Quote from: Spinachcat;645576We are in what may be a unique lull in the RPG industry. WotC is dead in the water until 5e comes out. Pathfinder is no longer the shiny new thing. 5e probably won't ship until GenCon 2014. WoD is on life support. Neither WotC nor Paizo are doing any real marketing, outreach or advertising.

The situation is tailor made for a new fresh RPG (or refreshed old favorite) to make a big splash and grab some momentum before 5e shows up. This is the moment for some company to seize the day.

So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?

CGL is pushing Shadowrun quite hard this year.
New Edition
Card Game
Miniature Game

Quote from: David Johansen;645813But those of us who didn't sit at his table can only go by what he wrote in the books.  

Where it says time and aga...


You know what? I can't have this conversation anymore. It's so fucking stupid. You win, whatever.

Plus Gliechman is here so any hope of an honest and/or intelligent conversation coming out of this is nil.

Like on page ten of the DMG "Use Of Miniature Figures With The Game?"  Or the aerial combat rules on page 50 - 53 with ranges in table top inches and turn modes in hexes?  Or the encounter distances in inches on page 52.  Or the heading "Number of Opponents Per Figure" on page 69 in the the combat rules?

Seriously, sometimes I think you guys are just offended at the notion that new people might get into gaming and enjoy doing it differently than you happened to do it in 1972.

You're all pissed off because I'm arguing for a product that can compete in the existing marketplace.  And it happens to resemble some of the stated goals of fourth edition.

The goals were fine, IMO, it was the implementation and marketing that make New Coke look like a brilliant success.

No. Nobody's pissed off for one thing. I know this is the internet and everything but not everyone's frothing at the mouth as soon as the word "fuck" is uttered, especially not on the RPG Site.

In fact, people simply disagree with you because (1) you are wrong, and (2) because this is the same bullshit being debated over and over again by the same people defending the same failed ideas over and over, like "AD&D was meant for miniatures, man! Look at [select quote from DMG]! It's got rules for hex movement too!" Disregarding the entirety of the body of the work and its meaning as an Advanced game system full of various sub-systems usable with different types of campaigns and context, with the assumption that the real master of the show is the actual Dungeon Master, to begin with.

But hey! Whatever, right? There's a section about miniatures in the DMG!

*shakes head* Read your books, people.

Quote from: Piestrio;645822Where it says time and aga...


You know what? I can't have this conversation anymore. It's so fucking stupid. You win, whatever.

Plus Gliechman is here so any hope of an honest and/or intelligent conversation coming out of this is nil.

Lol, so true. I think his crowning appearance was recently in that "bad flags" thread, when he was talking shit to everyone, yet somehow managed to pull an "Why are you mean to me" move, and in such an ingenious manner, than people actually believed and apologised to him.

God dammit, why don't you feed my ego like that you bastards!?

Quote from: Melan;645806And another thread has degenerated. There is less and less reason to come to this site anymore: good-faith discussion is no longer happening. :/

I could form a "Law of 6th Page" - whenever a thread goes above 6th page, it ought to degenerate into bickering, but I am far from blaming neither Internet, as many do, nor these forums. In all human group interactions, as long as discussion continues, the chance of bickering and good faith being lost raises.


Anyway, no true RPGer uses miniatures/doesn't use miniatures when playing. Pick your true Scotsman.

Have I ever said it was exclusively intended for use with miniatures?  No, I've said it said as much on the title page of the Blue Book Basic set and IRRC the white box.  I've said it had that base covered mechanically  and I don't see why it shouldn't allow for both preferences.  I've said that the core mechanics are so well suited to miniatures play that one might think that in conjunction with all the other miniatures oriented references it was intentional.  Yes, that was probably more Brian Blume than Gary Gygax, fair enough.

I have said that I think a starter with a lot of toy value would sell better to people who are in a store, picking a game off the shelf.  I'm saying an all in one purchase is a better introductory product because it doesn't require a body of product knowledge to know what you need.  It says "Dungeons & Dragons" on the box and it's everything you need to play D&D.

It's not stupid or wrong, at least not provably so until someone puts it to the test in the marketplace.  I appreciate that you disagree with my ideas.

But what about a solitaire adventure walk through like the later basic set or the 4e essentials?  Personally I'd rather flip tiles and move figures and actually learn the basics of the rules.  Or perhaps plastic gold pieces, and toy swords and costumes to wear?  Hand puppets?  A series of touchy feely tie in novels or putting the rules in a wooden box with some dice?

The fundamental question is "How do you present this product so it can make a buck and stay viable in the market."  It'd be nice if just being itself could do that, it really would be.  I'd like to see a solid, stable ruleset with good support in the stores.  I'd like to see D&D kick Magic and Warhammer's asses in the sales department.  That might seem extreme, but I'm tired of industry figures hanging their heads in shame and saying "rpgs just aren't a very good product and their time is done."

"Long tail?"  You know where I think you should stick it.

Hey, could all the D&D heads kindly piss off to their own thread, this one was actually interesting for a while. Seriously, fuck D&D, all of its versions, that Old School Religion, and the endless pointless circular talmudic arguments. If it struck an iceberg and vanished tomorrow the hobby would be better off for it. D&D isn't the hobby, and the hobby isn't D&D. Simples, no?

There is a mega market for tabletop roleplaying games, I guarantee it. As someone said earlier, innovative kickstarters are bringing in the bucks. TBZ is ostensibly more or less an RPG, how much did that make? It's all about the image and how the hobby's key strengths are presented.

Quote from: Silverlion;645640The whole "lets get non-gamers" thing is a bust. That ways lies madness.

Why would existing gamers be the only people on the planet who could be interested in RPGs?

At conventions, I see RPGs being played by guys in their 40s, boardgames being played by men and women 20s to 60s and 40k being played by guys in their 20s to 40s.  I rarely seen teen agers anywhere. In the 80s and 90s, we were overrun with teens.

I can't accept that today's teens just don't have our special snowflake imaginations that let us pretend to be elves with laser guns.

Quote from: Silverlion;645640It is easier to hop and WOW for two hours than get five busy friends together on the same day. Of course for me, the latter is worth about ten thousand times the former, but I admit to being a bit strange that way.

This is a failure of the RPG industry to make make gaming more accessible. WotC has finally tried to do something with Encounters, but it is too little and too late and with too little marketing.

The RPG companies were all about selling books and forgot that the entire hobby depends on GMs getting groups together. The RPGA was a good idea, but neither TSR or WotC put enough support into the infrastructure and instead spent all their time trying to monetize it.

Quote from: J Arcane;645651Man, H&H wouldn't even exist without the D&D vacuum.

Please elaborate on this.

Also, will you be doing a marketing / advertising / promotion campaign for H&H? Will it just be online or will you be promoting it offline as well?

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;645655The general masses do not tabletop role-play.  Magic cards or pogs are more their thing.

According to US Demographics, there are 88 million Gen Xers and 80 million Gen Yers. That's a shitload of people. If gaming could appeal to just 1% of them, then we are talking 1,680,000 new gamers.

We don't need the general masses. We just need 1 out of every 100 people between 15 and 50. Why is that impossible?

Quote from: Soylent Green;645681Maybe the new Star Wars is exactly that;

Maybe. Has anyone seen offline adverts for the new SW game?

Quote from: The Traveller;645699Couple this with the industry leaders not apparently caring much about the industry (Wizards, SJG, WW) along with a hilarious across the board failure to grasp the fundamental unique advantage of RPGs and you have the current pileup.

Yes.

I don't understand GAMA because they are the one group that should be doing much more to unite the industry leaders and the rank and file to promote the hobby which increases the business.

Quote from: The Traveller;645736The industry needs a new name.

I agree. "Everyone knows" that RPGs is something you play on the computer.

Storygames was a great name. Too bad that name was surrendered and then shit upon by both the Forge and the anti-Forge.

Quote from: The Traveller;645736b) The core strength of RPGs, the manifestation of spontaneous imagination in a form that many people can interact with has been utterly ignored by the industry.

Monetizing imagination is tough.

Legos does it because they own the tools. RPGs tried to do it by selling us piles of books with rules. At best, RPGs could do it by selling us more setting, more concepts, more how-to-imagine, but sadly, hardcore gamers buy more crunch than fluff and that's how we got here.

Quote from: jibbajibba;645741I am in an interesting position currently as my new game group are all novices, students that have never played RPGs before.

How did they even find out about RPGs?

What make them take the first step to join a group?

Quote from: David Johansen;645743But, my contention is that the Kickstarter is making it possible for new games and products to reach the market.

Very true, but only to the established market.

Quote from: ggroy;645770Wonder how many non-gamers and/or lapsed gamers, looked into D&D and found out very quickly that they couldn't stand the other gamers who showed up at the first few games they played, and subsequently didn't come back.

Sadly, you make an excellent point.

I wonder how many lapsed gamers are people who left gaming because of douche in their old group.

But sadly, I suspect if we all got to shoot "that one guy" there'd be none of us left.  Depending, I suppose on the sequencing of the shooting, you might end up with isolated surviors

Quote from: The Traveller;645832Hey, could all the D&D heads kindly piss off to their own thread

Nah, I think we're done.

Quote from: Spinachcat;645858Why would existing gamers be the only people on the planet who could be interested in RPGs?

At conventions, I see RPGs being played by guys in their 40s, boardgames being played by men and women 20s to 60s and 40k being played by guys in their 20s to 40s.  I rarely seen teen agers anywhere. In the 80s and 90s, we were overrun with teens.

I can't accept that today's teens just don't have our special snowflake imaginations that let us pretend to be elves with laser guns.

I totally agree. I work with kids day in and day out and I can assure you they're much the same as they've always been.

QuoteI agree. "Everyone knows" that RPGs is something you play on the computer.

Storygames was a great name. Too bad that name was surrendered and then shit upon by both the Forge and the anti-Forge.

I like "Adventure Games"

Yeah, "Adventure Games" is okay.  I like "Fantastical Confabulations" but I'm aware that it's just me.

Quote from: Spinachcat;645858Monetizing imagination is tough.

Is it though, much of the entertainment industry could be said to be monetised imagination - the Harry Potter books are monetised imagination, the Lord of the Rings, movies and all. RPGs are different in that they are inviting people to actively use their own imagination, its a different take on the same concept but similar potential is there.

Quote from: Spinachcat;645858Legos does it because they own the tools. RPGs tried to do it by selling us piles of books with rules. At best, RPGs could do it by selling us more setting, more concepts, more how-to-imagine, but sadly, hardcore gamers buy more crunch than fluff and that's how we got here.

It was always easier to market to hardcore gamers, they are the loudest and most visible whether in company feedback, conventions, or on the internet. A good example is that of the Resident Evil movies, the first one was brilliant but the fans of the computer game went bananas, so we were left with an increasingly boring series of John Woo films sans plot or direction, or for the most part, reason. Maybe the people who played the games loved them, I dunno.

The industry needs to change course and reinvent itself I think. Or have an outsider come and do it for them.

Quote from: Spinachcat;645858At conventions, I see RPGs being played by guys in their 40s, boardgames being played by men and women 20s to 60s and 40k being played by guys in their 20s to 40s.  I rarely seen teen agers anywhere. In the 80s and 90s, we were overrun with teens.

I can't accept that today's teens just don't have our special snowflake imagination(...)

Dunno how it is in the USA, but in Poland teenagers rarely go to cons because money.

Quote from: The Traveller;645877It was always easier to market to hardcore gamers, they are the loudest and most visible whether in company feedback, conventions, or on the internet. A good example is that of the Resident Evil movies, the first one was brilliant but the fans of the computer game went bananas, so we were left with an increasingly boring series of John Woo films sans plot or direction, or for the most part, reason. Maybe the people who played the games loved them, I dunno.

The industry needs to change course and reinvent itself I think. Or have an outsider come and do it for them.

Reinventing the wheel can be as much of a folly as claiming it is not broken. Again - RPGs never really had great market to saturate. The beginnings of RPGs were more of an entertainment bubble - DnD tapped swiftly, was the only serious thing...and now, though the market has grown, the amount of decent quality products makes the competition quite cutthroat.

But, as I said, I still think that the Golden Days are yet to come, rather than an age bygone. Though admittedly, for DnD, that ship has sailed.

Quite possibly but Pathfinder is still D&D in all but name.

What I don't see is somebody stepping up to the plate with a product that will change the situation.  It may come.  It might not be what I think would do it.

It might come totally from left field and just settle in and absorb the rpg hobby entirely.  But video games didn't and LARP didn't and Story Games haven't so I'm not sure what would.  Perhaps mountain biking or hiking?  I dunno, with the kids at the store on Saturday I might as well start a boyscout troop and buy a minivan.

So, if there is something that could do it I can't imagine what it would be.  That doesn't mean it doesn't or can't exist but it does mean I don't know what it would be.