d20 Hatred near you?

[johnsemlak]

Originally Posted by woodelf
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.

I did exactly that. I can name several others who did.

I can't say that I came back to D&D especially because D&D 3e was better, but it certainly is what helps me keep me playing at this point.

Of course, WotC has engaged in some smart marketing aimed to attract many gamers back to D&D. That may be part of the reason I did.

 

[woodelf]

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.

In this context, i'd say that only the converts from other systems who had previously avoided D&D are relevant [which, in yoru case, may be all ofthem--it's not entirely clear from the data you provided], because the others are just multi-system players trying a new system, which says nothing about D20 System, really. Those coming back may or may not be relevant, also: the guy who started the D&D3E game i played in for 2.5yrs was coming back to gaming after quite a few years off, but he'd decided that he wanted to start gaming again, and would be running a game, before the system was settled on, and when he didn't have any of the D&D3E books. The GM was ambivalent about system, but one of the players was a die-hard D&D player who wanted to try out this new D&D3E thing, so that became the game system. The GM would've come back to gaming with or without D&D3E. And, in his particular case, probably would've been a lot happier without--he found 3E way too much effort as a GM, so we switched systems. That said, i don't know these people you're talking about, so i accept that it was D&D3E that brought them back.

Which leaves the newbies. IME, game system has little-to-no effect on whether or not someone will try RPGs. It has scared them away after the 1st session, but it's genre, setting, style/mood, and maybe name recognition (for D&D or licensed properties) that has attracted newbies to give RPing a try. [Well, or friendship, but that clearly has nothing to do with the game played, so is a non-factor in this sort of comparison.] IOW, i suspect most of those newbies would've been just as eager (or reluctant, as the case may be) to play any flavor od D&D, and perhaps Star Wars, Star Trek, Wheel of Time, etc. The fact that it was D20 System is unlikely to make any difference to a newbie, because they don't know much or anything about RPG systems, them being newbies and all.

Now, i *did* bring up the whole "D20 System scares newbies away" thing, so let me clarify a bit. First of all, i shouldn't have brought it up--that'sa separate argument that, while relevant to the "why hate D20?" original question, just further derails the current conversation. Secondly, i think it's an assymetrical behavior: i don't think a system can bring newbies in, but i do think it can scare them away. Basically, i don't think a newbie knows enough about the mechanics for them to be appealing, but they could be frustrating or intimidating to someone who like the basic concept of RPGs. IME, complex systems have scared people away, while wishy-washy ones haven't. But it's possible that others could have the inverse experience. (I certainly know some experienced RPers who hate "rules-lite" systems, and it's not unreasonable to presume that this was always the case, and they would've been turned off to RPGs had their first exposure been, say, Everway.)

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.

And it may be partly just the gamers i know. One, frex, is about to wrap up a game, and wants to run Anything But D20 System for the next game, pretty much. And this isn't because he's only run/played D20 System for the last few years: he's had ongoing campaigns of Fading Suns [in fact, i think that's the one that's gonna end], M:tA, and others. But there has been a disproportionate amount of D20-ness. I think, for some (many?) of the gamers i know (i know this is true for me), playing *any* system for too long gets frustrating. I don't even want to run a game i developed as my only system for more than a year or two. Given that mentality, part of the desire to switch to a different game is precisely to switch to a different system. So the D20 System model is anathema--if when i switch from, say, D&D to Star Wars, the rules stay the same, that's a bad, not a good.

 

[woodelf]

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? )

A diverse market is less susceptible to bad things happening, a large market is neither more nor less. I misspoke--it's not the total size of the market that matters, it's the portion of it that one player could affect. When CCGs imploded [implosion: drastic reduction in size, often violent in nature], they took a lot of the market with them because they were such a huge %age of the market, specifically for a lot of retailers. Yes, this was partly because the retailers were unwise, and put so much of their money into CCGs. But it was also partly because the market was CCG-focused. WotC currently makes up something like 43% of the total RPG market, if Ken Hite's figures are reasonable. And D20 System stuff makes up perhaps 2/3rds of the market. What if WotC went belly-up, and took D&D with it? I fear that the other 25% of the market that's making D20 System stuff might very well go with it. Now, ignoring mechanism for the moment, what would happen if 2/5ths or 2/3rds of the market suddenly went away? It'd kill tons of retailers, and probably a couple of distributors, along with it. That's what i mean by implosion: a rapid drastic shrinking of the market. For whatever reason. And the more one player dominates the market, the easier it is for that to happen: in the current market, it only takes the public becoming disinterested in one system to eliminate on the order of half the market. Now, it is true that this isn't likely to happen--the very fact that D&D is so popular argues against it. Maybe. It's precisely that behavior (ultra-popular suddenly becoming unsellable) that occurred with CCGs. And it's the definitive behavior of a fad (which i don't *think* D&D is, but i have to be a little suspicious when a market with a relatively stable size (influx roughly matching departure) suddenly balloons hugely in a very short period of time--is it really growing the market, or is it just a fad-like behavior?).

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.

I'm sorry, but the semi-hard data i have, i'm not sure i'm supposed to share it, because it came from a membership organization. I'll re-iterate the summary: for a lot of producers (and i've heard SSS, among others, mention it), the shelflife of a product has gotten steadily, drastically, shorter in the last 4 years. And it's considerably shorter for D20 System products than others, even today: every D20 System producer i've heard from has said that, for most supplements (core gamebooks are different), typical product life is 90days--you see 90+% of sales within the first three months, heavily weighted towards the 1st month. GoO mentioned that their product life has "fallen" to less than a year (in a thread lamenting that the BESM Fantasy Bestiary was going to PDF not much more than a year after it was released).
Then there's the fact that WotC both saw much higher than expected initial sales of the D&D3E PH, and a quicker drop-off than expected (by about a third, apparently, since they released D&D3.5E after only about 2/3rds of the projected time). [This is according to members of the original D&D3E design team--Monte Cook, IIRC, and maybe others, but my Google-fu is weak, and i'm not finding the specific reference at the moment.]

You don't trust me? Fine, how about Ken Hite:

Through their palantirs of marketing, the Wizards of the Coast did decide to accelerate previous plans to revise Dungeons & Dragons; with commendable alacrity they released Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 just a few months after making the announcement, and the D20 3.5 System Reference Document concurrently. Not that D&D 3.0 wasn't in need of a revision, of course -- it's just that the timing managed to burst a number of other publishers' D20 plans asunder. (This didn't help the "front list" mentality that has broken the distribution system, either.) Now, nobody expects Wizards to make plans based on other publishers, but at one point in all this, the Wizards were blandly assuring us that the other publishers played a key role in supporting the system, and their contributions were important and expected to maintain the gaming network, and all that. So the blitzkrieg nature of the change caught a few people by surprise, and even those publishers who weren't surprised were still kind of screwed. Plans had to be changed, new products designed and old ones dumped off as fast as possible. More glut, more new product, less sales overall -- even for Wizards, apparently, or they wouldn't be pulling the White Wolf patented "reset, revise, resell" cord quite so hard. The D20 dirigible has lost more hydrogen as it noses into the Lakehurst field of economic reality.

True, he doesn't give precise numbers--but he's privy to a lot more actual numbers than i am, and *he* thinks that the market is accellerating, and in a way that is more bad than good.

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.

You're right. I shouldn't have said that. Just ignore that part. I wasn't trying to invalidate your data, i was trying to point out that the behavior of one small D20 publisher is probably not very indicative. Moreover, i really don't see how it "counters" the behavior of WotC as an indicator. And, while my Google-fu isn't currently locating the 1st-hand sources to prove that WotC accellerated the revision schedule, you'll note that Hite also cites it as fact.

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.

It may be a "standard" approach to sales, but it's an abominable one. It shows no respect for the consumer, or for your workers. You're trading on the consumer's good will by foisting off stuff on them that even you don't believe is quality, and you're wasting your workers' efforts on stuff that won't sell. Instead, you should be doing yoru very best to only put out the very best that you can. You don't just say "oh well, there'll be some bombs", you work to make sure there are no bombs. And don't tell me it's not possible: look at a company like Atlas that, as near as i can tell, has yet to release a poor product, and nonetheless maintains a reasonably-brisk release schedule. It is possible to do.

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.

[snip]
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.

You're absolutely right. That's exactly why i'll buy Atlas products sight-unseen on preorder, and why i won't buy a WotC product until i've read the whole thing cover-to-cover to make sure it's worth it (and i won't bother with the latter unless i hear good word-of-mouth or read a positive review). But, if what i hear from RPG producers is accurate, RPG sales differ from movies in one significant way: the shelf life and total sales are apparently not appreciably different for good and bad products. Think what movies would be like if a "good" movie lasted 4 weekends and a "bad" one lasted 3, and, moreover, opening weekend accounted for more than half of the good movie's sales, and opening weekend sales for good and bad movies were about the same. What would be the incentive to make good films, assuming it takes more effort and/or money to make a good film? Really, all you'd need to do is make the occasional good film, just enough so that people don't write off the studio entirely, and you're doing fine.

 

[Henry]

I am always looking for systems to use or steal from, and i too loved that ep of firefly, so... c'mon, which system do you use to get that scene right and ready out of the box?

Alternity. Unfortunately, it is no longer in print. However, it (with its Stun, Wounds, and Mortal health tracks) would have modelled Mal's "Stumbling around bleeding and half-dead" perfectly.

 

[woodelf]

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?"

Yep. Sorry--i did that a bit. I definitely tangented a bit. (And i *do* think you might prefer a different system, based on what you've said, but that *is* irrelevant to this discussion.)

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.

It's the "demonstrably" that i'm questioning. You claim that the reason system-specific statblocks have value, and thus the product has more value, is because of the effort to come up with those statblocks yourself. My counter to this is two-fold.

First, this is not inherently the case--it is only if you're using a complex system that statting up a character/object/whatever requires much effort. So D20 System, by being complex, actually makes the necessity of system compatibility greater, rather than supporting a necessity that was always there.

Second, we're still at a "your word vs. mine" point on the question of just how much effort is actually required. I still contend that my personal experience is that the amount of effort to use a monster from (1) the Monsternomicon, (2) S. Peterson's Guide to Creatures of the Dreamlands, and (3) Goblins (by Brian Froud), in my D&D3E game is essentially equal. In the first case i'll almost certainly have to adjust the stats some (probably on the fly, as i'm running the encounter), and maybe the description/background to make it fit my setting. In the 2nd and 3rd cases, i'll have to convert/invent the stats (probably on the fly, as i'm running the encounter), and maybe the description/background to make it fit my setting. And, IME, the actual effort in both cases will be about the same. The presence of stats, even for a system i'm using, often doesn't appreciably decrease the effort needed to fit it into the game i'm running. This, of course, may say more about our relative styles of running games than it does about anything else--i fully accept that this is not true for you. But that's not the same as accepting that it's not true for all gamers, or that it couldn't be made true.

Let my put forth one more tidbit that may alter things a bit, since there is no resolution, and likely no persuasion, when all we have is our respective personal experiences. I used to agree with you. There was a time when i was very concerned about "balanced" challenges, and statting up monsters ahead of time, and so on. At that point, i did see grabbing creatures from another game system as an obstacle. Then, at some point, i changed my mind. What changed was not my ability to translate, or my knowledge of other systems, just my belief on the matter. When i believed i had to convert monsters exactly, and have "fair" stats up front, and all that, itwas true. When i believed that i could just make a rough conversion and run with it and change things on the fly if necessary, it was true. Which gets back to the "myth" (or lack thereof) thing. More and more, i realized that i didn't use half the stats for a monster anyway (even when it was intended for the system i was running), so what did it matter if those stats were "compatible"?

"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.

I agree about the continuum idea. But, IMHO, system compatibility has a minimal impact on the usefulness. Moreover, while i'm sure there's a theoretical 100%-useful statblock, probably the best i've ever encountered is on the order of 67% (and that's for using a statblock in the intended system--say, an AD&D2 monster in an AD&D2 game). Likewise, i don't think i've ever seen an actual statblock that was less than, oh, say, 25% useful (i could extract rough figures but for not quite the "right" stats). Again, probably partly an issue of playstyle. I'm just not convinced it's an inherent, rather than learned, playstyle issue. Not only have i changed over the years, i've seen lots of other GMs change their playstyle radically.

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.

Fair enough. I see you as perfect evidence of it: you're even aware that you don't "need" compatible statblocks, and yet you prefer them. I think this is because you've been "trained" by complex balance-obssessed systems to think this way. You obviously don't--and who am i to tell you what you're thinking? If i can't persuade you, so be it.

 

[diaglo]

my hat for d02 no know limit

 

[Psion]

My take on this "stifling creativity" thing.

Many people who use that term who aren't d20 fans mean "stifling non d20 games."

There is one thing that will cause more people to play more d20 games and less non-d20 gaming products: high quality, useful d20 product.

That does not, however, necessarily stifle creativity. It's just competition. That can cause some small titles to not be able to compete. But at the same time, competition sometimes brings out the best in people and makes them want to put something out that will blow the socks of the competition.

Consider for a minute the sorts of non-d20 games that have been released since d20 has come out. A/State. Nobilis. AFMBE. Exalted. Orpheus.

I'm not exactly seeing a dearth of creativity there. Quite the contrary. I think this "stifling creativity" thing is a myth.

 

[lukelightning]

I was at a bar and met a gorgeous woman who turned out be a super model and she was going to give me her phone number but then she found out I played d20 so she say "see ya, loser, I only play GURPS."

 

[Arnwyn]

Well, we were talking about diversity in the market. I'm making a point about "need" vs. "want" because I think talking about "need" in reference to a luxury item ascribes a certain level of import that just isn't warranted. The RPG hobby doesn't "need'" anything because it's wholly unnecesary; it's just a fun thing we like to do.

A neither deep nor insightful comment - it's that robot thing again that another poster alluded to. Unless you just got clubbed in the head before making your post, I think you are quite aware of what was being talked about in the context of this discussion.

I know it's a D&D-related messageboard, but surely there is some level of pedantry that is considered just too much, hmmm?

 

[evildmguy]

Alternity. Unfortunately, it is no longer in print. However, it (with its Stun, Wounds, and Mortal health tracks) would have modelled Mal's "Stumbling around bleeding and half-dead" perfectly.

Thanks! That's what I think!

It is unfortunate it is OOP and won't be in print again.

I don't want to have this taken wrong but I would be fine with only Alternity as a game system. Sure, I would gladly run or play in other systems on occassion but I really like Alternity that much. As others say about d20, or the Storyteller system, or HERO, or whatever. Alternity is "that game" for me and I am glad I "found it" and my players agreed to play. I haven't found any genre that I think Alternity wouldn't be able to do and do well. The core rules of Alternity do tend to be more realistic than heroic but with very little "tweaking" even that can be changed. Again, this is all my opinion for my own games.

I have also managed to get some of the books for a good price on eBay or other places, although sometimes the bidding does get out of hand. *sigh* Ah, well.

Thanks again!

edg