Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pickaxe" data-source="post: 3317947" data-attributes="member: 10812">Regarding the staying power of D&D, it's actually somewhat remarkable that D&D was first on the market and has continued to dominate it. Ultima Online created a lucrative new industry but eventually gave way to others like DAoC and WoW. There are numerous other examples in other industries.What made D&D stick, then, when other games began to develop? You could argue that it was the need for connectivity or a "common language" for the consumer, that we players became invested in a system that allowed us to play together. It's kind of like why so many computers have Windows on them. But people bitch and moan about Windows and how they hate it but need to live with it so they can run their programs, whereas people don't play D&D because it's tolerable and their games would be set adrift without it.On the contrary, people who grow tired of D&D find other games (though they may still play D&D), and people who find fault with D&D continue to play it not because they have no choice but because they enjoy it. And, as another thread I saw on these boards pointed out, people often abandoned the RAW of earlier editions, for a variety of reasons. In some ways, considering the substantial house-ruling that most groups used, it was amazing that tournaments and cons could ever operate.So, I don't see strong support for saying that D&D lassoed its share of the market by getting there first and making us all feel obliged to use the same rules.I'm inclined to agree with Monte about what makes D&D attractive. There's more to the story than that, of course, and some of that is indeed related to being there first. When RPGs were starting to really hit their stride, D&D was already in position to market itself better, and it had set standards for how RPGs should operate that other systems tried more to emulate than to distinguish themselves from. But I'm also struck by the fact that all four of Monte's "genius" components have been adopted time and again by other games. Every MMORPG has characters with classes that progress through levels, use some kind of analog to hit points, and spend time adventuring in laid-out areas similar to dungeons.To use another analogy, D&D is more ketchup than mustard. My wife's dad is a former employee of Heinz, and my brother-in-law told me about an article he read about why there were so many gourmet mustards but no gourmet ketchup. Mustard, for whatever reason, lends itself to this gourmet trend, whether because it can be made differently or from premium ingredients, so it was easy for someone to make a gourmet mustard and steal a little of the market away from Gulden's or French's or what have you. That's sort of like how all these successful MMORPGs have been able to supplant the earlier ones.Ketchup, on the other hand, has not experienced this proliferation of successful brands, and in fact has been almost entirely a market for Heinz alone. It turns out that Heinz actually did a lot of research into developing a ketchup that pleased all of the different "tastes" that you can taste; ketchup is a combo of sweet, sour, tart, and salty. It was such an optimal recipe that no one could really improve upon it; to tinker with this formula was to only make it worse. So, even if you could make a worthy ketchup, it could only be as good as Heinz, so why should I switch to your brand? (Of course, Heinz has succumbed to the bottom line and now doesn't grow it's own tomatoes and uses the same tomato paste that every one else does, creating opportunities for competitors to surpass it.)D&D is like Heinz ketchup. Yes, you can call all sorts of things sacred cows and claim that they can be done away with, but, if you want to market a new RPG, you need certain things, which are basically the things Monte talks about. That's why it's hard to make a successful comic book super hero RPG; if Spider Man can't gain levels, where's the whole fun of character progression? Sure, you can try some other progression mechanic, but, as Monte says, we like levels. Even computer games, which can provide for progression systems that are extremely fine, or even ones based on use (like WoW's skill system), still use levels.So, at best, a new RPG just offers the same critical things that D&D offers, so there is no incentive to change. It can tinker with things that just don't matter as much, or it tinkers with core elements to its detriment. The fact that people complain about the "genius" elements, ironically, causes new RPGs to focus on these elements as areas to change, which actually makes them less attractive.--Axe</blockquote>

Verification