State of the RPG Industry

[Davelozzi]

Feeling a bit tangential now ...

Yeah, sorry about that, I kind of hijacked the thread for a minute there. At any rate it's over now, thanks for the info.

 

[dimonic]

RPG Markets

One thing the industry appears not to do very well, is distinguish its market well. It looks quite simple to me: there are DMs, and Gamers. Mongoose understands this, and so sells to players its tons of "quintessential" books (players are of course the larger market), and finances quality products that DMs will buy.

DMs need Campaign Worlds, Modules and Game Systems.

Players need handbooks, pretige classes, spells, feats, equipment etc.

One can sell to about 5 players for every DM.

The effort to write a "players" book is far less than the effort to write a DM's book.

I see here that people think that published modules will fall by the wayside. As a DM I would like to say there is a dearth of good published modules. There are many "free" mini-modules, but it is thought this product takes dollars away from designers of big complex modules. I don't know. Why is there no "Epic" module? Again, too costly to create, too few purchasers (DMs). Actually, the whole epic system is seen as too shakey too expect much in the way of sales for such a module, and if it came off badly, it woukd hurt the company who made it, not Wizards.

What is happening is against a whole new backdrop: the information revolution. It has become feasible for practically anyone to publish an RPG component (in terms of equipment and software). Therefore practically everybody does. Is this a good thing? It is just a thing. We will have to cope with it. On the up side, bright people who have hithertoo languished in "legend in their own group" status will rise to acclaim, on the down side, companies who might have made a living will fold.

I am surpriseed that other OGL systems have not appeared. D20 is fine for those who thought DnD was a good system, but there are any number of systems that are mechanically easier to fit to realistic game mechanics.

Anyhow, I saying too many things for one post, so I will shut up now. Hmm. This could be a tagline!

 

[Mytholder]

The effort to write a "players" book is far less than the effort to write a DM's book.

While I agree with 90% of the rest of your post, I'd disagree completely with that. When you're writing for DMs, you know that your material is going to be assessed and filtered by them and the needs of their campaign. There's another layer between the written material and the game, so you can afford to include tangents, optional rules and so on. Player-focussed stuff not only needs to be able to be dropped right into the game, and also gets a lot more of a workout. (A monster might show up only for one fight ever, so it's not too big a screwup if some bit of the monster writeup sucks. A player might be using a character based on a particular PrC for months or years, so it really has to be much tighter.)

 

[dimonic]

While I agree with 90% of the rest of your post, I'd disagree completely with that. When you're writing for DMs, you know that your material is going to be assessed and filtered by them and the needs of their campaign. There's another layer between the written material and the game, so you can afford to include tangents, optional rules and so on. Player-focussed stuff not only needs to be able to be dropped right into the game, and also gets a lot more of a workout. (A monster might show up only for one fight ever, so it's not too big a screwup if some bit of the monster writeup sucks. A player might be using a character based on a particular PrC for months or years, so it really has to be much tighter.)

You are right that scrutiny _should_ be placed on players' books, but the reality is that it is often lax. As a DM I often have to fend off players wanting to play the latest and greatest class they found in a supplement. Often they are unbalancing to my campaign, and all too often, just plain imbalancing (my players have an unerring attraction to overbalanced classes). This might meen only one or two classes in each supplement are overblown, but these are the ones many players pick.

And just to be clear, my definition of overblown is that the abilities gained allow the player to hog the session, getting a disproportionate amount of the action/attention.

So to refer to your first part, again the DM is the one who needs to scrutinize the PrCs and Feats. I for one cannot blindly trust every or any publisher to create work that will insert cleanly into my campaign (although some are better than others).

 

[dimonic]

Yep, which says to me that one area where companies can improve is in creating products that save time. DireKobold is doing this in part, by producing a product which can be scaled to party level before it's downloaded. Sure, Dungeon magazine provides tips on scaling their adventures, but DK does the work for me. Others are publishing "interactive" srd's, spell lists, etc., which perform much of the grunt work for dm's and players. And one day, we'll actually have the holy grail of character generators...I hope.
.....

Interesting points. I have found many a cool time-saver surfing the web. I have created my own spell-list generator that allow combinations of many source books, with over 1000 spells in the database and creates pdfs of the finished list, and I am considering combining this with other time savers in a web-based DM's and players aid.

Some other ideas include on-line character generation,

Monster generation.

Dungeon tracking (the idea here is a simple database of your dungeon: your map has keys which map into the database).

Encounter handling (you know, 11 monsters and 5 players with HP, ACs, multiple attacks, spells, initiatives is a lot to track).

The whole thing could be used live, during games, or printouts could be taken and used in game sessions (including handy dandy 4x5 stat-blocks of all monsters).

I wonder if players would pay subscription for such services, such that one could license IP from wizards to get the thing going, or whether I would just do it for myself and friends for the love of gaming?

 

[WizarDru]

I am surpriseed that other OGL systems have not appeared. D20 is fine for those who thought DnD was a good system, but there are any number of systems that are mechanically easier to fit to realistic game mechanics.

There are and have been plenty of Open RPGs out there, such as the Action! System, for example. d20 wasn't the first, but it is the most popular, by a wide margin. Some enjoy a great following, and like the AS and FUDGE, enjoy some degree of popularity and have seen print. The Fuzion system is the merging of the Hero system and R. Talosorian's Interlock system, and has a couple of games released (such as Sengoku). However, d20 powers the 800 lb. gorilla of gaming, D&D. It is much easier to get someone to try, say d20 Modern, than it is to get them to try something like Blue Planet.

More importantly, it's much easier to convince retailers to carry a d20 game than other games, as it already has critical mass.

Here's a list that might interest you.

 

[woodelf]

So never of you guys feel the market is over saturated right now?

The main reason I lament the passing of FASA and Hogs Head is the fact they werer producing RPG's that were not D20.

Don't get me wrong I like the OGl and the things it has done for the Game. But how many ways can you play the same game!

And Hogshead's former incarnation should be particularly lamented, because it was just about the only commercially-visible RPG company that was really producing something different. The vast majority of RPGs are the same thing with slightly different numbers. But the New Style line of games were very different--sufficiently different that the simple assertion "The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen is an RPG" can cause massive flamewars on RPGnet. Luckily, there are still people publishing those sorts of things--you can find many of them over at The Forge. Speaking of which, i don't think there's been as vibrant and wonderful of a community facilitating and promoting The Alternative in RPGs for a long time--it's like Alarums and Excursions, only anyone can read it.

 

[dimonic]

There are and have been plenty of Open RPGs out there, such as the

You know, even as I posted my comment, I was thinking about whether I should have qualified "appeared" with "made headway" or some such thing.

However, your reply, and the list you linked me to makes abundantly clear another point I made, which was that anyone who can (and apparently most of them do) publish their own thing.

 

[jmucchiello]

Why is there no "Epic" module? Again, too costly to create, too few purchasers (DMs). Actually, the whole epic system is seen as too shakey too expect much in the way of sales for such a module, and if it came off badly, it woukd hurt the company who made it, not Wizards.

There are no Epic level adventures because the Epic handbook is not OGC. The piddly amount that came out with 3.5 is insufficient for creating Epic adventures.

If I misunderstood, then there are no Epic-length adventures because there are hard to write, costly to produce, and ultimately not big sellers.

I am surpriseed that other OGL systems have not appeared. D20 is fine for those who thought DnD was a good system, but there are any number of systems that are mechanically easier to fit to realistic game mechanics.

The Action! System is OGC. It is completely unrelated to D20. Gold Rush Games released it. It is a generic system with a GURPS-lite feel.

 

[dimonic]

There are no Epic level adventures because the Epic handbook is not OGC. The piddly amount that came out with 3.5 is insufficient for creating Epic adventures.

Ahhh. I hadn't noticed (the lack of OGC). Wouldn't this mean that Wizards had plans to write their own epic stuff? It seems that it has backfired, anyway.

On the other hand: it makes it easier for me to create an epic adventure now, because I can go from the stuff in 3.5 (OGC), and extend it in ways that make sense to me!@