RPG niche stuff

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Post originally by Bloodcat at 2001-04-08 03:40:52
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There is another reason RPGs are so niche.

2 Companies get about 90% of the playerbase, and the other 10%
are actually willing to try something different.

I have seen that quite well in the last 5 years of gaming.

In 96, I put up a players wanted sign, listing tons of games that
I play and would be willing to join in groups to play.
While I have gotten a pathetically low number of calls from it, most
of them were for Dungeons & Dragons, and 1 or 2 for Vampire/White Wolf.

People don't want to try anything new, and this is very detrimental
to the hobby.
Especially when one considers how AWFUL AD&D 2nd edition is.
Anyone who can look at me with a straight face and tell me it is
superior to Call of Cthulhu or the D6 Star Wars RPG is probably insane. Or on drugs. Or both.

Yet, that is ALL I ever got asked to play.
(And I, being one of the rare breed who prefers to GM, as nobody ever
lets me roleplay my less than combat ready characters out anyways,
tended to subvert every D&D game into Steampunk or a psuedo Warhammer
40K RPG anyhow, I never saw many campaigns last long.)

It gets old, fast. But some people refuse to even TRY something
that might be better, or at least different.

The same thing with CCGs.

Almost the same thing with Miniatures games.
(Warhammer Fantasy 4th and 5th edition sucked. 40K 3rd ed is solid,
albeit expensive and a little skewed towards Space Marines and Imperial Guard.)

And people get bored of this, leave, and never come back.

You slowly wear out people, who then go on to other things.

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Post originally by Sandy Antunes at 2001-04-08 14:54:24
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Hi,

Good point. Also, what I've noticed is the folks who are willing to try new stuff, many times, are also the ones who don't need much of the published material. So they don't buy many of the adventures, etc that come out because they're too busy doing the neat different stuff. Often they pick one system they like (Cthulhu, GURPS, d20, etc) and just use it for other genres.

(A subset of them, like me, are rabid buyers of new games-- though less so new supplements and no new adventures-- just for the new settings these provide. We then use these new settings with our own existing house rules, which often are a simplified version of our favorite system).

So the experimentally minded are also likely not strong consumers of line support products, yet also fit into the 'early adopter' category for new systems.

From a business point of view, then, it's hard to aim stuff at "folks who don't need your stuff", better to aim to be 'the next White Wolf' and grow their own stable of fans. Which won't really help folks like you find experimental players-- that's probably a fairly flat population, by definition, and if they gravitate to 'the next White Wolf' they still won't be up for trying many different things.

Cheers,
Sandy
sandy@rpg.net

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Post originally by Sergio Mascarenhas at 2001-04-09 05:04:03
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That raises a very critical question. And you can't fail to answer it:

Which is that favorite system of yours you use with your house rules??? There's no way for you to avoid disclosing the secret.

Sergio

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Post originally by Sergio Mascarenhas at 2001-04-09 05:08:45
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<< 2 Companies get about 90% of the playerbase, and the other 10%
are actually willing to try something different. >>

My intuition tells me that there's a question of different perceptions on what we are referring to.

To the 10% there are RPGs, and the games of those two companies are just elements in the set.

For the 90% there is D&D, or Vampire, or whatever the game is that they got from one of the two companies.

If you are part of the majority the game is, for instance, D&D. You will vaguely acknowledge that there are other games that fall into a broader category of RPGs. But that's only a vague notion.
For them it's like Monopoly: one plays Monopoly, one does not play a Real Estate Management Game that happens to be Monopoly.

Sérgio

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Post originally by Emma Antunes at 2001-04-12 05:57:11
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I'll give you a hint...

Sandy is the author of "Miskatonic University: Where Science Meets the Mythos", published by Chaosium (and now sadly out of print).

Can you guess what rules we like to use?

(Admittedly, we're in a D&D 3rd edition campaign at the moment, but that's just because the new (and surprisingly quite good) rules came out and we were feeling nostalgic)

Emma

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Post originally by Bloodcat at 2001-04-12 07:30:13
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Don't get me wrong, the D20 version of D&D is a rock solid game.

In a way it is good for some of these companies, as people who
would not even LOOK at a non D&D product have actually picked up
alot of that Melinbone D20 book to the point the game shop in the
area ran out of copies and had to reorder.

(I found this out when I bought the lonely, yet near mint copy
of Castle Falkenstein sitting in the front of the store. It has been
there for years!)

But cmon, can't people try something new?
Otherwise everything is going to go D20, and that will suck.
And only D20 fantasy now, as D20 Star Wars isn't enough for some
folks.

(Which is probably why the upcoming Call of Cthulhu d20 is going to
be useable by D&D players. At least it will spread the word.. but
going from one of the most elegant game systems ever, the Chaosium
percentile system, to d20? It just seems.. wrong somehow...)

(Isn't the system called "Basic Role Playing" or something like that?)
(And seeing a game where getting neat toys and powering up simply
doesn't happen won't do much with D&Ders anyhow.. Though they could
use the asswhoopin, IMHO. See some level 20s meet a Shoggoth.. hehe..)

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Post originally by Sandy Antunes at 2001-04-12 17:43:28
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Hi,

I not only bought Everway, we played campaigns and one-shots with it. Does that count towards new? Feng Shui, ditto. Heck, we'll try anything.

On the other hand, far too often our games end up using the 'roll, then look' system. You wanna do something, roll something. If it's really high or low, play moves on. Otherwise, if it's a marginal roll, everything stops while someone drags out the rulebook to see how we're actually supposed to calculate these things.

Oh, what, sorry, that's our interpretation of d20.

Cheers,
Sandy
sandy@rpg.net

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Post originally by Joonas Laakso at 2001-05-08 10:49:45
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"I think you rolled something like enough" is the name of game most of the time for me, too. I've found that I actually use the rules mostly if I'm not much in the mood to engage in much roleplaying or story forwarding.

Yes, regardless of how simple the system actually is. The problem is that not all players appreciate this approach - I gotta play a straight face and pretend to calculate stuff on the fly. "Never... hesitate."

I remember once angering a player in a con, running the game fast and loose. He supposed that he "had to have the rules on his side, if everything else was against him". Go figure.

-Joonas

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Post originally by Tim Kirk at 2001-05-08 12:58:32
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--Good point. Also, what I've noticed is the folks who are willing to try new stuff, many times, are also the ones who don't need much of the published material. So they don't buy many of the adventures, etc that come out because they're too busy doing the neat different stuff. Often they pick one system they like (Cthulhu, GURPS, d20, etc) and just use it for other genres.

(A subset of them, like me, are rabid buyers of new games-- though less so new supplements and no new adventures-- just for the new settings these provide. We then use these new settings with our own existing house rules, which often are a simplified version of our favorite system).

So the experimentally minded are also likely not strong consumers of line support products, yet also fit into the 'early adopter' category for new systems. ---


Indeed this description, fits my model of gaming. I buy lots of new (when I can afford it) but most often find myself writing my own little settings adventures, and so on...First in means first out?
Howrver I try something new long before it picks up steam and often have abandoned it before it becomes popular or 'acclaimed'--Vampire was like this, as was Everway, but the cycle continues, I can't not buy something that looks good, and interesting, even if it's just to read it, not to use it. I've owned dozens of games for hundreds of genres and their minute variations, but keep going back to what I write with only a few rather notable exceptions.