TheRPGSite

This is the title of a panel being given at a local general fandom convention that I will be attending in February.

Any validity to it? Has there been a slow demise to tabletop gaming? If so, then why?

I know that we have heard people bemoaning that the hobby/industry is dying, but is it really? Can we recapture those heady days of the 80's when our hobby was the star of the show, or is it truely just spiralling down the drain? If so, what factors have caused this? Is it all because of the fanbase? Did the Forge injure the tabletop RPG hobby that grievously?

It's the same doomsaying by the same, and/or different, short-sighted people who've drank the mass media, mass marketing kool aid over the years. Doom, doom doom! We need to compete with World of Warcraft, with the internet, with mass entertainment... we're irrelevant! We should make RPGs more like these other things!

FUCK. THAT. NOISE.

I'll still play RPGs in the nursing home forty years from now just like I'll still play Monopoly, Ticket to Ride, Chess and Checkers, provided I'm not six feet under by then. This whole hipster "have to be relevant in the world of made up PR and marketing", "I am irrelevant because Boing Boing told me so boo hoo fucking hoo" is total bullshit. These people can go fuck themselves.

I've said it a number of times. My observations of decline are based on:

* The financial health and print runs of the companies. Notwithstanding all the little outfits that have sprung up, and I do believe that more individual entities are generating revenue regardless of how you calculate profit. The volume of product actually sold just doesn't seem that great. (One caveat here is that the secondary market is much stronger now than it used to be: eBay, Amazon Marketplace, etc. may be reducing primary sales. A caveat to the caveat, though: as Justin Alexander has pointed out, if you know you can unload a book if you don't like it, you may be more likely to buy it just to give it a try.)

* Relative shelf space in gaming and hobby stores. I live in an area with a number of stores, and I've watched this go down...and some stores go out of business. Granted, Internet commerce may be substituting for loss of shelf space, and I don't really have an answer for that.

* I should admit a couple more limitations on my observations. First, the industry isn't the hobby. Second, I don't feel myself to be very well plugged-in to the hobby, in terms of seeing how many game groups are out there and their ages.

And my explanation for decline is that there's so much more stuff competing for free time. I've posted a list occasionally when this subject came up; without knocking myself out I'll point to: video games, MMOs, Facebook and other Internet activities, DVDs and streaming media.

I don't think the Forge has anything to do with it.

I do think that 4e's failure could be another example of the reduced volumes of product. On the one hand I completely agree with the theory that 4e was a failed strategy that deliberately cut off its own fanbase in an environment when fans had other options (Pathfinder, eventually). WOTC thought they had a captive market, and were proven wrong. But if the industry were as strong as it once was, I think they still might have survived on fan-inertia. Also, I seem to recall reading accounts that suggest that 4e was a desperation move in response to dwindling purchases of 3.5 products.

In any case, I also don't think 4e has much to do with it, either.

Look at the player base: it's the same people who played Red Box D&D 30 years ago. Minus a hell of a lot of attrition, and plus a small trickle.

Tabletop RPGs are a hobby for white males born from 1955-1975. This is us. It rose, peaked and declines and dies with us.

The usual disclaimer for the aspies among you: sure this demographic isn't everyone playing RPGs. But it's the majority and the driving force.

I'm going to echo the doomsaying sentiment.

In fact, it's one of the greatest times to be a tabletop gamer: Print-On-Demand, electronic PDFs, numerous free, high-quality RPGs out there; Markets catering to both "old school" and modern gamers alike; Kickstarter's allowing small, new-time publishers the opportunity to get funding for their RPG projects without working for the industry big boys.

The current Edition Wars of 3rd Edition, 4th Edition, and D&D Next are but small brushfire conflicts in an era of prosperity.

Quote from: Benoist;611721It's the same doomsaying by the same, and/or different, short-sighted people who've drank the mass media, mass marketing kool aid over the years. Doom, doom doom! We need to compete with World of Warcraft, with the internet, with mass entertainment... we're irrelevant! We should make RPGs more like these other things!

FUCK. THAT. NOISE.

I'll still play RPGs in the nursing home forty years from now just like I'll still play Monopoly, Ticket to Ride, Chess and Checkers, provided I'm not six feet under by then. This whole hipster "have to be relevant in the world of made up PR and marketing", "I am irrelevant because Boing Boing told me so boo hoo fucking hoo" is total bullshit. These people can go fuck themselves.

Nothing that you say here is really inconsistent with the idea of a 'slow demise'.  Doomsaying is making predictions like "there will be no role-playing hobby as we know it in five years", or "the inevitable failure of 5e will kill the hobby once and for all".

"Slow demise" to me seems to be saying that the hobby is withering away. Slowly. Gradually.  I've certainly seen nothing to contradict this and all my experience seems to support this.  If people have been saying this for years, then it's probably been happening for years.

Whether this really matters all that much to people with stable gaming groups is another matter.  Maybe "demise" is overstating things slightly.  The hobby can survive in a fashion as long there's still a generation of gamers, and people can even make a little money off it thanks to the internet.  But unless something happens to reverse trends, I suspect that just means a "very slow demise".

It's hardly the worst thing that could happen however.

I think partly because the biggest names in the industry haven't really been able to take advantage of the re-found popularity of fantasy (aka Harry Potter and LOTR/Hobbit).

WOTC seemed to aim 4e at both the MMORPG crowd (or so it felt like to me) and the miniature crowd (Warhammer and such). Way too much focus on rules and minis (and maps) than imagination, they should have gone the other way, try to make something aimed at kids.

POD + the unleashing of OSR + OGL type platforms + Internet make this one of the great times to be a gamer.

I believe the hobby as we know it is being eclipsed by other things. However time will see our hobby transformed into something else that is much like it; so yes, its shrinking away, but it will come back as something else.

I think there will come a time where man-machine combinations will allow us to create experiential virtual realities, and very likely before the last of us die off.

I think the hobby will be a lot smaller once the Red Box generation dies out but it won't disappear with them. The university RPG society at my old school was substantially larger in the dim, distant past, but was still a viable entity when I went to university (in 2000 - you will note this puts me well outside the Red Box generation) and is actually somewhat larger than it used to be currently.

The hobby will never again attain Red Box-era popularity, but this isn't really a viable ambition these days anyway. In the era of the internet narrowcasting is king and there's all sorts of niche activities which can be kept alive which may not have sustained themselves in a less connected age.

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;611725Look at the player base: it's the same people who played Red Box D&D 30 years ago. Minus a hell of a lot of attrition, and plus a small trickle.

Tabletop RPGs are a hobby for white males born from 1955-1975. This is us. It rose, peaked and declines and dies with us.

The usual disclaimer for the aspies among you: sure this demographic isn't everyone playing RPGs. But it's the majority and the driving force.

Not really, no.

Quote from: vytzka;611753Not really, no.

I shall consider your words.

Seriously though, are there any concrete arguments aside from self-importance for your statement? It doesn't describe the target audience for any of the most popular roleplaying games this last decade, and companies publishing them are doing alright (aside from maybe Wizards at the moment, heh). It's pretty odd to say that the hobby will die with you when the hobby doesn't seem to consider your eventual death very relevant at all.

It does describe the audience of therpgsite, though, which I find a bit ironic.

Publishing models are changing. Dead-tree print runs might be shrinking and shrinking over time, but electronic documents and print-on-demand are on the rise, for instance (look for Matt Sprange's state of the Mongoose this year for an example of that). So you can't really make pronouncements to the effect of "well the print run of this or that game was that much smaller from this or that game from fifteen years ago, so we're fucked". That's just not how these things work.

And that's forgetting, additionally, that "the industry", whatever that actually is, is one thing, and the hobby, the people actually playing the crap out of the games, sharing with each other via social media and DIY and free downloads and all that, is quite another. With one RPG and an internet connection you can play for years and years, and get together on Skype or Hangouts with other gamers right now if you are so willing (and you think that's awesome now? The technological platforms will just get better and better with time). Games can be rediscovered decades from now. It's just not as straightforward as so many seem desperate to believe.

I don't have any concrete data, but everything I've seen points to the massive bulge in the RPG-playing demographic towards the group I mentioned (which I do belong to).

As far as the popular games of the last decade - 3.x, 4e, various Warhammer games etc, I suggest you try this. Go to Youtube and run a search for 4e reviews, Pathfinder reviews, etc. and then see how many of the video uploaders are in fact white males aged 35-45. I think you'll find most of them are. The same guys who unwrapped a Red Box at Christmas in 1982 are the mainstay today.

Just like you can write a history of culture from 1960 to now through the lens of the baby boomers and the various ages they passed through - youth, settling down, empty nesters and now retirees - you can write a history of RPGs through the lens of the changing tastes and spending habits of John Q. Whitebread, born 1971 in Tulsa.

You may as well talk about the slow decline of the MMORPG industry because there will never be another WoW, just a couple hundred smaller games sharing the same market space.  The new kids are playing shooters, soon as the "born in 1980" group dies, so will MMORPGs.

We're stuck with tabletop, crpgs and MMORPGs for a while, thank god, until simsense comes along and we can do it "for real". Of course at that point 99% of the population will die of starvation while plugged into porn.

I'm still sad the Battletech virtual cockpits didn't catch on :(

Quote from: CRKrueger;611763We're stuck with tabletop, crpgs and MMORPGs for a while, thank god, until simsense comes along and we can do it "for real". Of course at that point 99% of the population will die of starvation while plugged into porn.

It's funny because it's true.

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;611760I don't have any concrete data, but everything I've seen points to the massive bulge in the RPG-playing demographic towards the group I mentioned (which I do belong to).

So exactly how much of your spare time do you spend hanging around, say, 18-25 year olds?

This is not a facetious question; I ask because your experience might simply reflect the fact that people of a certain age with a peer group of a certain age might not necessarily expect their observations to be entirely objective.

Well it's clear that a huge amount of people joined in the early 80's and it's clear that the number of kids joining died off pretty quickly after that fad wore off. I'm not sure that after the initial surge of kids petered off there's been that much of a decline of new people joining, just a long slow drain of attrition with people in that initial surge.

Also, while I don't have time to do it myself (babies) I see a lot of promise in Google+ hangout RPGing as it makes logistical issues a lot easier and we're finally getting good enough internet in the hands of enough people to make that workable, it's something that's just starting and I think it has a lot more promise than alternatives like PBP or PBEM.

Quote from: Warthur;611774So exactly how much of your spare time do you spend hanging around, say, 18-25 year olds?

Not much (apart from dating them). That's why I suggested checking out how much chatter about Pathfinder or 4e is being conducted by under 25s on Youtube. I don't believe that all these younger people are too busy playing D&D to be reflected on forums, Youtube, or at conventions. They're just a smaller cohort, to my best guess.

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;611777Not much (apart from dating them). That's why I suggested checking out how much chatter about Pathfinder or 4e is being conducted by under 25s on Youtube. I don't believe that all these younger people are too busy playing D&D to be reflected on forums, Youtube, or at conventions. They're just a smaller cohort, to my best guess.

And they're a presence in the places I frequent so I don't think they're such a radically smaller cohort that the hobby faces extinction. The industry? Sure, but the industry's taken us on a decades-long swindle-ride anyway so good riddance to it.

Yes, there is a "slow demise" going on, for all the reasons Elliot Wilen (and others) have mentioned. There will be no return to the mass popularity of gaming in the 90s, let alone the fad of the early 80s, and much of that is due to slow structural changes in mass entertainment. You can say this decision or that contributed, but really, you can't stop this kind of social change.

Of course, the hobby will live on as a grassroots activity, even without a supply of "official" rulebooks you can buy in large chain bookstores. It has an attraction that goes beyond the glossy supplements and geek chic products people surround themselves with. It is about playing with our imaginations, and there will always be imaginative people who will like this sort of thing, even if they have to print and bind their own goddamn rulebooks to do so. They will not be able to count on a ready supply of fellow gamers outside large cities: they will have to go out and recruit new people. I believe that will not be a bad thing.

My one and only input is that I will be running D&D 1e for a small group of 20 year-olds between the 29th of Dec. and the 10th of Jan because, according to them, they play D&D 3.5 at college and would love to "try the older version". One of the 20-yos is my step-son's best friend and I bought him the Pathfinder box starter set for Christmas.

My opinion is that the hobby is not "dying". I do agree that the young folk's attention is more diversified now than when we (for those of us around at the beginning) were younger, but these activities are not mutually exclusive and from my admittedly limited but current perspective, the young folks at college are still TTRPGing. Along with many other things. I know another game my upcoming group enjoys is the munchkin card games, which I'll probably also be breaking out for them. Just got the family Munchkin Bites for Christmas :D

Quote from: Dog Quixote;611733It's hardly the worst thing that could happen however.

I have to agree with this. Seems to be the worst thing that could happen is that the Earth is destroyed by a rogue asteroid.... that would lay a serious buzz-kill on the whole TTRPGing community I'm thinking.

Quote from: Benoist;611758Publishing models are changing. Dead-tree print runs might be shrinking and shrinking over time, but electronic documents and print-on-demand are on the rise, for instance (look for Matt Sprange's state of the Mongoose this year for an example of that). So you can't really make pronouncements to the effect of "well the print run of this or that game was that much smaller from this or that game from fifteen years ago, so we're fucked". That's just not how these things work.

And that's forgetting, additionally, that "the industry", whatever that actually is, is one thing, and the hobby, the people actually playing the crap out of the games, sharing with each other via social media and DIY and free downloads and all that, is quite another. With one RPG and an internet connection you can play for years and years, and get together on Skype or Hangouts with other gamers right now if you are so willing (and you think that's awesome now? The technological platforms will just get better and better with time). Games can be rediscovered decades from now. It's just not as straightforward as so many seem desperate to believe.

Very true Benny. I'll be playing Grifffin Mt. using Legend/MRQII via G+ hangout Sunday with a couple fellers from the UK and a few Yanks :a

Quote from: Melan;611785Yes, there is a "slow demise" going on, for all the reasons Elliot Wilen (and others) have mentioned. There will be no return to the mass popularity of gaming in the 90s, let alone the fad of the early 80s, and much of that is due to slow structural changes in mass entertainment. You can say this decision or that contributed, but really, you can't stop this kind of social change.

Of course, the hobby will live on as a grassroots activity, even without a supply of "official" rulebooks you can buy in large chain bookstores. It has an attraction that goes beyond the glossy supplements and geek chic products people surround themselves with. It is about playing with our imaginations, and there will always be imaginative people who will like this sort of thing, even if they have to print and bind their own goddamn rulebooks to do so. They will not be able to count on a ready supply of fellow gamers outside large cities: they will have to go out and recruit new people. I believe that will not be a bad thing.

I can't disagree with this either. Kinda mirrors the miniature wargaming "industry" seems to me. Especially for the historical wargamers rather than the Warhammer crews.

Also for the industry side of things the percentage of revenue that ends up in the pockets of writers has been going up due to a lot of middlemen being cut out. So at least they're getting a bigger piece of a smaller pie.

There's a huge lack of market data in this business, moreso than in any other for a few reasons.

• It's an open ended hobby, a group (and it is almost always a group) can run the one system they bought forever if they want, while experiencing something new every week. Some groups do exactly that.
• Some people just don't buy RPG products, being too busy writing their own, its a very hacker-friendly pastime. I'd include myself here.
• There are a huge number of RPG PDFs on the torrent sites. Anyone can get just about anything with a few taps on their keyboard. Not to say that it's more prevalent in this business than any other, but its a factor moreso than monopoly or poker.
• "Roleplayers" doesn't mean "internet users that frequent roleplaying forums". Its unclear how much of an overlay exists between the two, but my estimation is that its a lot less than some believe.
  

You can't just look at sales and say the hobby is dying, they may mean very little. This is bad news for publishers of course, and also thankfully for the amount of vapid gossip these publishers seem to generate. The truth is nobody has clue one how many people are roleplaying out there, and short of including it as a census question they never will.

In all likelihood it doesn't matter for publishers since most of the hidden majority won't buy the products anyway, being happy enough with what they have. Short version, nobody knows, is ever likely to know, and even if they did know it probably wouldn't help them earn any money from it. A mysterious pursuit, this.

I think if there is ever to be a revival of the sales end of things, it needs to play heavily upon the uniquely personal and visceral experience produced by RPGs, nothing else can do that. Also it will help when A4 sized colour screen e-ink devices make an appearance, and they will.

Doomsaying? perhaps.

However i think the age of the video game console is passing. Perhaps rpg's need to take advantage of google + and tablets and ipads and othershit I can't afford nor run.

D&D needs to make up it's mind as to what it wants to be: either a tabeltop miniatures game (which is fine) or an rpg. If it's the latter then condense the product into a pair of books and not require cards and all sorts of other weirdness.

Perhap the future lies with story games: Fiasco got featured on Whil Wheaton's (you can't have a pie without cool whip!) Tabletop youtube show, D&D didn't.

FFG is still churning out 40k rpg product. I can't keep up with it now Only War is actually out. Do i play it? Well i've yet to read all the books I already own and have barely run DH and BC, but that's partly because the rules are chunky and the two players I have aren't really a) enough and b) serious.

Maybe there's a middle ground somewhere: smaller books, less prep, easier rules.

It's not dying, it's the conventional market that's dying; bricks and mortar.

Quote from: Benoist;611721It's the same doomsaying by the same, and/or different, short-sighted people who've drank the mass media, mass marketing kool aid over the years. Doom, doom doom! We need to compete with World of Warcraft, with the internet, with mass entertainment...

Of course RPG's need to compete with other forms of entertainment. People only have a finite amount of leisure time, after all, and they aren't shy about dropping activities they don't like. We want that time. Wizards wants that time, because it means buying their books. I want that time, because it means I get to play.

Thing is, RPG's stack up pretty fucking well against every other form of entertainment. Ultimately, our problem is that we're not very good at making people know this.

Quote from: Warthur;611774So exactly how much of your spare time do you spend hanging around, say, 18-25 year olds?

This is not a facetious question; I ask because your experience might simply reflect the fact that people of a certain age with a peer group of a certain age might not necessarily expect their observations to be entirely objective.

One of my tabletop campaigns is run at Gold Star Anime in Edinboro PA a small rural college town in NW PA. I have regular contact with a bunch of twenty somethings. What they mostly play is Magic the Gathering, Heroclix, and a small amount of tabletop role playing mostly 4e organized play. This is similar what I see in other stores in the region. Warhammer may be played instead of Heroclix, or Euro boardgames,etc.

Physically getting together and gaming seems to me to be quite healthy. If anything even stronger than the 1990s. Also it seems to me that tabletop RPGs are the low man on the totem pole, lifts a finger, at the moment. Until A Warhammere miniature wargaming was perceived as a dying hobby relegated to a niche.

What I think is that mass gaming is now the province of MMORPGs, first person shooters and other computer games. That physical gaming is a large niche hobby. That among those who play in person the popularity of various game types rise and fall in a cycle.

The RPG Industry can influence things. A strong organized play program is a great way to increase visibility. As long as you don't wind up thinking that how all tabletop gamers play. I think Paizo gets this while Wizard didn't.

Creating products that play to the strength of tabletop over other forms of gaming namely the ability to attempt anything combined with the flexibility of the human referee. Killing tabletop is easy just try to make it like another form of gaming. Then the hassles of having to assemble a group at a specific time combined with the burden of work on the referee will lose out to the conviences of the alternatives.

RPG Tabletop may not be popular among the masses but that OK thanks to the Internet's ability to effortlessly allow people to connect and communicate. This has allowed the revival and survival of all sort of niche hobbies.

Quote from: Sigmund;611790I have to agree with this. Seems to be the worst thing that could happen is that the Earth is destroyed by a rogue asteroid.... that would lay a serious buzz-kill on the whole TTRPGing community I'm thinking.

Yeah but one poor bastard will finally get to use his "stuck on a desert island" RPG list, only it will be his "Last man on earth" RPG list and he'll be playing with Wilson. :D

Changing, yes, Dying, no. If I had to guess I'd say it's going to be smaller and we'll probably see less and less lush, photoglossy, colorfully illustrated books like Pathfinder or Eclipse Phase; but the torrent of small-press and amateur material should remain steady for a long time.

Quote from: CRKrueger;611763You may as well talk about the slow decline of the MMORPG industry because there will never be another WoW, just a couple hundred smaller games sharing the same market space.  The new kids are playing shooters, soon as the "born in 1980" group dies, so will MMORPGs.

We're stuck with tabletop, crpgs and MMORPGs for a while, thank god, until simsense comes along and we can do it "for real". Of course at that point 99% of the population will die of starvation while plugged into porn.

Spot on, and made me actually laugh out loud.

Quote from: CRKrueger;611841Yeah but one poor bastard will finally get to use his "stuck on a desert island" RPG list, only it will be his "Last man on earth" RPG list and he'll be playing with Wilson. :D

Mythic GM Emulator and multiple characters for "each" PC should do the trick. ;)

I think the hobby goes throug peaks and valleys of popularity. Right now it does look like many rpg companiesare hurting but I do think much of that is because publishing in general is having trouble as things like ebooks ad print on demand change the game coupled with a prolonged recession. In fact I think the recession really makes it hard to decipher things.

I feel like we have had two huge surges in popularity: the early 80s and the early 2000s. Both were times when a lot of other elements in the popular culture made a game like D&D more palatable to a general audience. It seems like we are getting a lot of that stuff fin the media again (this time with tons of super hero movies and interest in geek culture with shows like the big bang). In some ways, I suspect we are going through another upsurge but it is concealed by the changes going in in publishing and the slow economic recovery. This is only based on my own observations, but I have just seen alot more early 20-somethings of late, who dont strike me as typical gamers, getting into rpgs. Interestingly a lot of them are coming to rpgs through games like skyrim or shows like big bang theory and the new doctor who. They are more casual about table top games (not needing that once to twice a week fix a lot of us expect) but they are still excited to play, and having people like that participate is helps generate interest and sales.

Everyone I introduce to AD&D is taken with it, but that's the thing: I seek them out.  It's not a phenomena any more; people know of it, at least in the remotest sense, but aren't drawn to it.  When you get a few imaginative people sitting down to play you can have a blast and maybe possibly "create" some new gamers, or at least people who will play when you ask.  Generally, with younger people the reaction is "Wow, you mean I can do anything?" and with people around my age the reaction is "This is neat; it's like The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones except we're the ones making the decisions" (that's a broad generalization, but there it is).

But the dedicated attraction, the desire to go out and seek out someone who plays D&D isn't really there, I don't think.  In that respect, TTRPGs aren't growing and indeed are dying.  The last "brand new gamers" I ran through part of A1 (they died at the hands of the ghouls in the ruined temple/slaver's hideout) were recruited by one of my group.  They fell in love with it, thought it was a blast.  But, by that same token, they didn't come to me/us.

So take away what you will from that.

Folks doesn't have the time or perhaps inclination to write and create. People like video games because character creation is visual and simple and the quests are created and ready to go. Simialrly no one wants to sit down and write an adventure, and games almost universally suck at explaining how you, as a prospective GM, go from reading the rules to writing and running adventures. It's a secret knowledge gleaned only from experience.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;611855Everyone I introduce to AD&D is taken with it, but that's the thing: I seek them out.  It's not a phenomena any more; people know of it, at least in the remotest sense, but aren't drawn to it.  When you get a few imaginative people sitting down to play you can have a blast and maybe possibly "create" some new gamers, or at least people who will play when you ask.  Generally, with younger people the reaction is "Wow, you mean I can do anything?" and with people around my age the reaction is "This is neat; it's like The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones except we're the ones making the decisions" (that's a broad generalization, but there it is).

But the dedicated attraction, the desire to go out and seek out someone who plays D&D isn't really there, I don't think.  In that respect, TTRPGs aren't growing and indeed are dying.  The last "brand new gamers" I ran through part of A1 (they died at the hands of the ghouls in the ruined temple/slaver's hideout) were recruited by one of my group.  They fell in love with it, thought it was a blast.  But, by that same token, they didn't come to me/us.

So take away what you will from that.

You seem to have better luck in introducing people to D&D.

These days whenever I introduce people to D&D, the typical response is stuff like:

- "Why are you wasting my time?"
- "So what?"
- "What are you willing to do for me?"
- "How much are you going to pay me?"
- etc ...

This is the main reason why I don't bother asking anyone anymore (offline unsolicited), about playing D&D or any other tabletop rpg games.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;611868Folks doesn't have the time or perhaps inclination to write and create. People like video games because character creation is visual and simple and the quests are created and ready to go. Simialrly no one wants to sit down and write an adventure, and games almost universally suck at explaining how you, as a prospective GM, go from reading the rules to writing and running adventures. It's a secret knowledge gleaned only from experience.

And yet my Labyrinth Lord group, none of whom are over 25 years old and never gamed before outside of the computer, love it and cannot wait for the next session.

Quote from: ggroy;611873You seem to have better luck in introducing people to D&D.

These days whenever I introduce people to D&D, the typical response is stuff like:

- "Why are you wasting my time?"
- "So what?"
- "What are you willing to do for me?"
- "How much are you going to pay me?"
- etc ...

This is the main reason why I don't bother asking anyone anymore (offline unsolicited), about playing D&D or any other tabletop rpg games.

*boggle*

Do those people ever have any free time at all?

Quote from: vytzka;611888*boggle*

Do those people ever have any free time at all?

From what I could tell, these particular individuals do have a lot of free time.  (A few of them are unemployed).

Though the issue seems to be that they are highly resentful about anybody intruding in on THEIR free time.

The only real evidence I can provide is that the local University RPG society in 2007/2008/2009 was bigger than in 1994/1995/1996.

Quote from: ggroy;611893From what I could tell, these particular individuals do have a lot of free time.  (A few of them are unemployed).

Though the issue seems to be that they are highly resentful about anybody intruding in on THEIR free time.

Intruding, what the fuck, how does inviting them for shared entertainment count as intruding? I hope they have fun sitting at home watching TV and by have fun I mean I hope they get bored to death.

Part of getting people interested is sales pitch, and knowing who you're selling to (if you will).

The "This is like LOTR/Thrones" couple were fairly well-read; we eschewed miniatures altogether and I used a lot of narrative, and there was a lot of "Wait, go back and describe that again" sort of stuff.

When I'd run my 10-15 people games (always overbooked, always drew a huge crowd of onlookers) at the local cons, the convention itself was based mostly on historical wargaming: I always always used Dwarven Forge, miniatures, the whole schmeer.  Same for running games for younger players.

You just have to know your audience.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;611923Part of getting people interested is sales pitch, and knowing who you're selling to (if you will).

The "This is like LOTR/Thrones" couple were fairly well-read; we eschewed miniatures altogether and I used a lot of narrative, and there was a lot of "Wait, go back and describe that again" sort of stuff.

When I'd run my 10-15 people games (always overbooked, always drew a huge crowd of onlookers) at the local cons, the convention itself was based mostly on historical wargaming: I always always used Dwarven Forge, miniatures, the whole schmeer.  Same for running games for younger players.

You just have to know your audience.

Knowing your audience is key.

My current Players were very resistant when a friend showed them the Pathfinder Core Rules because the size of the book just turned them off. Loaning one of them a copy of the 64 page Basic D&D rules won them enough over to give it a try. Never underestimate the benefits of a good introductory game.

Quote from: vytzka;611910Intruding, what the fuck, how does inviting them for shared entertainment count as intruding? I hope they have fun sitting at home watching TV and by have fun I mean I hope they get bored to death.

For one person, they don't watch tv at all.  This particular individual spends most of their time snorting cocaine, smoking weed, and drinking booze all day, while attempting to write country music songs.  (It's an old friend from decades ago).

This is from a UK perspective...

I think the whole video game argument for RPGs fading (and I think it is) is bullshit. Throughout D&D there have been video games! In the 80s to early 90s I had, at varying points, a Spectrum, Commodore, Nintendo, Sega and Amiga machines. I also remember video games being massive at high-school with a black market for Commodore and Amiga games! Additionally, I had Comics, Star wars, Transformers, Zoids, Fighting Fantasy books, music and lots of other things of interests AND RPGs. I don't buy the kids are doing not playing RPGs because of X.Y and Z; they aren't playing them because they have no presence, drive, market OR any company pushing them.

Think back to the 80s and 90s. You had in the 80s a D&D cartoon. You could walk into a hobby store, I mean a general hobby store and they would be there! They'd also be in comic stores AND toy stores. In fact the Virgin Megastore and Hamleys in London and Sheffield UK both carried such products in the 80s and 90s. Nowadays - nothing but the rare RPG shop and some comic stores. Also, Games Workshop (throughout the UK) carried D&D products to begin with but even in early 90s their own products.

So today. Games Workshop is still around and they are making profits; why? If we can compare a fantasy wargaming operation to D&D then why is Warhammer (at least in the UK) still huge and D&D not? The reason is GW knew that just paying attention to select crowd meant no expansion or profit you have to appeal to the incoming KIDS and their parents with £$£. Today I went to the supermarket - there in the magazine section were SEVEN copies of White Dwarf! In a supermarket, in the outer belts of London. No Dragon magazine, no Dungeon magazine they are gone. Want to know why the hobby isn't as big as it should be; blame WOTC.

Quote from: jeff37923;611929Knowing your audience is key.

My current Players were very resistant when a friend showed them the Pathfinder Core Rules because the size of the book just turned them off. Loaning one of them a copy of the 64 page Basic D&D rules won them enough over to give it a try. Never underestimate the benefits of a good introductory game.

I agree with this sentiment.  D&D is unique in that it's continuing the legacy of the "3 Core Books" format, where most other RPG systems just have one.  Even then, particularly weighty books such as Pathfinder (500+ pages) are chock-full of rules and mechanics which intimidate many interesting newcomers.  The Pathfinder Beginner Box, which is sort of like the "Basic Set" for it, did wonders for getting fresh blood into the hobby with its short and simple outline of the rules.

Quote from: elfandghost;612019This is from a UK perspective...

I think the whole video game argument for RPGs fading (and I think it is) is bullshit. Throughout D&D there have been video games! In the 80s to early 90s I had, at varying points, a Spectrum, Commodore, Nintendo, Sega and Amiga machines. I also remember video games being massive at high-school with a black market for Commodore and Amiga games! Additionally, I had Comics, Star wars, Transformers, Zoids, Fighting Fantasy books, music and lots of other things of interests AND RPGs. I don't buy the kids are doing not playing RPGs because of X.Y and Z; they aren't playing them because they have no presence, drive, market OR any company pushing them.

Modern video games are also completely different from that era. The megahits - CoD, WoW, etc. - are the results of a lot of research on addicting players to them. They're ridiculously easy to play, much more socially accepted than they were then, and evidently provide enough online social interaction for a sizable chunk of the age range that would have been playing RPG's.

Nobody has yet done, to RPG's, the amount of streamlining and mainstreaming that video games have gone through over the last two decades (Because, really, it was Sony that started it, with the PS1). And the RPG market is too fractured for anyone to really take the initiative required.

Quote from: ggroy;611930For one person, they don't watch tv at all.  This particular individual spends most of their time snorting cocaine, smoking weed, and drinking booze all day, while attempting to write country music songs.  (It's an old friend from decades ago).

Well, I must say those are pretty demanding hobbies. Liver masochism and singing about losing stuff takes real time and effort. So I understand if that person's time is wholly occupied.

However I just wanted to rejoinder that the already mentioned issues of high exposure and entry simplicity really matter. There's a reason why Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, et al, had cartoons. There's a reason why many successful games keep their terms and mechanics relatively straight forward.

Advertising works. It doesn't need to be successful, it just needs to be everywhere.

KISS design works. It doesn't need to be elegant, it just needs to be easy.

The hobby has had well over a decade of the big industry players disobeying these two pop culture edicts. The results are predictable. Submit and thrive or disobey and shrivel. 'Stop hyper-focusing your product line to a niche customer' is the solution.

Quote from: elfandghost;612019Games Workshop is still around and they are making profits; why? If we can compare a fantasy wargaming operation to D&D then why is Warhammer (at least in the UK) still huge and D&D not? The reason is GW knew that just paying attention to select crowd meant no expansion or profit you have to appeal to the incoming KIDS and their parents with £$£. Today I went to the supermarket - there in the magazine section were SEVEN copies of White Dwarf!

GW is a company I admire for their business sense. Amazing really that they have made a single game of fantasy battles into a recognised "hobby" with a worldwide chain of stores and are a publicly listed company.

Their strategy is based on selling loads of highly-priced components, so I'm just not sure how this would work for RPGs. GW recognised this in the 80s, thus they got out of the RPG market to focus on the bottom line.

I guess WotC tried to do something similar in the 21st century: sell loads of electronic product by subscription. But the results have been as we know.

GW is also utterly, utterly ruthless from a legal standpoint; they make 90s TSR look like punters when it comes to protecting IP.  If I did for WHFRP what I did for AD&D in terms of the many adventures I've written*, they'd have C&D'ed me out of existence.


...


*=SHUT UP 5 IS TOO "MANY".

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;612126GW is a company I admire for their business sense. Amazing really that they have made a single game of fantasy battles into a recognised "hobby" with a worldwide chain of stores and are a publicly listed company.

Their strategy is based on selling loads of highly-priced components, so I'm just not sure how this would work for RPGs. GW recognised this in the 80s, thus they got out of the RPG market to focus on the bottom line.

I guess WotC tried to do something similar in the 21st century: sell loads of electronic product by subscription. But the results have been as we know.

The strategy is also based on discarding customers at regular intervals. GW does its damnedest to pump as much money out of a person for a few years and then they throw them under the bus.

Business wise it's not a bad plan (obviously) but sucks as a player (witness the endless bitching about GW Everytime a new anything comes out).

Yup for introducing people you can't give them a freaking textbook to read. In my last CoC game we had two new players and they were a bit put off by the complexity of chargen (I shutter to think what WotC-D&D would've been like) but the French gun nut newbie took right to it immediately and by the end of the game was teaching us the gun rules despite not knowing what 3d6 meant at the start of the session (the GM and I had only played 1920's CoC and hadn't played Delta Green and didn't know the modern gun rules well) and telling all of our characters what guns we should buy for the next session.

For the elementary school kids that I ran a dungeon for recently I didn't teach them anything besides what the charisma, constitution and constitution meant and told them "these are your hit points, they go down when you get hurt and if they run out you die."

It's really easy to bring people in if they only have to learn the rules they're interested in or can just play without having to worry about what a daily is or what's the best way to distribute skill points.

People are so used to playing with a bunch of players who've played for years that I think a lot in the industry have forgotten what it's like to run a game for a party in which not a single one has ever played before. But if you approach them in the right way it's easy to draw them in once they start playing since it's so much fun :)

Quote from: Piestrio;612131The strategy is also based on discarding customers at regular intervals. GW does its damnedest to pump as much money out of a person for a few years and then they throw them under the bus.

Games Workshop's business model is thus: GW wants and expects a customer base with a median age of 17. Yes, that's right. I know what you're thinking, "But Delver, that's ridiculous, look how expensive their stuff is! What seventeen year old has the wherewithal to buy a whole army?" Well, they don't but mom and dad do. So little Johnny Chaosarmy hits mom and dad up 'round the holiday season and asks for a 5000 point army box set (or whatever they're onto), a shedload of paint, brushes, "official" terrain and modeling tools and so on (like their $20 wondercutter for foam sculpting that you can buy at a craft store for $2.00), plus various rulebooks, and Mom and dad comply and the fix is in for $300-$500.

Now comes the really cool part. Little Johnny Chaosarmy spends eighteen months (GW's ideal mean for players to play) going to this show or that, maybe taking a passing interest in trophy painting, and so on, buying an extra model kit or four here or there, plus the inevitable monthly catalogue for $10 (you know, the one that masquerades as a gaming mag?) When all is said and done, Johnny has been painlessly separated from $2000-$3000 of his parents' largesse and then they quit. They piss off, get interested in girls in a serious way, decide they want a car more than more WH40k/WHFB stuff, and either ebay the whole shebang for 10% of what they paid for it, give it away, throw it out, let it sit on a shelf and gather dust, etc. but they do not stick around playing after that eighteen months.

GW wants this churn, this turnover, because guys like "us" screw up the equation. Here's what "we" do: we very carefully build up an army $10 - $20 at a time, never throwing down for an army deal. We cherry pick the "hero" minis we want, and we use everything but the shittacular GW crap paints, brushes, glues, etc. What's worse is we tell other gamers that we do that and then they (potentially) start bucking the system too. The penultimate insult though comes when we've got our armies we've gamed with for years and years and years without upgrading, without spending $1000 in a single whack, etc., and we cleave to the older versions of the rules and don't supplement, or we just grab back-issues of WD to get the new rules, and so on. The REAL thing "we" do then to piss off GW is we stick around for years, dribbling out a tiny, tiny, insignificant amount of money into their coffers if any at all. Content to show up at GW "events" or stores that simply have a huge GW draw, we'll use proxies, ("That stand of Reaper orc archers are Black Orc bowmen," etc.) we'll basically not bend over and offer our rosy behinds to GW weekend in and weekend out and act like we're happy about it.

This is all that GW wants out of the consumer. All. Not to enjoy, not to be a die-hard for years, but to kindly fuck off and move out of the way for someone to burn through another two or three grand. The rare specimen who toes the party line and stays for years get the exalted job of paying to be a GW employee, pushing events, judging, etc.

QuoteBusiness wise it's not a bad plan (obviously) but sucks as a player (witness the endless bitching about GW Everytime a new anything comes out).

GW wants your business - for 18-24 months.  Then they want you to leave the hobby forever.

Yes, the hobby is dying, according to plan.  Now how can we speed that up?

Quote from: Daztur;612143Yup for introducing people you can't give them a freaking textbook to read. In my last CoC game we had two new players and they were a bit put off by the complexity of chargen (I shutter to think what WotC-D&D would've been like) but the French gun nut newbie took right to it immediately and by the end of the game was teaching us the gun rules despite not knowing what 3d6 meant at the start of the session (the GM and I had only played 1920's CoC and hadn't played Delta Green and didn't know the modern gun rules well) and telling all of our characters what guns we should buy for the next session.

For the elementary school kids that I ran a dungeon for recently I didn't teach them anything besides what the charisma, constitution and constitution meant and told them "these are your hit points, they go down when you get hurt and if they run out you die."

It's really easy to bring people in if they only have to learn the rules they're interested in or can just play without having to worry about what a daily is or what's the best way to distribute skill points.

People are so used to playing with a bunch of players who've played for years that I think a lot in the industry have forgotten what it's like to run a game for a party in which not a single one has ever played before. But if you approach them in the right way it's easy to draw them in once they start playing since it's so much fun :)

This.

TSR (and thus the rest of the hobby) reacted to the decline in the late 80's by focusing more and more on the "hardcore" fans and abandoning the casual market. More splats, more rules, more details, more more more.

And here we are today :)

Quote from: This Guy;612148Yes, the hobby is dying, according to plan.  Now how can we speed that up?

Well, I want the industry to die, but I'd like the hobby to live.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;612150Well, I want the industry to die, but I'd like the hobby to live.

No, both must die.  From the ashes shall arise a new hobby or something.  I'm still sorting out the details.

Though even if the hobby were to live, I don't think it would exist in a form that most of the posters here would want to see anyway.

Quote from: This Guy;612155Though even if the hobby were to live, I don't think it would exist in a form that most of the posters here would want to see anyway.

I often thought that "mainstream" popularity could only be achieved by making the game completely unacceptable to a huge portion of current RPGers.

Quote from: Piestrio;612156I often thought that "mainstream" popularity could only be achieved by making the game completely unacceptable to a huge portion of current RPGers.

Pretty much.  I think if Ron Edwards had been able to successfully market his ideas to a broader audience and using a popular license, probably involving melodramatic supernatural romance, and maybe thrown some board game mechanics as well, then the tears would have flown freely, and the hobby put quietly to sleep so as to spare it further suffering.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;612144Games Workshop's business model is thus: GW wants and expects a customer base with a median age of 17. Yes, that's right. I know what you're thinking, "But Delver, that's ridiculous, look how expensive their stuff is! What seventeen year old has the wherewithal to buy a whole army?" Well, they don't but mom and dad do. So little Johnny Chaosarmy hits mom and dad up 'round the holiday season and asks for a 5000 point army box set (or whatever they're onto), a shedload of paint, brushes, "official" terrain and modeling tools and so on (like their $20 wondercutter for foam sculpting that you can buy at a craft store for $2.00), plus various rulebooks, and Mom and dad comply and the fix is in for $300-$500.

Now comes the really cool part. Little Johnny Chaosarmy spends eighteen months (GW's ideal mean for players to play) going to this show or that, maybe taking a passing interest in trophy painting, and so on, buying an extra model kit or four here or there, plus the inevitable monthly catalogue for $10 (you know, the one that masquerades as a gaming mag?) When all is said and done, Johnny has been painlessly separated from $2000-$3000 of his parents' largesse and then they quit. They piss off, get interested in girls in a serious way, decide they want a car more than more WH40k/WHFB stuff, and either ebay the whole shebang for 10% of what they paid for it, give it away, throw it out, let it sit on a shelf and gather dust, etc. but they do not stick around playing after that eighteen months.

GW wants this churn, this turnover, because guys like "us" screw up the equation. Here's what "we" do: we very carefully build up an army $10 - $20 at a time, never throwing down for an army deal. We cherry pick the "hero" minis we want, and we use everything but the shittacular GW crap paints, brushes, glues, etc. What's worse is we tell other gamers that we do that and then they (potentially) start bucking the system too. The penultimate insult though comes when we've got our armies we've gamed with for years and years and years without upgrading, without spending $1000 in a single whack, etc., and we cleave to the older versions of the rules and don't supplement, or we just grab back-issues of WD to get the new rules, and so on. The REAL thing "we" do then to piss off GW is we stick around for years, dribbling out a tiny, tiny, insignificant amount of money into their coffers if any at all. Content to show up at GW "events" or stores that simply have a huge GW draw, we'll use proxies, ("That stand of Reaper orc archers are Black Orc bowmen," etc.) we'll basically not bend over and offer our rosy behinds to GW weekend in and weekend out and act like we're happy about it.

This is all that GW wants out of the consumer. All. Not to enjoy, not to be a die-hard for years, but to kindly fuck off and move out of the way for someone to burn through another two or three grand. The rare specimen who toes the party line and stays for years get the exalted job of paying to be a GW employee, pushing events, judging, etc.



GW wants your business - for 18-24 months.  Then they want you to leave the hobby forever.

Seriously, I had a beef with GW the day they turned WD into a house mag that was all about WH and WH40k for the kids and deprived the rest of us (in the UK) of a brilliant and affirming monthly mag. But really - who else was bringing in the new draft of 12 year old boys who were (and could still be) the new life blood of the hobby? It was a smart and effective marketing strategy they pulled off really well, and more power to them for it. I wish the same had been true of other publishers, or that it were done in a way by GW themselves, that would have fed more of those punters into the games that I'm personally invested in. But that's just vanity. Take from it some reassurance that if properly packaged and marketed our hobby can actually be something other than a niche for 30- 40- and 50- something persistent geeks who carry the flame for things we enjoyed when we were young and still cling to.

Quote from: Piestrio;612131The strategy is also based on discarding customers at regular intervals. GW does its damnedest to pump as much money out of a person for a few years and then they throw them under the bus.

Sounds similar to the business model of top40 popular music.  :rolleyes:

Quote from: thedungeondelver;612144Games Workshop's business model is thus: GW wants and expects a customer base with a median age of 17.

I was under the impression it was even lower than that - 17 is "learning to drive", "having a part-time job" and "saving for guitar/uni/girls/car" age in the UK, 12 - 13 is the age you want. Old enough to have pocket money, and young enough to have no idea what to do with it.

I kinda miss playing and collecting, but then again, grown-up responsibilities etc.

---

Near the end of when I played WHFB, I was considering getting a unit of Harpies for my Chaos Warrior army, but unwilling to spend £50 on a unit of them if I didn't like them much. So I took some Battlemasters Beastmen (Which were much smaller than the WHFB ones at the time), cut out some paper wings, and blu-tacked them on. A fair proxy, I felt. Obvious what they were, obvious what they did, based on a Citadel miniature.

So I take them along to the store, and get matched in a 2-vs-1 game, alongside an Undead player. While we're deploying, my team-mate (An older gentleman, I'd guess he was in his thirties or so) is somewhat dismissive of my Proxy Harpies, and just when we're done deploying, he turns to me and says quietly, "If I ever see you using those stupid paper Harpies after this game, I'm going to break your knees".

We played the game. I was pissed off and not playing my best, and we lost. The Harpies were pretty ineffectual; I don't think they even saw combat. A GW staffer comes up to me and tells me, "right, you've had the chance to try out Harpies, now you can't use those proxies again".

I didn't buy them.

Quote from: Ladybird;612178I was under the impression it was even lower than that - 17 is "learning to drive", "having a part-time job" and "saving for guitar/uni/girls/car" age in the UK, 12 - 13 is the age you want. Old enough to have pocket money, and young enough to have no idea what to do with it.

I kinda miss playing and collecting, but then again, grown-up responsibilities etc.

---

Near the end of when I played WHFB, I was considering getting a unit of Harpies for my Chaos Warrior army, but unwilling to spend £50 on a unit of them if I didn't like them much. So I took some Battlemasters Beastmen (Which were much smaller than the WHFB ones at the time), cut out some paper wings, and blu-tacked them on. A fair proxy, I felt. Obvious what they were, obvious what they did, based on a Citadel miniature.

So I take them along to the store, and get matched in a 2-vs-1 game, alongside an Undead player. While we're deploying, my team-mate (An older gentleman, I'd guess he was in his thirties or so) is somewhat dismissive of my Proxy Harpies, and just when we're done deploying, he turns to me and says quietly, "If I ever see you using those stupid paper Harpies after this game, I'm going to break your knees".

We played the game. I was pissed off and not playing my best, and we lost. The Harpies were pretty ineffectual; I don't think they even saw combat. A GW staffer comes up to me and tells me, "right, you've had the chance to try out Harpies, now you can't use those proxies again".

I didn't buy them.

I hear stuff like this from people about GW shops in England.  Is it illegal there for you to laugh in a shopkeeper's face as you tell him to go fuck his mother?

Quote from: Ladybird;612178I was under the impression it was even lower than that - 17 is "learning to drive", "having a part-time job" and "saving for guitar/uni/girls/car" age in the UK, 12 - 13 is the age you want. Old enough to have pocket money, and young enough to have no idea what to do with it.

I kinda miss playing and collecting, but then again, grown-up responsibilities etc.

I will take that correction, it actually is probably a lot closer to 12-13 in the overall.

Quote---

Near the end of when I played WHFB, I was considering getting a unit of Harpies for my Chaos Warrior army, but unwilling to spend £50 on a unit of them if I didn't like them much. So I took some Battlemasters Beastmen (Which were much smaller than the WHFB ones at the time), cut out some paper wings, and blu-tacked them on. A fair proxy, I felt. Obvious what they were, obvious what they did, based on a Citadel miniature.

So I take them along to the store, and get matched in a 2-vs-1 game, alongside an Undead player. While we're deploying, my team-mate (An older gentleman, I'd guess he was in his thirties or so) is somewhat dismissive of my Proxy Harpies, and just when we're done deploying, he turns to me and says quietly, "If I ever see you using those stupid paper Harpies after this game, I'm going to break your knees".

We played the game. I was pissed off and not playing my best, and we lost. The Harpies were pretty ineffectual; I don't think they even saw combat. A GW staffer comes up to me and tells me, "right, you've had the chance to try out Harpies, now you can't use those proxies again".

I didn't buy them.

Holy shit.  This garbage right here is what's killing the hobby.

GW is doing fine, no? It sounds awful on the part of both the shopkeeper and the other player, but that is what lets them keep selling product.

In the states people seem to be more interested in the modeling/ conversion aspect.  Even at "The Bunker" in SoCal no one gave a shit about the GW rules unless it was a highlighted GW event, IME.

Hell if you put paper wings on your harpies, at least you were trying, I've seen jokers use Tonka trucks for Land Raiders.

Quote from: CRKrueger;612195Hell if you put paper wings on your harpies, at least you were trying, I've seen jokers use Tonka trucks for Land Raiders.

That sounds like a lot more fun to me. As a kid I got the WHFB intro boxed set, got bored trying to paint the damn things, ran screaming from the prices of the models and then just used risk pieces, legos, a stuffed hedgehog (nurgle) and anything else I could dig up. Was fun playing 10,000 point battles over a course of a week against my brother in the space room. He was not happy when my skaven cannons killed his big demon before it ever saw combat, but what did he expect, I had like 20 of them :)

Quote from: Piestrio;612156I often thought that "mainstream" popularity could only be achieved by making the game completely unacceptable to a huge portion of current RPGers.

4e proved it was not that easy.

(http://i833.photobucket.com/albums/zz260/vytzka/rimshot.gif)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;612150Well, I want the industry to die, but I'd like the hobby to live.

Eh, I like full color glossy hardcovers too much to want the industry to die.

Quote from: vytzka;612245Eh, I like full color glossy hardcovers too much to want the industry to die.

Me too! :)

Quote from: Daztur;612199That sounds like a lot more fun to me. As a kid I got the WHFB intro boxed set, got bored trying to paint the damn things, ran screaming from the prices of the models and then just used risk pieces, legos, a stuffed hedgehog (nurgle) and anything else I could dig up. Was fun playing 10,000 point battles over a course of a week against my brother in the space room. He was not happy when my skaven cannons killed his big demon before it ever saw combat, but what did he expect, I had like 20 of them :)

I always wanted a miniatures game in which the two sides really were whatever toy soldiers or lego people that happened to be hanging around.  Battles would take place on specially prepared places of battle within houses (ie tables) and landscape would consist of coffee cups, pizza boxes, and whatever obstacles might happen to be there.

I have something just for you (http://brikwars.com/rules/2005/cover.htm).

Quote from: vytzka;612253I have something just for you (http://brikwars.com/rules/2005/cover.htm).

This (a link to Brickwars, tss tss, no blind links on the RPG Site, guys, please), is awesome.

You should totally have a look at it.

Quote from: LadybirdWe played the game. I was pissed off and not playing my best, and we lost. The Harpies were pretty ineffectual; I don't think they even saw combat. A GW staffer comes up to me and tells me, "right, you've had the chance to try out Harpies, now you can't use those proxies again".

It is legal and profitable, right? They are not even as bad as this little outfit named Goldman Sachs, right?

Well, if this is what it takes the hobby to live, I'll say some lives are not worth living. Fuck these guys, and their 'business model'.

Quote from: Benoist;612258(a link to Brickwars, tss tss, no blind links on the RPG Site, guys, please), is awesome.

Sorry, didn't know that was frowned upon. I don't like the look of bare links, but I'll keep it in mind.

Quote from: CRKrueger;612186I hear stuff like this from people about GW shops in England.  Is it illegal there for you to laugh in a shopkeeper's face as you tell him to go fuck his mother?

Dunno. Even when I lived in England, I played most of my Warhammer across the border in Wales... :)

Actually, most of the GW redshirts that I've dealt with have been nice enough folks, and most of the adult fanbase was great (As I've found is the case with most "nerd hobbies"). But on the other hand... the players they get rid of today, are the parents twenty years down the line. I've had semi-serious conversations with other geek parents about whether we'd let our kids get into collectathon hobbies, if we were funding them.

Quote from: Ladybird;612178An older gentleman, I'd guess he was in his thirties or so

I love this....

I'm not sure I buy this 'slow demise' thing.  Tabletop and RPG genre kickstarters seem to do amazingly well.  RPG books seem to be selling well on Amazon.  Where's the 'death'?  If anything, I'd predict a surge over the next several years as the kids of those who started playing in the mid- to late-70s become independent RPG consumers.  I introduced my kids to tabletop RPGs, and I know others who've done the same.

As far as demographics go, I help run a PBP community with thousands of members (age 13+ mandated), and for us it breaks down something like this: about 1 in 20 users are 13-19, 2 out of 3 are 20-29, 1 of 5 are 30-39, 1 in 13 are 40 to 49, and 1 in 100 are 50 and up.  (Some reference info:  at least 1 in 200 report impossible ages, and about 1 in 20 prefer not to list birth date information.  Information is aggregated from over 2000 users actively posting in the past year.)

So the biggest chunk of gamers in this community by far is 20-29, followed by 30-39, and with reasonable size groups in the 13-19 and 40-49 categories.

My guess would be that PBP communities are shifted to slightly older ages, as the slow and asynchronous play style is probably most favoured by those with commitments that prevent them from setting aside time blocks to get together and game face-to-face with people (e.g. having kids).

Quote from: CRKrueger;611763You may as well talk about the slow decline of the MMORPG industry because there will never be another WoW, just a couple hundred smaller games sharing the same market space.

There's death even in that industry, as City of Heroes/Villains recently got canned. I'm sure DCU and Champions Online will absorb most of that crowd, but an MMO that was still making like $2.5 million in profit a year wasn't considered "profitable enough".

Quote from: vytzka;611765I'm still sad the Battletech virtual cockpits didn't catch on :(

They were awesome, but a mechanical nightmare to keep running.

Quote from: Warthur;611774So exactly how much of your spare time do you spend hanging around, say, 18-25 year olds?

Only at gaming, honestly.

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;611777I don't believe that all these younger people are too busy playing D&D to be reflected on forums, Youtube, or at conventions.

May I submit your representative data is fucking old, to today's teenagers?
Teenagers don't post in forums, they tweet or Facebook.
They don't post reviews on YouTube, they play the damn game.
They don't go to conventions, which are typically staffed with old or brand new games. They also don't have to go out of their way to find meetings of like-minded gamers, unlike people in their 30's or older.

Just my own experience, but I had to turn down gaming while between 18-25, that I would love to get an offer to now in my mid-thirties. The problem isn't desire, it's fucking responsibilities as a husband and father, and those trump gaming.

Quote from: vytzka;612270Sorry, didn't know that was frowned upon. I don't like the look of bare links, but I'll keep it in mind.

It doesn't have to be a bare link; if you'd just posted "I have here a set of miniature combat rules that use legos (http://brikwars.com/rules/2005/cover.htm)" or whatever, instead of the just "something for you", it would not be a blind link because it would have had a basic description of what you were linking to.

On the contrary, if you post just a bare link, and the URL itself is not sufficiently descriptive of what the site in question is about, then you are still posting a blind link.

RPGPundit

nvm; delete plz.

My personal anecdote regarding the Mentzer generation and today, for whatever little it may be worth:

I'm that guy.  I started playing right when it was released, and it was the product that introduced me to RPGs.  It was a gift from a relative (non-gamer) at the age of 8 or 9, and I learned straight from the box with no outside assistance.  I did go on to teach every kid that would listen to me in the 3rd grade (and 4th, and 5th, and so on).

Of the dozen of gamers I met or taught in the 80's, exactly none of them still play table-top RPGs that I know of.  Some play WoW, but most quit when there main group fell apart, because for them the hobby was more about socializing with a certain collection of people than the game itself.  If they can't game with Joe, Bob, Cletus, and Hank, then they just don't want to game anymore.

When I first found and started visiting hobby stores for RPGs, I was always the youngest person there (unless I had brought a friend).  Of all the "old-timers" I met (IOW, people who started before me), all of them have long quit RPGs by the time 3e rolled out.  Even the shop owners themselves!

I still manage to game weekly today, and know about two dozen regular RPG players.  Every one of them started in the late 90's or with the D20 era.

So, however little value it may have, my experience has been most of the "red box generation" have actually long-left table-top RPG's, and the older players today tend to be D20 generation.  


(Also, of all the gamers I know, retired or current, I am the only one that spends any time at all on RPG forums.)

Quote from: SJBenoist;612589Of the dozen of gamers I met or taught in the 80's, exactly none of them still play table-top RPGs that I know of.

When I first found and started visiting hobby stores for RPGs, I was always the youngest person there (unless I had brought a friend).  Of all the "old-timers" I met (IOW, people who started before me), all of them have long quit RPGs by the time 3e rolled out.  Even the shop owners themselves!

I still manage to game weekly today, and know about two dozen regular RPG players.  Every one of them started in the late 90's or with the D20 era.

So, however little value it may have, my experience has been most of the "red box generation" have actually long-left table-top RPG's, and the older players today tend to be D20 generation.

I've noticed the local oldtimers (in many places I have lived over the years) whom started with Moldvay/Mentzer/AD&D and are today still playing tabletop rpg games, come in two distinct stripes:

A - My way or the highway.
B - Willing to try almost any tabletop rpg game.

(Locally, there is very little to no overlap between cases A and B).

Unfortunately I've come across too many cases of A, whom are just very unpleasant to play rpg games with.  This is the main reason why I haven't played any AD&D campaigns in a very long time.  (Too many bad experiences with too many hardcore AD&D individuals fitting into case A.  The well has run dry).

At this point, I'm mainly playing one-shot evening rpg games once in a while, with individuals fitting into case B.  Much more pleasant to deal with.

Quote from: ggroy;612632I've noticed the local oldtimers (in many places I have lived over the years) whom started with Moldvay/Mentzer/AD&D and are today still playing tabletop rpg games, come in two distinct stripes:

A - My way or the highway.
B - Willing to try almost any tabletop rpg game.

(Locally, there is very little to no overlap between cases A and B).

Unfortunately I've come across too many cases of A, whom are just very unpleasant to play rpg games with.  This is the main reason why I haven't played any AD&D campaigns in a very long time.  (Too many bad experiences with too many hardcore AD&D individuals fitting into case A.  The well has run dry).

At this point, I'm mainly playing one-shot evening rpg games once in a while, with individuals fitting into case B.  Much more pleasant to deal with.

If there's anything that will kill of this hobby it's the conflict between a and b.

Quote from: Daztur;612199That sounds like a lot more fun to me. As a kid I got the WHFB intro boxed set, got bored trying to paint the damn things, ran screaming from the prices of the models and then just used risk pieces, legos, a stuffed hedgehog (nurgle) and anything else I could dig up. Was fun playing 10,000 point battles over a course of a week against my brother in the space room. He was not happy when my skaven cannons killed his big demon before it ever saw combat, but what did he expect, I had like 20 of them :)

I never bought the models, but played many a WHFB game on the floor. We just wrote down all the relevant numbers on slips of paper, and shuffled them around.

One day my GF came over, saw "the mess" on the floor, and neatly piled up all the little squares of paper. Arg.

Quote from: SJBenoist;612589Of the dozen of gamers I met or taught in the 80's, exactly none of them still play table-top RPGs that I know of.  Some play WoW, but most quit when there main group fell apart, because for them the hobby was more about socializing with a certain collection of people than the game itself.  If they can't game with Joe, Bob, Cletus, and Hank, then they just don't want to game anymore.

Dude, you actually know a guy named Cletus?

Quote from: Joethelawyer;612659Dude, you actually know a guy named Cletus?

Is it Cletus Van Damme? Are you in trouble with the Armenian mob?

Cletus van Damme?  :confused:

I thought it would have been Cletus from the original Dukes of Hazzard.  ;)

Quote from: ggroy;612664Cletus van Damme?  :confused:

It was Shane's improvised alias in The Shield. Mate, The Shield is seriously the best TV programme ever made, go and get the boxed set immediately!

Quote from: Joethelawyer;612659Dude, you actually know a guy named Cletus?

No, I was just making-up names.  You could insert Wolfgang if it reads better :)

Quote from: SJBenoist;612677No, I was just making-up names.  You could insert Wolfgang if it reads better :)

Wolfgang does not have the same gravitas as Cletus.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;612150Well, I want the industry to die, but I'd like the hobby to live.

I don't want the industry or hobby to die. And I don't think it has too. I want new games to keep coming out. Which I don't think we can support on a purely hobby-based level. I just don't want suits and marketers driving the creation of those games. I want them created by gamers.

Lets face it... RPGs have taken a back seat to a newer generation with very little imagination and very little drive to get off their asses to write or plan. Its too easy to turn on the computer and play a game.

The idealism of roleplay has been watered down as well. Dice and paper are trademarks of the past. Alot of folks seem to feel their MMO characters are the depth of roleplaying. We can all agree the major MMOs have little or no roleplay to them or required to fit into their communities. Maybe Ultima Online once had a good RP flavor but that was long ago.

TableTop gaming will in turn carry on but only if its demonstrated and pushed towards the younger generation. Game stores on average need to cater more so to the younger folks because old foggies like the majority of this board will spend $$$ and buy shit reguardless if its commercialized or not. Kids and young folks dont seem to catch on unless the TV is straight selling it to them.

I think reguardless hobbyshops and game stores will always be around but only at a fraction of what was once the glory days of the 80s and late 90s.

Keep your chins up, and teach the next generation...

Quote from: Tetsubo;612723I don't want the industry or hobby to die. And I don't think it has too. I want new games to keep coming out. Which I don't think we can support on a purely hobby-based level. I just don't want suits and marketers driving the creation of those games. I want them created by gamers.

The kickstarter site seems to be enabling just that, no?  I've been pleasantly surprised a number of times by the support there for a new tabletop system or gaming aid.

Quote from: Looter Guy;612724Game stores on average need to cater more so to the younger folks because old foggies like the majority of this board will spend $$$ and buy shit reguardless if its commercialized or not. Kids and young folks dont seem to catch on unless the TV is straight selling it to them.

I've talked to a number of people running game shops over the past year.  They all told pretty much the same story:  they sell a lot fewer RPG games, and sometimes don't even bother bringing a lot of that kind of stock to shows, because people have shifted largely to buying gaming books online, usually in PDF form.

Quote from: Looter Guy;612724Lets face it... RPGs have taken a back seat to a newer generation with very little imagination and very little drive to get off their asses to write or plan. Its too easy to turn on the computer and play a game.

I know some people from that "newer generation", and a lot more of them seem to be engaged in creative hobbies than ever before. Granted, most of that creativity involve a computer in some way, if for nothing else but networking / sharing, but I am not seeing a drop of creativity. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. It is just creativity largely focused on different things from tabetop RPGs.

Are RPGs demising again? Man they've been doing that off and on every few months since the early 80s.

The statement that RPGs are dying a slow death is true enough, but the conditions and clarifications that need to be attached to that far exceed the small text on your cellphone contract.  

Consider, for a moment, archery.  In England, it was the most popular sport.  Eventually, lawn bowling soared in popularity, along with tennis.  Archery ceased to be the 'go to diversion' for the vast majority of people.  But as a sport, it still exists.  It's just not quite the 'game' it used to be.  

Now, RPGs differ from archery in a number of ways, but for my purposes, the biggest difference is that a proper TTRPG requires people to get together in order to play.  It requires the alignment of schedules and a level of coordination that sports or games you can play on your own simply don't.  

So, consider a 'team sport' that doesn't enjoy the same popularity it used to - stick ball.  It used to be that anywhere in this country you could head outside and get a group of kids to play a pickup game of stickball.  But baseball has little league and professional level still vibrant.  The way the game plays has changed, but the game remains popular - even though it isn't played by 'casual' players.

D&D and other TTPRGs still possess a dedicated fanbase.  Whether that fan-base continues to grow is an open-ended question.  Even if it doesn't grow, it doesn't mean that it will end anytime soon.  I was born in 1979 and still game regularly.  My current group is spread around the country, and things like Skype have made it possible to continue gaming without the headache of recruiting other gamers and hoping against hope that they'd be the kind of people I'd like to hang out with away from the gaming table.  

As for whether it's growing, my sense is that it is.  Young people are still picking up the books and playing.  As I get older, that perception is more and more skewed - I don't spend a lot of time hanging around high schools or trying to get 15-year-old boys to come over to my house for gaming...  Presumably, they play with younger people and I play mostly with people my own age.  When my kids are older, I might play games with and for them.  There might be a new generation of gamers in the works.  

As for my particular group, two of the other players are around my age (probably a little older).  Two of the players are significantly younger.  They definitely graduated from college many years after I did, so let's say they're both about 25 now - that sounds about right.  There are more players that have disappeared because life gets busy - but a lot of them come back when the opportunity arises.

And with PbP, video conferencing, and the sheer number of games that are in print (or recently out of print and still available in used-book stores), this is actually a pretty good time to be a gamer.  The industry itself has been in the doldrums since 3.5 wound down.  We could discuss the hows and whys but the fact remains the same - gamers and the industry aren't as energized now as they were in the early 2000s - but there are plenty of games that an interested gamer can get in on.

"The RPG Business - Celebrating it's 20th anniversary going out of business sale!"

Quote from: Melan;612733I know some people from that "newer generation", and a lot more of them seem to be engaged in creative hobbies than ever before. Granted, most of that creativity involve a computer in some way, if for nothing else but networking / sharing, but I am not seeing a drop of creativity. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. It is just creativity largely focused on different things from tabetop RPGs.

How is networking / sharing creative?

The problem I see is that there are so many newer activities that are purely consumerist and have very little creative value. Many newer social media activities are less social and more media than even picking up a phone.

There are lots of dads (and a few moms) here who probably have kids that engage in creative activities. Creative parents tend to introduce their kids to creative activities. But so many new activities that are very readily available are not especially creative or social, and that's what kids of non-creative or non-engaging parents are doing. There are going to be some exceptions, but those are exceptional, not typical.

Quote from: Lynn;612747How is networking / sharing creative?

It isn't; sharing the results of creativity is. That happens a lot - head over to Tumblr or DeviantArt or any fan fiction site and you will see a ton of creative stuff people - including young people - have created and shared.

Is it good? As good as an RPG session played by beginners, probably.

Is it enjoyable for old fogies? Well... probably not. But it is not for them, it is for the people enjoying themselves.

Quote from: Lynn;612747The problem I see is that there are so many newer activities that are purely consumerist and have very little creative value. Many newer social media activities are less social and more media than even picking up a phone.

That is correct, but has it ever been different? The majority has always wanted to be entertained, whether by horse races, movies, TV programming or concerts. Comparatively fewer people want to create their own entertainment, but looking around me on the net, or among the young people I know, I see no shortage of bright minds who want more than being passive observers. They will do it differently than I or you or your uncle did. More power to them.

Quote from: Melan;612809It isn't; sharing the results of creativity is. That happens a lot - head over to Tumblr or DeviantArt or any fan fiction site and you will see a ton of creative stuff people - including young people - have created and shared.

Is it good? As good as an RPG session played by beginners, probably.

Is it enjoyable for old fogies? Well... probably not. But it is not for them, it is for the people enjoying themselves.

Agreed. If you look into tumblr/Livejournal RP blogs you will often find that young people inclined to roleplay will just up and do it without bothering with any rulebooks or dice.

Quote from: Warthur;612820Agreed. If you look into tumblr/Livejournal RP blogs you will often find that young people inclined to roleplay will just up and do it without bothering with any rulebooks or dice.

You know, that is how a lot of us grognards did it in the beginning, we use the rules in the books to cover things like combat and spellcasting and skill usage. Things that may be argued in a free-form role-playing scenario.

"Bang! I shot you! You're dead!"
"Nuh-uh! I dodged and you missed!"
"I did not!"
"Did so!"
"Boys, biys, here are some dice. Now roll them to see if Bobby shot Jimmy and hit him. Then roll to see how much damage he took if you did hit him."

Quote from: Warthur;612820Agreed. If you look into tumblr/Livejournal RP blogs you will often find that young people inclined to roleplay will just up and do it without bothering with any rulebooks or dice.

You know, that is how a lot of us grognards did it in the beginning, we use the rules in the books to cover things like combat and spellcasting and skill usage. Things that may be argued in a free-form role-playing scenario.

"Bang! I shot you! You're dead!"
"Nuh-uh! I dodged and you missed!"
"I did not!"
"Did so!"
"Boys, boys, here are some dice. Now roll them to see if Bobby shot Jimmy and hit him. Then roll to see how much damage he took if you did hit him."

Quote from: Warthur;612820Agreed. If you look into tumblr/Livejournal RP blogs you will often find that young people inclined to roleplay will just up and do it without bothering with any rulebooks or dice.

I think there are entire hidden icebergs of this stuff going on in Twilight and Harry Potter fan forums.

Quote from: noisms;612843I think there are entire hidden icebergs of this stuff going on in Twilight and Harry Potter fan forums.

It's called "simming".

(Not my cup of tea, but there you are.)

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;612851It's called "simming".

(Not my cup of tea, but there you are.)

There was a period of my life where I wasn't doing any face to face gaming so I spent a lot of time doing PBEM.

I discovered this weird subculture of free form roleplayers writing reams and reams of (to me) utterly incomprehensible drivel. One group, of about a dozen people, were writing literally hundreds of posts a day between them - some sort of shared urban fantasy world. It was mental. But you'd never know they existed unless you happened to stumble across the yahoo group they used. Even now I can't remember what it was called.

Some of these communities are pretty large, too. The eye-opening moment came when I realised a PbP RPG site a player in my former group was involved in had hundreds of users, held regular summer camps, and had its own newsletter.

Quote from: jeff37923;612835You know, that is how a lot of us grognards did it in the beginning, we use the rules in the books to cover things like combat and spellcasting and skill usage. Things that may be argued in a free-form role-playing scenario.

"Bang! I shot you! You're dead!"
"Nuh-uh! I dodged and you missed!"
"I did not!"
"Did so!"
"Boys, boys, here are some dice. Now roll them to see if Bobby shot Jimmy and hit him. Then roll to see how much damage he took if you did hit him."

Yeah, they're not interested in doing that.  It's not that those arguments don't crop up, because they do, but the ideal manner in which they're handled in most freeform environments is to either roll with the conflict in the "Yes, and" style of improvisation, or by pre-planning the results of the encounter in which the conflict occurs.

Sure, some of them don't know about tabletop gaming and rules, but in the main, if you explained it to them, they wouldn't be interested.  They're engaged in a freeform collaborative literary exercise, in which there is shared authorial control over setting and NPCs to a lesser or greater degree depending on the game.  It's telling that the term such players use to describe the hobby is RP rather than RPG.

While there might be some people involved in freeform fanfic/chatroom style roleplaying that could be interested in tabletop rpgs with rules, I don't think that these two demographics are necessarily going to have huge overlap.

I'm pretty sure that for a lot of these people, the notion of adding rules and mechanics to the equation would be seen as totally unnecessary for what they want to achieve.

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