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<blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5250896" data-attributes="member: 80487">Dausuul asked whether the &quot;Big Boy, Little Friends&quot; model is &quot;enough to grow and sustain what has long been a desperately niche hobby?&quot;Again, the question arises as to what is meant.It seems to me that WotC-D&amp;D has been around for less than two decades. Prior to that, WotC was a &quot;little friend&quot; and Palladium -- which offered a range of games, despite their sharing a &quot;house system&quot; of basic rules mechanisms -- was one of the bigger boys among publishers.When TSR published D&amp;D, it also published other RPGs (as well as wargames and family board games).Just which has it been for decades: &quot;desperately niche&quot; or &quot;growing&quot;? I don't see desperation due as a consequence of decades of growth, but maybe I'm missing something.What is this &quot;technological future&quot;, Umbran, and just how is it dependent on there being &quot;one dominant game&quot;? Why do you consider it &quot;required&quot;?&nbsp;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&amp;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 &quot;boy stuff&quot;?If &quot;we&quot; want just D&amp;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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ariosto, post: 5250896, member: 80487"] Dausuul asked whether the "Big Boy, Little Friends" model is "enough to grow and sustain what has long been a desperately niche hobby?" 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 [I]one of[/I] 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"? 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, [i]Legend of Final Doom LXVI: Wolverine, Street Fighter[/i] 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. [/QUOTE]

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