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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beginning of the End" data-source="post: 5640910" data-attributes="member: 55271">This level of paranoia is perhaps admirable if you're working for the CIA. If not, you're just ranting on a digital street corner with tinfoil on your head.Although, honestly, if you're working for the CIA you probably shouldn't be installing game software onto your work computers just as a sort of general rule. So either way you don't have anything remotely resembling a point.You expect the newbies to spend $100 on the rulebooks and then spend another $10 for a supplement containing pregen characters?That's a kooky strategy.You're right that it's not JUST about speed of play/simplicity to start. But those are major parts of a total picture which includes:- Mainstream awareness.- Making it as easy to start playing as any board or card game.- An open table as the default play mode (so that experienced players will casually invite new players to join their games)- A default adventure mode that's easy to create and robust in play- An affordable/accessible price pointEven if you take mainstream awareness off the table, there are actually very few games that have achieved this particular mix of factors. Even D&D no longer achieves it.Those are pretty much the exact opposite of "easy to play". The expected form of play requires significant prep and exactly the right number of people (no more, no less). In most of the significant ways, they're actually more difficult for people to start playing than traditional RPGs.RPGs used to be <a href="http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1223/roleplaying-games/opening-your-game-table" target="_blank">casual games</a> that you could also invest deeply in. But the industry has been moving steadily away from that... and the industry has been steadily shrinking. I don't think that's correlation. I think that's causation. And I think it's the same death cycle that killed the wargames industry.</blockquote>

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