Do we want one dominant game, and why?

[Thornir Alekeg]

But, also remember, that other than a very brief boom and bust, 0e and 1e didn't manage to keep the audience. How many people were turned off of gaming for precisely what you are talking about and how many kept playing despite it, not because of it and how many actually thought that "Mother May I" was a good design policy?

I don't know enough to agree or disagree with the conjecture that there was a brief boom and bust in the early days of D&D.

What I know is that we did fine with the system as it was, and didn't concern ourselves much with game design. In terms of "Mother May I," it worked for the most part. There were DMs who handled it horribly, but we just stopped playing in their games over the DMs who played with a fair and consistent hand. The bonus to the "Mother May I" sytem was there were a heck of a lot fewer rules-lawyering arguments.

 

[Ariosto]

Dausuul asked whether the "Big Boy, Little Friends" model is "enough to grow and sustain what has long been a desperately niche hobby?"

It has done so for decades, so the model is pretty well-tested. And, I think it is required going forward. Why? Because the resources of a Big Boy are required to help drive RPGs into the technological future.

Again, the question arises as to what is meant.

It seems to me that WotC-D&D has been around for less than two decades. Prior to that, WotC was a "little friend" and Palladium -- which offered a range of games, despite their sharing a "house system" of basic rules mechanisms -- was one of the bigger boys among publishers.

When TSR published D&D, it also published other RPGs (as well as wargames and family board games).

Just which has it been for decades: "desperately niche" or "growing"? I don't see desperation due as a consequence of decades of growth, but maybe I'm missing something.

What is this "technological future", Umbran, and just how is it dependent on there being "one dominant game"? Why do you consider it "required"?

As others have recently noted around here, D&D is not primarily in competition with other RPGs.

I think it is much more immediately in competition with other RPGs than it is with anything else, from the buyer's side of the market! Someone who is not interested in RPGs is no more likely to choose D&D than someone who is not interested in beer is to choose Budweiser.

Sea over the gunwales swamps all boats.

There's a synergy, a self-fulfilling prophecy of a sharply limited market. American comic books and video games, for instance, have (at least in some periods) become extremely dependent on the adolescent-boy market because that demographic tends to drive out others. Some others might bring boys along, but how do you get a chance to sell to them after getting labeled as "boy stuff"?

If "we" want just D&D, then that's what we'll get ... until we get tired of it. Eventually, Legend of Final Doom LXVI: Wolverine, Street Fighter flops, and the market contracts again.

Meanwhile, some other field is nascent enough to appeal to a wider market. It gets yet another chance to do something more like what (I get an impression that) comics and video games have done in Japan.

 

[Ariosto]

Bringing in new gamers is, in essence, marketing, and that costs money. Big money. And the small producers have problems just getting product out the door, much less setting up effective marketing campaigns.

Likewise, the "small" parties have problems just getting product out the door when the Institutional Revolution won't let them in the door in the first place.

I like the way things are better than the hypothetical Dominant One. I might like yet better the way things were in the 1970s-80s.

Maybe TSR's advertising in mass media had a big payoff for everyone, or maybe not. Is what WotC does today actually comparable?

How does this translate to "one dominant game" being desirable? Are the hobby and the industry better off for having the publisher of D&D publishing no other RPG? Are we better off for not having Dragon and Dungeon (and Space Gamer and Different Worlds and White Wolf and etc.) at the news stand, carrying ads for Chaosium and Hero, FGU and ICE? Are we better off for Avalon Hill (except as a Hasbro brand name, like Atari) and GDW and SPI simply not existing?

How many more must fold to make things as much better as "the technological future" is supposed to be?

As far as I can see, the primary route into RPGs is not through the producers of the material, but through other gamers. This is why we need the Big Boy.

That looks backwards to me. It also illustrates the trap of circular thinking. Homogenized pasteurized process cheese product with textured vegetable protein sure is great for attracting people who happen to want just that. If that's all you offer, then after a while your customers are likely to think it's pretty spiffy! After all, if they wanted something else (such as real cheese and steak) then they wouldn't be your customers ...

We get together, and play other games, even though we are also D&D players. When we go home, we introduce other people we know to these non-D&D games.

Thus, the little guys ride on the coattails of the Big Boy, and can get into the market *without* a marketing budget.

"Thus", eh?

This reminds me of a cartoon panel of a chalkboard-filling, scientific-looking equation with "(insert divine providence here)" along the way.

D&D was not a big thing when I got introduced to it by a player of the game. It was chiefly by that person-to-person means that interest in the game grew even more rapidly than TSR's ability to supply sets to meet the demand.

The big advertising budget was a product of the large number of sales generated prior to -- and thus without -- its assistance.

 

[Umbran]

I like the way things are better than the hypothetical Dominant One. I might like yet better the way things were in the 1970s-80s.

In the 1970s and 1980s there was one dominant game - D&D. The company may not have been as large yet, but the game was still the biggest RPG around, by a long shot.

How does this translate to "one dominant game" being desirable? Are the hobby and the industry better off for having the publisher of D&D publishing no other RPG?

As I understand the business end of things (and I admit my understanding is imperfect) the business is harmed by splitting your own customers between games - you lose economy of scale and payback on your efforts. If it hurts the business too much, we lose, too.

Are we better off for not having Dragon and Dungeon (and Space Gamer and Different Worlds and White Wolf and etc.) at the news stand, carrying ads for Chaosium and Hero, FGU and ICE?

I don't think the loss of the print magazines has anything at all to do with the Dominant Game, and has everything to do with how hard it is to get by in the print periodicals business.

Are we better off for Avalon Hill (except as a Hasbro brand name, like Atari) and GDW and SPI simply not existing?

Do you have a cogent argument that somehow they'd still be alive if D&D wasn't there, or did they just die as many small companies die, only to be replaced by other small companies? Avalon Hill, GDW, and SPI are gone, but we have Paizo, PEG, and their ilk instead.

This reminds me of a cartoon panel of a chalkboard-filling, scientific-looking equation with "(insert divine providence here)" along the way.

The original cartoon, I believe had, "...then a miracle occurs".

What, you want business to be sweet, simple, and easily written in a few paragraphs on a message board so it can be universally implemented with 100% success rate, or something?

The big advertising budget was a product of the large number of sales generated prior to -- and thus without -- its assistance.

Yes. But it is generally not possible to plan to follow another company's path precisely. If it could be done, every singer would be Madonna, all toys would be Cabbage Patch Kids. That was back in the 1970s. The world has changed, and you must do business here and now, not then and there.

 

[Ariosto]

I would love it if there were multiple RPGs actually competing as entry-level products to the industry. That would be fantastic. I mean, it's never actually been true in the entire history of the industry, but it would be fantastic.

So, D&D, Boot Hill, Gamma World, Top Secret, Star Frontiers, Gangbusters, Marvel Super Heroes and Conan; Tunnels & Trolls, The Fantasy Trip and DragonQuest; Starships & Spacemen, Traveller and Universe; RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Elf Quest, Hawkmoon, Ringworld, Stormbringer, and Super World; Villains & Vigilantes and Champions and Golden Heroes; Chill and Time Master ...

Those don't count?

The basic notion of "competing as entry-level products" may be a problem here. Not one of the above had a "Must Be Less Than This Tall to Ride" sign! All were meant to be useful to fairly imaginative, intelligent and literate game-players with no previous RPG experience.

The very first edition of D&D came out when there was no such experience to be had except among its play-testers! It was in itself the definition of "RPG", the phenomenon for reference to which the term was (in this hobby-game context) adopted.

Along with some others, not listed above, the original D&D set assumed basic acquaintance with the conventions of hobby games, which were at that time mainly wargames. Later editions, from Holmes through Moldvay and on to Mentzer, progressively reduced that reliance.

Each of the games in the long list above has served as someone's introduction to the hobby. Each has also been enjoyed by FRPers with much previous experience with other games. Indeed, it has in my experience been typical for a gamer to play and purchase several games.

It seemed rather less likely, in the 1980s, that one who started with a TSR game would venture beyond the TSR brand. If that has become, in the age of WotC publishing but a solitary game of FRP, a reluctance among those starting with D&D ever to try anything else, then I consider that not exactly a good thing!

 

[Diamond Cross]

No. I like different game systems myself. It can get confusing though.

I just wish there'd be more support in some of the older games I love.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

In the end, whether one dominant game is good for the industry and the hobby all depends upon what how that dominant company uses their position.

If they use it to stifle innovation and competition (perhaps by buying smaller games and then closeting them) then it is not a good thing. If somehow WotC had been able to pull the OGL and kill many of those other publishers unless they migrated to 4e, that would have been bad.

On the other hand, if having one big game provides cultural common ground, gives brand recognition the way D&D does, and inspires others to try and grab their slice of the market with their own original games, then it may be a godo thing and is not likely to hurt.

With the advent of the internet and wonderful places like EN World, there is a gathering place for gamers to exchange information and learn about new games. If it had not been for the dominant game of D&D moving to a third edition, EN World would probably never have come into existence.

 

[nedjer]

I think it's very common for experienced gamers to think that "rules light" is a good idea for an introductory RPG.

I also think it's very, very wrong.

It may be true for players who are being introduced to the game as part of an experienced group. But if you're talking about a game that's being sold to entirely new players, then the ideal quality for an introductory game is one which can always provide a solid answer to the question, "What am I supposed to be doing?" And it should be able to answer that question for both the GM and the player.

And for that to be true, you need lots of detailed crunch. New players want the rules to tell them a 20-foot jump is a DC 20 check.

Perhaps a game which helps set out the options for them, but a game that tells them the rules come first from day one? That's like vetoing roleplaying and open-ended play before it gets started. Wouldn't it just be easier to unpack Descent and a few expansion packs?

I'll 'enter into evidence' this Actual Play I was asked for recently, which is over at the purple place. Telling the kid playing what to do and moving rules to the foreground would have killed her (pretty outstancing) imaginitive input. It's to be followed up with a full 'adult' AP but this concerns a new player. HERE

 

[Ariosto]

double post

 

[Ariosto]

Yes. But it is generally not possible to plan to follow another company's path precisely. If it could be done, every singer would be Madonna, all toys would be Cabbage Patch Kids. That was back in the 1970s. The world has changed, and you must do business here and now, not then and there.

"You must do business in just the way that would have kept the D&D business from coming into existence in the first place" is how it looks.

If you're not part of the latest WotC-D&D's profits, you're part of the hobby's problem. Actually, you're part of the problem if you just spread things around too much. A rising tide is supposed to keep the one boat higher than the others, remember?

It's necessary for the "technological future", whatever that is!

It's just looking a bit screwy to me.

Do you have a cogent argument that somehow they'd still be alive if D&D wasn't there

No, I have a cogent observation that destruction of whatever non-D&D entity gets too big is necessary to keep D&D in place as the "one dominant game". If that fails, then you won't have "one dominant game".

I don't think the loss of the print magazines has anything at all to do with the Dominant Game, and has everything to do with how hard it is to get by in the print periodicals business.

I think the particular circumstance to which I actually referred has a lot to with "the Dominant Game". No matter which came first, dominating hen lays eggs from which more dominating chickens hatch.

Does Chaosium advertise in the new Dragon? I don't know, because I have no incentive to pay the fee to read the new Dragon.

"There is no Pravda in Izvestia, and no Izvestia in Pravda." It's not about "print". It's about how freedom of the press is for those who own one, and how nothing succeeds at shutting out the competition like success at shutting out the competition.

It's about how that's ALL that is! It is not success at serving the wider -- the competing community in any way.

So, yes, the triumph of the One True Way is grand so long as one happens to consider it the OTW.

Otherwise? Well, it's not exactly a self-evident historical imperative.

If it hurts the business too much, we lose, too.

If scarcity of (just for example) bat guano drives the price high enough, financial capital will tend to shift from less profitable enterprises. There may be limiting factors in the inconvenient fact that real material wealth -- such as living bats -- is not as instantly and arbitrarily malleable as entries in account books.

Demand for bat guano is, however, not infinite. Neither is it by bat guano alone that man lives. Put simply, the profit from selling bat guano is just a fraction of all possible profit.

What, after all, is the argument for the practice of making such different "editions" of D&D? The argument is that there is a finite market for D&D, and at some point an edition has sold all there is to sell at the desired profit margin. It is necessary to sell something else -- but that something else must be labeled "D&D".

Hey, WotC is in the business of making up curious game rules! If they decide to sell only in months beginning with J, M or N, then so be it.

The rules, rather obviously, do not apply to anyone else at all. In fact, nobody else is allowed to sell a D&D RPG at all.

What is it that WotC mostly sells as "D&D"? From what I have seen, that is mostly books. There are a lot of books that are not D&D. Then there are plastic figurines. The same Chinese companies that make them probably make many other items. Now we have the online subscription service. I'll bet some others of those turn a tidy profit.

Hasbro, of course, wants to make a lot of profit. WotC was publishing Diplomacy, last I looked -- a game that has changed very little in 50 years. I rather doubt that there's a super profit margin on it. More probably, a merely respectable margin is acceptable when that's all there is to get. Hasbro's infrastructure is better set up for making boardgames than for smuggling cocaine.

So, what happens if the D&D-edition cycle gets really and truly not profitable enough? Hasbro drops it.

I guess the company could just lock it in a vault, but an unused trademark lapses. More probably, I think, the choice would be to squeeze a last few drops from it in a sale.

It's all good for Hasbro! The company is not in the "role-playing game" business. Absolutely the only reason something is "not profitable enough" to a globe-spanning mega-corporation is because something else is more profitable.

So, apparently what's good for WotC -- which, I think, is not really "micro-managed" by Hasbro (to the extent that D&D may be but rarely a blip on the radar upstairs) -- is a group of people combining the qualities of (a) being ready for yet another round of Edition Churn (with Power Creep! and Dude, Where's My Canon?); and (b) being unwilling to buy anything else that Hasbro might offer, which could facilitate enlarging and overlapping market shares.

If that is to be the majority of role-play gamers, then I must say our demographic must indeed be limited! Most of the people with whom I actually play D&D would have to be excluded.