Quote from: kythri;742316I don't much play "CRPG" style games anymore, but when I do/did, I roleplay(ed) in those as much as I pretended to be Sonic the Hedgehog.

I'm sure others play differently, and that's cool, but for me?  Button-mashing ain't roleplaying.

Considering that there are people who will claim that reading a book is really real role playing...

Quote from: RSDancey;741115So despite the fact that the OGL had been available for 8 years at that point, despite the fact that many people had made complete replacements for D&D, some of them very good, and despite the fact that Wizards had 8 years of experience in working with and around games that used the OGL, it was still able to tap a huge reservoir of good will towards D&D when 4e launched.

If 4e had been a game that players wanted, 4e would have been a massive success.  In my opinion, that's a very hard statement to argue with.

Everything that came after, especially the rise of Pathfinder, derives from the simple fact that 4e was not the game that players wanted.  I would further argue that it would not have mattered if the OGL had existed or not.  The near-death of TSR in 1997 showed that gamers don't just switch to another game system when D&D falters.  They just stop buying.  They just keep playing the game they already own.  The collapse of 4e wasn't because Pathfinder existed.  It would have happened regardless.

Pathfinder got lucky.  Paizo combined it's direct access to tens of thousands of customers it had from its time as the Dragon and Dungeon magazine publisher to address the gap.  Any number of companies - Fantasy Flight, Mongoose, Green Ronin, etc. could have addressed that gap.  Paizo just got there first, and had the advantage of that database of contacts to leverage, and when 4e stumbled, Pathfinder caught a break.

So Paizo didn't hurt Wizards of the Coast with Pathfinder.  Wizards self-inflicted its wounds, and would have sustained them in the absence of the OGL.

Thank you for this; pretty much the best analysis I've seen of this particular situation.  I'd only add that it seems to me there was, around that time, something that had gone profoundly rotten in the internal culture of WoTC, that led them to directly undermine that goodwill even before the books came out.  A lot of the 4e design itself was a product of that culture; it wasn't just that D&D players in some arbitrary way "decided" they didn't like it, it was that Wizards was so out to lunch they almost went out of their way to create a game that two-thirds of their existing customers would despise, on purpose.

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Quote from: RSDancey;741126I'm always very careful to not say that 4e is a bad game.  Many people I really respect think it's an incredibly well designed game.  It just wasn't the game that the market wanted.

More specifically, though, it was (regardless of how well-designed) the game that most D&D gamers didn't want.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;742720it was that Wizards was so out to lunch they almost went out of their way to create a game that two-thirds of their existing customers would despise, on purpose.

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This is a recurring theme with WOTC and any sideline product they happen to pick up. Wether or not it is intentional or not is anyones guess. But games like d20 GW and a lesser degree 4eD&D Gamma World seem to have been tailor made to repulse as many fans of the original as possible.

One designer scpeculated that either they are trying to kill off the line through bad sales. A "Look Gamma World crashed and burned. Those fans were totally wrong and its a dead game so stop asking us to reprint it!" or it could be a tax write off. The second seems unlikely. But WOTC has never been known for their wisdom.

In advertising and promotion WOTC is notoriously inept. Sure Next has great word of mouth due to the open playtest. But outside the online community and possibly FLGS. Who knows it is coming?

Unfortunately we'll never know whats going on behind the scenes really. WOTC is just too damn unpredictable and way too prone to nonsensical acts.

Quote from: Omega;742725This is a recurring theme with WOTC and any sideline product they happen to pick up. Wether or not it is intentional or not is anyones guess. But games like d20 GW and a lesser degree 4eD&D Gamma World seem to have been tailor made to repulse as many fans of the original as possible.

One designer scpeculated that either they are trying to kill off the line through bad sales. A "Look Gamma World crashed and burned. Those fans were totally wrong and its a dead game so stop asking us to reprint it!" or it could be a tax write off. The second seems unlikely. But WOTC has never been known for their wisdom.

In advertising and promotion WOTC is notoriously inept. Sure Next has great word of mouth due to the open playtest. But outside the online community and possibly FLGS. Who knows it is coming?

Unfortunately we'll never know whats going on behind the scenes really. WOTC is just too damn unpredictable and way too prone to nonsensical acts.

I think 4E gammaworld is an excellent game; but it is presented too gonzo even for me as a diehard 1E GW fan.

Quote from: Bill;742853I think 4E gammaworld is an excellent game; but it is presented too gonzo even for me as a diehard 1E GW fan.

Yrah, thats the insane thing. It does 4e such that people who dont like 4e like this version. But it so totally fucks the setting and the direction is so fucked up that it just repulses too many. "Hilarity Ensues" The addition of a CCG needed to get the rest of the mutations and equipment was just another nail in the coffin.

And its one of the most boring and pointless CCGs I've yet seen. Text. No art. And they were on such a tight leash from Hasbro that they quote "Could not afford different backs on the cards."

Eh. Hopefully they wont screw it up for Next.

Quote from: RSDancey;741294Yes, I agree strongly.  This is why I think that Ron Edwards hit the nail on the head when he started asking questions about why RPGs didn't give narrative authority to the players.  

And yet his movement's every attempt to implement this notion resulted in abject failure.  Clearly, "storygames" is NOT what the market wanted. They wanted D&D.

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Quote from: RPGPundit;742964And yet his movement's every attempt to implement this notion resulted in abject failure.  Clearly, "storygames" is NOT what the market wanted. They wanted D&D.

This.  It turns out that there is very little conceptual space in tabletop RPGs as a medium, and games that don't play to that space's strengths are the ones that fail; D&D covers most expressions of what the medium is capable of, as it plays to the medium's strengths, and the few RPGs that endure other than D&D tend to cover the gaps where D&D is unable or unwilling to handle.

I think the thought that people wouldn't have changed over to something other than D&D when TSR went under is a bit flawed.  To my recolection nobody tried to step up and fill that gap.  The whole industry seemd to gasp and freeze that year.

Partly, from the talk in magazines at the time, there was a pretty defeatist attitude in the industry already.  Sales were down and nobody in the know seemed to believe that rpgs would survive in a world of computer games.

But the reality is that nobody stepped up to take D&D's place.  I suspect Warhammer got a decent surge in sales but they were already pretty independant of D&D and ads in Dragon by then.  Though their Dragon ads had pretty much built the company in their early days.

I think the right product could have stepped in and grabbed the market but I don't think the existing games could have done it.  Partly, I expect everyone was hurting a bit financially at that point, Rolemaster and GURPS had a reputation for complexity, White Wolf withtheir noses in the air wouldn't stoop to publishing a generic fantasy game for the masses, Palladium was and is a mess and I don't think anyone else was big enough to pull it off.

What happened with Pathfinder is that WotC pretty much gave them their fan base by giving them Dragon and Dungeon to handle.  This also gave them a good long push towards corporate viabilty.  When the right opportunity came they were able to step right up to the plate.  Even without the OGL I suspect they could have grabbed a good chunk of the market with a game of their own.  There's plenty of non-OGL games that have been pretty close to D&D, though most originated before the OGL.

Quote from: RPGPundit;742964And yet his movement's every attempt to implement this notion resulted in abject failure.  Clearly, "storygames" is NOT what the market wanted. They wanted D&D.

RPGPundit

I see it as MMOs providing something that some RPGers wanted and thus pulled those players out of the RPG hobby and story games provide something that some RPGers wanted and pulled those players out of the RPG hobby, but to a much smaller degree.

On a market wide level, obviously story games didn't take over.  I can't call them an abject failure though, as the people making them are doing so and the people buying and playing them are doing so.  Just not in any quantity that can be compared to anything like D&D or Pathfinder.  For Ron Edwards and Vincent Baker, it's always been about the indie/creator owned market.

Ron Edward's vehicle for his ideas has always been that of indie publishing.  Those like Fred Hicks, Luke Crane and Jared Sorensen who embraced more of a market approach have vastly outsold Edwards, Baker and Nixon.  Even they, though, are nothing compared to the size of D&D at it's high points. They're probably not much more than White Wolf/Onyx Path at it's lowest point.

Problem is. People were predicting the death or TTRPGs since the advent of the arcade. Even before that there were murmurs that MUDs would be the end of face to face RPGs, especially when they started hitting their stride in the late 80s. Then PC games. Then consoles, then MMOs, then whatever the fucks next.

There was a slump in the market because A: CCGs were leeching massively from the disposable income and somewhat into the time investment. Companies were killing themselves off left and right playing either follow the leader or sue the fans. Bad PR was mounting everywhere.

At the time there were very few MMOs of note. Everquest was one, Neverwinter was another. EQ was hugely popular though. But at the time they were more RP focused according to a friend who played on EQ extensively. RPing pretty much died with the advent of grind focused MMOs. Even Champions is somewhat grind focused. Though that is predominantly for crafting bits.

RPGs are still around. MUDs are still around. When people want to really role play they will turn to RPGs if they can. NOT MMOs.

Its the If they can part that is the factor. Finding viable groups.

That is from personal observations and talking with others on MMOs, at cons, etc.

Quote from: RPGPundit;742964And yet his movement's every attempt to implement this notion resulted in abject failure.  Clearly, "storygames" is NOT what the market wanted. They wanted D&D.

RPGPundit

Yup. The market wants D&D. Not Dogs in the Vineyard.

Quote from: Benoist;743024Yup. The market wants D&D. Not Dogs in the Vineyard.

Yep.  Dogs In The Vineyard is a self published niche game that appealed to a small audience.

That said, I don't think any of the actual publishers of story games ever claimed that their way would become the way forward for the industry.  I think that's a strawman Pundit has constructed.  The games that developed out of the conversations Rod Edwards, Vincent Baker, Clinton R Nixon and others had at the forge are going to be what they advocated for:  self published, creator owned indie games that have a tiny print run or just sell in PDF and print on demand.

Everyone now and again you'll get someone on some forum going "aha!" and claiming story games thinking has taken over D&D or Pathfinder or something, but they're just plain wrong.

I think what Ryan Dancey was pointing out when he mentioned Ron Edwards is that there is a subset of RPG players remaining in the industry who are well served by an approach that moves some narrative control into the hands of more than one person at the table.  I don't think he's saying anything beyond that.

I don't think the "market" is big enough for more than one "D&D" style game.  Pathfinder pretty much has that segment sewn up (at least for now).

At PAX East, I introduced the category I called "Modern Midmarket RPGs".  I defined this category as games first released after 2000, with sales of at least 10,000 units.  Not new editions of older games, but whole new games.

Within that space I think it's very hard to argue that Ron's ideas about narrative authority and storytelling have not had a pretty tremendous impact.  Mouseguard, which has sold close to 20,000 units according to Luke Crane, is clearly influenced by those ideas.  Numenara, which is in the same neighborhood of sales, was too.

I have not played the Fantasy Flight Star Wars or Warhammer 40k titles.  Perhaps someone could comment on those who has?

If I were creating something like Vampire: The Masquerade today, and if it had not previously existed, I would certainly be focusing on shared narrative authority and other storytelling mechanisms that evolved on the Forge.  It's hard to imagine they wouldn't.

I can't speak to their new Star Wars stuff, Ryan, but FFG's Warhammer 40.000 RPGs are vastly more traditional than Mouse Guard or any other Forge-influenced game when it comes to the division of narrative control between player and GM (and are substantially more traditional than Numenera). You have a pool of fate points that give you bonuses or save you from death, but it's a small enough pool that you won't see it used very regularly in any particular session, merely "spending" a fate point only ever gives you a small mechanical bonus rather than giving you any direct narrative control, and burning a fate point doesn't give you any narrative control over how you survive - it's solely a "get-out-of-death free" card. That's one mechanic in a system which in more or less all other respects is extremely traditional.

For that matter, I don't think Numenera is the sort of shared narrative game you seem to think it is. Players have very, very little narrative control in that unless they elect to spend XP to establish situational benefits or to counter "GM interventions" (and there isn't anything system or fluff-wise to stop the GM throwing complications at the players which don't qualify as "interventions" and so can't be countered in this way, and indeed based on the sample adventures most challenges the players face won't be interventions). Numenera also has a very trad-D&D emphasis on exploration and soaking in the setting and gameworld, which isn't something that Forge games typically draw on. (Furthermore, the GM intervention mechanic seems to be inspired by FATE, which is, again, extremely traditional when it comes to the division of power between players and GMs.)

So I think your assessment of Numenera as not being D&D-like and being more Forge-like is rather tenuous, to say the least.