Why aren't RPGs poplular

[Dannyalcatraz]

In the event that a player deliberately did not choose a name for the character, our group would have probably provided a suitable nickname for the character, such as Cupcake, Tinkerbelle, Stinky Britches, etc. These nicknames hopefully would provide player/character motivation to choose a "real" character name.

We do that as well, with varied results.

IME, however, that tactic works best with people who actually have a vision of their PC as something other than "Stinky Britches."

So while most PCs manage to pick up a nickname or 2, the only ones that really stick are those where the player actually cares about the PC name. Nicknames just seem to slide off of the "waldoes" eventually.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There actually seems to be rather a trend in that direction, though, and on a couple of vectors; your friends may have been set in their ways long enough to be on the next cutting edge!

One obvious way to make "RPGs" popular would be to apply the name to quite another kind of game that is already more popular.

Several of the guys in the group have always been "beer & pretzel" players, but some got more interested in the "role" aspects of the games over time.

One thing that's cool about those guys playing the "Waldoes" though- they can optimize their PCs virtually on autopilot. That means that when I'm gaming with them, I know for a fact that the Wizard is going to built & played pretty much flawlessly.

Which means that they can often take up the slack for those in the group going for something "out of the box"- these days, usually me.

To illustrate, this week, we're dusting off a campaign that was put on pause at level 11, and we have at least one new face in the group. So everyone is being permitted to try a new PC if they so choose, instead of continuing to advance the PC they were playing.

Since the group had no divine caster with access to more than 2nd level spells, I decided to fill that void (somewhat), retiring my SpecWiz: Div/Ftr/Rgr/Spellsword in favor of a Cleric of Obad-Hai/Sorc/Geomancer (with Mystic Theurge being tossed in when the party reaches 12th). The announcement has left them...underwhelmed.

 

[mmadsen]

Let my try once more to explain why everyone in publishing and retail is not stupid and lazy and why you aren't paying for two books (in a bad way) when you buy one.

I'll explain it with the canonical news boy model, which is analogous to book publishing and selling.

Our iconic 1920s news boy -- "Extree! Extree! Read all about it!" -- buys newspapers from the publisher and sells them for 10 cents.

The publisher spends thousands of dollars paying journalists, editors, etc. and paying to run the presses -- it has high fixed costs -- but once everything's in place, it only costs the publisher, say, one cent to print one more paper than he was already printing.

How much should the publisher charge the news boy for papers? The reasonable, but naive, response is that the newspaper is spending a lot of money to print papers, and the news boy's time is not expensive at all, so the paper should charge him, say, 9 cents per paper. The news boy then makes a 10-percent commission. Not bad.

But how many papers does the news boy then buy from the paper? If he thinks he can sell around 100 copies, he doesn't necessarily buy 100 copies -- not if he's wise. If he buys a paper he can't sell, he's out 9 cents. (That is, his cost of overage is 9 cents.) If he neglects to buy one more paper that he could have sold, he's out one cent of profit. (That is, his cost of underage is 1 cent.) So, if he's wise, he'll only buy papers that he's almost guaranteed to sell. Optimally, he'll buy just enough papers that his last one has a 90-percent chance of selling.

So if he thinks he can sell 100±10 papers, he won't buy 100 and risk a 50-50 chance of "eating" that 100th paper; he'll buy 87 and be almost certain to sell the very last one.

If the publisher owned the news stand, and the news boy was a paid employee, then the publisher would only charge itself one cent per paper -- its own cost -- and it would maximize profits by distributing 113 papers to the news stand, because even a 10-percent chance of selling another paper is a worthwhile risk -- a one-cent cost to earn 10 cents in revenue.

But the publisher does not own the news stand, and it can't stay in business charging independent news boys one cent per paper. It would never recoup its fixed costs.

Instead, the publisher arranges to buy back any unsold papers for, say, 8.9 cents. (We'll ignore rounding problems.) Now the news boy's cost of overage is just a tenth of a cent, so he's willing to risk carrying extra papers that have just a 10-percent chance of selling, because it's worth paying a tenth of a cent for a one-in-ten chance at earning a whole cent.

Or instead of buying back unsold copies, the publisher could deliver copies on consignment, demand nine cents the next day for each copy that sold and ask for a tenth of a cent for each copy that did not. Wait, this is sounding familiar...

That, by analogy, is why a publisher is willing to distribute more books to retailers than it expects to sell and why it's willing to take them back if they don't sell -- because books have high fixed costs and low variable costs.

 

[ForceUser]

RPGs require commitment, so much so that many of us look down upon folks who don't put in the time to familiarize themselves with the rules.

When most people think of games, they think of things short, easy to play, and not requiring a lot of thought. RPGs are the exact opposite. So there are many more people interested in genres that RPGs portray---fantasy, sci fi, and so on---than in RPGs themselves.

At the end of the day this is a hobby, and like most hobbies, relatively few are willing (or able!) to invest the time required to make it fun.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

At the end of the day this is a hobby, and like most hobbies, relatively few are willing (or able!) to invest the time required to make it fun.

Hehe, it's been said many times before, and yet it just now finally sunk in that RPGing a hobby. At least for DMs, and likely for many players.

I'm curious now if CRPGs are considered to be hobbies by their players. Or are they something else?

 

[Jhaelen]

But the obvious counterpoint is to question how many people who play P&P RPGs actually roleplay either.

Good point. It's true that some pen & paper rpg players never bother to roleplay. I generally try to encourage some roleplaying in my games, but it's not for everyone. Some players are really just interested in the tactical challenge. Most players fall somewhere inbetween, enjoying both.

Re Ariosto:
If I remember correctly, we have to thank Dave Arneson that D&D became a role-playing game. If Gary Gygax had been the sole creator, all we'd have today would be a small-unit wargame (and it probably wouldn't be anything anyone today would still remember or play).

 

[cattoy]

If I remember correctly, we have to thank Dave Arneson that D&D became a role-playing game. If Gary Gygax had been the sole creator, all we'd have today would be a small-unit wargame (and it probably wouldn't be anything anyone today would still remember or play).

At its core, 4e is a small unit wargame.

Ask anyone in the RPGA about making or breaking a table and they'll tell you all about class/role balance and say not a word about having a straight man, a comedy relief guy, a wingman, a FNG, star-crossed lovers, tragic hero or any archetype that a storyteller or author might be concerned with.

I think Gary would have loved 4e.

 

[ForceUser]

At its core, 4e is a small unit wargame.

Ask anyone in the RPGA about making or breaking a table and they'll tell you all about class/role balance and say not a word about having a straight man, a comedy relief guy, a wingman, a FNG, star-crossed lovers, tragic hero or any archetype that a storyteller or author might be concerned with.

I think Gary would have loved 4e.

That's why I like it. It gives rules for things that need rules---swinging a sword, etc.---and leaves flexible things that don't require fixed solutions, such as sweet-talking a guard to get inside the city armory. As DM I can just assign a DC or hand-wave it, depending on the nature of the character.

 

[Gentlegamer]

At its core, 4e is a small unit wargame.

Ask anyone in the RPGA about making or breaking a table and they'll tell you all about class/role balance and say not a word about having a straight man, a comedy relief guy, a wingman, a FNG, star-crossed lovers, tragic hero or any archetype that a storyteller or author might be concerned with.

Tournament =/= representative game-play

 

[maddman75]

Re Ariosto:
If I remember correctly, we have to thank Dave Arneson that D&D became a role-playing game. If Gary Gygax had been the sole creator, all we'd have today would be a small-unit wargame (and it probably wouldn't be anything anyone today would still remember or play).

Actually, Dungeons & Dragons wasn't the first roleplaying game, just the first commercially available one. The first was Braunstein. A military style game where players took the roles of individual agents, trying to achieve different goals in a town.

Arenson was the first player, under the game's creator and first GM, Major David Wesely.

He lied, swindled, improvised, and played his character to the hilt. He came to the game with fake CIA ID he’d mocked up, so when another player “captured” and searched him he could whip them out. Other players were still moving pieces around the board and issuing orders like a wargame while Dave Arneson was running circles around them and changing the whole scenario. He was winning the game entirely by roleplaying.

You may think of Dave Arneson as one of the godfathers of GMing, but even before that he was the godfather of players. He was, literally, the proto-player.

Arenson was the first player as we think of the term. he and Gygax took off with D&D. When they showed it to Wesely he had no interest in the game, as he had no interest in fantasy.