By fan goodwill alone Kevin Siembieda has managed to keep Palladium lumbering for nearly 30 years, despite a cavalier attitude towards deadlines, positively amateurish layout, paranoid approach to IP management and generally acting like the crazy old uncle of the RPG industry. Kevin announces a crowdsourced project and, despite his reputation, everybody is like:



Meanwhile in Seattle... for some reason (most likely the prospect of being outsold by a former edition kept in print by someone else), WotC has changed stance from "if you're playing another edition you're a Doing It Wrong!" that we saw at the dawn of 4e, to "it's okay if you play older editions, we support you! Here, we'll even reprint the 1e books. That's how cool we are.", with Monte Cook and Mike Mearls spending a lot of time and words every week, to assure everyone that this will be the Best Edition Ever, with something for everyone from the cult of the white box to the compoundnoun 4efans.

Is fan goodwill the single most important thing in the industry?

It's more then just goodwill. It's also about brand identity, group identity, brand loyalty, feeling of belonging, feeling of participation, suspension of cynicism, and certain large spicing of hope.

Quote from: The Butcher;515161Is fan goodwill the single most important thing in the industry?

Boardgames, cardgames, miniatures wargames are all different.  But for RPGs, a hobby-based industry this size, yes, without a doubt.

I agree with Rincewind. It's very important and touches into a lot of different areas of short and long term marketing strategies. Ignore that, and you're dead in the water with your product, really.

It is the most important thing.  If anything, the OSR movement has proven that the industry, much less any one company, is necessary.  Gamers are perfectly capable of producing and using their own creations if their demand is not being met.

If the gaming population hates you, your game will fail, unless it's the best game ever made. Even then, it won't do well.

Regarding Siembieda, his Palladium fans love him. It's internet trolls that hate him.

The customers are the most important thing in the industry.  The audience is the most important thing in the hobby.

An analogy just occured to me. WotC reprinting 1e is like a parent saying "Don't drink, but if you do, at least do it under my roof where you're safe." Bad parenting, but possibly a smart move business-wise.

I'm pretty sure at this point I'M the most important thing in the industry.

RPGPundit

QuoteIs fan goodwill the single most important thing in the industry?

Yes, yes, a thousand times over for God's sake, YES[/i][/u].

From 2000 to all anyone who didn't slavishly follow WotC's D&D has heard is "lol we know better than you lol" from WotC and its slavish fans.  They have finally gotten it through their thick skulls that D&D fans know what they want out of D&D and the important corollary to that, there is more than one kind of D&D fan.  TSR knew that.  Even bad, horrible old TSR under Lorraine Williams kind of knew that.

Honestly I think WotC got into the same bind that TSR got into (D&D crumbling underneath them) because they started acting like 2e era TSR.  "We know what you want better than you do, fans." is what they said.  And they were wrong.

Quote from: Monster Manuel;515233An analogy just occured to me. WotC reprinting 1e is like a parent saying "Don't drink, but if you do, at least do it under my roof where you're safe." Bad parenting, but possibly a smart move business-wise.

Why is it bad though?  Not the drinking and parenting thing, that's horribly bad, but why is WotC's reprint idea bad?  Are you approaching this from the standpoint of not liking AD&D and therefore thinking it getting attention is a mistake or what?

Loyal fans are an absolute *must* in the RPG industry. And the first step in keeping those fans loyal is to not throw them under the bus. Like WotC did with 4E. So they can kiss my shiny, white ass.

It's a very good thing.

But the single most important thing in the industry is and always has been funky multi-sided dice.

Quote from: TristramEvans;515384the single most important thing in the industry is and always has been funky multi-sided dice.

Here is the voice of sanity. When all is said and done, it's the dice that make this pastime what it is.

I'd place the sense of belonging over fan goodwill. If KS had just started out with some fan goodwill and did not provide a sense of belonging people would have walked out on him a long time ago.