Quote from: P&P;741462The lack of backers is down to his price point and marketing strategy.  A kickstarter for a book that costs $10 to read even in .pdf form is a very hard sell in 2014.

I completely agree.  Newt was basically relying on a small community's good will.

Quote from: Hezrou;741480I don't disagree with you, but there is one factor that I don't think should be overlooked. I have no hard data but with a lot of these niche games I'd be surprised if even 10% of buyers ever actually play these games, much less play regularly. A lot of people who support these things like to read the books and collect them. I'm not necessarily saying there is anything wrong with that, but it skews how to make any inferences or decisions, as a publisher, that would hinge on actual play.

I think it's fair to assume that a fraction of those who buy or download a game will ever end up actually playing it.  I wonder what the numbers are for D&D or Pathfinder.  I wonder what portion of WotC's DDI subscribers participated in the VTT stuff.  Probably not a lot.

Quote from: J Arcane;741531Rift went so far as to actually shut down the RP server for Europe during one of the recent merges. Worldwide there's now only one RP server left for the NA region.

It's just not remotely a priority for any game out there, and the few that have made it one have all largely flopped. The last mainstream MMO I know of that had any sizeable enforced RP community was Everquest, and that was maintained with a kind of ruthless zealotry that ultimately rubbed even many RP-friendly players the wrong way. Some of them crossed over to WoW in the early days, but with no administrative support for their attempts, it has largely fizzled over time.

The plain truth of the matter is that sitting around and play-acting with each other, even virtually, is something I think a great majority of people are almost instinctively uncomfortable with. Adding the anonymity involved with online play seems to actually worsen, rather than improve, chances, because then people are just even more likely to respond with homophobic obscenities.

Roleplaying is arch nerdery. On the great social ladder the only people below regular roleplayers are LARPers and Ren Faire actors.

Unfortunately the "stand around in high traffic public areas and force everyone to listen to your own fanfic play" has really hurt the concept of roleplaying on a RP server, because it's not really roleplaying within the construct of the game world as much as it is simming.  The only game I really know of where there are tabletop-type roleplayers of the "act like your character while you play the game" variety are in LotRO, but of course that went down the tubes when they went Free to Play.

Still, even in WoW or Rift, I find people, who if talked to in an IC manner will respond in kind, as long as you don't act like an attention-starved simmer.

Quote from: CRKrueger;741535Unfortunately the "stand around in high traffic public areas and force everyone to listen to your own fanfic play" has really hurt the concept of roleplaying on a RP server, because it's not really roleplaying within the construct of the game world as much as it is simming.  The only game I really know of where there are tabletop-type roleplayers of the "act like your character while you play the game" variety are in LotRO, but of course that went down the tubes when they went Free to Play.

Still, even in WoW or Rift, I find people, who if talked to in an IC manner will respond in kind, as long as you don't act like an attention-starved simmer.

My wife has been in a few guilds that did the Rift RP thing, and there, thanks to some of the game features, you could get a bit more advanced. With the pocket dimensions you can sort of make your own levels on a limited basis, and some of the better GMs would make up plots to fit existing content.

On the whole though, I find the difficulty is that players just don't have the power to really create or influence content in most games. Ryzom's about the only one I know of that had a level editor with a GM role, the first of it's kind in the genre I think, but that game was an odd duck from the start. Several other games have included content creation tools since, but I think even the new Neverwinter game is a strictly hands-off affair when it comes time to actually playing user-generated content.

The result is that there's no real drama or conflict possible in most games that will actually be reflected by the game. You basically just have to work around the game to such an extent that I find myself wondering why they don't just run a tabletop game. My wife's current guild actually does just that: they've largely abandoned guild RP, and instead they have several on-going campaigns running on the RaidCall server.

Quote from: NathanIW;741455Other people don't and instead find other gamers who already know and like the game and meet up online via voice chat solutions like google hangout, roll20, etc.,.

Or they pitch the game to their pre-existing voice chat buddies, if they already have such a group.

In general I've found that people who use voice chat solutions are, with rare exceptions like the FLAILSNAILS/ConstantCon stuff aside, not actually complete strangers to each other but are longterm buddies who are using the solution because geographic distance means their group can't meet in the flesh any more.

But either way, I think the audience for a 500 copy niche game and how people recruit players for that is entirely orthogonal as to whether the virtual tabletop market is large enough to be worth Hasbro's time. People play mega-selling games over those things too. I think the real question as to whether VTTs are viable is how many people fall into the following categories:

a) Folks who want to game regularly with old buddies who live an inconveniently long way away.
b) Folks who want to game with strangers online, for whatever motive.

That's your market - forget the specific game, tying a virtual tabletop to a specific game is pointless unless the game is, like 4E, specifically designed to be used via a virtual tabletop that's tailored to that game's needs. (Given that this turned out to be something of a debacle even when you set aside the absolutely awful murder-suicide that impacted the DDI team, I think it will be a cold day in Hell before Wizards decide to go that route again.)

I also think the market of people who are super-duper hyped about a specific niche game which they can't convince anyone to try out in the flesh but are so determined to play it anyway that they'll gladly game with total strangers on the Internet in order to try it out is too small to even be worth tracking. I just don't see many people doing that outside of occasional online convention play. I know plenty of gamers who don't go online to game because they're already satisfied with their face-to-face group or groups, and if their buddies don't want to play Obscure Game X then nine times out of ten they'll just let OGX gather dust on their shelf.

I know literally no gamers in my extended circle of gaming acquaintances who are really keen on the idea of playing with total strangers online; a substantial number of the gamers I know aren't really keen on playing with total strangers at cons, after all.

This is all anecdote, of course, and real data on the issue would be useful. But I really don't think microniche games are even relevant to the discussion. As Ryan said, VTTs are a perfect solution for people who want to keep the old group gaming when the members are geographically dispersed, but for everyone else it's a distant second best. The people most likely to need to use a VTT are people who live in small towns and rural areas where the population density is low enough that they honestly can't get a face-to-face group together, even if they properly try to recruit people rather than sitting at home sighing. The thing about low-population areas? They have a low population. By definition, not many people live there, which means not many customers, which means not enough of a market to make it worth Wizards' time to focus on them.

Quote from: RSDancey;741483I would suggest to you that there are more people "roleplaying" in MMOs on any given day then there are total people playing tabletop RPGs.

Check out some of the Daedalus Project research for more depth:

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/

In my experience a lot of people doing that are effectively using the MMO as a glorified chat server providing a medium and a context to huddle in a corner and have dramatic conversations, though. It's not roleplaying which actually engages with the game itself, it's just something that happens on the sidelines.

And as pointed out, MMOs are closing their RP servers left, right and centre. I give that commercial reality far more weight than the Daedalus project because Daedalus was a survey, and whilst people might say they want roleplaying, that doesn't mean that's what they actually want.

Quote from: RSDancey;741483I would suggest to you that there are more people "roleplaying" in MMOs on any given day then there are total people playing tabletop RPGs.

Check out some of the Daedalus Project research for more depth:

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/

Hate to say it. But that is about as bogus as it gets.

The amount of real role playing on any MMO is nearly zero. MUDs are a totally different matter. But we are focusing here on graphical MMOs. From brief business experience and A-LOT of hands on experience. What you see is more akin to most social MUCKs. Mainly people sitting around talking in character. Occasionally you will see something more intensive with actual poses and whatnod. But that devolves right back to social MU**'s and is near across the board improv theater.

If the definition of role playing is that loose then sorry part 2. youd have to include every board game considered to fasciliate RPing. and at the pinnacle of that is Arkham Horror which board gamers fairly regularly cite as fasciliating storytelling Role play. And theres many more than just that. And all should then be counted as tabletop role playing if the same broad spectrum is being applied to MMOs.

Players tend to gravitate to PC and MMOs because they lack viable local gaming groups. Give them an alternative and they may take it. Or they may not.

That is my alternative viewpoint on the subject from personal experience.

I'm surprised most people missed the fact that Dancy posted "Roleplaying" in quotes, which could mean that he thinks the act of playing a game labeled an RPG is "roleplaying", and not the term of actually acting in character.

Quote from: JRT;741559I'm surprised most people missed the fact that Dancy posted "Roleplaying" in quotes, which could mean that he thinks the act of playing a game labeled an RPG is "roleplaying", and not the term of actually acting in character.

I noticed and as I've argued over on BGG far too often. Some peoples idea of RPG/roleplaying is so broad as to be undefinable.

Quote from: Warthur;741548In my experience a lot of people doing that are effectively using the MMO as a glorified chat server providing a medium and a context to huddle in a corner and have dramatic conversations, though. It's not roleplaying which actually engages with the game itself, it's just something that happens on the sidelines.

And as pointed out, MMOs are closing their RP servers left, right and centre. I give that commercial reality far more weight than the Daedalus project because Daedalus was a survey, and whilst people might say they want roleplaying, that doesn't mean that's what they actually want.

It hard to roleplay when your ability to impact the world around you is limited.

The reason why RPers are using the MMO as a chat server is because literally the only thing they can impact is the social network that surrounds and connects them to their fellow players.

Otherwise Stormwind will remain Stormwind, Ogrimmar will be still Ogrimmar not matter how powerful or influential a person is.

Now I guess Ryan with the Pathfinder MMORPG is going to try to make it more dynamic. But even then it you either stuck with the scripted options or some type of mass voting (by successful actions or just outright votes). Either way there is still a distinct lack of scope and ranges to your accomplishments.

For me personally, I have no problem roleplaying in MMORPGs. However my trick is my roleplaying is part of my interaction with human players. Fellow players are the only aspect of the game that will respond to how I am acting.

Most every time I went on WoW servers it was colourful characters running from point a to point b, hitting stuff, killing it, collecting their stuff and going back to point a to redeem 12 red wolf flowers or whatever. Then repeat.

WoW might have you playing a character in a specific role (human fighter, elf mage etc) but after character creation it's about going places, killing stuff and going other places to kill more stuff, get slightly better at doing it, then repeat. Now while that's fun for a while, I grew out of that kind of play in D&D/Whatever in my early teens.

I found the whole WoW experience an absolute grind, and whilst I saw a few people stood around chatting in what I assumed was character/role playing, it was hard to retain interest when they started emoting or breaking out into group dancing or whatever. I don't recall my 29th level fighter dancing for any reason when I played D&D. Maybe I was doing it wrong.

In other words, WoW is fine for those that want to run round and kill stuff - I get it . You jump in, collect things, kill stuff, do quests which involve collecting and killing. There's no set up, no getting everyone together, you just sit in front of screen and play.

That's fine, but I wouldn't call it roleplaying.

World of Warcraft, D&D Online, EVE, - they're all video games.  There's no-one to play a role to.  There's no impact on the world.  Beyond you, and what you have, the server doesn't go "Oh!  Oh, okay, well, you did that.  That's a thing I'll take note of, and bring back later or make a part of the landscape now," or adjust for your tactics, or appreciate what you're doing.

They're as much a "role playing games" as Black Tiger.

Yes, they have RPG trappings.

No, they're not RPGs.

On the other hand, VTTs when used to play RPGs are.

Of course, like all language, the definition of the RPG may be changing over time.  It already has with the introduction of the CRPG, for instance.  The majority will end up ruling in the long term.  (And technically speaking, role-play is equally role-assumption, and it doesn't require having an audience).

The big thing I wonder about is the viability of MMOs.  The scuttlebutt online in computer game circles is that MMOs have shallow features and people are looking for something more, and that elements such as Free to Play aren't helping things along.  Everybody now tends to be cynical, predicting failures of new MMOs and lamenting that some game companies should stick to strengths like single-player games with huge open worlds like Skyrim or narrative-heavy things like Bioware's games.

I think part of the future may be smaller multiplayer games as well as a hybridization of single and multiplayer.  MOBA seem to have all the stuff the powergamers want without a grind, especially since there's an e-sports scene building.  Games like Left 4 Dead and Borderlands are showing how you can combine a stronger narrative with multiplayer, and a lot of games are now focusing on player-built content thanks to the rise of Minecraft, Day Z, and other games.  

I think the future will end up being much different than anybody expects...

Quote from: GameDaddy;741515That's interesting, that's not my perception of what happened however.

The schism really came after 2006, and it didn't come from MMO games.

Your impressions of what was happing inside the TRPG hobby mirrors my own.

But the reason Wizards of the Coast did the 4e project was because D&D had declined in volume precipitously.  In fact, it had been experiencing problems internally for quite some time.

I have a confidential source who was one of the people making the decisions about strategy for D&D who confirmed to me that 3.5 was put into production because sales of 3.0 were "unsatisfactory".  I don't really know what that means, tbh, but this person's view was that the business was declining year over year (which is not surprising, as that is exactly what 1e and 2e had done), and Wizards' leadership was not prepared to defend the business cycle as "normal".  

So 3.5 was pushed forward in time from when it had been planned by almost 2 years, and its introduction was so accelerated that it caught a lot of the 3rd party market off guard, resulting in a huge mismatch between editions.  Consumers predictably didn't want to buy much of the "old" product when the "new" game was released and that created a market disruption which broke a lot of companies (and put a lot of products into landfills).

Then Wizards did it again with 4e.  I have much less visibility into the 4e strategies than the 3.5e strategies but what I do know correlates very strongly with the idea that 3.5's "success" was brief - maybe more brief than the 3.0 window.  Since 3.5 was essentially just a tune-up to 3.0, and it had not produced a result that was satisfactory, 4e had to be much much more than just 3.75 - logically you can't justify 3.75 if your goal is a substantially larger business than 3.5, since 3.5 didn't generate a substantially larger business than 3.0.

I believe that the problems Wizards had with 3.5 were less related to 3.5, and much more related to the fact that coincidentally World of Warcraft generated 5 million players, and a plethora of other MMOs followed it catering to millions more players.  I justify that opinion by looking at what Wizards actually did with 4e, which is make a game clearly influenced by MMO designs, with a strategy that emphasized on-line play of the game.  I have to conclude that Wizards internal data (which I suspect is quite illuminating) showed them that MMOs, not other tabletop RPGs, were the source of their problems, and they attempted to redesign D&D to counterattack.

As I've said elsewhere I don't fault them for that decision.  It was gutsy.  It was data-driven (I believe).  It may even have been the "right" decision - if the game they ended up producing had been a better fit for player desires than what they did release, it may have been more successful.  

The release of 4e and the treatment of the 3rd party publishers, and the stress the 4e release put on the community should all be case studies.  I think we can all see that Wizards thinks they made mistakes since the 5e strategy seems almost totally built around the idea that unification of the D&D community is Job Number One.  The first stage of getting healthy is admitting you have a problem, and Wizards is admitting they have a problem.

QuoteEve Online was interesting, I actually signed up for that after I found out you decided to be the Marketing Director there.

Wow, that's humbling.  Thank you.

RyanD

Quote from: thedungeondelver;741596They're as much a "role playing games" as Black Tiger.

Yes, they have RPG trappings.

No, they're not RPGs.

On the other hand, VTTs when used to play RPGs are.

I disagree, they focus on the playing of individual characters in a way that the player invests in his character. The investment in a single character is what sets roleplaying games apart from wargames.

In 1974 there was just one roleplaying game on the planet and that was Dungeon and Dragons. Today there are multiple families of roleplaying games with dozens of examples within in each families including nearly possible hybrid.

To be absolutely clear Dungeons & Dragons and related games are distinct from CRPGs, MMORPGs, LARPS, Storygames. I call this family of games of tabletop roleplaying.

To illustrate my definition of tabletop roleplaying games is

It is game where players play individual characters whose actions are adjudicated by a human referee using dice, rules and a setting.

CRPGs in contrast are
A game where a player plays an individual character who actions are adjudicated by a software program using rules and random probabilities and a setting.

MMORPGs are
A game where multiple players plays individual characters who actions are adjudicated by a a software program using rules, random probabilities, and a setting.

LARPS are
A game where multiple players plays an individual character who actions are acted out in-person using a set of rules taking place within a setting.

They are all roleplaying game but their characteristics and choices of medium forces various compromises and confer distinct advantages compared to tabletop roleplaying.

I am zealous advocate of tabletop roleplaying as it own thing because I played MMORPGs heavily starting with Ultima Online. I played the earliest and lastest CRPGs, I ran LARP events, and own a LARP chapter for several years.

Exposed to the variety of roleplaying as opened my eyes to the unique strengths of tabletop roleplaying. Conversely it has also allowed me to see the common threads that bind them together as roleplaying games.

My view is that the various forms are neither better or worse. That their design give benefits at the price of certain limitation. For example LARPS, CRPGs and MMORPGs are inflexible in how the setting is setup.  It is far easier to be in-character and roleplay in a LARP than the other forms. Tabletop roleplaying is far more flexible and dynamic than the other forms. MMORPGs and LARPs have the benefit and trouble of massive social interactions.  And so on.

But the heart of these games is the focus on the playing of a individual character over a particular scenario. That what makes all of these roleplaying games.

Quote from: estar;741608I disagree, they focus on the playing of individual characters in a way that the player invests in his character. The investment in a single character is what sets roleplaying games apart from wargames.

In 1974 there was just one roleplaying game on the planet and that was Dungeon and Dragons. Today there are multiple families of roleplaying games with dozens of examples within in each families including nearly possible hybrid.

To be absolutely clear Dungeons & Dragons and related games are distinct from CRPGs, MMORPGs, LARPS, Storygames. I call this family of games of tabletop roleplaying.

To illustrate my definition of tabletop roleplaying games is

It is game where players play individual characters whose actions are adjudicated by a human referee using dice, rules and a setting.

CRPGs in contrast are
A game where a player plays an individual character who actions are adjudicated by a software program using rules and random probabilities and a setting.

MMORPGs are
A game where multiple players plays individual characters who actions are adjudicated by a a software program using rules, random probabilities, and a setting.

LARPS are
A game where multiple players plays an individual character who actions are acted out in-person using a set of rules taking place within a setting.

They are all roleplaying game but their characteristics and choices of medium forces various compromises and confer distinct advantages compared to tabletop roleplaying.

I am zealous advocate of tabletop roleplaying as it own thing because I played MMORPGs heavily starting with Ultima Online. I played the earliest and lastest CRPGs, I ran LARP events, and own a LARP chapter for several years.

Exposed to the variety of roleplaying as opened my eyes to the unique strengths of tabletop roleplaying. Conversely it has also allowed me to see the common threads that bind them together as roleplaying games.

My view is that the various forms are neither better or worse. That their design give benefits at the price of certain limitation. For example LARPS, CRPGs and MMORPGs are inflexible in how the setting is setup.  It is far easier to be in-character and roleplay in a LARP than the other forms. Tabletop roleplaying is far more flexible and dynamic than the other forms. MMORPGs and LARPs have the benefit and trouble of massive social interactions.  And so on.

But the heart of these games is the focus on the playing of a individual character over a particular scenario. That what makes all of these roleplaying games.

Suffice to say, I disagree with you.  And leave it at that.

Quote from: JRT;741559I'm surprised most people missed the fact that Dancy posted "Roleplaying" in quotes, which could mean that he thinks the act of playing a game labeled an RPG is "roleplaying", and not the term of actually acting in character.

Let's look at what the '99 Segmentation study identified as the things that Character Actors desired in the RPG experience (with the understanding that every group on that chart has "roleplaying" as a core value):

"A Character Actor is a player who most enjoys the game when it delivers a Tactical/Story Focus. This kind of person is likely to enjoy the act of theater; using voice, posture, props, etc. to express a character's actions and dialog. This player will have a character that makes sub-optimal choices (from an external perspective) to ensure that the character's actions are "correct" from the perspective of the character's motivations, ethics, and knowledge."

My contention is that these kinds of players are increasingly well served by MMOs.  Yes, there are millions of people who play MMOs as treadmills - they grind raids to get better gear to grind harder raids to get better gear.  (For those who don't know, that's what Bradley's comments about getting ready to run the Siege of Ogrimmar mean).

But consider the desires of the Character Actors and the kinds of things you're seeing in MMOs today.  Lots and lots of costumes.  Pets.  Housing which has almost no in-game mechanical effect.  Emotes which are becoming increasingly complex.  Music systems (there are bands in Lord of the Rings Online and an annual Weathertop Music Festival).  Many, many, many people are in open revolt against the "Build of the Week" or "Fit of the Month" - statistically derived "best" choices for character development.  These rebels want the freedom to make characters they find appealing and reject the consensus that unless they strictly follow the most up-to-date build they are "doing it wrong".

That's one level.  Then there's another level which is conflating "playing a role" with "roleplaying".  This is where I think there is tremendously more roleplaying in MMOs than people in this thread are acknowledging.

If you ask players of MMOs about their characters, they give you the same kinds of answers you get about characters in tabletop RPGs.  "I play an elf druid".  (Yes, a segment of the population will give you an answer derived from their gear grinding raiding guild perspective - "I'm DPS" or "I'm a tank" or "I'm a healer".  But if you ask them one more level of depth, you'll get the "I play an elf druid" answer.)

Until these characters become completely committed to the gear grinding raid cycle, their players can usually give you a pretty cohesive narrative of what their characters are doing which sounds exactly like the answers you'll get from tabletop RPGs players.  "I'm trying to fight my way through this wizards' tower to kill a lich", for example.  They may be on some side quest - "I'm trying to become popular enough with the panda bear people to get a panda bear pet", which is a subclass of things people do in tabletop RPGs all the time, with slightly different terminology.  In other words, these players have the sense that their characters are immersed in a story, in which they are playing a role, and the story's outcome is dependent on the actions of their character.

Ok, so "theme park MMOs" have a persistence problem.  They're essentially non-persistent environments.  Players in "theme park MMOs" don't impact their environment.  They might fight their way through that tower and kill that lich, but the lich will respawn and the story from the perspective of the lich never changes no matter how many times the player characters kill it.

But the "sandbox MMOs" have solved this problem.  Instead of having the lich in the tower be an NPC that respawns ad infinitum, in a "sandbox MMO" the lich should be a player character, and killing it should cause that player some meaningful amount of pain.  In fact, it should be possible to tear that tower down and drive that lich out of the area completely.  Maybe not all in one go, but there should be a reasonable pathway for one group of players to displace another group of players persistently.  If you expand that idea to as many game systems as possible, you create an environment that is much more like a tabletop RPG in terms of the players' ability to meaningfully change the world their characters are living in.

Even some of the theme park MMOs are driving towards this outcome.  In Elder Scrolls Online, for example, the game actually alters the environment on a character by character basis to reflect their past actions.  For example you could complete an adventure to clear an area of undead, gain access to a locked crypt, confront the malevolent spirit within that crypt, and if you win, you'll find that instead of undead in the surrounding area there are just heaps of bones and cloth - for your character, killing that NPC changed the world.  If you go back to that location later, the heaps of bone & cloth are still there; it's a permanent, persistent change for you.  Other players will see the alternate environment, with the wandering undead until they kill the boss NPC.  (This is a real example, btw).

Ok, last comment:  If you have not, I really suggest you read some of that stuff at the Daedalus Report.  If you're a skeptic that there's "real roleplaying" going on in MMOs you will find it eye-opening.