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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 3698788" data-attributes="member: 15538">The future of TRPGs:1. Kill the story.Stories are the realm of books and movies. In a game, stories are told after the fact. In an RPG, the purpose is to GAME the setting, not to tell stories in it. Things like plot, theme, and character development can be used as analogies, but really RPGs are about setting, events, experience, and decision making. RPGs are not "storytelling games."2. Bring on the game.No one complains about a game of chess "killing the story." An hour long fight against monsters is exactly the point of many RPG sessions. The central issue is to make it a fun game, not a boring one. Talking is fun, and so exploring and creating an imagined environment, but roleplaying is about experience and decision-making. True "storytelling games" are just play-by-post affairs. An hour long fight is not a half-assed recreation of a MMORPG battle, it's something quite different. Options are more numerous, reactions less predictable, tactics less reliable. 3. Play a role.People play RPGs to play a role, period. Whether they identify with a character or simply empathize with one, that is why they play. Indeed, in my view, even the GM plays a character; the GM's personality and beliefs shape the reality of the world, such that is has a morality, a mood, a consistency of nature, a personality. 4. Creative endeavors.RyanD's chart is flawed in one important way. It shows sales. People continue to play games for years and years and years, often out of proportion to the number of rulebooks owned. His chart doesn't show RPGs are doomed; it shows his "sell corebooks to the masses" business model was flawed. One thing drives the RPG industry; new products that people want. Not "customer service." Not "brand." Both of those things are important, but I don't buy music CDs based primarily on customer service or brand. I don't want a "music service." I buy a CD because I value the creativity that produced it. Monster manuals may be geared toward GMs, but players buy them, too... not for nefarious purposes, I think, but simply because they enjoy reading about monsters. That's why the "encounter format" versions of monsters and the dearth of world-specific information and ecological stuff has made monster manuals less popular now than they ever have been. People enjoy the FR setting and Eberron and such because it puts that information back... in a sense, the Monster Manuals are mainly reference cards for the published settings. RPGs are readable in a way MMORPGs are not. Above all else, they are books about games, and should cleave to the fact that they are books.Trying to sell an RPG "service," whether in the form of a subscription to game supplements, pay for play, even magazine subscriptions, has never been a source of great profit. 5. It's the product, stupid.Look at how the poker industry makes money. You sell cards. You sell books about poker. You sell poker chips. You have poker conventions. The same goes for baseball: You have ticket sales. You have TV. You have actual baseballs. You have little league.So to make money, the RPG industry should produce a lot of products catering to both the enthusiast and the enthusiastic novice. I don't know what kind of profit they turned, but D&D for Dummies was a fanstastic idea for a product. Game books, supplements, dice, minis, T-shirts, events, novels, how-to guides.Selling "customer service" is the same as selling air. How is the RPG industry going to service a customer better than the GM?</blockquote>

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