Alzrius said:
This is completely fallacious. It assumes that the entire viable market has been reached, and that it will remain composed of an unchanging body of people who will never alter their views.
No, it assumes that the market will remain the same size--that people leave at roughly the same rate new ones are recruited. I don't know for certain that this is the case, but it certainly seems plausible from what i've heard. The opposite extreme: that no one ever stops playing (or buying) D&D, while new people start all the time, is equally implausible. Likely, it is somewhere in the middle, but as the market grows it is more and more likely to get near to the steady-state circumstance, as you run out of new people who would like to try the game. That is, i suspect the rate of attrition is roughly constant, as a %age of players, while i suspect the rate of new players starts out somewhat exponential, but approaches a linear limit.
You're saying that everyone who could/would play rules-heavy RPGs are already playing them, and that the only way to attract new people to RPGs is to try a radically different model to attract the non-players.
Yes. That's almost exactly what i'm saying. More specifically, i think that, within the targeted demographics (especially K-12 and college), D&D is approaching its saturation point. Most people in that age range know of D&D, and a fair number have a passing familiarity with it and have rejected it because of what it is, not because they don't know what it is. There are two avenues for a new player to join the D&D market: they can become exposed to it for the first time, or they can have negative preconceptions eliminated. Someone who is already familiar with D&D and dislikes it based on an accurate perception of it is never going to be part of the market. How many college students do you run across that don't know what D&D is? Even when i talk to random strangers of assorted demographics (i drive cab), most of them are either passingly familiar with D&D and know they aren't interested, or don't have an interest in the sort of game D&D is. Now, in both these cases, they will almost certainly never play D&D, or, if they do try it for some reason, they likely won't like it. So, yes, i think that D&D has successfully reached a very significant %age of its total current market. [I'm not counting those who aren't in the market yet but will be: i.e., those who are too young, because i don't see any reason to believe they'll grow the market at greater than replacement rate.] Not that absolutely every possible customer is already an actual customer, but that, say, 95%+ of them are, so that growth in that manner is significantly limited.
However, at least some of the non-market people dislike D&D for reasons that are not inherent to RPGs--they *might* be a candidate for a different RPG. And this is not hypothetical thinking, this is based on empirical evidence. I make it a habit to attempt to get everyone i can into RPGs, 'cause i think they're great. IME, most who haven't already tried RPGs are put off by anything as complex as D&D3E, but they're more than happy to give Everway or Four Colors al Fresco a try. And i frequently stumble on "non-RPers" who used to game and didn't enjoy it, but on further quizzing disliked elements that aren't inherent to RPGs. In fact, we've had people at GenCon who had tried several RPGs and rejected them in favor of other game styles (LARP, computer games, CCGs--depending), but who then fell in love with Dread. Similarly, my success ratios in introducing people to RPGs: D&D3E: 1/7; AD&D2: ~10/~30; BESM: 4/6; Storyteller: 2/4; Dread: ~15/~15; Four Colors al Fresco: ~3/~5; Everway: 1/1; OtE: 2/2; Ars Magica: 1/1; and with the exception of the AD&D2 players, the games were all specifically chosen to match the subject's interests ["success" is defined as those who hadn't previously played RPGs, whether 'cause they were ignorant of them or had specifically concluded they wouldn't like them, played a game with us, and decided they liked them enough to do it again; some of the numbers are quite low because i find it hard to find those who've *never* RPed, so most of the groups have a fair number of experienced RPers, even if they haven't played that particular game; most of these are with the same group, so the element of GM/group style has been eliminated as a variable]. My general experience is that, since the most-popular RPGs are fairly rulesy, most who aren't avid RPers associate RPGs with complexity, thus it becomes a self-selecting group: when beginning, complexity is seen as a quality of RPGs, so those who like it give them a try, those who don't, don't.
Or, to put it more succinctly, i've frequently heard "they're too complex" as a reason someone isn't interested in RPGs, or gave them a try and didn't enjoy it; i've never heard "they're too simple" as an explanation. Thus, i conclude that there is a potential market for simpler RPGs, but not for more-complex ones.
That's about as far from the reality of it as you can get.
So you regularly run into people who would find D&D3E an enjoyable activity, but aren't already playing it? Over the age of 18? Then why aren't they playing? And you can't say "because they don't have enough time", because large time requirements is precisely one of the problems of D&D3E (and shared by most RPGs currently on the market), not inherent to RPGs in general, that i'm talking about.
