Academic Plague in gaming

[king_ghidorah]

And yes, in the mid-late nineties, the existence of WoD game design theory (ie. story-based gaming) turned off thousands of players, who would have been into D&D if D&D had not been hijacked by those very same theories.

Hmm. Except that TSR began embracing story-based gaming with the Dragonlance modules. In 1984. Which predates VtM by 7 years. Plus modules like Ravenloft. The story-based gaming by TSR was clearly more closely-tied to cross-promotion with their book-publishing division. Bad marketing, not following WW. In fact, WW followed TSR's lead.

 

[Psion]

I left this thread and just read this:
GenCon SoCal Report on gaming which again suggests the RPG market is shrinking. It appears I stand corrected - there are fewer people getting into the RPG hobby these days. I hope the new basic game helps, but really, kids I know (I teach highschool) spend time on platform games above all else. Nothing written is going to compete with that.

You win this thread.

Really, if you are looking for scapegoats for what's "killing the hobby", that's just about all that need to be said, folks. Sure, there are reason kids the age that we were when we got into RPGs aren't getting into it now. The environment is different. And heck, you have to admit, that even the oldsters here probably spend a bit of time with computer games when they couldn't get the gang together.

I do think more could be done to bring younger folks in, but at the same time, when you are assigning blames to trends, it helps to identify other likely causes.

I really don't think there is an "academic scourge." I do think some titles -- including some very popular titles (like Lords of the Night: Liches) have this, um, opaqueness to them that make them hard to get into. But really, I don't think it's all that widespread. In fact, I think recent games (D&D included) have made efforts to clean up terminology and rely less on having lexical knowledge of the books.

 

[Faraer]

The industry is small, only TSR/WotC has ever had the resources to promote RPGs to non-RPGers, and the only way they know how to is to sell it as a souped-up boardgame to children. There's no doubt that the marketing strategy of 3E was to appeal foremost to existing and lapsed players, and sell them as much stuff as possible, rather than the general public. No wonder games published by people without the resources to promote them to their most fertile audience have been much less successful.

D&D and non-D&D games alike are guilty of insularity, and the very tribal notion of 'gamers' militates against the medium's expansion.

 

[3catcircus]

And also look at all the great books that have come out for it as well. d20 has shown us a lot of things. There are many creative people out there that can write a really good book and that writing game books is a little tougher then people thought. This is not a bad thing. It has really allowed new talent to come into the industry.

While some great books have come out - I wouldn't say it has been 95% great, 5% garbage - more like 50/50. As far as talent coming into the industry - for independents this is true. WOTC, on the other hand, seems to have managed to lose all of their talent and rely on freelancers. I'm not saying freelancers aren't good writers - it is just that they may have multiple commitments at the same time. You don't get the focused effort of a salaried employee, nor do you get the slavish devotion of someone creating or editing something as a labor of love rather than a way to pay the bills.

Does it matter how many companies have come and gone? Does it matter that some really bad products still rest on the store shelves?

Actually - it does. One measure of an industry is, obviously, performance. If the majority of companies fold after a few years, with unsold product mouldering in warehouses, it makes it that much tougher for others who want to get into the industry. Sure - this isn't medicine or lawyering, but if someone wanted to try and get into the game industry and make a living at it, based upon the current performance of the various game companies, they'd be crazy to try.

As for the similarity to past editions, well it still is D&D and many of the customers don't have D&D libraries that incvlude books from 20 years ago or even 10 years ago.

True, but those of us who *do* have 20 years' worth of books are *that* much more likely to *not* buy a product when we can convert what we already have. Especially when I see some of the products being offered that are of such poor quality that I think - "I could've done a way better job than that."

And as for the last question on which version is correct: Whatever version the DM wants to use.

True - but *as* a DM, I *still* have to spend the time comparing every version of them to determine which one I want to allow. A better example of this would be the example of the spell "Nybor's Stern Reproof," which appears no less than 3 times - first in Magic of Faerun, then in Unapproachable East, and finally, in Player's Guide to Faerun. I find it offensive that the text of this in Unapproachable East was nothing more than (paraphrasing) "Identical to what is in MoF, except for..." They were so lazy that they couldn't take the time to reprint the spell in full?!?!

This is the crux of the matter. I continually get the sense that WOTC doesn't give a damn about product quality. So long as people continue to buy their products, they'll have no reason to improve.

It isn't just in the creative end of the product, but in the editing and quality control.

My point is this - there have been cases of WOTC publishing stuff in 3.5 products that involved simply re-publishing - i.e. it didn't update a piece of crunch from 3.0 - yet they didn't bother to do the research of their own products to realize that what they were putting in a 3.5 product was a "Rev -" from the 3.0 book - not even the "Rev A" from a web enhancement or from an official errata.

There have been (as evidenced by several reviews posted on ENWorld) WOTC products where some of the information in stat blocks were off by +1 or -1. If it were a single entry, or if a stat block entry was way off (e.g. a skill should have been +5 and it was +15) then I would simply ignore it. But the fact that there were *so many* entries that were off by only +1 or -1 leads me to the only logical conclusion that whoever is responsible for creating stat blocks and whoever is responsible for checking stat blocks isn't doing their job. While this is a *minor* thing - it is an indicator of a company who doesn't care about their product quality. What next - a product where they forget a whole chapter?

 

[Crothian]

Actually - it does. One measure of an industry is, obviously, performance. If the majority of companies fold after a few years, with unsold product mouldering in warehouses, it makes it that much tougher for others who want to get into the industry.

But one cannot ignore that the standards for publishing were lowered with the SRD. People did not have to create their own system, they could use one in which a solid player base already exists.

True, but those of us who *do* have 20 years' worth of books are *that* much more likely to *not* buy a product when we can convert what we already have. Especially when I see some of the products being offered that are of such poor quality that I think - "I could've done a way better job than that."

There are more people who do not have those books then that do. Also, it is easier to recycle then create anew. I, too, have a ton of old D&D stuff and really have stopped buying Wizards products becasue they keep doing this. Also, ipeople thinking they can write better is what got us into the problem of so many publishers coming in and leaving fast. It obviously is not as easy as you would think.

 

[painandgreed]

While some great books have come out - I wouldn't say it has been 95% great, 5% garbage - more like 50/50.

The real trouble is that you'll never get everybody to agree on which group any particular book belongs in. Even for TSR/WotC products, I've heard the same reasons from different people used to explain why Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms was vastly superior to the other. For any game, comic, or movie out there, even if the majority thinks it sucks, there's going to be a group of people who think it's the best thing they've ever seen.

 

[Mark]

The real trouble is that you'll never get everybody to agree on which group any particular book belongs in. Even for TSR/WotC products, I've heard the same reasons from different people used to explain why Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms was vastly superior to the other. For any game, comic, or movie out there, even if the majority thinks it sucks, there's going to be a group of people who think it's the best thing they've ever seen.

Ladies and Gentlemen, MY BUSINESS PLAN!

 

[Nisarg]

2) Things that happen to moderately small games like Amber don't matter much. It may be its problem that it is a little bit too big . Very small games just disappear. Moderately sized games often find a new publisher who tries new concepts with them. Sometimes the concepts are fine, sometimes not. Part of the fans will always lament about the changes. I'm sorry for you if GoO does something to Amber that you don't like. At least, something happens to the game before it disappears completely .

While I'm sure all Amber players rejoice at the possibility of GoO issuing a new edition, while simultaneously praying that it will be good and not a travesty, there is really NO danger of Amber "disappearing completely". The Amber books have been in print since their first publication (that's 15 years or so, making it one of the longest running RPGs without an edition change to be continuously in print), and there are (as i mentioned) a good half-dozen conventions dedicated solely to the game.
Amber's fandom is tiny compared to D20 or the WW system, but its pretty huge and stable compared to most other game systems, in particular considering there hasn't been a new Amber RPG book in over 10 years.

Nisarg

 

[billd91]

I think it's attitudes like Nisarg's that are part of the problem behind the decline of the gaming industry. It's a tendency to factionalize over styles of gaming (or even product lines within a single company's output) that help fragment the market and keep gaming companies smaller and unable to weather downturns in the market, like the one caused by CCG popularity in the mid-90s. It may not be clear that CCGs caused a significant decline in the RPG industry, but it certainly did soak up a lot of consumption that might have otherwise been spent on RPGs. That kind of hit is hard for some companies to survive, especially when they already operate on a shoe-string and have to pay the printers.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

But one cannot ignore that the standards for publishing were lowered with the SRD. People did not have to create their own system, they could use one in which a solid player base already exists.



There are more people who do not have those books then that do. Also, it is easier to recycle then create anew. I, too, have a ton of old D&D stuff and really have stopped buying Wizards products becasue they keep doing this. Also, ipeople thinking they can write better is what got us into the problem of so many publishers coming in and leaving fast. It obviously is not as easy as you would think.

I am going to take the oddball stance that in the early days of D20 'lowering the standard' was good thing. I know that my nostalgia buttons were pushed when I started seeing things that were 28 pages long and without glossy covers - a lot of amateurs got into the industry while the bar was low, and many of them will remain - gaining the experience and skill to produce professional products. (The root of 'amateur' is 'amator' - lover, an amateur is a person who does what he does because he loves it. Not a bad thing.)

Yes there was a glut, and that resulted in the failure of a number of companies, much the same happened in the '80s. And both the boom and the bust will happen again.

Getting new, young players into the hobby is a key, and I do know a lot of young players who have gotten into RPGs as a result of D20. And in the '90s I knew a lot of not quite so young gamers who got into the hobby as a result of Vampire. And while some of each have fallen by the side of the road I can name better than 20 who have remained with the hobby from Vampire, and only time will tell how many D20 will keep. They may not play twice a week any more, or even weekly, but the dice do come out of their bags and hit the table. (And a few are taken out and sighed over by gamers who no longer have the time.)

So, rather than complain about it, do something about it. Find out if there are any places that would want a weekly game for students in a public forum. (I have run games at a youth enrichment program and at a youth detention center), heck I have run games at the mall. Check with the YMCA and the Boys & Girls Club and ask about volunteering if you have the time.

The Auld Grump - Academic Plague my Sweet Aunt Fanny...