The unsteady-state RPG meme

[virgil]

From what I've been told of the '80s, tabletop roleplaying just doesn't hold a candle to its glory years in terms of number of active players; and WotC has probably pulled out half their hair in trying to truly understand how this could be fixed.

Please tell me if my impressions are incorrect. Once a system stops seeing active support with more/new supplements, then the influx of new players wanes and generally goes into the negatives. Even with a steady stream of more material, saturation will economically force cessation of new material. Replacing a system with a new/upgraded one greatly expedites this effect, whether or not the replacement catches the dropouts.

Even when a system obviously has avenues both interesting and unexplored, the abandonment of 'dead' system will occur; and if there isn't a sufficiently enticing system, more often than not they'll simply abandon roleplaying until they hear of a system good enough.

Does anyone disagree with these assessments? I'm not that in touch with the gaming community at large, generally finding them to be a superstitious and fixated lot. I have potential questions, but they rely on the validity of my claims.

[Lokathor]

Your assessments aren't entirely clear in what they're asserting. Things like OSRIC were made to bring new players back to ADnD and other old games because people still wanted to play those games and play in that style. Many of the newer game editions aren't really the same game at all, even though they have the same titles and logos on them that the older editions did.

[Korwin]

Even when a system obviously has avenues both interesting and unexplored, the abandonment of 'dead' system will occur; and if there isn't a sufficiently enticing system, more often than not they'll simply abandon roleplaying until they hear of a system good enough.

I'm still playing D&D 3.5.
I stopped buying 3.5 supplements at the end of the life-cycle (and after the dead I bought some of the late supplements).

But I didnt really stop playing.
Sometimes we play other systems (SR, M&M, when it comes out Dresden Files)...

[Caid]

I think an important factor is the competition from computer based alternatives. I think many people consider MMOs to be a perfectly good substitute, or even a superior alternative, to table top RPGs.

[RandomCasualty2]

I think an important factor is the competition from computer based alternatives. I think many people consider MMOs to be a perfectly good substitute, or even a superior alternative, to table top RPGs.

I honestly believe the two are completely different games which don't directly compete with each other all that much. You just don't get the table top RPG experience at all from MMORPGs. They're just endless grind fests.

[Roy]

That is correct. The abandonment thing is more likely to happen when the player base is being split up, but even when it isn't you can still easily notice it. When the tabletop industry attempts to directly compete with MMOs, it will fail early and often because they do grinding better.

[Rejakor]

You don't get good, or properly done, tabletop from MMOs. You get something similar to a shitty game that I wouldn't play, though.

There are a lot of reasons most people can't/don't get into tabletop gaming. I think an often overlooked reason for that is indirect CRPG competition. People start playing crpgs because the cost to do so is low compared to pen and paper gaming, they are comparatively far more common, and have little social stigma attached to them compared to pnp.

Playing a CRPG trains your mind to think in gamist terms when confronted with a world. When you sit down to then try out a game of PnP roleplaying, you approach it like you would a CRPG, which is something PnP is prone to anyway - rails, shallow/boring characters, scripted cutscenes, and lengthy, boring combats. The advantages of PnP is the fact that the plot can go anywhere, be anything, and modifies itself as you make decisions or choices - and those choices can be anything you want. Furthermore, the situations that can occur are limited only by imagination, not graphics or budget. If you try to play it like a computer rpg, you don't get those advantages at all, and end up with the only difference being having to go somewhere at a specific time and put up with a bunch of sweaty nerds in exchange for combat taking longer. So a lot of people who grew up playing crpgs get turned off PnP because they try to interact with it in a way that doesn't work.

And it's just flat out harder to organize/run/turn up for PnP. With the various pressures of modern life, not even to mention the social stigma attached...

[souran]

I think an important factor is the competition from computer based alternatives. I think many people consider MMOs to be a perfectly good substitute, or even a superior alternative, to table top RPGs.

I honestly believe the two are completely different games which don't directly compete with each other all that much. You just don't get the table top RPG experience at all from MMORPGs. They're just endless grind fests.

I think you are totally wrong. Especially when you consider how much time people can allocate to hobbies and how they allocate their hobby dollars.

I have a solid gaming group that does both pen and paper rpgs and plays wow. Before wow, we often purchased new rpgs just to give them a try. We would play games we found on the internet, we would order games from websites or catalogs.

Now "will we have more fun that just playing wow" IS the determining factor as to if we buy a new rpg. Computer games have had a real tangible effect on the rpg and wargame industry.

Additionally, because wow has a "per play" effective set-up-breakdown time of 0, you can just hop on your computer and play.

On the other hand, to run a good D&D/Pen and Paper RPG game takes real time OUTSIDE of the game, especially for the DM. Yes you can play the game on the fly, but to get a high quality game session requires preptime.

Additionally the charactierization of MMO's as "endless grind fests" is disegenous to both pen and paper games and MMOs.

Most MMO's have internal communities that focus on different aspects of the game, EXACTLY like how different pen and paper players have different expectations for their game. MMOs have players who like to focus on roleplaying, players who like to focus on roleplaying, others who like to focus on exploring and others who want to grind out the best equipment and slay the biggest monsters.

I also think you are mischaracterizing exactly what pen and paper roleplaying games are. "bring me the mucguffin!" "protect those people!" "bring me its head" "stop that event!" and "End this situation!" are the basic rpg adventures. You see them over and over again, regadless of the genre, setting etc. Pen and Paper rpgs have many of the same "grind" elements to them.

One argument I have seen used before (including here) is that MMOs are immutable, that completing their quests and objectives changes nothing in the game. However, even that is bogus at this point in the life cycle of quality mmos due to instanced content, phased conent, and update schedules.

Now, I am not saying mmos are a perfect subsitute. I still play and enjoy a pen and paper game as often as we can fit it in. However, the idea that MMO's are not a "good enough" subsitutue for a lot of people, and therefore they consider spending their entertainment time and dollars doing other things besides pen and paper games is nieve.

[PhaedrusXY]

I agree with Souran to an extent. Of course CRPGs and MMORPGs have taken away many of the potential P&P RPG players. I would have thought that was obvious... It's not that they prefer CRPGs, it's that those are what they are exposed to first, and get into playing. Then once they're hooked, they're likely to continue playing for some time. They never even bother to try P&P, because they aren't exposed to it. It's like an ecological niche. P&P has basically been out-competed by an invasive species.

On the other hand, because those games are so popular, they might actually get more people curious about RPGs in general, and bring some in to P&P that might otherwise have never tried that. That will probably be after they've been playing CRPGs for years and have gotten somewhat bored with them, and have heard about P&P from people who play both.

So overall, there is a give and take, and I wouldn't be sure which one dominates.

[Roy]

I agree with Souran to an extent. Of course CRPGs and MMORPGs have taken away many of the potential P&P RPG players. I would have thought that was obvious... It's not that they prefer CRPGs, it's that those are what they are exposed to first, and get into playing. Then once they're hooked, they're likely to continue playing for some time. They never even bother to try P&P, because they aren't exposed to it. It's like an ecological niche. P&P has basically been out-competed by an invasive species.

On the other hand, because those games are so popular, they might actually get more people curious about RPGs in general, and bring some in to P&P that might otherwise have never tried that. That will probably be after they've been playing CRPGs for years and have gotten somewhat bored with them, and have heard about P&P from people who play both.

So overall, there is a give and take, and I wouldn't be sure which one dominates.

Before I would have said people coming from D&D based video games to regular D&D was a little more common than the reverse. But as D&D based video games have gotten better, and 4.Fail is out...

I know I got into it because games like Baldur's Gate showed enough of the rules to get me curious without being the same game.

Right now I don't even think they're making any new D&D based video games. You have the ones that are already there and still going and that's about it.

[souran]

So overall, there is a give and take, and I wouldn't be sure which one dominates.

I agree with the point that mmos all draw interested parties to pen and paper gaming.

However, especially as the mmos get to be better, I think we are seeing what happend to wargaming in the 90's all over again.

My father has a collection of several hundred bookcase wargames. I have played a fair number of them with him. He collected them until about 1992-1993.

Computers can keep track of all the little parts and modifers for a wargame. You can play a wargame on the computer and not have to worry that cats or little kids will send your pieces everywhere.

Now, its not that he really prefered playing games on the computer, playing face to face and getting to move the chits and stuff is FUN. Its just its SO much easier, and you get to do it SO much more often that it basically drove his wargame purchases to nothing.

Now, he still likes playing with people and even has a wargaming group that plays world in flames on a regular basis. However, his time/money is HEAVLY weighted towrd computer wargame expendatures. They defiantly compete against each other as well.


I think that especially WOW, but mmos in general, as they get better. As they offer more sophisticated content and more updates to keep players experiencing NEW content more often, that they are taking money from the same pool that players would use to buy pen and paper games.

MMo's wont' drive pen and paper games totally out of buisness, there are plenty of people that can afford to do/have time to do BOTH. Just like pen and paper wargames and rpgs have a fair amount of play base overlap, they are not going to eleminate the other because they offer different things. However, the dollars and time that back these hobbies all come from the same "pot" and so it does remove possible profit and players.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'd say that MMORPGs could be good for tabletop games, but tabletop games are hurt by three other factors.

1) Social stigma of PnP. Which is amusing when you consider that WoW is mainstream and coined the term 'catassing'. But whatever. It's probably something that PnP is just going to have to learn to live with.

2) The second one is cost. The paradigm of 'core book(s) + nickle and dime them to death with supplements' needs to go. The 4E character builder has just shown us that this just doesn't work anymore. They're addicted to supporting it because people like it and it's convenient but it's also sapping their sales. But it's not sapping their sales because they made a bad decision and they're addicted to it like a junkie, it's sapping their sales because they're trying to play by the old rulebook and players are catching on.

Editions in the future need to cut that shit out. Seriously, things like Arcane/Martial/Divine/Primal Power need to be combined with Adventurer's Vault and be released as ONE FUCKING BOOK. You can charge more for this book if you feel like and you probably should, too. Future editions should seriously produce like one book a year. It builds hype and makes people feel like they get more bang for their buck. It also stops people from going 'oh, Martial Power 2, big furry deal'. Every book you release has to be a big deal. Both to stop all of your sourcebooks from saturating the market and also not to intimidate new players from jumping in when the edition is halfway over.

Frank said that future gamebooks should shy away from being doorstoppers. I disagree. I think that 500-page full-color books should be the norm. Releasing a fuckton of individual sourcebooks creates more money in the short term but over the course of the edition's lifespan causes things to peter out.

3) Probably the biggest one is convenience. I think that in the future tabletop games will have to be able to quickly be adapted to playing online. Now I don't think that online tabletop will ever completely replace face-to-face. As people have noted, face-to-face tabletop is just MORE FUN. The Wii barely has any Internet capability to speak of (Smash Bros. Brawl is pretty much the best they can do) and it still completely spanks the pants off the X360 and the PS3.

The next big thing for tabletop games will be a game that can seamlessly switch between online and offline modes. The game should support five or so friends being able to play many or even most of their games online while but still be able for the players to print out their character sheets for days when they arrange to meet face-to-face, because people still want to do that. It's just... really hard.

This means that future editions of tabletop games should have a computerized monster encyclopedia and character builder, should have a fully-customizable character creator, and a really slick online tabletop module that puts Neverwinter Nights to shame. I'm not even kidding. Once tabletop games shy away from the silliness of 'all games have to be face-to-face or GTFO' they'll start to recover. I mean, honestly, after I moved all of my games of 4E D&D nowadays are done over the Internet. I seriously use online spreadsheet programs to run our games. I don't like running things like that because I miss listening to my friends' voices and Editgrid is a pain in the ass to use in this way. But it doesn't mean I wouldn't run or play a game on tabletop if I got the chance.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I also think you are mischaracterizing exactly what pen and paper roleplaying games are. "bring me the mucguffin!" "protect those people!" "bring me its head" "stop that event!" and "End this situation!" are the basic rpg adventures. You see them over and over again, regadless of the genre, setting etc. Pen and Paper rpgs have many of the same "grind" elements to them.

One argument I have seen used before (including here) is that MMOs are immutable, that completing their quests and objectives changes nothing in the game. However, even that is bogus at this point in the life cycle of quality mmos due to instanced content, phased conent, and update schedules.

Now, I am not saying mmos are a perfect subsitute. I still play and enjoy a pen and paper game as often as we can fit it in. However, the idea that MMO's are not a "good enough" subsitutue for a lot of people, and therefore they consider spending their entertainment time and dollars doing other things besides pen and paper games is nieve.

I'm calling bullshit on your calling bullshit.

One thing that MMORPGs will never EVER have over tabletop games is the fanfiction.net effect. Namely, when you have a huge setting like that you need to have a committee decide as to what the races and classes and backstory will be. When you're playing with 4-5 people you have to compromise less and less with the game designers/referee. In YOUR story Janeway and Seven of Nine are total nymphos and the Doctor is banging Kes. And you can make that happen by acceding to another players' demands to makes Tom and Harry total asspirates and another's desire the Gorn the primary nemesis of the setting and another's idea to let them play an Andorian/Betazoid psychic.

Remember, no matter how awesome Blizzard makes their special effects and X-CLUSIVE CONTENT, people are still going to want to write shitty World of Warcraft fanfiction when they get home. Moreover, people are going to want to READ said shitty WoW fanfiction because they totally agree that the Dranei have a Night-Elf shemale breeding program. The fact that fanfiction is rarely of better quality than the source material and that 95% of PnP plots could be replicated on a videogame doesn't mean jackshit. Pen and Paper will ALWAYS let you have a Monk class and catgirls in your World of Warcraft game no matter what those meanies at the Blizzard offices say.

Yes, MMORPGs hurt Pen and Paper games. There's no question of it, because sometimes people just want to smash orcs and don't care how lame the backstory is as long as they get to get into the groove of clicking a mouse button and watching numbers fly by. But people also always going to want to have their wizard totally fuck Jaina Proudmoore up the ass and make her their exclusive sex slave, so I don't think PnP games are ever going to go away or even because the next Slot Car Hobby.

That is, as long as PnP gamers and designers don't get a bug up their ass about not wanting to adapt out of snobbery. Since the technology is badass enough lately to give us World of Warcraft and technological inconvenience has always been the achilles' heel of PnP games the hobby could be bigger than it is. A lot bigger. But it won't be, because people are sobbing over the fact that the character builder is a really good idea and that releasing 12 fucking sourcebooks in a year is a bad one.

Of course, embracing the fanfiction.net paradigm also means that we need to destroy the current paradigm of DMs getting to unilaterally design the setting and rules, but, that's another project for another time.

[hogarth]

I'm calling bullshit on your calling bullshit.

RC's comment was that MMORPGs and tabletop RPGs "don't directly compete with each other all that much". We can all agree that's bullshit. You even seem to agree when you say:

Yes, MMORPGs hurt Pen and Paper games.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Feel free to read what I quoted again

However, the idea that MMO's are not a "good enough" subsitutue for a lot of people, and therefore they consider spending their entertainment time and dollars doing other things besides pen and paper games is nieve.

If what I said is too abstract for you, let me put it another way.

Avatar: The Last Airbender shippers are so insane that even people outside the fandom know about this. Certain shippers pretty much lost their damnfool minds at the ending. Now imagine that you were able to get the animation team and a few writers together for a project: you were going to make a direct-to-DVD alternate ending where Katara realizes what a twerp Aang is and she would end up having epic sex with Zuko instead. To make this happen, you needed to gather up 100,000 dollars from the fanbase in donations of 10-100 dollars to pay for production costs and a little cheddar on the side.

Knowing how insane the Airbender fandom is, I have no doubt in my mind that I would (at least at the fandom's heyday) be able to fund my project in a couple of weeks at the most and make it happen. Obviously the studio couldn't get away with doing that during the mainstream run, but there IS a demand (and thus profit to be had) for a professionally-produced episode of the totally noncanon Zutara.

And that's my point about the MMORPG/PnP relationship. No matter how big the MMORPG fandom gets, there is always going to be a demand for Gunslingers and catgirls and people getting to make Jaina their sex slave. World of Warcraft CAN'T add everything in the game that fans want, because there's a ton of things people don't want in their game and chasing that fan's dollar would lose the dollar of another fan. No matter how advanced and awesome and interactive MMORPGs get, short of them turning into a holodeck there is always going to be a demand for the kind of periphery canon tabletop games excel at.

souran was underselling tabletop RPG's biggest selling points by mocking the puerile plots most game tables come up with and noting that your average RPG can accomodate the much-bandied versatility of paper and pencil game. Which completely misses the point.

[hogarth]

Feel free to read what I quoted again

However, the idea that MMO's are not a "good enough" subsitutue for a lot of people, and therefore they consider spending their entertainment time and dollars doing other things besides pen and paper games is nieve.

[..]
souran was underselling tabletop RPG's biggest selling points by mocking the puerile plots most game tables come up with and noting that your average RPG can accomodate the much-bandied versatility of paper and pencil game. Which completely misses the point.

I still don't get where you're disagreeing with the above quotation. Is it the phrase "a lot of people"? I think we all agree that there are folks out there (me, for one) with a limited amount of time to spend on entertainment and so that any time spent playing video games eats into time spent playing tabletop RPGs. Are you saying that "a lot of people" is exaggeration? Note that he didn't say "everyone" or "almost all people", just "a lot".

[Lago PARANOIA]

However, especially as the mmos get to be better, I think we are seeing what happend to wargaming in the 90's all over again.

I think that especially WOW, but mmos in general, as they get better. As they offer more sophisticated content and more updates to keep players experiencing NEW content more often, that they are taking money from the same pool that players would use to buy pen and paper games.

Wargaming is depressed, probably permanently, due to the fact that the major draws of wargaming is the combat engine... which can just be flat-out replicated better by computers. The Yugioh physical cardgame makes nowhere near as much money for the franchise as the videogames.

Like wargames, Tabletop RPGs are also game, yes, but they're also FANFICTION. Unless you invent a holodeck, fanfiction is always going to exist.

When people whinge over and over about PnP games being free and being able to do what you want and going outside the boundaries of the video game and then souran goes 'but that freedom is just used to do puerile rehashes of videogame plots' that is completely missing the point of fanfiction. Most fanfiction is bullshit inferior to the actual source material, but it still doesn't change the fact that people want it.

MMORPGs hurt tabletop games by drawing away its target audience, but the technological innovations made by MMORPGs help it more. Even before you had MMORPGs as a competitor the organization and writing and preparation and scheduling hurt PnP games anyway. With improved technology you can mitigate that. Tabletop games won't go the way of wargames if they ease up on the 'core canon, DM-input only, Final Destination' bullshit and use the opportunity to compensate for the inherent weaknesses in the medium.

But people on these very boards are whining about things like the Character Builder completely changing the nature of how D&D is played so I don't hold out a lot of optimism. But souran's argument that as MMORPGs get more advanced and get more refined rules they'll offer just as much freedom as tabletop games are absurd. Until an MMORPG lets me fuck Jaina Proudmoore in the ass and makes her marry me and only me this will never happen.

[RandomCasualty2]

Wargaming on PC is different from a MMORPG.

You can basically play a wargame on the computer and get the exact same experience. You can play Axis & allies or 40K on the computer and have all the same strategic elements you do when you play it on a board. That's a direct competition. This becomes a matter of whether the human element is actually worth it.

However WoW versus D&D is not similar. You aren't playing the same game. About the only similarity is that you happen to be creating a character in a fantasy world. But you can't have mystery plots or true roleplaying. It's closer to Diablo than it is to any kind of PnP RPG experience.

The main thing that MMORPGs lack is that they don't really tell stories. You've created your own little instance of the dungeon or whatever, but seriously you know around you that other people are slaying the ogre king, and that you slaying him has zero effect on the world. See, WoW isn't about your story, in fact, you don't have a real story. Your character is just a list of accomplishments that lots of other people in the game world already did. Nothing is unique to your character. You do not have personal accomplishments at all, because everything you've done has already been done by hundreds of other people.

You can never get the feeling of being able to change the world in an MMO, nor is there any real attachment to the characters. You can't kill anyone for good, nor can you ever be killed for good. It's just a pointless never ending grinding cycle with no real winner or loser. If you fail your quest, it honestly doesn't matter to the world because your quest was completely meaningless from the beginning. You're not being a hero, because you're not saving lives. You're not saving the world, if you fail, then nothing fucking happens. Your quest is not heroic in the slightest.

Really, the whole MMO genre really equates to being less of a true gaming experience and more of a time waster.

[Kobajagrande]

RPGs simply haven't gone with the times. Never having been a serious enough market, it hasn't received the attention of the industry that would develop it further to meet today´s needs.

The thing is, everything RPGs try to do, more specialized products to better. Way better. So better that, indeed, any sort of comparison is just bullshit.

And the part where RPGs fail the most is the time needed to be invested in them. And I´m not talking just about prep time, although that is certainly a factor. I´m talking about the fact that you have to buy a huge book, read through thousands and thousands of words that explain rules that are about as interesting as something not at all interesting, or read through countless pages of badly-written fiction, which, guess what? Isn´t that interesting at all.

And that either has to be done by five-six people, or the one who reads and memorizes it all has to go through the trouble of explaining and getting others interested.

And that doesn´t even begin to address the issue of it beeing so BIG. How much stuff is it in there? How much stuff can you, no, how much stuff are you interested in using? How much uninteresting stuff you have to wade through just to get to the stuff you really care about? If you actually put it on paper, you´ll see that the numbers in a game such as D&D are really not that good.

What RPGs really need is to get down to basics in order to attract larger audience. Smaller books, less rules. WoW was known for managing to draw in new players, partially due to thematics, but also due to it not being as rules-heavy as D&D. On the other hand, 4E utterly failed to bring in new players, even though it was one of their goals.

[RandomCasualty2]

The thing is, everything RPGs try to do, more specialized products to better. Way better. So better that, indeed, any sort of comparison is just bullshit.

I've yet to see anything handle open-ended storytelling better than an RPG. I also don't know of any game with nearly the level of customizability of RPGs.

The biggest problems RPGs tend to be making now is that they're trying to be too much like a board game. Wargaming got overtaken by computers for a reason, and that's because ultimately that stuff is faster to run on a computer. RPGs really need to use their main strength, which is that they're run by a human being who can adapt and special tailor the story for your character.

Trying to be a hack and slash dungeon crawler game is a recipe for disaster, and RPG designers really need to give that up, because seriously if that's all their game is, then people will abandon it to play WoW. There should be more focus on open ended player puzzles and out of the box thinking, something you explicitly can't do in computer games.

[souran]

But people on these very boards are whining about things like the Character Builder completely changing the nature of how D&D is played so I don't hold out a lot of optimism. But souran's argument that as MMORPGs get more advanced and get more refined rules they'll offer just as much freedom as tabletop games are absurd. Until an MMORPG lets me fuck Jaina Proudmoore in the ass and makes her marry me and only me this will never happen.

I would really disagree that this is direction MOST games go, or at least, this is not the direction most games go for the portion that the players are not drunk and when you sit down next week you probably discount the part where everybody decided that "penis to stone" spells were a great idea and every class needed it as a 1/15 minutes ability to beat people to death with.

Yes people are going to write fan fiction for wow, on the other hand a lot of them write fan fiction for their own D&D characters as well becasue when you actually PLAY a pen and paper rpg you probably have no shot with Wizard-Godess of your game word EITHER. Unless that is, you and your DM are down with sort of shared mastabatory experiece.

On the other hand, I think that games are a lot closer than you think and as an example I think you should spend an evening in the GOLDSHIRE INN COMMON ROOM on ANY "roleplaying" server in WOW.

Also, my argument was not that they offer as much freedom, its that they offer as much a level of freedom that a lot of people (wow has millions of subscribes but most games can must at least 1/4 million) will find an acceptable to letting them get the amount of reward/enjoyment/roleplaying that they want.

As technology gets better, the ability of the stories to be intricate and responsive gets better. That cannot possibly be in doubt. Therefore, one could presume, that as the technology gets better MMOs will provide more of the things people say "you just can't get in an MMO"

I have seen people on this board complain that MMO's cannot tell a story. Thats just wrong. Again, using wow because its big and done well, it does tell numerous stories, and you can follow a story path through the latest expansion. A lot of people have complained that any "story" you could follow doesn't matter because the badguys just respawn or the world never changes.

They have changed that as well, with phasing content the quests you have completed change your resulting world so that it is not in all ways identical to other players.

Do not misunderstand me, I am not saying "STOP PLAYING Pen and Paper Games! MMO's RULE"

but I am saying that there are people who probably used to play pen and paper games and now ONLY play MMOs because MMOs can offer them all they wanted from an rpg. I am also saying that the number of people for whom that situation is true is more likely to INCREASE than to decrease.

[Kobajagrande]

I've yet to see anything handle open-ended storytelling better than an RPG.

Meh. You can find a couple of unique selling points for everything. But simply having a unique selling point isn't enough. It has to be needed by a large enough niche for the product to be profitable.

Like, you have a niche market of "enjoying a story". RPGs can give you a story. But you'll have books, movies and games that do that better. You can go into the niche of "enjoying an open-ended story" but that necessarily means you're targeting a smaller group than before.

And the trends are changing. People want different things. That the number of people playing has reduced since the 80s is an obvious proof that people's needs are more readily met by MMORPGs/video games/board games/you name it. You may not like any or all of them, and think of RPGs as the best thing since the sliced bread since it has the great "open-ended storytelling" you so enjoy. But you know what? That doesn't matter. Because, in the end, you and me are both insignificant little dots that do not appear on the radar.

The biggest problems RPGs tend to be making now is that they're trying to be too much like a board game.

Nope. I guess you can talk about D&D being board gamey, but there are a host of other RPGs which are not. And they're not doing so well either.

[RandomCasualty2]

Like, you have a niche market of "enjoying a story". RPGs can give you a story. But you'll have books, movies and games that do that better. You can go into the niche of "enjoying an open-ended story" but that necessarily means you're targeting a smaller group than before.

Note that I said "open-ended storytelling". Books and movies are obviously not open-ended, and games are highly limiting in what they let you do.

And the trends are changing. People want different things. That the number of people playing has reduced since the 80s is an obvious proof that people's needs are more readily met by MMORPGs/video games/board games/you name it. You may not like any or all of them, and think of RPGs as the best thing since the sliced bread since it has the great "open-ended storytelling" you so enjoy. But you know what? That doesn't matter. Because, in the end, you and me are both insignificant little dots that do not appear on the radar.

Honestly I tend to think it's more because people don't quite know what they're missing. RPG exposure has always been low, and the number of new people bothering to pick up and read RPG books over video games is notoriously low. Nowadays when people think RPG, they think Final Fantasy and WoW, with little idea of what a tabletop RPG really even is.

There's a lot of reasons for that, like lack of advertising for one, that contribute to it, but I don't believe that it's because people don't want the sort of experience RPGs offer anymore. Especially when you throw on negative publicity like that shitty god awful D&D movie, it's no surprise that modern generations haven't even given tabletop RPGs much of a chance.

At least D&D used to have some kind of an intriguing social stigma before, where you had people talking about committing suicide and all that cult crap. I mean hell, Jack Chick wrote cartoons about corrupting hot girls into being some kind of cult witches. You used to hear stories about parents tossing their kids D&D books, because they though it was devil worship and shit. But people don't even think of that stuff anymore, now they just think of that stupid D&D movie, and Neverwinter Nights. And that's just not the kind of thing that tends to attract people into reading the D&D books.

Really, RPGs would be more popular if people did think you were worshiping the devil like the old days.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Tabletop RPG games are never going to get direct advertisement, let's get that idea out of our heads right now. Tabletop RPGs are profitable compared to the amount of capital you have to invest, but they don't produce a high volume of money. Even though they're long overdue for an Internet revolution, the fact of the matter is that things like character builders and online tabletop should be FREE.

What D&D needs is a videogame company willing to bankroll the next Neverwinter Nights and all that shit. This probably means that WotC needs to hand over the license to Bioware or whoever. If 4E falls flat on its ass and causes the value of the license to degrade then there's a very good chance that Bioware just might end up snatching up D&D instead of deciding to strike it out on their own with Dragon Age: Online.

[Kobajagrande]

Note that I said "open-ended storytelling". Books and movies are obviously not open-ended, and games are highly limiting in what they let you do.

Oh good god. What defect prevented you from reading the paragraph and comprehending it instead of just jumping on the quote button without thinking?

Honestly I tend to think it's more because people don't quite know what they're missing.

And you are wrong. You are wrong because you think your personal preferences apply to all. They don't.