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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lewpuls" data-source="post: 7714491" data-attributes="member: 30518">Thanks for the comments. Keep in mind, folks, I am editorially constrained to 500 words. If I had a thousand, I’d have more thoroughly addressed/explained many of the points people are making or questioning (or explaining, thanks). Of course.It would be interesting to know what proportion of, say, D&D revenue comes from additional rules, what proportion from settings, what proportion from adventures. I don’t know enough to say which is the “optimal” one, though one commenter thinks he/she knows. If, as another says, one of the 5e rulebooks is #33 seller on Amazon for all books, I suspect  the base rules themselves generate the most income of all.Yes, a really simple game is more GM dependent. But a complex game causes shrinkage of the GM base. There’s a sweet spot somewhere in there.The VOCAL players push for complexity. I suspect the average player does not.In board and card games, we’ve seen significant “dumbing down” of hobby games in the past decade to accommodate the influx of new gamers as the hobby gets larger, who are often from “party game” roots. Games on average are much simpler and considerably shorter.This is now a world where many people cannot do simple arithmetic in their heads - even college students. Where people want the “Easy Button”. It’s the Age of Convenience as well as the Age of Instant Gratification. You don’t have to read any rules to play video games. The more complexity in a tabletop game, the fewer people will want to play and especially, the fewer who will want to GM.JeffB, there’s a large college-aged segment who go to game clubs to play tabletop board and card games regularly, but never buy any. Besides a (self-perceived) lack of money, they’re been “trained” in video games to expect games to be free in many cases. I’d say most of them are “naturally” RPGers (the focus on an avatar), but I don’t think they spend on RPGs either.Lew Pulsipher</blockquote>

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