Why RPGs are Failing

[doctorbadwolf]

I saw that, and stand by my statement.

ALso, I responded in teh same way to this sentiment (ableit not here) 12 years ago, and every time in between.

At no point have RPGs been failing. The business of selling them sometimes hits a rough patch, but using that to claim that RPGs are failing is like claiming that music is failing because record sales drop.

Or that books are failing because metrics that don't measure downloaded books, especially illegally downloaded books, show that people aren't reading, when really they just are buying books less.

A friend made a claim that TTRPGs are dying a few months ago, based on sales figures that have never again reached the highs of the 90's. I tried to point him to DriveThruRPG, the proliferation of KIckstarter games, and a fairly stable market with a crap ton of groups playing, and the health of gaming conventions, and he wouldn't listen, because sales of physical copies.

It's odd to me how eager some people are to declare things dead or dying.

 

[Celebrim]

Interesting thread in retrospective. Some of it is quite humorous. For example, rudeness aside, yes he probably should have quoted the whole article.

Paper RPGs have been failing for a very simple reason.

It's just too much work for the GM. Being a GM is a labor of love and always has been. I can remember when we were young putting in 1000 or more hours of prep work in a year and playing in games with that sort of labor. And that's not even counting play time, which even in the best of RPGs is occasionally laborious. More on that in a second.

Now days, it's not just a matter of who has the time for that, but the fact that there are now competitive products that deliver strongly on important aspects of the RPG experience without having to layout that sort of effort. These days, people can jump right into a multiplayer RPG if they want the social/tactical experience, or they can play a single player RPG if they want the huge immersive world and engaging narratives.

What the OP actually complains about is that many recent designs of RPGs don't feel like RPGs. The reason for the changes in how RPGs are written is largely driven by the need to remove as much of the effort from playing and running an RPG as possible. That's the reason for the increased codification. That's the reason for designs as extreme as something like Dungeon World. When people now talk about how they want 'rules lite' what they really mean is that they want effort lite. They want the same level of fun as they get from a cRPG for the same level of effort that they put into one. And to a large extent, that's a very reasonable and functional demand.

It's just one that is impossible to deliver on, because when you play a cRPG you are receiving 10's of thousands or even 100's of thousands of hours of someone's effort to deliver that experience.

That said, failing is a relative term. They'll probably never again take the world by storm in the way they did in the pre-personal computing era, but they'll I think remain a niche industry pretty much forever.

One thing that may change relative to the current industry is I think that we've reached the point we no longer need rules systems or rules industries. I think in the future we'll see more of the same shift we say in the cRPG industry where developers no longer bothered to build their own custom rules engine for each game, but instead licensed a world engine, tweaked it, and got down to the serious business of making content. Right now, the last thing that I think anyone really needs is a new set of rules. We are drowning in high quality rules systems suitable for virtually any genera or style of play.

 

[Emerikol]

One thing that may change relative to the current industry is I think that we've reached the point we no longer need rules systems or rules industries. I think in the future we'll see more of the same shift we say in the cRPG industry where developers no longer bothered to build their own custom rules engine for each game, but instead licensed a world engine, tweaked it, and got down to the serious business of making content. Right now, the last thing that I think anyone really needs is a new set of rules. We are drowning in high quality rules systems suitable for virtually any genera or style of play.

While I agree that what you desire is very much an outcome everyone should want, I don't think we are there yet. I think the industry still stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the major playstyle gaps. What we need is three or four sets of solid rules that address specifically the styles of play that exist. The industry currently is on a modernist kick but the reality is that the new approaches just satisfy a different set of gamers and are leaving behind others.

So I hope you are right in the long term. I don't see us being there yet.

 

[Puggins]

This post was written less than a year after the release of 3.5e.

Eberron came out the month this post was written.

World of Warcraft wasn't even in open Beta when this post was written.

I was still running through Lost Dungeons of Norrath (in Everquest), my one year old daughter sleeping on my shoulder, when this was written. My daughter is in 7th grade.

This is necromancy on an epic scale. From an internet perspective there is junk in Acererak's tomb that's newer than this thread.

 

[Jessica]

I think without a major change in RPGs do things, that they are going to get hurt badly in the future. Look at how we get people into RPGs in the first place as one example. People get into RPGs most of the time from someone else who is already into RPGs. It's like some kind of weird vampire-esque bloodline where I was turned into a mega-nerd by one of my friends when I was a teenager after being introduced to D&D and he was turned into a turbo-virgin by his father. It kinda has to be that way because I think RPG core products aren't designed for new people but are for people who already know most of the rules from prior editions/campaigns. I'm pretty sure if your average nerd who hadn't heard about D&D before read through the PHB, DMG, and MM they still probably wouldn't know WTF D&D even was or how to play it.

On top of that, look at the business model for selling RPGs. You either order them online from an internet retailer or you buy them from a game store where people actually play the game so people can get introduced there. However, more and more people are buying from internet retailers(how many people out there openly proclaimed the only reason they bought SCAG was because they could get it for like $20 from Amazon?) and I'm sure most of those game stores are relying on card games and miniatures to keep their doors open while a bunch of freeloading nerds come in to play a game of D&D once or twice a week in their store. People are so anti-splat that I imagine the profit the stores do make is just from selling the core rules and after people already own those(assuming they didn't get it from 4-chan or from Amazon) then what are they going to make profit on after that? How many of those shop keepers are only keeping D&D in their store because they have respect for it as either their own hobby or as an uber-nerd icon?

Which kinda brings me to the next point. How much longer is D&D going to be a major perma-virgin icon? Back in the 70s and 80s it was pretty much the most popular form of fantasy nerdery in existence. You get to the 90s and there is more mainstream competition in the form of video game RPGs(iirc I played Final Fantasy before I ever played D&D), but there are probably a ton of geeks whose preferred method of never seeing the sun is D&D. You get to the 00s and MMOs are taking over D&D's territory in a lot of ways. I know WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more people who play WoW then who actually play D&D. Almost every D&D player I know is involved in some sort of MMO, but the reverse definitely isn't true. How many more years is it until the preferred method of making sure your offspring never have offspring of their own is going on MMO dungeon runs together instead of sitting at a table pretending to be elves and dwarves and wizards and stuff?

Finally, is D&D helping itself by trying to stick as closely as possible to it's roots? The stuff all the elder geeks grew up on was all Grey Mouser this and Elric that and Conan the Barbarian and what not, but I'm 31 and I only have the vaguest idea of what those are outside of having seen the Ahnuld Conan movies. I'm pretty sure younger people won't even know that much about them. So many people still can't handle good aligned Drow, how the hell are they going to handle a generation of new players who might consider undead or orcs or robots or whatever to be just as valid protagonists as elves and gnomes and halflings? Even look at something simple like vampires. To all you old geeks, they were those 70s Hammer horror movies where Peter Cushing stabbed some pointy teethed chicks with gratuitous amounts of cleavage in the heart before getting in a one-on-one battle with Christopher Lee. To young people, they can easily be protagonists. That has been happening since like the mid-90s. Hell, I think one of my first characters in D&D ended up being an elf vampire of some kind.

 

[CapnZapp]

Each generation has its things.

I consider rpgs much like stamp collecting. Once huge, now extinct.

That specifically means both hobbies gave huge enjoyment to those involved. That they fade does in no way mean they're worth less.

And that "today's kids" ignore them, because they have their own thing.

 

[innerdude]

Interesting thread in retrospective. Some of it is quite humorous. For example, rudeness aside, yes he probably should have quoted the whole article.

Paper RPGs have been failing for a very simple reason.

It's just too much work for the GM. Being a GM is a labor of love and always has been. I can remember when we were young putting in 1000 or more hours of prep work in a year and playing in games with that sort of labor. And that's not even counting play time, which even in the best of RPGs is occasionally laborious. More on that in a second.

Now days, it's not just a matter of who has the time for that, but the fact that there are now competitive products that deliver strongly on important aspects of the RPG experience without having to layout that sort of effort. These days, people can jump right into a multiplayer RPG if they want the social/tactical experience, or they can play a single player RPG if they want the huge immersive world and engaging narratives.

What the OP actually complains about is that many recent designs of RPGs don't feel like RPGs. The reason for the changes in how RPGs are written is largely driven by the need to remove as much of the effort from playing and running an RPG as possible. That's the reason for the increased codification. That's the reason for designs as extreme as something like Dungeon World. When people now talk about how they want 'rules lite' what they really mean is that they want effort lite. They want the same level of fun as they get from a cRPG for the same level of effort that they put into one. And to a large extent, that's a very reasonable and functional demand.

It's just one that is impossible to deliver on, because when you play a cRPG you are receiving 10's of thousands or even 100's of thousands of hours of someone's effort to deliver that experience.

That said, failing is a relative term. They'll probably never again take the world by storm in the way they did in the pre-personal computing era, but they'll I think remain a niche industry pretty much forever.

One thing that may change relative to the current industry is I think that we've reached the point we no longer need rules systems or rules industries. I think in the future we'll see more of the same shift we say in the cRPG industry where developers no longer bothered to build their own custom rules engine for each game, but instead licensed a world engine, tweaked it, and got down to the serious business of making content. Right now, the last thing that I think anyone really needs is a new set of rules. We are drowning in high quality rules systems suitable for virtually any genera or style of play.

Deep down, I think all of us as active roleplayers want some kind of great "revival" of RPG play. We want our hobby to magically shine forth and go truly "mainstream," like fantasy football. Because it would infinitely expand our options for gaming. The whole reason we put up with as much crap at our game tables now, with bad GMs and odious players, is that it's so stinking hard to find a group to do it with at all.

One of the reasons I think I felt so strongly about the "Edition Wars" back in 2008 was I somehow had convinced myself that creating the "right" RPG would somehow make it easier to "progress the hobby forward."

Now, I've fully accepted the fact that pen-and-paper RPGs will never be "mainstream," for the simple reasons you state here. It takes A) a certain type of person, with B) certain types of interests, with C) the time and creative capacity to participate, along with D) a social circle willing to also participate.

That's a rare, rare thing. Combine that with the historical "nerd baggage" that goes with the hobby, it's a wonder we're in as good a shape as it is.

I've said it before elsewhere, but a single, mid-sized software company that I used to work for---one, just one, out of tens of thousands of like software companies---has more overall revenue potential RIGHT NOW than the entire RPG industry, everywhere, in the entire world.

And I completely agree with your assessment, @Celebrim, about rules systems. It's why I almost completely avoid (a competing web site that shall not be named), because half the conversations over there seem to revolve around "converting" people to some esoteric rules system that a grand total of 10 people have ever heard of or played. I don't need another set of rules, and I don't need to argue with anyone why their "ULTIMATE HOMEBREW!!!!!!" system is the greatest thing put to paper (or digital document file).

There are nigh-innumerable good entry points into our hobby now ---- D&D 5e, Pathfinder beginner box, the Savage Worlds "test drive," Fantasy AGE, GURPS Lite, Fate Core/Accelerated. I'm way, way more invested in getting new players into good groups with solid GMs so they'll stay in the hobby than I am in what they end up playing once they get there.

 

[darjr]

The revival is coming. Just keep chugging along. Its a slow burn but its growing. So many new people! And people are making money doing 'live' play on podcasts and YouTube and Twitch! I NEVER thought I'd see the day.

 

[Celebrim]

Deep down, I think all of us as active roleplayers want some kind of great "revival" of RPG play. We want our hobby to magically shine forth and go truly "mainstream," like fantasy football. Because it would infinitely expand our options for gaming. The whole reason we put up with as much crap at our game tables now, with bad GMs and odious players, is that it's so stinking hard to find a group to do it with at all.

Oh absolutely.

And I think on a smaller level its what keeps us old GMs going, even when going to a session feels more like going to work than going someplace to have fun. We are all hoping that our campaign will become something magical, and that the play will turn a corner, and the PC's will shine and have unforgettable moments of awesome, that the encounters will feel like something out good Summer Blockbuster, and the RP will be like something out of an Academy Award nominee.

But of course most days, neither we nor our players live up to our high ambitions and fantasies. Most days it feels like we make crap most of the time, even when the players are laughing and cutting up, and dice are clattering on the table fast and furious. We as GM live for those few moments of shining awesome, or in hope of them.

That's one of the reasons that I loved The Gamers 2, and think its by far the best movie ever made about RPing. Because as a GM, I could so feel for the poor put upon GM, what he was going through and what he saw in his head that no one else could see, but he just couldn't seem to share. And then at the end, when every gets to experience how beautiful the vision of it could be, and how much - despite themselves - the players contributed to that beauty.

That's like Heaven to me.

 

[aramis erak]

Each generation has its things.

I consider rpgs much like stamp collecting. Once huge, now extinct.

That specifically means both hobbies gave huge enjoyment to those involved. That they fade does in no way mean they're worth less.

And that "today's kids" ignore them, because they have their own thing.

Except that the kids these days are playing RPG's just as much, at least in the schools I've been able to gain "then and now" data on.

My alma mater had, in the 80's, 3 groups running at lunch. Has 4 as of last year. And the spin-off school, that took 1/3 of the student body away, has at least two groups (my daughter is in one of them).

I've worked at almost every high school, and in every one, in the same locations as in 1984-1987, there are still groups playing.

I've checked with some acquaintances teaching in other states; they, too, note that RPGs are alive and well in the student body...

Seattle and Portland, I've talked with a few folks who gamed in HS and then have been back on staff to their alma mater - they, too, can still find groups of RPGers.

The issue is that, outside of Organized Play, they usually don't come together with the adults.

Now, my OP D&DAL table - youngest is 18; oldest is 50-ish. At the site, oldest is pushing 70 and youngest is under 16. I've seen similar spreads in Anchorage AK and Corvallis OR.