Tabletopocalypse Now - GMS' thoughts about the decline in the hobby

[Dannyalcatraz]

That's a bit incomplete considering he's the driving force behind Adamant Entertainment itself. A different scale to be sure, it is kind of like saying Chris Pramas's impact on RPGs goes no further than his own (substantial) authoring credits and excluding his founding Green Ronin and everything it published.

Sorry, but that doesn't change my answer: I've not read word one of their stuff, so have no reason to have heard of that peson.

Pramas, OTOH, I have heard of.

Mr. Skarka has been a somewhat notorious contributor at RPG.Net for years, mainly in the early 00s; I think he was banned for a year at some point, although why I don't know (reading through the comments of the linked blog you can see that his tone isn't always...friendly).

I don't spend any time at RPG.Net either, so again, no reason to have a clue as to who he is.

 

[Cergorach]

#1 Sales where 5000+ (including pdfs) a Lot more then the 3000 stated.
#2 Maybe Q3 2010 was a slow quarter for games besides D&D/Pathfinder/40kRPG/WFRPG.
#3 D&D was always number one by a long way, it wouldn't surprise me if Paizo and Fantasy Flight Games caught up (relatively speaking).

While the specific case might not have merit (imho) that doesn't mean the pnp RPG industry is a healthy place at the moment, especially the print part of the industry. I have 25m+ of shelf space dedicated to RPG/wargame related books and boxed sets (add 9m of board games, a few cubic meters of miniatures). My game room/office is getting full and the amount of shelf space is getting increasingly sparse. A lot of that shelf space will be dedicated to completing a couple of old collections (AD&D 2E, Shadowrun, Battletech, Earthdawn, L5R 1E, OWoD, etc)., the new stuff is going to be limited to 40kRPG (FFG is not releasing a lot of supplements for this), Warmachine/Hordes hardcovers, Warhammer 40k/Fantasy rulebooks, and possibly some hardcover rulebooks from things I really like. Everything else will be pdf and will go on my iPad.

I also think that computer games, specifically MMORPGs are getting a lot of the pnp gamers. I've seen in the past a lot of folks playing pnp games over irc, forums, Ventrillo, Skype, etc. And to be honest I find that a poor excuse for the social interaction the pnp RPG excels in, why would folks want to play a RPG that way when there are boat loads of far more immersive computer (MMO) games out there? This isn't 10-20 years ago when a lot of the computer games weren't exactly immersive (bad graphics), very little multiplayer/interaction. If I have the option of playing D&D over Skype with a bunch of folks I don't really know or play MMO X (WoW, LotrO, DDO, EQ2E, etc.) I think I'll go with an MMO.

For me pnp RPG games are about sitting around a table with real life people (preferably 'friends'). The world we now live in is generally not 9-5 oriented anymore, so syncing 5+ folks for a regular evening is getting more problematic then it was 10-20 years ago. Add to that that a lot of folks that were in the 'golden' age RPG now have full-time jobs and have families. RPG publishers don't have the same connection to young people as they had 20 years ago, so a lot of introduction is left to the old folks, who don't really have time anymore to introduce new folks to the game.

The Internet and cheap (color) printers are also a thorn in the eye of most publishers. Free games, Open Source games, creative GMs, etc. There are also very few publishers that produce products I would advise players to initially buy. If I where to run a RPG campaign (haven't done so in years) i certainly wouldn't require players to buy expensive books, I either provide an Open Source document (OGL) or a page that explains the rules in as few of my own words as possible. Some of the books I would prefer players not to own (to much background information for a campaign). Heck, a lot of the new systems are superior then their old ones, but far to often the setting has moved on or has changed in ways I do not want to explore (Shadowrun, Battletech, WoD, Exalted are excellent examples), so I am often forced to disconnect rules from setting anyway.

Then we have games such as Descent (FFG) that are more then HeroQuest (MB) and generally less then a traditional pnp RPG. It's easier to get into and is presented a lot more attractively. It's also a board game that makes it more acceptable to a lot of folks then a nerdy pnp RPG, making it more casual.

 

[Cergorach]

Mr. Skarka has been a somewhat notorious contributor at RPG.Net for years, mainly in the early 00s; I think he was banned for a year at some point, although why I don't know (reading through the comments of the linked blog you can see that his tone isn't always...friendly). Anyhow, he is probably known more in RPG.Net circles as a controversial figure than as a game designer; yet his "controversiality" is probably less for the content of his ideas and more for his interpersonal skills, or lack thereof.

I think notorious is the right word, he has also waved his stick on these forums and my experience with that has left me with the initial reaction of skepticism of everything he professes as the 'Truth(tm)'...

He sometimes makes a good point, but even a broken clock is right twice a day ;-)

 

[BryonD]

There are so many points to agree with and so many points to completely laugh at, that it is hard to know where to begin.

I think a major flaw in the whole conversation is equating "tabletop" and "the hobby".

To me, personally, that equivalence fits. But if either of my daughters are gamers 15 years from now, electronic tools will be a presumption that is given no more thought than dice are to people my age. And there may not be a dead tree to be seen anywhere.

It is easy for me to think of electronic RPGs and immediately think of things like WoW or Dragon Age. And while they both may be cool, neither of them meet my standard of being "the hobby". "The hobby" comes down to total freedom of creation amongst the imagination of the players. Maybe 25 years from now WOW3 technology will reach that, but I doubt it, and for purposes here I'm presuming it won't be there yet.

There will always be a demand for purely imagination based RPGs and so the hobby isn't going to die.

Tracking the sell of books to track the health of the hobby is like counting wisdom teeth to track the health of a person. Or, at this stage of technology, counting milk teeth may be a better comparison.

DDI isn't even the tip of the iceberg of change coming to the industry.

It is interesting to note that White Wolf is pretty much walking away from the industry. And on one hand, that seems pretty damning evidence. But, I don't think that follows the logic all the way through. Yes, online games can generate vastly more income than pen and paper games. So it makes total sense that successful games will move to that. But, the other side of the coin is that same online community makes it feasible for two guys in their basement to provide games to the entire world. And it makes it possible for the best options of hundreds of pairs to two guys to get their "word of message board" on their product out. White wolf moves on to make huge profits (or fail) for a company and two guys move on to make solid income (or fail) for two guys. And if those two guys move on to bigger things, there is more where that came from. And in either case, their sales won't be counted in dead trees.

It is true that a lot simple players don't have a sense of the nuts of bolts of the industry. And their comments should be taken with that in mind. But, the other side of the coin is that the current field of micro-publishers are blinded by their own day to day livelihood needs. Change is painful and it can be hard to realize the need. So while the gamers may not know how tall the stack is, they do know that some insiders are measuring it with last years ruler and that ruler is obsolete.

 

[MerricB]

It should be noted that White Wolf merged with CCP Games in 2006, and since then they've been moving towards computer games... and with Ryan Dancey now there and aggressively promoting his "computer games are the way to go" view, it's no surprise that they're not doing much for traditional RPGs.

Cheers!

 

[Lanefan]

p.s. As an almost 37-year old private high school teacher (thus very low salary and with a five-figure college debt) I am certainly not 10-20 years away from retiring! LOL.

Fair 'nuff, but you're also about 10 years younger than the wave I'm talking about. In 1980 you'd have been almost 7; I'm thinking of those who were 17 in 1980 who'll be empty-nester 57 in 2020 and retired 67 in 2030. There's yer next round of glory years right there...the early 2020s to the mid 2030s, led by the same wave of people who made the first glory years ('78-'85) what they were.

Lanefan

 

[TerraDave]

(Let's avoid the snarkiness that EN folks tend to associate with GMS, please.)

After reading that...lets call it a blog entry...I could see why people might be a little snarky.

 

[Stalker0]

To me, Tabletop gaming has one great strength and one great weakness:

Strength

A human dungeon master. Technology has come a very long way, but we aren't close to a real human thinking AI. Computer Games for all their great features (and they have a lot of them) cannot match the innovation and flexibility of a human mind.


Weakness

The player group. In order for a tabletop game to work, you need bodies to play. Just like you can't have AIs to DMs you can't have AIs to play either.

You will always have loss of bodies as time goes on due to death, disinterest, and time constraints as one gets older. In order to maintain the hobby, those bodies have to be replaced.



Now what I see with technology today is interesting. On the one hand, modern games have taken a big bite out of Tabletop's strength. Games are smarter, more interactive, and actually do offer some options for imagination and flexibility.

On the other hand, technology is knocking away at Tabletop's weakness. Social Networking, real time video conferencing and a host of other projects are making it easier and easier to connect with new people from all over the world and have common interactions that mimic real life ones.

I could easily see the day when a 5 tv screen setup would allow me full video conferencing with 5 of my friends, anywhere in the world, in high definition real time streaming, and cost as much as an entertainment setup does today.

Under that model, suddenly I can get about 90% of the gaming experience I get now with my friends but with massive lowering of barriers to entry.




In the long run, I don't think the spirit of tabletop games will die...but tabletop itself will be transformed and merged with video games as a whole. Systems will combine the visual appeal and quick rules resolution of video games with the interactive nature and imaginative flexibility of a person driven tabletop system.

In such an era, it won't be your daddy's dnd anymore...but it will still be dnd more or less.

 

[pawsplay]

Amazon.com, Lulu.com, and OBE's POD programs will keep RPGs available for the forseeable future. Meanwhile, places like ENWorld, RPGnet, PnP, and so on provide places for people to get info, get turned onto new products, and talk hobby. Paizo.com offers more functionality than a hundred cardboard cutout booths in terms of supporting existing customers. Sales may be low, but product line "subscriptions" would have been unheard of 15 years ago, so I think the base has in some ways become more stable.

GMS has been wrong before, and will be again, and I think a lot of it, when it comes down to it, is his biases. I am not speaking of him personally but only concerning comments he has made here and elsewhere. First, he believes the industry provides the support needed for the hobby. In his view, if RPGs go out of print, the hobby belly-ups. I respectful disagree. I can think of several RPGs that have been out of print for twenty years or more and are still played, weekend after weekend. Second, he believes RPG players are looking for creative input from publishers, as opposed to what I would call resources. I think the opposite is true; I suspect most gamers rely on less than 30 pages worth of campaign fluff, but buy sourcebooks left and right because they save on prep time. Third, he believes RPG products are consumed. I believe that, by and large, they are read. I think sales are semi-independent of enthusiasm for playing. People buy RPGs books because they are cool, and they play because they have a group. They don't buy books that suck, and they don't play if they don't have a group that suits their needs.

Case in point. GMS's Tome of Secrets, a player's supplement for Pathfinder. I think he underestimated the sophistication of his audience. After it came out and response was not too favorable, he came here asking, "What do you want?" The answer, essentially, was, "A better book." ToS has few concepts or ideas you couldn't come up with on your own, plus some mechanics easily converted from 3.5, already available. The classes in the book were readily identifiable by "early adopters" as failing to meet Pathfinder specs for best practices; they had the lingo, but the accent was all wrong.

I suspect a lot of the "shrinking" in the RPG industry is simply that people already own many books. They would like to buy more, but they are more discerning than in the early Golden Age of the mid 70s, the boom of the mid 80s, the wild days of the early 90s, or the Gold Rush of the d20 scene. People aren't looking to buy, just to buy.

It's like graphics cards. They need to be replaced from time to time, which is your base sales. Then you can get more sales when new games come out that require them; this is your "network externalities." If everyone plays WoW, sales for cards that run Wow well go up, and ones that don't, go down. Lastly, you can sell a graphics card to someone by making a graphics card that impresses them in some way. Maybe it can run monster graphics, or maybe it just has fan control, uses less energy, and benchmarks about 20% better -- either way, there is a price point at which it will sell.

Plus, the d20 boom has a lot of publishers in the mode of overproducing; too many books, with too much art, sold at too high a price.

When paper becomes obsolete, we can drag out GMS's theory again and poke it with a stick and see if it growls. Until then, we keep on rolling.

 

[Umbran]

First, he believes the industry provides the support needed for the hobby. In his view, if RPGs go out of print, the hobby belly-ups. I respectful disagree. I can think of several RPGs that have been out of print for twenty years or more and are still played, weekend after weekend.

I agree with most of what you say, but I think your logic here is flawed.

Yes, there are games out of print that are still played every weekend. But that's generally going to be play by people who came by the game while it was in print. And eventually, for one reason or another, each of those people will stop playing.

Then what?

If there's nobody with a vested interest in bringing new players in en masse, you'll be faced with an ever-shrinking pool of players, that eventually evaporates into nothing. It'd take a while, but it is fairly plausible.

Who has the real vested interest in reaching out and finding new people to play? People with an economic interest - those who are trying to sell games.