures? I only ever bought two, and I didn't run them, I strip-mined them for ideas. I'm perfectly capable of coming up with adventures out the wazoo for my group. I have been doing it for thirty years, and most non-casual gamers are like me. I can sit down with my group and with zero prep run a kick ass game that will have them talking for months.

I've written adventures. They take longer to write than anything, because everything needs explaining, all the details have to be included, and every location mapped out meticulously. You can't get away with some generic goons, a plot generated on the fly by the GM & players together, and some maps scrawled on the back of a napkin.

They also don't sell. The only adventures I know that sell worth spit are those that cater to AD&D grognards. Most adventures are given away free - on the website or as intro adventures, are fan-written, or are pure loss-leaders. Of the adventures I publish, only one even made what it cost to produce. My other supplements sell like crazy, especially the crunchy ones!

-clash

Quote from: HaffrungI'm not saying nobody wanted more player options in 1984. But judging by what was published and sold, a lot more people wanted settings and adventures.

If they sold so well, why are they still on your game store's shelf 25 years later?

Quote from: HaffrungI'm not talking about rules clarifications - I'm talking about a mania for player options. I'm talking about buying a game with 8 PC classes and, before you've even played it, clamouring for more classes.

I'm not saying nobody wanted more player options in 1984. But judging by what was published and sold, a lot more people wanted settings and adventures.

Heh - this is why I'm thinking of taking the SR4 system (and the updated melee rules in arsenal) and stripping out the setting so I can use it with anything.

I'm tired of flipping through book after book (or PDFs or hopping on my computer to search online) - I want something with a moderate amount of crunch but fully extensible... and most importantly all in one book (or at most 2 books)! :rant:

Quote from: James McMurrayRPGs from day one have had a setup where catering to the players with new toys would be more fruitful than catering to GMs with new worlds and adventures. You definitely need some of theat, or you lose the gamers that don't want or don't have time to create everything for their campaign from scratch. But if you print too much, you end up with products that compete with themselves.

Bingo, James!

-clash

Quote from: James McMurrayFor example, we'll take some TSR offerings: Complete Fighter's Handbook + Complete Wizard's Handbook. You're selling to the players, of which there are more. Almost every wizard player is going to want CWH, and almost every Fighter player will want CFH. A lot of players will want both, and GMs will need to have access to both as well. Lots of copies selling.

I guess the people I play with are weird. Because the players can barely be arsed to read the PHB/Core rules, let alone seek out more homework. Back in our heyday of the 80s, books were for GMs because the GMs were typically the hardcore gamers and the rest of the group was not.

But as I've noted, I got into RPGs during the enormous crest of popularity of D&D, when every junior high school had a D&D club and many players were not 'gamers' in today's sense.

I actually play more boardgames - both wargames and euros - than RPGs. Historical hex and counter wargaming is definitely a niche hobby, geared towards hardcores (though it wasn't always so) who spend loads of cash, peruse rules, and fiddle with games on their lonesome. Euros, on the other hand, are much more accessible. A typical euro group consists of one or maybe two people who learns about the games, buys them, and teaches them. The rest are casual players who give no thought to gaming between weekly sessions. That's not so different from my experience with D&D at its peak of popularity in the early 80s.

So maybe the question is when did RPGs become a hobby strictly for hardcores? Of course there have always been hardcores, but they were only part of the market, not the whole market. You could say the same about a hobby like comics. They used to be written for 11-year-olds to buy off a rack at 7-11. Now they're aimed at 27 year-olds who spend half of their paycheque from Blockbuster every month at specialty comic stores.

My impression is RPGs have followed the trajectory of wargames: from wide commercial gaming market with a high ratio of games played to games bought, to a niche geek market driven by hardcores who spend more time fiddling with games than playing them. Like wargames, the move of RPGs towards crunch-heavy systems and publishing strategies reflects the changing market, but it also helped shape that market, as the preferences of existing hardcore players make games intimidating and inaccessible to newcomers.

Quote from: Bradford C. WalkerIt's far easier to trust a machine than a man.

You've obviously never used a machine running code I've created.  Trust that machine at the peril of your immortal soul.

Two questions to those with actual rather than imagined business acumen:

1) So long as a product is profitable in and of itself, as opposed to being less profitable than another product: why not continue producing it? Hire as many "novelists" as you need, but keep the RPG staff.

I'm assuming that DH etc. had the potential to BE profitable. We don't know the size of the initial print run that sold out, but clearly it was more than 500.

2) "Brand dilution": How would a successful RPG ever impinge on the success of a minis game?

Quote from: HaffrungSo maybe the question is when did RPGs become a hobby strictly for hardcores?

When it imploded.

Paul Chapman, marketing director for Steve Jackson Games, said last year that he estimated the RPG hobby was about a $50 Million per year industry.

When I worked for Dave Arneson, I saw some of the figures for D&D.  In the 1977 - 1983 time period, D&D ALONE was a $50 M per year industry.

Not counting other TSR products.  D&D ALONE.

In 1977 - 1983 dollars.

This hobby has imploded, dude.  Of COURSE there's nobody left but the hardcores.

Also, the "Why no adventures" question gets asked at RPGnet from time to time, and every time, the same dozen or so people who actually work in the industry say "Because splatbooks sell way more than adventures".

As Vimes would say, "Follow the money".

Quote from: Pierce InverarityTwo questions to those with actual rather than imagined business acumen:

1) So long as a product is profitable in and of itself, as opposed to being less profitable than another product: why not continue producing it? Hire as many "novelists" as you need, but keep the RPG staff.

I'm assuming that DH etc. had the potential to BE profitable. We don't know the size of the initial print run that sold out, but clearly it was more than 500.

2) "Brand dilution": How would a successful RPG ever impinge on the success of a minis game?

The answer to the first question depends on whether it's a privately held company or not. I say this because if it is publicly held, there's pressure form the shareholders to maximize profit - so it's not good enough just to be profitable.

Now, a privately help company has more leeway depending on the owners wishes. A privately held company could decide, just as you've pointed out, that they like the having the product line, for whatever reason, and so keep producing it even if it's only a bit profitable.  In fact, some will even run a portion at a loss, letting other portions make up the difference.

Rarely, if ever, will you see this in a public company - not unless it can be shown that the loss leads to bigger profits in some other portion of the business, profits that would not exist were it not for the losing sector. If that makes any sense whatsoever....

Quote from: flyingmiceI'm perfectly capable of coming up with adventures out the wazoo for my group. I have been doing it for thirty years, and most non-casual gamers are like me. I can sit down with my group and with zero prep run a kick ass game that will have them talking for months.

Why can't you (or your players) come up with rules crunch on your own without buying it?

But getting back to the assertion that players have always wanted crunch, were lots of people adding player options and rules crunch to Call of Cthulhu and Traveller on their own? Did they open the core book of Pendragon and instantly find the choices of knightly virtues and skills too limited? I don't know, I'm just wondering.

Because that's what I see a lot of in online discussions these days: people who haven't even played a game, or played only one or two sessions, clamouring for more players options and suggesting elaborations of the rules. I've always assumed that it's a good idea to play a game (any game) a number of times so that you can explore the existing options and understand how it actually works before you change or add anything.

Quote from: flyingmiceOf the adventures I publish, only one even made what it cost to produce. My other supplements sell like crazy, especially the crunchy ones!

I don't doubt it. And yet, I wonder how many of the people who buy those crunchy supplements actually play the games.

It's far more complicated.

It was games like Traveller and GURPS, which back in the 80s invented the solo-crunch of the design sequences for vehicles and world systems.

The 90s were the decade of the read-only setting-heavy games. The AEG model. CoC, the game with the most published adventures, assimilated itself to that model. From a great game it turned into a good read.

And then 3.x D&D comes out, a crunchy game even at the corebook level, and is a major success among real actual players of games.

Quote from: HaffrungI guess the people I play with are weird. Because the players can barely be arsed to read the PHB/Core rules, let alone seek out more homework. Back in our heyday of the 80s, books were for GMs because the GMs were typically the hardcore gamers and the rest of the group was not.

For casual gamers that don't buy books, there has been no change in the way things work. Publishers realized that not all players are casual gamers, and that GMs had to buy the books anyway.

QuoteSo maybe the question is when did RPGs become a hobby strictly for hardcores?

They aren't. There are still people showing up to games who have only read the PHB, or not even that much. But, since they're casual gamers, we don't see them posting online.

Quote from: HaffrungWhy can't you (or your players) come up with rules crunch on your own without buying it?

Because some people do it as their jobs, and the rest of us have jobs to do. It's a matter of time.

QuoteBecause that's what I see a lot of in online discussions these days: people who haven't even played a game, or played only one or two sessions, clamouring for more players options and suggesting elaborations of the rules. I've always assumed that it's a good idea to play a game (any game) a number of times so that you can explore the existing options and understand how it actually works before you change or add anything.

That is definitely a good idea. But since when has the general public restricted themselves to good ideas? It's just more visible now because it's on the internet instead of in a stranger's living room across town.

QuoteI don't doubt it. And yet, I wonder how many of the people who buy those crunchy supplements actually play the games.

From the point of view of the publishers it doesn't matter.

Quote from: flyingmiceI've written adventures. They take longer to write than anything, because everything needs explaining, all the details have to be included, and every location mapped out meticulously. You can't get away with some generic goons, a plot generated on the fly by the GM & players together, and some maps scrawled on the back of a napkin.

They also don't sell. The only adventures I know that sell worth spit are those that cater to AD&D grognards. Most adventures are given away free - on the website or as intro adventures, are fan-written, or are pure loss-leaders. Of the adventures I publish, only one even made what it cost to produce. My other supplements sell like crazy, especially the crunchy ones!

-clash

Clash, to add my own experience, I find adventures easy to write. Mainly due to my approach of hitting plot points, and conflict ideas and Plot twists. I leave the details to the GM. My adventures are more a source-adventure hybrid and it helps a lot.

That said, my experience has been that I can usually sell about 300-500 of an adventure or about 1/2 of the total source books sold. Also, they are very profitable and have a reasonable break even, for me. This has to do with much more than just market trends.

In the end, I truly believe the old model of Room A->Room B->Room C type guided adventures are gone. I think to produce successful adventures you need to have description of locale couched in a story that is fun for the GM or the players to read. Don't get me wrong, I used to buy those adventures and still have a shelf full of them but you know what? I would grab the maps and through out the rest. Maps were enough (and still are) for me to be highly inspired.

Of course, all the above is just me and my experiences.

Bill

Quote from: Old GeezerWhen it imploded.

Paul Chapman, marketing director for Steve Jackson Games, said last year that he estimated the RPG hobby was about a $50 Million per year industry.

When I worked for Dave Arneson, I saw some of the figures for D&D.  In the 1977 - 1983 time period, D&D ALONE was a $50 M per year industry.

Not counting other TSR products.  D&D ALONE.

In 1977 - 1983 dollars.

This hobby has imploded, dude.  Of COURSE there's nobody left but the hardcores.

Agreed.  From what I know, there was a peak of popularity at around 1981, and steady decline through the eighties.  Some cultural products lagged behind this, like Gary Alan Fine's "Shared Fantasy" (1983) and the D&D cartoon series (1983-86).  There was a mild revival with the early 90s driven by the popularity of Vampire, but it never reached the peak of 1980.  The late nineties similarly declined.  There was another mild revival in 2000 with the release of D&D3, followed by another decline.  Still, D&D3 mainly revitalized lapsed players rather than creating new ones, and neither of the two revivals approached the 1980 peak.  

Player option books and splatbooks became more common in the nineties with White Wolf's lines but also D&Ds parallels.   Though looking at the mid-eighties, I note that the D&D cartoon tried hard to promote one of the first player option books, Unearthed Arcana (i.e. Cavalier, Barbarian, Acrobat).

Quote from: HaffrungWhy can't you (or your players) come up with rules crunch on your own without buying it?

But I did, from the very beginning, and many of my players did too. I stated that already. Heck, I'm a game designer and publisher now. Obviously I did.

QuoteBut getting back to the assertion that players have always wanted crunch, were lots of people adding player options and rules crunch to Call of Cthulhu and Traveller on their own? Did they open the core book of Pendragon and instantly find the choices of knightly virtues and skills too limited? I don't know, I'm just wondering.

I don't know about lots of people. I'm talking only for my own group, but I had at least five or six players helping me eviscerate AD&D and recreate it in our own image, and that began for me within minutes of being exposed to the concept of roleplaying, and within months of others being exposed to it.

QuoteBecause that's what I see a lot of in online discussions these days: people who haven't even played a game, or played only one or two sessions, clamouring for more players options and suggesting elaborations of the rules. I've always assumed that it's a good idea to play a game (any game) a number of times so that you can explore the existing options and understand how it actually works before you change or add anything.

If it's something like AD&D, how it works and how it all interacts is simple. It's the game itself that's complicated. It was easy as pie to swap ouot this for that and change this into that because OD&D and AD&D were designed to work with several totally dissimilar sub-rulesets. Jury-rigging your own was easy because the game accepted and encouraged it. This is not the case with 3.X and higher D&D, which is a beautifully designed machine which is fully integrated and extensible and an absolute nightmare to houserule.

QuoteI don't doubt it. And yet, I wonder how many of the people who buy those crunchy supplements actually play the games.

I have no idea, and I have no way of telling that. I do see lots of people downloading multiple copies of the free light version of the rules, which only makes sense if they are giving them out to players. All I know is that people buy my games and my supplements enough so that I can continue making them available.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceBut I did, from the very beginning, and many of my players did too. I stated that already.

Sure. Just wondering why, according to the market:

Adventures = something you can make yourself

Splat books = something you have to buy

Quote from: HinterWeltClash, to add my own experience, I find adventures easy to write. Mainly due to my approach of hitting plot points, and conflict ideas and Plot twists. I leave the details to the GM. My adventures are more a source-adventure hybrid and it helps a lot.

That said, my experience has been that I can usually sell about 300-500 of an adventure or about 1/2 of the total source books sold. Also, they are very profitable and have a reasonable break even, for me. This has to do with much more than just market trends.

In the end, I truly believe the old model of Room A->Room B->Room C type guided adventures are gone. I think to produce successful adventures you need to have description of locale couched in a story that is fun for the GM or the players to read. Don't get me wrong, I used to buy those adventures and still have a shelf full of them but you know what? I would grab the maps and through out the rest. Maps were enough (and still are) for me to be highly inspired.

Of course, all the above is just me and my experiences.

Bill

Hi Bill!

Different experiences are vital to understanding a question fully. I find writing adventures for sale - as opposed to coming up with scenarios for my player group - boring and a chore. They don't sell enough to make it worth my while. You are lucky if you enjoy the process. Perhaps that's why your adventures sell better than mine do - the customers can feel that and respond to it. OTOH, most publishers who have posted about the subject on-line seem to be in my boat, at least as regards sales. :D

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceHi Bill!

Different experiences are vital to understanding a question fully. I find writing adventures for sale - as opposed to coming up with scenarios for my player group - boring and a chore. They don't sell enough to make it worth my while. You are lucky if you enjoy the process. Perhaps that's why your adventures sell better than mine do - the customers can feel that and respond to it. OTOH, most publishers who have posted about the subject on-line seem to be in my boat, at least as regards sales. :D

-clash

I wont argue and I am sorry if I came off as saying you were wrong. My point was that they can sell well. I believe that the format is important as well as the style and just the general approach.

That said, yes, common wisdom either as PDF or print, adventures sell poorly.

Bill

Quote from: HaffrungSure. Just wondering why, according to the market:

Adventures = something you can make yourself

Splat books = something you have to buy

I will take a stab. Adventures are basically stories (let's not get hung up on terminology). They are "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if..." kind of things. Splat books or what I know them as "Source" books are just that, the source of new rules. In theory, they are balanced to the setting and supply playable new rules. The former can be done with existing rules while the later is best done with someone with intimate knowledge of the base rule system. Now, if you have read the core cover to cover, well, yeah, you can do source books too. And guess what? If you are only vaguely aware of the rules you can often do source books. The theory is that if you are very aware of the rules you will be better suited to making useful and balanced extensions of the rules.

However, the above is not always the implementation. ;)

Bill

Quote from: HaffrungSure. Just wondering why, according to the market:

Adventures = something you can make yourself

Splat books = something you have to buy

Because creating adventures is way easier than writing crunch nowadays. It's writing everything down and illustrating it, and making all the maps and charts that's a pain. People won't buy adventures scrawled in longhand notes written on the back of 3X index cards, but they will run them if they wrote those notes themselves. Illos? DL pics from the web. Maps? That's what hex and graph paper pads are for!

OTOH, tightly woven single-engine systems like modern RPGs are a bitch to house-rule, though they're easy to extend. That's how they're written now, because that's what the customer wants. It's easier to buy a set of integrated, balanced crunch than to create and balance them yourself. Back in the old days it was a different story. You didn't need to do all that work because the rules were unbalanced and modular in the first place.

Mind you, I PREFER modular systems to integrated systems, and I write them myself, but other people have different tastes, and those like me appear to be in the minority. I also do my best to offer complete core books with fun but un-neccesary supplements. It works for me, but other designers are different, and their games are more popular, so people must prefer them.

-clash

Quote from: HaffrungSure. Just wondering why, according to the market:

Adventures = something you can make yourself

Splat books = something you have to buy

Because

Adventures = low income

Splat books = high income

According to the market.  I think your ACTUAL question is "Why do consumers buy that way"?

The market merely supplies what people are willing to pay for.

Quote from: flyingmiceMind you, I PREFER modular systems to integrated systems, and I write them myself, but other people have different tastes, and those like me appear to be in the minority. I also do my best to offer complete core books with fun but un-neccesary supplements. It works for me, but other designers are different, and their games are more popular, so people must prefer them.

-clash

Oh, you....Oh, you better watch it buddy! I have my eye on you. The Modular Game Designers Secret Cabal will revoke your membership for talk like that!:nono:

:emot-ssh:

Crap.:duh:

Bill

Quote from: Old GeezerBecause

Adventures = low income

Splat books = high income

According to the market.  I think your ACTUAL question is "Why do consumers buy that way"?

The market merely supplies what people are willing to pay for.

Thank you, Geezer! You have reduced my original point to its absolute essentials, and it stands there in naked sublimity like unto a goddess! :D

Meanwhile, I got sidetracked! :P

-clash

Quote from: HaffrungSure. Just wondering why, according to the market:

Adventures = something you can make yourself

Splat books = something you have to buy

Adventures are repackaging things that already exist. You take monster X, give it motivation Y, and send the PCs after; or however your standard adventure runs. But almost uniformly an adventure is created with mechanics that are already in place. There may be a new monster or two to showcase, and perhaps a spell / item or four, but in general the vast majority of adventures published are a laundrey list of previously published things tied together with a few cliches.

Splat books on the other hand require a lot more work. Creating rules is hard. Creating rules that mesh well with the game system harder, and creating well balanced and fun rules that mesh well even harder still. It's one thing to create 3 spells or a monster for your adventure. Quite another thing still to create a book with 100s of one of those.

When you get back to time being limited for people who don't design games for a living, it makes sense that most people would prefer to do the easier stuff themselves. I know I do.

It's easier to memorize the key points adventures in comparison to rules when you're browsing with no intention to buy. I do this a lot.

Quote from: HinterWeltOh, you....Oh, you better watch it buddy! I have my eye on you. The Modular Game Designers Secret Cabal will revoke your membership for talk like that!:nono:

:emot-ssh:

Crap.:duh:

Bill

The Cabal has been OUTED! :D

-clash

Quote from: Old GeezerI think your ACTUAL question is "Why do consumers buy that way"?

Yes. By market, I meant the customers.

Another example to illustrate my point:

How often do you see a newbie who plans to start a campaign of X for his group ask what people recommend as the next book he should get after the core book? And how many times is the answer a splat book?

For example, I've seen a lot of newbie GMs on RPGNet and the Ars Magica forum ask what they should buy after the Ars core book. Setting aside the unhelpful fanboy answers ('get them all, you won't regret it!'), you usually get a list of the magical order splat books.

Now, maybe I'm just a dimwit, but when I look at the Ars Magica core book, with its highly involved politics, myriad of options, dense rules, and elaborate system, I'm not thinking 'you know what I need before I can possibly run my first session of Ars - I need a couple books going into tremendous detail on the backgrounds of the magical orders the new PCs will belong to. Oh, and some new spell options and systems too - because the 160 pages in the rules aren't enough to get me started.'

There's only one guy on the Ars forum, the only one who seems to grasp how daunting the core game itself is, who steps in and suggests some concrete aids to setting up covenants and creating adventure hooks.

It seems that a lot of today's hardcore RPGers have trouble distinguishing between what new players need to play the game, and what jaded hardcores want to play around with the game.

So maybe that newbie Ars Magica GM really needs a book that gives him some maps, NPCs, faerie regios, and story hooks to run the first few sessions for his newbie buddies. But the system dabblers and readers who dominate the discussion boards scare him away and end up driving the product lineup to all splats, all the time. In the end, you have a self-perpetuating model feeding a shrinking band of devotees who do a lot more talking about the game than playing it.

Quote from: James McMurrayAdventures are repackaging things that already exist. You take monster X, give it motivation Y, and send the PCs after; or however your standard adventure runs. But almost uniformly an adventure is created with mechanics that are already in place.

Not the ones I enjoy. They give me places, people, and plots that do not exist in the core book. And if the designer is really good, they give me places, people, and plots that I couldn't think of myself. And even if could channel Clark Ashton Smith as well as the author does, it would take me dozens of hours to come up with the material in Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia. Instead, I spent $25 and got enough ready-to-play material to run 15 to 20 sessions of D&D without any work between sessions.

And some of my favourite setting material is virtually mechanics & stats free (ie the Wilderlands). I just picked up the Scarred Lands Ghelspad gazetteer on the weekend and it's great. No stats or mechanics - just 40 or so pages of cool-ass ideas that could serve as the foundation for an entire campaign. It's not a repackaging of anything.

Maybe my favourite setting book of all is the Scaum Valley Gazetteer for the Dying Earth RPG. It's a detailed description of the communities and wilderness along the broad Scam River. You have excellent, detailed maps, descriptions of every town and settlements, desciptions of all the named NPCs and interesting characters, entries for all the marvelous places of note, all knitted together with hundreds of plot threads, agendas, and scams. Best of all, every word has utility at the ground-level of the game. There is no background in the conventional sense, only descriptions of what people you meet are doing now and what agendas they will try to enveigle the PCs into. And nothing is railroaded - it's all sandbox.

I could run a Dying Earth campaign for a year with nothing but the core book and Scaum Valley Gazetteer open on the table. No prep at all. To me, that's a valuable product.

Quote from: HaffrungNot the ones I enjoy. They give me places, people, and plots that do not exist in the core book. And if the designer is really good, they give me places, people, and plots that I couldn't think of myself. And even if could channel Clark Ashton Smith as well as the author does, it would take me dozens of hours to come up with the material in Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia. Instead, I spent $25 and got enough ready-to-play material to run 15 to 20 sessions of D&D without any work between sessions.

Which is great, and it's people like you that keep companies producing settings and adventures. But, at least according to market trends, you're an outlier.

QuoteAnd some of my favourite setting material is virtually mechanics & stats free (ie the Wilderlands). I just picked up the Scarred Lands Ghelspad gazetteer on the weekend and it's great. No stats or mechanics - just 40 or so pages of cool-ass ideas that could serve as the foundation for an entire campaign. It's not a repackaging of anything.

To me that sounds like a book that creates work rather than does it for me, and I'd never buy it. I've already got way more ideas than I'll ever be able to use. I don't want to spend my time fleshing out someone else's ideas when mine are so much cooler (to me at least).

QuoteI could run a Dying Earth campaign for a year with nothing but the core book and Scaum Valley Gazetteer open on the table. No prep at all. To me, that's a valuable product.

You must be very good at improvising. Most GMs aren't.

QuoteTo me that sounds like a book that creates work rather than does it for me, and I'd never buy it. I've already got way more ideas than I'll ever be able to use. I don't want to spend my time fleshing out someone else's ideas when mine are so much cooler (to me at least).

Indeed. I do not need any setting. I just read about the new Pit Fiend (for 4E) that can grant wishes all 99 years. I guess, when I start running 4E ninety-nine years are just over.

Give me tidbits of setting that can work with myself. And please give me the stats, too, because making up numbers is just tiresome.



Another factor is that the 90s praised stories that were made for the characters. Premade adventures require random characters who then walk through them.

Games like Vampire and many contemporary games discourage such universal adventures. (Of course, it still works fine in D&D.) Instead adventures are to be constructed from the PCs' wants and backgrounds and stuff. You cannot write adventures for such games.

Quote from: HaffrungI suspect that a hefty portion of today's RPG market either does not play at all, or plays occassionally and spend a lot of time between sessions writing backstories, planning feats to level 20, etc. That's why a game can have a thriving community, a steady of supply of supplements, and see no adventures published in all that activity. You only need adventures for actual play.

Yes and no. People get system obsessed, cruise the forums, create elaborate homebrew rules and settings, and sometimes even publish games largely to fill the gap.

But that's not why rules books sell and adventure books don't (at least in DnD's sense). I've heard complaints from old-schoolers about a period of heavy railroading (according to some, this logic applies to all published adventures). For new-school gamers... we learned to play without them, and having done so can't imagine why we'd need them. WotC's been publishing more in the way of adventures lately, it seems... but it's my understanding that they're doing a poor job of it. I wouldn't know. I don't buy 'em. Partly because I'm not currently running (started playing again for the first time since GenCon recently). Partly because if I was running I don't know that I'd use them or that they'd help if I did.

So yeah... when setting is this impossible to break Faerun supplement line and adventures were nonexistent until now and of dubious quality even now... system's gonna trump all.

Quote from: estarThe splatbooks succeed because everyone buys them (player and GM). Everyone uses them again and again unlike most adventures. However I believe that adventures can succeed if they a) priced right, b) truly save the GM time, and c) written well. If you can make it useful beyond the presented plot then that is a bonus (like a village or town you can reuse.

The Dungeon Crawl Classics succeed because of a,b and c. When you buy a DCC product you know what you are getting as far as quality goes.

I agree about most of this. Splatbooks do have the advantage of being targeted at both players and GMs. Setting books are GM specific, but at least get repeated use. Adventures... well... I see that they have much potential. Especially if they have the a, b, and c that you listed.

If I were to go about all this, I'd probably just put out a book with a whole lot of adventures with sparse but useful details. Plot hooks to get you into it. The premise and a quick run-down. Then advice for follow up. Save the GM time with full stats for anyone that might show up and maps for them that need 'em. Seriously, you could cram fifty of these in a big book and I'd buy that in a heartbeat.

What makes me iffy about buying adventures is that there's just one. If it turns out not to be your thing, it's unusable. If you use it, you only get to do so once. I think a big book for 30 bucks would be good.

Quote from: flyingmiceI do see lots of people downloading multiple copies of the free light version of the rules, which only makes sense if they are giving them out to players.

Eh... are you telling us that you found a system to make PDF downloads fit into "spell memory slots" and once they are printed or viewed they are gone?

Killer DRM Wizardry!

Quote from: Smilin_JackHeh - this is why I'm thinking of taking the SR4 system (and the updated melee rules in arsenal) and stripping out the setting so I can use it with anything.

I'm tired of flipping through book after book (or PDFs or hopping on my computer to search online) - I want something with a moderate amount of crunch but fully extensible... and most importantly all in one book (or at most 2 books)! :rant:

They exist. They really do. At least a few.

Ironically the one I personally use is derived from SR**, albiet an earlier one but they actually got to a similar dice mechanics place to SR4 before FanPro did.

And extensible, to evoke a particular setting? It was pretty straightforward to adjust from it's late-medieval fantasy default to run a 10 session extestential horror in Victorian England. The custom magic system took a bit of work but now it's out there for anyone to pick up (and is effectively era, and mostly setting independant). *shrug*  It felt more like it was in Lovecraft's world than CoC. The PCs packed heat but only one of them fired a gun once in the entire run of "by the skin of [there] teeth" sessions, right at the end (and then only in a defense deterent way to keep from getting killed, not to kill). Not because the game or the rules said so suppose or anything but because the it was a natural feel for the setting.

** Although it's actually in 3, albiet small, books that would probably fit into 1 large format book under 200 pages, maybe under 150 pages.

BTW once you realize that "crunch" about characters is about the setting because characters are part of and about the setting this market for character classes and spell books and such becomes far more understandable.  These are really setting books, or setting parts books if you will.

Sales of individual adventures are actually the one that I don't get so much, those seem like the target for someone with a lack-of-ideas. *shrug* But it also can represent a lack of time for games that are easier with a lot of GM prep work. Or a lack of familiarity with the system, which is why it made sense that early on d20 sales were all about the adventures (plus those were likely the easiet to knock out first).

Quote from: blakkieBTW once you realize that "crunch" about characters is about the setting because characters are part of and about the setting this market for character classes and spell books and such becomes far more understandable.  These are really setting books, or setting parts books if you will.

Only if your players quickly grow dissatisfied with the classes and spells included in the core rules. Granted, it seems that this is the case with most players today. But none of the players in my group have ever complained that they wanted more options for classes or spells. One of my guys has played D&D for 28 years and never run anything but a fighter, ranger, or paladin.

If someone wanted a new class, I'd just spend an hour or two and make one up. Much faster and easier than writing an adventure. So to me, splat books have little value.

Quote from: blakkieSales of individual adventures are actually the one that I don't get so much, those seem like the target for someone with a lack-of-ideas. *shrug* But it also can represent a lack of time for games that are easier with a lot of GM prep work.

Depends on what you mean by adventures. I don't buy [insert character here] railroad stories (which is what a lot of people mean by 'adventures']. I buy discrete settings - usually dungeons. We generate the stories in play.

Now, I can write a better dungeon, ruin, or outdoor region than 95 per cent of the published material out there. However, I've also run or read some outstanding published adventures: Caverns of Thracia, Dark Tower, Tomb of Abysthor, Night's Dark Terror, Ancient Kingdoms Mesopotamia, Scaum Valley Gazetteer, the City of Zothay.

Furthermore, for me adventure settings are greatly enhanced by maps. And while I'm a decent hand at drawing maps, I find it quite arduous and time-consuming - especially for a multi-level dungeon, city, or large wilderness region. So a well-written adventure setting with imaginative challenges, vivid foes, and nice maps is a very appealing product. And at $20 or so for a book that will provide the raw material for 5-15 sessions of play, good value as well.

Quote from: HaffrungOnly if your players quickly grow dissatisfied with the classes and spells included in the core rules. Granted, it seems that this is the case with most players today. But none of the players in my group have ever complained that they wanted more options for classes or spells. One of my guys has played D&D for 28 years and never run anything but a fighter, ranger, or paladin.

That still happens today. I've played with people that never play anything but a fighter, a wizard, etc. My current group has a guy that plays some version of a ninja (as in sneaky and deadly, not necessarily Japanese and face-masked) or a wizard in every campaign, and usually alternates between the two.

Quote from: HaffrungOnly if your players quickly grow dissatisfied with the classes and spells included in the core rules.

Ding! If anyone tells you that the D&D Ranger (or Paladin, or in a lot of ways Fighter) class is setting neutral they are:
1) lieing through their teeth
2) clueless
3) insane
4) don't know what a 'setting' is
5) don't think more than narrow class of settings exist
6) two or more of the above :keke:

So someone wants a different setting, they want a character that does something different. And they are willing to do something about it...but not willing, or sometimes not allowed by the others at the table, to write up the fidgity bits for it to work within the overall rules. What do they do?

QuoteIf someone wanted a new class, I'd just spend an hour or two and make one up. Much faster and easier than writing an adventure. So to me, splat books have little value.

Because you posses the inclination and ability [to your satisfaction] to do so and are allowed to to by others that you play with. This is not as common as you seem to think.

QuoteFurthermore, for me adventure settings are largely about maps.

My emphasis. You you are buying setting parts. Yeah, it's the purchase of the canned storyline that comes with "adventures" that I don't really get so much.