Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Olgar Shiverstone" data-source="post: 396020" data-attributes="member: 5868">I would argue that the market is already split -- into an incredibly small number of little pieces.  Look at all the RPG flavors/genres/variations out there.  Now, D&D is still the 800-lb gorilla, and a large majority of RPG players out there play multiple systems, so there is some overlap.  But is you are afraid of splitting your market, then you only gain market share in a niche market by taking share away from everyone else.  D&D gets larger, and other gaming systems wither and die.  I don't want to see that.  I'd argue that the downside of d20 is that it will fracture the D&D market.  d20 as a brand lacks an identity.  How is a new player going to get involved in d20, or figure out how to play the game if he/she picks up a d20 sourcebook off a shelf?  It's potentially more confusing than D&D.If we want D&D to stay strong (and I'm not arguing it's weak, layoffs at WOTC notwithstanding), and to continue to have access to quality products, it hs got to continue to sell.  I suspect it will be not more than a year or two before the propensed market is saturated with PHBs, and core D&D players start to drift back to other systems.  So how does D&D grow?  Increase market share, or increase market penetration.For those not familiar with those terms, imagine that there's this orc, and he's got this pie.  A bunch of adventurers break in, and they want pie too, so the orc has to share.  The orc only gets a piece of the pie.  Now, the orc wants a bigger piece than he's getting.  He can either fight the adventurers for it, or he can get a bigger pie!Translation: The orc is D&D; the pie is the propensed roleplaying market.  The adventurers are other RPG systems.  With a fixed share, there's only so much propensed market to go around -- but if you expand the market, increasing penetration, then the size of everyone's share increases.  It's a win-win situation.Which is a long way of saying that rather than be happy with our little niche, and afraid of products which might split it, we should encourage the products that make the niche bigger -- it the long run it's better for everyone.</blockquote>

Verification