Why aren't RPGs poplular

[TwinBahamut]

A role-playing game's "story" is what the participants make at the game table, and is infinite in possibilities. A video game's "story" is confined to the "adventure path" (often a linear "railroad") in which the player is really just a spectator to a predefined "script" of events set up by the programmer. There's really no comparison nor should there be confusion about which is really a role-playing game.

I think your definition of "role-playing game", which depends on this idea that all "role-playing games" have an infinitely variable story, doesn't work. It is restrictive enough that it probably excludes a significant fraction, if not the majority, of actual D&D campaigns. It is the kind of definition that can be used to say that certain styles of playing D&D are not true "role-playing games". It also ignores practical limitations based on the DM's ability to prepare for the game and allow for variation, which is indeed finite, and was the basis for my comparison anyways. If look at how D&D games are actually played, and the effort required to make them work, they tend to fall far short of your theoretical ideal.

As far as I am concerned, a role-playing game is any game which focuses on gameplay mechanics built around character growth within the context of an intricate story. This is more than an adequate definition for both D&D and Final Fantasy. I don't think things like an infinitely variable story or even the ability to create your own character are even remotely necessary for defining the term.

 

[maddman75]

Well, that is one reason why I included the qualifier "arguably" in my statement.

Online RPGs may indeed be populated largely by "roll players."

But the obvious counterpoint is to question how many people who play P&P RPGs actually roleplay either. IME, many of the people I've shared a table with in the past 30+ years are "roll players," not "role players." That, however, hasn't diminished my enjoyment of the games with them, nor their contributions to the game itself. Its just like they put on a different name tag...kind of like when Sean Connery plays Russian submarine commanders.

(To be clear, I don't play MMORPGs at all, so I have no first hand experience with them.)

Well, to counter your anecdote with my own, most of the people I game with, if not all, would call themselves 'role players'. The general consensus is that there's nothing wrong with a good tactical game, but there's not much desire to mix it into roleplaying. Most of us also play board games, miniatures games, and video games for when you just want some imaginary violence.

It doesn't get more hack and slash than Left4Dead.

 

[Ariosto]

Yeah, Dannyalacatraz's "name tag" quip suggests to me the snobbery of folks who came along and started to dismiss what someone (Lew Pulsipher?) way back termed "vicarious participation" -- what seems to have been the primary mode of role-playing among the hobby's earliest pioneers.

At the same time, I don't think it was (or is) for nothing that RPGs got distinguished even from individual-scale war games. Part of the significant something, I think, is their open-ended nature. The player is not limited to any particular scenario, and can try absolutely anything the role might reasonably allow to be tried.

Are "first-person shooter" (FPS) games a subtype of "computer role playing game" (CRPG)? It seems to me they have a lot more to do with the role-identification aspect of a p&p RPG, and the mainly text-based "adventure games" -- even the Rogue-like graphical games -- as well.

By contrast, the key point of similarity to p&p RPGs that stands out in my experience among computer programs explicitly distinguished as "RPGs" is in the number-crunching factors of "ability scores" and "character class levels" and so on. Most in fact seem to put the player by default "in the role" not of any one character but of a whole party! (I think the MMO games tend to get back mainly to the individual level, but they might also tend to get back more to the war-game scope of activities.)

 

[Mark]

Why aren't RPGs poplular?

Statistics show that one third of all gamers can be somewhat annoying. So next time you are gaming, look to your left and to the right, if those guys seem fine . . .

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yeah, Dannyalacatraz's "name tag" quip suggests to me the snobbery of folks who came along and started to dismiss what someone (Lew Pulsipher?) way back termed "vicarious participation" -- what seems to have been the primary mode of role-playing among the hobby's earliest pioneers.

It wasn't just a quip.

There are 2 guys in my current group who have been playing variations of the same 2 PCs for at least the past decade- one of whom has done so for 20 years. One guy plays Ranger types almost exclusively, one plays Wizards almost exclusively. (Its almost like we have Dave "El Ravager" Bozwell and a married version of Brian Van Hoose at the table.)

By that, I don't mean the exact same character sheet. What I mean is that, regardless of edition, regardless of RPG, they play essentially the same PC over and over again, right down to the spells and/or equipment. Its like something from the Eternal Champion cycle, or the Multiverse of some comic book company.

In many of the campaigns, the PCs in question aren't even referred to by a name written on the character sheet, but almost exclusively by the Player's name.

IOW, its less them playing an RPG so much as a detailed wargame, like Battletech (which, BTW, both play, and try to mimic as closely as possible the PCs they play in RPGs).

Another guy in the group plays...whatever. For him, participation in an RPG is like playing poker. He's there for the friendship, food & booze and storytelling (as in personal, not game, stories), not to take on the alter ego on the paper in front of him. He'd be just as happy with a pre-gen as doing the work himself. Sometimes, he barely learns the rules, so each combat requires we remind him of how to do things. And its the same regardless of what we're playing- D&D, M:tG, RIFTS, Texas Hold 'Em, Battletech... He's not there to game, he's there to hang.

And I wouldn't kick any of the 3 from the table because they're fun guys to game with. I couldn't give a tinker's...darn...whether they were roleplaying because it doesn't detract from my or anyone else's experience.

 

[Ariosto]

It wasn't just a quip.

So I see. It is in fact just that very same snobbery and dismissal resurrected for the 21st century.

In the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns, a lot of famous characters have names that are anagrams or other plays upon the players' names. Read the examples of play in the old books, and you won't find much (if any) Ren Faire dialogue; the emphasis is on "you are there", not on "some completely different person is there".

Not that there's anything wrong with the more theatrical approach, mind you. Putting it up on a pedestal, though, dismissing vicarious participation as "not role playing", is not only narrow minded but quite contrary to the ethos of the seminal role-players. Mr. Gygax, for all his acknowledgment of the "amateur thespian" angle as a worthy pursuit, had from what I gather very little tolerance for those who use "staying in character" as an excuse to play the game poorly.

Dragondex says: Dragon #74 (June 1983), page 38.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Statistics show that one third of all gamers can be somewhat annoying. So next time you are gaming, look to your left and to the right, if those guys seem fine . . .

I must spread some XP around before giving it to Mark again. Somebody hook him up!!

 

[Celtavian]

re

I doubt D&D would have ever gotten as big as it is if games like Everquest and World of Warcraft had been out when I was young. I'd love to be the kid that chose D&D instead of a fantasy MMORPG, but I don't know that I would have been that kid. It's real cool to see your fantasy character and an entire fantasy world brought to life.

We all used to do that in our heads. Game designers have given the kids now a visual world. It's attractive a majority of people.

MMORPGs are a huge reason pen and paper RPGs are a secondary option for entertainment for a smaller group of gamers. I wonder how many older RPGers might have opted for an MMORPG over a pen and paper RPG if they had had that option.

 

[Pour]

RPGs aren't popular because RPG companies are not utilizing all the available methods to market and endear themselves to other, more popular forms of entertainment. It's time to grow out of their publishing sector into other venues.

They need to follow the comic industry and work with what they do best, generating ideas, allowing those intellectual properties to take on new life as movies, cartoons, toys, apparel, video games, theme parks and the like. Then the publishing side will stabilize and in fact grow as more are exposed to D&D, investigate the original game, and then try third-party games.

I understand that takes money and relationships with other industries, but I think Hasbro certainly has the capability, and look at what Green Ronin has done in their partnership with Bioware.

 

[Guest 85555]

RPGs aren't popular because RPG companies are not utilizing all the available methods to market and endear themselves to other, more popular forms of entertainment. It's time to grow out of their publishing sector into other venues.

They need to follow the comic industry and work with what they do best, generating ideas, allowing those intellectual properties to take on new life as movies, cartoons, toys, apparel, video games, theme parks and the like. Then the publishing side will stabilize and in fact grow as more are exposed to D&D, investigate the original game, and then try third-party games.

I understand that takes money and relationships with other industries, but I think Hasbro certainly has the capability, and look at what Green Ronin has done in their partnership with Bioware.

I have often wondered about this; mostly because I have such strong memories of the early 80s D&D cartoon and D&D action figures (fortress of fangs was one of my favorite toys as a kid). I feel that somehow embedded the idea of gaming into my mind, so when I had a chance to play D&D it was an easy choice to make. Not sure though.

This does bring to mind the D&D movie that came out soon after 3E. Perhaps that was an attempt to do what you are saying.