TheRPGSite

This is a follow up to jdrakeh's thread.

I don't think 'd20' has been successful in general. People make games using the system, some decent, some bad. I don't see any of these games bringing lots of new people into the hobby though.

So really the question is: has D&D 3 been successful?

I'm not sure. I see some people playing it in my community. It's certainly _more_ successful than any other RPG currently out there, where 'success' is defined in terms of butts in seats playing the game per unit time. (That's how I define success, from a hobby point of view. You could also define it from a money point of view or from an art point of view, but I'm not concerned with those in these thread.)

Now: are there more people playing RPGs now because of D&D3 than there were six years ago? I think there arguably are, actually. I don't know how many more, but I have the vague sense that there's some slow growth coming on. So by that measure, it's a success.

However, there are two sources for doubt:

1) D&D 3 is a complex system. It's a hassle to write your own material for as a hobbyist, which is why I got out just at the point where I was starting to get opportunities to write material for various RPG companies. However, a lot of the joy of old D&D and AD&D was just the relative ease of making shit up. I think the new design improves a lot of tinkering problems but greatly reduces the ease of making shit up. Will this sustain an interest among gamers in an age of increasing sophistication of computer games? Will it attract intelligent, dramatic people to be the 'good DM' that 'made the game' for earlier versions? If not, how will it substitute for that?

The worry here is that D&D will die a slow death because the system cannot sustain interest in itself over the long term, except among a core demographic of irritating teenage boys (of whom I used to be one, of course).

2) If the design had been more friendly to the public in certain ways, would D&D be even bigger now? Is the success much less of a success than it could have been if something had been done differently?

At least Ryan Dancey once supplied some numbers. He said there´s now a million more people playing D&D each month than were there at the final days of 2nd Edition.

Quote from: SettembriniHe said there´s now a million more people playing D&D each month than were there at the final days of 2nd Edition.

I believe there are still fewer players than in the early 80s with AD&D and B/X D&D.

1st Ed > 3rd Ed > 2nd Ed

Quote from: SettembriniAt least Ryan Dancey once supplied some numbers. He said there´s now a million more people playing D&D each month than were there at the final days of 2nd Edition.

Which is pretty meaningless because it's saying, "There's a million more people playing D&D each month during the highest point of the D&D3 craze than were playing AD&D2 during it's lowest ebb of popularity."

Are we discussing D&D, d20 or d20-not-counting-D&D?  Anyone who doubts the success of D&D should trying buying all their RPGs off the shelves of chain bookstores for six or twelve months, just to see how that works out.  You'll find that D&D has the most mainstream penetration the hobby has seen maybe since the last big D&D boom.

The rest of the d20 world is a much more tenous thing to discuss in terms of success.

- With respect to d20, I don't think the whole system has had much 'success' except as it attaches to D&D, so I'm focusing on D&D.

- I agree with you about market penetration, Jeff. I think the game has been at least a mild success from a hobby point of view. The questions are (a) can the system sustain or improve on that success and (b) could a different system with similar marketing/sales etc. behind it do even better with the D&D name? At least, that's what I'm interested in.

A) The only way I see Wizards improving or sustaining their position is to answer the New Player Question and the What About MMORPGS Issue.  The first question could be solved by a return to more modular complexity in the vein of the Basic/Expert/Companion/Master system.  Maybe not that exact methodology, but something similar.  Regarding the second issue I have no real answer to propose.

B) At this point I think the only way D&D could be unseated is by a better system that markets first to a non-English market, dominates that markets, then appears in America and England with a full head of steam as the new great game from Korea or China or whatever.  Like the way manga seem to be slowly choking the life out of DC and Marvel.

Quote from: jrientsAre we discussing D&D, d20 or d20-not-counting-D&D?  Anyone who doubts the success of D&D should trying buying all their RPGs off the shelves of chain bookstores for six or twelve months, just to see how that works out.  You'll find that D&D has the most mainstream penetration the hobby has seen maybe since the last big D&D boom.

The rest of the d20 world is a much more tenous thing to discuss in terms of success.

Interesting thing: in those mainstream bookstores I frequent here in the UK, if there's D&D books there's always World of Darkness books as well. There will probably be Star Wars D20 books. Beyond that? It's a real crapshoot. Non-D&D, non-Star Wars D20 games have as much chance to crop up as, say, WFRP or Big Eyes Small Mouth or Conspiracy X.

Quote from: GabrielWhich is pretty meaningless because it's saying, "There's a million more people playing D&D each month during the highest point of the D&D3 craze than were playing AD&D2 during it's lowest ebb of popularity."

That's not meaningless, it's just not saying what Dancey wants us to believe it says.  The real message here is that Wizards has recaptured a hardcore base.  I suggest that the next logical step would be to broaden the appeal to widen the demographic.  Like running an election campaign right or left in a primary but then making a beeline for the center for the general election.

Quote from: CalithenaI don't think 'd20' has been successful in general.

Well, I think you're wrong.  I see stuff like "d20 Modern" and its official offshoots everywhere.  Every gamer I've met knows about the game.  Many of them play it.

What the hell kind of measure of "success" are you aiming for here anyway?  Does the game have to cure cancer and bring us into peaceful communication with extra-galatic aliens?

It's a numbers question, Tony. You may be right; I'm just guessing. My anecdotal evidence seeing what people around me play, 3e is king, a few people play Star Wars and nWoD and AD&D, and the rest seems to just be noise.

I don't know of anyone who was into, say, chess or anime or spy movies or 'lost' or whatever, who picked up d20 modern cold and said, "huh. This looks fun - I never played a game like this before, but why don't I give it a whirl." That's a major part of the kind of success I'm talking about. Maybe there are one or two, but basically it's a game for people who already game.

I guess I also have to count what Jeff mentions as success though - if some guy hasn't played D&D since 1992 and gets back into it because he sees the PHB on the shelf at Borders, then that seems like it's a success.

Also, if someone makes a game that gets people who read and think about games to actually play, that's a success on my view too.

People spending time gaming at the table who wouldn't be doing that otherwise. Butts in seats playing RPGs. That's the kind of success I'm after, and I don't think any d20 product other than D&D or maybe Star Wars has really done that to any significant measure. But I'm happy to be wrong if so.

Quote from: CalithenaI don't think 'd20' has been successful in general.

Define "success." 'Cause d20 is selling. Here's a quick comparison from Amazon.com:

d20 Modern: released November 1, 2002, Sales rank 10,190
nWoD corebook: released September 30, 2004, Sales rank 210,355
Savage Worlds second printing: released March 1, 2005, Sales rank 108,535
GURPS core character book: released January 2005, Sales rank 42,905

d20 Modern is doing damn well for a book released so long ago. Does sales=success? Well, if we're talking business, I'd say it does.

Quote from: CalithenaIt's a hassle to write your own material for as a hobbyist, which is why I got out just at the point where I was starting to get opportunities to write material for various RPG companies.

Whether or not it's a hassle is a matter of taste.

Quote from: CalithenaThe worry here is that D&D will die a slow death because the system cannot sustain interest in itself over the long term, except among a core demographic of irritating teenage boys (of whom I used to be one, of course).

Except time has already proven you wrong.

Quote from: Calithena2) If the design had been more friendly to the public in certain ways, would D&D be even bigger now?

Demonstrate that the public wants something other than what D&D is offering. When you can demonstrate that it's the mechanics that are keeping the public from picking D&D or d20 up, then we can proceed along these lines.

Seanchai

Quote from: Calithena- With respect to d20, I don't think the whole system has had much 'success' except as it attaches to D&D, so I'm focusing on D&D.

And yet is apparently outselling other "generic" games, even ones you might forward as more friendly to the public.

Seanchai

d20 is already dying, but D&D will live.

Seanchai,

I'm offering the theses for argument. You defend your side spiritedly. But I'm not necessarily on the other side.

Do you think those amazon d20 modern buyers are new gamers? Because as I said, making a million dollars or creating a genuinely new and interesting way to roleplay are NOT success for purposes of this thread. The ONLY thing that counts as success for my purposes in this thread is creating more butts in seats playing RPGs. You can talk about other stuff if you want of course - it's a free internet.

I think the jury is still out on 3rd edition's long-term success in this sense. I grant that it has had some and I do believe (based on anecdotal and a limited amount of inside information) that it's undergoing something of a 'second wave' (or even third) now.  WotCs annual report supports that too. Is this 'proven wrong'? Well, first of all, I didn't assert it, I asked it as a question, and second, I wonder if it would be possible to do better.

I agree with you that one thing the public wants is very close to what D&D is offering. The question - which I wouldn't be asking if I had a convincing answer ready to go - is whether the current rules actually provide that as well as they could, granted that they provide it to a certain degree. The answer might be yes or no, that's what I was hoping to get some insight into out of this thread.

You need to define what the goals were to determine whether it's succesful.

Quote from: TonyLBWell, I think you're wrong.  I see stuff like "d20 Modern" and its official offshoots everywhere.  Every gamer I've met knows about the game.  Many of them play it.

How many non-gamers do you know who have tried it?  I suspect plenty of people who don't self-identify as gamers have tried D&D.  I suspect the overwhelming majority of people who self-taught themselves their first RPG started with D&D.

If the measure of success that is being touted is that a game is only successful when it is the first game for a substantial number of gamers (and moreover gamers who were not recruited by friends who were already gamers, but rather spontaneously decided to take up gaming due to the book) then that really makes very few games of any sort "successes."  Fewer, obviously, the greater the number of new gamers you need before you count it as "substantial."

Maybe D&D and Vampire are clear-cut successes by that metric ... and, I suspect, not much else.  Are you cool with that?

Quote from: TonyLBMaybe D&D and Vampire are clear-cut successes by that metric ... and, I suspect, not much else.  Are you cool with that?

No!  The complete opposite, in fact!  I want more games to achieve that level of success.  But every time we start talking about "well, I know lots of gamers who play that" or "every gamer has heard of that" we've pretty much taken that goal off the table.  I hate that.  Sometimes it's like the people in this industry can't see past their own nose.

Ah, I wasn't so much asking whether you were okay with the phenomenon.  What I was asking was (to put it more explicitly) "Are you okay with defining things in a way that implies that you're defining 99% of RPGs as flat-out 'unsuccessful'?"

Quote from: TonyLBAh, I wasn't so much asking whether you were okay with the phenomenon.  What I was asking was (to put it more explicitly) "Are you okay with defining things in a way that implies that you're defining 99% of RPGs as flat-out 'unsuccessful'?"

I think any one criteria is going to fall short of providing a complete view.  New blood in the hobby is very important and pretty much everyone, including Wizards, is doing a half-assed or worse job of it.  Another measure people like to talk about is sales.  I'm much more keen on whether people seem to be actually playing the games, myself.  For example, I know lots of people who own GURPS sourcebooks of various stripes.  Nearly every hobbyist locally seems to have at least one or two.  But there's only one active GURPS campaign in a vast sea of D&D.  Is GURPS successful?  From my point of view, where a game is an artifact designed to enable actual play, not so much.

Quote from: jrientsI think any one criteria is going to fall short of providing a complete view.

Okay ... then I say that d20 is wildly successful by all sorts of criteria.  You can, of course, say that it's wholly unsuccessful by other sorts of criteria.  We can both be right, and everyone can be happy.

Sound good?

Quote from: TonyLBWe can both be right, and everyone can be happy.

Sound good?

Sure thing.  I didn't come to this thread looking for a fight, after all.  I would totally agree that there are several perfectly good metrics that would indicate success for D&D, d20 in general, and d20 Modern as well.  I played d20 Modern/Future on Sunday and had a helluva good time.  That's my personal number one criteria.

FWIW, I don't begrudge anyone other definitions of success, and wouldn't tell people who don't want to measure themselves by this yardstick that they should by any means. If you design a cool homebrew or whatever and play it with your friends, or get an RPG company going and get hundreds or thousands of existing gamers to play your fun new game instead, I'm cool by calling that success. It's just not what I'm after here.

Cali, it might help if you let the cat out of the bag re. what you have in mind as a possible alternative to 3E.

It sounds as though what you're looking for is a fantasy game for adult non-gamers as opposed to teenage gamers, or former teenage gamers. Well, Wizards themselves did try to provide that, but Everway tanked.

Calithena, if you're defining "butts in seats" as successful may I suggest getting catalogs from various conventions and counting the # of tickets bought for each? It won't be a perfect count because some people won't show up, and others will use generics, but it should be close.

I'd also suggest checking both big and small conventions, given the differences in turnouts between the sizes.

My local con was this month.  It's a small con, say 400 attendees on a good year.  The RPGA's Living Greyhawk section outweighed every other RPG combined.  Back in the 2nd edition era I ran a three round AD&D tournament for a couple of years and we got similar results from that.  Heck, I ran a 10 person Basic D&D game this year and the mofo filled.  The only other game that consistently fills year end and year out is Call of Cthulhu.

Individual conventions are going to be swayed pretty heavily by the people who have made an effort in past years to really put on some stellar games.  Many conventions have a year-to-year continuity that people find reassuring, and so they'll deliberately seek out the "sequel" to a game that everyone was excited about last time.

Which is not to say that the convention-survey idea wouldn't work, simply that I recommend a survey broad enough to smooth out such local variation.  The butts-in-seats statistics at some of the conventions I've been working the past few years, for instance, don't look a lot like what I hear discussed as commonplace by other people.

Quote from: CalithenaSo really the question is: has D&D 3 been successful?

I'm not sure. I see some people playing it in my community. It's certainly _more_ successful than any other RPG currently out there, where 'success' is defined in terms of butts in seats playing the game per unit time. (That's how I define success, from a hobby point of view. You could also define it from a money point of view or from an art point of view, but I'm not concerned with those in these thread.)

Now: are there more people playing RPGs now because of D&D3 than there were six years ago? I think there arguably are, actually. I don't know how many more, but I have the vague sense that there's some slow growth coming on. So by that measure, it's a success.

D&D 3e is a success by any objective measure you can apply.

It sells the most books and has (BY FAR) the largest player base. It has also brought "lapsed" gamers either back into the hobby, or at least back into the "buying D&D books" part of the hobby.

As far as comparing number of players to the heady days of the early 80's, that's about as fair as wondering why no show on the air now gets ratings like MASH.

There's not three stations anymore, and the options for games have expanded WAY beyond Wargames, TTRPGs or Board Games. We now have way more choices, including console games, MMOs, CCGs and miniatures games, to name just a few.

M*A*S*H was a great show!

Nowadays they produce Grey´s Anatomy. Sad times indeed.

Quote from: RPGObjects_chuckIt sells the most books and has (BY FAR) the largest player base. It has also brought "lapsed" gamers either back into the hobby, or at least back into the "buying D&D books" part of the hobby.

That's what it did for me.

I had essentially stopped gaming for a good many years, apart from an odd Earthdawn campaign.  When 3e came out, it reawakened all of my old fun times gaming.

I started a D&D campaign a week after I got the new PHB, and had 12 players for a while because I didn't want to turn anyone away :)

-O

Calithena, what are you, Kiero's twin brother or something? "Who's Monte Cook?" said Kiero, as he pretended to be a gamer.

Of course d20 is successful, and so is D&D3.5. Everyone outside the Forge knows that, and even at the Forge they know it but wish it weren't true.

The only way a gamer could seriously believe that d20 and D&D3.5 are unsuccessful is if they never got out to game stores and clubs and groups because were imprisoned in Ron Edwards' basement as playtesters for his games.

Quote from: CalithenaThe ONLY thing that counts as success for my purposes in this thread is creating more butts in seats playing RPGs.

You've defined success...oddly. Taco Bell executive: "We've sold 60 million dollars of our new Deep Fried Crunchy Soft Chalupa." Another Taco Bell executive: "Yes, but did we create a lot of fast food customers? We're not successful if we're selling 60 million dollars to our loyal consumers..."

Seanchai

Quote from: jrientsNew blood in the hobby is very important and pretty much everyone, including Wizards, is doing a half-assed or worse job of it.

But roleplaying games are the easiest of sells to the general public.

Quote from: jrientsI'm much more keen on whether people seem to be actually playing the games, myself.

Yeah, but people playing games won't keep your favorite company in business. What they need is people to buy their games, whether or not they play them. It's sales that drives the industry—because that's what allows your favorite game company to put out their next game line, which hopefully excites the consumer enough to purchase, which hopefully allows the company to put out the next game, and so on.

Seanchai

So Calithena, can you name the RPG that has brought more new players into the hobby than any other?

That had such a huge impact that the overall player demography CHANGED as a result of its presence?

Because, by your definition, it should be the most successful RPG of all time.

I believe that given the criteria put forth in this thread, 3e has been a huge success. This belief is based both on my several years as a book store manager of a large chain book store, as well as the two members of my current gaming group who started rpging with 3e and have never played any previous versions, both of whom are younger than 25.

Quote from: RPGObjects_chuckD&D 3e is a success by any objective measure you can apply.

It sells the most books and has (BY FAR) the largest player base. It has also brought "lapsed" gamers either back into the hobby, or at least back into the "buying D&D books" part of the hobby.

As far as comparing number of players to the heady days of the early 80's, that's about as fair as wondering why no show on the air now gets ratings like MASH.

There's not three stations anymore, and the options for games have expanded WAY beyond Wargames, TTRPGs or Board Games. We now have way more choices, including console games, MMOs, CCGs and miniatures games, to name just a few.

I think that about sums it up. D&D and D20 are both successful games in their own right by virtually any physically measurable statistic you can use to guage success.

Are they perfect? Of course not.

Are they the BEST games out there? Well that is really a matter for each individual to decide for themselves.

Personally I hold D&D/d20 to be one of my alltime favorites, and many of my other favorite games like True20 and Mutants and Masterminds are derived from the OGL or are at least hevily influenced by D&D such as DragonQuest and Alternity.

If you think D&D/d20 sucks, that is your perogative and your oppinion, but it is silly to keep insisting that the game is completely lacking in quality in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

TO BE FAIR though, I think the same could be said for WOD. It isn't my thing, but I have to acknowledge it for reaching out to new audiences in a way that few games have been able to do since (though according to Pundit these people are somehow causing the collapse of the industry). I also acknowledge WOD for brining in more female players to a hobby that has long been grossly male dominated.

I think the question is poorly phrased.

Has D20 grown the hobby?

Of course not.  It's lured grognards back to buying product and has energised a few existing gamers as well as inspired lots of gamers to buy more stuff but has it brought any new blood into the hobby?

Given that a sizeable chunk of the D20 years coincided with the explosion in popularity of MMORPGs I find that possibility, frankly, laughable.  D20 was all about consolidating an existing market and wringing more money out of it.

In terms of actually getting new people to become gamers then I'd argue that Vampire was the last "successful"RPG.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalIn terms of actually getting new people to become gamers then I'd argue that Vampire was the last "successful"RPG.

Ding ding ding!

We have a winnar!

And given that, even though WOD lured MILLIONS of gamers who had never gamed before into the market, and given that many of those gamers never played a game EXCEPT the WOD, and given that WOD *still* couldnt get a larger player base than D&D...

Well, that all adds up to make the OP's criteria of "success" a really bad one.

Not that White Wolf shouldnt be proud of what they accomplished with WOD, especially with making a game that appealed to a new market.

But there's still nothing about being a DISTANT second that translates to being more successful than the game in first place.

Especially since White Wolf has been losing audience for awhile now.

I suspect White Wolf was only successful at bringing people in because their game happened to coincide with the prevailing counterculture fad of the 90s: "the goths".

Those fuckers were everywhere back then. And it was totally like a package deal. you join up, you get some mascara, a cure CD, and a Vampire rulebook, and you were set.

But it was a fad. I (privately) don't think most of those people stayed gamers. I mean, some definitely did. But I think when it came time for these kids to put away their dracula capes and edward scissorhands videotapes, many of them put away their Vampire books right along with them.

Quote from: SeanchaiYeah, but people playing games won't keep your favorite company in business. What they need is people to buy their games, whether or not they play them. It's sales that drives the industry—because that's what allows your favorite game company to put out their next game line, which hopefully excites the consumer enough to purchase, which hopefully allows the company to put out the next game, and so on.

You're making some assumptions about my favorite game company (http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/cumberland.htm) that do not necessarily stand up to scrutiny.  My gut tells me that if S. John Ross sold a million unplayed copies of Fly From Evil he'd find a use for the dough, but he'd also be heartbroken.

More to the point, as much as I love Ross's work and that of several others, I have no obligation to pay the man's bills.  I am of the opinion that the rpg industry exists to service the rpg hobby, not vice versa.

Quote from: Abyssal MawI suspect White Wolf was only successful at bringing people in because their game happened to coincide with the prevailing counterculture fad of the 90s: "the goths".

You're right, but then I think the original iteration of D&D rode in on the geek media boom that began with Star Wars, so the situations are roughly analogous (although D&D was the first rpg and had novelty value in that regard, I would still maintain that would have struggled in a market not softened up by Star Wars). I guess we won't see it again until we see another geek fad cross over.

Ned

Quote from: jrientsI'm much more keen on whether people seem to be actually playing the games, myself.

Based on market research I've seen and anecdotal evidence, by this measure D&D's dominance of the RPG market is even more striking.

There are literally millions of people who play D&D regularly that aren't active customers. Either because they didn't upgrade when a new edition came along, or they've been running their homebrew since the day they got their three 3.0 corebooks and never looked back.

The market research Ryan Dancey did for D&D 3.0 even went so far as to take steps to EXCLUDE active players that weren't active consumers, since they weren't going to cater to those folks.

The fact that we're still having this conversation seven years after D20 came out shows that it succeeded at something.

Quote from: JamesVThe fact that we're still having this conversation seven years after D20 came out shows that it succeeded at something.

Shit stirring? :)

Quote from: GRIMShit stirring? :)

Nothing succeeds like success. :keke:

I think D20, through D&D, put itself squarely in the zeitgeist of today's hobby and its ups and downs will be be considered the definitive force at the time. People bought, tinkered, played, talked excitedly, and argued ferociously over this system.

It seems to have been succesful at being unforgettable.

Quote from: jrientsYou're making some assumptions about my favorite game company (http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/cumberland.htm) that do not necessarily stand up to scrutiny.  My gut tells me that if S. John Ross sold a million unplayed copies of Fly From Evil he'd find a use for the dough, but he'd also be heartbroken.

I'm not sure what your point is. The company doesn't need money? Where does whether or not S. John Ross would be heartbroken or not enter the picture?

Quote from: jrientsMore to the point, as much as I love Ross's work and that of several others, I have no obligation to pay the man's bills.

I'm not suggesting otherwise—I'm pro-consumer. But it's still sales which allows the industry to grow. Whether you or not you should purchase a particularly product—or any product—is up to you.

Seanchai

Quote from: SeanchaiI'm not suggesting otherwise—I'm pro-consumer. But it's still sales which allows the industry to grow. Whether you or not you should purchase a particularly product—or any product—is up to you.

Seanchai

Yep, when you look at the difference between, say, the fan development scenes for FASERIP or Alternity, and the fan development scene for D&D, the ability, through the license, to make a commercial product has an enormous effect on the landscape.

I'm writing an OSRIC book *right now*. Now Im a fan and even though I do this full time, Im not counting on my OSRIC book to pay the bills for me (True 20 and d20 Modern do that just fine). However, I can honestly say I wouldn't be doing this is if there wasn't a potential to reap a reward.

People will be supporting d20, D&D, d20 Modern, M&M etc for decades, in ways they won't be supporting other game systems, because they'll be able to charge for the products, maybe include a little art, legally put the books on major e-book sites and still break even.

That's something I'd certainly call success.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalI think the question is poorly phrased.

Has D20 grown the hobby?

Of course not.  It's lured grognards back to buying product and has energised a few existing gamers as well as inspired lots of gamers to buy more stuff but has it brought any new blood into the hobby?

Given that a sizeable chunk of the D20 years coincided with the explosion in popularity of MMORPGs I find that possibility, frankly, laughable.  D20 was all about consolidating an existing market and wringing more money out of it.

In terms of actually getting new people to become gamers then I'd argue that Vampire was the last "successful"RPG.

Based on my experience in my local rpg scene, I'll have to disagree, fortunately. There are a great many young dnd rpgers around my area, and most I've talked to have never played anything but dnd 3.0 or 3.5. It's pretty cool actually, I go into the large game store here and there's always kids hanging out playing/talking dnd. Takes me back.

Quote from: GabrielWhich is pretty meaningless because it's saying, "There's a million more people playing D&D each month during the highest point of the D&D3 craze than were playing AD&D2 during it's lowest ebb of popularity."

I wouldn't call brining a MILLION people back to RPGs "meaningless"; but hey, I guess for some people who don't actually want RPGs to be successful, or who specifically want D&D to fail...

RPGPundit

Quote from: CalithenaSeanchai,

I'm offering the theses for argument. You defend your side spiritedly. But I'm not necessarily on the other side.

Do you think those amazon d20 modern buyers are new gamers? Because as I said, making a million dollars or creating a genuinely new and interesting way to roleplay are NOT success for purposes of this thread. The ONLY thing that counts as success for my purposes in this thread is creating more butts in seats playing RPGs. You can talk about other stuff if you want of course - it's a free internet.

D&D is the one that gets new players in. D20 (modern or whichever) is what dominates the RPG market itself.  The two each have their role to play (pardon the pun).

The point is that the sales ranking that D20 Modern has (vastly beating the shit out of all other mainstream games) indicates that whether they're new players or not, new people are getting into D20. Those people might be moving from D&D, or moving from other RPGs, but they're moving. D20 is a success, a bigger success by far that the WoD, Savage Worlds, or whatever game you like.

QuoteI think the jury is still out on 3rd edition's long-term success in this sense. I grant that it has had some and I do believe (based on anecdotal and a limited amount of inside information) that it's undergoing something of a 'second wave' (or even third) now.  WotCs annual report supports that too. Is this 'proven wrong'? Well, first of all, I didn't assert it, I asked it as a question, and second, I wonder if it would be possible to do better.

Oh for FUCK'S SAKE. At what fucking point is the Jury ever "In" with you fuckers?
Tell me, tell me motherfucker: What has to happen, concretely, for you to just fucking admit D&D is the most successful RPG in the world, and D&D 3.x has been a huge fucking success that SAVED ROLEPLAYING from the stupid as shit fuckhead swine who had driven gaming into the ground with failed concepts like Story-based gaming???

QuoteI agree with you that one thing the public wants is very close to what D&D is offering. The question - which I wouldn't be asking if I had a convincing answer ready to go - is whether the current rules actually provide that as well as they could, granted that they provide it to a certain degree. The answer might be yes or no, that's what I was hoping to get some insight into out of this thread.

ITS YES, MOTHERFUCKER, ITS OBVIOUSLY FUCKING "YES".

I mean shit, I'd love it if what the public liked was a little closer to True20 or Amber or even Warhammer, but its not. What they like is D&D 3.x. A million fucking new people say YES.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditI mean shit, I'd love it if what the public liked was a little closer to True20 or Amber or even Warhammer, but its not. What they like is D&D 3.x. A million fucking new people say YES.

RPGPundit

In fact when you look at the differences between M&M and True 20, you see (imo obviously) exactly what the dominant games are in their genre.

Why is M&M point based? Because supers fans (which in RPG terms means Hero fans) have said repeatedly, for years, that point-based gaming is the way to go and Hero is the most successful non-licensed superhero RPG of all time (by a wide margin).

True has classes. Why does it have classes despite being designed by the designer of M&M? Because D&D fans like classes and they like levels.

Following trends is one of the BEST ways to track real success.

And btw... only counting success as new players is, again, not a good measure of success.

When the NFL announces its attendance statistics, it counts the people who SHOWED UP, not the number who showed up, relative to last year.

So I agree "butts in seats" counts for a lot but we should actually count those butts when counting them, not whether it was more butts this year than last year (though obviously that's important for the future).