Quote from: ggroy;686635Wonder how much West End Games was paying for the Star Wars license back in the late 1980's and 1990's.

Or for that matter, how much was FASA paying for the Star Trek license back in the 1980's.

1. WEG was an established entity, having already produced board game/wargames and RPGs with good production values.
2. Star Wars was a successful trilogy of movies, but not the multimedia franchise juggernaut it is today.

Basically: The market is not the same, the license is not the same, WEG was in no way an amateur operation (at least, no more than everyone else was at the time at any rate), and even then you aren't going to get a license like what it is now for the price WEG got it then.

Quote from: JRT;686608What I've never understood is why people want the industry to die.  It's like instead of saying "I don't like this stuff, so I won't buy it", it's akin to "I don't like this stuff, so I want it to go away completely, because I can't stand other people liking what I don't like."  I don't like most movies lately, but I don't want Hollywood to die, for instance.

Do people think the lack of major publishers will improve anything?  All that will end up doing is accelerating the hobby's decline.

The hobby isn't in decline, it's only the industry that's ever been in decline and that's because once upon a time D& D was a fad, and everyone seems to think that's something that could/should be replicated. The hobby is doing just fine.

Wanting the industry to " die " doesn't mean wanting any particular game to go away. It means wanting to get rid of the commercial approach to games that leads to cripple ware, splat-based games, the "new edition as new game" syndrome, and the vile politics one inevitably finds when banal, unimaginative, contemptuous Suits involve themselves in a hobby they have no business in, and this eventually extends outwards as the publishing hobby targets demographics that are great for sales and horrible for the hobby.

I don't want less games. I don't see how there could be. Everyday gamers are writing their own, and the Internet means that it's very easy to share those games with the hobby as a whole. Meanwhile in Chapters bookstore, the entire hobby is represented by a 4 foot shelf of D&D 4th and PF, maybe a d20 game that's escaped the discount bin.

For most musicians, making music isn't a business.  RPGs are a lot like the music industry: you can reach quite a wide audience with your work, but it's hard to monetise very effectively, because you're competing with people who'll happily do a pretty good job for free.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;6866381. WEG was an established entity, having already produced board game/wargames and RPGs with good production values.
2. Star Wars was successful trilogy of movies, but not the multimedia franchise juggernaut it is today.

Basically: The market is not the same, the license is not the same, WEG was in no way an amateur operation, and even then you aren't going to get a license like what it is now for the price WEG got it then.

But you might get a good price on Ghostbusters

Quote from: TristramEvans;686641But youight get a good price on Ghostbusters

Ha. Yes. You probably could.

(on the subject of licenses that probably wouldn't be terribly expensive that I wish someone else would get. Please, god, can someone besides Palladium acquire the Robotech RPG License :/)

Quote from: JRT;686608What I've never understood is why people want the industry to die.  It's like instead of saying "I don't like this stuff, so I won't buy it", it's akin to "I don't like this stuff, so I want it to go away completely, because I can't stand other people liking what I don't like."  I don't like most movies lately, but I don't want Hollywood to die, for instance.

Do people think the lack of major publishers will improve anything?  All that will end up doing is accelerating the hobby's decline.

Bingo.

The doujin scene is a false comparison. Talented doujin writers get picked up by studios and get paid money that will buy them things like food and heat and an apartment slightly bigger than a breadbox. They make those doujin in the hopes that someone will notice them and start paying them something they might live on.

Kill the big publishers, and that dies.  The motivation perishes, because there is no pay off for success or talent, just more poverty and obscurity.  You can't maintain a creative field like that, you just can't.  Even penniless painters might be able to count on posthumous respect and fame.

When you remove all incentive for success, quality suffers, and then dies, because anyone with any talent finds something else to do that will at least feed and clothe them.  We've been seeing this for as long as RPGs have existed.  Most of the Lake Geneva crew went into insurance or some other equally boring shit. Warren Spector and dozens and dozens of others went into video games. I've talked to at least one or two who went into scriptwriting, and of course there's always those who give up making a published game of their campaigns and modules and write novels or manga or comics about them instead.

Everyone of any real talent leaves the industry sooner or later, because it's not feasible to keep with it. Making games is a shitload of work, for no pay, and when you tell people that maybe that isn't so hot, or try some other way to fund that work like Kickstarter, for every one person that ponies up there's another dozen entitled jerks who take offense to the idea that games shouldn't just come flowing freely to their eyeballs out of the goodness of a designer's heart.  

OP's 'dream scenario' is already happening, and the mess that's left is what comes of it, and its only going to get worse.  There's such a brain drain now that even the big publishers have stopped giving a shit whether the actual words or rules of their games are any damn good: look at how lovingly 'edited' FFG's games are.

And hey, I don't blame them. Barring a major sales push on release I'll have made less than a penny a word on Arcana Rising. I made less on the Kickstarter than I would've collected in unemployment. You can babble all you want about 'well you shouldn't go into RPGs to make money!' but FFG is. WOTC is. WW is. It's just not going to the people doing the work.

And as long as that's the case, it's only gonna go downhill from here.

Quote from: P&P;686640For most musicians, making music isn't a business.  RPGs are a lot like the music industry: you can reach quite a wide audience with your work, but it's hard to monetise very effectively, because you're competing with people who'll happily do a pretty good job for free.

Can the same be said about individuals who write open source software (using the GPL or BSD licenses)?

As for a model that would bring rpg's to a greater audience market- I don't know, maybe an introductory video showing normal people playing and having a blast, something other than pretending they are bad ren-fair actors.  Something basic to get a total new person started other than the brain melting "what is a role-playing game?" filler that gets stuck in the beginning.

"....  like playing cops and robbers when you were a kid!"  Doesn't exactly get people's blood pumping to play these days and kinda makes the whole thing seem like it's just a kid's game.

Quote from: P&P;686640For most musicians, making music isn't a business.  RPGs are a lot like the music industry: you can reach quite a wide audience with your work, but it's hard to monetise very effectively, because you're competing with people who'll happily do a pretty good job for free.

Those other musicians are doing it for free because they hope to get enough attention to one day not have to. If they were economically smart, they wouldn't, and increasingly other creative fields like graphic design and other writing fields are realizing that.

Quote from: ggroy;686650Can the same be said about individuals who write open source software (using the GPL or BSD licenses)?

Well, I'm curious to hear P&P's response since if he's who I think he is, he's basically the Richard Stallman of roleplaying design.

But what he probably won't bring up is the part where most OSS programmers are in fact paid, and paid well, either in selling support for the otherwise 'free' product, or as paid software teams at commercial companies who pay for teams on staff to contribute to the codebase.  That's been the way for years. The bulk of OSS software in wide use is basically commercial software, at least on the developer end, even if the end result to the consumer user is downloaded free.

Quote from: J Arcane;686643Everyone of any real talent leaves the industry sooner or later, because it's not feasible to keep with it. Making games is a shitload of work, for no pay, and when you tell people that maybe that isn't so hot, or try some other way to fund that work like Kickstarter, for every one person that ponies up there's another dozen entitled jerks who take offense to the idea that games shouldn't just come flowing freely to their eyeballs out of the goodness of a designer's heart.

Harsh but I feel with more than a grain of truth to it. The only problem I'd have with that is the notion that 'big' publishers are ever going to be able to pay for top talent as things stand, or even hungry new talent.

Boardgames are undergoing a great renaissance right now, a resurgence in popularity. Just like happened back in the 80s and 90s, people are deciding that boxes going 'bing' are less interesting than their fellow human beings.

Why aren't RPGs leading the charge there?

There's a deeply dysfunctional culture associated with RPGs which brings a stigma of its own, to a certain extent. A good example of that is rpgnet, people more addicted to chasing phantom demons their lecturer told them about and playing dimestore politics so they can feel like their lives have some sort of meaning rather than going out there and living them.

It would help a great deal if the hobby could cut all ties with academia and nerdiness in general and develop an 'everyman' appeal. They're costing far more than they bring in. It won't ever be a world-straddling colossus of profitability mind you but it should certainly be able to hold its own, at a minimum.

Quote from: The Traveller;686658There's a deeply dysfunctional culture associated with RPGs which brings a stigma of its own, to a certain extent. A good example of that is rpgnet, people more addicted to chasing phantom demons their lecturer told them about and playing dimestore politics so they can feel like their lives have some sort of meaning rather than going out there and living them.

It would help a great deal if the hobby could cut all ties with academia and nerdiness in general and develop an 'everyman' appeal. They're costing far more than they bring in. It won't ever be a world-straddling colossus of profitability mind you but it should certainly be able to hold its own, at a minimum.

There's a lot of truth in your statement here.  How many new people interested in rpg's went to rpgnet and recoiled in horror and dropped a potentially new hobby like a hot rock?

I'd personally rather RPGs not associate with the lowest common denominator. I prefer to play with nerds and academics.

Quote from: TristramEvans;686661I'd personally rather RPGs not associate with the lowest common denominator. I prefer to play with nerds and academics.

If I wanted to hang out with the proletariat, I'd have picked up football.

*adjusts his top hat*

Quote from: RunningLaser;686660There's a lot of truth in your statement here.  How many new people interested in rpg's went to rpgnet and recoiled in horror and dropped a potentially new hobby like a hot rock?

That would be a good example of the lowest common denominator. Heck, the mods said EXACTLY that. Can't be bothered to go there to find the quote, but Kai Tav and Ettin both specifically championed the LCD as the ideal for RPGs, in those words. RPGnet is hostile to geeks and Academia (actual academia, not college age SJWs).Several posters displayed outright hostility to the idea that someone needs an imagination to play.

Quote from: TristramEvans;686661I'd personally rather RPGs not associate with the lowest common denominator. I prefer to play with nerds and academics.

Football hooligans aren't noted for their monopoly skills. I'm not talking about dumbing down the hobby, just moving it away from the basement dweller and the frustrated late thirties early forties academic for whom life didn't work out the way they had planned. Most board games are middle class pastimes - RPGs are a much more narrowly defined niche. And that brings along a lot of baggage we'd all be better off without.