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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jessica" data-source="post: 6797513" data-attributes="member: 6796107">I think without a major change in RPGs do things, that they are going to get hurt badly in the future. Look at how we get people into RPGs in the first place as one example. People get into RPGs most of the time from someone else who is already into RPGs. It's like some kind of weird vampire-esque bloodline where I was turned into a mega-nerd by one of my friends when I was a teenager after being introduced to D&D and he was turned into a turbo-virgin by his father. It kinda has to be that way because I think RPG core products aren't designed for new people but are for people who already know most of the rules from prior editions/campaigns. I'm pretty sure if your average nerd who hadn't heard about D&D before read through the PHB, DMG, and MM they still probably wouldn't know WTF D&D even was or how to play it.On top of that, look at the business model for selling RPGs. You either order them online from an internet retailer or you buy them from a game store where people actually play the game so people can get introduced there. However, more and more people are buying from internet retailers(how many people out there openly proclaimed the only reason they bought SCAG was because they could get it for like $20 from Amazon?) and I'm sure most of those game stores are relying on card games and miniatures to keep their doors open while a bunch of freeloading nerds come in to play a game of D&D once or twice a week in their store. People are so anti-splat that I imagine the profit the stores do make is just from selling the core rules and after people already own those(assuming they didn't get it from 4-chan or from Amazon) then what are they going to make profit on after that? How many of those shop keepers are only keeping D&D in their store because they have respect for it as either their own hobby or as an uber-nerd icon? Which kinda brings me to the next point. How much longer is D&D going to be a major perma-virgin icon? Back in the 70s and 80s it was pretty much the most popular form of fantasy nerdery in existence. You get to the 90s and there is more mainstream competition in the form of video game RPGs(iirc I played Final Fantasy before I ever played D&D), but there are probably a ton of geeks whose preferred method of never seeing the sun is D&D. You get to the 00s and MMOs are taking over D&D's territory in a lot of ways. I know WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more people who play WoW then who actually play D&D. Almost every D&D player I know is involved in some sort of MMO, but the reverse definitely isn't true. How many more years is it until the preferred method of making sure your offspring never have offspring of their own is going on MMO dungeon runs together instead of sitting at a table pretending to be elves and dwarves and wizards and stuff? Finally, is D&D helping itself by trying to stick as closely as possible to it's roots? The stuff all the elder geeks grew up on was all Grey Mouser this and Elric that and Conan the Barbarian and what not, but I'm 31 and I only have the vaguest idea of what those are outside of having seen the Ahnuld Conan movies. I'm pretty sure younger people won't even know that much about them. So many people still can't handle good aligned Drow, how the hell are they going to handle a generation of new players who might consider undead or orcs or robots or whatever to be just as valid protagonists as elves and gnomes and halflings? Even look at something simple like vampires. To all you old geeks, they were those 70s Hammer horror movies where Peter Cushing stabbed some pointy teethed chicks with gratuitous amounts of cleavage in the heart before getting in a one-on-one battle with Christopher Lee. To young people, they can easily be protagonists. That has been happening since like the mid-90s. Hell, I think one of my first characters in D&D ended up being an elf vampire of some kind.</blockquote>

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