Death of PnP RPG

Visual Novel Community Anime/Otaku Discussions
#1

I just got off a wonderful online seminar that discussed the fall of the pen and paper RPG market. It essentially pointed out several factors, all of which happened at roughly the same time – a literal nuclear bomb of events:

[list][*]OGL and PDF
The open license of the d20 system in combination with PDF press, caused a massive oversaturation of material – most of which lacks creativity and innovation.

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[]Dollar in Flux
Many of the premier RPG publishers were based in Canada and Europe. As the dollar value fluxed violently, it got too expensive for them to continue turning a profit against the domestic US publishers who could sell at cheaper prices.

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[]Too Much Corporate Influence
This predominantly concerns entities such as WotC and White Wolf, who bought tons of intellectual properties and turned them upside down, alienating hardcore gamers who preferred the old “by gamers for gamers” mentality, instead of the “gamers buy for companies” operation.

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[]Too Much Rebooting too Soon
Tied to the item above: constant revisions of the same material, forcing to buy an entire line all over again, disenfranchised consumers. 3.0 and 3.5 anyone?

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[]Loss of Quality Control
Do you really think WotC play tested those Expansion and Prestige Classes? Do you really think White Wolf made sure all those new Bloodlines meshed together without causing issues? Do you really think the newest RIFTS World Book doesn’t make the previous obsolete? Yea… me neither.

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[]MMO and Console RPG’s
Does anything really need to be said?

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[]Lack of Evolution
Until very recently, mainstream RPG’s stuck with the classical “Tolkien Fantasy” and “Frank Herbert Space Opera” ¬ñ however Japanese anime and Chinese cinema had made a major cultural impact during the 80’s and 90’s. For a time there was an extreme niche market for 'em (Mekton, BESM, Robotech, etc) ¬ñ but the previously mentioned factors above killed 'em. It was about a year or two until the void was filled by the “Corporate Giants” ¬ñ but by then it was too late.

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[]Mass Production of Table Top Miniatures
Companies like Rackham and Games Workshop quickly captured the “big spending” hardcore gamers. It also was more visually appealing for newbies to watch and partake in tactical battles with their own eyes and hands, than listening to a bunch of guys describing what happened in their imagination (also less paperwork).[/*][/list]

There were some other issues pointed out, but these appeared to be the major ones. The discussion ended with questions if the RPG market can be saved. It was kinda iffy on that. Things like Iron Kingdoms were mentioned as awesome sources of hope – however the abandonment of the d20 system by WotC was cited as a failure, since MANY games (like the aforementioned Iron Kingdoms) had heavily invested in d20 - but are now being left behind - making the IP holders angry and weary of supporting table top RPG again. Also many great properties that were in d20 format – like The Red Star, Ravenloft, and Heavy Gear – are currently abandoned or inactive.

#2

I can only think of two things in my limited experience but you said 'em . Console RPGs and mediocre storytelling.

#3

My group used to be around 8-10 people. Now it’s down to a regular three. (mainly due to social problems :roll: )

And this is all the players in my town.

One of them even illegally downloaded pdfs of books. Only adding fuel to this fire.

#4

And sadly, there WAS a time that had titles that focused on the storytelling/worldbuilding side (that same early mid '90s frame Narg mentioned), few of which are even known as whispers today.

Castle Falkenstein at least got a little notice in LARP events; for BESM there were complete books for Dual, El Hazard and others; open rule sets such as GURPS and FUDGE had multiple published world/genre options; some of the CoC stuff of the period remains among the best written game ideas anywhere and there were risks like Blue Planet. Hell even the proto d20 stuff of West End Games – Bloodshadows, Indy, etc. gave willing players and GMs lots of options to play with.

#5

There’s also the development of ‘RP’ in ways the industry has no clue about, nor any idea of how to tap into. If you look around the internet, you’ll find tons of people doing fanfic roleplay, with very few rules and certainly no commercial systems. If you look around the communities I’m involved with, you’ll find tons of people organising huge ‘freeforms’ (british terminology for live-action ROLEPLAY as opposed to live-action hitting people with swords, which is also popular here). Again, very rules-light, very unlikely to be using a published commercial system.

And many of us who grew up in what we consider heydays of gaming own SO many books in so many systems that our interest in buying something new is… often quite low. Start over again with a new system? Why bother? We’d rather homebrew and fudge and do what we feel like…

And the more that people get used to writing their own games and their own systems, the more resentful they feel at being ‘bilked’ by companies desperate to get money out of them. Many online roleplaying tools/subscriptions are completely unreasonable because you have to get your whole party to EACH pay up in order to use them… and that’s just not likely. Then the geeks turn around and write their own freeware tools.

The hobby is still going, but it’s moving away from being able to sustain business.

(As for storytelling, I still think “In a Wicked Age” is cool. )

#6

Too Much Too Soon and Loss of Quality Control can be partly blamed upon the licensing of systems out. It’s called power creep. Every PnP RPG system is prone to it because when new supplements come out you have 3 basic options: rehash existing material (generally doesn’t get many sales because material is out already, exceptions might be with compediums), more soft substances on how to flesh out your character’s background or build a world, which can be useful, but only with so many books or finally add new stuff like items/spells/classes/etc. When you add new stuff, unless you make all your items for areas outside the mainstream (which most will never be used much) you need to make those things more powerful so people will buy them.

That is why there are resets every now and then, however there is a large span of usually close to 10 years between new versions for established systems (barring occasional bad first system that quickly gets redone).

#7

Oh lookie… WotC is now terminating the d20 license, so everyone jumps on the 4ED bandwagon. They’ve just ass raped all those indy and self-made PDF publishers… and possibly pissed off third parties like Iron Kingdoms and whatnot.

Did you hear that? It’s the sound of everyone moving to OGL. :lol:

#8

Yep. It doesn’t apply to anything using their OGL.

#9

Hmmm… it seems that WotC has made some “exceptions” to the expiration of the d20 license, for “big name” companies - which only pisses of the indy companies.

For example Privateer Press will continue their Iron Kingdoms line during 2009, and have openly stated they are not converting to 4th ed. White Wolf is allowed to continue production and sales of d20 titles they’ve produced. Good news for some… horrible news for others.

#10

Yes and no. They’ve already said revisions to their new craptastic “license” are forthcoming. Probably because of the gigantic sucking sound that was the community draining away from it. I don’t believe the revisions are out yet, so for all I know, these big publishers got to sign early. Or something.

#11

Indeed a lot of people are sticking with 3.5, despite some good solid things they did with 4E. Redoing magic to MP, contriversial, yes, but fits more with epic storytelling atmosphere. You never heard a wizard say, “Well i can’t cast a fireball because I used up my last fireball for the day” in traditional storytelling atmosphere. Same idea with balancing fighters and nerfing of Wizards…which really needed to be done (wizards and druids especially…more because of the way people play than game mechanics were bad).

They made a lot of changes though, removing races that had been in sine D&D began and putting in as default races ones that had only been campaign specific saying they’ll address classes like bards and others later. They removed all real role-playing aspects of things and focused on combat (they even said as part of their mission statement this was the intent…basically saying we are designing it to maximize our profit at player’s expense). Then for some they put too much anime-ish or mmo-ish elements in.

IMO, other than the lack of role-playing elements outside combat being addressed, the only major problem i had with it was the idea of roles, ie that a fighter is suppose to be a “tank” a cleric is suppose to be a “healer, support magic user”, etc and the decision to do so was based almost completely on MMOs which function on a different level: they have AI to guide the mobs…D&D has a GM to guide the opponents. AI is much less robust than most GMs out there, thus the idea of a fighter as a tank is fine when your playing a video game because your not really fighting a mob…your fighting a script. The mobs will go after the fighter because you make yourself artificially build up ‘threat’ even if your really not the one doing the damage or healing those who are about to die. A GM is just as likely to have his opponents deal with the fighter as the rouge or wizard, etc and except for artificial gamey powers that a fighter would get…he can’t really act as a meat shield. If he wants to be the meat shield, he has to be able to do more damage to the enemy and not require much, if any, healing (because otherwise the cleric will become priority #1, even if the fighter is dishing out the damage because a GM (running a component group of opponents) would have the opponents realize that if they get rid of the softer target, the healer, the fighter loses a lot of his bite.

#12

Heh… it appears crowd funding is the rebirth of PnP RPG. :stuck_out_tongue:

I mentioned Mekton in my original post… lo and behold, they’re trying to resurrect it again. Also saw the old indy OVA system trying to make a comeback.

Going through the KS history, it appears several other titles have been tried and succeeded. Robotech got 1.4 million dollars. :shock:

Even more neat: authentic Japanese PnP RPG’s have even gotten official translations. Tenra Bansho Zero from last year, and Golden Sky Stories just recently.

I wonder if anyone will ever try to get Sword World translated. That’s Japan’s “most popular” rules system.

#13

Just curious, but anyone here besides me watch Spoony’s Counter Monkey videos? They’re pretty interesting and funny though I will admit he does ramble a bit much in some of them.

http://www.youtube.com/user/countermonkeybard