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

In a way, basically the best of open source software wind up with the connections to find a good job. Some will find somebody is willing them to pay them to do what they do full time because they get benefit from the software.

Music anybody can heard it and appreciate it if they like. It more complex with software particularly for backend stuff. So people are willing to pay the open source developers to come and configure the software for their particular circumstances. Along with other forms of support.

Some parts of RPGs are like music and others are like software. What going to be interesting is seeing how it all shakes out over the next decade.

I think what is going to become more important is personalized service. Making for somebody or a relatively small group of people (like kickstarter backers) a product tailored to their needs.

When you think RPG publishing you think a person or a team producing a product that is consumed by many. Well with the capital cost of everything so low except for the time you have to put in is somebody going to be able to make a living offering custom creations for individual gamers or very small groups?

Will talk to this later.  
Have been busy, work, family, etc....but my actual work title includes trend advisor and category analyst.   Much of my job is involved with this kind of stuff, albeit at a different scale.

As one as RPGs and their followers are open to technology like roll20 and other means of communications, as long as they approve of toolkit systems, and approve of innovation they will thrive and the industry will thrive, mutate, encompass, and grow.

The opposite is also true.  The micro diversity describe before (friggin card games and such) is so small minded.... It must include so much more, and each system must stop trying to stand so much alone and work towards a good natured, compartmentalism rivalry.

Hmmm...looks like I started something...

Anyhow, Kickstarter interests me.  I really wonder where it will take us.  The capacity of distributors and retailers to strangle the free market is massively diminished now.  The internet alone started that but they still had a hold on the gateway.  I'm not so sure now.  I'll be very interested to see how Reaper's Bones line effects things.  For the first time in a very long time, individual miniatures and small packs are affordable again.  For every person I know who got in on the KS there are ten who wish they had.  My distributor has restocked Traveller V for the third time this summer.  Three restocks in two months for a game with a terrible on-line reputation.

What is happening is that the market is actually taking control of production.  No longer are companies restrained by the retailers looking at their table at GAMA and saying "sorry, no, that won't work, nobody wants that"  Now you can get out on the internet and shout, "Hey out there!  Anyone want this?" and they'll send you money.

Naturally it's in the honeymoon phase now but I think dependable manufacturers and producers who meet their targets will do well and fly by night new guys will have to fight pretty hard to get funded.  That's why I think GW needs to sweat a bit about Mantic.  Sure they aren't quite in the same league but they ship on time.

Quote from: TristramEvans;686714I think the first step in deciding how best to proceed in rpg publishing would be to make some sort of attempt to do a study of roleplayrrs demographics.

That would be a start.

I think the more interesting bit is actually "potential roleplayers".  People who aren't roleplayers, but are open to the idea.

Quote from: TristramEvans;686719As for the " you're just jealous" theory, even the comparatively rare person able to make a living as an rpg writer/ designer are not making what one could call "good money".

As I said, I know a number of people that left the RPG industry.  They didn't leave because they got sick of sitting on mounds of cash.  And these people weren't unknown hacks working on some minor supplement to an unknown game.

So, I think there's three tiers of the coming industry.

1 - Big Comercial Producers - we still need these guys to bring in new people

2 - Mid Tier On Line Producers - Formerly first and third tier companies

3 - Micro Breweries - Mad men, terrorists, and artists

I expect that some of the mid tier companies will actually make more money than they ever could in the old system.

Here's the problem.

We need the comercial tier to bring in new people.  They should want that too.  They need to look at the world's population and realize how small a niche gaming is and try to broaden it.  There's lots of room for the second and third tier guys in providing more for those who want it but the big guys need to be focused on bringing in new people it's the only model that works for them because trying to milk the long tail is just plain stupid.  They need to believe that rpgs can bring in more new people and work towards that.

Don't get me wrong.  I'd like, nay love, to see a third tier company become the next big fad and find themselves bringing in new gamers.  In practice though, they lack the finances for marketing and promotion not to mention the capital to ramp up production.  Of course, if they accomplish this with a pdf the sky is the limit so I think it's worthwhile to try.

Quote from: robiswrong;686728That would be a start.

I think the more interesting bit is actually "potential roleplayers".  People who aren't roleplayers, but are open to the idea.

that's an interesting idea. In that case surveying college and high school campuses and bookstores might even be a viable approach.

Quote from: David Johansen;686729So, I think there's three tiers of the coming industry.

1 - Big Comercial Producers - we still need these guys to bring in new people

2 - Mid Tier On Line Producers - Formerly first and third tier companies

3 - Micro Breweries - Mad men, terrorists, and artists

I expect that some of the mid tier companies will actually make more money than they ever could in the old system.

Here's the problem.

We need the comercial tier to bring in new people.  They should want that too.  They need to look at the world's population and realize how small a niche gaming is and try to broaden it.  There's lots of room for the second and third tier guys in providing more for those who want it but the big guys need to be focused on bringing in new people it's the only model that works for them because trying to milk the long tail is just plain stupid.  They need to believe that rpgs can bring in more new people and work towards that.

Don't get me wrong.  I'd like, nay love, to see a third tier company become the next big fad and find themselves bringing in new gamers.  In practice though, they lack the finances for marketing and promotion not to mention the capital to ramp up production.  Of course, if they accomplish this with a pdf the sky is the limit so I think it's worthwhile to try.

some level of wisdom is here.
They will bring more with them, and a linking with other lucrative (to them) platforms.  there is a chance this will bring a lot to the game.  

A chance

My personal experience is that most roleplayrrs are inducted into the hobby. It's , I think, comparatively rare for someone to just buy an rpg and get to it ( and before anyone here chimes in with "that's how I got started", I don't believe for a second that those of us who talk on rpg forums are in any way typical), from my experience (again, with no other info, thats all I have to go on. As always, ymmv).

That said, if there's one rpg that SHOULD be "random person on the street"-friendly that's D&D. D&D is the gateway drug. We still need our pushers though. I have over my life introduced everyone I've ever been friends with (and not trying to boink) to RPGs. About 50% either try it once, or play with me but don't continue on their own. But the other 50% has led to at the least about 100 new gamers since HS.

I like a big damn fancy new edition of D&D every several years.  I like having shitloads of other games to choose from whenever I am not feeling the D&D kick.  The industry as it stands works darn tootin' good for me.  Only thing I would change is for WotC to go ahead and publish their new edition already.

If you want to grow things, RPGs need referral and GM programs.

Give benefit to people who are actually going out there and running games.

I attempted to start a program to reward GMs who play BWP's games with free stuff, but I never got any takers, probably because confirming it is a hassle and BWP didn't have much free stuff to give.

Despite what came of 4e itself, all the reports I've heard were that the Encounters program got more people in stores and actually gaming than anything has in years. That was smart of them.

Quote from: J Arcane;686807I attempted to start a program to reward GMs who play BWP's games with free stuff, but I never got any takers, probably because confirming it is a hassle and BWP didn't have much free stuff to give.

I think Pathfinder has a 'Venture Captain' programme where countries and regions have a single person in charge of recruiting. I don't know that they're financially compensated, but they probably are getting a commission.

Quote from: jeff37923;686600For myself, I would be happy to see most of the industry just die already and let the dedicated hobby fans create their own stuff and either sell the PDFs or do limited print runs via Lulu. Treat RPG material like dojinshi in Japan and have most of it be fan-created, with someof the fans becomming risen stars of greater acclaim. Hell, it is what appears to be happening now regardless. Let the Big RPG Industry die and be replaced by the smaller RPG cottage industry.

Personally, I like Piestro's idea from the thread which inspired this: game companies need to see their RPGs as one prong of a franchise. Wizards almost certainly don't earn enough from the D&D RPG to satisfy Hasbro's investment in the brand name, and it's entirely possible that they never have - but they've used the brand name recognition to create board games, miniatures games, licence out videogames, and so on, and I think when you factor in all that revenue it becomes easier to justify D&D's existence to Hasbro.

If your tabletop RPG's setting is evocative enough, it can support all sorts of other games. If it isn't evocative enough, then you should reconsider publishing it in the first place. (Obviously, if you're deliberately making a generic game this model doesn't work, but even then companies like SJG have always understood that RPGs are not the only fruit.)

A few random thoughts ...

* I'm solidly in the "hobby's doing just fine" camp.  Look, folks: it was never the case that "RPGs" were wildly popular.  It's that for a short period -- and a period that passed more than twenty years ago now -- a whopping lot of people played AD&D.  We haven't been a fad provoking a national media buzz for a long time now, and we're never going to be that again.  It's high time that we accept that we're a niche hobby, and as a niche hobby, we're going to survive as well and as happily as every other niche hobby.

* Do today's table-top gamers really WANT newcomers around? Newcomers won't play the same games that have Always Been Played, with the same kinds of adventures that have Always Been Done. They won't necessarily buy into our received wisdom, or sit down and shut up like good little newbies and wait their collective turns. Their paradigms aren't going to be Moorcock, Vance and JRRT.  They're going to want to play games that look like Twilight or evoke WoW.  Sure you're up for that?

* On the jealousy issue: what sports fan hasn't sat up in his chair and cursed the blunderings of the home team, insistent that the player or the coach is a bum, and that he could do better himself? This derives from the fact that a majority of the men and a growing number of the women in this country at one point in their youths held a baseball bat, kicked a soccer ball or threw a football. It isn't THAT hard, they think, and so they figure they know all about it.

In like fashion, a lot of GMs write (or have written) their own scenarios and adventures. They have a notion how it's done, and they then read a product and mutter, "I could do a better job." Figure that in with the sheer number of semi-pros out there. Very few of you, I imagine, have book authors as personal friends (I've only two myself) ... but there've been seven published authors of GURPS products alone who've been regular players of mine or in whose campaigns I've played, and that figure trebles if we talk about all RPG products.

Now maybe there's a preponderance of game authors in New England, but what's more likely is that there's just a whole lot of them out there, and chances are that many veteran gamers have played with at least one. So you look across the dice at the Sunday afternoon run, and there's Joe Blow, who wrote a module for D&D and a few variant articles for Vampire, and you say to yourself, "Sheesh, he's not any better a gamer than I am. What makes HIM so special?" So the mere implication that he's making dollars from the hobby can be resentment making, and it just goes up from there.

To this conversation that the existence of popular game system under the open game license, notably the D20 SRD and the Fudge/Fate SRD, has not only lowered the barriers to entry significantly but  more importantly allows commercial efforts to tap into already existing networks of gamers.

Quote from: Ravenswing;686821* Do today's table-top gamers really WANT newcomers around? Newcomers won't play the same games that have Always Been Played, with the same kinds of adventures that have Always Been Done. They won't necessarily buy into our received wisdom, or sit down and shut up like good little newbies and wait their collective turns. Their paradigms aren't going to be Moorcock, Vance and JRRT.  They're going to want to play games that look like Twilight or evoke WoW.  Sure you're up for that?

On which note: holy shit, how stupid are White Wolf to not bring out some sort of starter version of Vampire geared to Twilight fans?