Why DO Other Games Sell Less?

[eyebeams]

Walking over to the wall of DVDs behind me, I don't recall grappling in the Lord of the Rings, Indian Jones, the Matrix, or Star Wars. Fictional fighting in American culture doesn't seem to head towards heavy grappling, so it's natural that American RPGs wouldn't do so either.

Of all three examples, the only one without significant grappling has the ol' laser sword in it. People grab, throw and tangle up in movies *all the time.*

It certainly negates that argument that no RPG has done so, and one would expect innovation on a subject to come in a genre that needs the innovation.

Perhaps you didn't read me. The only wrestling RPG in print in the last few years simulates pro wrestling using standard D20 striking attack mechanics. What I was saying is that I *cannot find* anything that would be an exception by I concede that it *might* exist in an obscure RPG from the 80s.

Know Your Role's combat system is quite interesting, but it in no way moves outside the standard model into the position/submission model of grappling. What I am saying is that virtually every RPG that models combat with significant detail makes grappling a subset of striking and not vice versa. Even KYR does this.

 

[Davmeister84]

Walking over to the wall of DVDs behind me, I don't recall grappling in the Lord of the Rings, Indian Jones, the Matrix, or Star Wars. Fictional fighting in American culture doesn't seem to head towards heavy grappling, so it's natural that American RPGs wouldn't do so either.

It does have a lot of sundering and disarming though. And plenty of grappling in the sense of dogpiling someone into submission, if not outright "test of strength" wrestling matches.

And, let's be fair, WWE has a decently big following so it does fit into the entertainment aspect.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Walking over to the wall of DVDs behind me, I don't recall grappling in the Lord of the Rings, Indian Jones, the Matrix, or Star Wars. Fictional fighting in American culture doesn't seem to head towards heavy grappling, so it's natural that American RPGs wouldn't do so either.

You gotta be kiddin' me! There's lots of grappling in American films! Its just interspersed with all of the punching and kicking.

The Indiana Jones movies feature many scenes of Indy wrestling with Nazis, yanking them out of cars, struggling to see who gets pushed over what precipice, etc. Agent Smith grapples with Morpheus in the abandoned building when he pounds him into the walls.

Grappling litters action sequences from modern superhero movies like the Batman series back to noir movies like the Maltese Falcon.

As for grappling in RPGs...both HERO and GURPS handle grappling and other unarmed martial arts quite well, and neither is specialized nor obscure.

My guess is that M&M and Spycraft would also do a decent job with it, but I can't say for sure.

 

[eyebeams]

You gotta be kiddin' me! There's lots of grappling in American films! Its just interspersed with all of the punching and kicking.

The Indiana Jones movies feature many scenes of Indy wrestling with Nazis, yanking them out of cars, struggling to see who gets pushed over what precipice, etc. Agent Smith grapples with Morpheus in the abandoned building when he pounds him into the walls.

Grappling litters action sequences from modern superhero movies like the Batman series back to noir movies like the Maltese Falcon.

As for grappling in RPGs...both HERO and GURPS handle grappling and other unarmed martial arts quite well, and neither is specialized nor obscure.

My guess is that M&M and Spycraft would also do a decent job with it, but I can't say for sure.

Just to clarify, my point isn't that grappling is done well or badly -- I'm quite happy with grappling systems in many games. It's that in the vast majority games, grappling rules are a set of special cases grafted onto a rules set designed to primarily adjudicate striking attacks.

 

[sullivan]

Not especially. All of them have additional bells and whistles compared to Strike (like Power vs. Power for Lock), whic the combat mechanics clearly set as the core form of attack. Strike is the maneuver that conforms to the fundamental combat mechanics; the others you mention contain the same exceptionalities, bels and whistles that most games do.

Eyebeam, your projection is now just brutally obvious. Strike is treated on the exact same level as those other actions. The 'bells and whistles' as you call them are just different effects. Which makes perfectly good sense to have different effects, because those types of actions are for accomplishing different things.

Not necessarily. D&D is back there in the chain, but someone doesn't need to absorb its values through D&D. They just need to play a game that inherits those values.

So in fact you mean to include influences that are even more convoluted? Indeed.

 

[WayneLigon]

The 'it was first' arguement still has a lot of merit, but that only gets you so far. I think D&D is a lucky accident with the right mix of rules complexity coupled with a genre that combines ease of introduction (almost everyone knows a little something about the middle ages), and the ability for the character themselves to Do Cool Stuff (this is why most every other RPG genre has remained a tiny niche: Sci-Fi isn't about you yourself Doing Cool Stuff - it's about what your tech can do for you - and in the other major genres (westerns and spy games) you're just a normal guy - the only other genre that offers tha ability to personally Do Cool Stuff is superheroes and that is a niche genre if there ever was one - too few people 'get' superheroes or want to have anything to do with them).

That has proven to be a very powerful combination. There are tons of games with less and more rules complexity, and they've almost all fallen bv the wayside. Vampire's success was due to the same reasons: Ease of introduction (I dare you to find me someone that doesn't know what a vampire is and the basics of how it acts, especially since Anne Rice redefined the genre) and the characters themselves get to Do Cool Stuff (everyone knows vampires have super powers, and they look cool doing it). It became the closest thing we've ever seen to challenging D&D's supremacy.

I've tried lots of different game systems and such, but it's hard to get people to learn a new system. Learning D&D is a fair amount of work and people don't like to see that effort go to waste, especially if they are a quasi-casual gamer.

For the most part, D&D (before 3E) became no-one's favorite system but it became the only one we could all agree on to play because it was the only thing most of us knew in common - it was everyone's second or third favorite system, so when the time came to decide what to play it was almost always the winner because nobody could decide on anything else to play.

Since 3E, most of the people I know are of the opinion 'why should we bother learning anything else at all?' d20 does almost everything we want from a roleplaying game and does it well. There's now enough in the way of variant rules that when we want something different we can play something different, in a different genre, and have it handled by a system that's fundamentally the same underneath. There's enough change that we get the feel of playing something different for a change, but there is enough familiarity that I don't have to reset everything back to zero to learn it.

There's still room for other systems. I just came back from vacation with a friend. She and her husband are both gamers with teenaged children and they've been trying to find a system that her son's friends will play. D&D is too expensive for them, for the most part, and they still get confused with the various rules - they've tried running it themselves but the concept of game balance is something still very poorly explained in the rulebooks and it trips them up every tmie. GURPS is still way too complex for them - they love the Banestorm setting but the rules complexity defeats them. They tried Savage Worlds this week and they all liked it best of anything they've tried so far.

 

[Hussar]

Eyebeam, your projection is now just brutally obvious. Strike is treated on the exact same level as those other actions. The 'bells and whistles' as you call them are just different effects. Which makes perfectly good sense to have different effects, because those types of actions are for accomplishing different things.

Not in many games. Yes, there are a few games out there that may not, but, by and large, every game that involves combat uses a "strike" as the base maneuver. Any maneuver that is more complicated adds additional rules to the strike, but, at no point are those maneuvers considered the base action. And, let's be honest, that's D&D in different clothing. I believe that is what Eyebeams is referring to.

So in fact you mean to include influences that are even more convoluted? Indeed.

If I play a game that is influenced by DND and then design another game based on that game, then my game is influenced by DnD. That seems pretty direct. If I never play DnD, but play Rifts instead, and then design a game with mechanics based on Rifts, then there is a pretty direct chain from my game to DnD.

 

[eyebeams]

Eyebeam, your projection is now just brutally obvious. Strike is treated on the exact same level as those other actions. The 'bells and whistles' as you call them are just different effects. Which makes perfectly good sense to have different effects, because those types of actions are for accomplishing different things.

I suggest that you make yourself more familiar with the rules for The Burning Wheel. How they are organized in a chapter is irrelevant. Strike is the movement that cleaves to the basic resolution system in The Burning Wheel. That's why it's "the simplest and most elegant of them all" (p. 161) and why Strike uses the basic "beat OB1 unless opposed" mechanic where none of your other examples do. That's why the Weapons Mechanics section reiterates Striking as the basic task of a weapon (p. 171), instead of, say, Beat and Bind. The reason other maneuvers are more complex is that they require additional systems to differentiate them from the task at the core of the design -- whacking somebody with something.

Hussar already covered the more inflammatory part of your post -- not the the accusation that began it was particularly reasonable . . .

 

[seskis281]

In the end, and going back to the question of the OP, I think it's merely the brand-name recognition of "D&D" that puts it above all else in sales.

I love Castles & Crusades - but when I tell people we'll be playing it they say "so we're not gonna stick with D&D?" - to which I then have to explain that it IS D&D - in the thematic sense, just adapted from 1e using the essence of d20, yada yada yada.... but because the logo on the cover doesn't say "D&D" they resist. Once played it's like a "OMG - this is great..." but it's hard to compete with sales with the moniker issue hanging out there.

 

[Ipissimus]

I have to agree with people who said that DnD is NOT a superior system, many of the other RPGs do certain things better and more logically. Most are also more accessable to new players.

The key to DnD's success, in my opinion, is simple. They made a TON of modules for it. Not sourcebooks; modules, dungeons, adventures, things to actually use the rules with so the DM doesn't have to make anything up. Creating your own adventures is DAMN hard work, most people who have the imagination and inclination to play an RPG don't have that much time to devote to the hobby. The mojority of RPGs give you the rules and maybe one or two adventures. If you're lucky. In DnD you're spoiled for choice.

Heck, take a look at Guardians of Order. Why waste time creating three or four new settings per year when you could have supported BESM with adventure modules? Why create yet another Fantasy RPG when six other companies have that market sewn up? No wonder they went down the tubes.

White Wolf doesn't really pander to the Horror-buffs, it panders more to the Roleplayers. Those of us who don't like HP, levels, Alignments and letting the dice do all the work. And if you don't like Horror, they've got Exalted.

Chaosium amazes me. They've lasted a very, very long time pandering to a real niche market. Teenagers from Outer Space is STILL in print...

I don't think, if DnD collapsed, the industry would die. It'd just lose it's poster-boy. There'd be some fall-out, but would the rules become Public Domain? Would the internet and home-brew become re-assendent? Might not be a bad thing in some ways.