This hobby needs to move on beyond its Nerd Roots

[RobG]

I am slightly more depressed about my hobby now.

[Kaelik]

I'm backfitting, here. Can you come up with a better definition that includes as much stuff people have described as "nerdy shit" and doesn't include anything nonsensical?

Sure:

Nerd is a slang term for an intelligent but socially awkward and obsessive person who spends time on unpopular or obscure pursuits, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities.

So therefore, nerdy activities are those that intelligent socially awkward and obsessive people engage in, that are unpopular or obscure.

Therefore "82% of all males between 17 and 30 engage in the nerdy activity of X" is totally fucking nonsensical.

Suck a dick and die, FPSes are not nerdy.

[echoVanguard]

1. If you have to fundamentally destroy something to make it marketable, you're better off just marketing something new instead. Basic logic.

2. Today's nerds are tomorrow's influential citizens. In another thirty years, there will literally be no one of importance in first-world countries who did not at some point play a video game, a tabletop RPG, or partake in a similarly "nerdy" activity.

3. "Legitimization" is a sucker's game, because you're working at cross purposes with how products are supposed to naturally evolve. It's significantly smarter and more simple to just improve the product until its quality attracts more customers, at which point "legitimacy" will be spontaneously redefined to include the product.

echo

[DSMatticus]

Note about Kaelik and AMiB's discussion: nerd is a word that describes a category of people, and the category in question is not static. Nerd means something different when you use it at two different points of time because the attributes associated with nerdiness change. 15-20 years ago, yeah; videogames were nerdy. 5-10 years ago, that just stopped being true. Videogames are pretty much a perfect example of something moving beyond its nerd roots.

But nerd, as it's used, means pretty much anyone perceived as 'smarter than normal' with a hobby that is a primarily mental exercise that is not considered normal by society. That doesn't include CoD anymore because we call that normal. That does include TTRPG's, because those are still not normal.

[Gx1080]

Honestly, if you want more people on TTRPGs, nothing works best than a huge marketing campaign + IP exploitation. GW, WotC and even WW did that, and it worked.

Of course, you kinda need a product that is actually fun to play, but that goes without saying.

[Dominicius]

Look, I do not disagree that TTRPGs need a strong fundamental base to survive and that is where the nerd culture is important but everywhere I looked when things that have moved into a broader audience, they have seen vast growth and evolution as a result.

The move towards legitimacy for video games meant that game developers have started to more closely listen to their players because as a legitimate hobby it needs to compete with other legitimate hobbies. It meant that games were not just designed to be fun but also intuitive and accessible for new players.

Some might say that the internet has gotten worse after it became popular but the sites and services that you can find on the net now have so much polish and research put into them exactly because so many people using it.

And I am not saying that we won't need a good product to attempt this transition. I am saying that we will need MORE than just a good product. Lago's thread about making a D&D cartoon is a great example of this.

[Caedrus]

No one has to actually get laid during the hobby. You just have to convince people it can happen, and people will convince themselves they bought it because of how awesome model railroading is after they by it to get laid but don't.

Hurray for the human psychological tendency towards retroactive overjustification!

Though, frankly, that's kinda one of the reasons why TTRPGs are stuck with so many old bad beliefs.

[Libertad]

If you want D&D to extend beyond a niche hobby, you'll need to make it more "user-friendly."

Expense:

To play 3rd or 4th Edition, you need to buy 3 Core Rulebooks ($75-90) and a good battle mat ($25) at the very least. If you want to expand your options, splatbooks can cost anywhere from $20-40 a book. And adventures, which you may run only once, cost $10-$25, while the rare adventure path series may net you $40-$50.

Contrast with video games. A game with good replay value like Call of Duty of Duty or Dragon Age costs around $60, has free updates; optional stuff includes downloadable content ($2-15) and an Xbox Live Subscription ($5 a month).

And MMOs like WoW are like $10 a month.

Connectivity: Table-top RPGs have play-by-post games and online maps (rpgtonight.com for example), but they're not as smooth and polished as online console and PC game communities. Wizards of the Coast is trying to go digital with D&D Insider, but they're a smaller company and I heard that people have problems with user accessibility. Xbox Live and WoW, by contrast, have [i]hordes[/i] of groups looking for players and games. Companies like Microsoft have more money and resources than Wizards of the Coast to hammer out problems.

Mass appeal: D&D is a nerdy hobby, meant to appeal to guys with a fondness for role-playing, imagination, and a good head for numbers. It also has a steep learning curve and requires book-keeping. We may have a chance of attracting the tactical-minded video gamers and RPG crowd, but making the product appealing to a "non-nerd" audience would require massive fundamental changes.

[OgreBattle]

Another good example of legitimization is comic books. They were once considered a geek only thing but with

No, you have this backwards.

Comic books used to be for everybody. There were Romance, Horror, adventure and whatnot. Comic books were widely read by US soldiers in world war 2. Disney was contracted to make training manuals and videos, where you can see cartoon animals teaching Americans how to kill japs.

Comic books were regulated to the niche of nerddom because of the Comics Code authority branding the medium only for children, and being largely replaced by TV and movies. Then the edginess of the 90's gave them a retarded makeover, because nerds are edgy people.
The only comic books that get read are ones with movie tie ins. There little no love for the art itself left in America. And most of those movies suck.

Comic books are more accepted in Italy, France, and Asia though. Generally cultures with a natural appreciation of visual art like them.

They even changed the name from comics to "graphic novels

Being ashamed of what you like and trying to hide it is a negative nerd trait that should be eliminated.

and if we could get people to view roleplaying as a form of art.

I wouldn't sweat that. Michael Bay doesn't make art, he makes money. Really, don't worry about it.

What I am about to say is going to sound extremely elitist but it is the sad truth, most DM have no idea how to run a game.

This is a really stupid comment, this is the HEART of the nerd root you want to move away from, being an elitist nerd. This attitude is what's killed your hobby

What do all of you think about this? Am I rambling or have all of you been thinking something similar?

I've thought about this before. I was introduced to D&D by my older brothers, they were Varsity football players.
When I got to high school age, I realized how twisted of limb and mind the general D&D fanbase actually was. High School was an adventure in my view of the world battling against society's, hahah.

And lastly, actually design a good game. Almost everything that WotC did when designing 4e was fucking atrocious. We all know how Pathfinder now sells more books than 4e and that should tell you something about the quality of the product. The

This is why the hobby's dying. More than anything, Nerds are spiteful and jealous people. The 4e rules are fine, the 3e rules are fine, the AD&D rules are fine, they facilitate roleplaying fine. Only obsessive nerds get so riled up with edition wars.
If you want "the hobby to move beyond its nerd roots", the minute differences between D&D editions don't matter at all.

2. Today's nerds are tomorrow's influential citizens. In another thirty years, there will literally be no one of importance in first-world countries who did not at some point play a video game, a tabletop RPG, or partake in a similarly "nerdy" activity.

3. "Legitimization" is a sucker's game, because you're working at cross purposes with how products are supposed to naturally evolve. It's significantly smarter and more simple to just improve the product until its quality attracts more customers, at which point "legitimacy" will be spontaneously redefined to include the product.

It sounds like you're trying to legitimize being a 'nerd' though.

Western Nerd Culture is a horrible, toxic place and there's no saving it. Enjoy being the last captain of the ship, or swim away. If you want to change the hobby, change yourself.

[TheFlatline]

No, you have this backwards.

Comic books used to be for everybody. There were Romance, Horror, adventure and whatnot. Comic books were widely read by US soldiers in world war 2. Disney was contracted to make training manuals and videos, where you can see cartoon animals teaching Americans how to kill japs.

Comic books were regulated to the niche of nerddom because of the Comics Code authority branding the medium only for children, and being largely replaced by TV and movies. Then the edginess of the 90's gave them a retarded makeover, because nerds are edgy people.
The only comic books that get read are ones with movie tie ins. There little no love for the art itself left in America. And most of those movies suck.

Comic books are more accepted in Italy, France, and Asia though. Generally cultures with a natural appreciation of visual art like them.

That's actually a really good point. Though I'd argue that there's some real literature buried in all the dross: The Sandman is especially a standout, Watchmen should be celebrated, V for Vendetta (the comic, not the atrocious movie), and a few others. They tell interesting, deep stories, and I've met people who most certainly are not geeky/nerds who have read and really gotten into it.

But yes, generally comic books are still geek fodder. Go to Comic Con and tell me that it's not 90%+ geeks/nerds.

And lastly, actually design a good game. Almost everything that WotC did when designing 4e was fucking atrocious. We all know how Pathfinder now sells more books than 4e and that should tell you something about the quality of the product. The

This is why the hobby's dying. More than anything, Nerds are spiteful and jealous people. The 4e rules are fine, the 3e rules are fine, the AD&D rules are fine, they facilitate roleplaying fine. Only obsessive nerds get so riled up with edition wars.
If you want "the hobby to move beyond its nerd roots", the minute differences between D&D editions don't matter at all.

Probably another really good point. New editions are meant to fix the errors of old editions, but are only particularly appealing to dedicated gamers. When my girlfriend says she wants to play vampire with me, she doesn't care if it's first edition or revised or masquerade or Requiem, she gets to pretend to be a vampire for a couple hours and if the storyteller has their shit together that's "good enough". She'll never really powergame to the point where she can see the engine limitations of VTM or the antiseptic dryness of Requiem.

2. Today's nerds are tomorrow's influential citizens. In another thirty years, there will literally be no one of importance in first-world countries who did not at some point play a video game, a tabletop RPG, or partake in a similarly "nerdy" activity.

The problem is, the further you move the nerd goalposts towards mainstream, the further nerds move away from mainstream. That's really the point. Nerds avoid mainstream, sort of like hipsters, but hipsters avoid mainstream as a status symbol. Nerds avoid it because it's not comfortable. Trying to mainstream/legitimize something like D&D means you essentially have one shot. If you fuck it up, the nerds abandon the thing like rats fleeing a sinking ship, feeling too much like they're in the spotlight, while the mainstream ignores it because it sucks, and you're left with fanboys who support, vocally, any dross you put out. Which alienates even more potential fans from both ends of the spectrum.

In fact, this is the biggest lesson you can learn from 4e. Not that it was poorly designed, but that it was poorly implemented for the wrong crowd who just didn't give a shit about D&D. It was a shot aimed at the 12 million WoW/MMO players out there to expand their numbers. It backfired by losing a large portion of their 3e fanbase and failing to capture a significantly large enough mainstream fanbase to sustain growth. So by trying to appeal to mainstream markets, they pissed off their nerdy, grognard fans who didn't see a refinement of D&D, but saw a fundamental, major paradigm shift that's arguably larger than AD&D to 3rd edition was.

Western Nerd Culture is a horrible, toxic place and there's no saving it. Enjoy being the last captain of the ship, or swim away. If you want to change the hobby, change yourself.

I wouldn't go that far. It's pretty bad, but let's not forget it was Western Nerd Culture, the fear of nuclear obliteration, and the desire to go to the moon that literally created the information age. Asia may have taken to the Internet and the information age better, but western nerd culture invented it.