barsoomcore said:
Which means what for the FLGS? Can they still get the books they need at prices they can afford if they have to go straight to the publishers? Is the industry moving towards 100% online sales?
I think one thing that will happen will be that we'll drop the
L from the phrase FLGS. The days of a small hobby shop are over. Just like bookstores have to get bigger to compete with Amazon, so do hobby shops. I used to go to a place called Bridgetown Hobbies, but they didn't reliably have the product I wanted. So I've started going to a place called Rainy Day Games, because they have many more RPG products.
I think both stores and production companies are going to have to learn to distinguish between quality and crap. The OGL has flooded the market with poor quality games as every grown man in his mother's basement publishes his homegrown campaign. There are also plenty of good games, but you have to look, and when you can find a publisher that's reliable, you stick with them. Back when I played Fantasy d20, I bought nearly everything Monte Cook put out, because I loved his books. Now that I'm a HEROphile, I try to buy everything they put out. Because I know that Steve Long and his Round Table have reasonably exacting standards. They make mistakes in layout and art selection, but they support their product.
Steve Long posts in the HERO Forums almost every
hour. He answers any rules question almost immediately after you post it. This is the man who built the most recent edition, and he's available free of charge to the public. I bet that company loyalty will play a larger role than ever in the future of gaming. Wired Magazine recently showed a study that the idea of brand loyalty is almost nonexistent in today's world. But I think in RPGs, with the high investment cost, it'll still be there.
I also think the rise of the internet has led to a slowing of RPGs. I'm not talking about Amazon and all that, I'm talking about the fans.
There was a time when we bought every product we saw because each module was our lone source of new material. Now, for any system, you can just hit up geocities.com/FANBOY and pull down his own campaign, many of which are quite good. HERO's got loads of fan support, and it's a small company/game. The d20 system has enough free prestige classes, spells and campaigns that there's no longer a need to buy anything.
And I think HERO's cutting down a bit for the same reason they always do - HERO is a rare game that is almost unique (to my knowledge) in that it needs no supplementary books. The entire rules are contained in the main book, and all the supplementary books do is offer ideas. You need to by extra books for D&D (Psionics, Epic Level, etc.), GURPS (Magic, Cybernetics, Vehicles), any many other systems. HERO as a company has always suffered because the entirety of the game is contained within one book, and any other purchase is extra. However, the business crew over at DoJ games, such as Darren Watts and Steve Long, have shown remarkable temarity and I have high hopes they'll weather the storm.
