Quote from: Melan;414272Does that, in your opinion, describe TheRPGSite? It doesn't in mine, not anymore.

Why not?

Yes, it describes therpgsite.

Sure, some people hold grudges. But they'd hold grudges even if we weren't allowed to call each-other cunts.

And then there are people who never ever hold grudges, no matter what.

Most of us are in the middle, if we have a bit of a yell and swear we feel better, build a bridge and get over it.

Quote from: ggroy;414011Does one really need a think-tank or "school" to do something like this?

Yes, as a permanent vaccination against the would-be "Theory Swine" out there.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Bobloblah;414025Funny.  I would've fairly directly equated the Chicago School with the likes of the Forge: a bunch of twits that couldn't grasp the significance when the world failed to live up to their theories.

Touche. I could have tried to find a better comparison, but one didn't spring to mind.

RPGPundit

Quote from: FrankTrollman;414026But... the Chicago School destroyed the entire world economy and offered shitty non-functional austerity measures to try to "fix" it. When times are good, they suggest tax cuts. When times are bad, they suggest tax cuts. Their proposals produce as much poverty as wealth, because they are not rational. Driven as they are by ideology, and possessed of an occasionally effective privatization hammer, they try to treat all problems as if they were nails.

I mean sure, I want to see a Hundred Flowers Bloom as much as the next guy, but you aren't going to get that listening to a bunch of mouth breathers ranting about Rational Expectations day in and day out. What you want is some Scandinavian school - something that acknowledges that there are multiple answers to multiple questions and tries to achieve some sort of balanced mixture.

-Frank

But that sort of thing is bound to get infiltrated and subverted by the extremists. That's why I set up the Landmarks as the absolute foundation of all "theory-style" discussion here. Because if not, if you inevitably start in good faith when your opponent is NOT acting in good faith but simply wants to take over and get rid of you, you're doomed.

In fact, that's what the Forge already did once, when they first came into being; they subverted all the theory-talk that was going on at the time, and even subverted the GDS theory to utterly kneecap any potential intellectual opposition to their semantic jargon.

RPGPundit

There's a discussion on the ukroleplayers forum about the price of entry to rpg's. I have argued (or tried to) that it's artificually high. This is because books have uneccesary expensive production values. My preference these days, as i have expressed before, is smaller books like savage worlds explorer edition, or the new essential edition of Wild Talents. There are other examples.

I link to that discussion here because someone has made the claim that the writer (and artist and editor) can expect at least £1000 for their writing an rpg for a publisher. That seems rather high to me.

Consequently that's why books are so expensive. Does that make sense? I still maintain my preference as the way forward for the print side of the hobby.

The problem isn't those filthy writers wanting to get paid, it's that the average RPG business plan is based on trying to break even with 1,500 copies sold.

Quote from: Grymbok;414678The problem isn't those filthy writers wanting to get paid, it's that the average RPG business plan is based on trying to break even with 1,500 copies sold.

Some probably don't even break a few hundred copies, in the first year of sales.

http://collective-endeavour.com/articles/first-year-sales

Quote from: ggroy;414682Some probably don't even break a few hundred copies, in the first year of sales.

http://collective-endeavour.com/articles/first-year-sales

Wow. Seeing 316 described as a "runaway hit" with those sales is just mad.

None of those are particularly significant games. That article is clearly written for the purely vanity-publisher.

RPGPundit

I think Gareth is witnessing the death of the hobby store and the three-tier distribution system and thinking they will take the games industry with them.

I happen to think the death of both would be good for small games publishers, not bad.

Quote from: Grymbok;414678The problem isn't those filthy writers wanting to get paid, it's that the average RPG business plan is based on trying to break even with 1,500 copies sold.

Wow, yeah, that would be a problem business plan. We sold over 1500 units of Diaspora in our first year (which I consider unexpected by a factor of about 10) but we also made over $10,000 doing it. Of course, we wrote and edited for free to develop it, so whether or not we wound up adequately compensated for that is up for grabs.

But we knew that a few hundred sales would be doing pretty good for a game that only a handful of people would ever even hear about. So we published tactically with that in mind. The ability to do this is undermining small-scale traditional publishers -- even small scale independents that choose to pre-print and warehouse books before they know if they have a hit.

Quote from: Halfjack;415260Wow, yeah, that would be a problem business plan. We sold over 1500 units of Diaspora in our first year (which I consider unexpected by a factor of about 10) but we also made over $10,000 doing it. Of course, we wrote and edited for free to develop it, so whether or not we wound up adequately compensated for that is up for grabs.

But we knew that a few hundred sales would be doing pretty good for a game that only a handful of people would ever even hear about. So we published tactically with that in mind. The ability to do this is undermining small-scale traditional publishers -- even small scale independents that choose to pre-print and warehouse books before they know if they have a hit.

Fair dos. I pulled the number out of my head - the point I was trying to make was just that RPGs are expensive because sales are low.

Quote from: Vigilance;415256I think Gareth is witnessing the death of the hobby store and the three-tier distribution system and thinking they will take the games industry with them.

I happen to think the death of both would be good for small games publishers, not bad.

I will miss the gaming store. Rummaging through bargain bins of RPG stuff is one of my favorite hobbies. I just found a new store in Southern MA this weekend.

http://www.medievalstarship.com/

Quote from: Tetsubo;415320I will miss the gaming store. Rummaging through bargain bins of RPG stuff is one of my favorite hobbies. I just found a new store in Southern MA this weekend.

http://www.medievalstarship.com/

I am not saying such stores necessarily will go away, or even that they should. I just think focusing on traditional print runs and trying to please the LGS is actively bad for most small game companies.

I certainly have spent a lot of enjoyable time in several game stores over the years.

I just think everything Gareth is pointing out says more about the health of small game stores and the old three-tier distribution system than it really does about the health of the hobby as a whole.