Do we want one dominant game, and why?

[billd91]

I'm torn. I don't like the idea of a truly dominant game in the market. Competition and choice are both good. But I do think having a big company in the industry, one that has enough muscle/budget to get the word out about the game and get the idea of RPGs on people's minds, is of some benefit. If every game had about equal market share, but were done by smaller-than-TSR/WotC companies, I don't think you'd see the mindshare that RPGs have today.
So I guess I have a mixed opinion on the whole thing.

As far as D&D being a good entry game? It used to be. I think it's been moving away from that since 3e came out due to complexity. We'll see if the Essentials line reverse the trend.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Do you think D&D is a good entry level game?

From a games-mechanical standpoint no, not so much. But, as you say:

Its fantasy setting and tropes are certainly familiar to many who have played computer RPGs or who have read fantasy literature.

I consider this a being extremely important. Most people with a modicum of interest in fantasy have a basic understanding of part of the language used in the game, they'll probably understand the premise of the game.

At least I'd have a better feeling describing D&D than, say, Mouseguard, as long as my counterpart hasn't read the comic.

I also think the setting of D&D limits its appeal as a good game for drawing in new players.

In the past I've tried to introduce people to the hobby through d&d and couple times through Shadowrun (with mixed results).

The limiting factor would be the fantasy theme, then?

Over the years I've used a lot of different systems to introduce newcomers to the roleplaying table; my main point has always been to select one simple enough to leave all the rules applications to the game master. Call of Cthulhu has proved to be very good in this regard as the concept of a percentile probability to describe the chance of success for some task is very easy to grasp.

But note that this is a situation where at least one of the participants already has some roleplaying experience. As much as I love to introduce new sheep to our herd, I'm turning 50 next year and don't have so many contacts with the young crowd. Therefore, I want an entry level game which gives absolute newbies a hand and teaches them roleplaying.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Voted "no" but the reality is that the question doesn't quite get to the issue it's trying to get to. It's a topic that bears discussing, but just putting it to a yes/no vote won't really deal with the topic in any meaningful way.

 

[Dice4Hire]

There seems to be a slightly rose-tinted view of the impact of a monopoly, and the resultant danger of a monopsony.

On the plus side I was looking for a topic to blog on - ta very much

Before you do that, look up dominant in the dictionary.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I voted "No."

I learned AD&D in 1977, and Traveller in 1978. In 1982, I found Champions.

Champions, now known as HERO, is my favorite system of all time. I can run any kind of game in it.

However, having played in dozens and dozens of systems- including some playtests- I learned that there is no better system for a given kind of game than one specifically designed for it.

So even though I could run a Mythos campaign in HERO, I'd be surprised if the game wouldn't have a better feel in some edition of CoC.

Thus, even though my love of HERO has no limits, I also think that the hobby is all the richer for the myriad of games within it.

 

[Beginning of the End]

I would love it if there were multiple RPGs actually competing as entry-level products to the industry. That would be fantastic. I mean, it's never actually been true in the entire history of the industry, but it would be fantastic.

Since that's unlikely to happen any time soon (if ever), we're left with D&D as the #1 point of entry for new players into the hobby. Given that reality, I would like D&D to:

(1) Be as broadly appealing as possible.
(2) Strongly compete with other entertainment mediums, particularly interactive ones (i.e., video games).

One of the problems with 4th Edition is that it moved D&D away from both of those points: It narrowed the appeal by adopted a design ethos of "pick a sweet spot and spread it across the entire game" (great if it was your sweet spot, terrible if it wasn't). And it moved the game towards specifically the types of gameplay where tabletop RPGs can't effectively compete with video games.

OTOH, maybe those are the very decisions necessary to break D&D's monopoly over RPGs in the general marketplace. But that's only a good thing if other games move in to fill that lost market. It's just as likely that the market will be permanently lost.

Also: Can we all stop spelling "bored" as "board", please? Thanks.

 

[N0Man]

How could I borrow features I liked from other game systems if there is only one game out there? Just because I have a game of choice doesn't mean I don't want to do something different sometimes, or tweak what I have.

Competition is healthy, and it is what brings new ideas and innovation.

 

[Lanefan]

I think we do need a dominant game, yes; for brand recognition if nothing else.

Having other games in the market is essential, to avoid stagnation and cover off areas the dominant game fails on for whatever reason; but the common experience has value too. Just look at all the reminiscences (sp?) in here about playing Keep on the Borderlands...the shared experience has value, and if there's 3 or 4 or 6 different systems and points of entry that shared experience will disappear.

Lan-"I'd just like to be able to choose which game dominates"-efan

 

[Khairn]

I used to care greatly about this topic as I felt that having the 800 lb gorilla in the corner was a great tool for bringing new people into the hobby, and for that reason alone (even though there may be others) having a dominant game was a good thing.

But over the past few years the marketplace has changed so much, and the big gorilla has become irrelevant to so many, that I'm now fence sitting, but leaning towards no.

"What's good for D&D is good for the industry." used to be a mantra for me. Now I use it as a signpost when discussing how things have changed.

 

[Beginning of the End]

More relevantly, there was a time early in the D20 OGL life cycle where all sorts of games were beign converted to use a variant of the D20 rules, sometimes at the expense of the original line. Traveller, World of Darkness, 7th Sea, Legend of Five Rings - they all had a D20 variant. I don't think that was particularly good for the original games, and to be honest I don't think most of the ones I mentioned worked well.

There's another reality out there where the original D20-derived games worked the way Ryan Dancey intended them to: Inter-compatibility between systems. Take your D&D monsters and use them as space aliens (and vice versa).

This vision died when Slavicsek's Star Wars put a bullet in its head and gave everyone a completely wrong-headed "model" for building their D20 games. D20 games needed to be either bold departures (Mutants & Masterminds) or strenuously loyal. The tepid middle-ground Star Wars D20 mapped out and everyone rushed to follow was literally the worst of both worlds: It took all the disadvantages of building your game engine around D&D, but then tossed out every advantage by making a couple hundred niggling changes that not only render the player's system mastery irrelevant but turns it into an actual liability.

Of course, it didn't help when you had companies like PEG who admitted that they hated D20 but flooded the market with crappily designed D20 products in an effort to cash in. (They didn't actually say "crappily designed", but what else can you expect from people who don't like the game system they're ostensibly designing for?)

I think we do need a dominant game, yes; for brand recognition if nothing else.

This doesn't seem to be true for any other entertainment medium on the planet. I don't see any reason why it needs to be uniquely true for RPGs.

I can think of two other examples with a dynamic similar to what the RPG industry has: When the Atari 2600 dominated the home video game market. And when SSI dominated the wargame market (albeit their dominance was weaker given the existence of Avalon Hill).

In both cases, the strong reliance of the entire industry on a single industry leader to pull in new customers ultimately made those markets unstable and vulnerable to the poor business decisions of their market leaders.

The trick here is that I don't want WotC to be any smaller than it currently is. I just want somebody else (and preferably several somebody elses) to be just as big or at least nearly as big.

Not that I actually have any plan for seeing that happen, mind you.