d20 Hatred near you?

[SSquirrel]

That's interesting. I left gaming because of the old highschool group of AD&D players had had enough, and as an unfortunate result spent the next 4-5 years in college languishing with out any sort of gaming habit.

Then 3E came out, the new PHB hit the stores. Myself and our entire gaming group coalesced over the remaining part of the year, each and everyone of us having gamed in the past at some point and most having dropped gaming right around the AD&D time frame. My current group still consists of 100% gamers that stopped gaming with AD&D and started when 3e came out. I don't think it's entirely proper allowing our personal experiences to alter a perceptions to the point of generalizations however.

I didn't quit playing games altogether, but in college I only played 2E a few times and instead branched into a bunch of other games. 2E had gotten boring and most of my friends agreed. Only thing we really played was a one shot of Dragon Mountain and some Dragonlance stuff. Tinker Gnomes and Kender heh. Maybe another 1 shot somewhere. We played tons of other stuff tho...WEG Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Toon, Call of Cthulhu (every Saturday afternoon), SLA Industries, RIFTS, a couple of homebrews and 18 jillion different varieties of White Wolf games. I think at one point when I was just living in town and not in school I was in 7-9 different games each week. Man I miss that.

Some of my current group tho hadn't played anything before D&D really or had maybe played a bit of Vampire (my wife had largely LARPed and that was it). One of our friends had only ever played Rolemaster and would actually not do as well in D&D b/c it was different dice for damage and rolling for everything else...Rolemaster is percentile for everything...plus the spell list confused her. her husband ahd tried teaching her 2E and she got too confused. 3E she managed an got better eventually, but she was actually the one example I've seen where 3E still wans't taht eas to learn.

this is quite the interesting topic. I completely agree that it is hard to tell. I have friends who run/play paladium games and have spent quite alot on all the books, I also have spent quite the sum in the past of WoD game books as well. With d20 books I tend to pick and choose among them since som nay hardbound books (at equally weighty prices) keep coming out. But then again with pre-orders and online discounts these can be had at quite cheap price as well due to their availability.

Its funny I've spent less money recently than I used to on gaming. granted I got married and then our work situation turned on us but still...in middle/high school and college I bought gaming stuff frequently. I have bought d20 product, but its been awhile since I've been able to buy much. 1st year of d20 was my prime spending area. Now I've only been abel to afford the books I REALLY want..like AU. Sold 2 2E PHBs and a 2E Legends and Lore for 25 (included shipping) and bought The Diamond Throne. taht was probably the last gaming book (besides Dragon/Dungeon magazines) I'd bought since getting AU in teh first place right after GenCon.

Hagen

 

[woodelf]

Sorting Ken Hite's info out from his report (link above by someone else) provides the following which would account for about 96% of the total...which allows for a total margin of erorr of about 5% which is fair. This also assumes that the 3 companies with 1+% each total to 4%.

WotC 43%
D&D 18%
Star Wars 10%-
d20 Modern 9%(?)
Other 6%

Actually, that's not quite what his numbers say:
He said WotC Has 43% of the total RPG market. He didn't specify what portion of that was D&D sales, but did say that Star Wars sales were "a little less than 10%" of D&D sales, and D20 Modern something less than that. So, if we assume that any sales of things like WoT D20 are lumped in with D&D , D&D sales would be ~84% of total WotC RPG sales (with 18% fewer units sold than in '02--but that tells us nothing about sales totals, either in relation to '02 D&D sales, '03 WotC sales, or '03 RPG sales), or 36% of the total market (with Star Wars D20 and D20 Modern each accounting for another 3.5%, roughly).

 

[woodelf]

Some of my current group tho hadn't played anything before D&D really or had maybe played a bit of Vampire (my wife had largely LARPed and that was it). One of our friends had only ever played Rolemaster and would actually not do as well in D&D b/c it was different dice for damage and rolling for everything else...Rolemaster is percentile for everything...plus the spell list confused her. her husband ahd tried teaching her 2E and she got too confused. 3E she managed an got better eventually, but she was actually the one example I've seen where 3E still wans't taht eas to learn.

Well, that's been my general experience--D&D3E is very complex, and pretty tricky to learn if you aren't already an experienced RPGer. And this comes from introducing a couple dozen people, at least, to RPGs over the last couple of years. Heck, it took me (with 20yrs of reading/playing/running RPGs, with a hundred or two systems under my belt, and a whole lot of game designing, too) longer to grok D&D3E than any other RPG i can recall, save Hero System, though that was due to the presentation/organization/unclarity of the PH rather than the system itself--as soon as i read the combat sections of the D20SRD, it was crystal-clear. Even then, it was 6mo+ of weekly gaming before i felt comfortable with the system, and after 2.5yrs of nearly-weekly D&D3E, i'm still not sure i've got it down cold.

 

[barsoomcore]

You just said it's a D20 System game and D20 System supplement--they're the same system; of course the game stats are mostly useful.

Uh, yeah, that was kinda my point. Or at least, that's what I meant my point to be -- when I buy d20 materials I know that the game stats will be useful to me verbatim.

Game stats will not only tell you that A is stronger than B, but that A is 60% stronger than B--easily and accurately translated into your game system of choice.

Well, your definition of "easy" is different than mine. Creating a stat block is a lot of work that I'd rather not have to do. Knowing that there's a 60% increase from A to B doesn't appreciably reduce that amount of work -- it just means that my finished product will more accurately mimic the source material -- which I usually don't care about anyway.

For gaming, you often need a fair bit of info that just doesn't show up in typical fiction

I don't. I need plot ideas, location ideas, monster ideas, trap ideas, world ideas, bad guy ideas -- I don't need precision unless I'm trying to use my campaign to mimic some existing setup. Which I'm not doing, so I don't much care.

OTOH, the Citybooks are hands-down the best game supplements I've ever purchased. But not BECAUSE they're generic. Because they contain very high value in what they do provide -- and because they hit a critical need for me as a DM where stat blocks aren't all that important. When my players are buying a sword, they don't need to know what the smith's Armor Class is -- but I get huge value out of knowing that he's protective of his wanna-be-adventurer daughter, in debt to loan sharks and has a talking bastard sword in the back room. One of the great things about the Citybooks is that the "game content" in it is limited to two lines per NPC. See my previous point about not wanting to spend money on useless game stats -- Citybook maximises value by minimizing game stats. The ultimate example of that, of course, is non-RPG material like novels and comic books.

My whole point is that there are *very* few RPGs out there that are "too different" from one another, and thus become of lesser value.

If I have to write a stat block, it's significantly different. There's a world of difference in terms of value to me between having to write up a stat block and not having to write up a stat block. Maybe that's not the case for you, in which case great for you. But I assure you it is the case for me.

And i agree with you that "incompatible" stats are worse than no stats. Which is precisely *why* i'd rather see a generic RPG supplement than a D20 System RPG supplement--the generic supplement is useful to the D20 System player and every other RPer out there. The D20 System supplement is most useful to the D20 System player.

Which I am. So there you go. I run four d20-based campaigns. When I look for where to spend my gaming dollar, the products that include stat blocks I can use as is in my game are providing significantly increased value -- products without that need to be seriously awesome in order to match that amount of value.

Some are -- like the Citybook products. This doesn't say that there is inherently more value (even to me) in d20 products. It's just that usable stat blocks represent a certain value that lack of stat blocks (or stat blocks I need to rewrite) does not.

And since i think it's partly a matter of self-fulfilling prophecy, i decry anything that propagates the myth [IMHO] that RPG systems are sufficiently divergent to hinder cross-compatibility.

It's nice that you think that. What I KNOW is the length of time it takes me to generate stat blocks. Products that reduce that time are providing value. Products that don't are at a disadvantage.

 

[woodelf]

My take on no one having new games in 2000. Like the big Hollywood blockbuster, no one wanted to go up against 3E. debut your game a month on either side and have people actually show interest in it and not get swallowed in the hysterical hype of GenCon and the actual appearance of a new version of D&D. Bet when 2E was released (maybe even 2.5) if they debuted at GenCon people avoided timing releases for the same period.

Actually, i think a bigger factor was that i think WWGS and the distributors killed the GenCon release. Used to be, seemed like everyone released their stuff at GenCon, bending production schedules by a couple months either way to do so. Then WWGS had two new games in a row released at GenCon that were popularly believed to have been rushed something fierce to get them out in time, and both of which had 2nd editions not much more than a year later--despite WWGS claiming they'd ironed out the basic system elements, and wouldn't be doing such fast turn-around times for new editions of their games (and that was in response to the complaints of only 2 years between W:tA 1 and W:tA 2). I noticed that the year of the 2nd putatively-rushed WoD core book release was pretty much the last year that any middling-to-big game company officially described a game as a GenCon release, for quite a few years. Ithink it's not just coincidence, but because this sorta poisoned the pot for GenCon releases, as consumers got wary of them, afraid that the splash of a GenCon release would persuade the company to skimp on editing, or whatever, to make the release. New games are still released at GenCon, but the companies don't seem to describe them that way any more--they're just "August releases", and GenCon may or may not be their first appearance. The distribution problem was that, for a while there, a game released at GenCon wouldn't show up in retailers 'til maybe 6-8 weeks after GenCon. Which sorta pissed off retailers. So now most companies release their game whenever it gets done, with GenCon being no more of a target date than any other. Lots of them release it a few weeks before GenCon, so they've got a "new" game for the con, but it's already in stores. The only ones who bother with GenCon releases, generally, seem to be the really-small companies, who need every boost they can get--and good sales at GenCon, plus word-of-mouth, can be that boost.

I know there's tons and tons of systems out there, but eventually you look at enough sytems and say "oh yeah that looks like so and so, cmon think up something NEW" which is a very odd thing. WHY did we think for so long that we need to havea new system all the time? Oh yeah, we'd get sued if we used anotehr company's system.

But it's not because we've thought of everything--it's because almost all RPGs are basically siblings, mechanically. To use a film analogy again, all RPGs are action movies. Of course, once you've seen enough action movies, they all start to seem derivative. But that's not an indictment of movies, or an argument for just sticking to John Woo movies, since the rest are all just imitators anyway. It's an argument for maybe trying a comedy, or a period drama, or a pretentious art film. In RPGs, you check out something that actually *is* different, like My Life with Master, or Everway, or Story Engine, or Psychosis.

The shakeout was bound to come eventually and it is happening as it SHOULD. It's been expected for awhile and game companies really have to make sure they are putting out quality products that are well balanced, good looking and interesting. The boring look of everything produced by Fantasy Flight is an instant "no thanks" to me. heck, Midnight looks quite nice artwise and such, but like I said the setting isn't me really.

If you're not giving the Horizon line from FFG a look, you're really missing out. Grimm and Virtual are genius, and i've heard good things about Redline--dunno about the latest sixguns-n-sorcery one. [btw, on Monte Cook and AU: it actually took a lot of persuading, in the form of his design diary and other people talking about it, to get me to check out Arcana Unearthed--and i'm glad i did, because i love it--because i'd been following his stuff since D&D3E and didn't care for any of it: a few good ideas, here and there, buried under a pile of not-interesting. IMHO, of course.]

Now personally I think that any game that needs an entirely new system just to make the 1 or 2 core ideas work has something wrong with it. yes I seriously doubt you would see things like Over the Edge d20, but cmon. Something like Palladium would be pretty easy to do but Simbieda is SO anti-d20 its not even funny.

That's exactly what i'm talking about it: games like OtE that are actually mechanically new. Games where the "1 or 2 core ideas" *are* a new system, or a significant chunk of one. The games that used to be whole new games, but didn't really need to be, were those where the new ideas *weren't* core elements, so the authors ended up just reinventing a lot of pretty basic mechanical elements, like how attributes and skills work, or whatever. And my point is i want to see more games like OtE and Hero Wars and Everway and Epiphany: games that *can't* be done as a D20 System game, or, ideally, a derivative of any existing RPG. I agree: i don't need "just another system"--i want RPGs that make me say "cool, i never thought of that", in both the setting and teh system.

I just wish that all the gaming stores in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids IA didn't close within a year of each other. Nearest game stores anymore are in Davenport, Des Moines and Ames. I think we'll see the transition of more of the market to the internet and pdfs specifically wwhich is also a good move. Allows for more profit and you can use some of that profit on advertising on gaming sites.

It's not that simple. How many people in Iowa City do you think are going to discover RPGs in the next few years? PDF/online sales aren't any good for growing the hobby, because they have no exposure--you only find them if you're looking for them, and you only go looking for them if you are already interested in them.

My group isn't a "it MUST be d20" kinda group either....we got burned out on 3E and went back to Rolemaster.

I find this comment interesting. There are only 3 game systems i recall ever hearing someone refer to being "burned out" on: D20 System, Storyteller, and AD&D. I'm not sure what that means. Maybe just that those are some of the very few systems that have significant numbers of one-system players. But maybe it's something about the systems? [and, maybe it's just something about the RPers i've known.]

 

[woodelf]

Does this include on the "new" young folk that have recently entered the gaming arena thanks to D&D3e and the numerous d20 products?

Yes, and no. I recognize that they're there, and i was certainly glossing over them. On the other hand, i've not seen any reliable evidence that kids (middle-school/high-school) are starting RPing at a greater or lesser rate than they have been for the last 20 yrs. So, until i see evidence to the contrary, i'll just treat that as an unquantifiable non-issue, and presume that the rate of influx of young kids to RPGs has remained a rough constant: there're roughly the same %age of kids who have the mentality to give RPGs a try as there always have been, and that's the dominant factor.

 

[woodelf]

Well, your definition of "easy" is different than mine. Creating a stat block is a lot of work that I'd rather not have to do. Knowing that there's a 60% increase from A to B doesn't appreciably reduce that amount of work -- it just means that my finished product will more accurately mimic the source material -- which I usually don't care about anyway.

I don't. I need plot ideas, location ideas, monster ideas, trap ideas, world ideas, bad guy ideas -- I don't need precision unless I'm trying to use my campaign to mimic some existing setup. Which I'm not doing, so I don't much care.

Then why do you want a statblock at all? For any system?

OTOH, the Citybooks are hands-down the best game supplements I've ever purchased. But not BECAUSE they're generic. Because they contain very high value in what they do provide -- and because they hit a critical need for me as a DM where stat blocks aren't all that important. When my players are buying a sword, they don't need to know what the smith's Armor Class is -- but I get huge value out of knowing that he's protective of his wanna-be-adventurer daughter, in debt to loan sharks and has a talking bastard sword in the back room. One of the great things about the Citybooks is that the "game content" in it is limited to two lines per NPC. See my previous point about not wanting to spend money on useless game stats -- Citybook maximises value by minimizing game stats. The ultimate example of that, of course, is non-RPG material like novels and comic books.

I'm confused. If you love the Citybooks for having minimal crunch and thus maximal useful value and consider non-RPG materials the "ultimate example" of useful stuff for RPGs, why would you prefer a product with statblocks?

If I have to write a stat block, it's significantly different. There's a world of difference in terms of value to me between having to write up a stat block and not having to write up a stat block. Maybe that's not the case for you, in which case great for you. But I assure you it is the case for me.

Which I am. So there you go. I run four d20-based campaigns. When I look for where to spend my gaming dollar, the products that include stat blocks I can use as is in my game are providing significantly increased value -- products without that need to be seriously awesome in order to match that amount of value.

Some are -- like the Citybook products. This doesn't say that there is inherently more value (even to me) in d20 products. It's just that usable stat blocks represent a certain value that lack of stat blocks (or stat blocks I need to rewrite) does not.

It's nice that you think that. What I KNOW is the length of time it takes me to generate stat blocks. Products that reduce that time are providing value. Products that don't are at a disadvantage.

I think we actually have very similar opinions on the matter, and just different solutions to it. I, too, don't want to take a lot of time doing up statblocks. And part of why i love the Citybooks (and at least the early Slayers' Guides), is, just as you say, that the crunch is such a miniscule portion of the content. My solution, however, isn't to look for game products with ready-to-go statblocks to save me time. My solution is to look for game systems where statblocks are less effort. Precisely the pain-in-the-ass nature of doing up stats for NPCs and monsters and magic items, and so on, is what has migrated me to mostly running games like Fudge and OtE and the like. Games where i can stat up any character or object almost as quickly as i can describe it: He's a Great swordsman with Fair social skills, Poor wealth, and a Terrible self esteem. There, i'm done, ready to play.

Oh, and i didn't mean to say that the Citybooks are good because of their generic nature, per se. Rather, i think they're good because they convey almost all the information in a mechanics-free way, which is merely a side-effect of being generic--the not-at-all-generic setting supplements for The Dying Earth RPG are the same way, simply due to the style of writing they want, and the nature of the Dying Earth mechanics. I also like the fact that they don't "waste" a lot of space on stats, but, again, a non-generic supplement could match that, especially if for a system that is less crunchy. Within the D20 System world, the best examples i can think of are the Slayers' Guides: Gnolls, frex, really only has 3pp out of 32 that wouldn't be useful if you used it with a completely different system.

So, if i read you rightly, the only significant point of disagreement we have is that i don't want much space devoted to crunch even if that crunch would be for my game system of choice. And, if you haven't already tried and rejected them, may a strongly suggest that it sounds like you'd be happier with a less-crunchy system than D20 System. There're RPGs out there that are no more crunchy than the Citybooks. That's the ultimate in providing value by reducing statblock-generation time: make the statblocks simpler.

 

[d4]

I have not, personally, met a single RPer who was "brought back" by D&D3E or D20 System. Every gamer that i personally know was going strong before D20 System. Every gamer i personally know who is playing D&D3E was playing AD&D2 right up until the release of 3E. I also don't know anybody who left gaming "because of " AD&D2--they all simply went to other RPGs. And of those i know who'd given up D&D during the AD&D2 era, i don't think any of them have come back to D&D during the D20 System era.

here's some more anecdotal evidence.

my first D&D 3e game (started a few months after the core books came out in 2000) had myself, a rabid GURPShead who hadn't touched anything D&D since 1985; two people who stopped playing AD&D and RPGs in general about 5 or 10 years earlier, one person migrating over from Palladium, one ex-White Wolfer who hadn't gamed in several years, and three people who had never played any RPGs before.

my second D&D 3e game had me, three people who converted to d20 from AD&D2e, and three people who had never played any RPGs before.

my third D&D 3e game had me, two people from the second game, two more people who converted over from AD&D2e, one former L5R d10 player, and two people who had never played any RPGs before.

between those three groups, we have:

* 3 people converting to d20 from other systems
* 3 people coming back to RPGs after years of not gaming
* 8 people who had never gamed before
* 5 people converting to d20 from AD&D2e

only 5 out of 19 people who came directly from one edition of D&D to the next. the rest of us are either converts from non-D&D, non-d20 systems; coming back to gaming; or brand-new players. i'd say that's a pretty good track record for d20, at least in my experience.

Moreover, i'm starting to see people burn out on D20 System.

i think it'd be fair to say that i'm starting to feel burned out on Dungeons & Dragons right now. not on d20 though. my favorite games right now, that i'm either currently playing in or dying to play are d20 Modern, Mutants & Masterminds, and Star Wars d20.

the only non-d20 game that i have a strong itch to play is Savage Worlds. i'm interested in taking a look at GURPS 4e, but i doubt i'll ever switch back to it.

 

[barsoomcore]

I think that now it's very unstable, and bigger--so if it implodes, it'll do so much more badlier(TM).

What makes you think that larger markets "implode" more drastically? I suggest the exact opposite is the case -- as the market expands it becomes less suceptible to vagaries that might cause "implosion" (not sure what this term means but since nobody seems to have any data who cares what our terminology is? )

I'm not talking about the market getting tougher. I'm talking about the accellerated cycle of the market.

You're describing a tougher, more competitive market. If the industry is trending towards an "opening weekend" mentality (and let's all keep in mind that nobody's produced a shred of data to suggest that it is), then that means that publishers will have to adapt their practices to manage that sort of market, is all.

And the fact that one small company, which is probably having trouble making ends meet, is behind on its production schedule isn't a data point at all.

Okay, this is just silliness now. When you have no data, you don't get to use your lack of data to invalidate other people's data. If you want to make speculations about a market without anything to back up your claims, then go ahead, but here's a fact: there exists a company that is not "ramping up production schedules" and is still in business, so clearly your assertion that "the only method anyone's come up with is to ramp up production schedules" requires actual supporting evidence if it's going to carry much weight.

Don't throw in "probably"s unless you have some information. You can say "probably having trouble making ends meet" till you're blue in the face, it doesn't make it so. If you have some reason to believe that's true then out with it. If not then stop trying to invalidate data that doesn't happen to fit the conclusion you want to generate.

Instead, look at the release schedules of somebody like Mongoose, which is doing reasonably well, and probably has the cash flow to print a product more or less as soon as its finished.

Pretty standard approach to sales -- put out a lot of product in the expectation that the hits will cover for the misses. There's nothing sinister or alarming about it.

The truth is that in an "opening weekend" type of market there's still consumer differentiation between good and bad -- it's just spread out over a series of releases rather than on a per release case. People go see Pixar films because they have built up an expectation of quality from Pixar. The next Pixar film is almost guaranteed to produce massive box-office returns, even if it sucks, simply because the audience expects quality from Pixar. But if the studio consistently puts out crap, the audience will start to decline.

Branding is difficult in films because people don't very often associate studios with any given quality of film. But take Ben Affleck -- after Gigli and Jersey Girl, it's unlikely that his presence is going to make any film into a hit anymore. He built up some consumer faith with a couple of good films but a couple of crappy ones have knocked it back down.

Same thing will happen in any market. If a publisher tries too often to foist substandard product on the market, they will see their credibility (and their sales) decline. If a publisher consistently puts out good quality, they will (all other things being equal) succeed more and more each release.

 

[barsoomcore]

Then why do you want a statblock at all? For any system?

Because it's valuable to me. You seem to be steering the conversation in the direction of "What game system is better (for barsoomcore)?" -- which is substantially different from "Is d20 having a negative impact on the gaming industry?"

Your assertion is that the d20 system is having a negative impact on the gaming industry by stifling creativity. As evidence, you suggested that the fact that people will buy a product with d20 stats over one without d20 stats supports a supposed myth that products must be system-compatible.

In counter to this evidence I suggested that a product with more compatible stats is demonstratably more valuable, so people might choose such a product without buying into any myth whatsoever.

I'm confused. If you love the Citybooks for having minimal crunch and thus maximal useful value and consider non-RPG materials the "ultimate example" of useful stuff for RPGs, why would you prefer a product with statblocks?

"The ultimate example" of maximising value by reducing space devoted to useless stat blocks, is what I meant. A product can maximize value through other tactics, of course -- like providing useFUL stat blocks. Sorry for the confusion.

Now granted that in fact stat blocks exist on a continuum of usefulness and probably none are at either 100% or 0%, but that just means that useful stat blocks provide value in proportion to how useful they are. The more a product consists of less-useful stat blocks, the less valuable the product is to me, all other things being equal.

My solution, however, isn't to look for game products with ready-to-go statblocks to save me time. My solution is to look for game systems where statblocks are less effort.

That's very interesting, but entirely beside the point. The question is -- is d20 in fact having a negative impact on the market by perpetuating a myth that systems can't be combined? I don't find any of the evidence you've presented to be very compelling.