We are in what may be a unique lull in the RPG industry. WotC is dead in the water until 5e comes out. Pathfinder is no longer the shiny new thing. 5e probably won't ship until GenCon 2014. WoD is on life support. Neither WotC nor Paizo are doing any real marketing, outreach or advertising.

The situation is tailor made for a new fresh RPG (or refreshed old favorite) to make a big splash and grab some momentum before 5e shows up. This is the moment for some company to seize the day.

So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?

Not enough money in it? No information about the industry available so nobody really knows what's going on? Rpgnet?

Honestly I think there's a false perception among the business minded that RPGs were version 1.0 and computer games are version 2.0 without ever giving one fuck about RPGs versus 'storygames', plus anyone that actually tried to research RPGs via forums would invariably come across the bulbous purple and back away slowly, making no sudden movements. Even here, we had guys at drawn daggers hunting down facebook accounts and whatnot over whether calling monsters undead or filing them under undead was the better option.

The real advantages of RPGs haven't been widely recognised, until that happens the business will continue to bounce along the bottom, in my opinion.

Because PnP RPGs are already well into the long tail of their product cycle.

In my neck of the woods, at least, there's enough momentum in Pathfinder and the 40K RPGs (plus perennial old classics like Traveller and Call of Cthulhu) that things don't seem to be in the doldrums to the same extent. We're not looking out for the hot new thing because we've already got precisely the hotness we want.

Quote from: Spinachcat;645576So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?

Differing agendas. The production of games takes a while, and unless you are psychic you don't know how the market will go--you have clues, but no hard facts. Add in to that, where D&D jumps so does the gaming world in many ways. So a D&D that's dead in the water is one thing--but you'd have needed a product in production that can lull all those playtesting D&D5E, or those disenfranchized by shifts of D&D away from "their favorite game version."

OSR is picking up some of the slack by making older editions of AD&D effectively available, add to that 1E's re-release, and the fact that those who do become distant from D&D  often look for something else and there really isn't a huge open market that is left open for some shark to swim up and swallow as part of their stake.

That doesn't mean there isn't some space there, but a lot of it is being filled just not by big bandstands but by smaller more mobile writers and companies--often building on cores people are familiar with. From Hulks & Horrors, doing D&D in space and doing it right, to things like FATE which has steamrolled itself a lot of money and a lot of fans, add to that things like a new Runequest and OGL Legend, and the fact that Pathfinder is still huge you get this bit of chaos with no clear contenders for that opening.

Plus games take time to filter through the public. A recent game group at our FLGS just started 4E D&D, while another has had a longer running 3.5, and Pathfinder isn't as familiar--we still get people asking what we are playing when they see the stacks of Pathfinder books. I have reason to believe this is fairly common--except to those who browse the internet a lot, or who live closer to the biggest location of a game's impact radius of word of mouth.

Honestly it's a place where Steve Jackson has repeatedly dropped the ball.  He could have done something when TSR died, he could have done something when 3.5 came out, he could have done something when 4e came out and he could be doing something now.

Yes, I get that he doesn't like dungeon crawls much.  Anyone who's read the GM section of GURPS knows that.  But damnit how hard is it to bring out a nice point of entry fantasy book dude?  It could be as simple as the races and monsters from Banestorm cut and pasted with GURPS Lite and the magic rules from book one of the basic set.  Just do a nice saddle stitched book with nice art and a pull out map section and a fold over of cardboard heroes like they did with GURPS Autoduel.  Heck, if you need a setting and adventure, use Orcslayer.  They constantly tell us that the 200 page plus hardbacks are more like four times as much work as the old world books, so a short little copy pasta book should be a quarter as much work.

One might almost think they don't want GURPS to do well.  And yes, a nicer book or a boxed set might do better but then again, a give it a try starter set isn't hurt by being cheap.

I am vaguely of the opinion that Steve Jackson hasn't given two shits about RPGs for, oh, decades now. Years certainly.  I mean, he'll keep GURPS in production perennially because it makes enough money to be worth it, but he's just sitting down there in texas smoking cigars he lights with cash from, say, Munchkin and other products at this point.

I don't ascribe any malice to this, I just sort of assume he's more or less retired and living on the fat of the land he's built.  It may be more interesting to discover what his Company will do with GURPS later down the line.



Besides: Fixing GURPS is like fixing D&D.  Chances are any improvement you make will cause a large segment of fans to go up in arms and proclaim it 'Not GURPS', and thus you lose all your money. Thus 4e GURPS was little more than a streamlined 3e GURPS, which was, itself, nothing more than a repackaged 2e GURPS.  For want of a better description: Major game systems like GURPS and D&D are nothing more than their collections of strength and weaknesses en toto.   'Fixing' them to improve them would be like replacing the Effel Tower with a new, improved one made out of space age plastics and all the newest engineering techniques to save of materials... kinda missing the point.

Quote from: Spinachcat;645576We are in what may be a unique lull in the RPG industry. WotC is dead in the water until 5e comes out. Pathfinder is no longer the shiny new thing. 5e probably won't ship until GenCon 2014. WoD is on life support. Neither WotC nor Paizo are doing any real marketing, outreach or advertising.

The situation is tailor made for a new fresh RPG (or refreshed old favorite) to make a big splash and grab some momentum before 5e shows up. This is the moment for some company to seize the day.

So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?

Pathfinder may no longer be the shiny new thing, but it has demonstrated its longevity and market presence sufficiently. Paizo is doing minis, has the Beginners Box out, does PaizoCon, and getting ready for Free RPG Day. Considering that they have beaten down D&D in sales reports is advertisement enough.

Interestingly, more publishers (like Mongoose and SJG) seem to be paying attention to the PDF and eReader markets for their profit margins.

As far as 2nd or 3rd tier companies, where would they market besides Kickstarter or banner ads? There aren't any more general gaming magazines out there AFAIK. Everything has gone digital and game system specific.

SJG has had downloadable PDF books on their website in some fashion or another for over a decade. Nothing new there, just a continuing expansion of the model.

Quote from: Spike;645598SJG has had downloadable PDF books on their website in some fashion or another for over a decade. Nothing new there, just a continuing expansion of the model.

True, but they seem to be taking more of their back catalog and placing it for sale as PDFs.

Look at it another way.  Steve Jackson has said what he has to say about rpgs.  GURPS is as perfect as he can make it.  He churned it out in the nineties but now he's letting it lie.

I think he may have lost faith in rpgs as a product and market.

But I'm not talking about fixing GURPS.  A few small issues do not a bad game make.

I'm just asking them to cut it down into chewable bite sized portions that won't scare away the masses.

Quote from: Spike;645592Besides: Fixing GURPS is like fixing D&D.  Chances are any improvement you make will cause a large segment of fans to go up in arms and proclaim it 'Not GURPS', and thus you lose all your money. Thus 4e GURPS was little more than a streamlined 3e GURPS, which was, itself, nothing more than a repackaged 2e GURPS.  For want of a better description: Major game systems like GURPS and D&D are nothing more than their collections of strength and weaknesses en toto.   'Fixing' them to improve them would be like replacing the Effel Tower with a new, improved one made out of space age plastics and all the newest engineering techniques to save of materials... kinda missing the point.

As the way it should be.

The only thing that needs "fixing" is presentation and packaging.

Because the really good rpg designers have ventured to the video game industry, trying to make a career over there.
Right now, no one is going to invest good money to market a new tabletop rpg, one that does not have some inherently established value in the market like D&D has.
Sad but true.

Kiero and Xech have it. RPGs are over as a business/pop culture thing. No one with business acumen will invest in them, and it's for good reason. The return isn't there.

Quote from: Spinachcat;645576So why hasn't any 2nd tier (or 3rd) company taken the initiative?

People are buying enough already on Drive-Thru which has plenty of everything.  Plus, there is currently an anti-book movement by those that don't understand how books are made.  Every time a game publisher says "We will be releasing our game in dead-tree format" instead of "books", they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Quote from: David Johansen;645600I'm just asking them to cut it down into chewable bite sized portions that won't scare away the masses.

The masses only want their World of Warcraft.