Discussion of Hero System's "Health" on rpg.net

[Vondy]

I'm not suggesting RPG's try to capture the video gamer market; I'm simply saying that video games that are quick/easy/pretty compete with RPGs as a form of entertainment ... and because they're quick/easy/pretty, they'll usually win.

 

i.e. Video games are the 800 pound gorilla in the games-as-entertainment space in which RPGs, card games, board games, etc. all compete.

 

As a general point, I agree with you.

 

But the same is true of television and books. TV is quick, easy, and has increasingly high production values. People still buy a lot of books.

[ghost-angel]

All these mediums both compete and compliment each other.

 

Comics, Movies, Television, PnP RPG, Video Games, Books, Sewing, Scrap Booking, Records Collecting....

 

Anything that takes up your time and money is a competitor, if you want to get down to it.

 

My primary hobby is music, I spend way more hours cataloging, listening to, and researching music, than I do any other activity except maybe SysAdmin (i.e. The Day Job). Well, probably on par with that.

 

But I still mark out time to play a video game, or read an RPG, or twice weekly play RPGs.

 

It's both competition and not competition... We like to think everything is a binary This Vs That kind of thing "Well, if he isn't playing Video Games he's probably playing Table Top RPGs..." which is the thought process behind them being direct competitors somehow.

 

Which is untrue. There could be a thousand activities they chose over any one other activity. So it's an unfair comparison from the start, it's apples and oranges and pears and raspberries and blueberries and kiwis and pineapples ...

[Ragitsu]

Video games are a great way to get players introduced/hooked on an actual pencil-and-paper roleplaying game system.

 

For instance, I got into D&D 3.0 then 3.5/Pathfinder because of PC CRPGs such as Neverwinter Nights. The taste at the "restaurant" was amazing, but then I learned I could prepare so many dishes with a kitchen of my own.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well I think of it this way: everyone only has so much time in which to do things each day while they are awake.  RPGs take up a large chunk of that time when they are played, so they compete with other actions that people are drawn by.  But a lot of what people found enticing about RPGs, video games will help sate to a lesser, but significantly more readily available degree - the imagery, the alternate world, the chance to be someone more capable and powerful, the opportunity to play out scenarios and situations you cannot in real life, etc.  There is even a social aspect to the game which RPGs filled.

 

So of the time people spend doing things, video games have taken a chunk of players away - but so has just the internet, phone games, texting, browsing, etc.

 

Book sales have taken a pretty brutal hit over the last 20 years.  If it weren't for the young adult market, I think a lot of big publishers would have toppled by now; some already have been swallowed up by rivals.  That doesn't mean people aren't reading books, it just means they aren't reading as much as they used to.

 

And that's a reality that RPG writers and hobbyists have to realize and deal with.

[ghost-angel]

To say Video Games are a great gateway is fair, they're of a similar bent in entertainment...

 

Which means what you want is less RPGs that look like Video Games and more of how they're different from video games; which means not cookie-cutter, not decision tree based... I'd argue the last thing anyone should do is try and emulate them with RPGs, especially not because they sell more.

[Vondy]

Then I guess we'll just have to agree to... agree.

 

That's not allowed. Strap on your cestus. The cage awaits...

[Markdoc]

I don't think anybody has a clear idea of the true size of the tabletop gaming market: companies by and large do not divulge their sales figures and there's no central clearing house for sales data.

But that said, I am sceptical that the market is actually shrinking, as so many people claim. IcV2, which tracks gaming sales  figures claim that it's been growing (albeit slowly) for about the last 5 years.

 

In 1996, TSR (who was the big kid on the block) reported total revenue of around 40 million at their peak (that was including fiction, card games and licensing). In 2000 WotC (who was the big kid on the block by that stage) actually did a fairly large customer survey which estimated the US market for RPGs at around 25-30 million dollars (as an interesting aside, they also found that about 20% of D&D players were women, laying the rest the idea that hardly any women play FRPGs). Newer figures are harder to come by, though one of the 4e design team said that their market was 25-30 million dollars, and in a 2012 filing Paizo (which owns about half of the D&D space, as far as trackable sales figures goes was sitting at 11.2 million dollars. Put all that together and it says that the US market for DRPGs has been pretty much consistently around 30 million dollars for the last 20 years. IcV2 puts the 2015 number at 25 million USD and growing fast - but that's just sales via gaming shops: they don't track alternative sales channels like online, so that 25 million is pretty much guaranteed to be a minimum.

 

So the tabletop RPG market might not be exploding, but it does not seem to be getting any smaller either. My best guess is that it is actually growing slowly. The market as a whole now contains far more different tabletop RPG games than it did in the past.  Most of those games don't flourish (perhaps deservedly so, in many cases) but there are plenty of viable small publishers now - far more than there were 20 years ago.

 

So if Hero is struggling in a market that hasn't changed significantly in size in 20 years (worst case scenario) or is growing slowly (best case scenario) that suggests it's about Hero, not the market. Now it could be simply competition: there's a lot of small publishers out there and from what we read, most of them struggle to grow their own marketshare. But I think it's worth considering if there is more to it than just that. If there is - and if non-D&D companies like FFG, Privateer Press, or Green Ronin can make a decent living out of it, I think it's worth asking why.

 

cheers, Mark

[Christopher R Taylor]

I can say for a fact that around here, RPG gaming took a plunge starting in the mid 90s and is sort of making a comeback.  With he excitement and interest in board gaming, there is growing interest in RPGs now as well.  But as you say, its extremely hard to find hard data on sales because companies either aren't saying or have disappeared.  D&D definitely isn't as big as it was in the 80s, though.

 

The thing you have to keep in mind is that straight numbers don't tell the tale. If a population doubles but the numbers stay the same, that means you've lost a huge amount of market share.

[Vondy]

One thing to consider as well is that a "universal systems" and tool kits find themselves in a tough-spot marketing-wise. Its much easier to produce tons of materials for a single genre and setting, which amounts to a single game-line. You end up having to produce numerous genre books (some of which will sell better than others) and multiple settings - and hero has multiple settings for some of its multiple genres. Trying to support each of those at once eats into resources and time and dilutes the underlying brand. Not every gamer is interested in every genre or setting. Unless you have a deep war chest and stable market share, that is a very tall order to meet. This is compounded by the fact that RAW is designed to deal with every genre as opposed to presenting only what is needed to get started with the genre the player is interested in buying goodies for. I think Champion's Complete was a step in the right direction, but how to sell a "toolkit" and "universal" system as being capable of doing anything without supporting everything? I think the 1-3e approach to the system worked better for that, which is not to say the core rules really did need the standardization and clean-up 4e introduced. I guess what I'm saying is, in its heyday, my book said "Champions" on the cover and that was what drove the line. It could do everything, but didn't really try to in the publishing sense. 

[massey]

I'd say that Hero Games should not publish a genre book without the intention to fully support it. If you can't come up with an enemies book, and half a dozen adventure books, etc, don't publish the genre book in the first place.

 

Luche Libre Hero, really?

[zslane]

Genre books without follow-on products are nothing more than tutorials/examples showing how one might use the system to build a campaign setting. These are useful to a degree, but only to the DIY crowd, which is the Hero System's traditional demographic. For everyone else who wants ready-to-play campaign settings, standalone genre books are going to be mostly ignored.

[Lucius]

Which means what you want is less RPGs that look like Video Games and more of how they're different from video games;

which means not cookie-cutter, not decision tree based... .

It's common in video games for characters to consult tree oracles before making decisions?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Sometimes I consult a palindromedary

[Vondy]

It's common in video games for characters to consult tree oracles before making decisions?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Sometimes I consult a palindromedary

 

I believe consulting treacles is more the norm. 

 

You know, where you stand around a tart asking her opinion on things.

 

No, wait, I mean, where you find answers by looking at crumbs of a freshly demolished molasses tart.

 

I'm still not sure I have this right...

[bigdamnhero]

So if Hero is struggling in a market that hasn't changed significantly in size in 20 years (worst case scenario) or is growing slowly (best case scenario) that suggests it's about Hero, not the market. Now it could be simply competition: there's a lot of small publishers out there and from what we read, most of them struggle to grow their own marketshare. But I think it's worth considering if there is more to it than just that. If there is - and if non-D&D companies like FFG, Privateer Press, or Green Ronin can make a decent living out of it, I think it's worth asking why.

Exactly.

[Surrealone]

As a general point, I agree with you.

 

But the same is true of television and books. TV is quick, easy, and has increasingly high production values. People still buy a lot of books.

 

But television and books are passive forms of entertainment -- whereas games-as-entertainment involve active participation.  This is why I was VERY specific about keeping the conversation to games-as-entertainment .... because they entail a different level of human engagement than passive forms such as television, movies, reading, etc. and, as such, the audiences are fairly well differentiated by that engagement level.

 

Put another way (and more simply): when it comes to convenience, games-as-entertainment don't hold a candle to television/movies in terms of consumption.  When was the last time you saw a video game on a monitor in an airport for mass consumption/entertainment by people going about their business without stopping what they're doing to engage it?  Never.  But you've seen Headline News (which is less news and more 'infotainment') there plenty of times ... reaching, entertaining, and informing lots of people without their active engagement.

 

I can safely hang my hat on THAT kind of differentiation when it comes to human engagement levels.  Now sub in a RPG for the video game in the above example, and it becomes clear why I consider video games and RPG's as competition in the same space ... and consider television, movies, reading, and the like ... a separate entertainment space.

[ghost-angel]

One thing to consider as well is that a "universal systems" and tool kits find themselves in a tough-spot marketing-wise. Its much easier to produce tons of materials for a single genre and setting, which amounts to a single game-line. You end up having to produce numerous genre books (some of which will sell better than others) and multiple settings - and hero has multiple settings for some of its multiple genres. Trying to support each of those at once eats into resources and time and dilutes the underlying brand. Not every gamer is interested in every genre or setting. Unless you have a deep war chest and stable market share, that is a very tall order to meet. This is compounded by the fact that RAW is designed to deal with every genre as opposed to presenting only what is needed to get started with the genre the player is interested in buying goodies for. I think Champion's Complete was a step in the right direction, but how to sell a "toolkit" and "universal" system as being capable of doing anything without supporting everything? I think the 1-3e approach to the system worked better for that, which is not to say the core rules really did need the standardization and clean-up 4e introduced. I guess what I'm saying is, in its heyday, my book said "Champions" on the cover and that was what drove the line. It could do everything, but didn't really try to in the publishing sense. 

 

You aren't off the mark. During the days of 5E when DOJ was on a seemingly meteoric rise they produced over 20 books in one year. It slowly dropped off, to a low point of, IIRC 7 books. That's several months with nothing hitting shelves.

 

Personally, I think Steve tried to take on too much writing it all (or mostly all) himself, as even as prolific as he is, it's going to burn out the idea factory to just keep churning.

[ghost-angel]

It's common in video games for characters to consult tree oracles before making decisions?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Sometimes I consult a palindromedary

 

A Decision Tree is when you start with one Thing, and that drives the Next Choices directly. There's no free form choice, normally you can go across, or directly down, but you can't skip around in choices, there's a path and path is determined by each choice made along the way.

 

The perfect example of Decision Tree Based Creation is the Edge Of The Empire Star Wars RPG. What abilities you get is directly determined by what abilities you already have. Done right it appears to be natural progression, most of the time it's just going down the garden path.

 

In video gaming, there are a lot of examples to pull from, Diablo 2 had a Decision Tree (they literally called it the Skill Tree); The character advancement in Torchlight and Borderlands (especially Borderlands) are Decision Trees as well, one choice opens up some options, closes or defers others.

[Vondy]

But television and books are passive forms of entertainment -- whereas games-as-entertainment involve active participation. This is why I was VERY specific about keeping the conversation to games-as-entertainment .... because they entail a different level of human engagement than passive forms such as television, movies, reading, etc. and, as such, the audiences are fairly well differentiated by that engagement level.

 

Put another way (and more simply): when it comes to convenience, games-as-entertainment don't hold a candle to television/movies in terms of consumption. When was the last time you saw a video game on a monitor in an airport for mass consumption/entertainment by people going about their business without stopping what they're doing to engage it? Never. But you've seen Headline News (which is less news and more 'infotainment') there plenty of times ... reaching, entertaining, and informing lots of people without their active engagement.

 

I can safely hang my hat on THAT kind of differentiation when it comes to human engagement levels. Now sub in a RPG for the video game in the above example, and it becomes clear why I consider video games and RPG's as competition in the same space ... and consider television, movies, reading, and the like ... a separate entertainment space.

But, but, but...

 

I was making a corollary between a high-tech media with flashy production values and a visual interface and a low tech one that leverages the minds eye. Active vs. passive aren't relevant to the allegory that was being made. There are passive consumers who prefer their mind's eye. There are active consumers who prefer their minds eye. I don't see anything material in you "critical difference" that is counter to my point. Gamers, as active consumers, are still drawn to different types of gaming media.

[Steve]

I don't think anybody has a clear idea of the true size of the tabletop gaming market: companies by and large do not divulge their sales figures and there's no central clearing house for sales data.

But that said, I am sceptical that the market is actually shrinking, as so many people claim. IcV2, which tracks gaming sales figures claim that it's been growing (albeit slowly) for about the last 5 years.

 

In 1996, TSR (who was the big kid on the block) reported total revenue of around 40 million at their peak (that was including fiction, card games and licensing). In 2000 WotC (who was the big kid on the block by that stage) actually did a fairly large customer survey which estimated the US market for RPGs at around 25-30 million dollars (as an interesting aside, they also found that about 20% of D&D players were women, laying the rest the idea that hardly any women play FRPGs). Newer figures are harder to come by, though one of the 4e design team said that their market was 25-30 million dollars, and in a 2012 filing Paizo (which owns about half of the D&D space, as far as trackable sales figures goes was sitting at 11.2 million dollars. Put all that together and it says that the US market for DRPGs has been pretty much consistently around 30 million dollars for the last 20 years. IcV2 puts the 2015 number at 25 million USD and growing fast - but that's just sales via gaming shops: they don't track alternative sales channels like online, so that 25 million is pretty much guaranteed to be a minimum.

 

So the tabletop RPG market might not be exploding, but it does not seem to be getting any smaller either. My best guess is that it is actually growing slowly. The market as a whole now contains far more different tabletop RPG games than it did in the past. Most of those games don't flourish (perhaps deservedly so, in many cases) but there are plenty of viable small publishers now - far more than there were 20 years ago.

 

So if Hero is struggling in a market that hasn't changed significantly in size in 20 years (worst case scenario) or is growing slowly (best case scenario) that suggests it's about Hero, not the market. Now it could be simply competition: there's a lot of small publishers out there and from what we read, most of them struggle to grow their own marketshare. But I think it's worth considering if there is more to it than just that. If there is - and if non-D&D companies like FFG, Privateer Press, or Green Ronin can make a decent living out of it, I think it's worth asking why.

 

cheers, Mark

Are those numbers adjusted for inflation? 40 million in 1996 is worth about 60 million in 2016 dollars. If the market is 30 million now, then it is shrinking.

[Surrealone]

I don't see anything material in you "critical difference" that is counter to my point. Gamers, as active consumers, are still drawn to different types of gaming media.

Audience size/interest is what's material in the critical difference.  The more passive the entertainment format, the larger the audience size/interest -- primarily due to sheer convenience and the ability to consume the entertainment while multi-tasking.  As a counterpoint: the more actively engaged the audience has to be to consume the entertainment, the smaller the audience size/interest tends to be.  At least in today's world...

 

This is germane to why RPG's aren't flourishing like they were when AD&D 1st edition was on the rise.  Back then there weren't 500 channels of televised stuff, plus movie channels, and the like offering passive entertainment as a form of competition (if you want to include it, which it seems you do).  And if you wanted active games-as-entertainment you had to make your way to an arcade or play a board game or 'pong' or 8-bit Atari (if you happened to have it) to find something that competed in the same active engagement space.

 

Today, there are many more passive options (since you insist on including them) that dwarf games-as-entertainment ... and then video games are the 800 pound gorilla of the games-as-entertainment category.  Alone, video games relegate RPG's to a really, really tiny niche within people's awareness/interest of/in games-as-entertainment compared to what they had 30 years ago.  Throw passive media consumption in the mix and that RPG awareness/interest decreases by at least an order of magnitude.

[Lucius]

A Decision Tree is when you start with one Thing, and that drives the Next Choices directly. There's no free form choice, normally you can go across, or directly down, but you can't skip around in choices, there's a path and path is determined by each choice made along the way.

 

The perfect example of Decision Tree Based Creation is the Edge Of The Empire Star Wars RPG. What abilities you get is directly determined by what abilities you already have. Done right it appears to be natural progression, most of the time it's just going down the garden path.

 

In video gaming, there are a lot of examples to pull from, Diablo 2 had a Decision Tree (they literally called it the Skill Tree); The character advancement in Torchlight and Borderlands (especially Borderlands) are Decision Trees as well, one choice opens up some options, closes or defers others.

 

.....oh.

 

I don't think that's something to be avoided just because video games do it. I think it predates video games anyway; way back in AD&D, your initial choice of Class for example predetermined what would be available for weapon proficiencies. And Defense Manuever is an example of something in standard Hero already in which each step must be bought in order - I can't just spend the last 2 pts to get "Levels on DCV are Persistant" and skip the ability to negate multiple attacker bonuses etc.

 

Basically, we're talking about some abilities being pre-requisites for other abilities, right? And as you say, "done right it appears to be natural progression."

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Riding and Animal Handler: Palindromedaries are prerequisites for PS: Palindromdary Rider

[Lucius]

Are those numbers adjusted for inflation? 40 million in 1996 is worth about 60 million in 2016 dollars. If the market is 30 million now, then it is shrinking.

 

That's a great question!

Thanks for asking

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Neither I nor the palindromedary know the answer

[Markdoc]

 With regard to population growth, the US population has not doubled in the last 20 years, so that's not an issue here. It has grown by about 15%. How much has the market grown? Well, as noted WoTC market analysis (the only one I am aware of) suggested about 25-30 million USD in 2000. Today we have the hard floor of around 25 million in direct sales through retailers - so total market would need to include online sales. For some companies, online sales are pretty much 100% of volume (Evil Hat games, which produces Fate actually shares their breakdown, falls into this category). We know a lot of the product from big manufacturers moves through online channels as well: the latest D&D releases hit the best seller category - not in roleplaying, but in all books - on Amazon. Some comments from Paizo suggest around 50% of their sales are through online channels. If that's true the total market is around 50 million - meaning that the market has grown about twice as fast as the population. If it's lower - say 20% - then it's grown somewhat less. If it's zero - meaning nobody buys any RPG stuff online, then yes, the market has shrunk significantly. But I don't think anyone really believes that more than 80% of all roleplaying books and miniatures, etc are sold through physical game shops today. So our best guess remains what I commented above - the market is growing around the same speed as the population or maybe somewhat faster.

 

Other indicators point in the same direction. The hard sales figures IcV2 tracks have been growing slowly, year on year for the last 19 years. Over the  period, attendance at thinks like Gencon have bene climbing, Back in the mid-90's attendance at Gencon was 25-30,000. Last year it was over 60,000. Gencon's about more than just tabletop RPGs, but then that was true in the mid-90's also.

 

Inflation is a little harder to deal with: there has been about 54% inflation over the last 20 years, but production and distribution costs have changed dramatically too over that period. Amazon had just started, RPG-drivethru did not exist  ... etc, etc.. It's hard to know how much, but if the reduction is greater than inflation, then the market size (on a per dollar basis) has not changed at all, and may even have grown in inflation-adjusted terms. That's not at all impossible - the owner of Total Strategy Games talked about developing his business and estimated that the cost of setting up his business and starting to deliver customer products today was about 5000 GBP down from his estimated 35,000 GBP back in the days when all marketing and distribution had to be physical.  We know that distribution and marketing costs have fallen significantly ... we just don't know how much. 20%? 50%? 90%? So I thought about inflation, of course, but without knowing far more about distribution costs, which are even more obscure than sales figures, trying to analyse it would just be piling guesses on top of already poor data.

 

So - just to be clear - I am not stating that the tabletop RPG market is growing. I think it is (slowly), but there is way too much uncertainty to be any kind of sure. But we can be sure that anecdotal evidence about game stores closing aside*, there is little to no data suggesting that the market is getting smaller. As far as I can tell, all the hard numbers we can actually gather - even if not conclusive - suggest that it is getting bigger and more  diverse. Without question, there are some midsize game companies that are flourishing, that simply did not exist a decade or two ago. So to come back to my original question (or to rephrase it) what are they doing right?

 

cheers, Mark

 

*this one always annoys me. Yeah, local game stores are getting fewer. So are local PC stores. Is anyone seriously suggesting that people are using computers less? What's happened is that as computer use has mainstreamed, the the hobbyist build-your-own mindset has become an ever smaller minority (and much of it has moved online anyway, along with the rest of the market) and with the introduction of phones/tablets, the market has become more diverse. As an indicator of market size, the closing of local stores is about as informative as haruspicy. 

[ghost-angel]

.....oh.

 

I don't think that's something to be avoided just because video games do it. I think it predates video games anyway; way back in AD&D, your initial choice of Class for example predetermined what would be available for weapon proficiencies. And Defense Manuever is an example of something in standard Hero already in which each step must be bought in order - I can't just spend the last 2 pts to get "Levels on DCV are Persistant" and skip the ability to negate multiple attacker bonuses etc.

 

Basically, we're talking about some abilities being pre-requisites for other abilities, right? And as you say, "done right it appears to be natural progression."

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Riding and Animal Handler: Palindromedaries are prerequisites for PS: Palindromdary Rider

 

It's slightly different from old school Class Based systems, which were direct paths (If you choose Fighter, the rest is predetermined). Decision Trees have choices, but they're limited based on what you already have.

 

Hero's Defense Maneuver isn't a Decision Tree, it's a direct line, 1-2-3-4.

 

A decision Tree would look more like:

Choose 1, 2, 3, or 4.

 

If you choose 1 your next choice can be: 2, 3, 4 (horizontal choice) or A-B (vertical choice based on choosing 1).

If you choose B your third choice can be 2, 3, 4 (the first line is almost always avaiable), A (based on choosing 1 and still available) and B1 or B2 (based on choosing B ).

 

If you had chosen 2 to start you don't have access to A or B on choice 2, but C and D (plus 1, 3, and 4).

 

If you draw it out it will look similar to a family tree, you can follow a line down, but you can't skip across it at any point without going back to the top and choosing options that get you down a second branch.

 

No, decision trees definitely didn't start in Video Gaming, they are a direct descendant of class-based systems though. Which is why we have a cross pollination of terminology between RPGs and Video Games.

 

The thing about RPGs, even bad ones, is that the decision trees tend to be a lot wider, far more flexible, and the point allocation you're allowed to use to get more aspects is completely Player/Group controlled. In video games, the progression is locked down hard.

 

Versus something like Hero where if you want to get Lockpicking you don't need to have chosen anything else, you just need to

[bigdamnhero]

Re RPG market size: Another factor that occurs to me is that 30 years ago RPGs were almost exclusively played by high school & college kids, whereas today they're spread across a much wider age range. Since most people tend to play with people close to themselves in age, it could seem like you have fewer people to play with even if the actual numbers have increased.

 

Re decision trees: some people love them, see the popularity of Fantasy Flight's new Star Wars game. I find them really restrictive personally.