Interesting Post(s) by Ryan Dancey about 4e D&D and Gaming as an industry.

[Ninja-Bear]

FWIW I think there is still hope for Hero in that Dancey sees a future for the hobby in a family-oriented quick-start version. Hero is probably the least quick-start of any TRPG system, but I don't see why there couldn't be a Heroscape-like version where designing your own superhero/fantasy character is a big part of the game. Then the depth of the Hero system would be there for those players who really wanted to get into it.

I agree! I think I've mentioned that on a couple of other threads. I see no hearsay in creating a simpler (hero) system for the younger crowd. A friend (whose a Herophile and got me into the system) and I were talking, and he mentioned that it isn't easy for a 12 yo to learn hero system, as oppsed to (dare I say it) DnD. And I have been playing (spottingly) with my 8 yo, but I did look for an easier system too.

[Lucius]

I liked INWO well enough, but I think my problem with it was that I liked the "regular" Illuminati game even better, and I didn't have to buy those cards in packs...

That's EXACTLY how I feel. Give me the Classic Illuminatus!

I think it could be improved actually, but the new version is not really an improvement. It's too frreakin' topical. The first time I saw it, I have to admit I loved bits like the way the Hillary and Bill Clinton cards were done. Bill had a collar and a leash trailing off, Hillary was holding the end of a leash, and if you put them side by side they matched up and made one picture. BUT, Bill had a high Power. What made him so powerful? He was president! But that's NOT the way to do it, for two reasons. First, the card's only valid during Clinton's term. Second, if you instead had cards that enhance other cards, like one that says "President of the US, +X etc" you could have games in which Dracula, or Fidel Castro, or Hitler's Brain, can be elected President - exactly the kind of whackiness I love about the game.


Wait, we've wondered way off topic haven't we?

Lucius Alexander

Illuminate the Palindromedary!

[ngross]

I agree! I think I've mentioned that on a couple of other threads. I see no hearsay in creating a simpler (hero) system for the younger crowd. A friend (whose a Herophile and got me into the system) and I were talking, and he mentioned that it isn't easy for a 12 yo to learn hero system, as oppsed to (dare I say it) DnD. And I have been playing (spottingly) with my 8 yo, but I did look for an easier system too.

I will stick my neck out a little (or a lot) and respond to this. I have a little one at home and hope to cultivate her love for games. I have been seeing a lot of threads/posts here and there about HERO-lite, HERO concise, etc. My experience with Hero has only been since 4th edition. However, I did flip through an older version and that has given me some ideas. And forgive me if I am repeating someone else as I stopped following the threads.

I think that if I had to introduce an 8 to 12 year old to the HERO system, I would treat it like Lego does with their building blocks. Many of the blocks are too small for little kids. To much detail and steps needed to build things. Their answer... use a larger block - Duplo. It will not be pretty as there will less detail, but you can get the basic idea. I think with HERO I would try something similar. Since I remember it as a choice of a grouping of powers, I guess this is where my viewing of an older version of HERO comes in (or maybe it it some other system). Keep all of the rules and put all of the characteritcs/powers/talents into larger chunks (packages). Want a Hulk/Colossus, take five chunks of strength and 3 chunks defense. Want Cyclops, take 8 chunks of energy blast. Want something like Superman, take 3 chunks strength, 3 chunks defense, 2 chunks speed/flying.

As I typed it out, I realized that there were a lot missing and this would be a lot for someone to come up with. Almost deleted the whole thing. But this is probably what I will be doing for my daughter if she is interested in RPGs at a young age. That is, if I am still cool enough that she sill wants to play with me.

Basically, when all is said and done, we just have to work on getting younger generations to play (and in a social environment). Who knows what RPGs will look like in 10 years. So, I will continue to play Candyland (*shudder*), dollhouse (*triple shudder*), Hi Ho Cherry-o, pretend, Duplo Lego blocks, and Zombie Dice with my 4 year old.

Norm.

[teh bunneh]

http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012...st-itself.html

A similar article written by Jeff Grubb.

[incrdbil]

So pretty much, its saying what has ebeen said for a while. MMO's are the RPG killer, and we are the last generation of role playing gamers, as MMO's cater to human laziness, which is easier to marklet than creativity which requires more effort. For gamign to continue, a common language a really dominant game needs to re-emerge, which is a subtle way of saying a lot of smaller game companies need to go away, and the games that do survive have to cater and appeal to a younger generation via simplified rules and a standard, generated prepackaged setting, because that new market is less willing, and perhaps simply less able to do what the first generation of gamers did.


Sort of depressing.

[Old Man]

So pretty much, its saying what has ebeen said for a while. MMO's are the RPG killer, and we are the last generation of role playing gamers, as MMO's cater to human laziness, which is easier to marklet than creativity which requires more effort. For gamign to continue, a common language a really dominant game needs to re-emerge, which is a subtle way of saying a lot of smaller game companies need to go away, and the games that do survive have to cater and appeal to a younger generation via simplified rules and a standard, generated prepackaged setting, because that new market is less willing, and perhaps simply less able to do what the first generation of gamers did.


Sort of depressing.

I don't know if it's depressing, but it's realistic. RPGs now have all kinds of competition for entertainment mindshare--Angry Birds, Netflix on demand, ebooks, MMORPGs, multiplayer online console games in general, CCGs, Youtube/Hulu, and the entire freaking internet. People are just less inclined to invest a lot of time in a new activity, especially one that requires that you get at least four people together in the same physical location for hours at a time. It can still be done, but you're going to have to hook new players very quickly with extremely short setup time and a pretty shallow learning curve. Nothing's stopping you from having a full crunch RPG system to back it up, but the initial hit is going to have to come in a more casual quick-start format.

[Tasha]

I keep hearing that MMO's are the PnP RPG killer, but the experiences are quite different. MMO's are like the PnP games of our youth. Full of hack and slash, over the top powers and equipment. Eventually People will tire of the Hack and Slash grind and start looking for something else.

I think that assuming MMO's will kill PnP is really an oversimplification of the player base of MMO's. In MMO's you seem to have 3 kinds of player. First is the Hard Core player. They play for the challenge of the game whether that challenge comes from PvP or PvE (usually a mixture of both). Those are the people who gripe everytime a game adds something to make any portion of the game easier (ie from Faster Travel, to Nerfs of NPCs). They are also the ones who power their way to maximum level without actually enjoying any content on the way to max level.

Next, There are Casual Players, who play for any number of reasons, but they tend to take their time and enjoy all of the game. They tend to explore, they don't always spend time to learn to play well. Just well enough to have fun while they play. They are all for things that make the game more accessable. They don't really care if the game is hard, only that it's engaging and rewarding.

One minority in gaming are the RPers. Yes there are people who Role Play MMO's. They are a maligned minority, but can be really fun to play with. As a whole they tend to run the gamit of being hardcore(ish) to being quite casual in their approach to gaming. RPers tend to run their own events and have gatherings in which you can actually play your character like you were in a PnP game.

I think that with the current state of technology for MMO's it is still possible to recruit players from the Casual crowd and the RPers. One thing that PnP companies have fallen down on the job doing is to persue PnP licences of MMO's and then make a game that feels like the MMO. World of Warcraft was published as an MMO by White Wolf, but unfortunatly they based their Class design off the Warcraft Computer game not The MMO. Which lead to most of the classes not feeling anything like characters from the MMO. Needless to say, the game isn't being published anymore. Everquest and Everquest II had ugly translations into games. I often thought that WotC dropped the ball when it failed to publish a KoToR(Knights of the old Republic) sourcebook for their d20 StarWars game. Especially seeing as KOTOR used d20 as it's game engine. It would have been a brilliant way to bring Computer RPGers into the PnP hobby. So many lost opportunities, so many things that helped to harm the RPG hobby over the years.

Like when TSR sued GDW, over the publication of Gygax's Dangerous Journeys. Basically Gygax worked on the game before his Non-compete clause from his separation from TSR was over. So GDW (the Traveller Publishers), had a ton of money tied up in books they suddenly couldn't sell. Also they had legal fees to deal with. Fast after that was the huge lawsuit from Palladium vs WotC (before they had published Magic, and had less than a dozen books published. That lawsuit also didn't do much to help the hobby, though it did teach everyone to not include Palladium conversions in their products. Heck, I think that lawsuit ended Universal style supplements. It was safest to only include game stats for what you had a licence to publish and allow the fanbase to deal with any other conversion.

So as long as PnP publishers don't do anything wildly stupid to kill off the remains of the hobby. I think that there are still parts of the market that are untapped. Casual Computer RPG players and Casual MMORPG players are huge untapped markets Also Women are a largely untapped market, but as more women infiltrate Comics, RPGs, and Computer gaming that should start to get better. Most RPG publishers don't know how to appeal to women and frankly most of them really don't care to learn how to. Which is really a shame, most non gamer women that I have taught to play have loved the hobby. This will eventually fix itself.

[incrdbil]

Someday a decent mesh of the PnP and the elctronic medium might emerege. MMO's provide a lot of things to do, but no o real roleplaying opportunities. Person to person interaction with a GM ran adventure simply cant be replicated. Having a computer interface that meshes chat, video, and a way to run the game seamlessly presrenting game content, background materials, reference and mecyhanics support may help save the game.

But it seems just as likely that a lack of new blood and companies will mean the virtual extinction of the RPG community and market as it exists with a decade or so from these articles..of course, we can just hope this is biased spin skewed to saying that without D&D as the dominant unifying flagship, RPG's are doomed. And frankly, I could see why you might detect a bit of 'die Pathfinder die!" sentiment hidden in there.

[teh bunneh]

I go to a fair number of conventions, and one thing that I've noticed over the years is there is a "skipped" generation. There are lots of people in the 35-50+ age group, and very few people in the 23-34 age group, and then there's a big jump in the 12-22 age group. I've noticed it for a long time, and recently came to hypothesize that it's because the kids that grew up playing D&D in the 70s and 80s had kids, and those kids are now teenagers and their parents are re-introducing them to the hobby.

Kids who grew up in the 90s and 00s never got into PNP roleplaying. They had computer games, and their parents didn't play so there was no one to introduce them to the games. But the newest generation have geeky parents who want to share their love of the game with their kids. In my own personal experience, one of the guys in my vanpool recently introduced his 14 year old son to D&D, and now the two of them have joined a group together (playing 4E).

I don't know if it's true, but if it is then it may bode well for the games we love to continue for another generation. The solution: Have kids and teach them to play.

[Jhamin]

I think that anyone who thinks they can build an RPG to "get back" the MMO Player is deluding themselves. I recall an interview years ago with a WOW dev on this subject.

His analogy was that once upon a time live theater and books were the only games in town if you wanted to see a production of Hamlet. Nowadays you can watch the best actors in the world perform it on masterpiece theater or one of a dozen different move versions with Hollywood budgets. And you can still see a local production or read the play in a book. But the local theater doesn't plan it's production from the point of view of having to beat the new $100 million dollar version coming to theaters this fall.

I don't think many would argue with the notion that Theater will *never* pull in the kind of money that movies do. Movies are easier to consume and much easier to distribute economically. But that doesn't mean movies drove theater into extinction. Theaters, even for-profit theaters continue to exist in the modern world. However, the wise theater plans it's production assuming that the human interaction of having actors and audience in the same room brings value to the process and tries to emphasize that.



He then went on to say D&D was live theater and WOW/Any MMO was a major Hollywood production.

The WOW Dev stressed that he played in a weekly pen and paper game and planned to for years to come. But that he didn't do it because WOW still hadn't "Caught up" to D&D, he did it because he got something from D&D he never expected to be able to get from an MMO.
D&D will never be able to replicate the graphics, math, or content volume WOW has. But at the same time WOW (and this was a WOW developer speaking) would never replicate the experience of high-fiving your friends when you totally took the adventure where the GM wasn't expecting & did something awesome in the process.

This argument has really influenced my thinking when I run my games. So if *I* were building 5th Edition D&D, I'd be trying to figure out how to emphasize what you get around a table with your friends and not how to more closely emulate an MMO.

[incrdbil]

D&D will never be able to replicate the graphics, math, or content volume WOW has. But at the same time WOW (and this was a WOW developer speaking) would never replicate the experience of high-fiving your friends when you totally took the adventure where the GM wasn't expecting & did something awesome in the process.

.

I'd have to disagree with content volume. MMO's have barely any real content--they simply repeat a lot of content over and over with slightly different NPC's. The game experience provided by MMO's is easier, and quicker than what any RPG can do. However, the quality, in terms of roleplaying, potential challenges, flexibility, and player innovation is so vastly different that MMO's will never, ever be able to close the gap..at least not until we create human equivalent AI's in terms of creativity.

[Kap]

I agree! I think I've mentioned that on a couple of other threads. I see no hearsay in creating a simpler (hero) system for the younger crowd. A friend (whose a Herophile and got me into the system) and I were talking, and he mentioned that it isn't easy for a 12 yo to learn hero system, as oppsed to (dare I say it) DnD. And I have been playing (spottingly) with my 8 yo, but I did look for an easier system too.

It might be easier to get young players involved with games that are easy to learn and allow you to start a game within minutes. Ghostbusters and Star Wars by West End Games are especially good at this. Prince Valiant by Chaosium was another good entry game.

[NinjaGeek]

Sometime around 2006, the D&D team made a big presentation to the Hasbro senior management on how they could take D&D up to the $50 million level and potentially keep growing it. The core of that plan was a synergistic relationship between the tabletop game and what came to be known as DDI. At the time Hasbro didn't have the rights to do an MMO for D&D, so DDI was the next best thing. The Wizards team produced figures showing that there were millions of people playing D&D and that if they could move a moderate fraction of those people to DDI, they would achieve their revenue goals. Then DDI could be expanded over time and if/when Hasbro recovered the video gaming rights, it could be used as a platform to launch a true D&D MMO, which could take them over $100 million/year.

This quote pretty much validates the accusations of all the D&D 4 critics who have been saying that D&D 4 was an attempt to make the game more MMO like. D&D 4 was part of a plan to better integrate D&D with subscription based online gaming. First with DDI and later a D&D based MMO.

I feel sorry for the people who are trying to clean up the mess that resulted. But that's what happens when you're more concerned about pleasing corporate bean counters than your own customers.

[Old Man]

This quote pretty much validates the accusations of all the D&D 4 critics who have been saying that D&D 4 was an attempt to make the game more MMO like. D&D 4 was part of a plan to better integrate D&D with subscription based online gaming. First with DDI and later a D&D based MMO.

I feel sorry for the people who are trying to clean up the mess that resulted. But that's what happens when you're more concerned about pleasing corporate bean counters than your own customers.

I actually don't have a problem with the strategy so much as the execution. Tying the tabletop to an online game is not a bad idea in and of itself; in fact given the way MMOs have apparently been eating tabletop's lunch, it was a logical survival strategy. And what is Activision's annual income from WOW? It wouldn't surprise me if that was a three comma number.

The mistake was in blowing up the ruleset and replacing it with that of an MMO, especially before any online integration was in place. I don't see why the 3.5 ruleset couldn't have been made a bit more compatible with online without a forklift upgrade. Now Hasbro has badly hurt their entrenched tabletop customer base which was going to be critical to the success of any D&D MMO in the first place.

[Cancer]

I dunno. I think it did, in fact, take a more or less completely new ruleset to make "D&D" something that was compatible with a machine-moderated MMO. The whole philosophy of gameplay had to be changed. My memory of earlier versions (most of which, I admit, I have no experience with) was that almost everything was open to GM interpretation, munchkinesque wheedling and whining, and ad hoc sleaze. Going the MMO-like route didn't make it invulnerable to power creep (though it did create a new adversary for many players, the most dreaded thing in the D&D multiverse, the rules-update nerf bat).