The State of Our Hobby

[jdrakeh]

I'm somewhat sad that diversity is seen as a bad thing by many people involved in this hobby. The OP here, for example, appears to envision the hobby as a single game and views any deviation from that One True Way as inherently detrimental behavior. It is this seemingly common mindeset that has done more to diminish my own enjoyment of the hobby in recent years (which I, myself, envision as getting together with people to play games, moreso than slavish devotion to any one game system).

 

[cougent]

I may get stoned or burned alive for saying this, but...

I invest a lot of time and energy and money into D&D as my hobby of choice.
I invest far more time and energy and in some ways money into my friends.
If D&D goes away, I still have my friends and we can find another social activity.
If my friends go away, I don't need D&D any longer.

WotC made a calculated choice to put forth a new edition.
Paizo made a calculated decision to put forth Pathfinder RPG.
Other companies have made their calculated decisions also.
At least part of that calculation for all of them was "How do we make more money?"
If the decisions of these companies, especially the big one, ultimately fracture the customer base to the point that the game / hobby dies; then maybe they should have used a different metric in their calculated decisions.
My choices as a single consumer / purchaser of products are infinitesimal compared to the decisions of corporations.
If the game dies, it is on their heads, not mine.

 

[Ranger REG]

That's the beautiful part about where we are now.

I mean, would it have really sucked to have skipped Sword and Fist and Defenders of the Faith and gone straight to Complete Warrior, the 3.5 PHB, ad Spell Compendium?

I can play my existing game for the next year or two, with Paizo support, and wait for the most serious issues with 4.X to be resolved.

And if the updated, corrected Second Printing run of PHB I, DMG I, and MM I 4e are not out by 2010, I'll wait some more.

Just heard they went to the printers this week. Just hope they're edited and spellchecked well.

 

[Lanefan]

As long as people - including but not limited to all of us - keep playing the game and introducing new people to it, it's in fine shape.

There's nothing anywhere saying we all have to play the same edition.

Lanefan

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I think the "State of Our Hobby" is as strong as it hasn't been for quite some time, in parts thanks to D&D 3E. There is one big brand that is extremely successful...and is wide open (thanks to OGL) to being kept alive through other publishers. There is a new edition, coming from the most successful publisher of the whole heap. There's a big wave of smaller, independent games testing new rules, new designs, being played or getting discarded. Fantasy as a whole has taken a big leap to the forefront of the general attention.

In my opinion, trying to unite everybody under one brand (and one edition) would mean a terrible stifling of creativity, and a big loss for the next generation of games. "One-Way-ism" never was terribly correct for a species where one individual alone can hold so many contradicting truths in its mind. And to be honest, calling 4E "our home" is a little bit pretentious right from the start. 4E isn't the be all-end all of D&D, same as 3E wasn't, and edition proliferation isn't the apocalypse that will destroy "our hobby". It simply means that gamers will continue to be influenced by more than just one vision of what roleplaying games are, and that's the best thing imaginable.

 

[The Eternal GM]

If us having a stronger and more unified hobby-culture means everyone has to play 4th Edition, like it's some holy grail game just because it's the new edition... Then forget it, let the hobby die.

I've been interested in 4th Edition all along. I'm not as fussed lately, but mostly because my B/X games are going so well and nothing in 4th Edition news has really caught my eye as an improvement.

The OP's message carries the vibe that we ought to all accept 4th Edition regardless of quality, pack up our other games and I don't possibly see how that is a good thing.

Ultimately, I'll play what I damn well like. MY hobby might outlive THE hobby for this outrageous defection! But that's all I care about. This hobby has a wealth of problems, mostly down to social perception, fueled by gamers who won't admit they game, and publishers who release garbage... I don't contribute to either problem, I play my games, I enjoy them, that's MY hobby.

 

[DaveMage]

The state of my hobby is: Florida.

 

[SavageRobby]

As for your general point -- I'm not seriously concerned. My hobby is gaming, not (just) D&D. There's always been a variety of RPG systems aside from D&D; indeed, I've probably played more non-D&D than D&D, given that I didn't play D&D for 13-14 years, and was an active gamer the whole time.

Well, since the late 70s at least.

But the point is good. I haven't played D&D in years, and didn't play any RPGs for most of the 90s. But the hobby was still there, new games were still coming out from various publishers, and the hobby didn't die.

I grew up with D&D (AD&D and the boxed sets), and it makes me sad that the game has morphed into something I don't particularly don't, and stewarded by folks I don't particularly trust; but even given that, I think this is a great time in our hobby, and somewhat unique. There are some GREAT games out there that don't have the label D&D on them made by some GREAT publishers, and having that kind of quality and competition is good for our hobby, not bad.


I think the best thing anyone can do for the hobby right now is to reach out to others in your community, play different games with different folks and promote the games you like. Run one shots. Get new and different people to your table. Recruit folks that haven't played before. Teach your kids how to play (my daughter was wavering on doing her biography report on either Gary Gygax or DaVinci). That kind of thing.

 

[Psion]

"Defections" makes it sound like people are crossing the Berlin Wall or something.

Funny you should use that analogy. I was thinking last night about how WP appeal for all of us to faithfully join in 4e for the good of the community sounded like some sort of "gaming communism", some bizarre version of We.

 

[JohnRTroy]

I'm somewhat sad that diversity is seen as a bad thing by many people involved in this hobby. The OP here, for example, appears to envision the hobby as a single game and views any deviation from that One True Way as inherently detrimental behavior.

I've been buying RPGs etc since 1981 or so. Diversity was something to be celebrated back then. I'm a little annoyed by the perception that homogenized rules are more important than diversity. Fans of the OGL proclaim that it's beneficial because it's supports D&D and it's good for WoTC, but for about 20 years or so, the hobby had people who could play D&D, CoC, GURPS, Storyteller, Runequest, RIFTS, and Traveller, to name some of the more popular games, and nobody ever seemed to think "jeez, shouldn't there be one ruleset"?

I think the hobby is actually less healthy since there was so much d20/OGL stuff and a glut similar to what TSR did to themselves in the mid 1990s affected the hobby. While there's a lot of "d20-based" product out there, a lot of the more experimental stuff has left and I think that more than anything hurt some of the other game camps.

D&D dividing into sub-camps is likely inevitable. The game has made several extreme changes, with now 3 rule-bases: 1/2 Ed AD&D (both are pretty similar so I count them as 1), 3rd Edition D&D, and now 4e. Doing this is always risky and you give up the loyal fans for new players by doing this--the key is to minimize its effect. I'm not sure by deciding to change their settings and rules so radically this time out they are doing as much to keep the fans as loyal.

The OGL has also given a lot of creative folks the ability to write their own spin on D&D. You'll note a lot of people who used to work for Wizards and TSR left and freelanced or formed their own companies. If they wanted to avoid that, WoTC should have not created an OGL and should have worked to keep the freelancers on staff or with exclusive contracts.

Is the hobby healthy? Well, it's lost some players to computer games, and will likely become a little more of a niche hobby like tabletop wargames?

Is D&D healthy--hard to say? I think eventually it will fall down as the #1 game. I think the fracturing will happen. If Hasbro suddenly pulled the plug on D&D support and didn't license out 4e, you'd have maybe 4-12 players all doing OGL-styled games based on 3e. Because there is no company with the trademark, the D&D player base naturally splinters, and I think a player like White Wolf, Games Workshop, or somebody of that size would end up having the #1 game.

Life is a series of evolutions and revolutions. We can't expect our favorite thing to last forever, or at least always be popular and #1.