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

[Erik Mona]

Paizo is having its best year ever.

I think part of the problem is that folks who view, say, D&D or Pathfinder or a licensed game as "too derivative" are looking for a kind of tabletop gaming industry playing field in which oddball ideas without much commercial interest in the first place perform as well as brands that have multiple decades of fan interest, or that are based on genres that are very popular.

I contend that that sort of atmosphere has _never_ existed in the marketplace. It's not that the sort of market folks like Malcolm and Gareth hope for has disappeared, it's that it never really existed the way they envision it in the first place.

--Erik

PS: That's not to say that there aren't some real threats to the industry, but there is still a ton of money to be made my people at all levels of the game industry.

You just have to make something that people actually want.

 

[nedjer]

You just have to make something that people actually want.

Like instead of deciding what you want and telling everyone else that's what they've got to like too?

Never catch on. To start with you'd be in danger of getting lots of new players and having too much money. Worse, ordinary non-gamer members of the public might start getting interested and enjoy themselves. Abandon this reckless plan before it gets out of hand

 

[Lanefan]

D&D comes from fantasy wargaming, which was influenced by the Braunstein type scenario, which came from historical wargaming. ....

Or, perhaps, existing principles of boardgame design were adapted to the idea of a wargame. One of these games is chaturanga, the ancestor of chess.

Thus, D&D and chess are ultimately descendents of the same type of game.

With the key differentiator being that in most wargames - including chess - a single player controls multiple units, forces, troops, pieces, or whatever; where in most RPGs a single player controls a very limited number of individual characters.

That's why Braunstein is such an important link; it's the game that took players from controlling multiple units to controlling a single character. (and at the same time to pretty much LARPing it; LARPs to a great extent also have Braunstein to thank for their existence)

Lan-"the chancellor"-efan

 

[carmachu]

The Designer Monologues » Blog Archive » Tabletopocalypse Now

Gareth raises some good points but despite the decline in sales, I feel that gaming as a hobby remains fairly strong.

Comments?

He also raises some invalid points. I have to agree with a friend- he uses a niche of a niche of a niche product (Dresden files product) to illustrate his point? Or as he said:

Pointing to the sales of the Dresden Files RPG as a landmark is disingenuous, in my opinion.

I'd be much more interested to see sales numbers on, say, DEATHWATCH. Something that isn't so much of a niche product by a no-name publisher.

 

[Hussar]

And, in the case of Gygaxian 1e, because we were to a large extent told to change it and make it our own by the author of the game. From that perspective, 1e D+D might be the least static game ever published.

Lanefan

This is very true and something to keep in mind in discussing whether D&D is a game or an IP. When the developers of the game (and this is not limited to 1e, it's appeared in EVERY edition of the game) straight up tell you to go forth and kitbash the game, isn't it pretty much guaranteed that the rules are going to roam far and wide?

This is one point where RPG's really do diverge from traditional games. Traditional games generally aren't built around the idea that every group of people playing them will be playing differently, although, to be fair, many games are. But, changing the rules isn't a base assumption of most game's rulesets.

It certainly is a base assumption in RPG's.

 

[prosfilaes]

He also raises some invalid points. I have to agree with a friend- he uses a niche of a niche of a niche product (Dresden files product) to illustrate his point? Or as he said:

It's the fifth best selling RPG right now, according to some figures. That's not niche of a niche.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

It's the fifth best selling RPG right now, according to some figures. That's not niche of a niche.

The answer to that really depends on the difference between 1 and 5, If 5 sells 3000 units and #1 sell 3100 units the no but if #1 sell 15000 units then yes. The problem is that outsiders like us have no real idea of what amount of product Paizo and WoTC are shifting in any timeframe.
Personally I suspect that it an order of magnitude over #3+ it may even be more but I have no real way of knowing.

 

[Mercurius]

Paizo is having its best year ever.

I think part of the problem is that folks who view, say, D&D or Pathfinder or a licensed game as "too derivative" are looking for a kind of tabletop gaming industry playing field in which oddball ideas without much commercial interest in the first place perform as well as brands that have multiple decades of fan interest, or that are based on genres that are very popular.

I contend that that sort of atmosphere has _never_ existed in the marketplace. It's not that the sort of market folks like Malcolm and Gareth hope for has disappeared, it's that it never really existed the way they envision it in the first place.

PS: That's not to say that there aren't some real threats to the industry, but there is still a ton of money to be made my people at all levels of the game industry.

You just have to make something that people actually want.

This is a good point. Over the last few decades hundreds of different RPGs have arisen, yet most gamers stick with D&D and a few other games; many of those that branch out and try something new end up coming back to D&D. There is only a relatively small segment of the gamer population that seems "mobile" in terms of its gaming choices. It also seems that a large percentage of indie and "oddball" games end up with very few players, no matter how critically received. They might be played by a small group of people for a short period of time, but those people tend to be fickle anyways and move onto the next new clever thing. A lot of the most cutting edge/avante garde games in terms of design end up being museum pieces in collections; sure, they're clever and well-designed, but why aren't people sticking with these games, and why do people always come back to (or stick with) D&D? Does anyone play Legends of Alyria or Sorcerer & Sword or Mechanical Dream behind their creators and a few friends?

This isn't to harp on such games, but to point out that for various reasons they just don't stick. Part of it is similar to the reason that very few independently produced records or books will end up gaining popularity; if you don't have a big record company or publisher distributing and advertising for you, it is hard to get the traction needed to make it big. But this is not the only or even main reason that Mechanical Dream is not a popular RPG; I would say that it has to do with particularity, specificity, and a kind of arcane quality that a lot of indie games have: They are created less for playability and game-table enjoyment and more as a kind of artistic rendering or snapshot of RPG potentiality. A game like Tribe 8, for instance, is very focused and flavorful thematically, but it has both limited appeal and scope, and potential for ongoing games.

I would say that one of the main reasons that D&D (and its largest child, Pathfinder) is so popular, year after year--aside from the big publishing house factor, which is significant--is that its play style, from OD&D to Essentials, is particularly conducive to a kind of ongoing, neverending, adventure game feel that you just don't get with many games. Whether we're talking about the sandbox or a tightly crafted epic campaign; there is a sense that the D&D Universe, in all its variations, from the published settings to the thousands of homebrews, is eternal, it exists and goes on. So even if your epic campaign ends with an apocalyptic bang, a new world can arise. To quote Merlin in Excalibur, "There are other worlds, this one is done with me."

There are other D&D worlds, countless of them, yet they are all part of one vast, populated, eternal mythos. Yet there is only one Mechanical Dream or Legends of Alyria, and it is self-contained, a creation of one or two minds; even though D&D was originally the creation of only a few, it has become the ongoing creation of millions. When you play a game like Mechanical Dream you are exploring a foreign land, a place you go to for a time but eventually come home. When you play D&D you are exploring your own world, your own land, and discovering new things about it. Exploring new regions, yes, but also exploring with fresh eyes, especially when you take into account that many of today's D&D players have played during different phases of their lives, from the "Golden Age" of childhood and middle school, to the "Silver Age" of high school, to the "Bronze Age" of college, to the Iron or Dark Age of early to mid-20s to the early 30s when many gamers leave aside such "childish things", to a potential revival and new Golden Age in one's mid-30s and on.

But I've rambled.

 

[Hussar]

Mercurius, this is something that certainly jives with my own experiences over the years. I've wandered away from D&D from time to time, but, I always seem to come back and I think you nailed it right on the head - D&D is one of the few games, IME, that is so conducive to long term play.

I find a lot of other games are loads of fun, for an handful of sessions. Maybe six months. But, then I find myself gazing longingly back at my D&D books and start banging away at yet another campaign idea because I know that it will come back around sooner rather than later.

 

[Chaos Disciple]

Not to downplay your comparison of D&D to chess, but D&D came from actual wargaming with actual units. There was simulation of historical scenarios, sometimes. Here's the source himself telling the story:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/294250-interview-david-wesely-inventor-rpgs.html

Great interveiw. My favorite parts are where he explains his drama with the publishing industry, and another, was when he talks about how he originated the uber-referee who gets to invent all the rules for the game, and change them whenever they want.