Why DO Other Games Sell Less?

woodelf said:

You're making the same false assumption that many proponents of the D20 System do: that all systems are equally difficult and time-consuming to learn. I've read, figured out, taught to the other members of the group, and gotten ready for (creating characters, whatever) some systems in less time than it takes to prep a night's play for my high-level D&D game. Heck, this was true when it was a mid-level D&D game. This was not true, however, for AD&D2 (that is, the prep time for AD&D2 was so much lower than most D20 System stuff that finding a whole new game i could learn and prepare in the same amount of time it took me to prep an evening of AD&D2 play is much harder). For that matter, it took us less time/effort to start up a game of Primetime Adventures, Dust Devils, and With Great Power…, than it did to get up to speed on Iron Heroes (despite being familiar with D&D3E and AU). Switching systems is not always as much of a burden as you make it out to be, just with more-complex systems. "i'm not gonna switch systems" is a reasonable response to the time 'wasted' in switching; "let's only switch to systems that don't waste much time" is an equally-reasonable response. And, as i've said above, with at least some groups (and my group is *not* a bunch of experienced RPers--two have only played the 3 or so systems i've played with them), the effort to switch to a simple system could be less than that involved in leveling up and preping the next adventure.

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I totally agree with this, And WotC knows this is a problem (hence PHBII)

jmucchiello said:

RPGs lacks the huge media presence to have games that pander to reviewers.

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Video game producers don't pander to reviewers. They buy reviewers. Seriously, the video game industry and video game "journalism" is rife with graft, corruption, and general conflict of interest.

woodelf said:

You're making the same false assumption that many proponents of the D20 System do: that all systems are equally difficult and time-consuming to learn.

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I wasn't making that assumption at all.

Time involved isn't just sitting down and learning a new system. It's sitting down and learning a new system, convincing the members of your group that it's worthwhile to switch, having them sit down and learn the game, playing a few games and evaluating.

You are assuming that every game can be evaluated on just reading it. They aren't. I've played many, many games during my gaming career.

Once I wandered away from AD&D because I wasn't satisfied with the gaming experience I was regularly trying new games. Some of them were interesting. Some were horrible (Powers & Perils comes to mind as one of the worst examples in my experience). All of them took a lot of time to try and experiment with to decide what a poor gaming experience came from. Was it the system? Was it a poor understanding of the system? Was it a poor adventure? Was it annoyance with a minor quirk of an otherwise solid system (easily fixed in house rules)?

I don't have time for that level of experimentation these days. I can't just find someone who is running a game to just drop in to try it. Our group doesn't have the same time to pick up dozens of systems, read them, and see which ones execute as well as they sound. Every new game we would try would mean one less session of an ongoing game. Every time it's not something we continue is lost time from a campaign, and in my experience that's most games.

So I'm wondering... Do people feel that all game systems are basically different versions of the same game? Role Playing is the real game?

So in a sense, D&D is basically the first and "original" rules to the game... All other systems are like optional variants... Like if you decided to play Star Wars Monopoly as opposed to the original Monopoly?

Scribble said:

So I'm wondering... Do people feel that all game systems are basically different versions of the same game? Role Playing is the real game?

So in a sense, D&D is basically the first and "original" rules to the game... All other systems are like optional variants... Like if you decided to play Star Wars Monopoly as opposed to the original Monopoly?

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Nah. At least no more than all automobiles are variants of a Ford car. The are roughly in the same class and have a generally similar superficial purpose. But the variation is huge, performance trade-offs vary widely as requirements for the roles they fill.

EDIT Of course the analogy isn't a perfect match, otherwise you wouldn't have so many people all buying one particular product and using it to do the equivalent of driving a Grand Prix, go offroading in swamps and deserts, land cruises to the South Pole, hauling their livestock to to town to sell, and even occationally attempting to drive to freaking Mars.

One of the earliest & most repeated lessons in my MBA program was that the market factor that has the highest correlation with success in that market is being FIRST. Simply by virtue of being first, you gain all kinds of advantages- your products set the market standards; your product's name becomes virtually synonymous with the market; your opponents cannot help but to compare themselves to your product, since you set the standards; market penetration, etc.

To put it a different way- I can beat a Top Fuel Dragster in a quarter-mile race if you give me enough of a lead.

There are other factors, of course- you do have to manage your product and counter whatever improvements are made by other market entrants. Stagnation = Death for almost any product.

But to the world at large, D&D=RPG. You ask Joe Normal what a role playing game is, and if he's even heard of one, the response you're likely to get is "You mean, Dungeons & Dragons?"

D&D is found in stores other RPG companies WISH they could crack. Hit a plain old bookstore- you'll find D&D (in VARIOUS editions if its a used book store) and perhaps another couple of companies' material, if any. White Wolf gets in a lot of stores, but I also see GURPS, or products that tie into popular Books, TV shows or Movies- so you'll see supers games related to Marvel or DC characters, Starship Troopers, "Buffyverse" stuff, Star Trek/Wars, Bab5, Jericho and LOTR & A Game of Thrones themed products.

But wherever you find those other products, you will almost always find D&D dominating the shelf space.

Do people feel that all game systems are basically different versions of the same game? Role Playing is the real game?

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Yes & no.

Yes in that it set the standard, and every game designer since D&D's initial publication is either learning from, stealing from, or reacting to what was done first in that game. D&D is the inevitable factor in every RPG that followed it- its the primer, the gesso, which lets all the other stuff follow.

However, there has been a lot of innovation in the field, some with so little resemblance to the original stuff that it is truly its own thing- like the various point-based systems (HERO, GURPS, etc.) or the diceless games like Amber.

Besides- flavor matters. Setting matters. Both influence the design of RPG systems.

A supers game is very different from a FRPG which differs greatly from a Sci-fi game. There are different expectations, different standards, different fictional conceits from the underlying source material that can have, in certain cases, a deep effect on the mechanics of the game.

For instance, supers games are based on comic books (DUH!), and one thing that is common in comic book melees is that combatants go flying when hit with great force- something that also happens in martial arts fantasy movies. In RPGs based upon those genres, "knockback" is part of the game mechanics, while being virtually absent from any other RPG system.

Scribble said:

So, apparently D&D is a huge force in the RPG market. It's the big seller, and other games just sell less... Why is this? What gives D&D such a huge spot in the market? Is it just because it was first? Because of its history?

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It's the brand. It also doesn't hurt that the brand now belongs to a big company. Those two things mean that D&D gets on shelves no other RPG has a chance of getting on.

The strength of the D&D brand certainly has something to do with being the first, but I think some of it also has to do with how the brand was built.

Note also that selling the best doesn't necessarily tell you how much it is actually played. Although I suspect D&D would still come out on top if you found a decent way to measure the latter, I think it's margin of victory would be much less than when measuring sales.

I'm surprised everytime that I meet one, but there are people who balk at the idea of trying a different RPG. Due to the strength of D&D's brand & market position, it gets more of these people than any other game.

Scribble said:

Would the RPG "industry" exist if D&D stopped existing? (I'm not predicting doom, just a question.) Would it have died out altogether if WOTC had not purchased D&D back in 96, and TSR went under?

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At this point I see the D&D market as almost a separate thing from the RPG industry. (The D&D market being WotC & any other companies--if there are any left--publishing d20-only-because-we-can't-call-it-D&D products. The d20-but-trying-to-do-something-different-from-WotC's-D&D companies fall into the RPG industry instead of the D&D industry.) The RPG industry is still there. I suspect it will not disappear. It just happens to be small. There's nothing wrong with that, though the attitudes of some corporations, executives, & "I can't be successful in business so I'm going to write a book about how to be successful in business instead"-types might say otherwise. It's small because its market is small & is never going to be big.

Although, sometimes I think the hobby would be better off it there weren't an RPG industry.

RFisher said:

Although, sometimes I think the hobby would be better off it there weren't an RPG industry.

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That's an interesting line that I think could use some 'splaining. :?

RFisher said:

Although, sometimes I think the hobby would be better off it there weren't an RPG industry.

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Almost any hobby have an industry. That's what free enterprise is all about. Unless of course, you prefer just one company to make all RPGs. In that case, I'd pick the D&D publisher over the GURPS publisher.

Let's face it. When you have more customers, you gotta think big. Expand if your customers are all over the world. Otherwise, especially in this real-time era, they demand their products now rather than 8-10 weeks from now.

Here's another question:

If D&D doesn't "drive" the market for RPGs, would the other systems begin to see more sales, and become more "known" in the general public, if D&D stopped being sold?