Nisarg said:
Sorry Jim but I already fought that fight on RPG.net... go find my postings on there if you want to see my full argument.
The short argument (which is all you'll get here) is that the decline in interest in RPGs was caused by a massive philosophical shift in gaming from RPGs being for fun, to RPGs being "story-based", with a strong emphasis on metaplot, railroading, story over rules/setting/characters/etc, and in-game fiction. This was fueled by the apparent success of White Wolf's Vampire, which was indeed successful but mostly because they tapped a new group of players who had no previous interest in RPGs and the vast majority of whm never would have an interest in other RPGs than the WoD. So the other major companies, including TSR, ran themselves into the ground trying to copy WW's story-based design theory in a vain hope of getting some of those people on board, while alienating their existing fanbase. It led countless people to leave the hobby forever, and was only halted with the advent of D20 and the good work of people like Jonathan Tweet and Ryan Dancey, designing the games and the market theory to bring RPGs back to being about having fun, and not about being pretentious and giving failed authors a chance to show off their b-grade fiction.
Nisarg
Apparently and admittedly the Master of the Obvious
(but only because so many others are trying to deny the obvious)
This has got to be one of the most surreal and sad threads I've ever seen. Face it Nisarg, on a board of die-hard D&D fans, if your WW conspiracy theories don't fly, then there is nothing to them. I have to agree with Etan Moonstar, I'm getting exactly the opposite message from that passage (and the preceeding and subsequent text in the WoD book) than you're getting from it. You're bitter, you've got an axe to grind for some reason, and when nobody here agrees with you, you get more venomous. To me, that dismisses your arguement as personal, petty, and half-baked. This also seems like a really silly thing to get so upset about compared to many much more serious issues that face people in today's world.
And for the record, I'm not a big WW system fan. I find the dice pool system to produce wonky gameplay due to a rather strange probability effect, but the background and story elements in the WoD stuff is top notch and very creative. The WoD is afterall a superhero game where the players take on the roles of monsters, but also grapple with inner demons and morality. The monster/superhero aspect of the game doesn't appeal to me, but the moral ambiguity of the game does, and while I don't still play WW games, I have incorporated some of the thematic and moral ideas from their games into my D&D game, with great results. What WW did in the early 90's was show people you could have fun with a RPG by incorporating ideas into the game that were NOT about kicking in the door, killing the monster, and taking its loot. This appeals to a rather juvenile mindset, and while its fun to do occasionally, killing and looting quickly lose their appeal to most folks. I applaud their efforts for broadening the horizons of gaming, and bringing more people into gaming (especially female gamers). You can try to dispute this if you like, but its the reality of what WW did to gaming.
What nearly killed RPGs was the CCG craze Magic started. Chaosium, previously a pretty strong publisher, nearly lost it all with the Call of Cthulhu CCG. Many other companies tried to branch into CCGs (TSR with Spellfire for example), and took a big hit. In addition, the biggest RPG company at the time TSR, was being run by people who didn't know anything about gaming, and who mismanaged product lines, overextending themselves, which caused the ruination of TSR. It wasn't due to inferior product (many people point to Planescape, Dark Sun, and Birthright as three of the best settings TSR produced, all during its final days), it was due to bad business practices, pure and simple. In addition, younger players wanted instant gratification and a quick game, which CCGs gave them, while RPGs could not. As more and more players gravitated to CCGs, the RPG player base kinda dried up, and people who had been regular gamers in the 80s as kids were suddenly in their 20s, facing jobs, marriage, and kids- all of which cut into gaming time. Mainly CCGs, but also an aging gaming demographic are what cut RPG sales bigtime, not a plot by WW to "kill gaming". That statement is ridiculous in the first place- why would a gaming company, whose success depends on the sale of gaming items, want to end RPGs? Think through a statement like that before you make it.
If anything, WW helped to keep RPGs alive in the mid to late 90s. While D&D was in a slump, Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage had huge loyal followings because they were innovative, new, and fresh. I don't know how many former die-hard D&D players I knew switched over to WW completely because TSR wasn't releasing often, and because they were tired of the same old D&Disms that hadn't been updated for 20 years. GURPS also got a mild upswing during this time, and started shooting out sourcebooks like there was no tomorrow. WW was successful because all of their sourcebooks could (theoretically) be used with each other as part of the same world, so they sold tons of units of even the splatbooks they made. TSR on the other hand, had something like 6 campaign settings running at the same time, whose sourcebooks were independent of each other, and therefore they took a hit having to make small print runs (more expensive for the publisher), and uncertain customer support as their support for each world became less frequent since they were havint to split resources. So you shouldn't be lambasting WW for what they did, but praising them for keeping some portion of the gaming community alive for 5 years or so.
