What happened to RPGs?, Industry in flux Options

[azrael_ven]

Here is my 2 cents... When D20 came on the scene, alot of people got excited and poured resources into it. D20 became to role-playing what the dotcoms did to the business world. The prices have become so expensive compared to playing Shadowrun or a White Wolf product. I believe the only thing keeping Wizard's afloat is MTG. The past three products that they sunk money into and introduced at GenCon all flopped big time. You can pickup heca-whatever it is called dirt cheap, same with that dream-whatever it was. I have noticed a general decline in the amount of vendors over the past 5 years. Duh und Duh 4 is what they are banking on now, offering alot web enhanced stuff because it is cheaper to put out and less production cost involved, not to mention updating it.

The web has brought some nice things like books on pdf. I can have my real copy and a digital copy, which is great for when I want to look something up when I have an idea. I usually always have my laptop somewhere near, but not my books. The problem with the web based things all the time I think does become the social aspect. There is something about meeting someone face to face. I may be old fashion. I guess that is one of the problems I have with mmo's and why I get bored with them after 2-4 weeks. Well that and grind. My brothers don't have as much of an issue, but I guess that is the difference between Gen X and Gen Y.

[nezumi]

I found I spend more on gas getting to an in-person RPG than I do on internet and associated costs. Heck, even if I had internet solely to run RPGs instead of driving every week to a game, I'd probably just about break even.

Like kage said, I can do voices better, plan better, improvise better and slack better online, and all of it is much cheaper to boot.

[Ampere]

[Roccojr]

I think the two major factors are competition from other game types, particularly ccg's, and the growing up of the roleplayers. I've been playing since 1978 and I'm 40 years old now. I'm blessed with friends as geeky as me so that in all that time, while we've missed a week or two when folks had the audacity to get married, have kids, etc., I don't think there would be a full month in all that time that I didn't game at least once.

But the games then were obviously aimed at younger players (with an obvious exception being Traveller... you needed a lot more math than I knew at 12 to calculate vectors if you used the Mayday starship combat system, for example). So aimed at kids, most of us likely remember the wussy days of TSR when they caved to parental groups and removed the historical names of devils and demons.

As we grew up, so did the games. The WoD games might be the best examples of this. Almost any Vampire game I ever played were erotically charged. I remember online V:tM games that were so filled with sex and eroticism that RP staff was hard pressed to get people to stop acting like rabbits in springtime to come out and actually develop plots! Shadowrun, in its way, serves as an example, too. For the first 3 editions of the game, we saw and used words like drek, hoop, slitch, slot, frag. 4th Edition? Whether or not you like the old vulgarities aside, the choice to use the language they did is a prime example!

Folks may point at D20 (particularly D&D) as the introductory game but look at the number of books and the start-up cost. The 3 core books plus a campaign setting book cost close to or more than $100. I remember starting for about $12. Different times, of course, but what 12 year old is going to plunk down $100 to buy all those books when they can spend about half that and get a game for their console. And look at the numbr of books!!! Getting into card games is a LOT easier... and with games like Pokemon aimed at wee ones (my 5 year old is well aware of them!), its only natural for them to grow up wanting more advanced card games by the time they're 10 or 12.

Many among us are going to be anachronistic and hate the idea that DnD4 is going to introduce to the industry and hobby. I don't blame us. But I think this is how roleplaying will come back. Make it easier to play, add an element of tech, and it will become attractive to new players.