Why do RPGs always follow a periodical model of sales?  Why don't we see more evergreen models?

It's not just because RPG companies are predominately small operations.  Ever since WotC got hold of D&D, they have treated it as a periodical model rather than an evergreen one.  If anyone in the RPG biz should be able to think long term, it should be the largest player in the business supported by the giant Hasbro.

The only nice thing I can say nowadays about Palladium is that they seem to be the only company I can say uses an evergreen model.  They keep worthless crap like Recon and Ninjas & Superspies in print.  KS has only ever let a few things go permanently out of print.  Otherwise, products stay in the catalog forever.

SJG used to strike me as a company with a partially evergreen model, but not so much anymore.  FFG strikes me as potentially operating under a predominately evergreen model, but I haven't tracked them long enough to say one way or the other.

Risk and Monopoly are on store shelves year after year after year.  Why does our hobby not have a "Classic D&D" box set which is reliably on every store shelf year after year?  Clearly such a thing is not considered viable, otherwise we would be seeing an official product rather than stuff like OSRIC and the retro clones.

I'm not saying I don't like new games.  I'm just wondering why it seems our hobby lacks anything which is considered salable/marketable for longer than 5 years.

Interesting question!  

I am unsure why HASBRO(!!!) would not want an evergreen D&D to sit on the shelves next to Monopoly.

CoC is pretty evergreen.   The new "editions" are just new covers, some new layout and some stuff cobbled from previous edition supplements.

All I can say is that I firmly think that there should be a basic D&D game that is sold in the boxed games section for 30+ years like Monopoly. One of my biggest complaints about the industry is doing new editions rather than creating a wholly different game. 2010 D&D should be the same as 1980 D&D just with updated art/packaging.

But it's apparent that the IP holders don't agree.

Evergreen games all share two features: Their rules are easy to explain in their entirety to new players, and they can be played without any preparation.  Neither has ever been true of D&D.  Even in the simplest versions the rules as a whole are not quick and easy to understand (it's easy to explain how to play a level 1 fighter, but its hard to explain everything, and one player, the DM, does have to know everything).  And every roleplaying game requires preparation on the part of the DM to prepare the scenario, you can't just break out the game and play.  Consequently RPGs of the traditional variety will always be the domain of serious enthusiasts, and never a product for the much larger causal gamer market.  And this means that there aren't enough customers, specially not enough new customers, to support an evergreen model.  Unlike monopoly which seems destined to be owned by every human on Earth.

Because people who write for RPG's want a job in 5+ years?

Unless you're setting is unimaginably massive (most sci-fi), you're eventually going to either be writing metaplot books, or RIFTS: Greenland.

And while space is unimaginably vast, books filled with exciting locales that aren't "bigger and/or better" than the last tend not to sell well, much as we complain about power creep in a game line.

People love Arrakis because of the spice, and how pivotal it is to events in Dune, not because it's a Islamic-inspired Desert World. Take away the spice, and even a space exploration game would have the players thinking it's a "quaint" little world, before moving onto the "real meat" worlds.

Becaue in a niche market it makes far far better business sense try to sell a lot of things to a few people than a few things to a lot of people.

a) RPGs are much more broadly focused so tie-in material is a natural inclination.

b) D&D as a "mainstream" game was a fad like Furby or the Home-Alone Talkman.  It did really well for one or two holidays seasons (esp. the Basic sets), then started to lose momentum.  Lots of casual players stopped or people who received it as a gift but didn't "get it" also dropped out, leaving the wargamers who had already been around and the more serious players as a main source of revenue.  When you have a hardcore fanbase that's very slowly shrinking, you tend to milk it, hard, and you see that a lot in AD&D 2e as a lot of people just stopped playing D&D altogether to make time for other RPGs or just to get out of the hobby altogether.

Quote from: 837204563;395409Evergreen games all share two features: Their rules are easy to explain in their entirety to new players, and they can be played without any preparation.  Neither has ever been true of D&D.

I'm not convinced that is a foregone conclusion of the nature of evergreen games.

Keep in mind, I'm not necessarily talking about something that is going to sit next to Risk and Monopoly in Wal-Mart.  I'm talking about the same game being supported for longer than 3 to 5 years before trashing it and starting over with a brand new product with the same name.

Take SFB as an example.  It certainly can't be explained easily or in it's entirety to new players.  SFB also takes considerable preparation to play.  Yet, the SFB Captains Edition Basic Set has been an evergreen product for 20 years.  The one you can by from Scifigenre, CCG Armory, or an Amazon seller is compatible with the same one I bought back in 1990.  As an older player, I could pick that game up and rekindle my romance with it, or join in with a group of brand new players.  Or, I could point a brand new player to buy that Basic Set.

SFB is also about as niche a game as you can get.  

As for the whole "having a job in 5 years", that's a consideration for the little guys, but shouldn't matter one tiny bit to a larger force like Hasbro.  You'd expect they would prefer to have a single evergreen product they release fundamentally the same but with a different cover every five years specifically so they could kick all those designer guys to the curb.  Instead we see the opposite.  The only examples of evergreen support are the little guys who should be cranking out a vastly incompatible version every couple of years to drum up sales, but aren't.  Meanwhile, Hasbro and WotC are reinventing the entire game every 2 years.

This also touches upon the retrorpg movement.  If D&D doesn't deserve to be an evergreen product, then it doesn't seem like anything in the hobby is.

QuoteBecause people who write for RPG's want a job in 5+ years?

This was probably a joke, but basically yes.

Back in the frontier gaming days of the 1970s, game designers were getting really new ideas all the time, and the game was morphing beyond recognition every few months. By the early 80s, Gygax had an AD&D that he was basically pretty happy with. And it was pretty much kept as-is for a long time. Even 2nd edition AD&D was pretty much a compilation of AD&D concepts. The concept was pretty clearly an evergreen model, even as things - of course - changed over time in response to changing thought.

But the really total shift to a periodical came with 4e D&D. And it came about basically because the writers want to be able to fill out word count quotas and get paid indefinitely. It came on the heels of a major switch to a format that uses up a lot of space and is very fast to write and requires and allows very little in the way of cross referencing or fact checking during the design process.

A 4e character class is incredibly narrow and takes up an eighth of a 100k word book. But it only takes two days to write. This way the authors can constantly "look busy" and avoid getting fired without actually putting in a lot of thought or requiring of themselves much insight.

-Frank

But how much money does SFB make?  Take a look at how the core rules are priced for example, it's a lot of money for something with low production values.  The master rules cost $50, and you can't even purchase them in a bound format.  That means they are charging $50 for running the pages off at Kinkos and mailing them to you.  That means they need to make a large profit off each sale, which probably means they aren't moving many copies.  So I grant that you can keep any product in print forever, but unless you have a huge player base the sales will quickly fall off.  You can get the occasional sale by keeping everything in print (this is how the Rifts line seems to work), but if you want to make money it's not the way to go.  And whoever buys the D&D license is going to want to make money off it.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;395592But the really total shift to a periodical came with 4e D&D.

I don't want to get into edition wars in this thread.  But the total shift to periodical came with 3e, not 4e.  

3e was deliberately made to be completely incompatible with all previous versions of the game.  The move to 3.5 was definitely not in keeping with an evergreen model.  The changes may not have made the game incompatible with 3e materials, but it had enough changes it was intended as a mandatory upgrade and not as just a polished path of introduction.

Prior to 3e, D&D fit an evergreen model.  3e firmly put D&D in the periodical model of reinventing itself from the ground up every few years.

Now I'm confused by what you mean by "evergreen."  D&D has never been evergreen in the sense that many board games are: there has always been a need for new D&D products to maintain the revenue stream.  I don't think that you could put 2nd edition in a box by itself and expect to support a company off that.  2nd edition had a ton of supplements, maybe not as many as 3rd edition, but there were still quite a few, and I'm betting that they were necessary to keep the money coming in.

The ultimate "rpg periodical model" without being an actual real magazine, was Mongoose during the d20 glut:  cranking out tons of junk every month.

Legitimate magazines have all kinds of information disclosure requirements dictated by law, which most rpg companies probably would not want to disclose.

Quote from: 837204563;395594But how much money does SFB make?  Take a look at how the core rules are priced for example, it's a lot of money for something with low production values.  The master rules cost $50, and you can't even purchase them in a bound format.

The Master Rules are not the introductory path to the game or the "basic" product.  The basic set costs anywhere from $25 to $35 depending on where you shop.  It also includes a bound rulebook, mapsheet, counters, SSD book, and the basic accoutrements of play.  Not saying that might not be seen as high, but the standard product is not 1000 pages of looseleaf rules.

The Master Rules are for those who are already into the game and just want another copy of all the rules.  In fact, I'm amazed that one is still offerred.  It was a interrim product offerred in the early 90s for Commanders Edition players to upgrade to the Captain's/Doomsday edition.  It wasn't supposed to be offerred in perpetuity.  Yet, it is.

SFB also requires allegedly sizable licensing fees be paid each year to avoid the Star Trek Technical Manual license evaporating in a puff of smoke.

But earnings are a fair point.  Perhaps the sales of a D&D Classic game wouldn't be worth Hasbro's time.  I honestly have a bit of a problem accepting that.  Obviously they feel the D&D brand is strong enough to put on Toys R Us shelves as starter sets, Ravenloft Boardgame sets, and alongside Avalon Hill branded niche games.  It has really only sold as the brand name for years now, because it has no inherent product identity anymore due to the multiple revamps over the past decade.

Obviously, I'm not talking solely about D&D.  Equally obviously, the limited number of game publishers in it for the long haul narrow things down as well.

Quote from: 837204563;395596Now I'm confused by what you mean by "evergreen."

The core rulebooks of AD&D were intended to be the core products indefinitely.  They remained essentially unchanged throughout their run.  The game was not reinvented midstream.

AD&D2 is a good example because the corebooks were 90% compatible with all 1e materials and Basic materials.  Despite the cover design change in the mid 90s, the game retained the same rules and text.  People could and did play with a mix of Basic, AD&D1, and AD&D2 books.

That was not possible with 3e.  3e invalidated everything that came before whether it was a core book or a supplement.  4e did the same thing when it was released.  Neither are the same game as what came before.  They are not intended to be evergreen.  They are intended to be remade every few years and use the brand name to lure people into another game.

Just having a bunch of supplements doesn't mean anything.  Just because you have supplement X doesn't mean you don't plan to sell the corebooks year after year.  Evergreen doesn't mean you can't support the line with supplements.

Hopefully that clarifies my angle on things.