Can we go back to smaller books?

[Raven Crowking]

It's like bemoaning the fact that McDonald's doesn't have Bananas Foster and Champagne on their menu.

McChampaigne. (Shudder)

 

[Umbran]

The old basic red box was a good simple introductory product. The expert blue box did not come along and tell you that everything in the red box could be tossed aside because you now had the "real" rules.

Yes, but I think things are a bit different now. The full system is a darned sight more elaborate than it was in the boxed-set days. It isn't so hard to cut it down into an introductory form, but when you then introduce the rest of the rules, the feeling that you'd been somehow cheated - that the character you've been playing for a little while now was behind the curve with all the new possibilities - is probably inevitable.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Yes, but I think things are a bit different now. The full system is a darned sight more elaborate than it was in the boxed-set days. It isn't so hard to cut it down into an introductory form, but when you then introduce the rest of the rules, the feeling that you'd been somehow cheated - that the character you've been playing for a little while now was behind the curve with all the new possibilities - is probably inevitable.

Precisely. You have correctly identified the problem.

 

[Hussar]

Actually, for a publicly traded company, constant profits are not good enough. They need ever increasing profits, increasing at ever increasing rates every quarter to keep the street happy. It's not rational, sustainable, or realistic, but that's what Wall Street demands.

Not seeing the hobby grow at the same rate as it did in the heyday of the '80s though, yeah. That ship's gone. It's possible it might someday happen again, but I can't conceive of the circumstances.

Not really. A constant return is pretty much the defining characteristic of most successful stocks. It's just not the ones you hear about on the news. Something that consistently returns a similar percentage is a fantastic option. Constantly rising ROI is unrealistic and certainly not expected by any serious investor.

So, no, if WOTC (if it were split out from Hasbro) returns 6% this year, it does not have to return 7% next year to be considered successful. So long as it returns about 6-10% every year, you've got pretty content investors.

But, that all being said, we have no real reason to think that WOTC is not profitable year on year. The size of the gamer market has grown year on year (ignoring the fad bubble) to the point where there are more gamers today than at almost any point in the past. Yet, we haven't had a "Basic" set in years.

Doesn't that mean that a "basic" set is not required to grow the market?

I've never understood the idea that D&D is the gateway game to RPG's. It's, IMO, not. That would be like saying Galactic Civilizations is the gateway game to video games. There are all sorts of ways to get into RPG's without stepping up to D&D. CCG's are a good start. DDM or some other minis game works well. Video games certainly give you the basics.

The idea that someone is going to come to an RPG with absolutely no knowledge of what an RPG is and how they work in a general way, in this day and age is not true. Back in 1982, sure, people could certianly come into D&D with zero knowledge of what a "character" was or what "to hit" means. But in 2010? Come on. Anyone with even a modicum of penetration into Gamerdom is going to have a pretty reasonable handle on the basics.

 

[BenBrown]

I've never understood the idea that D&D is the gateway game to RPG's. It's, IMO, not. That would be like saying Galactic Civilizations is the gateway game to video games. There are all sorts of ways to get into RPG's without stepping up to D&D. CCG's are a good start. DDM or some other minis game works well. Video games certainly give you the basics.

The gateway game to RPGs is whatever people you know are playing at the moment. That's D&D more often than not, but that doesn't mean D&D is any more a gateway game than anything else.

I'd wager that in 1980 more D&D boxed sets were bought as presents for kids than were bought by the gamers themselves. That's why that level of sales isn't coming back. One of the big appeals of the boxed set was that grandma could buy it for you.

These days, grandmothers aren't going to be buying D&D boxed sets for their grandchildren unless the grandmothers are themselves gamers (there are probably a reasonable number of gamer grandmas out there already, although the grandkids are not likely old enough for gaming).

 

[Hussar]

Fair enough. But, how many of those boxed sets bought by Grandma actually resulted in long term gamers? I know they sold gazillions of them, but, that's because it was a fad. Considering that once the bubble burst about 1983 or so, while you still had those boxed sets everywhere, sales dropped through the floor.

You just can't compare 1982 to 2010. Totally different worlds. 1982 had almost no competition for a young teen's attention. Console games were just starting out, but no internet, no computers to speak of, three channels on the TV. No product, no matter how wonderful, is going to replicate the situation surrounding the rise of D&D.

 

[BenBrown]

three channels on the TV.

Three? Luxury! We had two!

No product, no matter how wonderful, is going to replicate the situation surrounding the rise of D&D.

I'm actually arguing on your side here. I was attempting to give corroborative detail rather than contradiction.

 

[Ariosto]

Console games were just starting out

In 1982, second-generation console games -- those that had survived the crash of '77 -- saturated the market and were headed for the Great Video Game Crash of 1983. Once the bubble burst, sales went through the floor, leaving Atari with millions of unsold E.T. and Pac Man cartridges (plus many returns of those disappointing products).

"Console games" fell into such disrepute among North American retailers that Nintendo tried to avoid such associations when it introduced its Famicom as an "Entertainment System".

no computers to speak of

The Commodore PET had been out since 1977 (the VIC-20 since 1980); the Apple ][ had soon followed (and the II Plus in '79); the Tandy TRS-80 since 1977 (the Color Computer since 1980); the Atari 400 and 800 since 1979; the IBM PC since 1981.

Commodore Business Machines in 1982 unleashed the Commodore C= 64 (and Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in a movie giving CBM founder Jack Tramiel's philosophy of what is best in life.)

 

[ExploderWizard]

The Commodore PET had been out since 1977 (the VIC-20 since 1980); the Apple ][ had soon followed (and the II Plus in '79); the Tandy TRS-80 since 1977 (the Color Computer since 1980); the Atari 400 and 800 since 1979; the IBM PC since 1981.

Heh. I remember hanging out at a buddy's house playing frogger on his Atari 800.

...............and waiting 20 minutes for it to load from cassette. Good times

 

[delericho]

Not going to happen. What part of the word "fad" do you not understand...

Yeah, you're right. I was being stupid. I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking.