In short: me, too. That's why I instituted my "can I DM this game while tired and drinking wine?" test.
Also, I'm not looking for the game I play to validate how smart I am.
(and if I was looking for that, I'd use chess, not D&D
)
Why are people not interested in RPG?
- Thread starter Li Shenron
- Start date
Also, I'm not looking for the game I play to validate how smart I am.
(and if I was looking for that, I'd use chess, not D&D
)
A
amerigoV
Guest
Our view is of course shaped by our experience, but I personally have been in a gaming renaissance since 2004. I moved to up Michigan (booo!) for a job then - I could have probably filled 2 or 3 groups of 20-30 year olds. If players moved I never had a problem filling the slots (I had a surprising number of ER residency doctors in my group - so if you are even in an ER room, shout out "Roll for Initiative" and you might get some extra attention).
I was only able to make the Ann Arbor (double boo!) D&D MeetUp once, but it was robust with one table catering to teenagers playing 3.5 (which my GM running 4e indicated was constantly full). That table was just brimming with energy. The Traveller table, of course, had nobody at it since people only roll up a character and never actually PLAY that game
.
I came back to Ohio (yeah! Go Bucks!) to my old table and we are now overflowing. We are a Savage Worlds group and yes, a bunch of old folks. But one couple's kids started to get interested. Their oldest (early teen) plays with us and hooked all his friends on it. And he is the typical videogamer kid (we talked Skyrim all the time). Savage Worlds community is a growing one, with more and more presence at Cons. I gotta say I am glad I got to sit out of 4e and now the 5e ramp up - I do not miss the sniping at each other.
Heck, I was just at a sleep study Thursday night. It takes about 30 minutes to wired you up. The tech was probable 25 and turns out a gamer (a bit more on the wargame, but played RPGs too). We talked Origins, SW, D&D, etc. When I got up he asked if I was going to Gencon cuz he was going for the first time.
On a different angle - complexity. Its an interesting beast. I love Savage Worlds due to its elegance. There is just enough crunch and options to satisfy the powergamer in me yet the system appeals to those in our group that want a light system. I am curious what 5e will do on this front, as the ability to have multiple levels of complexity in the game could be a key item for the game.
This is an observation more than any profound statement. I think of how my 17 year old stepson plays games like Dragon Age and Madden football vs. me. When I play Dragon Age, I'll pay attention to my character, but I tend to hit "Y" and let the game level up the other PCs. I liked DA2 where there was less inventory management for the NPCs in your party. He, on the other had, seemed to enjoy the micro management of the level ups and inventory. Similarly, if I play the sports game, I just tend to load them and play a game. He digs in to manage the team, create players, run multiple seasons, draft, etc. As I mentioned above, I am a powergamer so its not like I have not done that type of deep dive in the past. Its just where I am now with family, etc.
I was only able to make the Ann Arbor (double boo!) D&D MeetUp once, but it was robust with one table catering to teenagers playing 3.5 (which my GM running 4e indicated was constantly full). That table was just brimming with energy. The Traveller table, of course, had nobody at it since people only roll up a character and never actually PLAY that game
.I came back to Ohio (yeah! Go Bucks!) to my old table and we are now overflowing. We are a Savage Worlds group and yes, a bunch of old folks. But one couple's kids started to get interested. Their oldest (early teen) plays with us and hooked all his friends on it. And he is the typical videogamer kid (we talked Skyrim all the time). Savage Worlds community is a growing one, with more and more presence at Cons. I gotta say I am glad I got to sit out of 4e and now the 5e ramp up - I do not miss the sniping at each other.
Heck, I was just at a sleep study Thursday night. It takes about 30 minutes to wired you up. The tech was probable 25 and turns out a gamer (a bit more on the wargame, but played RPGs too). We talked Origins, SW, D&D, etc. When I got up he asked if I was going to Gencon cuz he was going for the first time.
On a different angle - complexity. Its an interesting beast. I love Savage Worlds due to its elegance. There is just enough crunch and options to satisfy the powergamer in me yet the system appeals to those in our group that want a light system. I am curious what 5e will do on this front, as the ability to have multiple levels of complexity in the game could be a key item for the game.
This is an observation more than any profound statement. I think of how my 17 year old stepson plays games like Dragon Age and Madden football vs. me. When I play Dragon Age, I'll pay attention to my character, but I tend to hit "Y" and let the game level up the other PCs. I liked DA2 where there was less inventory management for the NPCs in your party. He, on the other had, seemed to enjoy the micro management of the level ups and inventory. Similarly, if I play the sports game, I just tend to load them and play a game. He digs in to manage the team, create players, run multiple seasons, draft, etc. As I mentioned above, I am a powergamer so its not like I have not done that type of deep dive in the past. Its just where I am now with family, etc.
In short: me, too. That's why I instituted my "can I DM this game while tired and drinking wine?" test.
Also, I'm not looking for the game I play to validate how smart I am.
(and if I was looking for that, I'd use chess, not D&D
Its really sad that people consider every activity not completely dumbed down as an attempt to "validate how smart someone is" or other elitist insult.
Consonant Dude
First Post
That sounds like a good idea if you want the hobby to have fewer players instead of more. "Expanding things instead of streamlining" is the reason we are in this mess to begin with.
The first thing you have to realize is that gamers and designers have been doing just that, trying to expand and change the things RPGs can do since... forever. It's not a new concept. Doing it without care for handling and prep time is what has led the industry to cater exclusively to hardcore gamers and ostracize average Joes while racing toward the thickest rulebooks possible.
I'm not against improvement, but there are serious questions to be asked before doing so:
1. Does it really improve the experience?
2. At what cost as far as your time is concerned?
Even the best RPG creators out there can't design hours in our schedules. Roleplaying is an investment of time and energy. You need to learn how the games work, then you need to prepare the sessions, then run them, then maintenance is required in between sessions. This is at the heart of what is required to roleplay.
Nonsensical concepts like Monte Cook's "Rule mastery" need to die in a fire because they actively make all those steps harder instead of easier, which is what good design should strive for.
The payoff for the investment is how many lands you traveled too, all these cool adventures you lived, traps you got out of, vilains' plots were foiled, alliances were made... it's all about adventure, intrigue, the growth of your characters and the environment they live in, created and maintained by the GM and impacted by the PCs. And the cost of that is gameplay. The more hours spent actually creating things and adventuring instead of bean-counting, arguing and memorizing.
You wanna talk about expanding roleplaying? Expand the payoff! Expand the things characters can do in a session by not having a 5 minute game-time combat between a bunch of irrelevant goblins and the characters take 120 minutes of real time.
You'll have happier players and a lot more of them if the games are easy to learn, to prep, to run and to maintain.
If we take D&D as example, the brand is certainly not in its current mess because in 4E WotC tried to "Expand instead of streamlining".
Consonant Dude
First Post
4th edition is certainly part of those "games" that are a tremendous amount of work for no reason whatsoever. Piles and piles of instruction manuals filled with useless details and game play that's unbearably slow.
But I do not want to point the finger at one edition of a specific brand in particular. This is a fairly generalized trend that's been going on for a long term.
The mess I'm speaking of is the trend toward less gaming shops and a hobby that stopped growing a long time ago once games became more complicated and now gives signs that its pool of active players is shrinking.
Can't XP you, but I will say that 4e broke our group up. We're not dumb. We're not lazy. We're busy adults with kids and lives so the amount of fussy rules and amazingly long length of a single combat encounter made our choice for us. One lady was so turned off she only recently agreed to try a game again. How I managed to do that was simple. I said, "Hey, Anita, I'm thinking of starting another D&D game, but using the older rules that aren't nearly as complicated."
Now she and her husband are on board. My wife was positively giddy when I showed her a character sheet (B/X) that didn't have a litany written on it. So, I am now setting up a B/X campaign and planning on transitioning it into a BECMI campaign after enough sessions to make the group feel comfortable with adding a few more rules.
This is not an edition war post. This is a game design post. Surely someone (Mr. Mearls, I am looking at you) can design a game that appeals to casual and family gamers as well as the tactical and "realism through rules" crowd. A streamlined core with modules sounds like a darn good start to me. A game that is affordable (my basic box cost me a few allowances and a module cost one week's allowance), streamlined, fast-paced, doesn't require constant continued purchases of minis, mats and books, and not bogged down in minutiae might bring in some of that much needed new blood we talk about to renew our shared hobby. Some people say that game shouldn't be D&D. I disagree because that game was D&D in the past and can be today.
And yet the mass exodus of D&D players certainly didn't happen because 4E is too complicated compared to older editions.
And you seem to think that "expanding" is equal to "make it more complicated" which is a very shallow view.
Expanding can also mean that the game allows for more than what was supported previously. For example add a bigger non combat roles, social interactions or just support for other settings. But no, its always "We offer exactly the same we always did and just make it simpler".
Consonant Dude
First Post
I've already answered all that just above in posts #124 and #126 and explained my position at length early in the thread.
I don't know why you're constantly shifting the discussion to 4th edition DnD when the discussion is about "why aren't people interested in roleplaying". People here have been talking about the hobby in general, not specific games. I'm not interested in discussing one specific example of a game and its fate within the community of hardcore gamers.
I'm interested in discussing why the hobby at large went from an infectious one that was growing to one that is slowly eroding.
If you think a specific game might help provide answers, then by all means let's use it.
Every time you just mention 4th edition without really explaining what you're trying to get at, you just compel me to say: it's one of many, many overcomplicated games that are part of the problem of this erosion, rather than the solution.
I think I've explained this very clearly in post 124. I've said that if "expansion" is done at the cost of streamlining, than the problem remains. I don't have a "shallow" view of anything. I'm going by what are the trends in the major publishers out there. And the trend is to cater to hardcore gamers with overinflated, overcomplicated and time consuming games.
You're throwing around a vague word without really explaining what you mean by expansion. I'm all for kickass games where you can do all kinds of things. If you feel like "expanding games" cool for you. I'm just saying, the discussion here is about why aren't more people into roleplaying. The answer for me is that they need to be more accessible to a greater number of people. I don't think streamlining has to affect versatility at all.
I don't really understand what you mean by all that. But it seems you're suggesting game companies are constantly offering the same thing and making it simpler. In which case, this is so far from reality that I don't know how we could really discuss things any further.
I'm sorry but I fear I don't understand any of your posts very clearly. If you have an opinion on why roleplaying games aren't more popular, than I'd be glad to know your point of view. If you wanna talk about expansion, I'd be glad to understand what you mean concretely by that... but otherwise, what's the point of this side discussion, really?
I don't know why you're constantly shifting the discussion to 4th edition DnD when the discussion is about "why aren't people interested in roleplaying". People here have been talking about the hobby in general, not specific games. I'm not interested in discussing one specific example of a game and its fate within the community of hardcore gamers.
I'm interested in discussing why the hobby at large went from an infectious one that was growing to one that is slowly eroding.
If you think a specific game might help provide answers, then by all means let's use it.
Every time you just mention 4th edition without really explaining what you're trying to get at, you just compel me to say: it's one of many, many overcomplicated games that are part of the problem of this erosion, rather than the solution.
I think I've explained this very clearly in post 124. I've said that if "expansion" is done at the cost of streamlining, than the problem remains. I don't have a "shallow" view of anything. I'm going by what are the trends in the major publishers out there. And the trend is to cater to hardcore gamers with overinflated, overcomplicated and time consuming games.
You're throwing around a vague word without really explaining what you mean by expansion. I'm all for kickass games where you can do all kinds of things. If you feel like "expanding games" cool for you. I'm just saying, the discussion here is about why aren't more people into roleplaying. The answer for me is that they need to be more accessible to a greater number of people. I don't think streamlining has to affect versatility at all.
I don't really understand what you mean by all that. But it seems you're suggesting game companies are constantly offering the same thing and making it simpler. In which case, this is so far from reality that I don't know how we could really discuss things any further.
I'm sorry but I fear I don't understand any of your posts very clearly. If you have an opinion on why roleplaying games aren't more popular, than I'd be glad to know your point of view. If you wanna talk about expansion, I'd be glad to understand what you mean concretely by that... but otherwise, what's the point of this side discussion, really?
Argyle King
Legend
I've had the complete opposite experience as that of the OP. I've found it rather easy to find groups and/or new players. I've had to cut down on the amount of gaming I was doing because I was starting to get concerned that maybe I was gaming too much.
If I can be completely blunt, sometimes I think one of the biggest obstacles to getting new people to try rpgs is the community which currently games. I feel that there are still too many people who act as though gaming is some sort of sin and/or secret underground rite. Painting your own hobby as something negative doesn't exactly do wonders for recruiting other players.
Likewise, there seem to be a lot of threads here and on various other fora which talk about topics such as "how do I game with girls"; "how can I game with minorities," and other such things. While I do understand that not everyone communicates the same way and that taking a look at some of these topics may be helpful, the bottom line is that people are people. I tend to believe that actually talking to someone (and doing so in a normal and non-awkward way) will deliver results far more often than joining an online discussion about how to talk to someone.
For me, I do not force my hobbies upon anyone. However, if they ask (or it comes up in conversation,) I talk to them about gaming just like I would talk to them about any of my other hobbies. Sometimes they seem open to giving it a shot; sometimes they don't, and sometimes the people who have said they would in no way be interested have turned out to be the people I've been gaming with the longest.
As for complexity, I'm not sure that I agree with the argument that complexity necessarily scares away new players. I think that is highly dependent upon the person, and I can honestly say I've had experiences in which someone who was interested was turned away by a game not being engaging enough. This is not to suggest that uber-complexity is the way to go, but only that 'streamlining' and 'simplicity' isn't always the best route to take either. RPGs are a game of the mind and a mental activity; I'd like to think using my brain is part of that process.
I can only speak for myself, but -if something like Essentials or the current version of 5E- had been the D&D I was introduced to, I'm not sure I would have been engaged enough to get involved in rpgs. I became interested in rpgs (and still play them now) precisely because I want that deeper engagement. There are far different reasons behind why I sit down to roll some dice for a tabletop campaign than there are behind why I sit down to play through Castle Crashers on XBox Live. I do not expect this to be true for everyone, but I do suspect it's true for enough people that I'm not alone in wanting a more engaging tabletop experience than a game such as something like Descent can give me. Descent: Journeys in the Dark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Something else to consider is that people may be interested in rpgs, but that may not mean they are necessarily interested in the rpg you want to play. In one of the towns nearby where I live, you'd be very hard pressed to find a D&D campaign. I'm not sure if it's some sort of cultural oddity unique to the local area, but the most common groups you'll find will be those who play Rogue Trader (Fantasy Flight Games [Rogue Trader] - Leading publisher of board, card, and roleplaying games. ), GURPS (which is nice for me because I also play) (GURPS: Generic Universal RolePlaying System ), and Pathfinder (which I recently learned to play) (http://paizo.com/pathfinder ). This also applies to those who have not gamed before; different people get interested in rpgs for different reasons, and not every game approaches the process in the same way, so a different game might speak to someone on a level that catches their interest.
If I can be completely blunt, sometimes I think one of the biggest obstacles to getting new people to try rpgs is the community which currently games. I feel that there are still too many people who act as though gaming is some sort of sin and/or secret underground rite. Painting your own hobby as something negative doesn't exactly do wonders for recruiting other players.
Likewise, there seem to be a lot of threads here and on various other fora which talk about topics such as "how do I game with girls"; "how can I game with minorities," and other such things. While I do understand that not everyone communicates the same way and that taking a look at some of these topics may be helpful, the bottom line is that people are people. I tend to believe that actually talking to someone (and doing so in a normal and non-awkward way) will deliver results far more often than joining an online discussion about how to talk to someone.
For me, I do not force my hobbies upon anyone. However, if they ask (or it comes up in conversation,) I talk to them about gaming just like I would talk to them about any of my other hobbies. Sometimes they seem open to giving it a shot; sometimes they don't, and sometimes the people who have said they would in no way be interested have turned out to be the people I've been gaming with the longest.
As for complexity, I'm not sure that I agree with the argument that complexity necessarily scares away new players. I think that is highly dependent upon the person, and I can honestly say I've had experiences in which someone who was interested was turned away by a game not being engaging enough. This is not to suggest that uber-complexity is the way to go, but only that 'streamlining' and 'simplicity' isn't always the best route to take either. RPGs are a game of the mind and a mental activity; I'd like to think using my brain is part of that process.
I can only speak for myself, but -if something like Essentials or the current version of 5E- had been the D&D I was introduced to, I'm not sure I would have been engaged enough to get involved in rpgs. I became interested in rpgs (and still play them now) precisely because I want that deeper engagement. There are far different reasons behind why I sit down to roll some dice for a tabletop campaign than there are behind why I sit down to play through Castle Crashers on XBox Live. I do not expect this to be true for everyone, but I do suspect it's true for enough people that I'm not alone in wanting a more engaging tabletop experience than a game such as something like Descent can give me. Descent: Journeys in the Dark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Something else to consider is that people may be interested in rpgs, but that may not mean they are necessarily interested in the rpg you want to play. In one of the towns nearby where I live, you'd be very hard pressed to find a D&D campaign. I'm not sure if it's some sort of cultural oddity unique to the local area, but the most common groups you'll find will be those who play Rogue Trader (Fantasy Flight Games [Rogue Trader] - Leading publisher of board, card, and roleplaying games. ), GURPS (which is nice for me because I also play) (GURPS: Generic Universal RolePlaying System ), and Pathfinder (which I recently learned to play) (http://paizo.com/pathfinder ). This also applies to those who have not gamed before; different people get interested in rpgs for different reasons, and not every game approaches the process in the same way, so a different game might speak to someone on a level that catches their interest.
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