Interesting Post by Mearls on rpg.net

[Mark]

Greg Costikyan writes a rather good summary (per 1996) here: A Farewell to Hexes

Since then, hex & counter wargames have managed to stay alive, though no longer at the levels they once were. Incredibly, they have also managed to attract new blood. I'm a hex & counter wargamer, and I only started playing them in the last 2-3 years.

The last few years have been very good for introductory hex & counter wargames. GMT Games is the most influential publisher of wargames currently publishing, and their stand-out hit has been Combat Commander: Europe, which uses a deck of special cards to guide your actions: the cards have Fire, Move, Advance, Artillery and other actions on them, plus reactions as well. It's very approachable and a lot of fun. (Games take 90-120 minutes).

Even newer, and very well regarded, is Confict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear which is even better as an introductory hex & counter wargame.

Still being published is that massive game of Advanced Squad Leader (ASL). MMP (who have the rights to make it) have been struggling to keep the core sets in stock, so it's still selling pretty well and is still being played. It's been getting a lot of new players thanks to the line of Starter Kits. They're still more complicated than either of the previous games I've mentioned, but they've been helping new people (like me) enter the ASL fold.

If you follow the links, you'll find yourself on boardgamegeek.com; I have several session reports (with photos) there for each of the games mentioned if you'd like to see what they look like.

Cheers!

That's about the right of it. Except I would proffer that tabletop wargaming is less prevalent because there are now so many other types of tabletop games and also so many of each. As MerricB points out, there's still plenty of tabletop hex wargaming. If you are in the area (anyone), stop by Games Plus on the night of their four day (twice annual) auction when they have Historical Wargames (Friday) up for bid and also check out the vast array of wargames (hex included) that they have in store. The people who claim the hobby is dead simply aren't paying attention and don't know chit.

 

[delericho]

Here's something to consider when you look at WoW and RPGs.

Imagine it's 1979. You're a hex and counter wargamer. You buy every title SPI releases. You love them.

Now, keeping in mind how everything played out, let's imagine a bit of a twist in the eventual decay of the wargaming hobby.

There are these home computers, Apple ][s, IBMs, Tandy computers. As luck would have it, this new company called Snowdrift starts making computer versions of games that look a lot like SPI games. In a lot of ways, they're SPI titles taken almost hex for hex and put on a computer.

This is the point where the analogy breaks down. The key difference between wargames and RPGs is that wargames are, to a very large extent, entirely mechanical. As such, a 'pure' translation to the computer screen will replicate the play experience very well indeed.

RPGs, on the other hand, have a mechanical core, but around that have a strong shell of interactive storytelling and improvisational acting. They also traditionally have a much more unbounded set of options to them - in a war game each unit has a very limited range of things that it can do; in an RPG a character can at least attempt any action within the bounds of human (and sometimes non-human) capability. That cannot be readily translated to the computer screen. Playing WoW is a very different experience to playing a tabletop RPG in anything but a fairly constrained hack-and-slash manner.

It turns out that these games are HUGE hits. They make Snowdrift one of the biggest, most profitable entertainment companies in the world.

Knowing what you know about how the wargame hobby went, what would you want SPI to do in that situation?

Find the things that make their game different from the computer equivalent, and play up those elements of the game. Making the new edition of D&D play more like WoW is a losing strategy - you'd be playing against the strengths of the computer, in an area where they simply do better. You can't win that way.

(That said, there are things to learn from WoW and other games. I'm certainly not one to claim that anything WoW-like is bad. And neither am I necessarily claiming the D&D 4e is a WoW clone, since I don't have enough experience of either to make that comparison. But I will claim that going down that route would be a losing strategy.)

 

[Plane Sailing]

Here's a link to the thread in question.

Could someone explain how hex/counter wargaming went? Is it safe to assume that it faded because it couldn't attract more people?

From what I recall, a big reason that it faded was because SPI was killed off (by Gary Gygax/TSR, IIRC). SPI pretty much 'was' the hex wargaming market. Innovative, interesting, affordable and they kept on bringing new stuff out at a tremendous rate.

When SPI was killed, the hex/counter wargaming community lost its center. Other companies have continued, but I don't know whether we will see again the like of (glancing up at my shelves):

Freedom in the Galaxy
Outreach
Starsoldier
War in the Ice
Firefight
Invasion America
Sorcerer

(and there were so many that I wanted but was never able to get my hands on).

So sad.

Cheers

 

[Umbran]

Except that MMOs will NEVER be able to replicate human imagination because human imagination is limitless, whereas MMOs are, by definition, finite and programmed.

But it does not have to be able to replicate human imagination in order to dominate. Whether human imagination is limitless or not is not really relevant - the market for leisure dollars is finite. The fact that published adventures and campaign settings (and, in fact, one major dominant rules sysstem) exist makes it clear that people don't need "infinite" variety in order to play a game. They simply need enough variety to keep things entertaining.

 

[ggroy]

From what I recall, a big reason that it faded was because SPI was killed off (by Gary Gygax/TSR, IIRC). SPI pretty much 'was' the hex wargaming market. Innovative, interesting, affordable and they kept on bringing new stuff out at a tremendous rate.

When SPI was killed, the hex/counter wargaming community lost its center. Other companies have continued, but I don't know whether we will see again the like of (glancing up at my shelves):

Too bad SPI and Avalon Hill didn't merge at the time. SPI essentially signed a very one sided "deal with death" with TSR.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Too bad SPI and Avalon Hill didn't merge at the time. SPI essentially signed a very one sided "deal with death" with TSR.

True but SPI was in real trouble before the 'death deal'

 

[ExploderWizard]

Find the things that make their game different from the computer equivalent, and play up those elements of the game. Making the new edition of D&D play more like WoW is a losing strategy - you'd be playing against the strengths of the computer, in an area where they simply do better. You can't win that way.

Yes. The truth is that the very best tabletop RPG on the market will never come close to earning the type of money that a good MMO can. Tabletop RPG's are too much of a niche market to ever see that revenue.

This is why large publicly held companies and traditional RPG's are a poor mix. Shareholders want the company to squeeze as much $$ from thier IP as possible (which is quite normal). If the company believes the IP will produce more money with different products then the product changes.

With an MMO:
Players can play solo or in groups at any time. A computer handles the rules automatically.

You don't have to arrange to have a meeting space where everyone gathers. Log in from your cave and start playing.

There isn't much in the way of rules to memorize. Learn what your abilities do and just play.

Watch all the action happen right in front of you. No need for imagination or creativity.

With a tabletop RPG:
You need a group (at least 2) to play. One player has to be the referee.

You need space to play and a time that everyone can arrange to meet.

Game rules need to read and learned.

The action happens in the collective imaginations of the players. Creativity and actual thought are needed to make the experience worthwhile.

It is easy to see which is more convenient and likely to have a much larger player base. I enjoy both and get different things out of them. One is not going to be the other no matter how much it tries. If you want to compete with an MMO then make a BETTER MMO.

 

[pawsplay]

Yes. The truth is that the very best tabletop RPG on the market will never come close to earning the type of money that a good MMO can.

This might be literally true, in the sense of what is likely, but I distrust it as a logical necessity. In different times and places, what constitutes a luxury or entertainment can vary. You would think that MMOs, with their heavy demands, social demand to compete, ongoing subscriptions and upgrades, and so forth would be onerous to a lot of people, almost a second job. but people enjoy the activity, the fantasy. Even when it involves a lot of grind. There are some aspects to human psychology that make infrequent rewards particularly appealing.

People certainly could sink the same amount of time into gaming. Admittedly, you have the hassle of physical transportation to deal with. On the up side, actual face to face communication is itself rewarding.

There is nothing about the MMO itself that makes it destined to rule. In the USA, the MMO market pales in comparison to places like Korea. And David Hasselhoff, you know, is very big in Germany.

I think it's very possible that with a few million in blitz advertising, you could get D&D all over the place. But it may or may not be actually profitable. It's not enough that something be popular, it must also earn in the black. Currently, the demand for tabletop RPGs is low, paper costs and e-publishing tithes are high, and game designers are competing with the computer game industry, mainstream fiction, and baordgame and collectible games for freelance talent, raising development costs.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

But it does not have to be able to replicate human imagination in order to dominate. Whether human imagination is limitless or not is not really relevant - the market for leisure dollars is finite. The fact that published adventures and campaign settings (and, in fact, one major dominant rules sysstem) exist makes it clear that people don't need "infinite" variety in order to play a game. They simply need enough variety to keep things entertaining.

that was my thought too, but to expand on this:

I have been told there are new 'home made mods' for many games already (morrow wind comes to mind). Now I have been told that city of heroes is working on something like this. Now look at the idea of how game day is suppose to work tommoro, heck even look at the way the mods h1-e3 are set up. Think back to how the game table was suppose to work.


Now imagin that 10-15 years from now we have a 3d game table for 6e. It allows you to use a system like never winter nights, but you build a 3d world (or atleast part of it) You all log in from 6pm-11pm on every tuesday night. You rp through a (guild chat?) program, and the DM still places the monsters, still controls the NPCs, heck he still talk for them, However once intiative is rolled it goes to round by round (kinda like the final fantasy games) so it looks something like battle chess.

now that is 15 years from now (infact i think that could be doen by great and expensive things today, but it has to be offordable too), but imagin 15 years from that...We have no idea how huge a jump that will be.

 

[Andor]

This might be literally true, in the sense of what is likely, but I distrust it as a logical necessity. In different times and places, what constitutes a luxury or entertainment can vary. You would think that MMOs, with their heavy demands, social demand to compete, ongoing subscriptions and upgrades, and so forth would be onerous to a lot of people, almost a second job. but people enjoy the activity, the fantasy. Even when it involves a lot of grind. There are some aspects to human psychology that make infrequent rewards particularly appealing.

People certainly could sink the same amount of time into gaming. Admittedly, you have the hassle of physical transportation to deal with. On the up side, actual face to face communication is itself rewarding.

The profitability (And liability) of MMOs doesn't come from the time put into them, but from the need for a subscription model. The ongoing expense inherent in maintaining and staffing the servers mean that (Guild Wars aside) an MMO must have an ongoing income source. If you can get enough subcribers then all the extra subscribers become pure profit. This is why Blizzard has enough cash to buy Martha Stewart. If you don't get enough subscribers you have a very rapid death spiral. While MMOs can make far more money than any paper RPG they also represent a much bigger gamble on the part of the investors. Heck a small enough RPG company doesn't even need investors.