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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 5080251" data-attributes="member: 85870">I was highly fascinated by howandwhy99's response in an earlier thread, as well as the thread asking the question, "If you were the CEO of WoTC, what would be your strategy now?" I thought it might be appropriate to fork a separate thread here. I'm certain someone has done this before, in another thread, or on another Web site / forum entirely, and if so, please forebear with the usual "Been there, done that" responses.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />For those of you familiar with the Delphi Method (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_method" target="_blank">Delphi method - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</a>), I'm hoping to set up this thread as a hypothetical Delphi method application to the question of, "If you were RPG Company X, what would you do now?" Here's the setup:  You're the newly-appointed CEO of a subsidiary of a larger corporate conglomerate whose primary business is in manufacturing. One of your parent company's many businesses has been the fabrication of "game" materials, including minis for various systems, dice, cardboard cutouts / displays, cards, pieces, etc. Though their primary focus in these products has been fantasy and sci-fi, the corporation is open to pursuing new product lines. Based on market research and the approval of the board, the company has asked you (and your new management team) to create a brand new, heretofore unknown RPG system to market and sell in conjunction with their existing game materials business. You have been given complete freedom to design, produce, market, and sell this new RPG product in any way you see fit. Understanding the nature of a new product start-up, the board recognizes that for the product to ultimately be successful/profitable, it is going to take some time to get ramped up. Your company's goals are to have the new product be a "break even" proposition within 24 months, to be profitable within 36 months, and to have a 7-10% total market share of the pen and paper RPG market within five years. With these goals in mind, what type of product would you ultimately create? The Delphi Method comes into play here because I don't want everyone to just start throwing out their own personal "Perfect RPG." The idea is to create a series of propositions, and then use Delphi Method analysis to ultimately revise, and come to a community consensus about what type of product should be created. First, we create maxims, or propositions that discuss the general framework under which the product itself is created. Then, once the frameworks are agreed upon, we decide what the game itself should look like. For example, do we want to create a genre-specific product, or make a generic ruleset for all kinds of settings? Which dice rolling method (i.e., D20, 2d10, 3d6, 'roll and keep') should the system use? Perhaps even broader, how do we define role-playing at all, and how should a rule system support that definition?(based on howandwhy99's comments): "[Thinking about] the conciseness of a rule, achieving each rule's particular purpose, knowing their effects on player behavior during the game, and the resulting workload for the referee/DM/GM are all important to every game."So here's my first set of maxims: 1. A successful RPG creates a unique "space" wherein participants assume one or more fictional alternative identities, or egos. 2a. A successful RPG should provide opportunities for participants to explore aspects of their identity--through conflict, interaction, geographic and cultural exploration, negotiation. 2b. The framework of the game should provide opportunities for participants to use all of its explorative aspects.  3. A successful RPG should develop a sense of community, on an individual, group, and broader social levels. 4. A successful RPG should provide rule-governed frameworks for adjudicating participants abilities, successes, and failures. 5. Whenever possible, those rule-governed frameworks should provide the most fair, balanced, and customizable options for participants to explore the milieu. 6. An RPG assumes that one participant will primarily act as the adjudicator, not a core participant. 7. A successful RPG allows the adjudicator/DM/GM the broadest freedoms and opportunities to create content while balancing other constraints, such as cost, time, materials, system mastery, and other factors (feel free to add more). 8. A successful RPG places the vast majority of useful/significant decisions, both in terms or character development and play, in the hands of the players. 9. A successful RPG makes non-standard rule adjudication streamlined, flexible, easy to understand, and "sensible," meaning that it makes sense within the constraints of the constructed space. Add more as you see fit! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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