Table Top Industry Defeatism

[Prak]

I think its generally because WotC's D&D division is a bunch of echo chamber wanking grognards, and Hasbro prefers to keep D&D separate from everything else, lest it taint them. I would imagine the board games only get made because there's been a friendship between the D&D division and the Board Game division since 3.X's days.

[TheFlatline]

But if the setting got Time of Judgement, then there's little incentive for an oWoD MC to move on to nWoD, because his favorite setting changed.

Actually it's funny you mention that. EVERYONE was on board with nWOD when it was announced. oWOD was... well... old. It had gotten silly, bloated under it's own metaplot, and everyone agreed it needed to go back to formula in order to keep going under it's own impetus.

Then they announced the core blue book and everyone rejoiced. WW promised that we'd either have cheaper supernatural books or 30% more crunch and splat per core book by moving the rule system out to it's own, unified, singular system.

Then the prices went up. And that seemed ominous. Suddenly instead of saving money like they claimed we were spending 2x as much on the core books.

Then Requiem dropped... And... they gutted the setting. The system was kind of shit.... It was as lifeless as the vampire protagonists. Some cool ideas were introduced but it wasn't enough.

So we got excited about Werewolf. And then that dropped... And it was even shittier than Requiem. The vampire fanboys who used to troll WTA forums bitching about how overpowered werewolves were in their own game got their way, and the WTF (how appropriate the acronym) game nerfed the SHIT out of the werewolves and I think that's when they lost their core fanbase. It didn't matter if Mage knocked it out of the park. Nobody was around to see if it was a hit or a miss.

Fans didn't abandon WW because they already had oWOD. They went back to oWOD because WW took all the strengths they had as game writers and fucking torched them and put out shovelware. When Requiem hit it almost felt like the developers were saying "Don't like metaplot? FUCK YOU here's no metaplot now try to find something to do until we sell you 30 dollar splat books describing basic antagonists in the game".

Anyway...

Another problem is that as shitty games got pushed out with grandiose production values the market shrank and book prices skyrocketed.

It's 60 fucking dollars for a core book these days. And splat books start at 30.

Sure they're sexy hardcovers, but if you're running a game and you have to lug 20+ pounds of hardcovers around wherever you go to run a game, you're going to be a lot less likely to drop really premium coin on really shitty and heavy product.

For me the one of the two biggest problems is the price increase. 15 years ago core books ran 30 bucks maybe and you got a lot of meat out of that. D&D bucked the trend and charged I think what, 25 for each of the 3.0 books? Totally 75 bucks. It's like everyone else looked at that and said "hey we can charge 60 for a core system and undercut D&D!" and then put out something that wasn't quite a core system.

Now everything costs a fuckton. Games that I used to pick up on a lark frequently to have a couple sessions of between marathon WOD or D&D sessions used to ping me 10 bucks or so. Maybe 20. Now games like End of the World, a game literally that took zero development and just needed translation, which should be 15 dollar quality paperbacks, run for 40 each. For like 110 pages of information. And there's 4 of them. And each of them repeats like 50% of their information.

The other problem is that my time is at a premium. I *want* to game, but I don't even play computer games any more because I'm too fucking busy. Playing online is still a goddamn joke because it's set up by enthusiastic amateurs. All the people who are really good at UI are working for Apple and Google these days. But that's a big part of what we need: Someone to cut through the bullshit and focus on playing.

[Jeff W]

I wonder if computer games are killing TTRPGs through attrition of talent. It seems like the only people who care about building more elegant and expressive game systems are deep into CRPG design jobs and not fiddling with TTRPGs for a fraction of the pay.

I've suspected this as well, but I don't really know anything about the industry side of tabletop rpging. The mechanical elements of a ttrpg are a procedural computer program and thus ttrpg development requires similar skills to computer programming, which is a much more lucrative, meritocratic and socially acceptable field. Game designers in open source projects make the major industry players look like amateurs (see roguelikes like Brogue, DCSS and Sil).

TTRPGs are an anachronism and the major players are relying on 20 or 30-year old business models. They should be looking at MTG: Online for how to bring their product into the 21st century, but afaik D&D 5e isn't even selling electronic versions of their core books.

[kzt]

Avengers is a big budget Hollywood action movie series with lots of explosions and Robert Downey Jr., but the success of the movies doesn't mean squat for the geekier, niche hobby of buying comic books. If you google "NY Comic Con" you'll find a full page of movie, TV show announcements, hollywood celebrity sightings, and maybe maaaaybe on page two there might be something about comic books and comic book creators.

Hollywood is still in the entertainment business. The major comics publishers have apparently decided to stop focusing on entertaining and instead focusing on propagandizing. But it turns out that being in the propaganda business might get you glowing reviews, but not that many people are willing to spend their entertainment money on not-very-entertaining propaganda.

[MGuy]

Avengers is a big budget Hollywood action movie series with lots of explosions and Robert Downey Jr., but the success of the movies doesn't mean squat for the geekier, niche hobby of buying comic books. If you google "NY Comic Con" you'll find a full page of movie, TV show announcements, hollywood celebrity sightings, and maybe maaaaybe on page two there might be something about comic books and comic book creators.

Hollywood is still in the entertainment business. The major comics publishers have apparently decided to stop focusing on entertaining and instead focusing on propagandizing. But it turns out that being in the propaganda business might get you glowing reviews, but not that many people are willing to spend their entertainment money on not-very-entertaining propaganda.

It's been a reboot and a half since I last actually read a comic (marvel or DC) so I'm not particularly paying attention outside of the lil controversies over art covers and other stupid bullshit. So what exactly do you mean by propaganda?

[Username17]

As far as Time of Judgement goes, it's important to remember that while the Time of Judgement books were infuriating and unpopular, the reboot itself had broad support. I mean, I completely reject The Flatline's "vampire players got their way" narrative, and have expounded on why that's bullshit on other threads, but he's right that the community was ready for a reboot and then rejected the reboot that actually came because it was boring and shitty.

nWoD ironically ticks all the boxes of what the rpg.net crowd said they wanted. Less complicated metaplot, nerfing the "broken" combat powers, unified mechanics, and so on. It's clear that the design team listened to the community and put together a design document that fit all the criteria they had been given.

And while there's certainly some "Be careful what you wish for" going on (people may say they want to nerf combat characters, but what they really mean is that they want their characters to be able to win combats and feel butthurt about the combat powers available to other splats), the big takeaway is that the nWoD is a soulless document that is defined by what it doesn't have rather than what it does have. I have no idea what I am supposed to do in any nWoD game. The only one that presents any form of goal for my character to interact with in any way is fucking Promethean, and that goal is simply to stop playing the game. Mission accomplished!

Design by committee with nineteen authors on a project or whatever the fuck is always going to be difficult. But the nWoD design criteria appeared to be a list of things to leave out rather than a list of things to put in. I get that removing the Camarilla/Sabbat war was probably a good idea, but the end result was a game where there was no reason to interact with any of the groups at all. Whether you were in Vampire, Werewolf, or Mage there was no reason to try to claw your way up to the top of any organization or fight any other organization, or even talk to the other supernaturals. You might as well just move to Topeka and start a business or something. The books were massive, but they never said anything or presented any plot hooks. It was an amazing anti-achievement.

The WoD fanbase was ready for a new direction. But they weren't ready for no direction.

-Username17

[Longes]

As far as Time of Judgement goes, it's important to remember that while the Time of Judgement books were infuriating and unpopular, the reboot itself had broad support. I mean, I completely reject The Flatline's "vampire players got their way" narrative, and have expounded on why that's bullshit on other threads, but he's right that the community was ready for a reboot and then rejected the reboot that actually came because it was boring and shitty.

I'm sure that this is true, but I'm also sure that most people didn't expect that "reboot" means "we throw away everything there was in the setting and make completely new stuff", rather than "we go back to basics of seven Camarilla clans doing politics and fighting the unaligned". Ultimate Spider-Man is a reboot of the Spider-Man comic, but I can still recognize all the main characters and identify the Spider-Man.

[Aryxbez]

he major comics publishers have apparently decided to stop focusing on entertaining and instead focusing on propagandizing.

Go actually read comics books, and not Tumblir? New 52 has provided entertaining stories, Like Forever Evil, hell they're kinda like a party of D&D PC's (Even Frank indicated New 52 Aquaman + Wonderman doing things).

As for Marvel comics, I've no clue, last I heard they were going to do a big story-arc that's retconning everythiing. Also how they retconned Scarlet witch, Quicksilver to screw the X-men movies for not giving rights back to Marvel film studios.

For me the one of the two biggest problems is the price increase.

Even in D&D this was slowly becoming evident near 3e's end, prices going up $5-10. By 4th edition that became the standard, and then 5th edition went full retard like much of what it does. So since the market was/is seemingly getting smaller, they jacked up the prices, despite the quality staying similar or getting worse. If that's deterred people now, how can one really come back from that? I guess as been stated, someone to come in with high quality content and putting it back at the good prices of yore?

[Almaz]

It should be noted the post-inflation value of $25 (the mentioned above price for a 3e D&D corebook) is like, $35 now, because inflation is a bitch. The list price on the current edition of D&D is totally $50 a corebook, though, right now. And while I think there's a few more pages per corebook, the content sure is less value.

[rasmuswagner]

Hollywood is still in the entertainment business. The major comics publishers have apparently decided to stop focusing on entertaining and instead focusing on propagandizing. But it turns out that being in the propaganda business might get you glowing reviews, but not that many people are willing to spend their entertainment money on not-very-entertaining propaganda.

It's been a reboot and a half since I last actually read a comic (marvel or DC) so I'm not particularly paying attention outside of the lil controversies over art covers and other stupid bullshit. So what exactly do you mean by propaganda?

Smells like fedora.

[Darth Rabbitt]

I'm pretty sure comics are significantly less propaganda than they used to be. The Silver Age was all about COMMUNISTS EVERYWHERE and the Golden Age is oozing with WWII propaganda. You don't get Thor nuking China or superheroes killing racist caricatures of random Japanese soldiers anymore.

[DSMatticus]

I'm pretty sure comics are significantly less propaganda than they used to be. The Silver Age was all about COMMUNISTS EVERYWHERE and the Golden Age is oozing with WWII propaganda. You don't get Thor nuking China or superheroes killing racist caricatures of random Japanese soldiers anymore.

Yeah, fine, whatever, but Thor has boobs now. I won't stand for this "people who aren't white men can be important" propaganda that's all up in our faces these days.

[FatR]

I'm pretty sure comics are significantly less propaganda than they used to be. The Silver Age was all about COMMUNISTS EVERYWHERE and the Golden Age is oozing with WWII propaganda. You don't get Thor nuking China or superheroes killing racist caricatures of random Japanese soldiers anymore.

Am I supposed to see anything wrong with that comic strip? And I'm quite sure that whatever racist caricatures of Japanese soldiers US propaganda, particularly in a tame medium like comic books, was able to come up with, ended up a good deal less repulsive than actual Japanese soldiers.

Yeah, fine, whatever, but Thor has boobs now. I won't stand for this "people who aren't white men can be important" propaganda that's all up in our faces these days.

The fact that you must resort to a strawman this blatant shows that you are perfectly aware of the political agenda in current comics. You're just agreeing with it.

Well, not all of the potential customers do.

That said, pushing politically correct shit is not even close to the main reason why comics sell poorly nowadays. Personally, I entirely stopped reading DC, because the New 52's cosmic retcon erased a good deal of my favorite stories from continuity. No, sorry, DC, I'm not emotionally investing in any of your characters or stories again, just to have them retconned from existence once more. I dropped anything Marvel earlier because of much the same thing, Orwellian reality rewrites, except in their case my frustration added up slowly. Not even pirating either now.

[TheFlatline]

As far as Time of Judgement goes, it's important to remember that while the Time of Judgement books were infuriating and unpopular, the reboot itself had broad support. I mean, I completely reject The Flatline's "vampire players got their way" narrative, and have expounded on why that's bullshit on other threads, but he's right that the community was ready for a reboot and then rejected the reboot that actually came because it was boring and shitty.

There's about 25% truth in it but the rest is hyperbole I'll admit. The actual motivation was to put all three supernaturals on "parity" with each other according to WW during the run-up to nWOD. It was suggested that this would make crossovers easier.

[TheFlatline]

It should be noted the post-inflation value of $25 (the mentioned above price for a 3e D&D corebook) is like, $35 now, because inflation is a bitch. The list price on the current edition of D&D is totally $50 a corebook, though, right now. And while I think there's a few more pages per corebook, the content sure is less value.

Inflation has gone up sure, but the cost of producing books I suspect hasn't stayed the same. At the very least it's become easier to actually layout the content (not necessarily *well* mind you) due to advancing computer software options.

That, plus the explosion of *dirt cheap* printing in China (this is starting to go away but from about 2000-2013 or so China was insanely cheap) you shouldn't have seen the jump from 30 bucks to 60 the way you did.

[TheFlatline]

As far as Time of Judgement goes, it's important to remember that while the Time of Judgement books were infuriating and unpopular, the reboot itself had broad support. I mean, I completely reject The Flatline's "vampire players got their way" narrative, and have expounded on why that's bullshit on other threads, but he's right that the community was ready for a reboot and then rejected the reboot that actually came because it was boring and shitty.

I'm sure that this is true, but I'm also sure that most people didn't expect that "reboot" means "we throw away everything there was in the setting and make completely new stuff", rather than "we go back to basics of seven Camarilla clans doing politics and fighting the unaligned". Ultimate Spider-Man is a reboot of the Spider-Man comic, but I can still recognize all the main characters and identify the Spider-Man.

No they were totally up front about blowing that out of the water and we were on board for it.

Requiem's setting sucked because if you played by the rules, odds were that the PCs made up either a significant minority or the majority of vampires. It repeatedly pissed on the idea of travel and even used terms like "Every city is an island" even in this modern day of internet and easy travel. Then they took away vampire history by making old vampires fall asleep after a hundred years or so and basically forgetting most of the shit they knew. Then it gave no real antagonists to deal with on your little island.

The WW devs actually thought that what people really wanted was to roleplay out seducing people in clubs and draining them dry, and then going and fucking the rest of the PC party over in in-party politics. Which I guess is fine if you're running a large LARP where player-driven conflict is the meat of your game. But at the table, players usually aren't that antagonistic towards each other.

I'm reasonably convinced that nWOD didn't get a lot of testing while it was being developed, and the people who did test it were in on the "vision" of the devs for nWOD. They wanted to bring the scope down to Interview with a Vampire where PCs would lament over a candle flame for 10 minutes after 20 years of Fang of Thrones.

[OgreBattle]

FatR,

1) When's the last time you bought a Thor comic, or talked about a Thor comic.
2) How much have you spent on movies where Thor appears?

If you have been buying Thor comics through early 2014 and earlier, up to the point Thor loses his arm and Jane picks up the hammer, then yes you have a valid criticism of Disney comics rather drastically changing the series you were financially supporting with your purchases.

If you haven't then... you're not part of the customer base of the Thor comic to begin with. But comic books are a teeny tiny part of Disney's profits compared to movies.

But if you've watched the Hollywood Thor movies and other films where Thor appears, he's still a nordic man. That's the 'real' Thor now, in the sense that is the Thor known to mainstream America and anywhere in the world hollywood films play. Disney will not risk hurting 'real' Thor profits by making 'real' Thor a woman, but they can make tertiary Thor a woman and enjoy some back patting where they claim to be progressives of the industry even though non-white non-male comic protagonists created by non-white non-male persons (say Sailor Moon) have sales numbers that outdo man and woman Thor sales alike.

[Prak]

*fedora*

Equality, diversity and representation isn't a political agenda, you fuck.

[erik]

Technical it is. It's just people who object to those things are fucks.

Before DSM posted I as genuinely trying to figure out what the propaganda was, then went "oh yeah I guess so", but that is nothing like the nationalist propaganda that was in old comics.

[Shrapnel]

I'm pretty sure comics are significantly less propaganda than they used to be. The Silver Age was all about COMMUNISTS EVERYWHERE and the Golden Age is oozing with WWII propaganda. You don't get Thor nuking China or superheroes killing racist caricatures of random Japanese soldiers anymore.

Am I supposed to see anything wrong with that comic strip?

Do you hate the Chinese, or are you just really friggin' dense?

And I'm quite sure that whatever racist caricatures of Japanese soldiers US propaganda, particularly in a tame medium like comic books, was able to come up with, ended up a good deal less repulsive than actual Japanese soldiers.

So... because some Japanese soldiers did some horrible things... that makes it okay to be racist? Does the R in FatR stand for "Racist Fuckbag"?

[Prak]

Technical it is. It's just people who object to those things are fucks.

Before DSM posted I as genuinely trying to figure out what the propaganda was, then went "oh yeah I guess so", but that is nothing like the nationalist propaganda that was in old comics.

Eh, social agenda, maybe, but, at least in the specific case of comics, I don't think it's motivated by politics, but rather one part non-cis het white dudebros getting into comics and wanting to make characters like them, and one part the companies wanting money.

[darkmaster]

No, it is entirely companies wanting money. Make no mistake the people making these comics, are not true believers in your identity politics. They're just hacks who have been told to write a story to try and sell copies by shock value. Eventually they'll realize it's not making them as much money as they want and they'll retcon the whole thing. Probably really lazily.

Also, Prak, saying identity politics aren't a political agenda is retarded. Please stop.

[virgil]

Back to the topic of the decline of tabletop...how big is Pathfinder these days compared to the rest of industry and the days when the industry wasn't crap?

While it wasn't simultaneous, it's still a matter of all the major players in the industry collectively spiraling. This brings to bear a question I have; is the industry sufficiently attached to brand recognition that the 'entry fee' is (in all practicality) too high for an indie RPG to stand out and revitalize the industry while the big names wallow?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Back to the topic of the decline of tabletop...how big is Pathfinder these days compared to the rest of industry and the days when the industry wasn't crap?

The numbers aren't public. Even the best analyses of numbers that people can get their hands on are missing significant chunks of data.

This brings to bear a question I have; is the industry sufficiently attached to brand recognition that the 'entry fee' is (in all practicality) too high for an indie RPG to stand out and revitalize the industry while the big names wallow?

I think V:tM was basically an indie RPG when it broke out and set the industry on fire, so there's definitely precedent.

[Username17]

Back to the topic of the decline of tabletop...how big is Pathfinder these days compared to the rest of industry and the days when the industry wasn't crap?

While it wasn't simultaneous, it's still a matter of all the major players in the industry collectively spiraling. This brings to bear a question I have; is the industry sufficiently attached to brand recognition that the 'entry fee' is (in all practicality) too high for an indie RPG to stand out and revitalize the industry while the big names wallow?

The death spiral was described very eloquently by Ryan Dancey, although he actually got the sign on the wordcount backwards, so rather than linking to his old prediction I'm going to paraphrase it here. Basically, poor capitalization leads to poor quality; poor quality leads to poor sales; poor sales leads to poor capitalization. And once you're on it, the logic of the spiral doesn't go away - each new product will get less funds because of the lower sales of the last product and be even chincier and get lower sales and leave less funds for production of the next product and so on.

And you can enter the spiral at any point! Shadowrun was decapitalized several times as the people in control of the company simply walked away with the moneys that would otherwise be used to finance the next set of books, leading to production slowdowns and corner cutting. 4th edition D&D was simply bad and delivered very poor sales because of that, which caused future releases to have much smaller operating budgets and be even worse. nWoD catastrophically misestimated their market and put up terrible sales numbers, which brought in very few revenues and left them without an operating budget to do much of anything but dribble out shovelware.

The good news of course is that the opposite spiral is equally possible and has happened many times. Good sales allow good capitalization; good capitalization allows good quality; and good quality promotes good sales. Breaking the cycle of failure is as "simple" as stepping in at any point and turning those numbers around. A brilliant market campaign that gets sales all out of proportion to the expected, a dedicated crew that brings in high quality on shoestring budget, or an angel investor that throws money at the problem until it goes away could all create the kind of invigorating spiral that propels a company to big name status and million+ book sales and shit.

-Username17