Is the RPG Industry on Life Support? (Merged w/"Nothing Dies")

[JackGiantkiller]

Fact is, a lot of people I know use homebrew, and just mine published stuff for occasional crunch and bits of inspiration. if books stopped coming out for D&D, or even RPG's in general, we'd keep on playing just fine, for ever. We've got more than enough rules. We've got more than enough imagination. We've got the building blocks for making any new rules we decide we need. We've got plenty of fantasy literature out there to mine for the inspiration we currently glean from RPG products. Gaming won't die if the industry dies. It'll just get less expensive.

 

[ssampier]

could be temporary

I am still in the opinion that this problem is temporary. This d20 industry has matured. The customer has MANY more choices now than they had before and some choose to play with the books they already own. This temporary market decline will separate the wheat from the chaff. Unfortunately some true gems may go down as well.

I think this decline was inevitable but seemed to coincide with the release of D&D 3.5.

 

[Monte At Home]

I am curious which people your friend got his information from, and what data those people are using to base the conclusions you present.

Me too. There's a big difference between "the rpg industry is doing poorly" and "the rpg industry isn't doing as well as I wish it was" or "the rpg industry isn't doing as well as the card/board/computer game industry" or even "my little corner of the rpg industry is doing poorly."

WotC is so big compared to the other players in the rpg industry that unless the seminar was given by WotC suits, I question the premise. Basically, if WotC (D&D) is doing well, the rpg industry is doing well. If every other rpg company disappeared and WotC sales stayed the same as they are right now, the overall difference in the success of the rpg industry would be small (not insignificant, but small).

 

[Mark]

The D&D 30th Anniversary Gameday was huge around these parts and everything I read online from other parts of the USA was huge, good, or, at least, encouraging. I'm not sure who was in charge of that seminar on the State of the RPG Industry, or who was "speaking for the industry" as such, but the independant reports from that Gameday alone lead me to believe the opposite. I'd bolster that opinion with some personal anecdotes of success but unless they come from WotC, WW, or a handful of other top tier companies I do not believe that it has much of a lasting or siginificant effect on the actual health of the industry as a whole.

 

[arscott]

That's not a very refreshing though, monte.

 

[Sigurd]

RPGs & D&D have new reality to conquer

When I started D&D, I never saw the need for a 'basic set' I read and reread every book that came out (and there were few enough books you could do that). Computer games barely existed. Wizardry by Sirtech was amazing but couldn't compete with RPGs -- not with Runequest, Powers & Perils, Travellor, AD&D, Paladium, Call of Cthulu. Perhaps this is only my feeling but, game systems seemed to offer a complete system and then leave you to go from there -- all my adventures were mostly home brew.


Now each book is really expensive! Computer games seem to be setting the flavour and level of realism necessary for role playing games. I have players who want to make sure that all their characters get the same treatment they can expect in Neverwinter Nights. The rules are so complicated it seems you need a lawyer to balance them and making dungeons Wow what a hassle!

Everything is a character -- I refuse to calculate feats, prestige classes, & all the administrivia for every dimly observed figure in a storyline.

Characters are all treated soo much better than the common person of the world. I think player characters should be heroes but I think the current system is so rich as to deny an evolutionary link between the common person and the players. Conversely, you are into situation where the every figure in your world needs a computer program to fully generate quickly.

Adventures become so complicated to make that they are not as much fun to write from scratch. I think this is the source of RPG atrophy. If I buy a book or PDF it is an effort to learn it and DM it -- I am less likely to convince people to join my game if it represents work I have to do. If the game has fascinated me so much that I wrote the dungeon myself I am more eager to get players because I am showing off work I already have done and I 'love' my creation. I really like some of the writing for this game (especially Monte Cook's stuff btw) but internalizing it to share it with the players is far more work than it used to be.

As soon as I am buying all my adventures to serve to my players I don't see that I get enough out of it as the Dungeon Master. My creativity deserves an outlet too. If the game is too complicated to play well (without worrying about whining players) to hell with it. I figure the DM's Job is about twice as hard as all the difficulties of all the characters combined.


The other issue that faces all RPGs is that computer games and console games consume a whole lot of the available free time for prospective players. This is simply a new reality after the rise of AD&D in the first place. RPGs seemed like the only game in town when I started them and now players get frustrated with little things way too quickly or seek to make it more like Morrowind or Neverwinter Nights. I think its worse for RPG's since the online game allowed players to get together on the web without leaving their homes. This is certainly not a death blow but it is a competing activity for prospective players both older (with difficult schedules) and younger with twitchier thumbs. There will always be players who don't want to play computer games -- this is not a terminal condition (no pun intended) but I think it cuts of the air supply for paper RPG's to make the profits they might have in the past.


Thats my .02.

I think this is especially difficult, not withstanding that some of the material for all RPGs and the breadth of that material has never been better. I think WOTC was brilliant with their open source game license that has allowed brighter creativity to flourish in other publishing houses and dominated the RPG industry -- Chapters near me has no non D20 games. Some of the perceived stagnation may be the success of that license. I miss the variety of games from my youth. The success and dominance of WOTC has very much warped the RPG industry. (It is ironic that WOTC might be too big to survive on the success they have had).

I think that WOTC have to restructure the advanced rules and publish them with a computer program to help with world creation. Something better and cheaper than Etools.

I think the greatest hope for table top RPG's is coming from the various simplified approaches. There is a maturing process where players and DM's are willing to give up the bells and whistles for easier game play but I think that is happenning now.

I remember being in love with ICE's Rolemaster game structure but slowly giving it up because it was too much work -- slowly I think that will happen to D20 as soon as people tire of the great content to realize the game itself is not workable.

It seems entirely possible that there is a correction coming in the game industry that favours small publishers with lower costs, cottage industries and vanity publications. Table top games might not be a great place to make money -- this does not mean they will ever die however.

I hope other games are released Open Source with even less restrictive licenses. I would rather write adventures and give them away in an environment that encouraged - even inforced this - than watch my little creations get sucked up into an industry where everyone made money from my ideas but me.


Sigurd

 

[Toben the Many]

About attracting new blood:

I think it's a mistake to try to go after the younger 13 year olds or 11 year olds. The bulk of D&D's audiences are in their 20's or higher. That's where you should aim. I remember in the 90's, in the twilight of TSR's run, there was this mad craze to try to recruit younger audiences. There was the D&D basic board game. There was an interactive D&D game where you watched stuff on the VCR. There was a game where you listened to tracks on a CD.

All of these efforts were colossal miscalculations.

Why? Because trying to make it more "accessable" is tanatmount to "watering D&D down."

Don't water D&D down. It's complicated. Has been since 1st edition. (Remember those armor charts?)

By the way, I teach middle school, and every single year - I see people bringing in a D&D book to reading day. I find character sheets on the floor. The list goes on. So there's always new blood.

I don't think that video games take away from the RPG industry at all. In fact, most of the kids I see playing D&D are the very same kids who play video games all the time. A video game simply can't replace laughing and guffawing with your friends around the table. I think if most of you think back - you, too, were addicited to video games. Who here could navigate the dungeons in Bard's Tale without the light on? Or got to the bottom level of Wizardry?

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I think it's a mistake to try to go after the younger 13 year olds or 11 year olds. The bulk of D&D's audiences are in their 20's or higher. That's where you should aim.

I don't think that video games take away from the RPG industry at all. In fact, most of the kids I see playing D&D are the very same kids who play video games all the time.

Oh ho, I've got to take issue with these statements. It would be an absolute disaster to focus the game on people aged 20+. An absolute strategic disaster. The people who are 20+ are the people who started in their teens. Sure you could sustain it for a while, but your new player base would dwindle away and the game would be dead in a couple decades.

I agree that people who play video games are probably more attracted to D&D than those who don't. BUT, that's not the point. The point is that kids playing video games are not playing the D&D RPG. In effect, video games are replacing in-person D&D and, IMO, will continue to do so.

IMHO, tabletop D&D as we know it is dying. Well, maybe changing would be a better word. The day is not far off when people won't gather around a table; instead they'll gather around their PCs around the world and hook up on the net. The tech isn't at that point yet (in terms of mainstream ease of use), but it's coming. NWN and other "living" computer games are the future, for good or ill. Books, like it or not, are passe. The future is staring you in the face even as you read these words...

 

[JoeGKushner]

I think Robin Law hit it in his book about Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastery. Role playing is an interactive activity. Is it not a passive one like playing a video game, even an online one. It has too much competition and takes too long.

As far as being on life support... well, it's not really an industry in the true sense of the word anyway. Almost anythign else probably has a bigger scale of economy than RPGs. Heck, selling refurbished keyboards is probably bigger than the RPG industry.

 

[Psion]

I find it interesting that things cited above as being problems are things that are helping Wizards generate revenue from RPGs -- minatures, "complexity" (eg., more supplements) etc. Seems like the preach their destruction and mourn the state of the industry shows a bit of a cross purpose. Not that I like the new focus on miniatures myself, but I certainly am not in a position to project my dislike of them and paint it as something that is bad for the industry.

I will say this: whether you call it good or bad, the market is very crowded. That has the upside of providing a lot of choice, the downside of losing some good writers to poor payscales and good companies to hostile market conditions.

Books, like it or not, are passe. The future is staring you in the face even as you read these words...

Having seen some of the challenges facing the PDF market, I'd have to call that innacurate. People like books and will continue to use them for some time, until the reader technology improves significantly (among other hurdles.) (Remember what happened to notions of a "paperless office"?)