Purple Pawn 2012 Game Industry Survey

The ever-interesting Purple Pawn has published its 2012 Game Industry Survey of retailers, publishers, and distributors. The link to the actual pdf report is in the above article, but the highlights from my perspective are:

• Pathfinder is outselling Dungeons & Dragons by a significant margin
• There are a ton of one-and-two-man game companies out there
• The larger companies are doing better, as a group, than the smaller ones
• Distributors are like the Federal Reserve. Seems like they print their own money. :-)

Read the whole survey; it's fascinating stuff.

Read More

Sneak Peek of Gygax Magazine Number 1

So what should grace my inbox this morning but a sneak peek of the contents of the upcoming first issue of Gygax Magazine, news of which leaked out not too long ago. I've gotta say I'm really, really looking forward to this, and not only do I like the fact that they've got a diverse selection of games covered, but there are more than a few names in there that should be very familiar to us. Best of luck, guys, and can't wait for the issue to come out! If you haven't done so already, I'd urge you to go to their website and get on the mailing list. Looks like good stuff ahead!

Posted with permission:

Thank you for signing up for updates about Gygax Magazine. It's just a few weeks before our first issue is out, and we wanted to give you a sneak peek of what's in store. Here's the contents of issue number one — we hope you're looking forward to reading it as much as we're looking forward to getting it out!

The Cosmology of Role Playing Games by James Carpio
Still Playing After All These Years by Tim Kask
Leomund's Secure Shelter by Len Lakofka
The Ecology of the Banshee by Ronald Corn
Bridging Generations by Luke Gygax
The Gygax Family Storyteller by Ernie Gygax
Keeping Magic Magical by Dennis Sustare
Gaming With a Virtual Tabletop by Nevin P. Jones
DMing for Your Toddler by Cory Doctorow
Great Power for ICONS by Steve Kenson
Gaming Through the Generations by Ethan Gilsdorf
Between the Dungeons by Ernie Gygax
Talents Off the Front Line by Dennis Detwiller
Adaption Decay by Michael Tresca
Gnatdamp: A Sanctuary in the Swamp adventure by Michael Curtis
The Kobold's Cavern - a special section edited by Wofgang Baur of Kobold Press:
---A Magical Miscellany for AGE by Randall Hurlburt
---Scaling Pathfinder Combat Feats by Marc Radle
---An AGE of Great Inventions by Rodrigo García Carmona
Comic - Marvin the Mage by Jim Wampler
Comic - What's New with Phil & Dixie by Phil Foglio
Comic - The Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew

----------

What would Dungeons & Dragons have looked like if Gary Gygax had been allowed to keep developing it? Please, if you haven't done so already, consider supporting my Kickstarter for the Adventures Dark and Deep Players Manual, going on now through December 19th. I need your help to make it a reality! 

Read More

The Rebirth of TSR?

Could this be some sort of early Yuletide gift for us old-school gamers? First we hear of new AD&D material being published by Wizards of the Coast, and now the detectives at ENWorld have uncovered this:

Both of the domains associated with these ventures (http://gygaxmagazine.com and http://tsrgames.com) are little more at this point than a place to sign up with your name and email address to be sent the announcement when the first issue of Gygax Magazine is published in December 2012. Both are owned by the same person, apparently, who posted to the thread at ENWorld, and seems to be legit:

Hi guys, this is Jayson. I'm the editor for Gygax Magazine.

Gygax Magazine is myself, Ernie Gygax, Luke Gygax, Tim Kask, James Carpio, and Jim Wampler. Our first issue is out in December; since it's not finished yet, we've been pretty quiet about things until it's ready.

Just to address some of the questions, I thought it was best that I leave a reply. We do own the trademark for TSR, and have since December of 2011. We are a new company, not the old TSR, as they were purchased by Wizards in the '90s. The trademark was abandoned about nine years ago, and we registered it in 2011. 

We decided the best thing to release first as TSR was a gaming magazine, because we wanted a way to bridge the traditions of the old guard with the awesome new games that are out today. 

I know that Tim Kask is involved with Eldritch Enterprises, similarly formed of a number of the Old Guard from TSR, but that doesn't seem to be connected with this. This TSR Games (note, not TSR Hobbies) is a completely new entity. Details about the magazine are sketchy as of right now, but hopefully more information will be forthcoming soon.

(h/t to Mortellan)

-----

Please, if you haven't done so already, consider supporting my Kickstarter for the Adventures Dark and Deep Players Manual, going on now through December 19th. I need your help to make it a reality!

Read More

Playing at the World: First Impressions

Author Jon Peterson was kind enough to send me a review copy of his new book Playing at the World, which bears the wordy subtitle of "A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role Playing Games".

In a word, if you have any interest in the early history of Dungeons and Dragons, wargaming, Gary Gygax, or role-playing games in general, buy this book now. No, don't wait. Buy it now. I'll wait.

Ordered it? Good.

I'm only partway through the book, so this is only a "first impressions" rather than a full review. The thing is 720 pages and weighs in at more than three pounds. But from what I've read and skimmed through, I am completely confident in saying that this will become the definitive text of the early history of the role-playing hobby for years to come.

I am an historian by training and avocation. I'm used to reading large books filled with footnotes. I like reading large books filled with footnotes. And this book is that. But it reads lightly, and for me, who thought he had a passing familiarity with the subject matter, this book is a revelation. The level of detail is simply astounding, and in uncovering all of the salient facts of the state of gaming in the 1960's and 1970's that led to the advent of Dungeons and Dragons, Jon Peterson does something that warms the cockles of my heart. It's exactly what I do when digging into some obscure piece of lore, whether it be related to the World of Greyhawk or Norse mythology.

He relies on primary sources.

The importance of that fact cannot be understated. One of the great achievements of this book is that it doesn't rely on the memories and reminisces of those people involved. Peterson double-checks every date, every assertion, and every faded memory against the actual text of the myriad of fanzines, club newsletters, magazines, and other primary documents of the period (the tale of how he amassed such a treasure-trove is probably worthy of a story unto itself). He also cross-references this material against other works that claim to give histories of the period and material involved, and often enough points out where they are contradicted by the actual sources.

I'll say it again. This will become the definitive text of the early history of the role-playing hobby for years to come.

Is it perfect? No, but only because it needs two companion volumes. The first would be a Sourcebook. I would love to see the complete text of the original sources to which Peterson refers and quotes only enough to make his point. The second would be a volume that does consist of the reminisces of the persons involved. The pure facts laid out in "Playing at the World" are fascinating, engaging, and an utterly unthinkable amount of work. I would love to see a pure book of interviews, intended to capture the impressions and emotions of those involved, and see it cross-referenced against the facts laid out here.

But those points are not failings of the book itself. It's a phenomenal achievement. If you are interested in the history of RPGs, you must get this book. Buy it now. I'll wait.

Read More

RuneQuest 6th Edition Now Available for Pre-Order

I never got into RuneQuest. Sure, I owned some of the books, but for us in high school it was all AD&D all the time when it came to fantasy, and that was all she wrote. Still, I know that RuneQuest and Glorantha hold a special place in many OSR gamers' hearts, so I thought many of you might be interested in this news from The Design Mechanism:

RuneQuest 6th edition is now available for pre-order. All direct orders are handled through our partner, Moon Design Publications. Physical copies will ship from our distributors around the 20th-27th July. Please allow up to 28 days for delivery. PDF orders are available for immediate download.

In addition, the Mongoose RuneQuest material will be made available in pdf format through the RuneQuest Archives (handled through DriveThruRPG.com), some of which are only $1 a piece. And all, supposedly, are going to be compatible with the new rules (although I confess I'm not enough of a RuneQuest afficinado to grasp the nuances, and RuneQuest has had a rather convoluted publishing history).

I've gotta say this seems like a good time to be a RuneQuest fan!

Read More

Saying Exactly the Right Things

A quick follow-up to yesterday's news regarding online gaming from WotC and Paizo. Here's Lisa Stevens, Paizo CEO, on their strategy:

Just to make things 100% clear, we don't care what VTT tool people end up using. If you like Roll20.net or d20Pro or Fantasy Grounds or Nferno or whatever, then that is fine and dandy with us. Keep using them and playing games. We just wanted to give folks another option here on Paizo Game Space. We aren't in competition with the other VTTs. We aren't going to be trying to outcompete and steal their customers away. People can play with whatever VTT strikes their fancy. We will make ours the way it makes the most sense for us, and if folks don't like that and like some other VTT better, then awesome.

I know that sounds like crazy talk, to not want to crush your enemies and hear the lamentations of the women, but we are crazy like that here at Paizo. In the end, we just want people to be able to play more regularly. If that is here, then great. If it is somewhere else, that is cool too.

Man, but that's a terrific attitude.

Read More

Tomorrow is Free RPG Day!

Alas, there aren't any stores in my immediate vicinity, and naturally none of the three closest game stores are participating, but I fully support any endeavor that gets people into their FLGS.

Complete information (including the available swag) can be found here.

A participating store locator can be found here.

Read More

Frog God Games Acquires Necromancer Games

Got this announcement in my email today:

Frog God Games announced today that they are acquiring Necromancer Games, the award-winning publishing house known for Necropolis, Rappan Athuk, City of Brass, Tomb of Abysthor, Crucible of Freya, Tome of Horrors, and many other famous titles. The purchase of Necromancer Games considerably increases Frog God Games’ influence in the tabletop gaming industry. 

Frog God Games will re-animate several of Necromancer Games’ products in the future to provide its customers with revised and expanded products for a variety of tabletop editions.

Read More

My Kickstarter Experience

As my regular readers will know, I recently concluded a successful Kickstarter campaign for Adventures Dark and Deep: A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore. The book is a version of my ADD game presented as a supplement for other 1E-compatible games. I learned a few things about Kickstarter from the experience, and thought I'd share.

First off, Geek Industrial Complex has a great three-part analysis of crowdsourcing for RPGs, here, here, and here. Excellent stuff, well backed up with hard numbers (it was the result of a study of 150 different projects), and you can download the raw data here.

For my personal experience with the Forgotten Lore KS campaign, I was approached by Tavis Allison, who was managing the Kickstarter campaign for James M.'s Dwimmermount, about possibly doing a cross-promotion between my project, Dwimmermount, and Myth & Magic (a 2E-based game with tweaks and improvements). Tavis had himself been approached by Tom Ryan of New Haven Games, who inquired about synergizing their two KS campaigns. I believe he got the initial idea from Paul Hughes' Random Dungeon Generator Poster kickstarter, which also used this sort of cross-pollination to great effect.

We hashed out the details for most of the afternoon via email, and came up with the notion that Dwimmermount and I would offer a shared stretch goal-- an adventure module that would be linked to Dwimmermount as the locale for a treasure map found therein, and which would be a stand-alone module suitable for use with ADD. I would also give M&M a hearty endorsement (which wasn't contrived at all; I've been excited about their project for a while), and vice versa.

So when I sent out the update announcing the shared stretch goal on April 12, I also told the ADD supporters to go check out Myth & Magic. I also mentioned it all here, to maximize the audience. Both the other two Kickstarter campaigns did likewise, plus James mentioned it on Grognardia on the 11th, and this was the result:

Now, I can't speak for the impact that either Dwimmermount or M&M saw, but it was pretty dramatic coming in my direction. There is a natural bump near the end of the life of a kickstarter campaign, but this exceeded my wildest expectations, and as you can see, once the big jump happened, things leveled out to what looks like a more normal end-of-campaign boost.

I attribute this to a few things.

1. A mention on a blog, even a very widely read one like Grognardia, is like radio advertising. You're going to get a very big imprint, but relatively few sales per listener. Over the life of the project, I did get 12 backers from Grognardia (3.5% of the total money raised), but I got three times as many from those mentions in the Dwimmermount and M&M campaigns (accounting for 17% of the total funds pledged, so they were not only more numerous, but more generous).

2.When the mentions are done on kickstarter as part of a supporter's update, you're hitting an audience that is more inclined to actually open their wallets. When it's sent out to supporters, you're by definition getting a targeted audience of people who have already demonstrated their willingness to support projects.

3. The three projects were very much targeting the same audience. Especially in the case of M&M, which might otherwise have been seen as a competitor to ADD, the modern market is much more of a cooperative venture. Because the OSR is such a niche market, we gain much more by getting the word out to other potentially interested buyers than we do by trying to jealously hoard the customers we have. I can't imagine anyone looked at M&M and said "Boy, that looks a hundred times better than ADD. I'm going to switch my support from the one to the other." (Or vice versa.) It's much more about community building, and given the scale at which we're looking, that has much more of a positive impact than any sort of competitive disadvantage.

3a. I think the mutual benefits between ADD and Dwimmermount were due much more to the fact that people who knew about the one were hearing about the other for the first time, rather than saying "Hey! I'm getting a treasure map location module because I'm supporting ADD; I'd better end up supporting Dwimmermount so I can get the level that has the map in it!" (and, again, vice versa). Again, community building. At the scale we're working on, that has many more advantages than disadvantages.

On a larger scale, we see something like this with the Ogre Designer's Edition kickstarter. One of the stretch goals for Ogre is that they will have a Car Wars kickstarter at some point, so they get fans of both games invested in the other. There has also been talk of "recursive" kickstarter campaigns, were a subset of people can band together to combine their efforts to get a high-priced goal, such as 10 people each putting in $300 so that a $3,000 reward level can be shared among them. That hasn't been formally adopted as a feature by Kickstarter, but apparently they're looking into it.

Conclusions

Especially in a small niche market like OSR roleplaying games, kickstarter is not a zero-sum game, by and large. That is, people who are inclined to support one such project are probably going to be inclined to support another project that meets their interests. Both projects could end up getting support, rather than one taking support from the other.

OSR publishers have little to lose, and much to gain, by forming these sorts of partnerships where other projects are not only endorsed, but are integrated together through stretch goals and the like.

I think there is a potential for burn-out and overkill on such things; every OSR KS campaign endorsing every other OSR KS campaign all the time would quickly lose its effectiveness. But doing so in a targeted manner, where natural synergies exist, seems to be a win-win for all concerned.

UPDATE: The raw data for the crowdfunding survey can now be found here.

Read More

Dave Arneson's Personal Game Collection

This was a great way to start my morning (no sarcasm intended at all). Apparently, Dave Arneson's personal collection of games and notes from his days as a designer were left in a storage unit after his death. Eventually, they were put up for auction, and found their way to The Dragon's Trove, which specializes in auctioning exactly that sort of material. From their website:

In early 2011, The Dragon's Trove had to chance to buy what is arguably one of the two most important collections of gaming materials every offered for sale, the one belonging to the late Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons. In my opinion, the only other more important collection would be the one owned by the late Gary Gygax that is currently being sold off by his widow, Gail. When I was contacted by the owner Dave's collection, it was immediately apparent how lucky all gamers were that this collection was not lost forever. Because it purchased at a storage locker auction (that's right, just like on TV) and it was by pure chance that the new owner attempted to find the meaning of some of the boxes of paper rather than deciding that there was no gold or jewelry to be found, and just tossing it all into the nearest dumpster.

Now, after nearly a year of careful cataloging and research by Paul Stormberg of The Collector's Trove, we are proud to offer this once in a lifetime collection to the public. Paul Stormberg is probably the foremost expert of this type of esoteric collection, and will be holding a series of auctions over the coming months to allow the vast assortment of items to find a home. You can follow this on his site here:

The Collector's Trove's Web Site

I'm very pleased that things worked out the way they did, and am looking forward to seeing some of the hitherto-unknown material come to light.

The Collector's Trove will also be auctioning a portion of the collection starting this Sunday:

The auction will include nearly 200 items including several rare wargames, Call of Cthulhu, Empire of the Petal Throne, Blackmoor, Dungeons & Dragons, and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Highlights of the auction will include inscribed and autographed copies, editorial and review copies, author's and comp copies, Dave Arneson library copies, and personal play copies! Among many special items are a series of Empire of the Petal Throne books and journals autographed by the late M.A.R. Barker.

Read More

Genre-Specific Cross Promotion

A day or two ago, I came across a website called Celstyle. It's an intriguing idea-- they present themselves as a one-stop-shop for various role-playing games designed by different people and sold by different companies, but all dealing with anime-type themes. (What we used to call "Japanimation" back in the day.)

Now, I know that anime has a rabid fan base all unto itself, and thus something like this could make sense. Get into the zeitgeist of anime fandom, mentions on the prominent anime blogs, podcasts, etc., and you have a good chance of not just selling one product, but potentially several, since they're all very specific (almost micro-RPGs, since some of the topics are so very specific), and the site promises that all are very rules-lite, making the barrier to entry for non-gamers very low. The general concept intrigues me.

I wonder if there are any other genres that something like this could apply to? Horror? Apparently someone tried to market some horror RPGs at a large horror convention recently and got stomped on, figuratively speaking. But is that a function of the genre, the games, or just a fluke of that particular convention? Jessica over at Changing the Rules gives a much more in-depth analysis of why he might have failed, but I wonder how other genres might work for such genre-specific game promotion.

Fantasy seems unlikely, since there's not too much of a purely fantasy fan-base that doesn't already include some gaming components, but science fiction could work a little better, I think. Maybe something that marketed specifically to the various science fiction fan clubs out there (and there are thousands of tiny and not-so-tiny clubs all over the world). How about romance? World War II? Something else?

I think it's an interesting concept that bears exploration, if nothing else.

Read More

Dreamation 2012: Part 3 (Organized Play)

For my final thoughts inspired by this year's Dreamation convention, I wanted to pay a little attention to the way that companies view and deal with the people who play their games. This was a subject that was talked about at some length in the seminars run by Scott Douglas, both in the specific realm of organized play and the more general realm of companies growing their revenue streams.

Scott, having been head of the RPGA for quite some time, naturally has some great insights into that aspect of the hobby/industry. He stressed the point that having an organized play structure in place is exceedingly helpful for companies not only to market their own games, but to grow the market by bringing in fresh players.

Note, however, that just having that infrastructure isn't enough. You have to know what to do with it. One of the things I found most striking at this convention was the comparison between how the RPGA was represented and how the Pathfinder Society was.

I found the difference between the two quite illuminating. While both Pathfinder Society and Living Forgotten Realms were well-represented in the schedule, I found the Pathfinder Society to do an overall better job of representing the flag. They had colorful posters with good art around the gaming hall that not only advertised their own group, and Pathfinder in general, but specific adventures as well. The RPGA had a white oversized printout that they shared with another, local-but-aspiring-to-more group called NAGA.

The Pathfinder Society GMs were easy to spot; they all wore shirts that clearly identified who they were and what they were playing. The RPGA GMs, not so much. I don't have a dog in the Pathfinder-4E race, but my own impression was that the Pathfinder Society folks were better organized, better supported from their home base, and more enthusiastic than their RPGA counterparts.

How does this translate into sales, or growth in players? Well, hard numbers are difficult to come by, but according to the latest survey of retail stores by Purple Pawn, Pathfinder is far outstripping 4E in terms of sales. That's in line with other industry estimates that have been coming out over the last year or two. I certainly won't say that it all has to do with the way they are handling their organized play arms, but it certainly couldn't be hurting that the Pathfinder Society seems more energetic, confident, and supported, and Pathfinder is doing better in retail stores.

There is one thing of which I am not certain, since I'm not a Pathfinder player myself (although I am on record as saying I think Paizo is doing everything right in terms of how to run a game company viz-a-viz their fan base) is how Pathfinder compares in in-store play as opposed to conventions. Do they have anything comparable to the WotC Lair Assault program? I'd be curious as to what other people's experiences with organized play, either with RPGA, Pathfinder Society, C&C Society, etc. has been. Do your observations square with mine, or have you had a very different experience?

Read More

The Elusive "Family RPG"

Lately I've seen some references to RPGs in what is (to me, anyway), a new context throughout the blogosphere. That is what I call "the family RPG". Something that is "evergreen" (i.e., has steady sales at toy and mass market stores in the same way that Monopoly and Operation do), something that you would expect to find in any house with kids, and something that gets trotted out on "family game night" with more or less equal frequency as Risk, Life, and Sorry!

Among the OSR blogarati, such a thing is "rules lite" and weighs in at 36 pages; it's bought and the purchasers are never heard from again (perhaps "everbrown" is a more apt name for such a product from a marketing point of view). Among the rest of the RPG universe, it's a way to lure new people into more expensive (and thus lucrative) games; the longed-for gateway drug that will finally steal the audience away from WoW. I'm not sure such a thing is even possible, but let's explore the possibilities.

I believe there are a few criteria that a "family RPG" needs to meet:

• It's got to be accessible. Weird settings that require a lot of acclimation and understanding are going to put off the average family, which should be looked at as a "quadruple casual" gamers, if that. Go with something at least vaguely familiar; a wildly popular IP is a choice, but it runs the risk of alienating folks who just don't like Harry Potter, Tolkein, or Iron Man.
• It's got to be easy. Easy does not necessarily equate to "terse" or "short". A set of rules that's four pages long and packed densely with information, jargon, and acronyms is going to fail. Reading level should be no more than 5th grade.
• Corollary to the first criterion: It has to be quick to start. Monopoly takes about as much time to set up as it takes to count out the money. Risk takes a little longer, but not much. Spending an hour on character creation is a non-starter.

• It's got to be geared for 3-5 players. That means 3-5 classes, or races, or roles, or whatever. No more, no less. Save the rest for expansions for the hard-core players. You need to have one for mom, dad, and 1-2 kids, and deciding should be as easy as choosing between the car and the top hat. Why do you think "Hungry Hungry Hippos" is made for 4 players, and Monopoly works best with 4-5?
• It's got to be forgiving. You trade two railroads for Baltic Avenue, you won't automatically lose the game, even though it might be harder. Same thing if you roll four 2's and a 1 when defending Kamchatka. The sort of "you are punished both for stupidity and for bad luck" that many old school games embrace just won't fly.
• It's got to be fairly winnable. It could be a team win, or an individual win, but it cannot be a situation where one player serves as the referee/foil for the rest. In a family scenario, nobody wants to be felt "ganged up on", and that's what the DM is, basically, in traditional D&D-type games. Normally, that's counterpoised by the near-omnipotence of the DM, which in turn is balanced by the fact that people will leave the group and find a new DM if he is consistently unfair. However, plug that into a family scenario where mom had a bad day at work, or Susie stole Jimmy's last Popsicle from the freezer, and it becomes a madhouse of metagaming mayhem. What's lost is the last piece of balance; in a family game, you can't just go find another group, because you're stuck with the family you've got.
• It's got to be fun. Because nobody plays a game twice if halfway through you have to ask "when does this become fun?"

The question becomes, can such a game be designed and still be recognizable as an RPG (in the way most of us think of RPGs)? I don't pretend to have an answer; if I did, I'd be pitching it to Hasbro right now. Thus the discussion; are there parts of the above that invalidate the RPG concept? Can you have an RPG in the D&D sense of the term that is easy, quick, accessible, 3-5 players, forgiving, fairly winnable, and fun? Did I miss a criterion or is one of mine off-base?  Please weigh in.

Read More

Here Comes 5th Edition!

As I discussed before, I've felt that certain actions on the part of Wizards of the Coast (not least of which was the re-hiring of Monte Cook) presaged a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons coming down the pike, and lo! and behold I am once more proven correct:

Charting the Course for D&D

To those who doubted that I was right in saying that 5E was coming sooner rather than later, I will reply with a stately and dignified "neener, neener, neener". However, there are some interesting tidbits. FTFA:

"...starting in Spring 2012, we will be taking this process one step further and conducting ongoing open playtests with the gaming community to gather feedback on the new iteration of the game as we develop it. With your feedback and involvement, we can make D&D better than ever.


"We want a game that rises above differences of play styles, campaign settings, and editions, one that takes the fundamental essence of D&D and brings it to the forefront of the game. In short, we want a game that is as simple or complex as you please, its action focused on combat, intrigue, and exploration as you desire. We want a game that is unmistakably D&D, but one that can easily become your D&D, the game that you want to run and play.

"Then at the D&D Experience convention in late January, Wizards of the Coast will conduct a special playtest of ideas currently in development."

There's also a New York Times article covering the story (free registration required to read). They add a few more things, including this critical piece that flies in the face of those who predict that tabletop gaming is dead and should move over to MMORPGs:

Still, a new edition could backfire, if the changes requested by hard-core fans can’t be reconciled or if players believe the company is merely paying lip service to their concerns. Nonetheless the company remains “absolutely committed” to the core tabletop game-play, Ms. Schuh said. “People want that face-to-face experience.”

Also, this year's D&D Experience convention later this month has an interesting slate of seminars:

Charting the Course: An Edition for all Editions (Thursday)
Join Mike Mearls, Monte Cook, and Jeremy Crawford as they discuss the origin for the idea to create an edition of Dungeons & Dragons that encompasses all previous editions. The designers discuss the challenges in creating compatibility and balance, as well as the exciting possibilities such a system creates. Seminar to be followed by a Q&A session.

Class Design: From Assassins to Wizards (Friday)
Designers Monte Cook, Bruce Cordell, and Robert Schwalb discuss their approach to class design, including the difficulties in creating iconic versions of the classes that speak to players of all editions. Should the cleric be more martial or more healer? Does the default ranger have an animal companion? What level of complexity should the fighter have? Seminar to be followed by a Q&A session.

Future Products and Q&A (Saturday)
Mike Mearls presents upcoming D&D products for 2012, as well as a vision for the future of Dungeons & Dragons. Seminar is followed by a Q&A session. Other members of R&D on hand to answer questions as well.

Reimagining Skills and Ability Scores (Sunday)
The role of skills has fluctuated throughout the life of Dungeons & Dragons, and ability scores have been of varying importance in each edition. Find out what the design team has done to reimagine these aspects of the game, and how they arrived at a system to marry the two concepts more closely together. Seminar includes Monte Cook, Bruce Cordell, and Robert Schwalb, and will be followed by a Q&A session.

Takeaways from all this: 5E has been "in development" for some time, now. To the point that they'll actually have something ready for public exposure three weeks from now. They're following in the footsteps of Paizo and doing an open playtest, and it looks like they're aware that tabletop gaming is still their core competency, and aren't going to go 100% digital. Good.

I will say this again: I gave 4E a fair chance, read the rules and actually played the game, and made an informed decision that it wasn't what I was looking for. I will give 5E the same benefit of the doubt, and I am honestly and actually hoping it turns out to be something a committed old-school grognard such as myself can embrace. If they ask for input from me, I will be happy to oblige. I'm not optimistic, but I am open-minded.

EDIT: There is some more in-depth information over at EnWorld here and here. (Well, as in-depth as it can be, given that they have been asked not to disclose any specifics about the system, but they're a fun read if you're interested in 5E.)

Read More

The Specious Model Railroading Analogy

Recently, Ryan Dancy was quoted in an article in The Escapist where he repeated the canard that the tabletop RPG industry is "becoming a dead hobby", because it's falling into the same pattern as the model railroading industry:

"Kids stopped playing with trains, and the businesses that remained dedicated to hobbyists who got more disposable income as they grew up, until the price of the hobby was out of reach of anyone except those older hobbyists. Eventually, it became a high-end hobby with very expensive products, sold to an ever-decreasing number of hobbyists. As those folks die, the hobby shrinks. That is what is happening to the tabletop RPG business."

The exact same argument (nearly word for word, interestingly), was recently featured in an anonymous guest post over at Wise Fugaros' blog:

Historically there was a time when model trains were a popular gift, the sort of thing that you give a child to occupy their time, or to play with with their friends. Then over time the trains got more complex, and the hobby got more and more focused. The kids grew up and kept their model trains, but not too many new kids came in. Now we see an interesting situation: it is hard to find a model train set for a kid to just get into, and you don’t go looking in a toy store for one, you go to a hobby shop.

Likewise, there was a time when an RPG (“Red Box” Dungeons and Dragons) was a popular gift, the sort of thing that you give a child to occupy the time, or to play with friends. Then over time the games got more varied, and the hobby got more and more focused. The kids grew up and kept their games, but not as many new kids came in. I’ll stop there to avoid belaboring the point, but the parallels are pretty clear.

The fallacies here are numerous, so I'll start with the most obvious.

The Hobby Manufacturers Association estimated that in 2010 alone the model railroading industry had sales of some $424,770,000. The tabletop RPG industry wishes it had sales anywhere near that. You can find model railroading magazines-- at least a half-dozen different titles-- at every Barnes & Noble in the country and a couple even in my local convenience store. That's hard copy, not some dubious "online magazine". If that's Dancy's idea of "a dead industry", then I say bring on the mourners. As for the claim that "it's hard to find a model train set for a kid to just get into", well, this.

But the more general notion is that tabletop RPGs don't attract enough kids. Without kids, the thinking goes, the hobby is doomed to die as the older players die off and aren't replaced with fresh youngsters clutching a red box to their breast.

That, of course, is specious because it presupposes that all growth must come from kids. While it is true that a large segment of newcomers to the hobby back in the 1980's were tweens and teens, I would argue that any attempt to recapture that golden era is doomed, and any attempt to make comparisons between the market today and how things were in 1983 is just not credible. Those times are gone, the product of a number of different factors that will never be repeated.

And you know what? I'm fine with that. Who says the hobby only has to grow through kids?

I'm perfectly fine with entrants into the hobby skewing older. Disposable income is not a vice! Just to take some anecdotal evidence, the folks I see playing D&D or Pathfinder at the local stores are in their early-mid 20's. They're not stymied by the lack of an introductory boxed set (a holy grail that some seem to think is the key to bringing back the hobby to its 1983 levels). They buy the core rulebook(s) and start playing. Whence this notion that people advancing from Pokemon when they're young to RPGs when they're older is a losing proposition? Why the need to dumb things down?

Plus, I would point out that most games today don't have the same model as Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder. Not every game is an attempt to get the customers hooked through a "gateway drug" cheap and easy boxed set so they'll feel compelled to step up to the heroin of endless $50 rulebooks. You buy Swords & Wizardry, or Labyrinth Lord, or Diaspora, or Call of Cthulhu, or Tunnels and Trolls, or any one of hundreds of games out there, and you don't really need anything more than that. There's no "starter set" required because the whole thing is self-contained, and can be played entirely as-is, with maybe an adventure module or pre-made setting for those who are inclined to use such.

That may not be good news for the RPG industry (which is built on the "call R&D and see if there's a way to make the pages physically addictive" model), but it's terrific news for the RPG hobby.

And every day dozens of new designers and publishers, often the much-maligned one-man-startups, are coming out with new games, new accessories, new ideas, and new twists on old ideas. That's where the future of the hobby lies. There will always be a few Big Players, who can afford full-time staffs and salaries, R&D budgets and television advertising, but experience has shown that innovation rarely comes from such corners. Once the lean newcomers "make it big", they begin to ossify, and are left in the dust by newer, leaner, entrants (I'm looking at you, White Wolf).

Personally, I don't really care what happens to the RPG industry (aside from the personal effects on friends of mine who are in it), because it is distinct from the RPG hobby. I am most decidedly a hobbiest, and proud of it.

The RPG industry is changing and facing challenges from new technologies. Does that mean that we should all give up and start playing MMO's? Well, Ryan Dancy might want us to, and belittle those of us who still think that getting together with friends... you know... across a table is an enjoyable thing, but I think it's hardly inevitable. But even if Wizards of the Coast went out of business tomorrow, and Dungeons and Dragons went unpublished for 20 years, the RPG hobby would still endure, and probably flourish. Or at least be as "dead" as model railroading. And I'd be okay with that.

Read More

D&D Edition Timeline

In the comments accompanying my previous post about the prospect of 5E being on the horizon, the question of whether or not such a thing would be historically atypical came up. Well, I'm a numbers man, so here are some numbers. I'm deliberately omitting the basic/expert/etc. pathway in the interests of clarity; including them doesn't materially alter the point.

• 1974: 0E (White box edition)
• 1977: 1E (Monster Manual first published)
• 1989: 2E (Core Rulebooks first published)
• 2000: 3E (Core Rulebooks first published)
• 2003: 3.5E (Core Rulebooks first published)
• 2008: 4E (Core Rulebooks first published)

And here's what those dates end up giving us in terms of intervals:

• 0E - 1E: 3 years
• 1E - 2E: 12 years
• 2E - 3E: 11 years
• 3E - 3.5E: 3 years
• 3.5E - 4E: 5 years
• (3E - 4E: 8 years)
• 4E - now: 3 years

I've got to say, I was pretty shocked by the interval between 3.5 and 4E. I thought it was a LOT longer. 3.5 was only around for 5 years before they came out with 4E? Considering its enormous shadow, that's pretty impressive. First Edition was on top of the heap for the longest period, 12 years, but 2nd edition wasn't too far behind at 11 years.

The average interval between major releases is 6 years or so. A release of 5E in 2012 wouldn't be unheard-of fast*. A 2013 release would be more reasonable, and from a marketing standpoint possibly easier to sell, given that it would tie 3.5's record. That's where I'm placing my bet. Will we see it before Christmas 2014? I think that's a lock.

__________
* Super-duper conspiracy theory: Monte Cook was working on 5E all the time, and was brought on board to polish the design after presenting it to the WotC brass nearly fully-formed, like Athena from the brow of Zeus. Seeing the writing on the wall re: the white elephant that is 4E, they jumped at the chance. Complete speculation on my part. Complete.

Read More

GO. SCREW. YOURSELF.

Not you, Gentle Readers-- the title of this post is directed at one "fugaros" (who shall hereafter be known as "wise fugaros", for reasons which shall be apparent), who runs a new blog called "How Not to Run a Game Business" which you will find newly ensconced in my "Blogs I Read" list over to the left; I make a point of reading points of view with which I disagree. Keeps me young.

With his wealth of experience running a just-broke-even lemonade espresso stand and a failed weekly newspaper, and armed with his sophomore year textbooks in Business Administration at county college, he has taken it upon his acned shoulders to tell the rest of the gaming hobby/industry YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

And thank the heavens he has, or else the folks at Amarillo Design Bureau, one of his favorite punching bags who have been, apparently by sheerest happenstance in their ignorant bumbling, selling enormously successful and popular products for more than three decades, wouldn't know just how bad bad bad they've been. Now that they have wise fugaros to point them in the proper direction, I'm sure they will actually prosper, as opposed to... well... selling enormously successful and popular products for more than three decades.

What occasioned my notice of wise fugaros (whose blog address has the charmingly endearing URL "yourbusinesssucks.wordpress.com") was a post of his entitled "STOP. MAKING. GAMES." Thanks to Stargazer's World for his much-more-temperate-than-my reply, "NEVER.STOP.MAKING.GAMES" for pointing it out, or I would never have found Mr. Marketing Expert wise fugaros's blog, despite being both a gamer and one of the despised self-published-gamers who is, presumably, his intended audience.

Apparently, having a large number of options for a beginner is a Bad Thing:

There are over a hundred products in my local game store that bill themselves as core or introductory. I didn’t even check the clearance/closeout/used shelves. This is a ridiculously dangerous fact.

Dangerous indeed; the unwashed and unprofessional masses are harming the elite few whose wares are actually worthy of customers by putting so many alternatives out on store shelves that the good stuff gets drowned out in the noise. And the internet? That's even worse:

Anyone with a copy of OpenOffice and two fingers can create a game.  

Really!?!?



THE HORROR! The hoi polloi, having escaped the well-defined and god-intended boundaries of the 1980's, doing an end run around Professional Editorial Review, dare to inflict their ham-fisted musings on a helpless populace that can't tell the difference between their moose-droppings and the results of Professional Designers. Much like, it seems, anyone with an Internet connection and a gmail account can start a blog about game companies. But I digress...

Wise fugaros has something to say about the OSR as well:

What’s more, we have various “movements” in the hobby causing even further factionalization. These feature hobbyists, players, people who have no goddamned right to be making a game, touting themselves as “designers” and putting out endless iterations of the rules that please them. Storygames vs. anti-storygames, D&D vs. Pathfinder vs. AD&D vs. OSR, you could probably fill a landfill with the shit these people put out.

AD&D vs. OSR?
Eh??

That's right-- OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, LotFP, Adventures Dark and Deep, etc. etc. is all shit fit for the landfill. Writing games to please ourselves? How DARE we!? We have "no goddamned right to be making a game." There's a special circle of Hell reserved for such miscreants as we. We should, presumably, be writing games to please other people, and those games better be pretty. Because wise fugaros seems to place a high value on glossy paper and pretty pictures. The text itself is, well, boring. It's eye candy that makes a game, damnit; we've got to get people BUYING those euludically-perfect games. And hex maps? Surely you jest.

Because hobbiests-turned-publishers, amateur posers that they are, don't understand that the goal of doing all this isn't to have fun and share their work with fellow travelers, even (especially!) if those travelers are in a niche-of-a-niche and you end up with tiny sales that might cover your pizza bill for a month and a small measure of satisfaction. THOU FOOL! The goal is to have a successful business, and if you are a gamer, you're almost certain to be an inept boob when it comes to the Real Goal of publishing games. After all, Lorraine Williams proved that, right?

I fear nothing more than that I shall ever be a disappointment to wise fugaros. Am I not one of the Fallen? Am I not a gamer with not a whit of business sense, who has fallen into folly and have started my own game company? Worse yet still, I'm not making edgy, cool, "indy" games that are surely the future of not only the hobby by the very race of men itself, but just another "fantasy heartbreaker." More the fool I! Nobody should ever make another fantasy RPG. Ever. It's been done, to perfection (by 4E, no less), so any attempt would be a useless gesture. And the fun I'm having doing it? Scales upon my eyes which have not yet fallen to reveal the utter emptiness of my labors and the destitution of my vision.

Thank goodness I've got wise fugaros to guide me through this rough patch, when I fancy myself a designer, and fool myself into thinking that I could actually have fun doing it, and that that would be enough.

Read More