It came up before our group's session yesterday that we didn't actually know any kids who play SR - the closest we got was one player's brother that they had gotten into SR who was 18. The median age of our group is late 20's, with some players in their 30's. Everyone else I've met has also been at least drinking age. Now, I generally RP with adults anyway, so it's not likely that I would play with HS students, but I never seem to see any playing at hobby stores and the like. Has SR been overshadowed by MMORPG, card games, and Tabletop games (Warhammer 20k seems to be pretty popular around here, as is that game that causes cancer.)? In 10 years, will there be new 20 somethings to play with, or will we have to schedule sessions around babysitters and doctor's appointments? Or are the kids hiding out in their basement/dorm rooms/HS hobby clubs, which is why I've never noticed them?

As a whole, I think that there is a graying of Gaming. The draw of games like WoW and the proliferation of console games has decimated interest in table top games across the board, IMO. Even lucrative licenses aren't seeing the pull that they once could claim.

I completely agree with this; console games, MMORPGs, and all of the flashy, instant-gratification that entails are killing tabletop gaming in general, not just SR.

Though it seems SR was always for the "older" crowd, what with its reliance on more adult themes and source material (let's face it; kids are usually more interested in playing heroic warriors than burned out, cyber-punk street sams).

of course if your peer group is all in their late 20's, you're going to be seeing more people of that age in general. how many 16 year olds do you associate with on a regular basis anyway?

i am in the same boat (26) but i've played shadowrun since i was a teenager, and i'm sure there are still tons of young players out there. gaming isn't greying, it's just the gamers! what self respecting teenager wants to sit around and hear the old has-beens talk about how 'decks are forever and pervasive wireless is silly? they'd probably use their cell phone to take a video of you complaining, and then upload it to youtube, twitter about it, and laugh at how behind the times you are

That and the Cold War is over

A friend of mine summed it up nicely.

"How can I run a game that can compete with the WoW? It has flashy graphics and surround sound and they can get on the server to play whenever they have some free time!"

The success of MMORPGs illustrates that vast numbers of people like to play make believe and are willing to pay for the privilage to do so. They are doing what we did sans the computer/console without every realizing that they gaming geeks just like us! The irony is so thick that you could pour it for bridge footings. I would laugh but for the tragedy unfolding for a hobby that has given me so much joy for more than three decades.

I started playing SR about two years ago with a mix of ages ranging from 15-18, and my group has been playing tabletop RPGs since we were 13-16.

I voted under the assumption that "younger" means anyone who hasn't gotten to college yet, so I haven't seen any younger gamers playing it.

Also, most younger gamers have grown out of P+P RPGs in general I think. Our local group has a hard time every fall recruiting freshmen into the club. All of our GMs have graduated too (one is attending a masters program, but he still graduated).

None . I'm just going by what I've seen played in hobby stores, and responses from trying to get a group together. I'm quite aware my experience isn't representative; hence the poll.

i started playing sr3 in the december of 03. at the age of 14. so yeah kids play sr. atleast i did

Agreed.

I don't think I've met anyone under 20 that plays SR... or any other PnP RPG for that matter. PnP gaming demands time and commitment. Much easier to hop on the PC or console for a couple hours than it is to try and get a game together.

I find this problem even with older gamers. For the past several years, its been incredibly hard to get people motivated to get together to play. Schedules change, peoe live on the other side of town, etc. Its a right bitch to get things rolling sometimes, even when people want to play.

-paws

I too believe that MMORPG's have really hit the PnP RPG industry hard. Hence why WotC went the direction that they did with DnD 4E (like it or not), attempting to try and capture that crowd. I too find it massively ironic that PnP gaming was considered horribly "geeky" for so long, yet many of the people that did the mocking are now horribly addicted MMORPG players, which could be seen as a more anti-social activity than PnP gaming.

To me, PnP gaming has been a social activity first, and a game second. We spend a large part of our gaming sessions digressing into tangent discussions when something in the game reminds us of something funny etc. That's not a "bad thing" in my mind, and is part of the group gaming experience. The game should be a largely fun, social activity (which is also why I don't "get" the emotion generated from crunchy rules discussions... it's just a game people).

I've had more than one discussion with people a few years older than me with kids a few years younger than me about PnP RPGs. The prevailing thoughts among people older than our generation (and still a great deal of people in our generation) is that PnP RPGs are "bad" and only people with emotional or mental problems are in to them (or that the PnP RPG creates emotional or mental problems). In all of those conversations I have been an unwavering advocate for PnP gaming on the basis that it is tons better than the MMORPG or video gaming that those kids will almost inevitably be into anyway.

PnP gaming promotes: socialization, literacy, mathematics, imagination, acting/role-playing (duh), problem solving, and a general "engaging" of ones brain. There's a big difference in how much of your brain is engaged when you have to actually read a book, understand the text, apply that to a situation, roll the dice, do some math to calculate the result, and apply the result. That's way more "brain work" than just click some icon and waiting to see the spell effect on your screen. Not to mention the speed with which PnP games run is significantly slower than video games, which should help temper that "instant gratification" ADD problem that seems to be coming up more and more in younger kids these days.

From a parental control standpoint, PnP games are no more (and quite often less) violent than any of the popular action video games that are seen today. PnP RPG's also have the massive advantage that the game experience is entirely dependent on the person running it. That means that a parent can interview the GM and feel confident that the game experience as a whole will be within their acceptable limits as far as morality exposure goes. With a video game, you have a pre-packaged game experience created by the designer of that came which is unchangeable to the level that a PnP RPG can.

For all of theses reasons I will introduce and encourage my kids into PnP RPG's long before I buy them a computer and whatever games they want.

B. Freaking. S. All of that.

(No offense; I'm talking about the notions, not about you.)

Hi. I'm 18, and I play this game with a bunch of 18 to 19 year olds at my college, and hopefully will be getting more new blood from next year's incoming class. While we might play more with what we see as the themes of SR4 (I don't think a lot of the street focus and burnout is necessary in the new edition) we do indeed play very troubled people. And we enjoy it. In fact, the group I play with was primarily a D&D group before I introduced them to Shadowrun; now both of the other DMs are planning out SR campaigns for next year.

Everyone in this group is a gamer, and I mean PC or video-wise. But you know what? WoW (or, in their case, Starcraft) is never competition to a good PnP session. Why? I have guesses, but nothing solid. If pressed, I'd say it's the social aspect; there's something just really fun about getting together in real life. It might also be the fact that your character can always try to do exactly what you want -- not the nearest you can approximate with four directional moves, a jump button, and a 1-0 list of special attacks, but anything at all.

Now, to be fair, I sort of cheat when it comes to new players: I tend to get the people who've never played PnP before, and I give them a show. I use minis, music, sound effects... for my SAGA game, I even created a custom opening crawl for them, complete with 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm logos beforehand. The program I was using to do all of the sound I could probably run a theatrical show off of. But all of this is something anyone with a laptop and enough time can do. (The programs used in every step of this were freeware, for example.) And all the players liked it more than the average video game, where -- no matter how hard you try -- you just can't ignore hte invisible boundaries.

Ok, so to save gaming we just need to clone you (500 should do...to start) and send all of 'you' out on a permanent recruitment cycle.

Barring that do you have any clips on you tube to peruse? Sounds pretty awesome.

At 33, I am the oldest one in my gaming group, so everyone is younger at my table...although the youngest is 27, so I'm not that much older than the rest.

I started PnP games as a freshman in high school, so what, 14 or 15 years old? I mainly played with peers, but at the local game stores, there'd be a handful of older guys playing. Early-mid 30s and a couple 40s to 50s, but they mostly played miniatures games...Johnny Reb or other strategic types.

Nowadays, while there are different local stores, there's still about the same amount of them in town. I still see younger players at the tables, although I don't play publicly anymore. I'd have to agree, with being able to just play when you want and not needing a GM to spend hours preparing a game, its so much easier for new players to just get into computer and console games.

I dont think MMOs have effected the less combat orientated RPGs much, WOD still flies off the shelves. In fact they may be in a position to be the #1 company in a few years. Though they are doing their own MMO and moving more and more to PDF for small run products. They are also trying to find a viable print on demand solution.

You look at the industry numbers in total sales and something has happened that has decimated it. In 2010...I would be surprised if WotC is still in business even their card division. Anecdotally I have seen groups that have simply evaporated since WoW started to do nothing but play online.

I'm in my mid-30s and have been a tabletop gamer since junior high. The youngest player at my table is 27, so we're not exactly the newest generation of games. These days, games nights are much like poker nights. It's a bunch of us getting together to bullshit and have a little fun.

I've also seen where MMOs can actually feed back into the PnP crowd, too. I also play WoW on a semi-regular basis (I'm one of the casuals the kiddies like to flame). A fair number of my guildmates are PnP players and our chats online have actually lead some of our younger members to check out good ol' fashioned RPGs. Granted, they're cutting their teeth on D&D 4e *shudder* but it's actually the perfect system for making the transition from video to tabletop, imo. Given the number of people that play online games, even a small percentage of them drifting into the pen and paper genre should be enough to keep the industry alive.

CGL is probably in a better position to survive a decline in PnP RPG sales than WotC. CGL has already "leaned-up" by cutting down to just essential personnel full-time (by necessity, but that's another matter), and more importantly, they have embraced e-publishing options.

QFTMFT.

I dunno, the Penny Arcade forum crowd is in the early twenties - late thirties age bracket, and there's...lesse, at least ten play-by-posts going, four or five maptools games, and three real life groups that are frequent posters on their roleplaying forum. Hell, if anything Penny Arcade is helping to bring in new blood through its advocacy on their front page and lots of roleplaying support at PAX.

My neice (who's sixteen) has been trying to pull together a group for herself for the last year or so, but being youngsters, it's hard to balance out pretending your an elf with going to the mall and gossipping about boys.

I see lots of roleplaying events and open rooms at anime conventions, and those tend to skew pretty young. Of course it's usually stuff like Exalted and DnD, but still...(not a whole lot of BESM, oddly enough).

I also seem to remember Caine talking (on rpg.net) about a game of..what was it Caine, Mountain Witch? Burning Wheel? he ran for his daughter and her friends last year or so.

Some blame can be put on video games, I'll give you that. Like any hobby, there's a certain amount of time investure that you need to do in order to fully enjoy that hobby. Gaming is at least a four hour chunk of time if you're just a player - if you're a GM, you've got another four or shour hours on top of that for preparation!

All you need to play a video game is a gaming console and an internet connection and you're blazing across Azeroth with your buddies. It's like, five minutes of time to turn on, load a disc, and be on your way. And at any time, you can shut it off and walk away.

But I think another factor is how inclusive our hobby is and how much of a barrier of entry we've put up for people to get in.

I hate bringing it up (since I seem to be That Guy) but look at DnD 4e. It's got a simplified rule set, it's got a laser focus on what's fun with gaming (beating shit up, taking shit's shit), there's a fun tactical and tactile element to it, and WotC's been holding all sorts of Open Events in gaming stores to encourage people to come out and play.

And what's the hobby's response? "Sell outs! Fakers! Money grabbing corporate whores!"

Say you're a brand new fan of DnD and you go online to find somewhere other than the WotC boards to talk about it. You'll either stumble into well-tread flame territory or be ejected out of the forum so quickly your head will spin. Even if you stick around, prepare to listen to Yet Another Diatribe on why your chosen edition is the wrong edition every couple of weeks or so.

Look at the arguments we have around here. When we're not fighting edition wars, we're fighting about technical differences in rules. This does not look encouraging to newbies.

That's just online. In gaming stores you can either deal with smelly stores, unattentive staff, and inappropriate customers or part or all of the above. And that's just if you're male. If you're female, expect to be hit on, stared at, whistled at, approached inappropriately, or treated like you're a stupid airhead because obviously, it's your boyfriend who dragged you to this, right? My SO's been in the hobby for around five years and has a bunch of industry friends and yet she still doesn't feel like she's part of the community - and even worse, she wants no part of it because of interactions like that.

So no, I don't think it's just the vidya games. I think it's the fact that we're just not very attractive as a hobby to the younger crowd. Gaming is a fun hobby but it's also a hobby that you have to wade through a whole lot of bullshit to get anywhere with. At least in video games you have the /ignore and /mute function.

I dunno. I played D&D4e even under the assumption of just beating the shit out of shit for their shit and still didn't enjoy it.

Well, not knowing you, not knowing what your preferences are, not knowing what kind of games you like to run and play in...

Obviously you're just stupid.

Kidding, kidding, kidding. Seriously, kidding.

*shrug* Like any game, you give it a go and see if it's your thing. If not, move along.

For instance, lots of people love Grand Theft Auto. Me? It's called, "Crash Expensive Cars Into Things While Laughing At the Radio."

Or more aptly, I think Luigi's Mansion is one of the most underappreciated Nintendo games in years.

Our group has an age range of 14 to 33. I don't know many people under 18 that play, but then I don't know that many people under 18. I haven't seen much decimation of gaming but I have never been part of a "gaming crowd". My games have nearly always been just me, starting off a game for people who have mostly never played and role-playing game before. Hence there's perhaps less of a battle with computer games in my demographic.

If anything, I would say people at school and University age have an advantage as they have that much more time and their peers mostly share the same structured schedule as them. It's hard to get together a group of people with diverse social lives and full-time jobs to play a regular game. I can barely find the time to prep for running one.

I'm glad to see that despite people tending not to associate outside of the age group that much, a large proportion of people have clicked that they know younger players.

Tell me about it.

Throw young kids into the mix - too young to play, that is - and you have to consider child care, language, etc. That's pretty much my situation.

-paws

Poll nazi time. Why did you make it so people could select more than one? That has the potential to mess up your results. You can't both know a few young gamers and know a lot of them, and you can't both think that they don't play it, and that they always do. I dunno why they would pick more than one, but the option to makes your outcome less reliable.

And like I've been saying, people need to pay attention to the neutrality of their answers. "I am surrounded by squalling brats!" is an answer that tends to skew results because of its negative connotations. Some people might know a good number of younger SR players, but don't view them as brats, and thus would be more likely to report an innacurate response like "I know a few."

Also, you have answers that are non-responsive to the question. "Children shouldn't play SR" does not answer the question of how many kids you know who play it. If a respondent picked that one only, then you know their opinion about children playing the game, but you do not know their opinion about whether they know any who do. Now, the fact that multiple results are selectable enables them to both answer the question and also vote for how they think kids shouldn't play. But it is unnecessarily confusing and misleading to have that response in there. It is furthermore non-neutral -- people can vote that kids shouldn't play, but they can't vote that kids should play. That means you're only getting respondents who agree with that statement. You've got no clue how many disagree with it and how strongly they do, and thus no real measure of the respondents' attitudes as a whole.

You also haven't defined your terms in the question themselves. What's a younger gamer? Some people might play with a whole bunch of 17 year olds, but decide that child means under 15, and say they know none. Others might play with a bunch of 20 year olds, and decide that below the drinking age counts as younger. So you're not sure what your responses mean, which means they're not very informative.

I know, you probably don't care, but this is something I'm interested in. People needn't bother telling me that the poll is just for fun and I shouldn't comment about its accuracy or lack thereof. I will anyway, in the perhaps vain hope that people pay attention to their polling choices. If you want to know opinions, you have to ask questions in such a way that you actually get them. If you don't care about accuracy, why even have a poll, instead of just asking the question via normal post? I'm just trying to help people see that it does matter how you phrase both your questions and responses so that you can achieve your goal of learning opinions.

Here's how I would have designed it: "How many people below age 18 do you know who play Shadowrun?" (None. 0-5. 5-10. More than 10.) "How popular do you think Shadowrun is with people under 18 compared to other PnP RPGs?" (Not popular at all. Somewhat popular. About the same. More popular. Much more popular.) "How popular do you think PnP RPGs are with people under 18 compared to other types of games (such as video games and CCGs)?" (Same responses as last one).

I'm lucky on that end...I have an almost 2 year old and a 7 month old. My wife is great and I can get away every Monday (minus the occasional holiday or family event) to get my gaming on. Now, in our group of 6 people, we alternate GMs every other week, so one week its DnD4 and the next its SR4. I GM the SR4 game and find plenty of time at work and sometimes at home to get my plans together. I don't write a lot of stuff down though, so after most games, I'm like, "Damn, I forgot to say/do something". But it works.

I'm not saying that it hasn't effected RPGs. I'm saying that non-combat ones arent being effected. WoW caters to a the crowed who want to go through dungeon crawls or have strategies on combat tactics. It doesnt cater to people who want to have improv acting yet (EVE actually tried more to cater to that crowed and still comes up short). Things like WOD, Noblilis, Unknown Armies, etc arnt going to see their numbers impacted like D&D, Shadowrun, WHFRP, etc are.

I would have to say that the general consensus amongst those manufacturing, distributing and selling games that the hobby has been pretty much mauled by MMORPGs and console games. And I don't see anything to prove them wrong.

You know, this gets brought up all the time.

Where are people getting these "numbers" from? Yes, the industry is in a slump, but so are a whole bunch of other industries.

This is also part and parcel of the whole, "Not even Magic will save WotC in 2011!" crack someone made earlier.

Everyone throws around this phrase or something near it but never throws out hard numbers. So c'mon, throw up some hard numbers.

Also, imagine that I'm quoting and bolding what Larme said.

If they're still printing the books things can't be all bad, someone must be making money somewhere. I suspect kids (high schoolers) are still getting their introductions to RPing games, but perhaps not as many as might have who are instead going for WoW and similar (or perhaps playing both). Although it could also work the other way. Kids try out WoW and like it, but feel like there should be more to it. Que visit to local game shop. What is this D&D game...? Voila. Then after getting bored with medieval elves, they see SR4A and go - Elves with guns!? hell yeah!! Hence the players tend to be a bit "greyer". Nothing necessarily wrong with that. Oh and the art of SR4 generally sucks (up until SR4a - much better), which hurts the chances of a newbie being inspired to pick up one of the books that first time, and think, yeah, that looks cool...

I agree, so WOTC has a slump sure I can see that, its evident from the FLGS selection of 4e books but take someone like Burning Wheel who you used to have to ask a FLGS if they had it and most had not even heard of it, now I can even find it at the Barns and Nobles (Ok ive only seen mouse guard but its the same company that does burning wheel). Just because the big guy is hurting doesn't mean all games are. WW has a ton of books coming out to, they are releasing books in numbers I haven't seen since VTM was big. Granted the numbers may not be as high for Vampire but Changeling is doing way better than the old version ever did and the mortals line is doing far better than they ever dreamed it would.



I over heard those kids at the Red Robin a few weeks ago, granted they decided D&D sucked because combat was way to slow, but they were going to go try Savage Worlds because the guy at the shop had recommended it if they didn't like D&D.

Agreed. The art in the original core rulebook was disappointing. The artwork in SR4A in dynamite. I have no research to back this up, but I imagine there is a segment of the gaming market that makes a purchase decision by picking up the rulebook and leafing through it. In that brief time period the game needs to make a impression on the player and well balanced combat mechanics in an 80 page chapter is not going to do it. Most likely its going to be the artwork, and in SR's case the Sample Character section. I was very pleased to see many of the Sample Characters get an artwork overhaul.

Ok,

We have lost more than 2,000 game store retailers nationally out of about 5,500.
GDW at their peak was selling 100,000 units for a given product...these days 5,000 units is considered respectable for any third tier game company.
SR 3rd moved 300,000 units as compared to 100,000 units for 4th.

I made the 'crack' about WotC...by Xmass of this year I think they are going to be closed and simply an IP place holder.

But then again, PNP gaming led to the explosion of PC gaming. I think about the 80's and 90's were the high tide of table-top gaming. But the crop of gamers in the early 2000 pretty much grew up on some pretty sophisticated PC games (as opposed to pitfall, pac-man and street fighter, space invaders anyone? ). What I do find PC wise is an incredible lack of turn based PC games. I

'll echo this about PNP-it is more social. PNP has an infinite degrees of freedom as opposed to the linear or tree type plots in MMORPs and other PC games

Just look at all the layoffs and companies that have gone under in just the last two years!

Actually, my wife is 44, but you didn't hear it from me.

I think your numbers are off, there. We have had in Seattle Area 1 shop close and 4 open that I know of within the last year alone (yeah its pretty crazy the number of gaming stores we have). Though I think Amazon/pdf/print on demand not MMOs are eating into the stores.

The industries is probably in an "evolve or die" mode but all that means is the little guys do well and the giants either change the way they do business or loose business.

I'm not sure what that number means -- 300,000 units during its entire life? Because it was around longer than SR4 has been so far wasn't it?

I run an online game. Half are my age or older, half are new people (and younger).

Mark Simmons formerly of Games Quarterly Catalog, which published an industry catalog of all manufactures and distributors and then sent them out to game stores. So...I really doubt that their numbers were off.



3rd Edition went from 1998 to 2005, roughly 7 years with a total of 13 printings if I remember right.
However, in publishing your sales are front end loaded so you sell more books early on and then they trickle off as time passes. I do believe that the initial printings of SR 3rd were 30,000 to 35,000 but Fasa didn't do print runs of less than 25,000.

Maybe back in the 80's and early to mid-90s. Nowadays, I can't hardly buy anything "new" that I haven't looked up at least a half dozen reviews on. Its just too easy to get information these days.

So, if a half dozen reviews don't sell me on a game, then no matter how cool the artwork is, I'm not buying. I don't consider PnP games, or even console and PC games an impulse buy anymore.

thanks Malachi! I'm glad to hear someone quip up in defense of the younger PnPers, and it's great to hear that other people are willing to introduce multimedia elements and non-standard RPG storytelling techniques into their games, as well as to point out that the social aspect of PnP roleplaying is still alive and well and appreciated with a younger demographic.

makes me wonder what an SR game will be like when every player actually incidentally HAS an AR-capable mobile computing device *GM's wet dream*

I don't know the stats, but I can say I have one 20 yr old that games at my table. We met through his older brother who is my age.

Overall, I don't know how many young kids still roleplay per se. I don't think many kids roleplay at all to be honest. Malachi hit the nail on the head.

Why would kids roleplay when they can play XBox or WOW on the PC? The idea of using your imagination and spending your time with friends (face to face) seems to be a legacy 20th century concept.

At least it feels that way sometimes. Maybe I'm just getting old...

- J.

Thats a good point, also WOTC upped the ante on pretty with 3.0 for the big press rpgs. Indie game may have felt the pressure a bit to but you can still get away with little to no artwork in indie games.



What year? (curiosity, not saying your wrong) Because at leased in my small pod I'm not seeing it. Which means in some other small pod they are closing a lot of stores.

Artwork isn't nearly as expensive as it used to be. There are lots of talented starving artists who post samples on the internet and will do a really nice custom piece for $500. It's likely to be nobody you ever heard of who also lives in a different country, but paypal works for them too.

Tete,
That would have been 2007.

Overall...
I believe that the best rememdy for salvaging the game industry rests in the hands of the consumers. If you happen to be a personable individual and can run a killer game then I say go out and recruit people to play. Me...I am old and cranky...nobody listens to my sage advice.

I've once found myself GMing in a con to a group of pre-teenagers. Hopefully, it was one of my few adventures that I could imagine GMing to such a crowd: except for the "you're criminals and you shoot people in the face" it didn't have any adult theme.
Overall it was a quite fun game (but I was happy it didn't last too long). I had to throw away realism, help them from time to time and show them there were other ways to solve problems than killing people, but they had a blast and I was reminded of my first games.

But even then I chose all the 'no' answers:
From what I've seen and heard, younger gamers aren't into P&P RPG in general. They aren't interested in reading a 200 pages book to be able to spend 4 hours to play a short story when they can switch a button and play a whole story in 2 hours. But they might get drawn into it from other games.
But the thing is that there had never been a time where people were into P&P RPG in general. It has always been a fringe market, and it'll probably stay that way.
I also think that cyberpunk isn't exactly something younger gamers are interested into: what was the last cyberpunk movie you've seen? Cyberpunk just isn't exactly part of popular culture, and even if some elements are still popular with the younger crowd (cyberarms! big guns!) I think that if they had to choose among the games, they might go for Shadowrun but rather for trolls with big guns thant for Cyberpunk.

Finally, I think that even if kids can have fun with Shadowrun, I think it's, especially now with 4th ed, a mature game designed for mature gamers. Not only because of the adult themes (sex, drugs and criminals PC who shoot people in the face for money) but also because of the overall complexity. Of course you can play "trolls with big guns go through the front door gun blazing" but I guess that there are better games out there for children.

Ergh. This is one of the things that bothers me. Hobby stores /= "the industry". Hobby stores are just that: hobby stores. They survive and thrive on their own merits.

Allow me to tangent briefly:

I think hobby stores are going the way of the rotary telephone. Anything they can do, the internet can do better.

Interested in a new game? Log onto rpg.net or browse the many different gaming blogs that are out there. You'll even find ones you've probably never heard of (which is how the indie scene is getting more attention).

Looking for people to discuss your favorite game with? Go to a forum or blog roll.

Looking for a group? Between forums, online people matchers, Myspace and Facebook, it's easy to find people with the same interest. There's also IRC, Maptools, or play-by-post games.

And the biggie, purchasing new material. How awesome is it that we live in a time where the devs can put up an announcement about releasing a new book and five minutes later (give or take haggling with the SO), it's sitting on my desktop waiting to be read? Between companies own .pdf sales and websites like rpgnow, you can have new or old material delivered to you at broadband speed. Truly, the future.

If you're one of those types that wants hardcover books (they do look sweeter on the shelf, I'll admit) there's still Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc, etc. It's not as fast as a pdf file, but it'll still get to your house in around a week give or take shipping.

Frankly, not having to deal with game stores any more would be a good thing. First off, not everyone has one in their area. I didn't - I've got a comic book store about fifteen minutes from my house that sells some mini games and the latest from WotC and White Wolf. The other couple stores are either an hour south in Boston or an hour and a half north in New Hampshire. That's not good for impulse browsing. Plus, you don't have to deal with (and stop me if I'm repeating myself here) dark, dirty stores, inattentive or annoyed staff, customers making rude forwards to your significant other, gaming groups down in the common area being loud and inappropriate while you're trying to shop...yeah, I'm just not a fan of the places and I'm not going to be sad to see them go.



GDW also has a lot more competion than it used to have, from Privateer Press and pre-painted / plastic games. Not surprising that their sales would drop.



As someone else said - what am I supposed to infer from these numbers? Is this at first release? Or over the course of the gameline? Since 4e hasn't ceased and 5e come out...


And you haven't given me any numbers to justify this prediction. You've thrown around some empty numbers and said, "there you go."

Hobby stores are not an accurate reader of the "health" of the industry. What we need is the actual sales sold. It's kind of a pity that unlike the video game industry, we don't have companies releasing sales numbers each month (like the NPD).

As WotC is releasing at least a book a month, has only had one major layoff within the last year (and, IIRC, they were people involved with the Virtual Table project and a few developers that were probably aching to leave, since they were from the 3.* era) and has had PHB and DMG and PHB2 on the Wall Street Journal best seller list, I don't think they're going to suddenly become nothing more than an IP holder.

Now, WotC doesn't share its actual sales figures, granted. Neither do a whole lot of companies. But given that we're in a slack economy right now and that between work and commitments free time is at an all time low, it's no wonder that the hobby looks like hell. Give it time. Go out and start running Your Favorite Game for a group of newbies and try to get them into the hobby. That's the best way to prevent the "graying" of the hobby, not running around yelling that the sky is falling.

Edit: how bloody annoying that it takes me an extra ten minutes to post this because I can't find the "missing quote tag". Bloody forum software!

Ravensmuse,

Your tone has taken on a decidedly harsher edge and I think that this might be a good point for me to step back from the discussion rather than dig at what seems to be a raw nerve.