What that means to story gamers

Given the above, I have several observations that I think are very relevant to the indie scene and story games.

1) There is a remarkable gap between the vast majority of "Gamers" and people who are interested (at least to date) on indie games, story games, and so on.

This gap explains much, from my perspective. The vast majority of gamers either do not realize story games exist, or they actively want nothing to do with them. I do not think this is a 1:1 match with Creative Agenda (aka GNS). I used to think so. I no longer do.

Yes, there is cross-over. I think that fact says more about story/indie gamers than it does traditional gamers. The fact is, it's the small group of story gamers clamoring to say "But I play D&D too!" and very, very little of the large audience of traditional gamers saying "But I play indie games too!" They're out there, there just aren't a lot of 'em by comparison to the rest of the crowd.

2) Marketing product to players more so than game masters may have lead to the "game masters" demanding something they could not find. This is interesting, but may be difficult to verify, or even act on. More on this split in the next item.

3) Huge numbers of RPG products occupied the "game master" groups' shelves, and went unplayed. If you haven't figured it out by now, that "game master" group is probably us here at Story Games.

Again, it's not as though every single person here literally was his or her group's go-to game master, or even necessarily a game master at all. But, I think that's very likely the trend overall.

It leads me to re-label the "game master" group. It represents very well the split I observed in Point #1 above. I have referred to this in the past as The Great Divide.

On one side, we have "traditional gamers." By and large, they want to celebrate and observe things they enjoy. The want less to create and imagine and more to partake and reinforce. By definition, they're not interested in imagination (Dancey refers to this very specifically.)

On the other side, we have what I'll call the creators. Most started out in traditional RPG circles. Most remain there. Some are frustrated. Some have moved "over here" to story games (the hobby, not necessarily the forum) and indie games.

Unlike their cohorts, these creators are interested in creating and imagination. The don't want to just celebrate and partake in the games. They want to challenge and create them. (An aside: Part of this meant they also wanted to try lots of different games ... and the vast majority of them went frustrated in that effort.)

4) If it's true that particular ages and demographics result in swells of participation in traditional RPGs, doesn't seem reasonable that similar situations lead to swells in indie and story games participation? I don't have ANY verfiable research to compare to Dancey's amazing facts about adolescence and college. But, I'd be willing to put money down on some causes for indie games. My suspect situations for surges in story games and indie games include:

* Late 20s, when friends/gaming groups move into different cities to pursue work. Individuals are "left alone" and turn inward and to the internet for connections. The result is: more individual game design, more online connections.

* In long-term relationships with significant others, diminishing time one can devote to long-term RPG play. It includes either shorter-term play or inclusion of the significant other in play, or both.

* This is less defined, but one of the situations somehow involves a general dissatisfaction with RPGing experiences in the past. The person just gets tired of playing like he or she "used to" and seeks out a change, often leaving a long-standing group to do so. This seems to happen at ages 26-30.

When I look at my indie pals, they all share some of these suspect situations (or did, recently).

(cont'd below)

Something to talk about

This series of posts is long. But, I want to talk about it. I think we need to talk about it, and not just as publishers but as hobbyists and enthusiasts. As creators. There is so much here, and it's not just business stuff. It's people stuff.

So! Let's talk.

First, let's get some stuff out of the way.

There are, clearly, numerous individual exceptions to these trends. I view myself as one, for example. Your anecdotal upbringing isn't particularly interesting to me in this thread, but on the other hand, it might be indicative of a larger trend worth talking about. Talk about that! Try to avoid talking about stuff that is purely personal anecdotes.

Second, there's probably plenty to refute in what I said. Maybe even in what Dancey says. Do so reasonably, please. No one's attacking anyone. Every time -- every friggin' time -- this kind of stuff gets talked about, a shitstorm breaks out. Let's avoid that. We're trying to recognize the state of affairs, not exercising our dick-waving.

I think armchair players, those with great libraries but who haven't played for quite some time, also turn to Indie/Story-game games, and their design.

I don't see that you're taking into account that Ryan Dancey is wrong about everything, but other than that observation I don't see that much which is objectionable, or, indeed, new. Yeah, creating is a different activity than celebrating. We knew that a long time ago, that's why all those years of 'the GM is special!' came about, right?

Hey Matt,

My own personally significant take-away from the Dancey interview was the realization that the frustrations of indie publishers at the traditional hobby games publishers are as mis-applied as the frustrations of traditional hobby games industry notables at indie publishers. We aren't the market disruption that's hurting them, and they and their customers aren't a stony ignorance that thwarts us. The community of gamers has fragmented under the "good enough" distractions of video games and other entertainments. We are designing for the "challenge and create" community that's left incompletely satisfied by these other entertainments. And because, as Dancey says, the partake and reinforce gamers have always been the decider of what games get played, nothing we design warrants the approbation of the traditional hobby games publisher, because nothing we design can bring partake and reinforce gamers back from their other entertainments. So the traditional hobby games publishers are left to their fight for the attention of the shrinking partake and reinforce community. And our adherents can only get a game to happen with non-gamers or others also in the smaller challenge and create community.

Paul

Paul! My god! I can't believe I forgot the world we stumbled on together -- PARTAKE.

I knew I was forgetting something. That word really nailed it for me. I was hoping you'd chime in, because the more I wrote this long post, the less I was confident I remembered our talk accurately.

Otherwise, yes, full agreement with you, if I can ride on your coat-tails about we indies misapplying frustration. I'm guilty of that on many occasions, certainly.

Posted By: JDCorleyI don't see that you're taking into account that Ryan Dancey is wrong about everything, but other than that observation I don't see that much which is objectionable, or, indeed, new. Yeah, creating is a different activity than celebrating. We knew that a long time ago, that's why all those years of 'the GM is special!' came about, right?

Sure. I don't find much of this new stuff, either. It did help me collect some thoughts to talk about, though. Besides the specific insights Ryan shared about those life stages in adolescence and college, the consequences of what he talked about, well, he's been talking about that stuff online in different channels for years. And, he's the first to admit he his information is sort of frozen in time in 2001 or so.

Matt,

I have not had time to read your full post in detail, but I must respond immediately to Ryan Dancey's research. I did a critical review of his research technical and findings several years back and both are extremely suspect. My skim of your thoughts and the responses leads me to think that this won't be a problem, but I urge you to be cautious in reading too deeply into his data-based insights.

Christian, that's an excellent point. It's really difficult to talk about, precisely for the reason you cite. I mean, let's say we profile Jason Morningstar as a story games exemplar ... and then find out the guy would play Memoir '44 with me until the sun goes out (and, really, that sounds fucking awesome to me!). The similar kinds of examples are probably endless. Last I knew, my man Keith Senkowski played WoW every week, so does John Harper. They are hardly antagonistic to story/indie games. So, we talk about big groups as though they have non-fluid characteristics, and fit like pegs in holes. And, they don't.

Other venues ... YES. And, my wish would be that people do a better job of making that happen, both as publishers tapping a market and as people finding new pals.

Posted By: BlueMatt,

I have not had time to read your full post in detail, but I must respond immediately to Ryan Dancey's research. I did a critical review of his research technical and findings several years back and both are extremely suspect. My skim of your thoughts and the responses leads me to think that this won't be a problem, but I urge you to be cautious in reading too deeply into his data-based insights.

Awesome! I have my own reservations about the research. I find certain aspects of the results awfully questionable. I'm no statistician. I am a marketer, professionally. Something in my gut says pieces of it ain't right. So, I'd love to hear whether you think things I'm talking about here are way off base as a result of that. I try to be conservative in my observations for that reason. But, I do indeed make speculations. I'm not claiming otherwise.

Tony: That post explained it for me. Excellent! I'm aiming at a similar design right now myself (my game 44). I think there are several of us out there working on the one-nighter, likely. It makes good design sense, as far as I'm concerned.

Josh,

The funny thing about that Dancey interview that you didn't listen to is that he said that. Specifically, he said it about TSR. They didn't publish what people wanted, they published what they thought people should want. And it killed them.

Matt,

I've had reservations about the MR that Dancey points to as well. In addition to everything Blue is certainly going to say, I'd add that it was done specifically focused on D&D, and that at this point it is years and years old. Really, it was done in 99 right? Like before 3.0, 3.5, WoW, the Forge Booth, the d20 glut, and everything else. Which makes me wonder if even were it accurate when made, how much it is still valid and how much is valid to us out here in the long tail.

My other contribution will be thus: I think there is more overlap between the groups then we're talking about ATM. I know that many folks I play with, have corresponded with, and talk to online do some degree of both. There certainly are data points at clustered at the extreme, but that doesn't mean there isn't a middle connecting them. Plus, one of the reason I like Indie games is a lot of them let me create and participate in more equal measure -- everyone gets to be more GMful and more playerish either at once or in cycles, rather than anyone being stuck in one position all the time.

I think we're in agreement, Jonathan, in most of it. The only catch, for me, is that indie games have historically been something of a parasite on a market that was marshalled together by somebody else. Seriously: we steal players (and customers) from mainstream gaming. Sure, sometimes we get new players and such, but the majority are people who have played D&D, GURPS, or CoC before. If indie games go the "building new markets" route, that's not just writing a new kind of game -- that's writing a new kind of game, perhaps publishing it in a new way, certainly distributing it in a new way, and promoting it in a completely different way. IPR and the Forge Booth are great, but they are baby steps compared to what would need to be done to "build a new market." That's all totally foreign territory -- and I doubt it's something that can be done as anything less than a full-time job fueled by capital investment.

So, really: "build a new market" -- sounds fun, and I'm all for it, but it's a very, very big thing.

I'm trying to think of a parallel example of some relatively large-scale, self-perpetuating leisure activity that is highly creative and collaborative. Something where the participants are creative and yet do not have or require an outside audience to show off their creativity...and I'm coming up totally empty.

Dancing?

Some internet activities come to mind. I know of RPG-related activities, e.g. creating character pages ("chambers"). People can do it on their own, they can do it together, and they can share and admire each other's work.

When I was putting together my gaming group's census data (out of 47 people), I noticed a few things. Check out:

- EXPERIENCE (years): [5] 1, [3] 2-5, [12] 5-10, [22] 10-20, [5] 20+
- GAME MASTER: [23] Often, [6] Sometimes, [18] Never
- MMORPGS: [6] Often, [9] Sometimes, [32] Never

24 out of 29 who have Game Mastered above, also play indie games.
13 out of 18 who have never GMed above, never play indie games.
The 5 above who have never GM but do play indie games, are also new players (playing 1 year or less).
12 out of 15 who play MMORPGS, have never GMed.

I haven't polled this but I believe a huge portion of those who do GM also:
- tend to work, participate, or have interest in some sort of creative field (writing, acting, drawing).
- when not GMing, tend to play characters that have special powers that they can be creative with, such as magic users.

This all loosely reminds me of what Robin Laws wrote here:

DUNGEONS AND OTHER UNSTRUCTURED ADVENTURES
Despite the inroads narrative-oriented games like Call of Cthulhu and Vampire have made over the years, most gamers still cut their teeth on plot-free adventures of exploration, action, and looting. The ultimate expression of this adventure type is the dungeon. Dungeons are great for starting GMs, because they don’t have to worry about plot at all. The plot consists of the arbitrary order in which the PCs decide to knock down doors and beat up the monsters behind them.

Although storyteller types find them utterly unsatisfying, your particular group may like them just fine. One of the big advantages of the unstructured adventure is that it’s dead easy to create. Each area is a discrete and separate unit. You can add a new room to your dungeon complex at any time. You don’t need to weave a complicated plot or worry about dispensing clues at the right rate. You don’t have to play a bunch of different NPCs, keeping their motivations and funny voices straight. Your main concern lies in game balance, in making sure that the adversaries the PCs find behind the doors they bash down are neither too easy or too hard to vanquish, and that they treasures they guard are properly keyed to the characters’ current power level. Any rules set that supports this style of play makes these decisions easy for you.

If you and your players like the dungeon-crawling style of play, let no one convince you that there’s anything wrong with it. It is probably still true that the majority of roleplayers active today prefer unstructured, exploratory adventures. Most roleplayers still play Dungeons and Dragons, and use the dungeon style of play it best supports.

This style is popular because it’s easy to run, and because it perfectly suits butt-kickers, power gamers, most specialists and casual types, and appeals reasonably well to tacticians. However, when storytellers and method actors first encounter plot and characterization, they experience an epiphany and drift off in search of games that better serve them.

A drawback of the unstructured style is that GMs get tired of running it sooner than players tire of playing it. Because the hundredth dungeon encounter you design is more or less like the tenth, the adventure creation process gets monotonous after a while. The ease of the dungeon style turns out to be a mixed blessing, too; many come to find it insufficiently challenging. GMs are disproportionately likely to be storytellers themselves, and want to introduce intricate plots, play weird NPCs, and show off their lovingly detailed worlds.

Joshua - I think gaming does have an audience; it just happens to be the players but as AP becomes more and more recorded, even that will change.

Oh yeah, players=audience I'm all on-board with. I'm just looking for some other thing where that equation held true for more than a generation (ie one round of guys doing it).

AP reports and games intentionally producing transcripts/products is an interesting path to traipse down. Curious.

Posted By: Joshua BishopRobyWhat about the Society for Creative Anachronism?

Josh, the SCA is a many-splendored thing. For most SCA fighting play, there is no non-SCA audience, although public fighting demos are a well-established recruiting practice. This slice of the SCA is very much "a relatively large-scale, self-perpetuating leisure activity that is highly creative and collaborative."

edit: and it's into at least its second generation now.

There are lots of other bits in the SCA that are more like knitting or quilting groups. There's tons and tons of crafty stuff going on in the Society.

Matt,

It's been about seven years since the original survey, so I had a hard time tracking down my original document. The link below reproduces it in total.

Needless to say, Ryan Dancey did not much appreciate my critique. And here, nearly a decade later, I am wishing I had spent more time editting.
That said, reviewing the text, I still find the concerns valid. In my current role, a good 25-50% of my time dedicated to survey research and my current perspective doesn't change my opinion.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.moderated/msg/cf3a3df9886c0840?

Now that I am home and the kids are off to bed, I will read the thread in more detail and comment more in a sepearate entry.

I'm going to start randomly calling numbers and asking if they play story games.

I turned to Indie games in my 30's, and not due to any dearth of opportunity to play. It had to do with me wanting to give Brand a chance to play games he was interested in, and to equitably support his games the way he supported mine.

I did settle down with an SO, and this resulted in more and longer games than I'd been playing before. It did however make for smaller, more focus game groups in general as my appetite for 5+ player games diminished.

I did however turn away some of the behavior of previous groups. My game tastes matured earlier (probably because I'm a slight bit older) than some folks I was playing with, and this did demand several changes in the kinds of games I play, who I play them with and how I approach them.

I do think we're overstating the divide between trad and indie games as demographics. I mean, when I look over on the Your Gaming Census thread, I see a whole lot of games of both stripes represented, and only three people who report playing exclusively indie games.

I do think John has a big point around GMing and hippy games as a possible pointer. Even though Brand had been trying to get me to engage in hippy games for about a year before I did, it was only when I started pointing my efforts towards GMing that I started to really plug in, and it wasn't playing the games that made me focus on them, but thinking about the possibility of running them. Even when I started GMing, I went to a trad game first, and it was after that experience that hippy games became more appealing. Also, their indie-ness rather than their nar-ness or their forge-ness or their hippy-ness that got me more interested, because their indie-ness made me think about how different approaches to design could support different playstyles. It was only after that that I really got into things and learned that I had a love on for Dogs and for keys in TSOY, and for a handful of other things out there.

I personally think that hippy games (not all, but by and large) are daunting to the people out there that don't GM. They break down trad GM constructs to re-distribute power and responsibility to the whole group. This in itself is a terrific thing, but it doesn't provide, by and large, any real training or support for those folks who never had those skills in the first place. What's more, in doing so, it can muck around with redistribution of power without regard for the playstyles that have been working for a lot of non-GM's for a long time.

Oh, and JBR: You have hurt my heart very badly. You made a cheese reference. I didn't know your soul was dead. I'll be sure to send flowers to Laura. Poor thing, she.

Posted By: RoninZombieCall me an optimist, but I think the audience for story games can only grow larger as time passes.

I foresee something akin to what David said about skateboards. The mid-tier, RPG-only company is going to die (hence Chris Pramas' general angst). We'll then have the WotCs and WWs making the big, shiny stuff you can find at Barnes & Noble at one end, and the Rons and Lukes doing the DIY thing at the other. And I think this is going to really good for everyone who enjoys RPGs.

The remaining issue is that the Green Ronins and Hero Games of the world need to figure out at which end they want to take up residence.

Generally, I’m sitting here and nodding my head to what Matt and many others are saying, except for one thing. Gamers, even gamer-partakers are creative and imaginiative. They create their characters, and some of them go into a great detail over backstory and exposition. They regularly come up with imaginative solutions to problems in-game. And they enjoy both of these activities, in tabletop and MMO play. Failing to recognise these traits is missing the market. I think Tony nailed some of this right at the beginning of the thread.

Even so, most players do not enjoy being the GM, because GMing requires a much broader skillset. For example, active listening, resolving disagreements between players, world creation, incorporating other people’s input and building upon it. I think this is exactly why story-gaming appeals more to GMs than non-GMs, it also hits those skills full-on. For non-GMs, it’s hard work.

There are also people who would be attracted to the worldbuilding and creative riffing that story games encourage, if it wasn’t for all those rules and dice. Many of these end up in LARP or IRC freeform gaming because the rules get in the way less.

So yes, there is a divide – but it may not be the divide that Dancey (and many of us) think it is.

Other things to consider: a lot of GM skills could be considered to be management skills (as in skills that a good manager of other people should have). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that corporate “role-plays” are still popular (with the companies at least. Maybe not so much with the staff, who are unlikely to be attending the role-play of their own free will.)

Also, young children also exhibit a lot of these skills, and (I believe) are often far better negotiators and team workers than adolescents.

Finally, I think that the “evolution” from traditional gaming to story gaming is similar to the evolution of traditional classroom teaching (I talk, you listen and reply) into trainee-led workshops (I facilitate, you talk).

So, what does this mean for the (real or perceived) story gaming market? Firstly, there are some design considerations, many of which we are familiar with. If you want to reach out into the wider market, it is generally a good idea to make sure that your games:

1) Have rules that are easy to learn and drop into the background during play.
2) Provide active support for creative expression and interaction between players.
3) Have an interesting setting or premise that people will want to add their own fiction to.

Secondly, marketing. If you ever want story gaming to hit the big time, you have to get away from the adolescent audience (who are more interested in self-expression) and towards the child and adult audiences (who are more interested in group expression.) This is of course a massive generalisation and please forgive me for it, especially if you are of a certain age!

We're all colored by our experiences, so here's why I don't buy the doom and gloom.

In the Eighties I started going to Hardcore/Punk shows. In the pit I could get elbowed by all types of folks; A goth kid with mascara and a leather skirt, a kid with spike bracelets and a Mohawk, a kid with a chainmail shirt and a jean jacket with the sleeves ripped off and a Metallica patch on the back, a kid with a black leather jacket and a hand painted Ministry album cover on the back, a Skin, a Suicidal, a pre-Riot Grrrrl, a regular looking kid, blah blah blah. All types of people. Kids liked what we built, and as more entered the "scene" eventually disparate groups branched off and built their own thing. Even Hardcore got somewhat separated from Punk Rock. Today Hardcore and Punk Rock do not display this diversity. They are stratified and established. Evolution comes slow now, but their size hasn't changed. It goes through cycles, but overall it's stable. However, there are so many more options for the weird kids, outside of Hardcore, than there were then.

To me it seems the same with RPG's. There are so many more people who enjoy controlling their protagonist, having some control over their imaginary life. MMORPG's, to a lesser extent video games in general, traditional games, LARP, Story Games, and whatever comes next. Think about MMO's and LARP's. There are whole groups of people involved in those mediums who would have never played a traditional game, because they would have lost tragic points or gained geek points.

So if Clyde's theory of Punk Rock Gaming is true, the Traditional games aren't going anywhere, as long as they evolve slowly, and they are. D+D 3E is evolution, rumors of 4E being announced at Gen Con, White Wolf is evolving. Mid tier game companies have always come and later folded. I think we may see a stable market for Traditional Games, but I don't think they're going away. Companies are unlikely to appreciate stability, and I think that's their major threat to themselves.

I'd also like to mention that if the majority of people are not creative or imaginative, then it would be really hard to deprotagonize them, since they have no creative vision to hold on to. If players are just consumers they'd be more likely to take what they're given, and this just doesn't seem to hold water to me. I think some folks are mistaking narrative and plot control for creativity. I think creativity is a bit larger than that.

Hey, uh, Curly?

Posted By: Call Me CurlyWhy is that? Is it because they discover something great and worthwhile in rpgs?

Or, sadly, is it because those players continue to lead lives which lack in Real World satisfaction; and so Imaginary, Surrogate satisfaction remains the best they can obtain? Is that the true core of the rpg hobby?

While I'm not above prodding the lumpen to re-evaluate their lives, either... that statement would probably have been more useful if you had tied it in with the rest of your argument about consume/create groups.


I fully expect that this whole "issue" (and maybe I'm not understanding it correctly) ultimately boils down to deeper values about "consumer-driven" vs. "creator-driven" culture in general, and I really don't know what's gonna change anyone's attitudes about that. Watching people argue about it like it's some peculiarity that occurs only in table-top gaming is sorta twisted.

Posted By: Call Me CurlyHowever, I did suggest that the other segment-- people who particularly-do enjoy imagining-- may exemplify the core of the hobby.
In that their passion for imagining may be due to lack of means to create in the Real World. Whether due to lack of mobility and cash (like a student)
or due to other, lifelong factors-- which limit their ability to create in Reality.

Could it perhaps fulfill a need more like that of the casual guitar strummer or the painter that only paints for their own enjoyment, rather than any fame or cash? Not everyone is cut-out for even modest recognition in creative fields, yet it seems kind of a shame to completely give up on creative activities because of that.

Go Mark!

Mark wrote: Also, young children also exhibit a lot of these skills, and (I believe) are often far better negotiators and team workers than adolescents.
Mark, have you read "Lord of the Flies"?
i don't buy that children have better imaginations than adults do.

Larry,

I can't decide whether the differences between your summary and my actual point are significant-enough to dwell on.

Posted By: Christoph
Regarding WoW: I don't think that gamers play it for the story. They play it for killing the monsters, looting the huge dungeons and especially developing a cool character over time. The fact that this can be done with other human players to which you can show your character (and that you know they will be able to appreciate) is a huge boost.
At least that's why my friends play, even if some appreciate the "roleplay" that happens from time to time (which from what I've seen is a lot of showing off and little story, often used in recruitment).

Bah. They do it to compare their e-penises. I've been playing MMORPGs since 2000, and I can tell you that's what the games are all about. How big's your weapon? How many hit points you got? What are your resistances? Is the same thing no matter what game, and I've played just about all of them. MMORPGs satisfy the gaming need for the kind of person who A) likes killing monsters and taking their stuff, B) can't find any play group in their area but want *something* like roleplay, C) are computer game-aholics, or D) loves to compare himself to others and see how superior he is.

Peace,

-Troy

>>If indie games go the "building new markets" route, that's not just writing a new kind of game -- that's writing a new kind of game, perhaps publishing it in a new way, certainly distributing it in a new way, and promoting it in a completely different way. IPR and the Forge Booth are great, but they are baby steps compared to what would need to be done to "build a new market." That's all totally foreign territory -- and I doubt it's something that can be done as anything less than a full-time job fueled by capital investment.<<

I suspect you are right. At least by any one publisher being so successfull at it that they revolutionize the hobby and industry all by themselves. However, on a smaller scale, the Guild of Blades has made its bread and butter on non traditionally sales channels and incomes for the last half decade. So its possible to move in that direction and be succesful at it. Its just a matter of scale. We have a few large budget initiatives on the books for the relaunch of our Dark Realms RPG, but yeah, the lowest budget among them requires a capital investment to the tune of about $150,000. We'll make that investment too, but we are working on fleshing out the plan and minimizing our risks in case it doesn't go over as successfully as we intend at first. If the program goes over well enough at first, that initial investment of $150K will be rolled over quarterly to keep the program rolling continuously. But like any business decision, we have to make it make fiscal sense to green light in the first place.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com

Thats easy. Going to print 1,000,000 copies of a full color introductory edition of the game that is fully playable and then going to seed that production run across as much of the core market as I can. Once we get our legs under us with that program, we'll print another million and will seed it through a non core channel. Then another million and through another channel and so on and so forth until we've literally saturated as much of America and Europe that we can and still make the program meet its goals.

There is a LOT more to that plan than that, but some of it we sort of want to surprise the market with, so want to keep it quite until we're ready to go ahead with the full plan. One just has to ask ones self on how you can get independent retailers and mass market chains invested in working with you to distribute the intro games and how we might turn that into a both a profit for us and strategic long term placement for the brand we want.

Going to be a heck of a lot of work...

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the feedback.

>>Ryan, with all due respect, I think you're wildly over-estimating the possible market.<<

Not really. There are somewhere between 2-6 million active or lapsed D&D players out there. Thoery (not mine) on statistics and human behavoir suggests that 3% of any population is the average "deviant" variant any any topic. Meaning an "average" of 3% will believe that something that the rest of us would consider to be completely crazy, is in fact, true. Such as that they were abducted by aliens, that the very existance of Europe is a massive government conspiracy, etc. That suggests that with sufficient marketing reach to put an idea in front of an entire population, even if yur product is totally cracked, you should be able to win over 3%. Extremely cracked ideas might fair a bit worse, such as 1-2%. I don't believe role playing as a form of entertainment is cracked and believe the upper limit of its potential impact should be running 5-8% of the populace or maybe even a bit more....with the marketing reach to reach the whole populace. That means in the US alone that potential audience is in the 14 million to 23 million range. The big trick and its the BIG trick, is developing the marketing reach to reach them all.

>>I do not see your product far eclipsing unit sales moved by, say, Wizards of the Coast,<<

WOTC with D&D gets the sales it has for two reasons. It has the most successful RPG mostly by virtue of having the first RPG. As such, its player network has always been the largest and by extension, its ability to recruit new players to its system has been the greatest, even with less than stellar marketing programs at work. Its the natural dynamic at work. No publisher, regardless of how well funded they are, can enter the market and outsell WOTC by just making a competitive game and advertising it. Its quite impossible. The only way ANY publisher, large or small, will EVER be able to compete with D&D will be to create a game that GETS PLAYED as much or more than D&D. From that point, they have a chance to equal or eclipse it, if they manage their distribution properly.

>> even if you actually give it away as a marketing effort (I advise against that, as the perceived value of your product by customers will be poor).<<

Don't worry, we're not giving the full game away. What we will be giving away is what amounts to a 24 page "introductory edition" which does contain all the basic core rules, character generation, user races, basic GM advice, etc. The full game will be sold online and through our retailers. The basic game give players enough to play even without buying anything else and thats the whole point.

>> If you do intend it as a marketing effort, make certain you have a percentage of return and well-founded reason to believe that is accurate. For example, direct mail campaigns by major magazines devoted to hobbyists and enthusiasts consider a 1% rate of return an extraordinary success. I suspect you will not consider that sufficient, as an example.<<

We test marketing a similar event about 5 years ago. Partnered with two local comic shops to give about 2000 core rules to a very basic RPG system away. We kept those comic shops well stocked with the various supplements for the game and it made for a great return on investment. More, we attempted to track the number of active gamer's the promotion either won over from existing gamers or by creating new gamers and the results were very encouraging. Most of those gains were made in the teen audiences, but thats just fine by us. People wedded to a favorite RPG system aren't likely to be won over easily or exclusively, so the future lies with the next generation to enter the RPG field. We do hope to achieve a 2-5% attraction rate, which means that 2-5% of the number of games given away will turn into that many RPG players utilizing the game system. If we can actually turn a total of 1% into purchases of the printed game box set we plan to offer, that would be a great outcome. But the financial success of the project does not depend on it.

>>Please consider listening to much advice on this topic, and deliberately seek it out from experienced publishers in and out of the hobby. It would be a huge mistake to dismiss critiques of your extremely, extremely ambitious plans as ignorant naysayers. I am profoundly skeptical you will achieve your aims. This is me, advising you respectfully, that you are likely to lose money on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars.<<

I thank you for the advice. We like to regard ourselves as experienced publishers too, since we've been at it since 1994. In that time we've published well over 200 titles and have never failed to turn a profit on a SKU that we have released (albeit, some accessories or less than stellar selling titles turned very meager profits). As we've grown as a publisher our needs to find new ways to publish to achieve stronger revenues and open up new methods of distribution have grown. At present, after more or less abandoning RPG publishing for more than half a decade (we kept one small scale RPG line in print, but with only marginal support) in favor of our board games and more recently MMO computer games, we've returned with a hard analysis of the RPG market and come to realize if we're seriously going to re-enter it, it needs to be with a plan that can build our brand into a viable market competitor. No disrespect to any indie published titles here, but just making a very innovative and beautiful game can't do that. Sure, you can develope a core fan base that is extremely loyal and sell enough to be profitable, but you can never sell enough that way to be a direct competitor for the role of market leader. No RPG can. Not even those published by SJGames, Palladium, White Wolf, etc. Not by sales alone. Market forces make it impossible. The only way to escape that reality is to do a side step around the existing market forces.

Don't worry. We're not betting the farm on this one. And actually, short putting up the capital to get the venture rolling, is actually a self sustaining model without selling a single copy of the core box set. There are a multitude of revenue streams involved here, most of which we can't really explain here in full detail. Well, we "can", but really can not. Sort of like trade secrets for the moment. But not so much that we have to stay tight lipped to the point that I can not at least suggest to the publishers here that there ARE other business models for publishing RPGs than can be pursued.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com

Hi Matt,

>>I would think the marketing budget required to see the 5%-10% rate of return (which is HUGE) you'd need to sell all the copies of your game is going to be WAY beyond the $150,000 you mentioned earlier.<<

A 5-10% response rate would be unrealistic to be sure. As I mentioned above we project a 2-5% attraction rate with the first printing. That means 1 million copies put into the market would translate into 20k to 50k people who begin to play the game. We expect the vast majority of those to be younger teens, but perhaps some will go to existing core gamers as well. I said based on looking at the current and lapsed D&D player base and general behavoir statistics my estimate is that IF an amazingly powerful marketing campaign was run to expose the idea of role playing games to EVERYONE in the US was conducted that the concept would be accepted by somewhere between 14 mil to 23 mil total people. I make no claim that our marketing idea or the system behind the marketing idea will reach that many people. As far as comprehensive marketing outreach programs go, I think we've designed a good one. But in the grand sceme of things, merely the opening volley.
To make further gains we'll have to do additional print runs in the million range and find new stores and venues to distribute them through to find those potential new players.

>>There are more reasons than this.<<

Honestly, not really. I mean, its not a bad game, but in my opinion there are many better, including games with systems and themes that would actually be better positioned to win new converts. BUT...back when D&D was released, the idea and game were revolutionary. And because it was first to present a revolutionary concept, it grew to be the "The Market". All other games have lived in its shadow. Being first was a HUGE advantage. Nearly unsurmountable. Which, by the way, is by no means a market dynamic exclusive to role playing games or games in general. In "most" markets, the first product or service that is a revolutionary new concept that forges a market becomes king. Its develops the brand name most associated with that idea. All competitors to enter the market later invariably get compared to the first and must market themselves as an alternative. The simple process of doing that reinforces the power and reach of the market leader. It requires the market leader to totally and completely mismanage its brand (or go out of business) for a competitor to eclipse it. For instance, in the later 90's when TSR almost went down, if someone like WOTC had not stepped up to buy D&D, its possible Vampire and WOD might have eventually overtaken D&D as the market leader (though likely, leader over a smaller market for a good while to come). The only other way to beat out a market leader is market around them to forge a whole new market that the market leader has failed to reach itself (either geographically or demographically).

>>Ryan, is there a particular region in which your products are especially popular? I ask simply because, despite having been very active in online RPG communities for the last ten years I have never heard of nor seen any of your products before. (Save possibly Button Wars, which sounds familiar. I could be getting it confused with Diskwars.)<<

Our RPG lines had included the Dark Realms RPG Universe, WHAT? Customizable RPG and Heroes Forever RPG. None of our RPG lines were overly successful, though each has its core following and has been profitable. Presently only the Heroes Forever RPG remains in print. The other two are more or less getting merged into one for our intended relaunch for our new RPG business model. Button Wars was modestly successful for a short while in 1st Ed. as a collectible game and has been profitable and stable in its second, non collectible edition. The Guild's most successful product lines have been our board games, with our Empires of History line of strategy board games being the company's bread and butter. Our board games are not hex and counter wargames, so we've always enjoyed much stronger results in marketing to general historical enthusiasts than to the existing wargame audiences. Which sort of harkens back to my arguement above. The entrenched historical war game players all have their favorite companies and systems already. Its VERY difficult for a new company to enter that market and compete with the market leaders for the attention of consumers who alread have their favorite brands. It took us a few years to figure that out, but we've enjoyed much greater successes since we learned it was more important to market to new consumers.

>>I have no idea how this is possible, but if so, I'm glad to see your company is secure.<<

Well, I can't really go into full details and leave there something to be a surprise for the market. :) But in business there are MANY ways to generate revenue. There are many different business plans involved with the distribution of physical goods. In addition to physical goods sales, there are other ways to generate income from the distribution of physical goods and from the development of an intellectual property. I have often thought the bulk of the RPG industry is stuck in a VERY small box when it comes to creative business structuring which has left all involved mostly incapable of developing stable businesses and unnecessarily limited the distribtion of RPG.

>>Can you tell us something about the game? You mentioned races; is this a FRPG in the vein of D&D? If so, what differentiates it?<<

The core game is a FRPG, but the system can and is planned to support multiple genres. We're (re) starting with the fantasy genre because its the more generally accepted gaming genre (ala, World of Warcraft and others). I am not sure I would say its in the vein of D&D as the core game neither uses classes or levels. Its a system that runs on only D6's and in thoery can be played with a single D6, but runs smoother with a few more. Its very easy to learn and has a free form system to allow players to generate their own skills and spells. Of the RPG systems we've published, this one proved by a large margin to be the most popular, hence why it will be the one we support big time moving forward. But let me be clear, while the game system has some unique traits and has been well recieved, we do NOT think it is some sort of revolutionary leap forward in the concept of RPG game design or anything like that. Its a good system, easy to learn, very flexible, small in core page content, and can be run off of a D6, which makes it perfect for mass distribution for the sort of marketing campaign we're going to be initiating to present it to the masses.

I can give you a link to a _OLD_ pdf download of the game, but don't judge it too harshly on presentation. Most everyone will be redone in preparation for its relaunch. What is in PDF format presently is merely a fan generated PDF layout of the old first edition content and something we put online back in 2001-2002 to run a file download experiment. Most of the core game mechanics remain the same, but most everything else is getting dressed down and rebuilt. You can download a copy of the old PDF at the link below:
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Games/Text_Role_Playing_Games/Worlds_of_Heroes___Tyrants_Epic_Adventure_Game.html

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com

Joshua's post is troubling in its truth. We are reaching market saturation. We don't really create tools, the tool games sell and keep selling, but we create new ways to apply the tools. For a new game to sell, it may very well need to have new tools rather than new ways to apply them.
http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=2430&page=1#Item_19.

http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=2430&page=1#Item_23
Except most Indie publishers write the games, and would write them even if there was no money in it, and moving means they're in it for the money. In a way.
But I think Mr. Walton is wrong about us moving to new pastures, there'll be new indies for that.

http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=2430&page=1#Item_29 I disagree, you do it for an outside audience, of the other people participating in said activities.

http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=2430&page=1#Item_30 Brilliant.

http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=2430&page=1#Item_33 What the fuck?
I mean, really.

http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=2430&page=1#Item_39 Custom versus factory made, this post is solid gold.
BTW, I think this is why GameCraft enjoys a small amount of participation, but is invaluable, because there people work on designing new tools, even seperate from games.
Like the person who posted "Trust" on the Forge, which later became part of CoS and the Core of tMW.

http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=2430&page=2#Item_9 If Cristoph were 100% right, there wouldn't be Roleplay channels that are IC only.

JBR, I think your Doom And Gloom is only true if indie game designers prove as conservative as mass-market roleplaying publishers in adapting to a new market and/or new areas of creative opportunity. I have a large amount of faith that many indie RPG designers are ready to make the jump to whatever comes next for us.

One of the real strengths of being an indie pub is that you have such low overhead that you can afford to be flexible. Conservatism is a function of entrenchment in industry: if my company has to pay millions of dollars to buy an up to date database for my workers, we will instead stick with the one operating on DOS. If I've only got 3 workers, I'll upgrade every year and move to the innovative systems when I can. Closer to home, doing what White Wolf has done is risky. By doing the reboot to their setting they are basically making obselete the investment people have made in their systems. I'm sure they will get plenty of new purchases from it, but nonetheless it was a risky move. It's why Film Studios do so many film versions of novels. It's less of a risk to re-tread proven material than to try something new when you're already deeply invested.

So, indie means small and maneuverable. Tailor made to shift with changes in technology, form innovation and user preference.

The parasite comment also struck me as misguided. What indie games are, instead, is a niche market. Small producers have a huge advantage over large mass-market producers, if they can find a niche and provide a unique product that is too difficult or expensive to be produced at a mass scale. The more the small producers try to capture the mass market, the less they are able to fulfill the needs of their (real) target audience, and the more they come into competition with cats that are way out of their scale. Custom skateboards as a metaphor are right on.

And as far as changes necessarily putting small producers a form out of business, think about indie mini-comics. How many people had read them outside of maker/user circles in the 80s/90s? Few. Now think about the audiences for webcomics. Huge.

Posted By: Emily CareThe parasite comment also struck me as misguided.

It may have a negative connotation but it's true to the extent that indie games depend on people who've already been drawn to the hobby by "mainstream" games, either as a first-order market or as a "vector" for introducing non-gamers. When you start having non-gamers spontaneously pick up indie games off the shelf and playing them, and people without "mainstream" experience bringing in non-gamers, then indie games become self-sustaining. I don't think things have quite reached that point.

At best it's commensalism. At present, indies thrive on a market created by the big companies. Arguably that's also true of most "mid-tier" outfits, indie or not.

(Edit: What I described is commensalism, at best. Symbiosis covers a bunch of relationships, including those deleterious, helpful, and neutral to either or both parties.)

I can't quote for some reason, anyway, Talysman said:

"Given that, we shouldn't be in denial about this significant majority of gamers, nor should we be dismissive. Instead, consider this: can you design a game that allows creativity for those who so desire, but which supports the vast majority of gamers?"

The game that strikes me as notably doing this is D&D. Bear with me a moment.

D&D can be played without any roleplaying at all, it can be played as a pure tactical boardgame, in which one player references a pre-purchased adventure containing locations and encounters while the other players maneouver their play pieces through the same seeking to survive and prosper. Basically, a game like Descent.

D&D can also be played as a game in which the engine serves to support play, but the core of play is the creation by one or more participants of a world and story that speaks to them.

Note, in the same group, one or more players could be interested in using it as a tool to create content, a tool for generating their own fantasy epics that speak to them, while others in the same group could be treating it as an elaborate boardgame.

I think part of the success of D&D historically, aside from the obvious advantages of being first and having immense brand recognition, is precisely that it requires no creativity at all but permits the expression of creativity fairly easily. In particular, within the same group it is easy for some players to be using it as a creativity enabler while others are using it as a source of prepackaged content.

Other games could do the same thing, but most don't, D&D is actually slightly unusual in the extent to which it permits utterly uncreative play. The essential point is that the game can be played with no roleplaying at all, that you can play it as a boardgame should that be your wish without anyone creating any actual content of their own. Once you have that, I think you have a game with potential to bridge a consumer/creator gap.

I'm not sure if any indie games currently manage that divide, I think vanishingly few trad games do. Most require someone at some stage to create their own content to at least a minimal degree, D&D doesn't necessarily.

Edit: This isn't rpg.net so hopefully this won't be an issue, but to be clear I'm saying that a strength of D&D is that it can be played with no creative input, I am not saying in the slightest that people who do play D&D actually make no creative input. This isn't a slam on D&D players or saying they suxxors while storygames rule (again, hopefully not necessary to state here, but I'd hate to derail things with someone passionately defending D&D from an attack that wasn't being made).

Posted By: Mark WI think that's pretty insightful about D&D, Max. Current D&D is a lot less friendly to that sort of thing that past forms, though - a lot of the folks at ENWorld and elsewhere lament the tendency of the Rules As Written to produce a particular "D&D Genre" of play that doesn't suit their aesthetics, and also find that the tight interdependency of the rules makes tinkering very difficult without upsetting balance. To a large extent, though, the OGL has come to the rescue there. You can buy umpty D&D variants, but they're still "D&D."

Mark, I broadly agree with your additional comment there, I think it's because D&D is now being explicitly aimed at a consumer audience more than was historically the case. Historically I think it was a bit of an accident it worked that way, whereas now we have a company with a research and marketing budget looking at how to adapt the game so as to maximise sales. That leads to different outcomes by its nature.

Edit: Put another way, WotC would probably be happy if nobody played the game at all if in the process somehow it shifted more units, whereas Vincent Baker (to take a basically random example) would not I suspect be happy to churn out content aimed at sales rather than play. Happily, for now at least, WotC sees the money being in play rather than collection, which view I think they are correct in.

Edit 2, the sequel. Rather depressingly, I was originally going to cite Chaosium rather than Vincent Baker, then I remembered how much of their stuff was written by people who don't play and realised it probably wasn't true of them in the way it was for Vincent. Rather a tangential point, but a depressing one given my fondness for CoC.