Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thornir Alekeg" data-source="post: 1892569" data-attributes="member: 15651">I suspect that the panel consisted of two Trolls and Chicken Little  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I have my doubts that things are as bad for the RPG industry as some would like to think.  As with many things, it is possible that RPGs are heading into a down-cycle, but it will likely come back at some point and the reason for it could be one of many things: better marketing, a new ruleset that captures more people's attention, a surge in the U.S. economy, Tom Hanks and Ron Howard do the next D&D movie, or the older RPGers spark a new baby boom and raise all their kids to play.My take on a few of the original points:Complexity: I wonder about the complexity issue as being a deterrent to new players.  As a long time player it is hard to judge whether or not the game is too hard to learn.  I do know that even back when I learned to play D&D, it was a lot better to learn from someone who already knew the game as opposed to just reading the books.Fragmentation:  While this may be bad for a particular publisher, I do not believe that it is bad for the industry.  Are the board game companies out there saying, "we need fewer games to boost interest.  There are just too many titles with different rules - people aren't willing to try them unless we have a few core rule sets."  As long as the particular fragments are supported, more choice will probably equal greater interest.Video Games: I will echo those who have said, "I did both as a kid and I still do both today".  I think it will be a very long time before video games can emulate the complexity of RPGs.  Yes, you can play Halo 2 and fire a rocket launcher and drive the Weasle and do all kinds of great things, but try and tell the computer that you want to try and grab a rope, hang from it with one hand, shoot the rocket launcher at the baddies with the other and use the recoil to swing you up to the next level.  I guarantee the computer will not let you...but your DM might.One thing I wonder is if some people directly link growth of the video game industry to RPGs, either thinking that a) growth of video games = shrinkage of RPS or b) the RPG industry is failing because it is not growing as fast as the video game industry.  Both of these suppositions would be a huge mistake.</blockquote>

Verification