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Message: <blockquote data-quote="guildofblades" data-source="post: 3307154" data-attributes="member: 27324">>>I don't think any game company is going to break into Role Playing with the luck and impetus that TSR did. Anything you set up will be a long haul but your customers will really be your customers.Business sense to me would dictate that for now D20 is a necessary publishing element. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have your own system as well.<<We've always avoided D20 like the plague. Nothing personally against it, but it was decided early on that publishing D20 or OGL (OGL any system) carried with it certain disadvantages we wanted to avoid. The largest of those was simply that we could not dictate when, where and how the "core rules" were delivered and thus could not map our own market. A lesser restriction but still one worthy of consideration was that pretty much no matter what, even if we became the most successful D20 publisher around, our brand would still only be second in the line behind D&D. In publishing under D20 (ala, D&D) you guarantee you can never eclipse D&D.But yes, Role Playing is much the same as the trading card game market. While board games and miniatures games can actually exist on smaller, more isolated pockets of gaming groups, and thus can still be made profitable at smaller scales of operations, my feeling is that role playing games operating under that model will always fail. It is only a question of time. A game that sparks an interest as being new and unique will survive for a while. How long that is exactly will depend on just how brightly is shines. But the typical pattern has run between 3 and  7 years.I feel for a RPG to become totally successful in the long term that it MUST strive to compete heads up with D&D. And by that I don't mean be a D&D clone (only better), I mean whatever system or theme or production format it takes, it must generate enough active players to its system within its first few years of production so as to compete for players with D&D heads up. Basically, it needs as many players as D&D has. Not an easy accomplishment giving the establish entrenchment D&D already has in the market. But if a publisher has no business model to actually achieve that, then they should not be looking to invest into a RPG system long term. They should have a production cycle, well, of 3 to 7 years and then be prepared to let it die and move onto something else.Just for the record, I'm not being pessimistic on the subject. Just realistic. I do, however, think the a business model to let a new RPG compete heads up with D&D exist. Multiple such business models in fact. But any I have conceived of thus far do require a pretty sizable investment that a small start up studio will not be able to muster on their own.Ryan S. JohnsonGuild of Blades Publishing Group<a href="http://www.guildofblades.com" target="_blank">http://www.guildofblades.com</a><a href="http://www.1483online.com" target="_blank">http://www.1483online.com</a><a href="http://www.thermopylae-online.com" target="_blank">http://www.thermopylae-online.com</a></blockquote>

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