We are in what may be a unique lull in the RPG industry. WotC is dead in the water until 5e comes out. Pathfinder is no longer the shiny new thing. 5e probably won't ship until GenCon 2014. WoD is on life support. Neither WotC nor Paizo are doing any real marketing, outreach or advertising.
The situation is tailor made for a new fresh RPG (or refreshed old favorite) to make a big splash and grab some momentum before 5e shows up. This is the moment for some company to seize the day.
So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?
Not enough money in it? No information about the industry available so nobody really knows what's going on? Rpgnet?
Honestly I think there's a false perception among the business minded that RPGs were version 1.0 and computer games are version 2.0 without ever giving one fuck about RPGs versus 'storygames', plus anyone that actually tried to research RPGs via forums would invariably come across the bulbous purple and back away slowly, making no sudden movements. Even here, we had guys at drawn daggers hunting down facebook accounts and whatnot over whether calling monsters undead or filing them under undead was the better option.
The real advantages of RPGs haven't been widely recognised, until that happens the business will continue to bounce along the bottom, in my opinion.
Because PnP RPGs are already well into the long tail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail) of their product cycle.
In my neck of the woods, at least, there's enough momentum in Pathfinder and the 40K RPGs (plus perennial old classics like Traveller and Call of Cthulhu) that things don't seem to be in the doldrums to the same extent. We're not looking out for the hot new thing because we've already got precisely the hotness we want.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645576So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?
Differing agendas. The production of games takes a while, and unless you are psychic you don't know how the market will go--you have clues, but no hard facts. Add in to that, where D&D jumps so does the gaming world in many ways. So a D&D that's dead in the water is one thing--but you'd have needed a product in production that can lull all those playtesting D&D5E, or those disenfranchized by shifts of D&D away from "their favorite game version."
OSR is picking up some of the slack by making older editions of AD&D effectively available, add to that 1E's re-release, and the fact that those who do become distant from D&D often look for something else and there really isn't a huge open market that is left open for some shark to swim up and swallow as part of their stake.
That doesn't mean there isn't some space there, but a lot of it is being filled just not by big bandstands but by smaller more mobile writers and companies--often building on cores people are familiar with. From Hulks & Horrors, doing D&D in space and doing it right, to things like FATE which has steamrolled itself a lot of money and a lot of fans, add to that things like a new Runequest and OGL Legend, and the fact that Pathfinder is still huge you get this bit of chaos with no clear contenders for that opening.
Plus games take time to filter through the public. A recent game group at our FLGS just started 4E D&D, while another has had a longer running 3.5, and Pathfinder isn't as familiar--we still get people asking what we are playing when they see the stacks of Pathfinder books. I have reason to believe this is fairly common--except to those who browse the internet a lot, or who live closer to the biggest location of a game's impact radius of word of mouth.
Honestly it's a place where Steve Jackson has repeatedly dropped the ball. He could have done something when TSR died, he could have done something when 3.5 came out, he could have done something when 4e came out and he could be doing something now.
Yes, I get that he doesn't like dungeon crawls much. Anyone who's read the GM section of GURPS knows that. But damnit how hard is it to bring out a nice point of entry fantasy book dude? It could be as simple as the races and monsters from Banestorm cut and pasted with GURPS Lite and the magic rules from book one of the basic set. Just do a nice saddle stitched book with nice art and a pull out map section and a fold over of cardboard heroes like they did with GURPS Autoduel. Heck, if you need a setting and adventure, use Orcslayer. They constantly tell us that the 200 page plus hardbacks are more like four times as much work as the old world books, so a short little copy pasta book should be a quarter as much work.
One might almost think they don't want GURPS to do well. And yes, a nicer book or a boxed set might do better but then again, a give it a try starter set isn't hurt by being cheap.
I am vaguely of the opinion that Steve Jackson hasn't given two shits about RPGs for, oh, decades now. Years certainly. I mean, he'll keep GURPS in production perennially because it makes enough money to be worth it, but he's just sitting down there in texas smoking cigars he lights with cash from, say, Munchkin and other products at this point.
I don't ascribe any malice to this, I just sort of assume he's more or less retired and living on the fat of the land he's built. It may be more interesting to discover what his Company will do with GURPS later down the line.
Besides: Fixing GURPS is like fixing D&D. Chances are any improvement you make will cause a large segment of fans to go up in arms and proclaim it 'Not GURPS', and thus you lose all your money. Thus 4e GURPS was little more than a streamlined 3e GURPS, which was, itself, nothing more than a repackaged 2e GURPS. For want of a better description: Major game systems like GURPS and D&D are nothing more than their collections of strength and weaknesses en toto. 'Fixing' them to improve them would be like replacing the Effel Tower with a new, improved one made out of space age plastics and all the newest engineering techniques to save of materials... kinda missing the point.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645576We are in what may be a unique lull in the RPG industry. WotC is dead in the water until 5e comes out. Pathfinder is no longer the shiny new thing. 5e probably won't ship until GenCon 2014. WoD is on life support. Neither WotC nor Paizo are doing any real marketing, outreach or advertising.
The situation is tailor made for a new fresh RPG (or refreshed old favorite) to make a big splash and grab some momentum before 5e shows up. This is the moment for some company to seize the day.
So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?
Pathfinder may no longer be the shiny new thing, but it has demonstrated its longevity and market presence sufficiently. Paizo is doing minis, has the Beginners Box out, does PaizoCon, and getting ready for Free RPG Day. Considering that they have beaten down D&D in sales reports is advertisement enough.
Interestingly, more publishers (like Mongoose and SJG) seem to be paying attention to the PDF and eReader markets for their profit margins.
As far as 2nd or 3rd tier companies, where would they market besides Kickstarter or banner ads? There aren't any more general gaming magazines out there AFAIK. Everything has gone digital and game system specific.
SJG has had downloadable PDF books on their website in some fashion or another for over a decade. Nothing new there, just a continuing expansion of the model.
Quote from: Spike;645598SJG has had downloadable PDF books on their website in some fashion or another for over a decade. Nothing new there, just a continuing expansion of the model.
True, but they seem to be taking more of their back catalog and placing it for sale as PDFs.
Look at it another way. Steve Jackson has said what he has to say about rpgs. GURPS is as perfect as he can make it. He churned it out in the nineties but now he's letting it lie.
I think he may have lost faith in rpgs as a product and market.
But I'm not talking about fixing GURPS. A few small issues do not a bad game make.
I'm just asking them to cut it down into chewable bite sized portions that won't scare away the masses.
Quote from: Spike;645592Besides: Fixing GURPS is like fixing D&D. Chances are any improvement you make will cause a large segment of fans to go up in arms and proclaim it 'Not GURPS', and thus you lose all your money. Thus 4e GURPS was little more than a streamlined 3e GURPS, which was, itself, nothing more than a repackaged 2e GURPS. For want of a better description: Major game systems like GURPS and D&D are nothing more than their collections of strength and weaknesses en toto. 'Fixing' them to improve them would be like replacing the Effel Tower with a new, improved one made out of space age plastics and all the newest engineering techniques to save of materials... kinda missing the point.
As the way it should be.
The only thing that needs "fixing" is presentation and packaging.
Because the really good rpg designers have ventured to the video game industry, trying to make a career over there.
Right now, no one is going to invest good money to market a new tabletop rpg, one that does not have some inherently established value in the market like D&D has.
Sad but true.
Kiero and Xech have it. RPGs are over as a business/pop culture thing. No one with business acumen will invest in them, and it's for good reason. The return isn't there.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645576So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?
People are buying enough already on Drive-Thru which has plenty of everything. Plus, there is currently an anti-book movement by those that don't understand how books are made. Every time a game publisher says "We will be releasing our game in dead-tree format" instead of "books", they are shooting themselves in the foot.
Quote from: David Johansen;645600I'm just asking them to cut it down into chewable bite sized portions that won't scare away the masses.
The masses only want their World of Warcraft.
Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;645611Kiero and Xech have it. RPGs are over as a business/pop culture thing. No one with business acumen will invest in them, and it's for good reason. The return isn't there.
A variety of quite popular kickstarters say otherwise. The only thing stopping RPGs from being a whole lot more profitable is an ubiquitous failure to understand the unique pleasure they bring. These aren't MMORPGs, these are not boardgames, these are living adventures.
It's all in the marketing, kids.
Quote from: The Traveller;645616A variety of quite popular kickstarters say otherwise. The only thing stopping RPGs from being a whole lot more profitable is an ubiquitous failure to understand the unique pleasure they bring. These aren't MMORPGs, these are not boardgames, these are living adventures.
It's all in the marketing, kids.
The trouble with RPGs is that they are in thrall to RPG gamers.
The problem with rpgs is that they have a boom / bust cycle that's fueled by apathy and ignorance on the part of the gamers and the industry. The market goes up and everyone dives in with new product and the market floods out and dies down again.
The great thing about the crowd funding movement is that it kills the gate keepers dead. The stores and distributors no longer control who can get into the market and the manufacturers can no longer count on the stores and distributors to limit new competition.
So, those who wake up and produce great new stuff should do well and those who wallow in their nostalgic slop will hopefully die out as the should have long ago.
Quote from: The Traveller;645616A variety of quite popular kickstarters say otherwise. The only thing stopping RPGs from being a whole lot more profitable is an ubiquitous failure to understand the unique pleasure they bring. These aren't MMORPGs, these are not boardgames, these are living adventures.
It's all in the marketing, kids.
I have my doubts about that. When you consider the opportunity costs involved, if you have a million bucks to invest, why would you invest it in an RPG? From a business perspective, all you can see is an illustrious history of decline, product fumbles, and steadily-increasing market fragmentation. Your bricks-and-mortar retail options have been steadily dwindling for decades and show no signs of reversing, and your biggest historical bulge of buyers are in their forties these days.
WotC gambled its favorite internal organs that they could break open a wider market of players with their new edition. They made the precise sort of push to widen the player base that everybody's been asking for since the D&D cartoon went off the air. Many of these same people then bewailed their efforts as utterly stupid, but WotC paid the money and took the chance, and it has not visibly paid off for them.
I don't see a lot of reason to believe that the next company that comes along is going to be able to find the magic marketing words where WotC failed. The fad happened at the right place and the right time. Things have changed since then, and I'm not seeing any sign that we'll experience such a craze again.
My buddy was explaining to his son's friend what D&D was. The kid is 11, reads voraciously, watches fantasy TV shows and movies, but has never heard of D&D.
Once my buddy told him how D&D was different than a boardgame or a video game and here's what the kid said, "That's awesome. I love video games, but you don't get to use your imagination. I would love to play something like that!"
I highly doubt this kid is unique. I bet there are a million of them in the first world with enough disposable income to join the hobby.
Quote from: jeff37923;645595Considering that they have beaten down D&D in sales reports is advertisement enough.
How is that reaching non-gamers? Nobody but the most hardcore RPGers online know about sales reports.
Beating WotC is a major accomplishment and I suspect Pathfinder will outdo 5e as well. Which is why on every survey I send to WotC, I always tell them to buy Paizo immediately.
Quote from: jeff37923;645595As far as 2nd or 3rd tier companies, where would they market besides Kickstarter or banner ads?
Why not advertise in video game mags? In the 80s, video games advertised in Dragon.
What about teen mags? Or science mags? Or movie fan mags?
Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;645611RPGs are over as a business/pop culture thing. No one with business acumen will invest in them, and it's for good reason. The return isn't there.
That may be true for people looking for tens of millions of dollars, but what about cranking out some adverts to get 10,000 new Shadowrun players?
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;645613People are buying enough already on Drive-Thru which has plenty of everything.
Drive-Thru is a micro-niche. Their customers have to be the following:
1) People who know about Drive-Thru
2) People who want PDFs.
3) People who already play RPGs.
DT customers are a subset of a subset of a subset. But maybe it it makes sense for DT to advertise to expand those subsets.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;645613The masses only want their World of Warcraft.
Let's say that's true. If 80% of the potential new RPGer market is lost to MMOs, what about the other 20%?
If there are only 1 million potential gamers out there, why not reach those 200,000. Just imagine how much our hobby would rock if we got 200k new gamers.
Quote from: The Traveller;645616It's all in the marketing, kids.
Yes. That's what's puzzling me. It's primo season for hunting new customers.
WoD did it in the 90s when 2e was stale. Today we have a larger population with more marketing opportunities and RPGs are still a unique hobby.
Quote from: Piestrio;645619The trouble with RPGs is that they are in thrall to RPG gamers.
That's why I bring up the marketing and advertising question. There are probably x10 the number of potential RPGers than current RPGers. Those are the people who need to be reached via advertising.
Quote from: David Johansen;645622The great thing about the crowd funding movement is that it kills the gate keepers dead.
Except that Kickstarters only talk to the already converted. Zero brand new gamers and very few, if any, lapsed gamers are trolling Kickstarter looking for interesting new RPG games.
Potential gamers don't even know the hobby exists.
How would this person/business distinguish itself from what is already happening? Pathfinder still has a strong publication schedule. They may no longer be shiny and new, but they are delivering consistency. DCC is still drawing lots of attention. Swords & Wizardry is being well supported by FGG. So what room is there for someone else to take advantage of that is not already being filled? 'Cause I'm not seeing it.
Quote from: SineNomine;645632From a business perspective, all you can see is an illustrious history of decline, product fumbles, and steadily-increasing market fragmentation. Your bricks-and-mortar retail options have been steadily dwindling for decades and show no signs of reversing, and your biggest historical bulge of buyers are in their forties these days.
Sounds like the boardgame market before their current boom. Or the minis wargame market before Warhammer hit the scene.
Quote from: SineNomine;645632WotC gambled its favorite internal organs that they could break open a wider market of players with their new edition. They made the precise sort of push to widen the player base that everybody's been asking for since the D&D cartoon went off the air. Many of these same people then bewailed their efforts as utterly stupid, but WotC paid the money and took the chance, and it has not visibly paid off for them.
Except that WotC did not do the advertising.
4e was built for online gaming. It was a great system for an online game table and WotC was just about to make that happen until they shut down the project and committed 21st century suicide. The lack of an official game table to play D&D 24/7 online in 2013 is just moronic.
4e marketing was a joke. There was no outreach to new gamers, no attempt to put a D&D in the big box stores and absolutely no level of advertising compared to what is given to Magic or Hasbro products.
I agree that D&D's moment in the sun is gone. But there are stores devoted to Hello Kitty, RC cars, model trains and that shit ain't fresh either.
Quote from: Caesar Slaad;645635So what room is there for someone else to take advantage of that is not already being filled? 'Cause I'm not seeing it.
Non-gamers
Lapsed gamers
Gamers not on RPG forums
Quote from: Spinachcat;645636Except that WotC did not do the advertising. .
4e marketing was a joke. There was no outreach to new gamers, no attempt to put a D&D in the big box stores and absolutely no level of advertising compared to what is given to Magic or Hasbro products.
I agree that D&D's moment in the sun is gone. But there are stores devoted to Hello Kitty, RC cars, model trains and that shit ain't fresh either.
I seem to recall plenty of marketing, including tv spots.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645638Non-gamers
Lapsed gamers
Gamers not on RPG forums
The whole "lets get non-gamers" thing is a bust. That ways lies madness. It assumes the "non-gamers" would ever be interested in gaming. Far to many people who might look like that untapped market, just aren't and never will be interested. Far too many companies have tried to reach them, with little success.
Lapsed Gamers and Non-forum goers are something to consider, but many of the latter are lapsed because of time/family constraints. It is easier to hop and WOW for two hours than get five busy friends together on the same day. Of course for me, the latter is worth about ten thousand times the former, but I admit to being a bit strange that way.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645638Non-gamers
Lapsed gamers
Gamers not on RPG forums
RPG designers will never capture those markets, because:
Quote from: Piestrio;645619The trouble with RPGs is that they are in thrall to RPG gamers.
Pretty much everything we dedicated RPG people say or think about RPGs and how to market them outside the hardcore is corrupted by our distorted vision of what RPGs are like. And that goes double for RPG designers. They've lost the ability to see the game from the perspective of someone who either has never found anything of interest in RPGs as they are currently designed or tried RPGs and just didn't catch the "bug" (or were even turned off to RPGs from their encounters with RPG gamers.)
You know, it has been said here a thousand times. Write a simple, elegant system that uses commonly available dice and both print it cheaply for sale and make it available for free download to eReader and as PDF.
There are already tons of them out there.
Man, H&H wouldn't even exist without the D&D vacuum.
Quote from: Kiero;645579Because PnP RPGs are already well into the long tail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail) of their product cycle.
this is precisely it.
RPGs are available everywhere there are thousands of micro products filling every avaibale niche. The sheer number of RPG products is astounding however the market is a certain size. So you have saturation.
There are a small number of people, like folk on here, who will buy a game of a certain genre just to see what its about or how a mechanic is implented. There are those crazy collectors who will part with money for reprints of stuff they already have or stuff that was somehow at the forefront of the market, like the OD&D reprints. But these are fanatic collectors and don't make a hobby.
The pnp RPG format is self limiting. You have a system where the players can create their own content easily and it's as good as professional content. Imagine if CoD was produced and all its players could easily make up new missions on the fly for minimal invested effort. How would that affect sales of CoD2. What if it wasn't just the content that was user creatable but the rules engine could be tweaked to add extra weapons vehicals, locations, move it to outerspace, add alien races, make it play like Star Wars or Memento, or batman.
That is the trouble with selling RPGs. They work by encouraging the imagination of the players, but players with imagination quickly realise they have no need for any more rules. So you can't sell them product. That is why so many new commercial games have gimmicks because you can sell gimmicks.
Pathfnder found a trick, they created the adventure paths partially to appeal to those players that thought somehow 'professional' content mattered, they will always represent a subset, but more importantly it creates a culture of shared experience. Something that Ben refered to in a post an age ago was that the classic D&D modules represented a shared experience. Somthing
that brings a culture together and I think that there is validity in that.
I suspect it was one of the main forces behind living Greyhawk, the RPGA and all that the sense of being part of a group with shared experience and lets be honest allowed a subset of men who were never going to shine as the star quarterback or the guy that made the million dollar deal to shine as the guy that beat the Dragon King in blah blah adventure module.
So Pathfinder is exploiting that gap, the MMO forums exploit the same gap as to the various Computer RPGs walkthroughs and recorded record to beat level XX on CoD etc .
The trouble is that the actual stuff that goes on at the table doesn't need any of it. Put aside the shared experience angle and anyone of us could create a rules system and play with their mates/kids etc because what happens at the table is unique. It is therefore very difficult to see where the money is from an investors perspective.
Take SJG for example. A perfect case in point. GURPS has been one of the best selling most popular games for nigh on 2 decades. However SJG makes exponetially more money from Munchkin. A game which builds on the tropes of D&D but works in a much more traditional Board game paradigm.
Take WotC Magic revolutionised games in the same way that D&D did it created an entirely new thing. It created a thing that you could also sell because they controlled the content. Because of it Wizards literally saved the D&D brand but all they get from Fans is hate hate hate. Why do they bother? the Wizard guys bought TSR because they totally loved D&D They sold it to Hasbro because they also love $300 Million and Peter Adison can now play games all the time and not have to worry about running a company
- he bought Gen Con as a hobby ....surely every gamers dream?
Now Hasbro didn't buy Wizards for D&D they bought it for magic and Pokemon. I imagine if they had wanted too Wizards could have pealed off D&D and excluded it from the sale and run t independently but they didn't probably because as Wizards they had nevery made any money from any of their RPG lines pre Mtg.
Anyway just my opinion.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645634Let's say that's true. If 80% of the potential new RPGer market is lost to MMOs, what about the other 20%?
They are playing the free-ish MMOs like Star Wars and Star Trek. The general masses do not tabletop role-play. Magic cards or pogs are more their thing.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645576So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?
They weren't aware of the scope of WotC's problems, and as such, they were not positioned to develop a game for this timeframe. Up until very recently, we still heard lots of bullshit about digital subscriptions were making up for 4e's IRL sales deficit to Pathfinder.
It's plausible that a small company might take such tbp propaganda at face value. (And make no mistake, there's a reason WotC's employing Shannon A. as its D&D historian now.)
Oh and as The Traveller says in the second post, there's not enough money in it.
Quote from: Spinachcat;6456364e was built for online gaming. It was a great system for an online game table and WotC was just about to make that happen until they shut down the project and committed 21st century suicide. The lack of an official game table to play D&D 24/7 online in 2013 is just moronic.
I strongly disagree with the second part. Yes, 4e was built for selling online subscriptions to an online game table and rules to activate the tokens around and play with them. The deal is though is that this is not the game that people want to buy and play. If you want to buy subscriptions to play around in an online environment and system and its limits, there are so many games, much more attractive and fun to play for this kind of thing, namely the MMOs such as WoW.
Maybe the new Star Wars is exactly that; not necessarily a giant killer but a game well poised to exploit the lull in the market, assuming there really is such a thing. I've only played it once and I have no strong feelings about it either way about it, but it seemed pretty accessible and newbie friendly (well it was the beginner game we were playing) and at the end of the day Star Wars is still a big licence.
Quote from: jeff37923;645595Pathfinder may no longer be the shiny new thing, but it has demonstrated its longevity and market presence sufficiently. Paizo is doing minis, has the Beginners Box out, does PaizoCon, and getting ready for Free RPG Day. Considering that they have beaten down D&D in sales reports is advertisement enough.
I have to agree with Jeff - Pathfinder has been in constant ascendancy. They are also building their own online tabletop gaming platform and also there is the sandbox MMO coming.
If you go to PaizoCon (Ive gone to the last three), you'd have a good understanding just how competent the company is.
If I'm a company, I don't want to rush a big new RPG into production and have it crushed by 5e, if 5e is successful. Plus if I'm doing generic fantasy, even though the D&D brand is no longer the 900 lb gorilla, I'm now going up against Paizo. I don't want to be the Arab armies vs Paizo's Israelis.
Quote from: Kiero;645579Because PnP RPGs are already well into the long tail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail) of their product cycle.
Quote from: xech;645604Because the really good rpg designers have ventured to the video game industry, trying to make a career over there.
Yes, mainly because of this. Bold risk-taking just isn't there. Kickstarters are a solution for the hardest of the hardcore, but even the best performing ones are
- speaking to an audience who is absolutely committed;
- or riding the bandwagon of a strong existing brand (game, company or designer).
However, from a broader perspective, the vidya game industry is afflicted by very similar problems: on the top, you've got the "AAA game" tier, mostly built on leveraging existing brands, trying to be "cinematic", and very reluctant to innovate or venture outside the comfort zone of its imagined target audience (teenage boys, dudebro-style tweens). Occasionally, you get pseudo-innovation like Bioshock: Infinite (a regressed successor to the high-interaction "immersive sims" of the late 90s), or the odd great title like Dishonored (Bethesda is one of the better umbrella companies out there).
On the bottom, you've got a lot of experimentation, but most of it is
essentially running the same circles with a veneer of indie cred - a platformer with an odd aesthetic and lip service to some Tumblr-friendly ideology is not as different from Super Mario as we'd like to think. Indie studios are so small they don't have the capital to make a game that offers complexity and meat beyond a few decent basic ideas. Innovation is a blip and not a sustained process. There is no, or very little in the middle, where publishers would have the resources to accomplish, but the freedom to experiment. There is no Looking Glass Studios today. No LucasArts. No Origin. And that's a problem.
I believe this is intristic to the whole corporation-ruled global economy (especially under the present crisis), but that's getting off topic, and potentially political.
Just on the long tail thing, that's usually used in the business sense to mean you make most of your money from the sale of sundry smaller products rather than a few headliners, like a petrol station that makes most of its income from foods and other items rather than the petrol.
In terms of the RPG market it's not really applicable, what we have here is balkanisation and fragmentation. Its a really weird sector actually, the costs to entry are minimal, but if you want to make decent products costs are just beyond the reach of the hobbyist, and if you want to market it properly you're into small business territory.
Couple this with the industry leaders not apparently caring much about the industry (Wizards, SJG, WW) along with a hilarious across the board failure to grasp the fundamental unique advantage of RPGs and you have the current pileup.
Let me present an example - someone recently posted a thread with a photo of a medieval castle or manor perched in a most unlikely fashion on a stone pillar in a tropical lagoon. A fantastic picture and one to fire the imagination, if one had the tools to take advantage of it.
RPGs are those tools, accessable by anyone with the ability to read. You can swim out to that pillar and take their stuff, it makes the unreal not just real but something you can interact with. There's no other hobby or game which allows the tangible manifestation of pure spontaneous imagination in such a fashion.
One of the main problems is that the market leaders, the industry giants such as they are, haven't grasped this fact and pushed it as hard as they can. They seem to be stuck in "WoW on paper" mode.
Quote from: SineNomine;645632WotC gambled its favorite internal organs that they could break open a wider market of players with their new edition. They made the precise sort of push to widen the player base that everybody's been asking for since the D&D cartoon went off the air.
What did they do to push 4e to non-gamers? Genuine question, I really have no idea what if any marketing there was to non-gamers?
Quote from: The Traveller;645699Just on the long tail thing, that's usually used in the business sense to mean you make most of your money from the sale of sundry smaller products rather than a few headliners, like a petrol station that makes most of its income from foods and other items rather than the petrol.
In terms of the RPG market it's not really applicable, what we have here is balkanisation and fragmentation. Its a really weird sector actually, the costs to entry are minimal, but if you want to make decent products costs are just beyond the reach of the hobbyist, and if you want to market it properly you're into small business territory.
Couple this with the industry leaders not apparently caring much about the industry (Wizards, SJG, WW) along with a hilarious across the board failure to grasp the fundamental unique advantage of RPGs and you have the current pileup.
Let me present an example - someone recently posted a thread with a photo of a medieval castle or manor perched in a most unlikely fashion on a stone pillar in a tropical lagoon. A fantastic picture and one to fire the imagination, if one had the tools to take advantage of it.
RPGs are those tools, accessable by anyone with the ability to read. You can swim out to that pillar and take their stuff, it makes the unreal not just real but something you can interact with. There's no other hobby or game which allows the tangible manifestation of pure spontaneous imagination in such a fashion.
One of the main problems is that the market leaders, the industry giants such as they are, haven't grasped this fact and pushed it as hard as they can. They seem to be stuck in "WoW on paper" mode.
The long tail term is being used a lot rounf Social network web 2.0 stuff these days to refer to the bulk of apps. So Take facebook there are 100,000s of apps but only a small margin every shift over 1000 units or have more than 100 hits a day. This is refered to as a long tail.
Here is a discussion on the topic - http://blog.cascadesoft.net/2012/08/01/the-app-store-long-tail-myth/
The fact is the top 10% of RPGs earn close to 90% of the overall sales. The numbers are probably more like 95% from teh top 1% if you include all free stuff I can just download at no cost.
So to get any of the pretty small RPG pie you have to be in the top dozen or so RPGs in terms of market share.
The risks of being one of the other 100,000 games are huge.
Quote from: jibbajibba;645704The long tail term is being used a lot rounf Social network web 2.0 stuff these days to refer to the bulk of apps. So Take facebook there are 100,000s of apps but only a small margin every shift over 1000 units or have more than 100 hits a day. This is refered to as a long tail.
Here is a discussion on the topic - http://blog.cascadesoft.net/2012/08/01/the-app-store-long-tail-myth/
Meh, someone misunderstands what a term means, hijacks it with a megaphone, others pick it up and the world becomes marginally more ignorant. Even the blog post there said that others are getting it bass ackwards. The term originally reached wide currency in describing Amazon's business model, but it could just as easily be applied to most retail stores, gas stations are the definitive example. The headliners aren't the breadwinners in long tail businesses.
Quote from: jibbajibba;645704The risks of being one of the other 100,000 games are huge.
How are they huge risks, it's not as though the designers put much money or effort into them 99% of the time, nor are they relying on them for income.
First of all we need to remember that RPGs are a very small market. It's a product for the Western society, that requires a bit of social skills, and at least a hint of willing to do intellectual DIY stuff. Something that puts it as a good for which market is easily saturated. And as I wrote countless times - it'll really stay that way, until a fashion takes it as some sort of intellectuals' by - time plaything. But, on the brighter side - contrary to most, I am of belief that we are yet of the "golden age" of RPGs. Thanks to PDF distribution and Print On Demand, the costs of putting your own products are lower than anytime before.
Quote from: Melan;645691Yes, mainly because of this. Bold risk-taking just isn't there. Kickstarters are a solution for the hardest of the hardcore, but even the best performing ones are
- speaking to an audience who is absolutely committed;
- or riding the bandwagon of a strong existing brand (game, company or designer).
However, from a broader perspective, the vidya game industry is afflicted by very similar problems: on the top, you've got the "AAA game" tier, mostly built on leveraging existing brands, trying to be "cinematic", and very reluctant to innovate or venture outside the comfort zone of its imagined target audience (teenage boys, dudebro-style tweens). Occasionally, you get pseudo-innovation like Bioshock: Infinite (a regressed successor to the high-interaction "immersive sims" of the late 90s), or the odd great title like Dishonored (Bethesda is one of the better umbrella companies out there).
On the bottom, you've got a lot of experimentation, but most of it is essentially running the same circles with a veneer of indie cred - a platformer with an odd aesthetic and lip service to some Tumblr-friendly ideology is not as different from Super Mario as we'd like to think. Indie studios are so small they don't have the capital to make a game that offers complexity and meat beyond a few decent basic ideas. Innovation is a blip and not a sustained process. There is no, or very little in the middle, where publishers would have the resources to accomplish, but the freedom to experiment. There is no Looking Glass Studios today. No LucasArts. No Origin. And that's a problem.
I believe this is intristic to the whole corporation-ruled global economy (especially under the present crisis), but that's getting off topic, and potentially political.
I think we should take this to Other Games Melan, because I feel like we ought to have a decent conversation o nthis itneresting topic.
I partially agree with you, and partially disagree.
Indeed, video games triple A titles are doing the community a disservice - especially as publisher are playing their customers for idiots more and more. I think the Mass Effect 3 controversies depicted this damn well. First of all, you had the rather nasty endings - for a much flaunted superiority in game design, they had worse endings than BG saga did - not only did you not get a cool boss fight, but also you had to make choices that were completely out of sync with rest of the saga (imagine if in BG you had to choose suddenly between saving elf's forest ecosystem or destroying all life or reverting entire Faerun back to stone age). Second of all, the first - day DLC showcased how the players are played for suckers - the very thing that EA did with DLCs, is something that'd not stand in any other industry, and people are actually defending them for it, buying into "You should get a special copy for the game for your dog, and used games are Satan".
Books are being sold on the second hand market all the time, and the content of the book (the appearance may be destroyed, yes, but 95% of people aren't bibliophiles. Then again, if Great Gatsby taught me anything, is that a lot of people may buy books for the cover, but nevermind) are not destroyed per se, and no publisher who'd not wish to commit a professional suicide, would start selling books with a chapter cut out and given alongside the book, which would be prohibited from re - selling.
And yes - the love of Bioshock saga makes me laugh. A mediocre shooter which is being flaunted for plot that is about as edgy and surprising as second M. Shyamalan film you see. I disagree somewhat on Dishonest - it felt for me too much like Thief but in more obviously Victorian setting (I mean, the plot's basically the same - technocrats against pagans).
And yes, indie games are certainly sinners as well - the worst offender is this whole "games as art" discussion, that has spawned a lot of failures. Games that are essentially films, in which you have to press a button every 5 minutes to make actors say another line. The AAA titles are guilty of that as well. The "cinematisation" of games is basically because of the foolish notion, that people will like games more if they are more filmlike. No, idiots, I play games because I'd rather build my own story, than just watch yours.
And in a way, it's same problem that we have when discussing RPGs - the difference between making your own story, and replaying a GM's story/making one according to the notions of other story making medium.
But I think not all is lost in the land of gaming, both indie and mainstream. Fallout New Vegas is a game I am surprised we haven't discussed here in the Other Games, because it's as close to the true sandbox RPG, as I have seen a computer RPG go (even Ultimas were heavily plot driven, with just a world full of dungeons). It's a game that depicts a realistic, but still interesting world, with political factions (well, alright, let's face it, Legion is probably a bit "hammish", and so is Mister House, but still) that are believable, with realistic expectations and reasonable ambitions.
And on the more storydriven front - I was recently truly greatly surprised by Hotline Miami. It has a decent enough, if trippy storyline, but it also has absurdally
tight gameplay, to the point that I feel that this time, the whole edgy and bloody content was indeed deserving, as it helps drive the point that you are just an average guy in a terrible situation. I don't see a game like HM out there - Postal was much, much more stupid, not as fun to play, and it just lacked this notion that while you deliver a bloody death to everyone in one hit, so is your brain splashed on the floor with a lone swing of an enemy's bat.
Quote from: The Traveller;645709Meh, someone misunderstands what a term means, hijacks it with a megaphone, others pick it up and the world becomes marginally more ignorant. Even the blog post there said that others are getting it bass ackwards. The term originally reached wide currency in describing Amazon's business model, but it could just as easily be applied to most retail stores, gas stations are the definitive example. The headliners aren't the breadwinners in long tail businesses.
How are they huge risks, it's not as though the designers put much money or effort into them 99% of the time, nor are they relying on them for income.
I see your point :)
The fact that people don't put money into their games confines them to the long tail.
The terminaology may be wrong but the point is that there are a huge number of RPGs on the market, or available for free.
To make any money as an RPG you have to be what in the top 10 sellers in the global market?
What are the RPGs that make money or break even
D&D
Pathfinder
Savage Worlds
WoD
Marvel Heroic Roleplay
Traveller
Palladium
Star Wars
Gurps
One ring?
Dr Who?
Apocalypse World? - unlikely
Dungeon World? - unlikely
Chances are all but the top 5 or 6 are merely scraping by.
Now you might have some games made by indie publishers that shift a few hundred copies and so as they are self produced or on a publisher/writer profit share maybe the writer gets a couple of hundred bucks which is fine if you don't count the cost of writing it.
The problem is that without a quantum change in the industry, and that would require something as siesmic as the Harry Potter RPG, all that happens is you try and sell different flavours of the same stuff to the same market and there are already a million available flavours.
I am working on my heartbreaker. It's just another fantasy game with some slightly different mechanics. I just converted it to play Strontium Dog SciFi.
People like me are unlikely to either (a) buy another game or (b) publish a game.
If I want to get some rules on star ship combat I can take my own rules or spend 20 mins on teh web and find a rule sytem someone like me has created for free.
The content is free, the rules engine is free where is the busienss need?
Weren't Dark Heresy and its sister games selling really well at one point? Is that all down the way of the dodo already? I haven't been following.
Quote from: Benoist;645731Weren't Dark Heresy and its sister games selling really well at one point? Is that all down the way of the dodo already? I haven't been following.
Sorry yeah I forgot about the Warhammer universe stuff that prolly still has a market and a fan base.
Point being a big noise high production game like Eclipse Phase probably breaks even at best. Certainly not going to bring new players in.
Quote from: jibbajibba;645728The problem is that without a quantum change in the industry, and that would require something as siesmic as the Harry Potter RPG, all that happens is you try and sell different flavours of the same stuff to the same market and there are already a million available flavours.
I started a thread on this before, what the business needs to do is rebrand, because
a) roleplaying as a title has already been massively subverted by computer games, take a straw poll of people walking down the street and ask what they think a roleplaying game is; I guarantee that 99% of them will come out with some variation on "World of Warcraft".
Even saying "Dungeons and Dragons" is no good, people already think they know what that is and have decided either they don't want to play it or can get a better experience from WoW.
The industry needs a new name.
b) The core strength of RPGs, the manifestation of spontaneous imagination in a form that many people can interact with has been utterly ignored by the industry. World of Warcraft can't do this,
no computer game can (until we have fully functional holodecks which are centuries off at best). Magic the Gathering can't do it, monopoly, poker, basketball, none of these can do it. They can't compete on this playing field.
This core strength and message need to be attached to the new title, which then has to be aggressively marketed, shaking off any perceived previous stigmas in the process.
This is how you renew the industry, in as many words.
Quote from: jibbajibba;645728I am working on my heartbreaker. It's just another fantasy game with some slightly different mechanics. I just converted it to play Strontium Dog SciFi.
People like me are unlikely to either (a) buy another game or (b) publish a game.
If I want to get some rules on star ship combat I can take my own rules or spend 20 mins on teh web and find a rule sytem someone like me has created for free.
The content is free, the rules engine is free where is the busienss need?
I'm in the same boat for the most part, but neither of us are the target market. The target market should be non roleplayers as that represents a market many many times larger than dedicated roleplayers.
Quote from: The Traveller;645736I started a thread on this before, what the business needs to do is rebrand, because
a) roleplaying as a title has already been massively subverted by computer games, take a straw poll of people walking down the street and ask what they think a roleplaying game is; I guarantee that 99% of them will come out with some variation on "World of Warcraft".
Even saying "Dungeons and Dragons" is no good, people already think they know what that is and have decided either they don't want to play it or can get a better experience from WoW.
The industry needs a new name.
b) The core strength of RPGs, the manifestation of spontaneous imagination in a form that many people can interact with has been utterly ignored by the industry. World of Warcraft can't do this, no computer game can (until we have fully functional holodecks which are centuries off at best). Magic the Gathering can't do it, monopoly, poker, basketball, none of these can do it. They can't compete on this playing field.
This core strength and message need to be attached to the new title, which then has to be aggressively marketed, shaking off any perceived previous stigmas in the process.
This is how you renew the industry, in as many words.
I'm in the same boat for the most part, but neither of us are the target market. The target market should be non roleplayers as that represents a market many many times larger than dedicated roleplayers.
But when games like The One Ring, or Marvel Heroic Roleplay can't break into that market what can? Like I said the only thing I can think of is a fully endorsed and licenced Harry Potter RPG sold via the Pottermore Web site and that simply is not gign to happen so ...
I am in an interesting position currently as my new game group are all novices, students that have never played RPGs before. They heard about tabletop RPGs and had to go to a meetup site to find players because they didn't think they had the nous to just read a book and get their mates playing. So there is a market there. smewhere I suppose its just about tapping it. Interestingly enough when I polled them on what they wanted in a game the one thing they all agreed on was nothing with elves, dwarves or hobbits. I think they woudl have gone for a S&S feel, probably cyberpunk, space opera with a touch of British misery tourism is what they got after an early rennaissance fanatasy game to kick off experience with the system.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645634Except that Kickstarters only talk to the already converted. Zero brand new gamers and very few, if any, lapsed gamers are trolling Kickstarter looking for interesting new RPG games.
Potential gamers don't even know the hobby exists.
True but Kickstarter isn't just a gaming company and sends e-mail notices and has links to related projects so at least there's some cross pollination.
But, my contention is that the Kickstarter is making it possible for new games and products to reach the market. It's giving the established companies a much needed kick in the ass. That money they didn't believe was out there in the marketplace is flowing and they ain't getting a dime of it because they're rigid old fools who've refused to make a proper point of entry game for decades. Or in Steve Jackson's case, never.
The biggest obstacle to new players is the sheer depth of the games themselves. Sure you can pick up the D&D Essentials red box but it's good for what? Two or three sessions top? Really if you were going to do a set like that, which only covers a single level, why on earth start at first level? A level that's pretty universally seen as the weakest point of the game. Hand out tenth level characters and matching challenges.
Quote from: jibbajibba;645741But when games like The One Ring, or Marvel Heroic Roleplay can't break into that market what can? Like I said the only thing I can think of is a fully endorsed and licenced Harry Potter RPG sold via the Pottermore Web site and that simply is not gign to happen so ...
Both of these games are horrible points of entry that are focussed on narrative structure and a deep understanding of what roleplaying games are and how they really work. You pretty much have to have had the "the numbers are immaterial and irrelevant and pointless" epithany before they even begin to make a bit of sense. They are the equivilant of studying the works of Dante in depth from a historical and cultural lense before you can read "The Cat In The Hat." In my experience 99% of gamers never reach the realization that made up numbers are made up numbers no matter how you made them up.
You are pointing to doctoral thesis' and saying that they're great Learn to Read With Dick and Jane material.
D&D's core rules can fit on a doublesided eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper if you move the stats and spells onto cards and remove all the discussion of what it represents and special cases and decision making.
eg. Combat
On your turn you can:
Cast a Spell, Charge, Move twice, or Move and attack.
To cast a spell follow the instructions on the spell card and discard it.
To move, move your figure a number of squares equal to their movement rate.
To attack with a melee weapon you must be in an adjacent square to your target. To attack with a missile weapon you must be within the number of squares listed for its range and not be blocked by characters, monsters, walls or doors.
Roll the twenty-sided dice and add the bonus for the attack you used, if the roll is greater than the monster's armor class you hit and roll your attack's damage as shown on your card. If the monster runs out of Hit Points it dies.
Yes it reduces D&D to a board game. The problem with 4e as a point of entry is that it isn't enough of a board game.
Yes I'd like to see a D&D starter that was completely self contained to tenth level. But I'd like the starting point in the box to be:
Each player picks a character card and figure. Shuffle the monster cards and dungeon tiles and place the dungeon entry at the edge of the play area. Place the characters at the dungeon entry and move them into the first room. They can search for secret doors or hidden treasures, when the first character leaves the first room, flip the first dungeon tile and arange it so it ties into the exit they have left.
Quote from: S'mon;645702What did they do to push 4e to non-gamers? Genuine question, I really have no idea what if any marketing there was to non-gamers?
TV and magazine ads and putting a beginner box in Target, to name what I can remember off the top of my head. Clearly not enough if you presume that there's a significant well of untapped RPGers out there- but who else could shell out even that amount of marketing cash these days?
Quote from: David Johansen;645746Both of these games are horrible points of entry that are focussed on narrative structure and a deep understanding of what roleplaying games are and how they really work. You pretty much have to have had the "the numbers are immaterial and irrelevant and pointless" epithany before they even begin to make a bit of sense. They are the equivilant of studying the works of Dante in depth from a historical and cultural lense before you can read "The Cat In The Hat." In my experience 99% of gamers never reach the realization that made up numbers are made up numbers no matter how you made them up.
All true but irrelevant.
the point isn't that the games are overly complex or whatever the point is that there was no out reach to the massive fan base for the Lord of the Rings movies or the Avengers in either case both games maerkets solely to gamers. Now that might be because they jsut din;t think of it but I suspect its because they did their amrket research and realised there was no point.
Quote from: jibbajibba;645756All true but irrelevant.
the point isn't that the games are overly complex or whatever the point is that there was no out reach to the massive fan base for the Lord of the Rings movies or the Avengers in either case both games maerkets solely to gamers. Now that might be because they jsut din;t think of it but I suspect its because they did their amrket research and realised there was no point.
That's like saying that the absence of a bridge across a deep gorge and river is irrelevant to a tourist brouchure for a remote city.
It isn't complexity or simplicity that's the main issue for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying and The One Ring. They're both reasonably simple, it's just the concept they start with is too far removed for most people.
If you start with something familiar that looks and feels like a board game that becomes your bridge and you don't end up with a bunch of people standing on the edge of the gorge holding their brochures and looking confused and angry.
That said it would be nice to have them in bookstores right next to the books but I'm not sure how you talk the book stores into it.
Quote from: David Johansen;645763It isn't complexity or simplicity that's the main issue for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying and The One Ring. They're both reasonably simple, it's just the concept they start with is too far removed for most people.
The problem is that, from a mass market standpoint, they suck. They are overcomplicated, they are edgy
to some faction of the RPG crowd for the sake of being "edgy", and in fact all they end up accomplishing is make the principles of role playing unclear, weird, and compare themselves to other media most people would rather be doing or enjoying for their own sakes, instead of playing some lame replacement for them (e.g. RPGs as emulators of other media instead of their own thing FAIL. Hard).
Propose to people to play a Narrative/novel-emulator game and most of them will prefer to just read a book. If they want to put in the effort, they will WRITE one. Not play some emulator instead that leads nowhere.
Tell people about RPGs and play them for their own sakes, and then you'll see people getting more curious. That's why D&D, for all its "immaturity" or "vanilla-esque fantasy" or whatever the fuck the buzzword of D&D-bashing is this week, actually wins at this game. Or at least it did, before its custodians lost their way in Forge la-la-land.
Quote from: David Johansen;645746Yes it reduces D&D to a board game. The problem with 4e as a point of entry is that it isn't enough of a board game.
Yes I'd like to see a D&D starter that was completely self contained to tenth level. But I'd like the starting point in the box to be:
Each player picks a character card and figure. Shuffle the monster cards and dungeon tiles and place the dungeon entry at the edge of the play area. Place the characters at the dungeon entry and move them into the first room. They can search for secret doors or hidden treasures, when the first character leaves the first room, flip the first dungeon tile and arange it so it ties into the exit they have left.
Fuck no. Exactly the wrong thinking I describe in action, but applied to board games instead of comics or novels. Fuck. No.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645638Non-gamers
Lapsed gamers
Wonder how many non-gamers and/or lapsed gamers, looked into D&D and found out very quickly that they couldn't stand the other gamers who showed up at the first few games they played, and subsequently didn't come back.
When I use to play at gaming stores (for 4E Encounters and some game-day type events), there were some new and/or casual players which showed up, but who stopped coming back after a week or two. In one case I later came across one such player (who didn't come back to the game) at a nearby mall, where they mentioned that they couldn't stand being around two particular other players. As far as they were concerned, it was pointless playing the game further with two individuals they didn't like.
Quote from: Benoist;645765The problem is that, from a mass market standpoint, they suck. They are overcomplicated, they are edgy to some faction of the RPG crowd for the sake of being "edgy", and in fact all they end up accomplishing is make the principles of role playing unclear, weird, and compare themselves to other media most people would rather be doing or enjoying for their own sakes, instead of playing some lame replacement for them (e.g. RPGs as emulators of other media instead of their own thing fail. Hard).
Propose to people to play a Narrative/novel-emulator game and most of them will prefer to just read a book. If they want to put in the effort they will write one. Not play some emulator instead that leads nowhere.
Tell people about RPGs and play them for their own sakes, and then you'll see people getting more curious. That's why D&D, for all its "immaturity" or "vanilla-esque fantasy" or whatever the fuck the buzzword of D&D-bashing is this week, actually wins at this game.
Very possibly true bit the real issue is no one outside the RPG hobby is even aware of them at all.
So you have 2 ips with an RPG cross over potential both huge in popular media both with new active games but no attempt to even reach out outside the established gamer market.
Quote from: David Johansen;645746Yes it reduces D&D to a board game. The problem with 4e as a point of entry is that it isn't enough of a board game.
Yes I'd like to see a D&D starter that was completely self contained to tenth level. But I'd like the starting point in the box to be:
Each player picks a character card and figure. Shuffle the monster cards and dungeon tiles and place the dungeon entry at the edge of the play area. Place the characters at the dungeon entry and move them into the first room. They can search for secret doors or hidden treasures, when the first character leaves the first room, flip the first dungeon tile and arange it so it ties into the exit they have left.
Wotc made a bunch of products like this. Castle Ravenloft, Legend of Drizzt, Wrath ofAshardalon to name a few. Paizo did a beautiful intro box to Pathfinder. Games Workshop has also created board games of this kind in the past, Heroquest and Warhammer Quest. FFG has released the second edition of this kind of game, Descent: Journey in the Dark.
The market has more than enough Dungeon Crawl board games. D&D does not need any more of that. What D&D needs is a platform able to let it insert in its marketing all the new fantasy fads and so to be able to reach to geeks and nerds out there. For example, right now it is zombie apocalypse/survival so it needs to be able to be marketed as a fantasy roleplaying game of sword & sorcery zombie survival amongst others things. But first of all it must develop a versatile and suitable game system for that sort of thing without any unnecessary baggage like minis and grids (competing for time is one of the most important realities of today's entertainment market). These gimmicks should be additional products to explore for already established clients, not the other way around.
D&D could and should easily dominate the roleplaying, dungeon board game, and fantasy wargame markets with a single product. It can and should be all things to all people. It's that capacity that made it a giant. It's that division and fracturing that has prevented other rpgs from knocking it out of the top spot. It presents a broad and expansive experience that can mould itself to the needs of the individual group.
I suggest a simple board game with a map tile and cards system and one page of rules as a bridge. The gap between this and actually roleplaying is more like a shallow creek than a gorge with a raging river.
I suggest it because in my experience most new players look at the big fat rulebook and sigh. They might look through it at the pictures. But the sheer scope of it is just too daunting.
Don't get me wrong, a person who knows how to play can be the best bridge but they can also be the bridge with panels that fall out of the bottom and a spiked roof that drops on the poor fools who trusted the bastard.
I don't think that the whole game should be boardgamized or unplayable without miniatures. Just the very tip of the point of entry. I prefer real world ranges and movement rates to inches but chopping off the miniatures aspect is also a mistake. D&D needs to embrace the whole breadth, width, and height of the fantasy gaming experience and stop pidgeonholing or scapegoating people with different preferences.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645576We are in what may be a unique lull in the RPG industry. WotC is dead in the water until 5e comes out. Pathfinder is no longer the shiny new thing. 5e probably won't ship until GenCon 2014. WoD is on life support. Neither WotC nor Paizo are doing any real marketing, outreach or advertising.
The situation is tailor made for a new fresh RPG (or refreshed old favorite) to make a big splash and grab some momentum before 5e shows up. This is the moment for some company to seize the day.
So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?
Do Numenera and 13th Age not count?
Really, the people who *write* games are attempting this, but the companies that produce and distribute them are not. Maybe it's because the writers feel they can get more out of a smaller company or self-publishing. Maybe companies like GURPS rely on an audience built up and maintained over decades and they don't want to rock the boat.
Quote from: David Johansen;645776D&D could and should easily dominate the roleplaying, dungeon board game, and fantasy wargame markets with a single product. It can and should be all things to all people. It's that capacity that made it a giant. It's that division and fracturing that has prevented other rpgs from knocking it out of the top spot. It presents a broad and expansive experience that can mould itself to the needs of the individual group.
I suggest a simple board game with a map tile and cards system and one page of rules as a bridge. The gap between this and actually roleplaying is more like a shallow creek than a gorge with a raging river.
I suggest it because in my experience most new players look at the big fat rulebook and sigh. They might look through it at the pictures. But the sheer scope of it is just too daunting.
Don't get me wrong, a person who knows how to play can be the best bridge but they can also be the bridge with panels that fall out of the bottom and a spiked roof that drops on the poor fools who trusted the bastard.
I don't think that the whole game should be boardgamized or unplayable without miniatures. Just the very tip of the point of entry. I prefer real world ranges and movement rates to inches but chopping off the miniatures aspect is also a mistake. D&D needs to embrace the whole breadth, width, and height of the fantasy gaming experience and stop pidgeonholing or scapegoating people with different preferences.
You fail to realize that this is already out there. It already exists. You asked for ten levels. The matter with presenting to the market ten valuable game levels is not about the rules of the ten levels but rather about the scenarios. But these scenarios need to showcase tabletop roleplaying and not board game play. Thus they kind of need a different game system platform than the one you suggest.
Quote from: David Johansen;645776D&D could and should easily dominate the roleplaying, dungeon board game, and fantasy wargame markets with a single product.
It's been tried and it FAILS. Precisely because of what I just talked about. Or to put it in the words I edited in above: "Fuck no. Exactly the wrong thinking I describe in action, but applied to board games instead of comics or novels. Fuck. No." AFAIC.
Bullshit
The only edition that comes close to doing it is First Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.
It has naval combat rules, siege rules, stats for men and monsters that ignore weapon type and fix it to a die type for faster play. Hundreds of one hit dice creatures appearing in a single encounter.
The current D&D board games don't use the actual rules of the game, they're a stripped down and modified subset. What I'm talking about is more like the old PaceSetter boxed sets which had a short pamphlet to allow people to start playing in minutes including an adventure location map and pregenerated characters and two full rule books for advanced play. Add a nice campaign supplement with some adventures and a massive batch of plastic figures (well, in a perfect world lead but ah well...) and you've got my perfect starter set.
I laugh at the supposedly old school players who like to forget that all the early versions of D&D purported to be for use with miniature figures.
I don't think any company can "take advantage" of the "debacle" (if there is one regarding WoTC and the market).
I'll ignore computer games and most outside competition for now, because I think most gaming nowadays is electronic and a lot of the gaming audience who would be interested in the table-top RPG moved to the computer versions, and it will likely have the majority interest.
But more importantly, the way most of these games became successful was from the bottom up. D&D went from being a cult phenomenon to a mass market product in the 1980s. Vampire came out of nowhere and influenced how RPGs were made for over a decade or more. WoTC build Magic: The Gathering from scratch, and it became a phenomenon, and later and was able to buy D&D and give it a burst of energy.
None of these guys said at the beginning "let's dominate the market". It just happened. The ones that end up on top were partly skillful, partly savvy, and partly just plain lucky. If anything takes over the domination of WoTC in the market, it will likely be something new, something different, and something that comes out of nowhere and just expands exponentially.
I think the only way to change the market is not to try to do it deliberately, but just keep creating new things--and I mean really new things, don't try to create the upteenth D&D clone or the 18th revision of Traveller or something like that. Keep creating, keep thinking of new ideas, and maybe you'll find something that gets there.
Quote from: David Johansen;645785Bullshit
The only edition that comes close to doing it is First Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.
It has naval combat rules, siege rules, stats for men and monsters that ignore weapon type and fix it to a die type for faster play. Hundreds of one hit dice creatures appearing in a single encounter.
The current D&D board games don't use the actual rules of the game, they're a stripped down and modified subset. What I'm talking about is more like the old PaceSetter boxed sets which had a short pamphlet to allow people to start playing in minutes including an adventure location map and pregenerated characters and two full rule books for advanced play. Add a nice campaign supplement with some adventures and a massive batch of plastic figures (well, in a perfect world lead but ah well...) and you've got my perfect starter set.
I laugh at the supposedly old school players who like to forget that all the early versions of D&D purported to be for use with miniature figures.
How much would such a product cost? And what would it do differently than Paizo's Basic Game box? Also remember that 30 years ago there were no playstations, no World of Warcraft, no dungeon crawl board games and no MtG and no warhammer to compete.
Quote from: David Johansen;645785Bullshit
Right back at you, David. Naval rules and 1 hit dice creatures do not board games and tactical miniatures games make.
It's the same warped reductio ad absurdum that gave us 4e in the first place.
It's been tried. It fails.
Cost? Well, that's an economies of scale issue. In a perfect world where I buy out Habro to get D&D and then turn their entire engine to putting D&D on the map, well, then it's probably around $30 and the core book is hard backed.
In a less perfect world where for some reason I decide to build such a starter using Dark Passages as the core, probably around $50 and the core book is sadlestitched and the figures are metal ones I cast and sculpted myself. This one isn't likely as the retro-clone market is flooded and even my own D&D variant isn't my favorite game by a long shot.
You get more figures in the Habro takeover version because they're plastic :D
The core rule book does not need to be and indeed should not be more than 100 pages. The adventure and setting book should be the same size though it's possible the adventures and gazeteer should be individual folios so you only need the one you're playing. I'd probably go with a town adventure, two starter dungeons, and a major dungeon.
If I had the D&D rights the setting would probably be pre gazeteer Mystria and the adventures would be Village of Homlet, The Keep on the Borderlands, and Temple of Elemental Evil. But maybe those are over played so perhaps the cult of the reptile god series instead. There's not much difference between iconic and a dead horse some days.
Quote from: Benoist;645790Right back at you, David. Naval rules and 1 hit dice creatures do not board games and tactical miniatures games make.
It's the same warped reductio ad absurdum that gave us 4e in the first place.
It's been tried. It fails.
Lets open up the 1e DM's guide, see the
TURNING RADIUS diagrams? The
HEX GRID facing diagrams? The random solo dungeon and wilderness rules? It's all in there in FIRST EDITION AD&D. Right there in the fucking DM's guide.
Where 3e and 4e went wrong is that they went from a fluid, modular game that could be used in a million ways and turned it into a rigid, formally structured game that restricted and complicated any attempt to fiddle with the system.
But yeah, the hit dice system is the core functional element of the combat system and it is clearly a wargame mechanic intended to abstract large combats.
Quote from: David Johansen;645794Lets open up the 1e DM's guide, see the TURNING RADIUS diagrams? The HEX GRID facing diagrams? The random solo dungeon and wilderness rules? It's all in there in FIRST EDITION AD&D. Right there in the fucking DM's guide.
Oh! So you're one of those guys looking at the pretty diagrams without actually reading the damn book, are you?
OK. That explains the communication breakdown. ;)
No, but I haven't read it as recently as you have. Still I think we're not as far apart as you think. I do think that mapless, more or less free form narrative (as opposed to narrativist) play should and always will be the standard mode of play. But I don't believe that people who want to use miniatures and maps should be neglected either.
When I talk about the contents of a starter set I'm talking about doing everything possible to get people to buy the damn thing and actually give it a try. I'm also wanting to prevent some self appointed Dungeon Master from giving everyone a horrible experience. I see absolutely nothing wrong with a DMless rules walk through that can be played within five minutes of openning the box. Heck, Warhammer even does this. There's a little pamphlet that has you pull out a couple figures and shows you how they fight. I am, by no means suggesting that the adventures should be reduced to a series of set piece encounters and map tiles. Make the map tiles generic enough to get good use, sure, but reduce the dungeon maps to tile layouts? No way.
I'm talking strictly about teaching tools and cool toy value to get it off the store shelves (and my own miniatures collecting fetish) when I discuss what goes in the starter.
As far as miniatures battles, sieges, and naval combat go, Warhammer has a huge market share and since we're talking business I don't see why we should just let them have it. D&D's core rules can handle it so why not showcase it and agressively pursue that market? Especially when miniatures are such a good on-going sales product.
You seem to want to tie the publisher's hands behind their back when it comes to keeping the game you love in print.
Quote from: David Johansen;645797No, but I haven't read it as recently as you have. Still I think we're not as far apart as you think. I do think that mapless, more or less free form narrative (as opposed to narrativist) play should and always will be the standard mode of play. But I don't believe that people who want to use miniatures and maps should be neglected either.
There is a WORLD of difference between what you are suggesting here, that people who want to play with miniatures and maps should not be neglected in the ADVANCED game, which I agree with, and what you proposed a few posts above, which is to create yet-another-4e fail-game trying to function as an emulator of other game types and media, which is, again, FAILtastic and has been tried before.
Quote from: David Johansen;645797When I talk about the contents of a starter set I'm talking about doing everything possible to get people to buy the damn thing and actually give it a try. I'm also wanting to prevent some self appointed Dungeon Master from giving everyone a horrible experience. I see absolutely nothing wrong with a DMless rules walk through that can be played within five minutes of openning the box. Heck, Warhammer even does this. There's a little pamphlet that has you pull out a couple figures and shows you how they fight. I am, by no means suggesting that the adventures should be reduced to a series of set piece encounters and map tiles. Make the map tiles generic enough to get good use, sure, but reduce the dungeon maps to tile layouts? No way.
An "auberge espagnole" starter set trying to be everything, albeit just a pale copy of whatever it copies, to everyone, whatever that means in altering the actual specificity of the product you are selling and would make it stand out on its own terms, and cutting off the balls of the prospecting DM will result in a crap product. This is total nonsense. Utter crap. I hope nobody at the helm of D&D ever listens to this type of total bullshit again. Seriously. With all my heart.
Quote from: David Johansen;645797I'm talking strictly about teaching tools and cool toy value to get it off the store shelves (and my own miniatures collecting fetish) when I discuss what goes in the starter.
How about introducing people to, you know, role playing games? The worlds of their own imaginations, instead of trying to sell the thing as something it isn't? I know. Crazy idea.
Quote from: David Johansen;645797As far as miniatures battles, sieges, and naval combat go, Warhammer has a huge market share and since we're talking business I don't see why we should just let them have it. D&D's core rules can handle it so why not showcase it and agressively pursue that market? Especially when miniatures are such a good on-going sales product.
Because D&D is not Warhammer. Warhammer is first and foremost a miniatures tactical skirmish game. D&D is a role playing game, or at least, it's supposed to be, and could be quite successful at being just that again, if it tried.
Quote from: David Johansen;645797You seem to want to tie the publisher's hands behind their back when it comes to keeping the game you love in print.
No. I want the publisher to stop thinking in terms of other media and game types and bullshit and to stop trying to create a pre-packaged consumerist item where all you do is play inside the confines of the toy box, and instead try to have faith in the inherent open-endedness of role playing games on their own merits again.
Quote from: David Johansen;645794Lets open up the 1e DM's guide, see the TURNING RADIUS diagrams? The HEX GRID facing diagrams? The random solo dungeon and wilderness rules? It's all in there in FIRST EDITION AD&D. Right there in the fucking DM's guide.
Revisionism is strong with the OSR.
D&D was produced by a wargame company, it contained language and methods common to the wargames of the time and anyone from the period familar with TSR products would know that it wasn't intended to played without a map and miniatures of some type, indeed these were some of the first supporting products produced for the game line.
But you'll not win any brownie points with this crowd pointing such things out. Best to leave them with their illusions, worse case they'll do what the Forge did- wreck the next version of D&D.
Let them. It's the only way to learn.
Quote from: gleichman;645800Revisionism is strong with the OSR.
D&D was produced by a wargame company, it contained language and methods common to the wargames of the time and anyone from the period familar with TSR products would know that it wasn't intended to played without a map and miniatures of some type, indeed these were some of the first supporting products produced for the game line.
But you'll not win any brownie points with this crowd pointing such things out. Best to leave them with their illusions, worse case they'll do what the Forge did- wreck the next version of D&D.
Let them. It's the only way to learn.
If it were not for Basic all this discussion would not exist. It is the Basic set that made D&D popular in the market. So, was Basic a wargame? Or did Chainmail make D&D any popular?
Nope.
Quote from: xech;645801If it were not for Basic all this discussion would not exist. It is the Basic set that made D&D popular in the market. So, was Basic a wargame? Or did Chainmail make D&D any popular?
Nope.
Yes, but Basic actually plays better than Advanced when used as a wargame because all the weapons have single die / no modifiers damages. And the movement rates and ranges are still in place, and the Expert set has naval combat, sieges, and domain building, and the Companion set has mass battle rules.
What basic shows is that it can be done more cleanly and clearly than Advanced did it. But it breaks it into three sets and I think new people get as intimidated by the great wall of books as any other facet of the game.
Where I do agree with Benoist is in that D&D offers a unique creative experience that should not play second fiddle to toys and teaching tools.
I'm not at all opposed to a proper Players Hand Book, DM's Guide (including miniatures rules for regimental movement, sieges, and naval battles of course), and Monster Manual for the existing market. I don't want the current market abandoned or cast aside. But I want the core to be the core and the advanced options to be modular and advanced.
What we disagree on is whether free form narrative play will convince new people to buy the game and give it a try.
And another thread has degenerated. There is less and less reason to come to this site anymore: good-faith discussion is no longer happening. :/
Yeah, a bit of a derailment, my bad.
Quote from: gleichman;645800Revisionism is strong with the OSR.
D&D was produced by a wargame company, it contained language and methods common to the wargames of the time and anyone from the period familar with TSR products would know that it wasn't intended to played without a map and miniatures of some type, indeed these were some of the first supporting products produced for the game line.
But you'll not win any brownie points with this crowd pointing such things out. Best to leave them with their illusions, worse case they'll do what the Forge did- wreck the next version of D&D.
Let them. It's the only way to learn.
If you ignore the fact that Gygax never used minis.
But ignoring things that don't fit your biases is a well formed habit of yours.
But those of us who didn't sit at his table can only go by what he wrote in the books. It doesn't really matter what he did though because he was trying to sell the game to miniatures gamers.
Which I think is reasonable marketing strategy.
Warhammer is huge and has a huge market share that is based entirely on toy value.
If you have a beautiful hardbound D&D rule book sitting next to a big Warhammer starter box full of amazing miniatures with beautiful artwork and photos of the painted figures and the Warhammer box is twice the price of the D&D book most kids will want the Warhammer box. Just go and look at the shelf space allocation in half a dozen gaming stores if you want some proof.
Now if you put the D&D in a big box with as much cool stuff for a bit less I think you'll do better. Warhammer's a big name, sure, but so is Dungeons & Dragons. I'm not saying the game should bend over and become a Warhammer clone. I'm saying it should get in the ring and fight for its market share with every means at its disposal. And when the rules are already there, the game is already fully capable of doing these things without becoming 4e (actually 4e was the worst version of D&D for handling mass battles) why on earth shouldn't it?
Quote from: Spinachcat;645576We are in what may be a unique lull in the RPG industry. WotC is dead in the water until 5e comes out. Pathfinder is no longer the shiny new thing. 5e probably won't ship until GenCon 2014. WoD is on life support. Neither WotC nor Paizo are doing any real marketing, outreach or advertising.
The situation is tailor made for a new fresh RPG (or refreshed old favorite) to make a big splash and grab some momentum before 5e shows up. This is the moment for some company to seize the day.
So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?
CGL is pushing Shadowrun quite hard this year.
New Edition
Card Game
Miniature Game
Quote from: David Johansen;645813But those of us who didn't sit at his table can only go by what he wrote in the books.
Where it says time and aga...
You know what? I can't have this conversation anymore. It's so fucking stupid. You win, whatever.
Plus Gliechman is here so any hope of an honest and/or intelligent conversation coming out of this is nil.
Like on page ten of the DMG "Use Of Miniature Figures With The Game?" Or the aerial combat rules on page 50 - 53 with ranges in table top inches and turn modes in hexes? Or the encounter distances in inches on page 52. Or the heading "Number of Opponents Per Figure" on page 69 in the the combat rules?
Seriously, sometimes I think you guys are just offended at the notion that new people might get into gaming and enjoy doing it differently than you happened to do it in 1972.
You're all pissed off because I'm arguing for a product that can compete in the existing marketplace. And it happens to resemble some of the stated goals of fourth edition.
The goals were fine, IMO, it was the implementation and marketing that make New Coke look like a brilliant success.
No. Nobody's pissed off for one thing. I know this is the internet and everything but not everyone's frothing at the mouth as soon as the word "fuck" is uttered, especially not on the RPG Site.
In fact, people simply disagree with you because (1) you are wrong, and (2) because this is the same bullshit being debated over and over again by the same people defending the same failed ideas over and over, like "AD&D was meant for miniatures, man! Look at [select quote from DMG]! It's got rules for hex movement too!" Disregarding the entirety of the body of the work and its meaning as an Advanced game system full of various sub-systems usable with different types of campaigns and context, with the assumption that the real master of the show is the actual Dungeon Master, to begin with.
But hey! Whatever, right? There's a section about miniatures in the DMG!
*shakes head* Read your books, people.
Quote from: Piestrio;645822Where it says time and aga...
You know what? I can't have this conversation anymore. It's so fucking stupid. You win, whatever.
Plus Gliechman is here so any hope of an honest and/or intelligent conversation coming out of this is nil.
Lol, so true. I think his crowning appearance was recently in that "bad flags" thread, when he was talking shit to everyone, yet somehow managed to pull an "Why are you mean to me" move, and in such an ingenious manner, than people actually believed and apologised to him.
God dammit, why don't you feed my ego like that you bastards!?
Quote from: Melan;645806And another thread has degenerated. There is less and less reason to come to this site anymore: good-faith discussion is no longer happening. :/
I could form a "Law of 6th Page" - whenever a thread goes above 6th page, it ought to degenerate into bickering, but I am far from blaming neither Internet, as many do, nor these forums. In all human group interactions, as long as discussion continues, the chance of bickering and good faith being lost raises.
Anyway, no true RPGer uses miniatures/doesn't use miniatures when playing. Pick your true Scotsman.
Have I ever said it was exclusively intended for use with miniatures? No, I've said it said as much on the title page of the Blue Book Basic set and IRRC the white box. I've said it had that base covered mechanically and I don't see why it shouldn't allow for both preferences. I've said that the core mechanics are so well suited to miniatures play that one might think that in conjunction with all the other miniatures oriented references it was intentional. Yes, that was probably more Brian Blume than Gary Gygax, fair enough.
I have said that I think a starter with a lot of toy value would sell better to people who are in a store, picking a game off the shelf. I'm saying an all in one purchase is a better introductory product because it doesn't require a body of product knowledge to know what you need. It says "Dungeons & Dragons" on the box and it's everything you need to play D&D.
It's not stupid or wrong, at least not provably so until someone puts it to the test in the marketplace. I appreciate that you disagree with my ideas.
But what about a solitaire adventure walk through like the later basic set or the 4e essentials? Personally I'd rather flip tiles and move figures and actually learn the basics of the rules. Or perhaps plastic gold pieces, and toy swords and costumes to wear? Hand puppets? A series of touchy feely tie in novels or putting the rules in a wooden box with some dice?
The fundamental question is "How do you present this product so it can make a buck and stay viable in the market." It'd be nice if just being itself could do that, it really would be. I'd like to see a solid, stable ruleset with good support in the stores. I'd like to see D&D kick Magic and Warhammer's asses in the sales department. That might seem extreme, but I'm tired of industry figures hanging their heads in shame and saying "rpgs just aren't a very good product and their time is done."
"Long tail?" You know where I think you should stick it.
Hey, could all the D&D heads kindly piss off to their own thread, this one was actually interesting for a while. Seriously, fuck D&D, all of its versions, that Old School Religion, and the endless pointless circular talmudic arguments. If it struck an iceberg and vanished tomorrow the hobby would be better off for it. D&D isn't the hobby, and the hobby isn't D&D. Simples, no?
There is a mega market for tabletop roleplaying games, I guarantee it. As someone said earlier, innovative kickstarters are bringing in the bucks. TBZ is ostensibly more or less an RPG, how much did that make? It's all about the image and how the hobby's key strengths are presented.
Quote from: Silverlion;645640The whole "lets get non-gamers" thing is a bust. That ways lies madness.
Why would existing gamers be the only people on the planet who could be interested in RPGs?
At conventions, I see RPGs being played by guys in their 40s, boardgames being played by men and women 20s to 60s and 40k being played by guys in their 20s to 40s. I rarely seen teen agers anywhere. In the 80s and 90s, we were overrun with teens.
I can't accept that today's teens just don't have our special snowflake imaginations that let us pretend to be elves with laser guns.
Quote from: Silverlion;645640It is easier to hop and WOW for two hours than get five busy friends together on the same day. Of course for me, the latter is worth about ten thousand times the former, but I admit to being a bit strange that way.
This is a failure of the RPG industry to make make gaming more accessible. WotC has finally tried to do something with Encounters, but it is too little and too late and with too little marketing.
The RPG companies were all about selling books and forgot that the entire hobby depends on GMs getting groups together. The RPGA was a good idea, but neither TSR or WotC put enough support into the infrastructure and instead spent all their time trying to monetize it.
Quote from: J Arcane;645651Man, H&H wouldn't even exist without the D&D vacuum.
Please elaborate on this.
Also, will you be doing a marketing / advertising / promotion campaign for H&H? Will it just be online or will you be promoting it offline as well?
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;645655The general masses do not tabletop role-play. Magic cards or pogs are more their thing.
According to US Demographics, there are 88 million Gen Xers and 80 million Gen Yers. That's a shitload of people. If gaming could appeal to just 1% of them, then we are talking 1,680,000 new gamers.
We don't need the general masses. We just need 1 out of every 100 people between 15 and 50. Why is that impossible?
Quote from: Soylent Green;645681Maybe the new Star Wars is exactly that;
Maybe. Has anyone seen offline adverts for the new SW game?
Quote from: The Traveller;645699Couple this with the industry leaders not apparently caring much about the industry (Wizards, SJG, WW) along with a hilarious across the board failure to grasp the fundamental unique advantage of RPGs and you have the current pileup.
Yes.
I don't understand GAMA because they are the one group that should be doing much more to unite the industry leaders and the rank and file to promote the hobby which increases the business.
Quote from: The Traveller;645736The industry needs a new name.
I agree. "Everyone knows" that RPGs is something you play on the computer.
Storygames was a great name. Too bad that name was surrendered and then shit upon by both the Forge and the anti-Forge.
Quote from: The Traveller;645736b) The core strength of RPGs, the manifestation of spontaneous imagination in a form that many people can interact with has been utterly ignored by the industry.
Monetizing imagination is tough.
Legos does it because they own the tools. RPGs tried to do it by selling us piles of books with rules. At best, RPGs could do it by selling us more setting, more concepts, more how-to-imagine, but sadly, hardcore gamers buy more crunch than fluff and that's how we got here.
Quote from: jibbajibba;645741I am in an interesting position currently as my new game group are all novices, students that have never played RPGs before.
How did they even find out about RPGs?
What make them take the first step to join a group?
Quote from: David Johansen;645743But, my contention is that the Kickstarter is making it possible for new games and products to reach the market.
Very true, but only to the established market.
Quote from: ggroy;645770Wonder how many non-gamers and/or lapsed gamers, looked into D&D and found out very quickly that they couldn't stand the other gamers who showed up at the first few games they played, and subsequently didn't come back.
Sadly, you make an excellent point.
I wonder how many lapsed gamers are people who left gaming because of douche in their old group.
But sadly, I suspect if we all got to shoot "that one guy" there'd be none of us left. Depending, I suppose on the sequencing of the shooting, you might end up with isolated surviors :D
Quote from: The Traveller;645832Hey, could all the D&D heads kindly piss off to their own thread
Nah, I think we're done.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645858Why would existing gamers be the only people on the planet who could be interested in RPGs?
At conventions, I see RPGs being played by guys in their 40s, boardgames being played by men and women 20s to 60s and 40k being played by guys in their 20s to 40s. I rarely seen teen agers anywhere. In the 80s and 90s, we were overrun with teens.
I can't accept that today's teens just don't have our special snowflake imaginations that let us pretend to be elves with laser guns.
I totally agree. I work with kids day in and day out and I can assure you they're much the same as they've always been.
QuoteI agree. "Everyone knows" that RPGs is something you play on the computer.
Storygames was a great name. Too bad that name was surrendered and then shit upon by both the Forge and the anti-Forge.
I like "Adventure Games"
Yeah, "Adventure Games" is okay. I like "Fantastical Confabulations" but I'm aware that it's just me.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645858Monetizing imagination is tough.
Is it though, much of the entertainment industry could be said to be monetised imagination - the Harry Potter books are monetised imagination, the Lord of the Rings, movies and all. RPGs are different in that they are inviting people to actively use their own imagination, its a different take on the same concept but similar potential is there.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645858Legos does it because they own the tools. RPGs tried to do it by selling us piles of books with rules. At best, RPGs could do it by selling us more setting, more concepts, more how-to-imagine, but sadly, hardcore gamers buy more crunch than fluff and that's how we got here.
It was always easier to market to hardcore gamers, they are the loudest and most visible whether in company feedback, conventions, or on the internet. A good example is that of the Resident Evil movies, the first one was brilliant but the fans of the computer game went bananas, so we were left with an increasingly boring series of John Woo films sans plot or direction, or for the most part, reason. Maybe the people who played the games loved them, I dunno.
The industry needs to change course and reinvent itself I think. Or have an outsider come and do it for them.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645858At conventions, I see RPGs being played by guys in their 40s, boardgames being played by men and women 20s to 60s and 40k being played by guys in their 20s to 40s. I rarely seen teen agers anywhere. In the 80s and 90s, we were overrun with teens.
I can't accept that today's teens just don't have our special snowflake imagination(...)
Dunno how it is in the USA, but in Poland teenagers rarely go to cons because money.
Quote from: The Traveller;645877It was always easier to market to hardcore gamers, they are the loudest and most visible whether in company feedback, conventions, or on the internet. A good example is that of the Resident Evil movies, the first one was brilliant but the fans of the computer game went bananas, so we were left with an increasingly boring series of John Woo films sans plot or direction, or for the most part, reason. Maybe the people who played the games loved them, I dunno.
The industry needs to change course and reinvent itself I think. Or have an outsider come and do it for them.
Reinventing the wheel can be as much of a folly as claiming it is not broken. Again - RPGs never really had great market to saturate. The beginnings of RPGs were more of an entertainment bubble - DnD tapped swiftly, was the only serious thing...and now, though the market has grown, the amount of decent quality products makes the competition quite cutthroat.
But, as I said, I still think that the Golden Days are yet to come, rather than an age bygone. Though admittedly, for DnD, that ship has sailed.
Quite possibly but Pathfinder is still D&D in all but name.
What I don't see is somebody stepping up to the plate with a product that will change the situation. It may come. It might not be what I think would do it.
It might come totally from left field and just settle in and absorb the rpg hobby entirely. But video games didn't and LARP didn't and Story Games haven't so I'm not sure what would. Perhaps mountain biking or hiking? I dunno, with the kids at the store on Saturday I might as well start a boyscout troop and buy a minivan.
So, if there is something that could do it I can't imagine what it would be. That doesn't mean it doesn't or can't exist but it does mean I don't know what it would be.
There is a reason KISS is nigh dictum; approachability matters.
For all the phenoms that exploded on the gaming stage, note that they often started in approachable productions, besides the novelty factor. M:tG cards are like all these crazy new effects and tricks from the get go. But note two things: a) in the beginning the text amount was smaller on average (albeit often contextually vague), and b) they still keep such simple cards nowadays in small pools in the commons spread just in case for new players.
You'd think selling imagination wouldn't be so hard, since it sells relatively well everywhere else (and then gets ground into dust with sequels). But catering only to any elitist fan base is always a bad idea. A simple, approachable foundation keeps the market big enough to indulge in diverse fan specialties on the side.
I reject the OP's assertion that there is in fact a "debacle" going on; if anything, the Debacle happened with 4e.
Trying to jump in with some big D&D-beating project now would be very stupid, as you risk having your entire investment swept away when 5e comes out.
RPGPundit
If the most recent 5e playtest is any indication of what 5e is going to look like, you are going to be screaming how nobody at WotC would listen to you because that piece of shit is going to redefine debacle.
But who knows, maybe there is some super secret internal version of 5e that is totally badass and they are just keeping us playtesters fooled with PDFs full of lukewarm crap.
Quote from: RPGPundit;645999Trying to jump in with some big D&D-beating project now would be very stupid, as you risk having your entire investment swept away when 5e comes out.
RPGPundit
Hah. So I'm a Fantasy Flight, Steve Jackson or Joseph Goodman and want to bring out my biggest idea with the biggest budget yet, and you would advise me to sit on it for a couple of years so 5e won't sweep it away?
I guess Samsung should wait until the iPhone 6 before they release their new tech too. Forgive me for wiping away my tears of laughter.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645576So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?
I know it's not what you want to hear, but FFG's Star Wars game is the product you're looking for. It's landing in the market lull period; it's already enjoying huge success; and FFG must have been doing fucking happy dances when Disney bought LucasFilms and announced a new trilogy of films.
More generally, the idea that D&D is quiescent right now doesn't seem to be true. While it's true that WotC is not selling anything right now, D&D Next playtest groups are plentiful -- which means that the budget of available time for RPG gamers is, in fact, being consumed by D&D.
Paizo, of course, continues to do what it's had great success doing: Turning out consistent, monthly releases in their multiple subscription lines; launching new product lines; expanding their organized play network; yada yada yada.
Quote from: Spike;645592I mean, he'll keep GURPS in production perennially because it makes enough money to be worth it, but he's just sitting down there in texas smoking cigars he lights with cash from, say, Munchkin and other products at this point. I don't ascribe any malice to this, I just sort of assume he's more or less retired and living on the fat of the land he's built.
That's certainly possible. AFAIK, Jackson hasn't done any direct design work on an RPG product since the '90s. But that doesn't translate to Jackson just sitting on his laurels: He's actively designing a fairly steady stream of new board and card games.
My interpretation of SJG, however, is pretty much what Jackson says it is in his yearly reports: Munchkin makes a ton of money and board games are the new hot item. GURPS doesn't and isn't. He's a savvy businessman, so he's going to invest where he can profit.
I also think sales of GURPS from roughly 1993 onwards were being driven primarily by the library of source material. Going to 4E was a mistake because it rendered the existing source material obsolete, thus removing the only real selling point the game had going for it.
GURPS is clearly a legacy product at this point. Like others I think SJG could have done more to leverage it since the comparative failure of 4e, but a couple of user-friendly all-in-one books or whatever wouldn't have been a game changer.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645576So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?
Quote from: FASERIP;645656They weren't aware of the scope of WotC's problems,
Apparently neither was WotC. :D
JG
Quote from: Benoist;645765The problem is that, from a mass market standpoint, (those games) suck. They are overcomplicated, they are edgy to some faction of the RPG crowd for the sake of being "edgy", and in fact all they end up accomplishing is make the principles of role playing unclear, weird, and compare themselves to other media most people would rather be doing or enjoying for their own sakes, instead of playing some lame replacement for them (e.g. RPGs as emulators of other media instead of their own thing FAIL. Hard).
Thanks for explaining why I didn't like
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying better than I did in my own Review. :D
JG
You need to spend money to make money (advertising, production, advertising, more advertising etc) to fill the void of D&D and a product that is easy to play and won't be jumped on by the media as a means of brainwashing the next generation of kids into becoming the mass murderers who take peoples stuff.
Plus for those companies who have the money, expanding the experience onto tablets and phones (with pictures, movies, sound effects etc) might help appeal to the kids. To sell to kids, anything different needs to be done, because boxed beginners sets take up shelf space and without that advertising budget, end up gathering dust. How about a cheap projector to fire pictures and movies onto the wall? Skylanders style interactive fighting mound, where you put the character figures on the mound, things light up and it tells you who attacks, misses, hits and wins with noises and stuff?
We didn't have any of that first time round, and relied on printed mags to find out about new games. Plus of course Computer Games were squares moving on a solid colour screen, usually after typing in a program that needs hours of de-bugging afterwards. When computers took a jump in the early-mid eighties I can imagine RPGs took a big hit that they only momentarily recovered from in peaks and troughs. Now, why bother with all that set up shit and taking hours to read rules when you can just stick in a disc and go? In my opinion the RPG industry needs to bring in new blood and change the way it pulls new players in, then feed them with options when game X (that brought them into the hobby) has run its course and they look for something a bit more grown up/shinier.
Otherwise the RPG industry can continue to sell to a bunch of grumpy old bastards with plenty of money but who moan about everything and buy games more to collect than actually play, cause no one has time what with jobs, kids, sleep being of higher priority than they used to be when you played first time round.
Smaller RPGs will continue to make money and cater for a smaller fanbase (who have the money to spend - see kickstarters for example) but I can't see how a small company will find the money to attempt a 'breakout' product that brings the kids in and sells in the numbers the suits required, when the big guys have already decided to push Barbie or Mickey Mouse this quarter.
I don't think RPGs are doomed - just that the market is more crowded with other options these days, and that they need to do something to stand out better, just like they did 'back in the day' and wargamers were maybe grumbling about the same stuff.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645858Why would existing gamers be the only people on the planet who could be interested in RPGs?
At conventions, I see RPGs being played by guys in their 40s, boardgames being played by men and women 20s to 60s and 40k being played by guys in their 20s to 40s. I rarely seen teen agers anywhere. In the 80s and 90s, we were overrun with teens.
I basically agree but last weekend was a small convention here in Berlin, Germany. I didn't attend as a visitor but only came over to bring a movie for the night slot anime block.
I was very surprised about the attendance. It was way better than in the last 5-8 years, and I saw many young(er) players. Still not "hordes of teens" but it was different than before.
I don't know what they changed in their organisation/marketing style but it seemed to have worked.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645858Why would existing gamers be the only people on the planet who could be interested in RPGs?
At conventions, I see RPGs being played by guys in their 40s, boardgames being played by men and women 20s to 60s and 40k being played by guys in their 20s to 40s. I rarely seen teen agers anywhere. In the 80s and 90s, we were overrun with teens.
I can't accept that today's teens just don't have our special snowflake imaginations that let us pretend to be elves with laser guns.
Well, I'm well below the 40s range you're talking about and so are almost all of the gamers in my particular circles.
You may wish to consider that you might be observing not a shift in the RPG-playing population overall, but a shift in the behaviour of con-goers. I, for one, have absolutely no desire to play an RPG at a con, and the same is true of most of the gamers I know. I think this comes from several factors:
- One of the big selling points of RPGs is the ongoing campaign, whereas one-shots at cons don't offer that. That by itself wouldn't completely poison the well, except...
- ...another draw is the fact that you can say or do anything that occurs to you, which is great when you're with a group of friends but lousy when you're sat next to a lawncrapper who likes to say or do obnoxious, irritating, offensive or just plain lawncrappy things. I am very reluctant to sit down and play a tabletop RPG with complete strangers unless I've at least had a chance to go to the pub with them and assess whether they are actual human beings, because you've got the combination there of investing hours of your life into a game and at the same time there often being a presumption of co-operativeness which doesn't let you simply exclude the lawncrapper. Conversely, I'd be a bit more willing to play a boardgame because boardgames tend to be over sooner so if I end up playing against a jerk I know I can get away soonish and I can at least get some joy out of beating 'em. (Likewise, with Warhammer at cons if you're looking at a tournament contest it doesn't matter whether or not you like your opponent because you're in it to win it.)
- Plus, even if your table doesn't have a lawncrapper, you're still looking at the fact that your enjoyment of a tabletop RPG is going to depend heavily on how well your tastes and preferences mesh with the other participants in general, and the GM in particular, so that's another factor against playing games with strangers.
- There are an awful lot of us who do lots and lots of gaming but don't go to cons. Why would we need to? We've got the internet for debating stuff, finding out about the new hotness, buying things, and chatting with those designers who deign to interact with their fans as equals. A lot of the time, unless there's a panel or event or a game launch which excites me, I'm not interested in cons because they just provide an opportunity to do a whole bunch of stuff I can do from the comfort of home anyway, only it costs me money to get into a con and I have to hang out with folk running the full range from functional human being to nightmarish lawncrapper (and guess which encounters are almost always the most memorable ones?).
Basically, I dislike playing tabletop RPGs with strangers, and playing tabletop RPGs with folk I know at a Con seems pointless because we could just do that at one of our houses, where we'll have more control over what food and drink is available and we know the toilets will work and I can
hear myself think, and there's a fair proportion of people in my generation who feel the same.
Quote from: Warthur;646036- ...another draw is the fact that you can say or do anything that occurs to you, which is great when you're with a group of friends but lousy when you're sat next to a lawncrapper who likes to say or do obnoxious, irritating, offensive or just plain lawncrappy things. I am very reluctant to sit down and play a tabletop RPG with complete strangers unless I've at least had a chance to go to the pub with them and assess whether they are actual human beings, because you've got the combination there of investing hours of your life into a game and at the same time there often being a presumption of co-operativeness which doesn't let you simply exclude the lawncrapper. Conversely, I'd be a bit more willing to play a boardgame because boardgames tend to be over sooner so if I end up playing against a jerk I know I can get away soonish and I can at least get some joy out of beating 'em. (Likewise, with Warhammer at cons if you're looking at a tournament contest it doesn't matter whether or not you like your opponent because you're in it to win it.)
- Plus, even if your table doesn't have a lawncrapper, you're still looking at the fact that your enjoyment of a tabletop RPG is going to depend heavily on how well your tastes and preferences mesh with the other participants in general, and the GM in particular, so that's another factor against playing games with strangers.
- There are an awful lot of us who do lots and lots of gaming but don't go to cons. Why would we need to? We've got the internet for debating stuff, finding out about the new hotness, buying things, and chatting with those designers who deign to interact with their fans as equals. A lot of the time, unless there's a panel or event or a game launch which excites me, I'm not interested in cons because they just provide an opportunity to do a whole bunch of stuff I can do from the comfort of home anyway, only it costs me money to get into a con and I have to hang out with folk running the full range from functional human being to nightmarish lawncrapper (and guess which encounters are almost always the most memorable ones?).
Basically, I dislike playing tabletop RPGs with strangers, and playing tabletop RPGs with folk I know at a Con seems pointless because we could just do that at one of our houses, where we'll have more control over what food and drink is available and we know the toilets will work and I can hear myself think, and there's a fair proportion of people in my generation who feel the same.
Over the years I've found that playing with strangers vs friends/acquaintances is mixed bag.
With friends, there can be numerous problems when things go wrong during the game (both OOC and in-character). The big elephant in the room is dealing with stuff from the "geek social fallacies (http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html)". Harder to kick out friends from the game.
More generally, this sort of stuff are issues for non-geek/non-nerd activities which involve a close group of non-geek/non-nerd friends. (General human behavior).
Quote from: Spinachcat;645634Why not advertise in video game mags? In the 80s, video games advertised in Dragon.
What about teen mags? Or science mags? Or movie fan mags?
Imagination is good for something. Make your own movies... in your mind.D&D... Anything You Want It To Be.(TM)
Followed up by...
An enchanted forest, filled with goblins. A simple village, under attack.
Only you can save them.D&D... Anything You Want It To Be.(TM)
Then...
The orc horde nears the city. The chieftan, clad in furs, bellows a challenge.
Your wizard lets loose a fireball...D&D... Anything You Want It To Be.(TM)
(Couple these descriptions with a pic of people sitting at a table, GM screen, books, dice. And another illo, showing the situation described in the copy. Each ad should evoke some common and beloved fantasy trope, and have some tie in to D&D.)
It's a fucking fantasy game in the golden age of fantasy media. The Hobbit, Game of Thrones, and more.
Seriously, how is "you can do whatever you want" or "make your own fantasy movie" not a selling point?
(Fine, some of the above need work. But they're at least interesting.)
Quote from: Spinachcat;645634Why not advertise in video game mags? In the 80s, video games advertised in Dragon.
What about teen mags? Or science mags? Or movie fan mags?
Because print ads are very expensive.
Even today, video games advertise in fantasy/gaming magazines in Germany (Mephisto and Nautilus). Video games advertise in anime magazines (AnimaniA and Koneko). And those ads keep those publications floating as their respective industries don't generate enough ads to finance a print magazine.
If the gaming (and anime) "industry" can't pay for ads in their own niche's magazines how should they pay for ads in media that have a ten-fold printrun?
Anybody know what the print ad rates are these days in video game type magazines? (Whether full page ads, half or quarter page sized ads).
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;646040Because print ads are very expensive.
Here's are the ad rates for a magazine named "GameInformer".
http://www.gameinformer.com/p/printadspecs.aspx
For an 1/3 page sized B&W ad printed once, the going rate is $80,906.
For a full page sized 4-color ad printed once, the going rate is $195,455.
For an 1/3 page sized B&W ad printed 60X, the going rate is $57,522 per ad.
Quote from: Warthur;646036Well, I'm well below the 40s range you're talking about and so are almost all of the gamers in my particular circles.
You may wish to consider that you might be observing not a shift in the RPG-playing population overall, but a shift in the behaviour of con-goers. I, for one, have absolutely no desire to play an RPG at a con, and the same is true of most of the gamers I know. I think this comes from several factors:
...
Basically, I dislike playing tabletop RPGs with strangers, and playing tabletop RPGs with folk I know at a Con seems pointless because we could just do that at one of our houses, where we'll have more control over what food and drink is available and we know the toilets will work and I can hear myself think, and there's a fair proportion of people in my generation who feel the same.
And yet, here in Denver the two gaming conventions have tons of folks playing RPGs, most of them younger than I (43, at last count). What are some of the fun things with con games?
1) Trying a system you're curious about without having to buy a book.
Lots of interesting games show up at conventions, and usually they're more than willing to teach you how to play the system and get you going.
2) Trying a character you might not normally play.
Either a class or archetype you don't usually play, or a personality you don't usually play. Or just stuck in a situation where you don't usually play - you might not be willing to play a wife in a struggling marriage, but if it's part of a call of cthulhu game, why not?
3) And there's the fun of meeting new people who have the same interests.
I'm not a social sort of guy. But if I sit down with six other people around a table and play a game with them, I may end up with a new friend. And if I don't, well... it's four hours, it's not a marriage. And if it's really bad, I can always pull an "emergency at work" call that I got while I was going to the restroom. :) But I haven't had to.
Of course, I'm aware of a number of gamers who don't go to the cons, and that's cool too. :)
So, different areas, different stuff happens.
Quote from: Warthur;646036You may wish to consider that you might be observing not a shift in the RPG-playing population overall, but a shift in the behaviour of con-goers. I, for one, have absolutely no desire to play an RPG at a con, and the same is true of most of the gamers I know.
Most (say 90% or so) of the gamers I've known over the last 35+ years have never been to a gaming con. Those who have have mostly only been to one or two small local gaming cons. Only 3 or 4 I've personally known (as opposed to known online) have ever been to any of major gaming conventions (Gencon, Origins, etc.)
I can't think of any gamers I've regularly played with (a smaller group than "gamer's I've known") who had any interest in RPGs tournaments. The idea of playing RPGs competitively does not interest them. To many, it does not even make sense.
I've never had a regular in my groups who regularly played in RPGA play. The only player I've had who was a long term member of the RPGA was only a member to get issues of Polyhedron. RPGA play is generally thought of as just slightly better than tournament gaming.
Few of my players have even followed the RPG industry, been regulars on a RPG message board, etc. Most of these gamers are not very visible to random other gamers, let alone visible the RPG industry.
I suspect most players are like this.
Quote from: Spinachcat;645576We are in what may be a unique lull in the RPG industry. WotC is dead in the water until 5e comes out. Pathfinder is no longer the shiny new thing. 5e probably won't ship until GenCon 2014. WoD is on life support. Neither WotC nor Paizo are doing any real marketing, outreach or advertising.
The situation is tailor made for a new fresh RPG (or refreshed old favorite) to make a big splash and grab some momentum before 5e shows up. This is the moment for some company to seize the day.
So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?
Who has the money? A big push costs hundreds of thousands of dollars - millions if it included the kind of high-profile marketing campaign that some around here put so much faith in. People with real business acumen can find far less risky ways to make money. Even some of the 'successful' RPG companies like Goodman Games are run by people who have day jobs. Quite simply, there's fuck all money in the RPG business, because the market is tiny.
You may as well ask why nobody has taken advantage of the slowing release schedule of GMT games to really jump into the historical hex and counter wargame market. The answer is because everybody who knows anything about the historical hex and counter wargame business knows it's a hobby more than a business, and it wouldn't even be viable if it weren't for the virtually free labour of most of the people who make the games. It's simply demographics - few people want to spend hours on detailed historical simulations of warfare. RPGs today are in the same boat. I'd be surprised if the industry supports much more than 50 full-time employees. It's a tiny, tiny market.
Quote from: The Traveller;645616A variety of quite popular kickstarters say otherwise. The only thing stopping RPGs from being a whole lot more profitable is an ubiquitous failure to understand the unique pleasure they bring. These aren't MMORPGs, these are not boardgames, these are living adventures.
It's all in the marketing, kids.
Sounds like you have an opportunity to make yourself a wealthy man!
Quote from: Spinachcat;645636Quote from: SineNomine;645632I have my doubts about that. When you consider the opportunity costs involved, if you have a million bucks to invest, why would you invest it in an RPG? From a business perspective, all you can see is an illustrious history of decline, product fumbles, and steadily-increasing market fragmentation. Your bricks-and-mortar retail options have been steadily dwindling for decades and show no signs of reversing, and your biggest historical bulge of buyers are in their forties these days.
WotC gambled its favorite internal organs that they could break open a wider market of players with their new edition. They made the precise sort of push to widen the player base that everybody's been asking for since the D&D cartoon went off the air. Many of these same people then bewailed their efforts as utterly stupid, but WotC paid the money and took the chance, and it has not visibly paid off for them.
I don't see a lot of reason to believe that the next company that comes along is going to be able to find the magic marketing words where WotC failed. The fad happened at the right place and the right time. Things have changed since then, and I'm not seeing any sign that we'll experience such a craze again.
Sounds like the boardgame market before their current boom. Or the minis wargame market before Warhammer hit the scene.
The current boom in the boardgame market had nothing to do with marketing wherewithal. It happened because hobbyists learned about German-style boardgames that featured:
* Less then two hour playtimes.
* No players elimination and very little direct conflict (making the games appealing to families and couples)
* Simple rules that are no longer than 8 pages.
* Thoroughly streamlined and playtested gameplay.
That's the foundation of the boardgame revival. English-language publishers picked up on those design principles and incorporated them into more thematic games. But the principles still hold. While you have the occasional outlier such as Twilight Imperium or War of the Ring, the real momentum in the industry is driven by incredibly accessible, fast games. The potential audience for a game drops off a cliff when it goes longer than two hours or can't be learned verbally in 15 minutes.
What would the RPG equivalent of a Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, or Pandemic even look like? And how would it be received by the existing RPG player-base?
Quote from: RPGPundit;645999I reject the OP's assertion that there is in fact a "debacle" going on; if anything, the Debacle happened with 4e.
Trying to jump in with some big D&D-beating project now would be very stupid, as you risk having your entire investment swept away when 5e comes out.
RPGPundit
It's not a risk. 5e won't take the gaming world by storm. At best, it might do as well in the market as 4e did, and that's about it. Trust in WoTC is at an all-time low, and for good reason. The planned obsolescence model that WoTC uses is hurting them (because it pisses people off), and they won't stop using that model, unless someone else takes over the license. Frankly, I think that 4e and the GSL depressed the climate of the gaming market and gaming industry, and caused many game designers (and gamers) to find some other outlet for their imagination and creativity. That's why nobody's taking advantage of this situation.
Is the situation fixable? Yes, but not by WoTC. :pundit:
Quote from: RandallS;646052Most (say 90% or so) of the gamers I've known over the last 35+ years have never been to a gaming con. Those who have have mostly only been to one or two small local gaming cons. Only 3 or 4 I've personally known (as opposed to known online) have ever been to any of major gaming conventions (Gencon, Origins, etc.)
I can't think of any gamers I've regularly played with (a smaller group than "gamer's I've known") who had any interest in RPGs tournaments. The idea of playing RPGs competitively does not interest them. To many, it does not even make sense.
I've never had a regular in my groups who regularly played in RPGA play. The only player I've had who was a long term member of the RPGA was only a member to get issues of Polyhedron. RPGA play is generally thought of as just slightly better than tournament gaming.
Few of my players have even followed the RPG industry, been regulars on a RPG message board, etc. Most of these gamers are not very visible to random other gamers, let alone visible the RPG industry.
I suspect most players are like this.
How much of this is influenced by you?
Quote from: RandallS;646052Most (say 90% or so) of the gamers I've known over the last 35+ years have never been to a gaming con. Those who have have mostly only been to one or two small local gaming cons. Only 3 or 4 I've personally known (as opposed to known online) have ever been to any of major gaming conventions (Gencon, Origins, etc.)
I can't think of any gamers I've regularly played with (a smaller group than "gamer's I've known") who had any interest in RPGs tournaments. The idea of playing RPGs competitively does not interest them. To many, it does not even make sense.
I've never had a regular in my groups who regularly played in RPGA play. The only player I've had who was a long term member of the RPGA was only a member to get issues of Polyhedron. RPGA play is generally thought of as just slightly better than tournament gaming.
Few of my players have even followed the RPG industry, been regulars on a RPG message board, etc. Most of these gamers are not very visible to random other gamers, let alone visible the RPG industry.
I suspect most players are like this.
Yep. Out of the seven other guys I play RPGs with, only one even reads RPG forums or reviews. The rest just show up and play. To them, RPGs are about as much a hobby or community as playing poker.
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;646062It's not a risk. 5e won't take the gaming world by storm. At best, it might do as well in the market as 4e did, and that's about it. Trust in WoTC is at an all-time low, and for good reason. The planned obsolescence model that WoTC uses is hurting them (because it pisses people off), and they won't stop using that model, unless someone else takes over the license. Frankly, I think that 4e and the GSL depressed the climate of the gaming market and gaming industry, and caused many game designers (and gamers) to find some other outlet for their imagination and creativity. That's why nobody's taking advantage of this situation.
The GSL depressed the market because... why, exactly? The OGL was still there. Non-D&D systems were still there. Why was it necessary for third parties to be able to produce product for 4th edition for the industry to thrive? Hell, given that we're given to understand around these parts that 4E was a miserable failure, wouldn't it have been a business blunder to do so?
Quote from: Warthur;646077Why was it necessary for third parties to be able to produce product for 4th edition for the industry to thrive?
It wasn't and it has been proven as some companies have actually produced third party product for 4e.
There has been a problem with Wotc trying to kill the OGL in a backwards kind of sense. Their goal to kill the OGL was a factor, amongst others, that pushed Wotc to create an edition with rules so focused, strict and intricate so that if you did not like some of 4e's basic premises you were at loss and thus a disappointed D&D fan. 4e created a lot of that disappointment and let many fans suspect that if 4e were OGL perhaps it would do better as 3.x did. That actually means that fans are not crazy about 3.x either and are open to buy a seemingly better game than 3.x (as they did with Paizo's Pathfinder -I am not saying that Pathfinder is better, only that it were OGL and marketed as a better (but compatible) game).
Of course with the OGL we have seen free online sites with all rules Pathfinder while Wotc asks for a subscription fee. This also has helped Pathfinder against 4e amongst D&D fans.
And you can easily understand that happy fans means a better doing industry. While disappointed fans means a depressed industry. Not always, but many times as in this case.
I actually think the OGL hurt the games industry as a whole via the following.
First, it encouraged the talent pool at WoTC to spin off their own companies. If Monte Cook, for instance, could only do D&D supplements via WoTC, he would most likely have stayed either as staff or a permanent freelancer. At one time WoTC was actually trying to get Gary Gygax back to write for them. But opening it up actually made it more lucrative for their best writers to spin off their own stuff. And many did.
Second, while it brought in a flux of extra development via complementary and supplementary products, it didn't really expand the market as much. A lot of publishers went from producing their own game designs to D&D clones. This lead to less variety and less innovation. (I see it akin PC vs Apple, while PCs dominated and provided stability, without the Apple company a lot of innovation probably would not have happened).
Finally, the change in the primary product that everybody worked on via the 4e release caused what I called an "Irish Potato Famine"--everybody was growing potatoes and few people diversified. A lot of the complimentary companies had to switch gears--we saw this effect when 3.5 came out. By changing the market to a D&D dominated market, this made it more susceptible to product shocks like this. And I think the market would have been healthier if more diverse companies were around.
Quote from: Rincewind1;645879Dunno how it is in the USA, but in Poland teenagers rarely go to cons because money.
I'd say, the world over, young people don't go to Cons...because they don't have to. They have a large (fairly captive) social group to pull out members from. Part of the reason you don't see many college kids either. Cons serve a function, but it's a function mostly appreciated by older gamers (social and professional networking; trying out new, or old, game systems; a weekend away from wife and kids... :p ).
Quote from: Daddy Warpig;646039Imagination is good for something. Make your own movies... in your mind.
D&D... Anything You Want It To Be.(TM)
Followed up by...
An enchanted forest, filled with goblins. A simple village, under attack.
Only you can save them.
D&D... Anything You Want It To Be.(TM)
Then...
The orc horde nears the city. The chieftan, clad in furs, bellows a challenge.
Your wizard lets loose a fireball...
D&D... Anything You Want It To Be.(TM)
(Couple these descriptions with a pic of people sitting at a table, GM screen, books, dice. And another illo, showing the situation described in the copy. Each ad should evoke some common and beloved fantasy trope, and have some tie in to D&D.)
It's a fucking fantasy game in the golden age of fantasy media. The Hobbit, Game of Thrones, and more.
Seriously, how is "you can do whatever you want" or "make your own fantasy movie" not a selling point?
(Fine, some of the above need work. But they're at least interesting.)
WotC or Paizo should be paying attention to you. Seriously.
Quote from: Haffrung;646065Yep. Out of the seven other guys I play RPGs with, only one even reads RPG forums or reviews. The rest just show up and play. To them, RPGs are about as much a hobby or community as playing poker.
And I'd say that's how 90%+ of the hobby goes about it.
I'd also say you're more likely to find GM's, than Players, on-line as well.
Quote from: Warthur;646077The GSL depressed the market because... why, exactly? The OGL was still there. Non-D&D systems were still there. Why was it necessary for third parties to be able to produce product for 4th edition for the industry to thrive?
Because a lot of the 3rd tiers write "for the Big Dogs". It's a lot easier to get a RoI for a book that sells to 30% of the market, than one that sells to 5% (assuming equal merit). Money begets money, and you have to sell books, to make more books. Whether that's a good or not, matters where you sit on "hobby vs business".
Quote from: Sommerjon;646063How much of this is influenced by you?
Higher than "none" certainly, but probably less than "some". I've never ran games just for my friends. However, one of my friends was one of the people who went to lots of conventions. He was single and his job in the Air force was basically scheduling flights that were likely to have "space available" seats, so he could easily fly to lots of places for next to nothing -- and got to a lot of conventions that way. However, he did not go to play in tournaments but to buy stuff that was hard to get otherwise -- something that isn't much of a problem any more, at least if you do not mind PDFs.
Quote from: JRT;646097I actually think the OGL hurt the games industry as a whole via the following.
It might have hurt the industry (or at least some parts of it), but it was the one of best things that ever happened to the hobby.
Quote from: Haffrung;646057RPGs today are in the same boat. I'd be surprised if the industry supports much more than 50 full-time employees. It's a tiny, tiny market.
And yet that TBZ guy hauled off better than $125,000 in a big creaking sack. No, no don't bother with the qualifications and the backtracking, there's money to be made.
Quote from: Haffrung;646057Sounds like you have an opportunity to make yourself a wealthy man!
Apparently, others certainly are.
Quote from: RandallS;646052Few of my players have even followed the RPG industry, been regulars on a RPG message board, etc. Most of these gamers are not very visible to random other gamers, let alone visible the RPG industry.
Yup, I've been immersed in web stuff since there was a web, and I only thought of looking up RPG forums a year and change ago.
I don't buy "young people don't need cons" because BronyCon, PAX and ComiCon are packed with young people.
I don't buy "young people don't wanna play with strangers" because Meetup
Quote from: Justin Alexander;646008I know it's not what you want to hear, but FFG's Star Wars game is the product you're looking for. It's landing in the market lull period; it's already enjoying huge success;
This is great news (and I am happy to hear it), but how do you know its a "huge success"?
I am not saying it is not, I just want to know how its been successful versus other 2nd tier games. Maybe its just me, but I haven't heard much chatter about it.
Quote from: Daddy Warpig;646039It's a fucking fantasy game in the golden age of fantasy media. The Hobbit, Game of Thrones, and more.
Seriously, how is "you can do whatever you want" or "make your own fantasy movie" not a selling point?
Please send your idea to WotC. You make excellent points.
I would add that we are doubly in a golden age because almost every fantasy RPG video game is just a D&D ripoff.
So if you are 12-20 and go to fantasy movies, watch fantasy TV shows and play fantasy video games, you damn well should be introduced to D&D.
Quote from: The Traveller;646116And yet that TBZ guy hauled off better than $125,000 in a big creaking sack. No, no don't bother with the qualifications and the backtracking, there's money to be made.
Keep in mind that after production costs and shipping for all the stuff promised, he's not "hauling off" jack shit. I'd be surprised if he's even breaking even.
Edit - hadn't seen the request to leave the d&d origins debate to rest yet.
Quote from: Spike;645592Besides: Fixing GURPS is like fixing D&D. Chances are any improvement you make will cause a large segment of fans to go up in arms and proclaim it 'Not GURPS'.
um...sounds
exactly like the response surrounding the release of every new edition of D&D.
Quote from: xech;646092And you can easily understand that happy fans means a better doing industry. While disappointed fans means a depressed industry. Not always, but many times as in this case.
Sure, but shouldn't OGL fans be happy in this case? They've got what they want and it's called "Pathfinder".
Quote from: GMSkarka;646151Keep in mind that after production costs and shipping for all the stuff promised, he's not "hauling off" jack shit. I'd be surprised if he's even breaking even.
Yeah, and then there's the increase in international shipping costs on top of that.
Quote from: Novastar;646099Because a lot of the 3rd tiers write "for the Big Dogs". It's a lot easier to get a RoI for a book that sells to 30% of the market, than one that sells to 5% (assuming equal merit). Money begets money, and you have to sell books, to make more books. Whether that's a good or not, matters where you sit on "hobby vs business".
And Pathfinder isn't a perfectly adequate Big Dog because...?
Quote from: Spinachcat;646143I don't buy "young people don't need cons" because BronyCon, PAX and ComiCon are packed with young people.
And none of those has an RPG focus.
QuoteI don't buy "young people don't wanna play with strangers" because Meetup
Meetups tend to provide more robust ways to meet people and suss them out before committing to playing in a game with someone.
Quote from: Warthur;646036Well, I'm well below the 40s range you're talking about and so are almost all of the gamers in my particular circles.
You may wish to consider that you might be observing not a shift in the RPG-playing population overall, but a shift in the behaviour of con-goers. I, for one, have absolutely no desire to play an RPG at a con, and the same is true of most of the gamers I know. I think this comes from several factors:
- One of the big selling points of RPGs is the ongoing campaign, whereas one-shots at cons don't offer that. That by itself wouldn't completely poison the well, except...
- ...another draw is the fact that you can say or do anything that occurs to you, which is great when you're with a group of friends but lousy when you're sat next to a lawncrapper who likes to say or do obnoxious, irritating, offensive or just plain lawncrappy things. I am very reluctant to sit down and play a tabletop RPG with complete strangers unless I've at least had a chance to go to the pub with them and assess whether they are actual human beings, because you've got the combination there of investing hours of your life into a game and at the same time there often being a presumption of co-operativeness which doesn't let you simply exclude the lawncrapper. Conversely, I'd be a bit more willing to play a boardgame because boardgames tend to be over sooner so if I end up playing against a jerk I know I can get away soonish and I can at least get some joy out of beating 'em. (Likewise, with Warhammer at cons if you're looking at a tournament contest it doesn't matter whether or not you like your opponent because you're in it to win it.)
- Plus, even if your table doesn't have a lawncrapper, you're still looking at the fact that your enjoyment of a tabletop RPG is going to depend heavily on how well your tastes and preferences mesh with the other participants in general, and the GM in particular, so that's another factor against playing games with strangers.
- There are an awful lot of us who do lots and lots of gaming but don't go to cons. Why would we need to? We've got the internet for debating stuff, finding out about the new hotness, buying things, and chatting with those designers who deign to interact with their fans as equals. A lot of the time, unless there's a panel or event or a game launch which excites me, I'm not interested in cons because they just provide an opportunity to do a whole bunch of stuff I can do from the comfort of home anyway, only it costs me money to get into a con and I have to hang out with folk running the full range from functional human being to nightmarish lawncrapper (and guess which encounters are almost always the most memorable ones?).
Basically, I dislike playing tabletop RPGs with strangers, and playing tabletop RPGs with folk I know at a Con seems pointless because we could just do that at one of our houses, where we'll have more control over what food and drink is available and we know the toilets will work and I can hear myself think, and there's a fair proportion of people in my generation who feel the same.
I had the same feelings but then I attended a few cons and GMed at Gen Con a couple of times and I really think its worthwhile. You get to try games you wouldn't try otherwise, you get to see different styles.
Now one of the reasons I hitthe US cons is my mates in Canada go down there as well so its not entirely unknown. But generally I have a really good time.
Quote from: RandallS;646109Higher than "none" certainly, but probably less than "some". I've never ran games just for my friends. However, one of my friends was one of the people who went to lots of conventions. He was single and his job in the Air force was basically scheduling flights that were likely to have "space available" seats, so he could easily fly to lots of places for next to nothing -- and got to a lot of conventions that way. However, he did not go to play in tournaments but to buy stuff that was hard to get otherwise -- something that isn't much of a problem any more, at least if you do not mind PDFs.
95% of con games are not tournaments. Tournament play dies years ago. Most con games are just organised by folks who want to play with a wide varieity of people. I run Amber at cons becuase I think it could do with someone keeping it going.
Put the idea of con = tornament play to ne side Cons = oneshots, some good some bad, mostly somewhere in the middle
Quote from: Warthur;646205And none of those has an RPG focus.
Meetups tend to provide more robust ways to meet people and suss them out before committing to playing in a game with someone.
My current group formed through meetup.
the other players are 19, 23, 21 and 22
After some faff on the group forum I just got everyeone round my place to play and ran a homebrew session. All RPG novices they just needed someone with experience to guide them. I think one of them, a chinese girl will drop out but the rest you can see are already committed RPGers after 3 sessions.
Quote from: Warthur;646077The GSL depressed the market because... why, exactly? The OGL was still there. Non-D&D systems were still there. Why was it necessary for third parties to be able to produce product for 4th edition for the industry to thrive? Hell, given that we're given to understand around these parts that 4E was a miserable failure, wouldn't it have been a business blunder to do so?
The GSL is only
part of the reason that 4e depressed the market. There are many other reasons that 4e caused much of the hobby and industry to degenerate into shit. Many people expected the GSL to eventually morph into another version of the OGL. Instead, WoTC kept everyone hanging in regards to how they would improve it, and instead just left a "poison pill" in the license which put a bad taste into everyone's mouths. :mad:
You gotta remember that the OGL made tons of people feel like they were part of something larger than themselves, and that's part of the reason that gamers and game designers became so heavily invested in the system. Ordinary gamers all around the world suddenly felt like they had the opportunity to publish their various campaign settings and games. Whether or not they actually cashed in on that opportunity is beside the point. The mere opportunity inspired them to become invested in D&D 3.x and the OGL.
People didn't usually have to worry about getting sued if they posted their d20 or OGL material on the Internet, and game designers flourished in this environment (compared to now).
4e hurt the industry, and what hurts the industry hurts the hobby. Once 4e hit town, it drove many people to other rpgs, and caused many others to leave rpgs entirely. There are multiple reasons for this, but I'm just not going to explain why in this thread.
Did you know that rpg writers tend to earn
less money today than they did over ten years ago? And that there are
fewer opportunities for freelance writers in the rpg industry? I've been looking into this, and there's been a change...
In answer to this question:
Quote from: WarthurWhy was it necessary for third parties to be able to produce product for 4th edition for the industry to thrive?
4e was never going to thrive (for
many reasons), but an OGL for 4e would have garnered goodwill, and inspired more gamers and game designers to support the system. That would have
helped 4e (and the rpg industry), but it still would not have been enough.
The clusteruck that is 4e was not caused by merely one problem, but explaining in detail the full nature of that clusterfuck is beyond the purview of this thread, so I think I'll avoid that for the moment. Suffice it to say that WoTC is a company that is flailing around blindly, and has actually managed to cripple a chunk of the gaming industry and hobby by doing so. I mean, we just don't have as many gamers as we did a mere six years ago.
Don't get me wrong. Things can get better for roleplaying games, and the
potential number of gamers out there is as large as ever (the potential, not the actuality), but I just don't think that things can get much better for D&D while WoTC owns it. But whatever. I can still play the games I want, so their stupidity won't have much effect on my gaming group... :pundit:
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;646259Once 4e hit town, it drove many people to other rpgs, and caused many others to leave rpgs entirely.
While I know many people who didn't move ahead to 4e (folks who typically followed the latest versions of A/D&D), and some that have tried various OSR games, I don't know anyone who quit playing RPGs because of 4e. How about trying to substantiate your claim here?
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;646259Don't get me wrong. Things can get better for roleplaying games, and the potential number of gamers out there is as large as ever (the potential, not the actuality), but I just don't think that things can get much better for D&D while WoTC owns it.
More specifically, while Hasbro owns WotC.
JG
Quote from: Lynn;646277While I know many people who didn't move ahead to 4e (folks who typically followed the latest versions of A/D&D), and some that have tried various OSR games, I don't know anyone who quit playing RPGs because of 4e. How about trying to substantiate your claim here?
^ This. Why can't Pathfinder be the lynchpin for the industry 3.X was?
Quote from: Lynn;646277While I know many people who didn't move ahead to 4e (folks who typically followed the latest versions of A/D&D), and some that have tried various OSR games, I don't know anyone who quit playing RPGs because of 4e. How about trying to substantiate your claim here?
I don't know what to tell you, other than outside of the old school blogs, pen 'n paper gaming just doesn't seem as vigorous from what I've seen. Many people have turned to computer gaming online or board games instead. This isn't anything I can prove in a court of law, sorry. I've just been visiting lots of blogs and forums from the past dozen years or so, and from what I've seen, when the industry is in a slump, so is the hobby. It's a
fixable slump, but it's a slump.
Quote from: Warthur^ This. Why can't Pathfinder be the lynchpin for the industry 3.X was?
I'm not saying Paizo
can't be the lynchpin for the industry that 3.X was, but they're facing challenges that WoTC never had to face.
(1.) The rpg market is totally fragmented.
(2.) As popular as 3.x is, it is no longer shiny and new.
(3.) WoTC tried to kill the OGL, and that had the side-effect of fewer publishers producing material for it, even though they legally could do so.
(4.) Gaming online is far more prevalent now than it was a dozen years ago, and acts as a massive time sink for people who would normally play rpgs.
(5.) When approaching online gamers, the strengths of the medium of tabletop games needs to be more strongly emphasized.
(6.) Even in this electronic age, rpgs need a paper magazine with a highly-noticeable physical presence, readily available in stores. Paizo doesn't have that.
There's more, but I'm too tired to write a Bible-sized post.
Paizo is the current champion in the market, and they're doing a good job, but that doesn't change the fact that pen & paper gaming still needs a whole new generation of new blood for this industry
and hobby to survive, and thrive. :pundit:
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;646344I don't know what to tell you, other than outside of the old school blogs, pen 'n paper gaming just doesn't seem as vigorous from what I've seen. Many people have turned to computer gaming online or board games instead. This isn't anything I can prove in a court of law, sorry. I've just been visiting lots of blogs and forums from the past dozen years or so, and from what I've seen, when the industry is in a slump, so is the hobby. It's a fixable slump, but it's a slump.
The box was never big to begin with, and for the reasons I've stated countless times before, won't be unless something big for RPGs happens.
QuoteI'm not saying Paizo can't be the lynchpin for the industry that 3.X was, but they're facing challenges that WoTC never had to face.
(1.) The rpg market is totally fragmented.
(2.) As popular as 3.x is, it is no longer shiny and new.
(3.) WoTC tried to kill the OGL, and that had the side-effect of fewer publishers producing material for it, even though they legally could do so.
(4.) Gaming online is far more prevalent now than it was a dozen years ago, and acts as a massive time sink for people who would normally play rpgs.
(5.) When approaching online gamers, the strengths of the medium of tabletop games needs to be more strongly emphasized.
(6.) Even in this electronic age, rpgs need a paper magazine with a highly-noticeable physical presence, readily available in stores. Paizo doesn't have that.
There's more, but I'm too tired to write a Bible-sized post.
Paizo is the current champion in the market, and they're doing a good job, but that doesn't change the fact that pen & paper gaming still needs a whole new generation of new blood for this industry and hobby to survive, and thrive. :pundit:
Now those are interesting ones, and ones that I mostly agree with.
1) On the fragmentation of the market, well - for us, customers, that's actually a good thing. Board games are just as fragmented, but nobody takes that as a minus, at least on the customers' side.
2) True.
3) Again, true - in a way, letting the 3rd party do your support work for you is not as stupid as one'd think, from a business standpoint. RPGs aren't software, where you may wish to try and hold onto a monopoly as long as possible, because it's like selling bread.
4) Agreed. And there were never too many of people willing to play RPGs in the first place. Not to mention that as surprising as this statement may sound, you do need social skills to play RPGs - and you may train them as you do.
5) Agreed. The strength of RPG as a leisure activity for meeting with your friends, drinking a few (if you prefer to do so) and just engage in a fun social activity must be played. Also the fact that it helps your social skills, as you learn to interact with people face - to face, and to work in a group.
6) I am unsure on that. With Kindles and their ilk being more and more popular, PDF seems the way to go, especially as it marginalises your risk factor in such a risky business as RPGs.
Quote(3.) WoTC tried to kill the OGL, and that had the side-effect of fewer publishers producing material for it, even though they legally could do so.
WotC tried to kill it, Paizo saved it, Pathfinder is now #1. What's stopping all those publishers switching to PF?
Quote(6.) Even in this electronic age, rpgs need a paper magazine with a highly-noticeable physical presence, readily available in stores. Paizo doesn't have that.
Why? One glancing mention of D&D in a Penny Arcade strip reaches more of the youth demographic than any paper magazine would.
QuotePaizo is the current champion in the market, and they're doing a good job, but that doesn't change the fact that pen & paper gaming still needs a whole new generation of new blood for this industry and hobby to survive, and thrive. :pundit:
There's a new generation gaming perfectly happily, dude, they're just not gaming with you.
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;646344(1.) The rpg market is totally fragmented.
Wasn't this one of the marketing reasons for the OGL/d20 in the first place?
How is the market today more fragmented than the market pre-3E?
I seem remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth of everybody complaining that all their favorite systems/settings were being overhauled for d20, and how that was such a bad thing.
Now, more new systems are proliferating than during the OGL/d20/3E period, and this is now the new bad thing?
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;646344I don't know what to tell you, other than outside of the old school blogs, pen 'n paper gaming just doesn't seem as vigorous from what I've seen. Many people have turned to computer gaming online or board games instead.
It could simply be a natural and inevitable decline. The way model railways declined, the way amateur astronomy declined, and the way historical wargames declined. Society changes. Recreation changes. No need for any villains in this story.
Things go in cycles and it is hard to predict what will succeed in creating another boom or drawing in a more mainstream audience. I do believe from time to time the hobby can gain a bigger audience. But I am not sure what the magical formula or timing is (it seems to me there are a lot of different kinds of rpgs out there trying different kinds of things, which is good). The existing market does seem to be pretty small. I don't think we should write-off the possibility of mainstream growth though just because of that (I do remember a time when D&D was everywhere and we have had two pretty big booms).
I think the best thing anyone interested in trying to grow the hobby can do is take whatever it was that enthralled you with it in the first place and try to recreate that in a product you think will have mass appeal. With kickstarter and POD (which is now extending beyond mere books it seems) it is quite easy to throw your hat in the ring. If you have an innovative business plan that will bring gaming to the masses, don't wait for WOTC or Paizo to do it, get out there and test your ideas.
Before I did that myself, I thought I knew all the answers, and it was humbling to stumble out and see what game publishing is really about. But I have never lost my optimism that the right game at the right time, released in the right way, will take the world by storm.
Quote from: Haffrung;646400It could simply be a natural and inevitable decline. The way model railways declined, the way amateur astronomy declined, and the way historical wargames declined. Society changes. Recreation changes. No need for any villains in this story.
Well, all industries (and hobbies) experience peaks and valleys in their popularity. We're in a valley right now. I don't think it's necessarily permanent, but we are in one.
Quote from: kythriWasn't this one of the marketing reasons for the OGL/d20 in the first place?
How is the market today more fragmented than the market pre-3E?
I seem remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth of everybody complaining that all their favorite systems/settings were being overhauled for d20, and how that was such a bad thing.
Now, more new systems are proliferating than during the OGL/d20/3E period, and this is now the new bad thing?
No, not a bad thing. But you're forgetting that 4e has garnered an unprecedented amount of ill-will in the gaming community, probably more so than any other edition of D&D,
ever. And the
type of fragmentation is
different this time. During the pre-3e market, this (limited) fragmentation caused gamers to turn to other roleplaying games, and to some degree, CCGs (collectible card games). But the
current fragmentation is causing gamers to turn towards other roleplaying games, card games, board games, and computer games. Heck, people are even spending more of a time sink goofing around on their tablets and cellphones. :pundit:
Quote from: GMSkarka;646151Keep in mind that after production costs and shipping for all the stuff promised, he's not "hauling off" jack shit. I'd be surprised if he's even breaking even.
At a bare minimum he hauled off a holiday in Japan for himself, that was one of the stretch goals. The rest was a collection of hankerchiefs and gewgaws. I'd say he did pretty well out of it to be honest. In any case these things are usually expressed in sales rather than profits; by that yardstick he's certainly put the lie to 'no money in RPGs'.
A big part of the reason for the decline is the economy. RPGs started to decline when the economy started to decline. The economy is still pretty shaky, and so are RPG sales. It's not the only reason, but it's one major reason.
Quote from: The Traveller;646498At a bare minimum he hauled off a holiday in Japan for himself, that was one of the stretch goals. The rest was a collection of hankerchiefs and gewgaws. I'd say he did pretty well out of it to be honest. In any case these things are usually expressed in sales rather than profits; by that yardstick he's certainly put the lie to 'no money in RPGs'.
All those discussions about lack of money RPGs kind of really make me thinking (and I'd be glad if clash would perhaps enter the discussion, seeing how he's still making games like a pro).
Because I feel like for some reason, most of us here left their basic economic knowledge at the door.
First of all, 80's popularity of DnD and RPGs in general might have, and most likely have been, a typical "new toy bubble". Then again, the hobby hasn't really shrunk I expect - it is just that the pie is much more divided by various companies, and large monopolists like TSR or White Wolf have fallen out of the game because they were too desperately trying to create that monopoly. Why am I saying so?
DnD may be even first in sales of the RPGs, but it may still be turning a loss rather than a profit. On the other hand, Eclipse Phase may have sold "only" 10k printed copies, but netted a tidy profit, and as much as it truly tears and pains me to say, I suspect Baker's getting nice profits from his works as well - maybe not enough to make a living just out of them, but probably much more than just a booze found. And the answer's really easy. The production costs for a typical DnD books, given the amount and quality of illustrations and paper alone, drives the production costs sky - high. Add to that dedicated teams of editors, usually there's also a few freelancers working on various chapters, and the fact that unlike an indie RPG, you can't just try to use your fans to offload some of the work you'd normally need to pay for, and you have your costs ramped even higher and higher, so the break - even point is even higher. The answer to that is of course to use your big buck for marketing - but that's also adding to the break even costs! And add to that a business infrastructure, and voila - a recipe why you may dominate the market, but still be poised for downfall.
On the other hand, if watching and reading histories of people who have squandered various government/EU grants taught me anything, than with all due apologies and I'm not pointing any fingers, but I'll have a cactus grow on my hand, before I'll believe that all or even most of Kickstarter money is indeed invested in the product. Faking bills is childs' play.
There are already many more RPGs than possible to play in a lifetime, not to mention storygames. And often enough, even most forgotten RPGs have some devoted fanbase, which keeps the product alive long after the developers abandoned it. For the most part, the cry from (and also bear in mind, it's usually The Big Guys who cry about this) developers about Fragmentation Hurting Everyone, is because RPG bigs realised too late that the monopolies slipped out of their hands, and they don't have the money to play EA or Activision in video games world, and just buy those people out in order to still dominate the market. And heck - seems like this strategy isn't even working that well for EA. Because the problem isn't that hobby is dying - it's just that Wizards would like us to believe that if you are not buying DnD, hobby will die.
And I should specify that I believe that while there is indeed decent money, it's not that decent for most to quit their dayjobs - or for big RPG - focused business ventures, to really flourish.
Quote from: Mistwell;646500A big part of the reason for the decline is the economy. RPGs started to decline when the economy started to decline. The economy is still pretty shaky, and so are RPG sales. It's not the only reason, but it's one major reason.
Calling current global economy "shaky" is like calling World War 2 a border dispute.
Quote from: Rincewind1;646502First of all, 80's popularity of DnD and RPGs in general might have, and most likely have been, a typical "new toy bubble". Then again, the hobby hasn't really shrunk I expect - it is just that the pie is much more divided by various companies, and large monopolists like TSR or White Wolf have fallen out of the game because they were too desperately trying to create that monopoly.
I think the overall number of PnP RPG gamers has drastically shrunk since the early eighties heyday, because a lot of people who used to play are no longer interested. The number of boxed sets TSR was moving per month in 1981 is quite possibly around the yearly sales of all RPGs these days. To illustrate, take a look at the sales numbers Evil Hat puts out here (http://www.evilhat.com/home/q1-2013-sales-numbers-big-beginnings/). Realize that Evil Hat is fabulously successful by RPG company terms. Notice that their highest-selling product is getting lifetime numbers that would get an entire genre shut down and its editors fired at a conventional publishing house.
QuoteOn the other hand, if watching and reading histories of people who have squandered various government/EU grants taught me anything, than with all due apologies and I'm not pointing any fingers, but I'll have a cactus grow on my hand, before I'll believe that all or even most of Kickstarter money is indeed invested in the product. Faking bills is childs' play.
I have no problem whatsoever believing that the vast majority of kickstarter cash gets poured into the game, because game kickstarters are much more expensive to produce than most people realize- especially people who start them. To illustrate, I'll give the numbers on my Spears of the Dawn kickstarter. It closed out with $10,000 and the promise of an RPG and a PDF-only associated adventure. Where did that money go?
First, KS takes its cut. There was exactly one card charge that didn't clear, so that was negligible, but it still means I've only got $9K left.
Next, I had to buy art for Spears of the Dawn. There are approximately 60 pieces of b/w line art in the 190-page book, ranging from a half-dozen full-page spreads to dozens of quarter-page illos. I also needed to invest in a full-color cover. My artists worked for a very reasonable price, and so I only had to shell out $3,315 for this, leaving me with $5,685.
Then it was time to buy art for the companion module, the House of Bone and Amber. I'd promised color art for this one and I wanted to get West African artists for it where possible. Protip: a dude in Lagos with Internet access knows what artists cost, and he is not going to work for half-rates just because of where he happens to be sitting. All told, the art in that 40-page module ran me $1,400, and that was going light on it. That left me with $4,285 to work with.
And then we get to do fulfillment. Print the books, pack the books, ship the books, and deal with the inevitable problems when some people don't get the book for some reason or another. Also, notice that it costs $50 to send a book to Brazil. This cost me about $3,200, leaving me with a grand total of about $1,100.
Oh. Except there's taxes on that. 15% self-employment taxes and another 20% or so on the margin, and so I've got about $600 profit. If I'd been dumb enough to promise The House of Bone and Amber in print rather than PDF, I'd have been a couple thousand in the red on the project.
So yes. A $10,000 kickstarter turned into precisely $600 in profits, and this is with me doing every bit of the editing, layout, writing, and management work myself. If I had farmed virtually anything out to someone else, I'd have been in the hole. Of course, now I've got a game and a module to sell on DTRPG, and they've been doing respectably, but almost that entire initial KS windfall was absorbed in producing the game.
And it's not even a particularly lavish example of the species. It's a b/w interior, old-school two-column layout book. Those 10,000 zealous fans of Fate Core together handed Evil Hat about $400,000. Which is great. Except if you do the math, that's about $40 per fan. Which is about what an average hardback RPG costs, except that if they bought it afterwards they'd at least pay their own shipping on it. Evil Hat did admirably with their KS, but they do not have money to blow if they're going to get the game to their backers.
Quote from: SineNomine;646520Protip: a dude in Lagos with Internet access knows what artists cost, and he is not going to work for half-rates just because of where he happens to be sitting.
Sure they will. Sorry but look (http://fiverr.com/uartist/make-professional-sketch-of-anything-you-want) at the work this dude in the Ukraine is rolling out for five bucks a pop. You overpaid for the art here.
Quote from: SineNomine;646520Also, notice that it costs $50 to send a book to Brazil. This cost me about $3,200, leaving me with a grand total of about $1,100.
Most KSs are specifying that costs don't include shipping these days (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1412277313/this-is-war-an-lfg-musical-short/posts/392073).
The question I'd ask is why you didn't work all this out in advance and price your KS appropriately leaving you with a comfortable profit margin.
I reject the OP's premise as well. You see a missed opportunity. I see dozens of cleverly made, available in print and successful RPGs. Not just in kickstarters, but there's a lot of heavy production licensed games which have recently been released and appear to be doing pretty damn well (Dresden Files, Marvel Heroic, FFG Star Wars, Iron Kingdoms etc.) not to mention Dungeon World, Mummy: the Curse, and Shadowrun all seem to be doing pretty well to fill in the vacuum.
Instead of one fantasy D&D clone, you've got dozens of well made games to choose from. I think you've got a bunch of companies taking advantage of the WotC "debacle."
Quote from: SineNomine;646520I think the overall number of PnP RPG gamers has drastically shrunk since the early eighties heyday, because a lot of people who used to play are no longer interested. The number of boxed sets TSR was moving per month in 1981 is quite possibly around the yearly sales of all RPGs these days. To illustrate, take a look at the sales numbers Evil Hat puts out here (http://www.evilhat.com/home/q1-2013-sales-numbers-big-beginnings/). Realize that Evil Hat is fabulously successful by RPG company terms. Notice that their highest-selling product is getting lifetime numbers that would get an entire genre shut down and its editors fired at a conventional publishing house.
Fair enough - as I said, I think the market was never too big, it was just an early bubble that got it going and TSR never realised that, until it was too late and they kicked the bucket. But also the question is - how much were they earning? What were the costs as opposed to profits from that single unit? And how many of them were collecting dusts in gaming shops?
QuoteFirst, KS takes its cut. There was exactly one card charge that didn't clear, so that was negligible, but it still means I've only got $9K left.
Well, that's a given.
QuoteNext, I had to buy art for Spears of the Dawn. There are approximately 60 pieces of b/w line art in the 190-page book, ranging from a half-dozen full-page spreads to dozens of quarter-page illos. I also needed to invest in a full-color cover. My artists worked for a very reasonable price, and so I only had to shell out $3,315 for this, leaving me with $5,685.
Then it was time to buy art for the companion module, the House of Bone and Amber. I'd promised color art for this one and I wanted to get West African artists for it where possible. Protip: a dude in Lagos with Internet access knows what artists cost, and he is not going to work for half-rates just because of where he happens to be sitting. All told, the art in that 40-page module ran me $1,400, and that was going light on it. That left me with $4,285 to work with.
Fair enough as well. But on the other hand - I keep looking on the internet, and I see a lot of people who show at least above average/decent drawing capabilities. You need but to look at the webcomic crowds, to see hundreds of people drawing excellent stuff for free - and judging by the average quality of a plot, they are in desperate need for a writer.
QuoteAnd then we get to do fulfillment. Print the books, pack the books, ship the books, and deal with the inevitable problems when some people don't get the book for some reason or another. Also, notice that it costs $50 to send a book to Brazil. This cost me about $3,200, leaving me with a grand total of about $1,100.
Why did you not specify that they pay for shipping, then? I live in Europe, and when I backed a few KSes, I had to pay arm and a leg for shipping. Your business decision, really. And in connection to the other...
QuoteOh. Except there's taxes on that. 15% self-employment taxes and another 20% or so on the margin, and so I've got about $600 profit. If I'd been dumb enough to promise The House of Bone and Amber in print rather than PDF, I'd have been a couple thousand in the red on the project.
I can only speak from Polish/European perspective, but since it is not that hard nor expensive to start at least a proto- small business in the bureocratic hellhole that I live in, it can't be too hard in the US. And should you had that, you'd write at least such stuff as shipping under costs. As an old joke says, "If you have a problem you can fix with money it's not a problem, it's just costs".
QuoteSo yes. A $10,000 kickstarter turned into precisely $600 in profits, and this is with me doing every bit of the editing, layout, writing, and management work myself. If I had farmed virtually anything out to someone else, I'd have been in the hole. Of course, now I've got a game and a module to sell on DTRPG, and they've been doing respectably, but almost that entire initial KS windfall was absorbed in producing the game.
No offence, but kind of exactly this - if you were left with 1$ from Kickstarter, that's still a dollar you were in the clear. You didn't borrow this money, you had it and used it, no further strings attached unless you'd default on the product. Even if the product would flop, you'd still be safe and one dollar (which is hardly the reward you'd probably deserve from that supplement - I read your previous works, they are quite good). Most business, such as mine, don't have that safety net.
QuoteAnd it's not even a particularly lavish example of the species. It's a b/w interior, old-school two-column layout book. Those 10,000 zealous fans of Fate Core together handed Evil Hat about $400,000. Which is great. Except if you do the math, that's about $40 per fan. Which is about what an average hardback RPG costs, except that if they bought it afterwards they'd at least pay their own shipping on it. Evil Hat did admirably with their KS, but they do not have money to blow if they're going to get the game to their backers.
Again, that's a bit of a business akumen - if you promise golden mountains, well, that's your problem.
Quote from: The Traveller;646524Sure they will. Sorry but look (http://fiverr.com/uartist/make-professional-sketch-of-anything-you-want) at the work this dude in the Ukraine is rolling out for five bucks a pop. You overpaid for the art here.
Great. I need him to take specific art direction, sell all rights to the art, work to my schedule, and fit with the visual idiom of the rest of the game. And I need about five of him to get the art done in a timely fashion.
What's that? I can't get that for $5?
Everybody likes to wave around the noob DeviantArtist doing decent art for peanuts, but when it comes to actually finding these guys to hire, one miraculously starts to realize why they're charging a pack of cigs a go. It's because they can't deliver on time, to spec, in volume sufficient to be serviceable. I don't have a month to sit around while they wait to get inspired. I don't have leisure to run three revision passes while they learn how to draw feet.
The ones who can do all of this? They stop charging $5 a picture real damn fast.
QuoteMost KSs are specifying that costs don't include shipping these days (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1412277313/this-is-war-an-lfg-musical-short/posts/392073).
I haven't seen much evidence of that myself, and that certainly wasn't the case last October. People do not like getting billed twice for their KS pledges, plus collecting shipping payment at ship time is a whole new layer of transaction costs and credit card processing.
QuoteThe question I'd ask is why you didn't work all this out in advance and price your KS appropriately leaving you with a comfortable profit margin.
I
did work all this out in advance, which is why I was able to deliver two months early. I just accepted that making the 10K stretch minimum meant that I'd have to make the profit on the post-KS sales. Because, as I said, making and shipping a RPG with respectable indie-grade production values is a Hell of a lot more expensive than most people realize.
Quote from: The Traveller;646524Sure they will. Sorry but look (http://fiverr.com/uartist/make-professional-sketch-of-anything-you-want) at the work this dude in the Ukraine is rolling out for five bucks a pop. You overpaid for the art here.
.
It is possible to find deals like this (though I would check to see if he is actually giving the rights to publish the art as well) but the rates Sinenomine gave are also pretty reasonable for the rpg industry and it is tough getting a better deal than he is getting while also maintaining quality (though not impossible if you have the time to search for deals). When I got into this I was determined initially to get by on cheap to free art. Turned out to be a lot harder to maintain that than I thought and now most of our budget goes toward artwork. Occassionally I will find a good deal, or make a trade with an artist (writing for artwork or something like that). It is quite difficult though to rely on that, particularly once you get a regular production schedule going. I can think of countless instances where I was waiting for free or cheap art that never arrived. I do know some people who manage to do so, but they also spend a lot of their time searching for deals.
Quote from: SineNomine;646530Great. I need him to take specific art direction, sell all rights to the art, work to my schedule, and fit with the visual idiom of the rest of the game. And I need about five of him to get the art done in a timely fashion.
He's got 100% satisfaction, the art looks quite nice actually, and he's swamped with work. In very poor countries that $5 will go a hell of a lot further, in the Philippines for example living expenses are about 20% of most western countries, to maintain a similar lifestyle. If you want a poor lifestyle over there you don't have to spend a cent really.
Quote from: SineNomine;646530It's because they can't deliver on time, to spec, in volume sufficient to be serviceable. I don't have a month to sit around while they wait to get inspired. I don't have leisure to run three revision passes while they learn how to draw feet.
Did you even look at that profile? And he's far from unique. Believe me there is no international union of artists. Programmers are in the exact same boat.
Quote from: SineNomine;646530I haven't seen much evidence of that myself, and that certainly wasn't the case last October. People do not like getting billed twice for their KS pledges, plus collecting shipping payment at ship time is a whole new layer of transaction costs and credit card processing.
Let them know in advance, they can pledge or not at their leisure. If the layer is cheaper than paying the shipping costs yourself, do the layer. Honestly this sounds like a massive hole in your business plan.
Quote from: SineNomine;646530I just accepted that making the 10K stretch minimum meant that I'd have to make the profit on the post-KS sales.
If you intended it as a loss leader from the start why are you crying about the fact that you didn't make much profit on it? What...?
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;646532the rates Sinenomine gave are also pretty reasonable for the rpg industry and it is tough getting a better deal than he is getting while also maintaining quality (though not impossible if you have the time to search for deals). When I got into this I was determined initially to get by on cheap to free art. Turned out to be a lot harder to maintain that than I thought and now most of our budget goes toward artwork. Occassionally I will find a good deal, or make a trade with an artist (writing for artwork or something like that). It is quite difficult though to rely on that, particularly once you get a regular production schedule going. I can think of countless instances where I was waiting for free or cheap art that never arrived. I do know some people who manage to do so, but they also spend a lot of their time searching for deals.
Personally my solution is option c) do the art yourself. :D
Quote from: Rincewind1;646529Fair enough as well. But on the other hand - I keep looking on the internet, and I see a lot of people who show at least above average/decent drawing capabilities. You need but to look at the webcomic crowds, to see hundreds of people drawing excellent stuff for free - and judging by the average quality of a plot, they are in desperate need for a writer.
As I noted above, the usefulness of an artist is measured by more than their cheapness. Free art is worthless to me if the artist can't work to the directions, deliver on time, fit the visual idiom I want, and hand over the full rights to it. The great majority of those artists drawing great free stuff out there are invalid on one or more of these points, and those who can deliver all of them rapidly learn how much they're really worth.
This is not to say that you can't get dirt-cheap art from artists who don't realize what they're worth yet, but I didn't get into this business to skin hobbyists. More than once, I've had to tell one of my artists, "You are charging me too little. You should be billing me at least X for this work, so I will pay you X." I consider this basic business hygiene, because it pays off in the long run. My artists work fast, deliver what I ask for, and don't flake. That means I can put out a half-dozen books a year, because I can just slot my art order and write instead of having to ride herd on a bunch of clueless or resentful brushworkers. As in most things in life, you get what you pay for.
And if somebody is honestly convinced that there's all this great dirt-cheap art out there just crying out to be made into RPG illos, well, let them give it a try. One year later, they can tell us how fabulously it worked out for them. (Spoiler: It will not be fabulous.)
QuoteWhy did you not specify that they pay for shipping, then? I live in Europe, and when I backed a few KSes, I had to pay arm and a leg for shipping. Your business decision, really.
I folded the shipping cost into the pledge levels because A) that's how kickstarters usually work, and B) I had no desire to pay a second round of transaction costs and deal with the fulfillment headache that would come of collecting their shipping money when the book was finally ready.
QuoteI can only speak from Polish/European perspective, but since it is not that hard nor expensive to start at least a proto- small business in the bureocratic hellhole that I live in, it can't be too hard in the US. And should you had that, you'd write at least such stuff as shipping under costs. As an old joke says, "If you have a problem you can fix with money it's not a problem, it's just costs".
Oh, I already did write off the shipping as a cost of business, which is why I only paid taxes on the $1,100 left over instead of the full sum. But I'm operating as a sole proprietorship, which means the income is treated as pass-through; I add it directly to my employment income to determine my total taxable income for the year. I also pay a 15% self-employment tax on it. When combined with my 25% marginal tax bracket, I'm basically handing 40 cents out of every dollar I make on Sine Nomine to the government. Any KS patron who decided to blow his take on hookers and blow would end up with a very hefty tax bill at the end of the year, since hookers and blow are not often considered legitimate business expenses.
I'm satisfied with the KS's results because I now have a completely amortized RPG and module to sell, people paid me to build good working relationships with extremely reliable artists, and a proven KS track record of delivering early in a genre where that is borderline unheard-of. I would much rather have had these things than an extra 5K after taxes. The next time I go back to the well, I'll be able to point at Spears of the Dawn as a working illustration of the fact that I can and will deliver. Given the usual record of RPG kickstarters, that is worth money.
Quote from: The Traveller;646533Personally my solution is option c) do the art yourself. :D
That is the ideal solution. If you have the art skills to pull this off, by all means go for it because you will save lots of money and have total control of your art content.
Quote from: SineNomine;646537And if somebody is honestly convinced that there's all this great dirt-cheap art out there just crying out to be made into RPG illos, well, let them give it a try. One year later, they can tell us how fabulously it worked out for them. (Spoiler: It will not be fabulous.)
There are buckets of completely free out of copyright art floating around, a guy had a thread on it a while back. Some really nice pieces too.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;646538That is the ideal solution. If you have the art skills to pull this off, by all means go for it because you will save lots of money and have total control of your art content.
Well the proof of the pudding etc, I've been paid handsomely for artistic work before, this is just a slightly different format. Time to work on it is the biggest shortfall at the moment!
Quote from: SineNomine;646537This is not to say that you can't get dirt-cheap art from artists who don't realize what they're worth yet, but I didn't get into this business to skin hobbyists.
it must be weird to have people tell you you need to be
more predatory in your hobbyist-publishing practices, eh? unpleasant to watch, lemme say.
Quote from: Warthur;646357WotC tried to kill it, Paizo saved it, Pathfinder is now #1. What's stopping all those publishers switching to PF?
There is a lot of 3rd party support for Pathfinder from splatbooks to adventure paths. The only thing I'm unaware of are setting books, but chances are they exist as well, it's just that most campaign settings aren't very good because it's an enormous undertaking that requires rare talent and effort.
I also agree that the economy is a huge factor, especially with younger gamers. Sure they spend money on video games, but they aren't spending them on cars or houses with which to have the space to gather 4+ friends together without having to beg rides and deal with each other's parents, and frankly the home life of kids is not the same today as it was a few decades ago.
This extends past childhood as well as I've met plenty of 20 somethings that want to join a game that don't own cars, and don't live in places where they could or would be willing to have a boisterous group of friends over.
Also not to be too unkind but lots of pnp gamers are awful people that live in insular worlds. This extends beyond just geek stereotypes. I've come to the conclusion that most pnp gamers in my area are late 20ish, early 30ish overweight hairy men that play erotic elf princesses, and the entire experience is also wrapped up in some transgender crusaderism/sexual wish fulfillment. One one hand this immediately makes the game inaccessible to anyone but the extraordinary tiny clique of people who don't live on the Internet and think that anyone gives a shit about the politics of gender identity disorders (which is almost everyone in every age group, everywhere and almost any sub-20 year old player is immediately going to call the other player a faggot to his face), and on the other hand it's also incredibly off putting even to most people who do when it goes beyond the Internet and theory into the real life of having some unattractive man want to roleplay out flirting and sexual encounters with other men in public and then take the "high road" of calling everyone bigots when they refuse to do so.
The "community" is completely and totally hijacked by freaks who are uncomfortable with being denied the opportunity to make other people uncomfortable socially and sexually in public, for either purposes of vetting them or simply getting their jollies for feeling self-righteous at outgroup members expense.
This is my experience with playing in public with strangers. I can't think of a single game that didn't include at least one grown man whose primary reason for playing is seemingly to control his paper doll elfen waif into crotch diving at every opportunity. The other side of this same coin is the ones that randomly determine their gender, and then refuse to roleplay and then extol the gaming table as to how gendered roles are social constructs so his elfen waif will more or less resemble the attitudes and affectations of a 30 something slightly overweight nerd that refuses to roleplay characters lest he inadvertently do something either masculine or feminine and have to seppuku for the shame of public sexism. This latter type is much more rare, but probably more annoying by virtue of actually being more time consuming at the table and needy on an interpersonal level.
I'm firmly of the belief that the reason the hobby has never grown beyond small groups of tight knit friends is because you can't effectively combat this exhibitionism (in point of fact it will probably be illegal to attempt to do so in the near future), which is the byproduct of unfettered imagination. Even MMOs have RP servers which are almost 100% about erotic roleplay, and any player hub will have areas that basically resemble some sex chat room.
There is no real solution to this problem that can be accomplished by anyone who is out for a profit.
Oh my... :confused:
I have taken the initiative. My game is basic and fun and simplified. If you take away all of the dross of the old school games, and gain a fresh perspective on what is left, then that is what I have tried to do. So far, so good. It is now published.
Quote from: Wolf, Richard;646573There is a lot of 3rd party support for Pathfinder from splatbooks to adventure paths. The only thing I'm unaware of are setting books, but chances are they exist as well, it's just that most campaign settings aren't very good because it's an enormous undertaking that requires rare talent and effort.
I also agree that the economy is a huge factor, especially with younger gamers. Sure they spend money on video games, but they aren't spending them on cars or houses with which to have the space to gather 4+ friends together without having to beg rides and deal with each other's parents, and frankly the home life of kids is not the same today as it was a few decades ago.
This extends past childhood as well as I've met plenty of 20 somethings that want to join a game that don't own cars, and don't live in places where they could or would be willing to have a boisterous group of friends over.
Also not to be too unkind but lots of pnp gamers are awful people that live in insular worlds. This extends beyond just geek stereotypes. I've come to the conclusion that most pnp gamers in my area are late 20ish, early 30ish overweight hairy men that play erotic elf princesses, and the entire experience is also wrapped up in some transgender crusaderism/sexual wish fulfillment. One one hand this immediately makes the game inaccessible to anyone but the extraordinary tiny clique of people who don't live on the Internet and think that anyone gives a shit about the politics of gender identity disorders (which is almost everyone in every age group, everywhere and almost any sub-20 year old player is immediately going to call the other player a faggot to his face), and on the other hand it's also incredibly off putting even to most people who do when it goes beyond the Internet and theory into the real life of having some unattractive man want to roleplay out flirting and sexual encounters with other men in public and then take the "high road" of calling everyone bigots when they refuse to do so.
The "community" is completely and totally hijacked by freaks who are uncomfortable with being denied the opportunity to make other people uncomfortable socially and sexually in public, for either purposes of vetting them or simply getting their jollies for feeling self-righteous at outgroup members expense.
This is my experience with playing in public with strangers. I can't think of a single game that didn't include at least one grown man whose primary reason for playing is seemingly to control his paper doll elfen waif into crotch diving at every opportunity. The other side of this same coin is the ones that randomly determine their gender, and then refuse to roleplay and then extol the gaming table as to how gendered roles are social constructs so his elfen waif will more or less resemble the attitudes and affectations of a 30 something slightly overweight nerd that refuses to roleplay characters lest he inadvertently do something either masculine or feminine and have to seppuku for the shame of public sexism. This latter type is much more rare, but probably more annoying by virtue of actually being more time consuming at the table and needy on an interpersonal level.
I'm firmly of the belief that the reason the hobby has never grown beyond small groups of tight knit friends is because you can't effectively combat this exhibitionism (in point of fact it will probably be illegal to attempt to do so in the near future), which is the byproduct of unfettered imagination. Even MMOs have RP servers which are almost 100% about erotic roleplay, and any player hub will have areas that basically resemble some sex chat room.
There is no real solution to this problem that can be accomplished by anyone who is out for a profit.
As Dan Savage would put it: "Thanks for sharing."
JG
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;646412No, not a bad thing. But you're forgetting that 4e has garnered an unprecedented amount of ill-will in the gaming community, probably more so than any other edition of D&D, ever. And the type of fragmentation is different this time. During the pre-3e market, this (limited) fragmentation caused gamers to turn to other roleplaying games, and to some degree, CCGs (collectible card games). But the current fragmentation is causing gamers to turn towards other roleplaying games, card games, board games, and computer games. Heck, people are even spending more of a time sink goofing around on their tablets and cellphones. :pundit:
Is this based on personal observation or meaningful statistics? Because frankly, if someone flat-out gives up RPGs for MMOs or board games or CCGs in my experience it's usually because they were never actually that into RPGs and whichever hobby they shift over to is actually genuinely better at scratching their gaming itch. In general, I've found roleplayers more than capable of finding alternate systems they enjoy if the current D&D offering isn't to their taste.
Re: Art budgets - Exactly how much art is needed in an RPG book these days?
I ask because I for one don't expect to have a pretty picture on every page of an RPG rulebook, especially something self-published. Why not budget your Kickstarter so that if you hit basic funding the book gets cover art, any maps that are absolutely required for the product in question, and that's it, and then make adding more and lovelier art part of the stretch goals?
Quote from: Warthur;646627Re: Art budgets - Exactly how much art is needed in an RPG book these days?
A fair bit is really needed I think. You can reduce the amount with some clever layout tricks like Eclipse Phase did, but you're absolutely right that these costs should be factored into the kickstarter.
What beats me is when you get people like SineNomine weeping bitterly that there's no money in RPGs and pointing to their $600 profit on a kickstarter as evidence...
...right before they admit
they intended it as a loss leader and never meant to make any money on it in the first place.
:confused:
Quote from: The Traveller;646630A fair bit is really needed I think.
Really? Provided that the text layout is reasonable - and really, anyone spending enough time with a word processor can teach themselves to do that - I think I could happily run a game which had no internal art at all.
Quote from: The Traveller;646630A fair bit is really needed I think. You can reduce the amount with some clever layout tricks like Eclipse Phase did, but you're absolutely right that these costs should be factored into the kickstarter.
What beats me is when you get people like SineNomine weeping bitterly that there's no money in RPGs and pointing to their $600 profit on a kickstarter as evidence...
...right before they admit they intended it as a loss leader and never meant to make any money on it in the first place.
:confused:
No tears were shed by me. I posted the breakdown to reply to Rincewind1, who was of the mind "I'll have a cactus grow on my hand, before I'll believe that all or even most of Kickstarter money is indeed invested in the product.". So I showed him the numbers to illustrate that producing an RPG with adequate indie-level production values is much more expensive than he had thought, and that no kickstarter is likely to have vast pools of cash lying around that aren't actually needed for the book.
Whereupon you advised me that I should be paying fourth-world wages to a guy in Ukraine, because I guess they're all clay goblins who can live on sand. Now, if I'm going to be a villain, I insist on being a much higher grade of villain than this. I want Bangladeshi sweatshops with deaf orphans chained to their drawing desks and my art orders communicated by means of a code of syncopated floggings. Telling some Ukrainian guy he's got to live on four pierogies this week instead of five is
petty villainy, and I will have no part of it until the profit on it increases exponentially.
Quote from: Mistwell;646500A big part of the reason for the decline is the economy. RPGs started to decline when the economy started to decline. The economy is still pretty shaky, and so are RPG sales. It's not the only reason, but it's one major reason.
So how would you explain the continued strong growth of the boardgaming industry and hobby?
I gotta say, I just love the smug advice given to people struggling to run profitable businesses by people who have clearly never even tried. The radiant ignorance is breathtaking.
Quote from: Haffrung;646678I gotta say, I just love the smug advice given to people struggling to run profitable businesses by people who have clearly never even tried. The radiant ignorance is breathtaking.
Be my guest. I do run a business, and if I was struggling to turn a profit, I'd stop. I have claimed no expertise in the RPG industry, but some basics are universal. Few, I agree, but we were not exactly discussing the intricacies here.
Quote from: Rincewind1;646529Fair enough as well. But on the other hand - I keep looking on the internet, and I see a lot of people who show at least above average/decent drawing capabilities. You need but to look at the webcomic crowds, to see hundreds of people drawing excellent stuff for free - and judging by the average quality of a plot, they are in desperate need for a writer.
Putting your commercial enterprise at the mercy of people you come across on the internet who have not demonstrated the ability to deliver professional material on time is folly of the highest order. Even companies like Paizo get burned not infrequently by freelancers who flake out. And they have the resources to backfill with a stable of experienced writers and artists.
Quote from: SineNomine;646672Whereupon you advised me that I should be paying fourth-world wages to a guy in Ukraine, because I guess they're all clay goblins who can live on sand. Now, if I'm going to be a villain, I insist on being a much higher grade of villain than this. I want Bangladeshi sweatshops with deaf orphans chained to their drawing desks and my art orders communicated by means of a code of syncopated floggings. Telling some Ukrainian guy he's got to live on four pierogies this week instead of five is petty villainy, and I will have no part of it until the profit on it increases exponentially.
If that makes you a villain, everyone who buys or uses anything made in China is just as much a villain.
These countries are in a state of abject poverty, if you want to keep them that way
don't give them any work or put any capital into their economies. If you'd like to see living conditions in these places improve,
do pay their inhabitants to work. If you're paying more than the local rate however, you may as well get the work done at home where you have more control.
You see, your concern for the welfare of poor people actually leads to poor people starving by the roadside for the benefit of western artists who don't want to compete on the global playing field. Personally I don't feel as though I owe anything to western artists or any sector in particular.
Quote from: Haffrung;646678I gotta say, I just love the smug advice given to people struggling to run profitable businesses by people who have clearly never even tried. The radiant ignorance is breathtaking.
Heh, I've founded, built and sold several businesses buddy. The only ignorance appears to be radiating from the "oh woe is us" crowd.
Quote from: The Traveller;646707These countries are in a state of abject poverty, if you want to keep them that way don't give them any work or put any capital into their economies. If you'd like to see living conditions in these places improve, do pay their inhabitants to work. If you're paying more than the local rate however, you may as well get the work done at home where you have more control.
I'm hiring good artists who just happen to be working from foreign countries, because I do not especially care where they come from or what their national GDP is or what my responsibility as a Righteous Global Citizen (tm) is. I just want some damn art. To get this art, I'm paying them fair market rate for their work. Let's cover the reasons why one more time:
1) Finding dirt-cheap artists who also fulfill the basic minimums of professionalism and fast delivery is difficult. Once I find them, I've saved money, but I've spent a great deal of time winnowing the flakes and discovering that the guy working for $5 a pop feels no amazing urgency to finish my art buy.
2) Dirt-cheap artists that also fulfill the basic minimums of professionalism rapidly start to charge the amount the market will bear- and that's $20-$40 per quarter-page slot easily. So that time I spent finding them buys me cheap art for one project, not an everlasting stream of sub-market art prices.
3) Paying fair market rates saves me grief. I get good artists who deliver on time and to spec. This saves me time and aggravation and lets me focus on my own comparative advantage, which is writing and production management.
Look, you've run several businesses, right? How would you respond to a random guy who's not in your industry coming up to you and telling you that you're doing it all wrong, that these Foozlestani widget manufacturers are working for peanuts and can get you a ton of vital widgets for a quarter of your usual price. Except that you already know from personal experience that Foozlestani widget manufacturers have a defect rate of 17% and lose all their English whenever you ask where the delivery is. And that if you don't get those widgets on time and to spec, your business is dead in the water.
The simple truth is that trying to skin third-world artists for your project art is too expensive in time, aggravation, and uncertainty to be worth the nugatory financial rewards involved. If you believe otherwise, well, I'd want to see the book you put together before I bet my next project on the idea. Last year I sold somewhat north of $40K worth of books. This year, Q1 sales are already up almost 100% over last year. I really do not need to risk blowing up my production schedule by gutting an art budget I can already afford without strain.
Curse those d*mn Foozlestanis!!
Quote from: SineNomine;646727I'm hiring good artists who just happen to be working from foreign countries, because I do not especially care where they come from or what their national GDP is or what my responsibility as a Righteous Global Citizen (tm) is. I just want some damn art. To get this art, I'm paying them fair market rate for their work.
No you got pulled up on the sweatshops comment, and now you say you're paying western rates to people in developing countries. That's your call, there's no reason to do it though.
Quote from: SineNomine;646727Look, you've run several businesses, right? How would you respond to a random guy who's not in your industry coming up to you and telling you that you're doing it all wrong
Nobody said you were doing it all wrong, I just pointed out a couple of problems, namely that you should have factored shipping into that KS like other people are doing and that there's no good reason to pay western rates to people in developing countries. Western artists are very vocal and heavy handed when it comes to the 'protection' of their brethren, who of course think they'll get big money if they play along.
What actually happens is they get no money since there's no tangible difference between them and western artists except distance and control, which is plenty to make businesses choose western artists.
Of course now it transpires that you didn't want to make any money from the KS, congratulations you have succeeded. Don't imagine the same applies to every or even most successful KSs though.
Quote from: SineNomine;646727Except that you already know from personal experience that Foozlestani widget manufacturers have a defect rate of 17% and lose all their English whenever you ask where the delivery is. And that if you don't get those widgets on time and to spec, your business is dead in the water.
Doesn't matter how much you pay someone, if they aren't going to deliver they aren't going to deliver. There was a big thread about exactly that hereabouts recently, some (western) guy was making a megadungeon and wandered off with forty grand. Nice how you use a broad brush on artists from developing countries though, I'm sure they'd appreciate that.
Quote from: SineNomine;646727The simple truth is that trying to skin third-world artists for your project art is too expensive in time, aggravation, and uncertainty to be worth the nugatory financial rewards involved.
Again with the derogatory terms. Maybe you don't understand how this works. $10 in a place like the Philippines is worth $50 in real spending terms over there. Here you can buy $10 worth of groceries with $10. There you can buy $50 worth of groceries with $10. That doesn't apply to things like electronics and cars, but almost everything else, yeah. So who exactly is being skinned?
They are at a big disadvantage due to distance and apparently a poor reputation, if they can offset this with lower costs while still maintaining a similar lifestyle more power to them. And even with that many businesses would prefer not to use them.
Quote from: SineNomine;646727If you believe otherwise, well, I'd want to see the book you put together before I bet my next project on the idea. Last year I sold somewhat north of $40K worth of books. This year, Q1 sales are already up almost 100% over last year. I really do not need to risk blowing up my production schedule by gutting an art budget I can already afford without strain.
Good for you, I'm glad it's working out. So you're happy enough to say that there is decent money to be made in RPGs?
Quote from: The Traveller;646630A fair bit is really needed I think. You can reduce the amount with some clever layout tricks like Eclipse Phase did, but you're absolutely right that these costs should be factored into the kickstarter.
What beats me is when you get people like SineNomine weeping bitterly that there's no money in RPGs and pointing to their $600 profit on a kickstarter as evidence...
...right before they admit they intended it as a loss leader and never meant to make any money on it in the first place.
:confused:
Cos its 3 months work for 1 days's pay........?
Quote from: The Traveller;646740No you got pulled up on the sweatshops comment, and now you say you're paying western rates to people in developing countries. That's your call, there's no reason to do it though.
Traveller, this entire conversation has been a laundry list of the reasons why I am paying western rates to people in Nigeria- in brief, because I am requiring Western standards of results from anyone I hire. You are under the impression that these standards can be satisfied for trivial amounts of money. You are welcome to maintain that impression, but I cannot say that I'm going to take it all that seriously until you show me the nicely-illustrated 200 page RPG you published with a $500 art budget.
Quote from: The Traveller;646740Good for you, I'm glad it's working out. So you're happy enough to say that there is decent money to be made in RPGs?
You do realize his entire spiel was a response to someone saying that there was no way that all the money from a kickstarter was actually invested back in the product, right?
And that he has repeatedly pointed this out to you.
And all you can keep harping on is this point he never said.
If you are going to be acerbic, why don't you try and actually be ACCURATE in what you are saying?
Quote from: SineNomine;646746Traveller, this entire conversation has been a laundry list of the reasons why I am paying western rates to people in Nigeria- in brief, because I am requiring Western standards of results from anyone I hire. You are under the impression that these standards can be satisfied for trivial amounts of money.
Of course they can, the computer you're typing on is a testament to that.
Quote from: SineNomine;646746You are welcome to maintain that impression, but I cannot say that I'm going to take it all that seriously until you show me the nicely-illustrated 200 page RPG you published with a $500 art budget.
I'll show you one with a $0 art budget as soon as I can find the time to finish teaching myself the subject.
Quote from: Emperor Norton;646749You do realize his entire spiel was a response to someone saying that there was no way that all the money from a kickstarter was actually invested back in the product, right?
And that he has repeatedly pointed this out to you.
It was repeatedly ignored because Rincewind was right, most KSs have a profit margin built into them. These aren't charities, most companies use it as a preordering tool. I wouldn't agree that most of them fake bills mind you but I don't think that was the point. That mister loss leader didn't on purpose is his own affair.
Quote from: Emperor Norton;646749If you are going to be acerbic, why don't you try and actually be ACCURATE in what you are saying?
I'm not the one pissing on artists from developing countries here.
I apologise because I did indeed word the original paragraph poorly. What I meant was a hyperbole suggesting that I believe that perhaps some are indulging in various crafty activities in order to flush down money raised in Kickstarter as pure profit, since the funds, unlike even the government stimulus packets, aren't the "pay us if you succeed "loans, but just cash in metaphorical hand. And I apologise if someone felt insulted over this.
Quote from: The Traveller;646754It was repeatedly ignored because Rincewind was right, most KSs have a profit margin built into them. These aren't charities, most companies use it as a preordering tool. I wouldn't agree that most of them fake bills mind you but I don't think that was the point. That mister loss leader didn't on purpose is his own affair.
I'll show you one with a $0 art budget as soon as I can find the time to finish teaching myself the subject.
Truth be told, I think the biggest lesson I got from this thread is to ignore RPGs and instead come up with a Kickstarter lookalike that'd charge 3% rather than 5 :P.
And heh, beware the brash words - I still feel a terrible shame for what I've done to StormBringer and the rest of people involved in "my" project on these forums, the GMPM, having abandoned them with all their finished, hard work, when I was fleeing life for a year.
Quote from: jibbajibba;646741Cos its 3 months work for 1 days's pay........?
That's profit on top of normal later sales of that product. The Kickstarter fundraising is great, especially for RPGs, because it reduces the so - common in RPGs flop risk.
Quote from: Rincewind1;646759"pay us if you succeed "loans
Where is that?
Quote from: Haffrung;646676So how would you explain the continued strong growth of the boardgaming industry and hobby?
It was growing much stronger before the economic problems. Yes, it's still growing, but before the crash it was growing at around 33% a year, and now it's around 5%-10% a year.
Quote from: xech;646776Where is that?
There are some stimulus programs in Poland (and I suspect rest of EU) that work kind of this way - if tje company goes bankrupt, they won't take their owed cut unless a few requisites.
Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;646002Hah. So I'm a Fantasy Flight, Steve Jackson or Joseph Goodman and want to bring out my biggest idea with the biggest budget yet, and you would advise me to sit on it for a couple of years so 5e won't sweep it away?
I guess Samsung should wait until the iPhone 6 before they release their new tech too. Forgive me for wiping away my tears of laughter.
Nope, not saying that at all. If you are one of those bigger companies and you have something to release, when you release it should be independent of considerations about 5e (barring that maybe you wouldn't want to release it on the same month that 5e is going to come out, because then you'll be competing with where people will be spending their dollars).
What I AM saying is that if you are one of those companies and your whole purpose is to try to make something not on its own merits but as a misguided attempt to "fight" 5e, then you would be better off releasing it AFTER, rather than before. Though really, the bigger issue there is that you're trying to make something as a reaction to 5e in the first place, that you're doing before even knowing what 5e is really going to be about.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;646888Nope, not saying that at all. If you are one of those bigger companies and you have something to release, when you release it should be independent of considerations about 5e (barring that maybe you wouldn't want to release it on the same month that 5e is going to come out, because then you'll be competing with where people will be spending their dollars).
What I AM saying is that if you are one of those companies and your whole purpose is to try to make something not on its own merits but as a misguided attempt to "fight" 5e, then you would be better off releasing it AFTER, rather than before. Though really, the bigger issue there is that you're trying to make something as a reaction to 5e in the first place, that you're doing before even knowing what 5e is really going to be about.
RPGPundit
Nope. Release a product before 5e, during 5e, or after 5e. It doesn't matter. 5e just isn't nearly as much of a game-changer as previous editions. So far, most people I see are just kinda "meh" about 5e. Maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised, but I kinda doubt it.
Not sure why Rincey is saying anyone is ashamed. 5e will not, a prediction even though not a well thought out one, will not impress anyone. Nothing inspirational has come from WotC since they began. And that is a lot of money spent for naught.
Quote from: StormBringer9;646922Not sure why Rincey is saying anyone is ashamed. 5e will not, a prediction even though not a well thought out one, will not impress anyone. Nothing inspirational has come from WotC since they began. And that is a lot of money spent for naught.
I may be writing about another StormBringer, one that made a brief idea of mine into a creation ;).
It seems to be that it is not when the game is made, it is what it is made of - it only took two people to alter the RPG milieu for once and all.
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;646896Nope. Release a product before 5e, during 5e, or after 5e. It doesn't matter. 5e just isn't nearly as much of a game-changer as previous editions. So far, most people I see are just kinda "meh" about 5e. Maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised, but I kinda doubt it.
It truly stuns me when I see comments like this. It hasn't come out yet, and yet you have decided you have a handle on the likelihood it will do well, from your own personal echo chamber of experience with an infinitesimally small fraction of the gaming community?
I tell yah, sometimes I question the value of internet message boards for getting an objective survey of views. It seems to bring out the worst in people way more often than anything else.
Quote from: Mistwell;646931It truly stuns me when I see comments like this. It hasn't come out yet, and yet you have decided you have a handle on the likelihood it will do well, from your own personal echo chamber of experience with an infinitesimally small fraction of the gaming community?
I tell yah, sometimes I question the value of internet message boards for getting an objective survey of views. It seems to bring out the worst in people way more often than anything else.
Sure there will be those that buy it because it is D&D.
However, what has Mearls done this time around to make anyone swoon? Only thing we have seen is a lot of flipflopping around.
Quote from: Sommerjon;646933Sure there will be those that buy it because it is D&D.
However, what has Mearls done this time around to make anyone swoon? Only thing we have seen is a lot of flipflopping around.
Do you understand the difference between your own opinion, and fact anymore? Do you comprehend that your tastes are not universal, that things you hate can be extremely popular and things you love can be unpopular? Have you lost touch with all perspective?
What you think and what I think are, essentially, meaningless in trying to determine if this game will be popular. We're representative of basically nothing but ourselves and perhaps a few others in our gaming groups. 5e could be the Brittany Spears of RPGs - we and all our gaming groups combined could despise it, while it's incredibly popular. Or, it could be the 'Snakes on a Plane' of RPGs, we could think it is awesome and it could be a total sales flop. Who the fuck knows?
Quote from: Mistwell;646941Do you understand the difference between your own opinion, and fact anymore? Do you comprehend that your tastes are not universal, that things you hate can be extremely popular and things you love can be unpopular? Have you lost touch with all perspective?
What you think and what I think are, essentially, meaningless in trying to determine if this game will be popular. We're representative of basically nothing but ourselves and perhaps a few others in our gaming groups. 5e could be the Brittany Spears of RPGs - we and all our gaming groups combined could despise it, while it's incredibly popular. Or, it could be the 'Snakes on a Plane' of RPGs, we could think it is awesome and it could be a total sales flop. Who the fuck knows?
Is no one allowed to speculate anymore?
Are we not allowed to take any kind of position with 5e?
Everyone should be allowed their opinion at any time. I'm of the opinion that I won't write 5e off before I see it, but based on WOTCs track record and barring some major shift in their policy of crafting RPGs, I can't see me playing 5e.
7th edition, in 2019, might be a possibility. Two stats (hit and miss) everyone being able to do everything and rolling a D2 for everything (or flip a coin) and leveling every time you kill an orc should bring the old school lot and the kids together. The rules will fit on the back of a post it note, but it will be a lavishly illustrated one, and the modules will come in packs of fifty, on the back of postage stamps. It will bring all players in of all editions, and reunite the RPG industry leading us into a new golden age. We'll think it's 1984 again. I'd best get a new tin of hairspray, some fresh shoulder pads for my pastel jacket and some wicker slip on shoes so I'm ready for it.
*wanders off to get his meds*
I think a big way in which 4e might hurt WotC is that it may be the last edition that tons of people (like me) went out and bought sight unseen simply because it was the new edition of D&D.
I was an auto-sell for 4e, as I was for every previous edition. This time around I'm not.
If there are lots of folks like me out there, I think that might hurt.
huh...It seems I'm not the only one who finds it very hard to leave the D&D side of the question out of this thing.
But I will agree, it depends entirely on what WotC does with 5e. It could rock the gaming world. What they've said and shown so far doesn't and won't but as I've argued back down the thread, presentation matters at least as much as the game.
Now, if you wanted a game to spike in sales and replace D&D and happened to be George RR Martin you probably could do it. He's a GURPS fan but let's stay system agnostic on this. I'm not sure what the current liscencing deals are but assuming he's good with the rules, he could stick his name and Game of Thrones on a paperback sized, ten dollar rule book and insist book stores stock it right next to his novels. That would certainly do okay, especially if he threw in an exclusive short story and so on.
I don't know how it would do, similar tie-ins have been attempted but never with such a major property. The game would, of course, have to be very good in and of itself and not too heavy since it's targeting new players.
Another shot across the bow that might work would be a colectable action figure rpg. Yes it's been tried and frankly the action figures cost a lot to make. But here you'd have rules for making your own characters and stuff other than combat. Personally action figures and rpgs aimed at the ten to twelve crowd should be a no brainer but you'd have to hit a sweet spot with what you put out and I'm not quite sure where that is on this one. Maybe a liscenced superhero game. I suppose you could use current Marvel or DC supers rules with it. The current Marvel story game seems like a bit of a reach though. And you'd have to convince Time Warner or Disney to tie in your game and convince toy stores to put it in the store next to the figures. I don't know, I'm not an action figure guy and I don't know what works in that market. I'm guessing the rules would have to be really lite. I like the idea of action figures for GURPS quite a bit because you could show things like kneeling and crouching very well.
I should add that I really believe quite strongly that the traditional stack of big fat books model will never revive the rpg market.
This time around, I think the success of the game will depend on strong supporting adventures and sourcebooks. My sense is fewer and fewer D&D players have the time or inclination to write their own adventures. WotC needs to win back some of the adventure market from Paizo, who have proven you can build a fanbase with a steady supply of high-quality adventure material. People buy and learn Pathfinder just so they can play some of the famous adventure paths. WotC need the best adventure writers in the industry working on top-flight adventures for Next. One of the advantages they'll have over the 4E release is Next is close enough to earlier iterations of the game that authors won't have to learn and master an entirely new system in order to write adventures.
Quote from: David Johansen;647031Now, if you wanted a game to spike in sales and replace D&D and happened to be George RR Martin you probably could do it. He's a GURPS fan but let's stay system agnostic on this. I'm not sure what the current liscencing deals are but assuming he's good with the rules, he could stick his name and Game of Thrones on a paperback sized, ten dollar rule book and insist book stores stock it right next to his novels.
There's already a Song of Ice and Fire RPG (http://greenronin.com/sifrp/). Well produced by Green Ronin, and reasonably well received (it won a 2009 Ennie). But it hasn't set the RPG world on fire, let alone drawn in a bunch of new players.
Let's face it - D&D
is RPGs to a big part of the game community. And if something does come along to replace it, the game won't be anything at all like D&D. It will be something along the lines of a collaborative urban fantasy fanfic carried out online. No pen and paper tabletop game is going to truly rival D&D until the tabletop hobby decline even further into an amateur cottage industry akin to hex and counter wargames. At that point we'll be talking sales figures of 2,000 versus 1,500 - king of the anthill.
Quote from: Sommerjon;647008Is no one allowed to speculate anymore?
Are we not allowed to take any kind of position with 5e?
Sure, just don't speak for everyone else, and declare it as fact.
I know there's a Song of Fire and Ice rpg already. I was talking about a specific product model to get a sales spike. From that spike if properly supported you might get a continuing market to rival D&D. I'm not sure it would work. More over, I'm not sure the product model could make money. It's a lot easier to get sales if you're willing to lose a lot of money. What I am sure of is that the Game of Thrones fan base is much larger than the entire rpg market. Of course, if I were GRRM I'd bring out a retroclone in a box with tonnes of miniatures but if GRRM was GRRM we can conclusively say he wouldn't. ;)
I'm not so sure you couldn't replace D&D with a paper and pencil rpg but I am sure you would have to go outside of the existing rpg market and to do so. Within the existing market and business model nothing will ever replace D&D.
As someone already mentioned, Numenera is totally what Spinachcat is looking for. I would say that it qualifies having taken advantage of the WotC fallow time.
Didn't it have the biggest tabletop rpg Kickstarter ever last year? $517k. Huge numbers for a game no one had heard of even a few months before. I'm betting it sells decently when it's published this summer due in no small part to all that amazing art.
Quote from: Dimitrios;647027I think a big way in which 4e might hurt WotC is that it may be the last edition that tons of people (like me) went out and bought sight unseen simply because it was the new edition of D&D.
I was an auto-sell for 4e, as I was for every previous edition. This time around I'm not.
If there are lots of folks like me out there, I think that might hurt.
That's a good point. 4e was in my case the very first edition of D&D that I DIDN'T buy "sight unseen" (or indeed at all); but I suspect more people followed your pattern than mine, based on what the pre-order sellout success of 4e was, and then became bitterly disappointed, based on what later sales were like.
And yes, I suspect that means a lot of people will need to carefully look at 5e BEFORE just buying it.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;647280That's a good point. 4e was in my case the very first edition of D&D that I DIDN'T buy "sight unseen" (or indeed at all); but I suspect more people followed your pattern than mine, based on what the pre-order sellout success of 4e was, and then became bitterly disappointed, based on what later sales were like.
And yes, I suspect that means a lot of people will need to carefully look at 5e BEFORE just buying it.
I was one of those "sight unseen" buyers of 4E, largely due to finding a group I was willing to play a regular weekly game with.
This time around for 5E/Next, it won't be "sight unseen" anymore. (Especially if I don't come across any "acceptable" local gaming groups playing it).
I was a double schmuck for 4E: I picked up Keep on the Borderlands, thought "Huh, this is locked to the grid and focused almost entirely on tactical miniatures skirmish battles - I guess since this is the intro adventure they pitched it like that to ease people into less structured stuff." Then I got the main rulebooks and NOPE, it really was grids all the way down.
Quote from: RPGPundit;647280That's a good point. 4e was in my case the very first edition of D&D that I DIDN'T buy "sight unseen" (or indeed at all);
RPGPundit
4e is the only edition I don't own a single product of. I fear 5e will remedy that.
Quote from: Haffrung;647037There's already a Song of Ice and Fire RPG (http://greenronin.com/sifrp/). Well produced by Green Ronin, and reasonably well received (it won a 2009 Ennie). But it hasn't set the RPG world on fire, let alone drawn in a bunch of new players.
"A Game of Thrones" was released by Guardians of Order before that, in 2005. So yeah George's incestous, misery porn, boring/dont get anything done books are not gonna bring the kids/players in.
That's why I was very specific about the format, marketing, and content. A $10 paperback with a short story not appearing anywhere else. Even then I'm fairly sure a side story novel by GRRM would make more money. It's just that rpg sales are so low that a failure in another market might be considered a break away hit by rpg standards.
RPGs aren't about "telling stories".
No but selling books is.
Actually I disagree to an extent. An rpg campaign has a beginning, middle, and end and is composed of a series of events that are mostly narrative in nature even if you do use miniatures. And rpgs are most certainly ficticious.
What rpgs don't do or at least shouldn't do is conform to the formulaic modern story structure in to more than a passing glance. A piece of fiction in the English Literature class sense is like a single line passing through a maze from the beginning to the end. An rpg campaign is like a scribble on top of a maze that frequently goes off the page and makes holes in the paper.
That doesn't mean it's not a story.
Quote from: David Johansen;647610That doesn't mean it's not a story.
By that definition a commentator's transcript of a game of golf is a story. What you do with the information after the game is done is your own business, the game itself has little or nothing to do with telling stories. A record of an RPG campaign is not an RPG game.
Quote from: S'mon;645702What did they do to push 4e to non-gamers? Genuine question, I really have no idea what if any marketing there was to non-gamers?
From what I saw, there were television commercials (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWW4iL6ykRk) which aired during adult Swim, SyFy, YouTube and other "geek" markets. I think it premiered on MTV primetime.
They ran print-ads in pretty much every issue of every comic book known to man.
For release, they had standee displays in every big-box bookstore, and probably in other retail as well.
The "basic" game was released into every major retailer i.e. Wal-Mart, Toys R Us.
They did this again with the D&D Essentials Red Box. minus the TV commercials.
They pushed the crap out of that product.
Quote from: KrakaJak;647638They pushed the crap out of that product.
And if the product wasn't crap, they might have succeeded. :(
Quote from: S'mon;645702What did they do to push 4e to non-gamers? Genuine question, I really have no idea what if any marketing there was to non-gamers?
Well, really, why wouldn't they? You have a product so completely different from past products, you may as well try to get a whole new userbase.
Quote from: Daddy Warpig;647644And if the product wasn't crap, they might have succeeded. :(
If you push all the crap out of 4E, what's left to it?
JG
I find that an interesting perspective. I find myself being inundated with new Pathfinder games, content and Kickstarter projects. I simply can't keep track of it all. I consider Paizo the big dog in the RPG market at the moment. Obviously that is not a belief held by everyone. Perhaps this is an act of self-selection.
Quote from: James Gillen;647821If you push all the crap out of 4E, what's left to it?
Very little, IMHO. Some great Dark Sun campaign material, I hear.
And...
Uh...
I...
I got nothin'.
Quote from: Daddy Warpig;647986Very little, IMHO. Some great Dark Sun campaign material, I hear.
And...
Uh...
I...
I got nothin'.
There are some excellent source books: Open Grave, the Plane Above, the Plane Below, Underdark, Demonomicon, and Manual of the Planes. Monster Vault is good, and includes tons of useful markers/chits. But, IMO, some of these books are the best on the topics for D&D.
Quote from: James Gillen;647821If you push all the crap out of 4E, what's left to it?
JG
An empty sack that was once filled with crap.
Oh, and some boardgames with miniatures.
Quote from: Mistwell;646931It truly stuns me when I see comments like this. It hasn't come out yet, and yet you have decided you have a handle on the likelihood it will do well, from your own personal echo chamber of experience with an infinitesimally small fraction of the gaming community?
I tell yah, sometimes I question the value of internet message boards for getting an objective survey of views. It seems to bring out the worst in people way more often than anything else.
You're not gonna start "Mistwelling" the thread, are ya?
Anyone can come to these conclusions after visiting multiple Internet websites, and paying attention to the prevailing mood of gamers out there.
And the current mood towards 5e is....meh.
(https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRRGKPZBN2lVY68Wh44tmaeVNM_V0KoESRNEVF1VLDvR2cOk4qn)
The pic above says it all. Don't believe me?
Google it. Seriously, google either D&D Next or D&D 5e, with the key words,
"meh",
"apathy", or
"I don't care". There are probably lots of other phrases I'm not thinking of. I googled these phrases because people were continuously expressing apathy about 5e, and I wanted to see what was going on. And if it matters, you even have people in this very forum who make it clear that they probably aren't going to pick up 5e sight unseen like they would have with previous games.
That's bad. :pundit:
And as far as prognostication goes, I was mostly on point in regards to predicting how things would evolve for Pathfinder and 4e, and I even touched briefly on the rest of the market. So...
yes, I trust my judgement over yours. If you'd like an example of my ability to prognosticate, then read this thread from early 2008, and bask in my brilliance...
[4E predictions]For the record... http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=9486
What might kill 5e won't be hate, but just plain apathy.
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;648000You're not gonna start "Mistwelling" the thread, are ya?
Anyone can come to these conclusions after visiting multiple Internet websites, and paying attention to the prevailing mood of gamers out there.
And the current mood towards 5e is....meh.
(https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRRGKPZBN2lVY68Wh44tmaeVNM_V0KoESRNEVF1VLDvR2cOk4qn)
The pic above says it all. Don't believe me? Google it. Seriously, google either D&D Next or D&D 5e, with the key words, "meh", "apathy", or "I don't care". There are probably lots of other phrases I'm not thinking of. I googled these phrases because people were continuously expressing apathy about 5e, and I wanted to see what was going on. And if it matters, you even have people in this very forum who make it clear that they probably aren't going to pick up 5e sight unseen like they would have with previous games.
That's bad. :pundit:
And as far as prognostication goes, I was mostly on point in regards to predicting how things would evolve for Pathfinder and 4e, and I even touched briefly on the rest of the market. So...yes, I trust my judgement over yours. If you'd like an example of my ability to prognosticate, then read this thread from early 2008, and bask in my brilliance...
[4E predictions]For the record... http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=9486
What might kill 5e won't be hate, but just plain apathy.
And if you google it with positive keywords you also find tons of those posts as well. I mean, come on dude, you intentionally biased it for a word, and then in that vacuum you declared it representative with nothing else.
I've seem many threads where people are thrilled with what they've seen so far.
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;648000And the current mood towards 5e is....meh.
People who spend all day posting about D&D on RPG forums tend to be deeply invested in an existing edition. WotC is clearly aiming at the more casual, flexible crowd with Next. If WotC is gambling with Next, it's on whether there's still a casual RPG market out there.
I think there is. I doubt half my players even know WotC publishes D&D, let alone have the sort of intensely emotional reaction to the company that so many regular RPG forum posters have.
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;648000The pic above says it all. Don't believe me? Google it. Seriously, google either D&D Next or D&D 5e, with the key words, "meh", "apathy", or "I don't care". There are probably lots of other phrases I'm not thinking of. I googled these phrases because people were continuously expressing apathy about 5e, and I wanted to see what was going on. And if it matters, you even have people in this very forum who make it clear that they probably aren't going to pick up 5e sight unseen like they would have with previous games.
D&D Next "meh" got 1,760,000 hits
D&D Next "apathy" got 5,950,000 hits
D&D Next "I Don't Care" got 2,840,000 results
D&D Next "I hate it" got 2,570,000 hits
BUT!
D&D Next "yay" got 7,640,000 hits
D&D Next "I am Excited" got 1,670,000 hits
D&D Next "eager" got 13,100,000 hits
D&D Next "About time" got 9,900,000 hits
D&D Next "can't wait" got 1,810,000 results
....proving that this may be a terrible way to prove anything unless you're in to data mining.
There's no "casual, flexible crowd" that will be interested in D&D. Those people simply go to video games for their fantasy gaming fix.
D&D-anything is aimed at a 40 and over crowd who want to relive their youth, buying anything with the D&D name attached because, well, D&D.
Any time I encounter gaming with a teen involved, they're interested in this weird, anachronistic hobby only because their dad or uncle got them involved; it used to be 'older brother' but that's over. Older brothers nowadays pass on their older generation video games, they don't pass on a legacy of playing D&D.
Ask most teens about D&D and I suspect that either they'll know it from pop culture references only (via Big Bang Theory, etc.) and any rep it has is simply some kind a dorky game that an older generation played in the 1980s before there were cool video games.
Quote from: Ian Noble;648098There's no "casual, flexible crowd" that will be interested in D&D. Those people simply go to video games for their fantasy gaming fix.
D&D-anything is aimed at a 40 and over crowd who want to relive their youth, buying anything with the D&D name attached because, well, D&D.
Any time I encounter gaming with a teen involved, they're interested in this weird, anachronistic hobby only because their dad or uncle got them involved; it used to be 'older brother' but that's over. Older brothers nowadays pass on their older generation video games, they don't pass on a legacy of playing D&D.
Ask most teens about D&D and I suspect that either they'll know it from pop culture references only (via Big Bang Theory, etc.) and any rep it has is simply some kind a dorky game that an older generation played in the 1980s before there were cool video games.
Not in my town. There's a thriving local crowd for games, and most of the teen gamers into D&D arrive by way of playing Magic or talking to other friends their own age. Most of these players don't even begin to crossover into the older groups like mine until they've gone off to college. There is literally two entirely separate worlds locally for gaming, delineated by age and experience.
People like to hang around with other people, drinking and eating while doing fun stuff. RPGs provide that gateway, for people of all ages.
Quote from: Ian Noble;648098There's no "casual, flexible crowd" that will be interested in D&D. Those people simply go to video games for their fantasy gaming fix.
D&D-anything is aimed at a 40 and over crowd who want to relive their youth, buying anything with the D&D name attached because, well, D&D.
Any time I encounter gaming with a teen involved, they're interested in this weird, anachronistic hobby only because their dad or uncle got them involved; it used to be 'older brother' but that's over. Older brothers nowadays pass on their older generation video games, they don't pass on a legacy of playing D&D.
Ask most teens about D&D and I suspect that either they'll know it from pop culture references only (via Big Bang Theory, etc.) and any rep it has is simply some kind a dorky game that an older generation played in the 1980s before there were cool video games.
The casual crowd doesn't have to be teenagers. A lot of 40-something gamers don't have the time or inclination to master 300 pages of rules and play RPGs where a combat with five orcs takes over an hour. But they may very well get back into the game with a version that plays quickly, with moderate rules overhead, and modern presentation and game mechanics.
And retro-clones simply aren't on the radar of anyone outside the fraction of RPGers who hang out on forums. Most people like handsomely designed and printed books with professional layout and artwork. And yeah, the D&D name still matters to a lot of people.
Quote from: Haffrung;648103And retro-clones simply aren't on the radar of anyone outside the fraction of RPGers who hang out on forums.
AND the people they play with, who never bothered with forums or the RPG "scene" or whatever else like this. People who then might play games with other people like themselves without ever bothering with message boards, people and groups who will never register on the radar of the hardcore RPG gamer on the internet.
Lest we forget, RPGs have always been mostly propagated by people, not game companies, by people playing the games with other people who didn't know them. And that's still going on. Though it seems nobody gives a flying fuck about them on internet forums these days, the sentiment is reciprocal: they don't give a shit about internet forums either, and play the games they like with the people they like.
OR people who never stopped playing the game of their choice, whatever that is, and likewise never bothered with RPG forums in the first place. This is the case of the vast majority of gamers I know both in France or Canada, people who are still playing TSR D&D, AH RuneQuest, Nephilim 2e, Vampire the Masquerade, James Bond 007 or whatever suits their fancy. These too are people most hardcore forumers would call "casuals" who in fact, still play a game every month or three or six, and are very happy not to be digging into the new RPG.net/ENWorld/whatever darling of the moment.
The hardcore RPG gamer/designer new shiny and "RPG as technology" bullshit completely flies over the heads of these people. With good reason.
Quote from: Ian Noble;648098There's no "casual, flexible crowd" that will be interested in D&D. Those people simply go to video games for their fantasy gaming fix.
That is one of the stupider comments of the week, right there.
Of course there is a casual, flexible crowd. You don't game with them apparently. I do.
Also, lots of under-40 players that are not the children of gamers. My local game store and game cons are full of them.
It would seem your experiences are rather limited.
Quote from: camazotz;648097D&D Next "meh" got 1,760,000 hits
D&D Next "apathy" got 5,950,000 hits
D&D Next "I Don't Care" got 2,840,000 results
D&D Next "I hate it" got 2,570,000 hits
BUT!
D&D Next "yay" got 7,640,000 hits
D&D Next "I am Excited" got 1,670,000 hits
D&D Next "eager" got 13,100,000 hits
D&D Next "About time" got 9,900,000 hits
D&D Next "can't wait" got 1,810,000 results
....proving that this may be a terrible way to prove anything unless you're in to data mining.
...meh.
I wasn't necessarily offering "proof", but I have little confidence in the latest installation of the Edition Treadmill.
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;648120...meh.
I wasn't necessarily offering "proof", but I have little confidence in the latest installation of the Edition Treadmill.
So, you were not offering proof, you were just offering support for your assertion that the majority of people think it's meh, to back up your own feelings on the matter?
Dude, that's what we call an offer of proof, and it was an incorrect one. There was no point to your doing that, and telling people to Google it, if it was to simply validate your own feelings. Nobody else needs to Google something to validate your feelings. We get you don't have confidence in the edition. Cool. The response of "your feelings might not be universal" should be taken as just that then.
Quote from: Mistwell;648108My local game store and game cons are full of them.
As I go to the same local game stores you do and the same cons you do, they're really not. I think you're simply too feeble-minded to perceive your environment.
This isn't surprising. I see many of your kind at cons and game stores.
I wish my hobby didn't have you people in it, but alas it does.
Quote from: Mistwell;648128So, you were not offering proof, you were just offering support for your assertion that the majority of people think it's meh, to back up your own feelings on the matter?
Dude, that's what we call an offer of proof, and it was an incorrect one. There was no point to your doing that, and telling people to Google it, if it was to simply validate your own feelings. Nobody else needs to Google something to validate your feelings. We get you don't have confidence in the edition. Cool. The response of "your feelings might not be universal" should be taken as just that then.
Look, maybe this hurts your delicate feelings, or maybe you're just white knighting on yet another thread for shits and giggles. I neither know nor care. Instead, I'm going to follow the advice bolded below in this definition of you:
Quote from: [BMistwelling Definition from Circvs Maximvs Wiki[/B]]
Mistwelling a thread is a form of thread derailment not unlike Spoonying a thread or Torming a thread. Where the preferred mechanism of those two was to make a thread all about themselves by in Spoony's case talking about himself and in Torm's case drawing attacks upon himself, Mistwell's chosen approach involves staking out ludicrous White Knight defences of people or positions rightly taking a beating. By presenting a living breathing local target, he provides a distraction of sorts for the subject who has no clue they're being ripped on some silly messageboard somewhere. What he feels he accomplishes by this is unclear, though he does clearly take enjoyment from the conflicts he stirs up.
The more contrarian, wrong-headed or stupid the defence, the more Mistwell likes it, and the more it's guaranteed to atom-bomb a thread. He's become a master at white knighting anything at any time, unfortunately for him he's become so predictable in the role that you see him coming a mile away, and some people have even taken to predicting how and when he's going to charge in on his trusty steed.
Mistwell was first tagged with this post: [1]
"Hey look, Mistwell Mistwells another thread.
That's right, you're now a verb because you've supplanted Spoony and Torm as our resident thread-destroying black-hole of inevitability."
It's everyone's responsibility to help threads avoid Mistwell's event horizon of stupidity. Don't bite on his hasty defences - or if you do, keep it to a simple "you're an idiot" and move on.
Mistwell will white knight almost anything: the Jester seems immune to his, er, proclivities.
Mistwell Flow Chart [2]
Retrieved from "http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/wiki/index.php/Mistwelling"
Mistwell, you're an idiot.
Quote from: Haffrung;648103The casual crowd doesn't have to be teenagers. A lot of 40-something gamers don't have the time or inclination to master 300 pages of rules and play RPGs where a combat with five orcs takes over an hour. But they may very well get back into the game with a version that plays quickly, with moderate rules overhead, and modern presentation and game mechanics.
And retro-clones simply aren't on the radar of anyone outside the fraction of RPGers who hang out on forums. Most people like handsomely designed and printed books with professional layout and artwork. And yeah, the D&D name still matters to a lot of people.
Actually, I think a retro-clone of AD&D or Basic D&D could do very well, but it would need to contain an entirely new campaign setting for people to explore. Make the game into a boxed set, with character sheets and dice. You could include some pregenerated characters, miniatures, maps, cards, and maybe even some coins. Play up the somatic components of the game, describe the wonder of the setting, and make sure that the production values are high.
It's doable. :cool:
Quote from: Haffrung;648103The casual crowd doesn't have to be teenagers. A lot of 40-something gamers don't have the time or inclination to master 300 pages of rules and play RPGs where a combat with five orcs takes over an hour. But they may very well get back into the game with a version that plays quickly, with moderate rules overhead, and modern presentation and game mechanics.
Im not sure I agree here - Pathfinder continues to sell, and its a 3.5 derivative.
Quote from: Haffrung;648103And retro-clones simply aren't on the radar of anyone outside the fraction of RPGers who hang out on forums. Most people like handsomely designed and printed books with professional layout and artwork. And yeah, the D&D name still matters to a lot of people.
While I agree they reach a fraction, they are reaching some who are not regular forum dwellers. Forum dwellers like us often introduce our friends and groups to retroclones. My group has two separate LotFP games going for example, and it was introduced to the group by someone who learned of it by word of mouth.
Also, some retroclones are reaching some stores. Powells, thought to be the largest used bookstore in the world, for example, carries LotFP plus others.
I may not have the largest retro-clone, nor the flashiest, but it exists, and is sold. Something works. It has already reached the European market, and India. Weird. The point I am making is that people need to stop treating RPGs like disposable creative systems the moment they get ticked with the mechanics. For the company, it is about major dollars; for the Players - read consumers - it should be about fun. Arneson knew this. Thank you for your attention :)
Quote from: Ian Noble;648210As I go to the same local game stores you do and the same cons you do, they're really not. I think you're simply too feeble-minded to perceive your environment.
This isn't surprising. I see many of your kind at cons and game stores.
I wish my hobby didn't have you people in it, but alas it does.
Why not worry about your local table and campaign instead?
See my sig below.
Quote from: Haffrung;648103The casual crowd doesn't have to be teenagers. A lot of 40-something gamers don't have the time or inclination to master 300 pages of rules and play RPGs where a combat with five orcs takes over an hour. But they may very well get back into the game with a version that plays quickly, with moderate rules overhead, and modern presentation and game mechanics.
And retro-clones simply aren't on the radar of anyone outside the fraction of RPGers who hang out on forums. Most people like handsomely designed and printed books with professional layout and artwork. And yeah, the D&D name still matters to a lot of people.
Some players don't realize it, but it is possible to play and enjoy an rpg without mastering jack squat. :)
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;648291Actually, I think a retro-clone of AD&D or Basic D&D could do very well, but it would need to contain an entirely new campaign setting for people to explore. Make the game into a boxed set, with character sheets and dice. You could include some pregenerated characters, miniatures, maps, cards, and maybe even some coins. Play up the somatic components of the game, describe the wonder of the setting, and make sure that the production values are high.
It's doable. :cool:
Sounds like Dragon Age. Furthermore, it leverages a very popular CRPG, and is published by one of the more professional, established tabletop RPG companies out there.
But it's not D&D. So it simply doesn't have anywhere near the market reach of D&D. That would also be the case for even the most lavishly-produced retro-clone
Quote from: Lynn;648297Im not sure I agree here - Pathfinder continues to sell, and its a 3.5 derivative.
I'm not saying a complex iteration of D&D can't sell well. Pathfinder obviously proves that. I'm just saying a version of D&D that caters to casual players -including lapsed players of all versions - may also sell well. One of the reasons for the tremendous growth in hobby boardgames is they started aiming at busy adults who meet once or twice a month for a short session, rather than 19-year-olds who can play for seven hours at a shot and are happy to take rulebooks home to learn complex systems. WotC are likely privy to marketing and demographic data that shows how attractive the casual adult gaming market is.
Aren't there millions of roleplayers in the world, and they're all playing World of Warcraft et. al.?
Now don't get me wrong, it aint for me, but there are whole servers dedicated to RP only, and I know of many people who only play to talk and roleplay and interact.
So we won.
Quote from: tzunder;648492Aren't there millions of roleplayers in the world, and they're all playing World of Warcraft et. al.?
So what happens in WoW when I pull the laces from my boots, knot them into a garotte, use the loop to climb the silver Tower of the Lantern, á la Mulan, strangle the avian Cult-Keeper on his perch at the top, and make off with the Egg of Fortune?
Do bootlaces even exist in WoW?
Quote from: The Traveller;648502So what happens in WoW when I pull the laces from my boots, knot them into a garotte, use the loop to climb the silver Tower of the Lantern, á la Mulan, strangle the avian Cult-Keeper on his perch at the top, and make off with the Egg of Fortune?
Do bootlaces even exist in WoW?
No, but people seem quite happy to roleplay within the constraints of the world, and eventually there will be bootlaces.
But the more I reflect on it the more I tend to agree that young kinds could really get the same kick from face to face gaming that we did, but isn't the real questions, how do we get them off the Xbox or Facebook and meet each other?
I think one of the big appeals of roleplay in MMOs is anonymity. I'm not sure how well the secret desire of a 42 year old male to impersonate a 17 year old girl and marry a heroic ranger (played by a 13 year old boy) can be satisfied in a tabletop game.
Wait - isn't that what games like Maid are for?
Quote from: tzunder;648504No, but people seem quite happy to roleplay within the constraints of the world, and eventually there will be bootlaces.
Not in this lifetime, or the next. You'd need to be able to accurately represent an entire world down to the molecule to get even close to what RPGs can do using just the imagination, the flexibility and open endedness which allows anything to be possible,
that is the magic. In fact you'd have to mimic not just the world but all possible worlds, since players do all sorts of wacky things ad hoc. Bootlaces are just one example.
As for WoW roleplaying, I know a great many WoW players and not one of them roleplays their character, aside from the odd battlecry of 'Leeerroyyyy Jenkinnnnss', which isn't really their character. They are playing a team sport competitively.
Now maybe these rp servers are out there, maybe you can even link to transcripts, but to say it represents more than 0.0001% of the whole WoW population, or some similarly tiny number, doesn't represent reality in my opinion.
And even for those who do roleplay, they
still can't find their bootlaces.
I can do more with a pencil, paper and some dice than the entire information infrastructure of WoW or for that matter the world can achieve. Of course the other side of that is tabletop roleplaying games are limited in ways that WoW isn't; you can't have a hundred people playing at your table for example, which just underlines that these are very different activities.
Quote from: tzunder;648504But the more I reflect on it the more I tend to agree that young kinds could really get the same kick from face to face gaming that we did, but isn't the real questions, how do we get them off the Xbox or Facebook and meet each other?
Easy, just show them what they're missing, highlight the strengths of the hobby. Well maybe not easy but certainly a departure from the heel dragging lower lip jutting nuh-uh attitude most major industry players have been indulging in for the last ten years.
Quote from: The Traveller;648510Not in this lifetime, or the next. You'd need to be able to accurately represent an entire world down to the molecule to get even close to what RPGs can do using just the imagination, the flexibility and open endedness which allows anything to be possible, that is the magic.
I do not believe we are that far. First, there were DOS, a command script environment. Then came windows, a revolutionary 2d interface. In the near future there will exist 3d interfaces with the ability to create or modify 3d objects on the fly: you will be able to give them interactive properties, like gravity, elasticity, toughness and resistance. There will also be the possibility to do this in an open and shared environment, real time. It is not that hard to imagine it really.
Quote from: xech;648536I do not believe we are that far. First, there were DOS, a command script environment. Then came windows, a revolutionary 2d interface. In the near future there will exist 3d interfaces with the ability to create or modify 3d objects on the fly: you will be able to give them interactive properties, like gravity, elasticity, toughness and resistance. There will also be the possibility to do this in an open and shared environment, real time. It is not that hard to imagine it really.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Cutting edge theoretical mathematics can't even solve the three body problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem), and that's just vertical difficulty, massively parallel computations trying to accurately mimic every element of a universe that might be interacted with in every way it can be interacted with are not a short or mid term possibility.
Even if you could, the bandwidth required to bring it to the doorstep would need transat cable levels of throughput on every street. We can and do approximate sure but on the fly anything and everything is centuries away, you're talking about holodecks here.
And that's before you even begin to consider the showstopper that is artificial intelligence.
Quote from: The Traveller;648539You have no idea what you're talking about. Cutting edge theoretical mathematics can't even solve the three body problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem), and that's just vertical difficulty, massively parallel computations trying to accurately mimic every element of a universe that might be interacted with in every way it can be interacted with are not a short or mid term possibility.
Even if you could, the bandwidth required to bring it to the doorstep would need transat cable levels of throughput on every street. We can and do approximate sure but on the fly anything and everything is centuries away, you're talking about holodecks here.
And that's before you even begin to consider the showstopper that is artificial intelligence.
Huh? Are players when playing rpgs interact by analysing physics of this kind? Interface is a tool to interact and communicate certain things. Obviously most people do not want or need to communicate about this kind of things. More simple physics like weight against earth is enough for 99.999% of people to play out or simulate. We are not far off to develop interfaces that will allow you to digitally create what you do in a tabletop rpg session on the fly.
Quote from: xech;648545Huh? Are players when playing rpgs interact by analysing physics of this kind? Interface is a tool to interact and communicate certain things. Obviously most people do not want or need to communicate about this kind of things. More simple physics like weight against earth is enough for 99.999% of people to play out or simulate. We are not far off to develop interfaces that will allow you to digitally create what you do in a tabletop rpg session on the fly.
It takes many hours of render time to create even simple scenes; even using monster render farms like Pixar does, the render time for every single frame of Treebeard in the Lord of the Rings was around 48 hours. That's not for the sum of his total appearances, that's for
one single frame.
Are the problems starting to become clearer? The difficulties inherent in representing something as simple as a bootlace for the one in a billion players that might somehow make use of it once are staggering in the context of keeping track of everything.
And if you could reasonably accurately emulate a world in the same way that RPGs can, you wouldn't waste your time with games, you'd just fast forward a little bit to see the future and rule mankind with an iron fist for all eternity. Or more likely you'd bounce around a bit in your ichor because by the time we have that technology everyone's going to be either a brain in a jar or a godlike immortal sauntering lazily between the dimensions, exploding suns just to watch the pretty lights.
RPGs shortcut the entire mess by plugging directly into the biggest entertainment centre anywhere, the human imagination, and letting that run free. This even has advantages beyond a holodeck, since the imagination fills in the blanks in a very personal way for each player, a brief description can conjure up different vistas for everyone at the table, a hotline direct to primal wonder, shivering apelike creatures sitting around a fire enthralled at the shaman's tale.
It's a very different experience.
I been a programmer dealing with CAD, CAM, and motion control for nearly 30 years now. And I have a fair amount knowledge about the technology combined with 35 years of tabletop roleplaying.
When stripped of everything else Tabletop roleplaying hallmark is a human referee adjudicating the action of players interacting as individual characters. Every strength and limitation of tabletop RPGs stems from the presence of the human referee.
What distinguishes a CRPG/MMORPG from Tabletop is the refereeing is automated. And every strength and weakness stems from the fact that the referee is automated.
When you try to use Bioware's Neverwinter Night in DM Mode it become quickly obvious that a human referee doesn't scale well and a Neverwinter Night module is almost impossible for a human to referee without using the built in automation. At best it becomes a computerized LARP and would remain so even in a fully immersive Virtual Reality.
When immersive Virtual Reality are developed they will be more like LARPS than the cRPGs we see today.
Tabletop can benefit from computer technology but on a different path than what CRPGs took. Virtual Tabletops, and automated rule utilities are what works for Tabletop. Basically using the Internet as a sophisticated phone and whiteboard.
The wild card is the development of artificial intelligence.
Quote from: The Traveller;648546It takes many hours of render time to create even simple scenes; even using monster render farms like Pixar does, the render time for every single frame of Treebeard in the Lord of the Rings was around 48 hours. That's not for the sum of his total appearances, that's for one single frame.
Are the problems starting to become clearer? The difficulties inherent in representing something as simple as a bootlace for the one in a billion players that might somehow make use of it once are staggering in the context of keeping track of everything.
And if you could reasonably accurately emulate a world in the same way that RPGs can, you wouldn't waste your time with games, you'd just fast forward a little bit to see the future and rule mankind with an iron fist for all eternity. Or more likely you'd bounce around a bit in your ichor because by the time we have that technology everyone's going to be either a brain in a jar or a godlike immortal sauntering lazily between the dimensions, exploding suns just to watch the pretty lights.
RPGs shortcut the entire mess by plugging directly into the biggest entertainment centre anywhere, the human imagination, and letting that run free. This even has advantages beyond a holodeck, since the imagination fills in the blanks in a very personal way for each player, a brief description can conjure up different vistas for everyone at the table, a hotline direct to primal wonder, shivering apelike creatures sitting around a fire enthralled at the shaman's tale.
It's a very different experience.
A billion players? Tabletop sessions have half a dozen players and a DM. But this isn't it what I am trying to tell you here. As I told, it is not about representing life like experiences (our senses from taste to sight are too advanced for current technological standards), just recognizable, acceptable and aesthetically pleasing results of a number of interactions of the kind that a DM could handle. This, modern technology will be able to achieve in the very near future, if not allready.
Quote from: estar;648547When stripped of everything else Tabletop roleplaying hallmark is a human referee adjudicating the action of players interacting as individual characters. Every strength and limitation of tabletop RPGs stems from the presence of the human referee.
Not so simple, as I hope my comment on the illustrative powers of the imagination highlighted above, to say nothing of player creativity and flexibility.
Quote from: xech;648548A billion players? Tabletop sessions have half a dozen players and a DM.
Yes, I made this point. But their possible choices of action far exceed a billion, something that computer games cannot boast, and won't be able to boast for the foreseeable future.
Quote from: xech;648548But this isn't it what I am trying to tell you here. As I told, it is not about representing life like experiences (our senses from taste to sight are too advanced for current technological standards)
Treebeard looked pretty good to me, and that was what, ten years ago?
Quote from: xech;648548just recognizable, acceptable and aesthetically pleasing results of a number of interactions of the kind that a DM could handle. This, modern technology will be able to achieve in the very near future, if not allready.
Look, I just rendered Treebeard standing on his head. I just rendered him riverdancing. I just rendered him sitting outside a tavern with Elric, Elrond, and Druss, holding forth on matters earthy and esoteric, a giant mug of tree juice in his woody paw. It's not "good enough", it's perfect and perfectly visualised in my mind. And I can do the same thing with an infinite number of other choices.
Even as far as what you're saying, you still aren't grasping how massively complex the problems are in terms of technological representation. The bootlace was just one example, what about the blades of grass the character walks on, the footprints left in the mud, prevailing weather conditions, the bird that may or may not notice an orc hiding in the bushes, the observation that may or may not notice the bird, it's an endless list.
You won't be able to get the tabletop RPG experience from computers anytime soon, and by soon I mean possibly thousands of years.
Quote from: The Traveller;648550Even as far as what you're saying, you still aren't grasping how massively complex the problems are in terms of technological representation. The bootlace was just one example, what about the blades of grass the character walks on, the footprints left in the mud, prevailing weather conditions, the bird that may or may not notice an orc hiding in the bushes, the observation that may or may not notice the bird, it's an endless list.
The same techniques that allow storytellers, novelists, theatre, radio, movies/TV to gloss over the lack of details are available to those creating virtual worlds. The problem isn't a lack of detail, a skilled team can make the players forget that the details aren't there.
The problem is the lack of flexibility. CRPGs are more interactive than a movie or novel but there are bounds to one's actions. Tabletop RPGs are among hugely flexible because the ability of a human referee to respond to what the players are doing. This is the niche that will allow Tabletop RPGs to endure alongside other forms of roleplaying and gaming.
Quote from: estar;648558The same techniques that allow storytellers, novelists, theatre, radio, movies/TV to gloss over the lack of details are available to those creating virtual worlds. The problem isn't a lack of detail, a skilled team can make the players forget that the details aren't there.
Depends on the players I guess (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealIsBrown). But hey, I can count the leaves on Treebeard's head as he riverdances. Also computer games are very visual, and people for various reasons have very highly developed visual capabilities when it comes to distinguishing what should and shouldn't be there. These are not problems associated with storytelling and radio plays, the mind's eye fills in the blanks. This is a strength RPGs have over computer games.
Once again, I'm not saying computer games are bad, they are amazing at what they do, and very enjoyable. That just happens to be something different to RPGs.
Quote from: estar;648558The problem is the lack of flexibility. CRPGs are more interactive than a movie or novel but there are bounds to one's actions. Tabletop RPGs are among hugely flexible because the ability of a human referee to respond to what the players are doing. This is the niche that will allow Tabletop RPGs to endure alongside other forms of roleplaying and gaming.
While I broadly agree you're ignoring player creativity in this picture. Whatever, we're more or less on the same page here.
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;648287Look, maybe this hurts your delicate feelings, or maybe you're just white knighting on yet another thread for shits and giggles. I neither know nor care. Instead, I'm going to follow the advice bolded below in this definition of you:
Mistwell, you're an idiot.
Allow me to once again state that
I wrote the wiki entry on myself. It was done tongue-in-cheek, and Jeff took it seriously. But, if you want to create cross-board drama, be my guest. I suspect Pundit will not like it, but hey, it's your decision to make.
Just kiss already, for Bane's sake.
:) Personally I would love to write a wiki entry on myself. But then, I thought, I really have accomplished what!? So.
Just a thought. These same Players/Gms that are playing the name brand RPGs, these are Dragon Slayers - and they refuse to try something new?
Quote from: StormBringer9;648369I may not have the largest retro-clone, nor the flashiest, but it exists, and is sold. Something works. It has already reached the European market, and India. Weird. The point I am making is that people need to stop treating RPGs like disposable creative systems the moment they get ticked with the mechanics. For the company, it is about major dollars; for the Players - read consumers - it should be about fun. Arneson knew this. Thank you for your attention :)
In what sense have you "reached India"? I'm curious what you mean by this, for obvious reasons.
Hi Pundit. Yes I was scouring the internet for places where the book has traveled to in its advertising.....the Rupee came back as a exchange medium for one site, it is considered as an imported book, in India. Yes, it worries me.
Quote from: estar;648558The problem is the lack of flexibility. CRPGs are more interactive than a movie or novel but there are bounds to one's actions. Tabletop RPGs are among hugely flexible because the ability of a human referee to respond to what the players are doing. This is the niche that will allow Tabletop RPGs to endure alongside other forms of roleplaying and gaming.
Not only bound to one's actions, but those that the designers have allowed as possible choices.
It is easy to be impressed with the technological advancements of our time, but they simply build upon the same paradigms. Artificial intelligence may one day change that, but the commercial impetus is still far away and that is what makes the difference.
To compare - high definition broadcasts and TVs were available in Japan in the late 1980s (analog!), but outside of a limited number of enthusiasts and specific applications sort of dried up on the vine until much, much later.
Likewise there are 3d technologies that can parametrically create and render a small planet (first seen in its juvenile form in Wrath of Khan) with some features. Technology like that isn't required for building an interesting computer game.
I see, so this is not something you actively pursued, stormbringer?
No. I did not actively pursue, it happens of itself.
Quote from: StormBringer9;650577No. I did not actively pursue, it happens of itself.
Why don't you post a link to your game. For free or pay. Would love to take a look. And Pundit you realise this isn't the StormBringer thats been here since 2008 right? This is a new/different guy.
Okay, I have something in the other forum for advertising the game. If Pundit does not mind, I shall post a link, for a $2 USD annotated version here: http://www.sojournergames.com/
Apologies if I have done this incorrectly. I hope you do take a look........If you want a complimentary copy, I am happy to do that too. Just need somewhere to send it.
What WOTC debacle?
Quote from: GameDaddy;651077What WOTC debacle?
I see you bothered to read at least the original post before responding.
Quote from: Bobloblah;651084I see you bothered to read at least the original post before responding.
Heh. Since when did it become a
Debacle if Wotc is taking a break from publishing a new RPG?
Quote from: GameDaddy;651094Heh. Since when did it become a Debacle if Wotc is taking a break from publishing a new RPG?
When they fell into 3rd place in the market?