Crossposted from a related post on rpg.net:

For satisfying years of gaming you need some dice, some paper, some pencils and a reasonably complete rulebook.

That's it.

Take a copy of second edition Call of Cthulhu, or the DnD Rules Cyclopedia, or Burning Wheel (which is three books but still clearly self contained as it were), Prime Time Adventures, In Harm's Way, Lightspeed, Gangbusters, there are several games like this.

Take that book or where the core is split those core books, take your friends, some dice, paper and pencil and that's you. That is all you need for play.

You can now literally have years of fun, this is how we all used to do it, before the internet and all that. We bought a core book or core books, we played.

It's hard to make a viable industry from a product that six people buy one copy of and then never need to replace.

The hobby has no need of the industry, except possibly as a tool for gaining new hobbyists. If there are other ways to find new hobbyists, and there are, we don't even need it for that.

Ok, so the hobby needs friends and a book essentially. What does the industry need?

Profit, a return on investment. Put another way, the industry needs to shift books.

But, the hobby doesn't really need that many books, one core book and you're done. So, we see over the last ten years industry developments like metaplots, like core books missing elements that will be included in later books, like a move towards shiny hardbacks and colour art that are great for readers and collectors but make no real contribution to actual play (hardbacks actually may help if they lie open flat, if they don't they do nothing).

What is good for the industry, games that require multiple books for play, games that require you to follow a metaplot, games sold on colour art and on gaming fiction, has very little to do with what helps people play fun games.

Hence the indie crowd, who are in a way kicking it old school. They produce games focussed on being played, and the result is something very different to the games the industry is producing.

The industry is not serving the hobby, at this point I think it's closer to say the industry is a parasite on the hobby, and not particularly good for it.

There is a 300lb exception, DnD, which does a fabulous job of really supporting fun play. But I don't think many people have understood the lessons 3e has to teach, in particular the serious thought they gave to how the games would be used in play. DnD books are for play, all too much of what the industry produces is driven by other factors.

To be clear, this isn't a post saying the Forge roxxors, for these purposes indie includes PIG, Flying Mice, Jags and so on.  Essentially I'm talking about the small press guys.

Quote from: BalbinusFor satisfying years of gaming you need some dice, some paper, some pencils and a reasonably complete rulebook.

I'd say that you can dispense with any of those in a pinch, in favour of just a few friends with a general agreement on the setting and the system. Those accessories help, certainly, but they aren't vital.

Quote from: BalbinusHence the indie crowd, who are in a way kicking it old school. They produce games focussed on being played, and the result is something very different to the games the industry is producing.

The industry is not serving the hobby, at this point I think it's closer to say the industry is a parasite on the hobby, and not particularly good for it.

Honestly, that's a load of bull.

Just because you don't need anything more than the core book doesn't mean that any supplement produced is utterly unusable. Expanding on the mechanics or setting information is perfectly valid. Nobody forces you do actually buy that. There are methods to make more money of that, namely a metaplot and the usual splatbook mentality. But even that is not total moneymaking.

I really don't see the big industry/gamer divide so many people are preaching.

I heard that exploitation of labor, erm, gaming rhetoric before...

Quote from: SosthenesExpanding on the mechanics or setting information is perfectly valid. Nobody forces you do actually buy that.

Expansions that come in sets can 'push' the issue a little; nobody is being forced, but if you have and use Clanbook X, then that clan has more cool options than all the others.  Better get the other clanbooks...

D&D has something sort-of similar with the "complete" books, but each character has so many damn options to begin with that it's far less pressure.

IIRC, this marketing tactic is called "crippleware".

I tend to buy supplements and supporting texts, but avoid metaplot type stuff.
My own preferences are toward complete systems in one book, with supplements optional. If you make those sorts of thing play enhancers rather than play prerequisites then I'm happy.

I'm not anti-industry at all. As a consumer, it's up to each of us to decide what we want to buy and what we won't. Products that don't satisfy us won't succeed, and products that don't succeed don't make money. Companies base their production decisions based on this alone. There is no supply without demand.

With this in mind, the onus on promoting the hobby in a fun, self-sustaining manner lies solely on hobbyists like you and I. We need to be more picky, instead of slavishly buying whatever the newest splat book is.

So options are bad? You call a car crippled because it doesn't come with a turbo-charged engine, sport seats and alloy rims?

Yes, some companies do it worse than others, most often because the later additions offer more powerful options than the core books. But even WW doesn't exaclty produce 96 page corebooks and puts everything else in supplements. They also produce quite a lot of fluff for all the clans, communities and conspiracies. Something that can't be said for the crunch-heavy WotC supplements. And building a Fighter with just the PHB _can_ be considered unbalanced.

Furthermore, it's wise not to forget Hanlon's Razor. I think especially Palladium are not that malicious

Quote from: SosthenesSo options are bad? You call a car crippled because it doesn't come with a turbo-charged engine, sport seats and alloy rims?

Nope.

I call it crippling when I have to buy the turbochargers for the left and right sides of my car seperately.  I'll always get both, or neither, and if I just buy one of them to give it a go, I'm probably going to be pissed about the way they split them up.

Quote from: SosthenesHonestly, that's a load of bull.

Just because you don't need anything more than the core book doesn't mean that any supplement produced is utterly unusable. Expanding on the mechanics or setting information is perfectly valid. Nobody forces you do actually buy that. There are methods to make more money of that, namely a metaplot and the usual splatbook mentality. But even that is not total moneymaking.

I really don't see the big industry/gamer divide so many people are preaching.

I heard that exploitation of labor, erm, gaming rhetoric before...

I wasn't really talking about supplements sold on quality.  

The new Runequest, you need to run a Gloranthan game around half a dozen books, with the old World of Darkness there was a metaplot that required you to keep buying books to keep up.  If you didn't buy them all, but wanted one later on, it was no use without the others.  They were designed to interdepend.  Lo5R, Seventh Seas, Brave New World all kept critical info from the core book in order to drive later book sales.

Otherwise, the move to more expensive books to support colour art and the widespread inclusion of game fiction, again profit driven trends rather than trends supporting actual play.

That's my point, the industry is not serving gaming, it is serving a mix of readers who often don't game and collectors and people like that.  Not only them, but a lot is aimed at them or designed with them in mind, which leads IMO to an industry which produces product which is not as well suited to actual play as it could be.

How do you get from "some companies" to "the industry"? That's like saying the whole software industry is corrupt because there's a certain small company in Redmond... Or the whole oil industry is, erm, whaitaminute...

I find this to be degrading for all the hard-working designers, editors, writers and even managers who try to produce new material for the market. Quite a lot of those could easily earn more money by changing to a more profitable industry.

For actual play I do not need colour art.

Unless it helps me use it in play, and sometimes it does if it helps the book lie flat, I do not need hardback.

I do not need fiction.

I absolutely do not need core setting or rules elements intentionally left out for release in later books that may never happen.

I do not need supplements to cross correlate to the extent I use none of them or all of them.

I don't need most of the recent trends in mainstream game publishing in fact.

That's the point, the money is being made on things that do nothing for the hobby, that are at best irrelevant and at worst actually get in the way of play.  The reason for that is that increasingly sales are taking into account, sometimes even targetting, the collector market.

Look at recent trends, the Gurps books are now glossy and shiny, does that do anything to make them better in actual play?  The new Runequest requires multiple books to run a game, that directly hinders actual play.  The NWoD is rapidly going the way of the OWoD, where in order to play I need a ton of supplements one per splat, indeed it is expressly crafted so that supplements per splat will be part of the sales package and if you buy one splat book you pretty much have to get the others or it gets unbalanced.

By contrast, if you buy Dogs in the Vineyard, a game I don't personally like as it happens, you're done.  If you buy Call of Cthulhu there are useful supplements, but the core book really is all you need for play.  If you bought the Rules Cyclopedia back in the day you could still happily be playing it.

Those are games designed for play, Runequest or NWoD is only partly designed for play.

Quote from: Levi KornelsenNope.

I call it crippling when I have to buy the turbochargers for the left and right sides of my car seperately.  I'll always get both, or neither, and if I just buy one of them to give it a go, I'm probably going to be pissed about the way they split them up.

YES!

Quote from: BalbinusOtherwise, the move to more expensive books to support colour art and the widespread inclusion of game fiction, again profit driven trends rather than trends supporting actual play.

That's a common meme, but it's wrong.

When Steve Jackson Games was developing GURPS Fourth Edition, we did an extensive survey of GURPS players, asking their opinions on a wide variety of topics. One piece of data that came out of that was the desire for higher physical quality books -- hardcovers and full color.

I can't speak for other publishers, but I don't imagine GURPS players are unique in this respect. After all, even my phone has a full color screen.

Quote from: BalbinusFor actual play I do not need colour art.

Unless it helps me use it in play, and sometimes it does if it helps the book lie flat, I do not need hardback.

I do not need fiction.

I submit that your tastes may not match the majority of the game purchasing public.

Quote from: PaulChapmanI submit that your tastes may not match the majority of the game purchasing public.

Of course they don't, if they did we wouldn't have the trends we do.

I'm not persuaded though that the game purchasing public and the game playing public are entirely overlapping entities.  I think many games are sold to people who have only the vaguest intention, if any, of playing them.  My piont isn't one of taste, it's about the purpose of the books and who is being catered to as a customer base.

Gurps was probably a bad example though, as my understanding is that your books are now much more play focussed.  A lot of third edition supplements IMO were, in part due to the Pyramid playtesting process, far better suited to reading than play.  My impression is that the playtesting process has been heavily revamped and that as a direct result the books are a lot more gameable.  I mention supplements as Gurps 3rd core was I think an extremely playable book and from all I hear 4th has if anything improved on that.

Quote from: PaulChapmanWhen Steve Jackson Games was developing GURPS Fourth Edition, we did an extensive survey of GURPS players, asking their opinions on a wide variety of topics. One piece of data that came out of that was the desire for higher physical quality books -- hardcovers and full color.

I participated in that survey and bought those books.  I wanted that increase in quality.  However, I wanted it as a showman.  That sound stupid, so I'll clarify.

The hardcover, color art look, can help me sell other people on a game because it looks professional.  When I want to sell people on GURPS, I can plonk down the book in front of them.  It doesn't make for better actual play, but it makes one game attractive over another.

Making one game attractive over another it a basic component of selling a game; it doesn't matter if publishing companies are big or small.  It's not going away.  Yes, maybe it might be better for the hobby if all of that effort went directly into fine-tuning game engines for actual play.  It's a laudable goal.

I don't think that reverting with joy to staples and glue is the way to chase it.