I'm not entirely sure you can engineer a Blue Ocean Strategy, and ( after being challenged by someone in the original RPGnet thread on insular design on this point), I'm starting to conclude that there is no Blue Ocean Strategy at all for RPGs.

OTOH, you might be able to bumble into a Blue Ocean situation with an activity that is fun, possibly even addictive, that has elements of RPGs, and then discover a way to make cash off it, if that is (or becomes) your goal.

Here's my thinking:
People are lazy.
People have little free time.
Peope enjoy getting together with their friends for social occasions, like a party.
People enjoy light competition, but not serious competition.
People enjoy engaging with common cultural touchstones (liked a shared favorite tv show, book, movie, music)
People all want a bit of the spotlight, to be a star even if for only a few minutes with friends.
People enjoy playing with known stuff, especially cliches/genres/tropes, whateveah.

(where "People" equals at least me ;-) )

So, let's see. If I was making a game with those things in mind, plus my baggage of being a gamer, I'd throw a party and combine it with a game. Further, I'd theme it based on a sitcom that we all knew. I'd print up pix of the actors in their roles, and put their names on them, and maybe some really quick write ups about them on the back. Then, when people chose their characters, they'd tape or pin the pic to their shirt front.

The game than is nothing more than playing out a hypothetical episode of that show. I'd probably start with some basic stuff ( as host, why not at least get things rolling?). I dunno, play it in "scenes", with the major mechanic being that players not in the scene could shout suggestions and the active players try to incorporate them or do their own thing while doing their best impression of the character/actor from the real show. Enter of other characters on whim into the scene, provided they give context.

And I'd keep the scenes short, maybe even just use a timer. We break. Everyone then breaks, drinks more, and comes up with ideas for the next scene and turns them in. Short stuff, like on a 3x 5 card. Hand em into someone, who then picks one or more and sets up the next scene with what has already happened in mind.

Repeat process a few times. Drink more. End that sucker, and wind down the "themed part" of the evening's activity. Go drink.

A few minutes after the cool down, give some sort of recognition by popular acclaim. Rounds of applause.

More Drinking.

Now, before everyone is totally smashed, the host gets attention of party-goers, and challenges someone else to throw the next shindig in a similar vein.

Taaa-daa! There, now you have the basis for a game for the masses. Go ye forth and steal from Friends and Seinfeld and 'Allo, 'Allo.

Where's the money?
I dunno. Make it a fad. Sell crap to make it easier to play:series guides, cool screen shots of the actors, episode starter sheets and decks of idea cards gearded towards a particular show.

Host the game at a bar you own or work at and rake in tips ( hell, it works for Pub Quiz nights and midnight shows of Rocky Horror), host it as a party at the same venue that hosts cheesy stand up nights and get the audience involved, switching player-to-role with audience members ( get free drinks or food or a cut from the door), whatever.

Or, make up your own never-made sitcom and your your own fad. Hook up with a decent cartoonist and put up a website. Let people play the sitcom characters with their own local group and record it, turn it in in some fashion. Then pick the episode you like best that was turned in, get the artist to draw it up, and it becomes part of the building canon. When you start getting a lot of hits, sell advert space. ( Come to think of it, you could almost do something similar with Lady Blackbird. Hmmm)

Is it roleplaying? Sure. Storygaming? Mebbe. A game? Well, there'd be competition and social recognition and a bit of structure, so I'd call it one.

Would it call the masses into the Red Ocean of RPGs?

Doubt it, but really who cares if a bunch of folks are having fun with it?

Posted By: komradebobI'm not entirely sure you can engineer a Blue Ocean Strategy, and ( after being challenged by someone in the original RPGnet thread on insular design on this point), I'm starting to conclude that there is no Blue Ocean Strategy at all for RPGs.

I do think that creating a Blue Ocean on purpose is iffy at best, but I have a hard time with the idea that there can't be one for RPGs. If we can't think of something, or if it turns out to be something we don't want to call an RPG, that's our limitations.

What advantages and disadvantages are there to using the term RPG for a game/activity, Neko Ewen?

Could always stick with the coined term Stkry Games I think to seperate from rpg would be a potentialy beneficiL thing as for example it would define the hobby from video game rpgs. This could make it easier (in time) for people to find these niche groups without digging through video game forums.

Vampire is probably the best example case here.

If you want to find the new Blue Ocean, follow the sketchy maps of previous explorers. So... what's the most recent innovation in "RPGs" that had a shot at mainstream? The Murder Mystery Dinner Party games. THERE'S some of your hook. But most of them lack any real "role playing" or even creativity: you mill about reading off cards to each other until someone figures out which way the railroad is heading and guesses the murderer. We disdain the in the LARP RPG.net forum, even as we jealously look on at their shelf presence in WalMarts and Toys R Us.

And you are wise to take into account media. The DVD has a GREAT interface tool for the masses, and it can easily be used as a springboard for a game. And it's easier to get folks to watch a DVD for 30 minutes than to read 100 pages of rules text, that's for sure. Get 'em showing off their $1000 flatscreen TVs to the Joneses, and you have a "social" activity (as the wise man said: "demented and sad, but social").

Robert's got a good line on the generalities: people are lazy, fearful of the new, and wanting to lord over others. Mostly. In America, at least. So forget about crunch, radical innovations, and collaboration. Bring World of Warcraft (et al) to the coffee or kitchen table and call it a day and head for the bank.

We are, let's face it, a rare and creative breed. Artists, in a nutshell. How many "average masses" pursue ANY sort of art? Now...

...how many purse a hobby or craft? Can we find blue ocean in a craft-like pursuit that's very similar to existing hobbies, but not so similar that they're mere derivatives? Can we "drift" the hobby-like pursuits of the "average Joe" to something closer to our art form?

Posted By: David ArtmanWe are, let's face it, a rare and creative breed. Artists, in a nutshell. How many "average masses" pursue ANY sort of art? Now...

...how many purse a hobby or craft? Can we find blue ocean in a craft-like pursuit that's very similar to existing hobbies, but not so similar that they're mere derivatives? Can we "drift" the hobby-like pursuits of the "average Joe" to something closer to our art form?

Actually, I was thinking more about drifting more towards the other direction ;-D

Also, somehow get sex into the mix. Like, answer this question: "How does this activity help me meet cutes?"

If you can get the activity to somehow help with social lubrication and getting singles together, you'd better buy a wheelbarrow, 'cause you're gonna need it to cart your money to the bank.

Hell, that was the really real success story of VtM and Vamp larping: Geeks meeting other geeks and getting laid.

Chris, a few years ago there was a company marketing a card game you play at Vampire LARPs that also amounted to a party/dating/sex game. I wish I could find the flyer, and I haven't seen them again for a while. Basically you could play cards on other player characters, and most had some sort of naughty or sexual theme to them.

That was an interesting attempt to find a market within a market by combining LARPing with Magic-esque cards and a good sized dose of fetish thrown in.

Posted By: Ben LehmanVampire is probably the best example case here.

I'll agree here, to some degree. Vampire reached beyond the RPG market by tying into an up-and-coming fad. It attracted a lot of new people to rpgs, most notably women, but not exclusively so.

Vampire accomplished this by not just being trendy and timely, but by being evocative, by suggesting romanticism. I won't get into the argument as to how well it did or didn't play out in-game. It's enough to recognize that the suggenstion of romanticism worked in enticing people to try a new activity. Was this a strategy? Or was it merely the people involved in making the game getting into something they thought was cool that happened to take off at the right time? I suspect it was more the latter.

Yes, it lost some of those same new players later, but that's a different discussion.

Posted By: Ben LehmanI actually think any active blue-ocean market strategy is probably doomed.

That could well be, but I still think that the kinds of questions suggested in Blue Ocean Strategy can lead us to new and interesting places.

For example, what is it that keeps a lot of people from giving RPGs a chance? How can we take those factors out and still provide a compelling experience?

Aren't these already in use? "Chuck out the GM, use computers instead" has been a pretty successful blue ocean for RPG's - turning into the computer games industry. And "let's try dressing up and lose the dice" has captured a new crowd of LARPers.

Posted By: Neko Ewen

Posted By: Ben LehmanI actually think any active blue-ocean market strategy is probably doomed.

That could well be, but I still think that the kinds of questions suggested in Blue Ocean Strategy can lead us to new and interesting places.

For example, what is it that keeps a lot of people from giving RPGs a chance? How can we take those factors out and still provide a compelling experience?

Absolutely. It's an interesting space to explore for inspiration, regardless.

Graham is pretty right, though. I don't think it's about taking things out, but about putting them in.

yrs--
--Ben

Actually, I hated that comic. The population of people who don't play RPG's vastly outnumbers the population of people who do. That alone means that a Blue Ocean Strategy could easily exist.

I think the reasons why RPG's haven't gotten mass appeal has a lot to do with their history, emerging from wargaming. Most RPG's to this day have a lot of crunch. As my wife has described her experience with D&D 3.5, "Yeah, math homework—totally my idea of a fun night out."

I think a lot of story games already have the potential to compete with Monopoly, rather than simply gazing up at the starry sky set by a small fry like Dungeons & Dragons. Traditional RPG's limit themselves to a very nerdy subset: the kinds of people who enjoy volumes of inscrutable details, and looking up tables for hit locations and damage dealt. I think simple, immersive games could really make a hit.

Why haven't they?

On the one hand, I think a certain amount of the blame has to fall on us, the people who play and design story games. We've suffered from a lack of ambition. We've accepted that as indie gamers, we'll always have just a fringe of the fringe market of RPG's in general, itself a fringe of gaming in general. So, we've concentrated on trying to pitch to other gamers. But gamers have self-selected themselves already for the kinds of people who enjoy volumes of inscrutable details, and looking up tables for hit locations and damage dealt. So, we've concentrated on pitching to an audience self-selected to not want what we have to offer!

I once had a very traditional gamer tell me that the fact that most gamers didn't like indie games proved that they had a very limited appeal. I pointed out that the very things that made them unappealing to a traditional gamer like him—the player empowerment, the light rules, even the simple fact that you've got so many games that deal with real-world situations instead of Tolkien-esque fantasy—made them more appealing to the general population. Think of how many times you may have experienced, or have heard accounts from others, how non-gamers quickly and easily pick up story games, much more quickly and much more easily than gamers who have so many assumptions to set aside and rules to unlearn.

The other big hurdle I see might pose a bigger challenge than just re-orienting your marketing, but I consider it one of the things that makes storyjamming so valuable. Americans have become increasingly more socially isolated (PDF). Wizards of the Coast has frequently discussed its sales difficulties in terms of groups that break up, and the difficulties of getting a play group together. Not just play groups—groups of any kind have gotten more and more difficult to bring together. Modernity isolates us in so many ways. That isolation makes it very difficult for any face-to-face activity to gain a foothold. It takes so much effort to get your friends together; simply watching TV and submitting to the growing isolation seems so much easier. But story games provide one more tool, one more means, one more reason for people to get together, and that means that each and every story game published offers a little rallying cry against that growing isolation. I have to admit, I really look forward to making some money one day, however little, at a business that can look at social isolation as bad for business, and can put some marketing dollars to helping address it.

So, when I finally do finish The Fifth World, I probably will hit some of the cons, but I won't put my emphasis there. No, I intend to really push my marketing dollars touring co-housing communities, intentional communities, and ecovillages.

Just posted a quick blue ocean idea here: MP3 experiment as RPG

I think White Wolf did this with Vampire and Mind's Eye Theater. Took rpgs (then mostly about orcs and elves and such) and found a new audience for them (goths and people interesting in non-fantasy larping).

A new blue ocean for rpgs (maybe not entirely new to be honest) are TV series licences like Firefly and Supernatural. I bet a lot of fans not already into rpgs gave those books a look.

In my opinion, rpgs based on existing licenses can be interesting in terms of exploring parts of the franchice world that you can't otherwise explore.
To use Dresden Files as an example (although I've only read one of the books), I can see it appealing to non-gamers if explained to them in the ''right way''. Like any product, you have to appeal to what interests them. A Dresden Files rpg for a non-gamer is a continuation of the novels (maybe it should involve new plotlines or hooks?), it means you can play a game based on one of the lesser-used characters in the book (play a vampire or an evil warlock), explore new locations that haven't been touched upon in the book, etc.

Posted By: komradebobAside from that, there seems to be some fairly muddled thinking going on, at least as a group. First what do you, person who is participating in this discussionactuallywant.(Pardon me while I put on a Narr-y GM hat for a moment ;-) )

Personally, I want to explore what kind of zany RPG ideas the kinds of methodologies discussed in Blue Ocean Strategy might lead to. I'm much more focused on how it mike make for neat games than the practical business side of things. (But, I've never subscribed to the idea that the OP should control what goes on in a thread.) So, let's go over some of the points from the book:

According to the book, a blue ocean strategy should do the following in varying proportions:
Create something that's never been offered before.
Raise something well above the industry standard.
Eliminate something that's taken for granted.
Reduce something well below the industry standard.

The major ways is gives to arrive at this are to:
1. Look at how things are done in other areas entirely.
2. Look at how things are done in a different sector of the same area (e.g., looking to economy cars for ways to make better luxury cars).
3. Look across the chain of buyers (e.g., Evil Hat's PDF policy pays attention to the retailer as well as the end customer)
4. Look at complementary products/services, other things that can affect how people use the main thing (e.g., having child care at a movie theater)
5. Shift the focus between functional and emotional appeal to buyers.
6. Examine trends over time.
7. Analyze why non-customers are non-customers. (Put off by something, want to but can't, or no one's bothers to try selling to them.)

Yellow Tail wine is perhaps a good example of a product using the Reduce part well. Wine is normally very sophisticated and prestigious, but for many people that makes it a very complex and difficult drink. When launching Yellow Tail, Casella basically cut the selection down to two kinds (red and white), put them in the same kind of bottle (which simplified sales displays too), and made the flavor simpler, milder, and more accessible. In essence they made wine's answer to sweeter, more casual alcoholic beverages, and it was a major success.

For a gaming example, Palladium Books was in certain ways a very innovative company back in the day. One of the important things that Kevin Simbieda did was to defy the conventional wisdom and put out all of Palladium's games as well-made but inexpensive softcover books, at a time when more expensive hardcovers or boxed sets were the norm. While we can question the quality in some ways, for the volume of material they include, Palladium's books were and in fact still are priced very cheaply compared to other publishers putting out comparably sized books. Rifts Ultimate is $36, and they have a bunch of other zany games (Dead Reign, Nightbane, After the Bomb, etc.) for $25 or less.

OK, I just had another thought: a big part of the problem for RPGs not making mainstream is simply a factor of distribution.

Joe Plumber doesn't check RPGnow or a game store for products, but he'd notice something on an endcap at Wal-Mart, right? I'm all about loyalty to the FLGS (if they're model is smart enough to stay competitive, like Sci Fi Genre's is), but I know of at least one game manufacturer who will ONLY sell through FLGSs, even though their products would FLY off the shelves of Big Box toy and department stores. We've even BEGGED them to release a game or two into those mainstream markets, as a sort of "breadcrumb"" to lead them (via literature in the game's contents) to their site and, by extension, preferred retailers. I'm not sure they'd even consider marketing in "specialty" toy shops like Discovery Kids or ... or... DMAN, whatsistsname. The "fancy toy store" where most everything is made in the US (or Germany) and is all about "learning," without any toy guns or video games or shit. Can't recall, but you know you have a store like that in your city....

Anyhow, that's one part of our "fringe" not making it into Blue Ocean: we won't leave the harbor where we first built our ships.

Visiting Vermont with my fiance this week and I have been digging all the micro brewery pubs and got to thinking "artisan games" are also a decent way to spread titles. For example Zombie Planet a gaming store near me also publishes their own (meh) game All flesh must be eaten. This could be applied to other specialty markets. Working at a deb maybe the store owner will stock your game "Mean Teens: A game of bitches and brawls" what if your a fan of wine try some wine shops to put your micro game at the counter "Quest for the golden Vineyard" a game of small time vineyards ruthlessly competing to get their bottle at the kings table. Just a thought to get out of the harbor as David put it so well. Not only trying to move your products to a more visible place but also trying to narrowly focus in on the interests of others.

Posted By: DanielSolisI've always thought more indie gamers should pitch to Scholastic, but I hear they're scaling back their non-book merchandising after hearing teacher's complaints that they only sell toys now.

What would be awesome would be to see a very short rpg in the back of a kids' book, based on the book in question and sold through Scholastic.

No idea how that'd get worked out, but it'd be cool.

I suppose you'd need to hook up with the author and publisher.

Neko, would you consider that a BOS? RPG not as distinct item, but as an upgrade to another item? I've often wondered why no one has pitched someting similar to a toy company before, actually. Instead of doing something licensed on your own, do a pitch for the main maker/publisher to pick up your work.

'Course, that undercutrs the whole indie conecpt of creator control for the game itself, so maybe that's it.

Posted By: jasonActually, I hated that comic. The population of people who don't play RPG's vastly outnumbers the population of people who do.

I think what the comic is saying is correct, you don't market to people who will not like your product. You market to people who enjoy products like yours and the people who WOULD like your product if they were made aware of it. You do not try and sell games to people who don't play games, you try and make people who would like to play your game, but have not yet played similar games, aware of and attracted to your game.

The absolute best thing to remember is that in your quest to add new potential owners from this frontier population, you must continue to cultivate the core demographic you appeal to. They are the people most likely to buy your product without the marketing push, so (whether the marketing beyond the product is designed for them), the product should on some level be made for them.

Best example of this I have seen lately is "Penny for My Thoughts". The game is able to target indie gamers, actors and fans of improv games, and potentially even educators. There is some material contained in the back of the book to keep the game anchored to more traditional "geeky subjects" and I think Paul deals with that tendency in the OOC part of the book. His talk about Gonzo play and establishing the parameters (not limits, per se) of the reality the characters are within.

No doubt, if you gave the game to a set of acting students and a group of sci-fi writers at a Conevention, you would get VERY different games, but both sides would be having FUN and consumers from both groups would want to take it home after the test drive.

Posted By: komradebobNeko, would you consider that a BOS? RPG not as distinct item, but as an upgrade to another item? I've often wondered why no one has pitched someting similar to a toy company before, actually. Instead of doing something licensed on your own, do a pitch for the main maker/publisher to pick up your work.

Whether it would turn out to be an effective blue ocean strategy would remain to be seen, but it's definitely a sufficiently out-of-the-box idea. I'm trying to think of something that used a comparable "piggybacking" strategy. I've seen simple board games and such in magazines and books on rare occasions (Animerica once had a rather nifty Ranma 1/2 board game, actually), and Dream Pod 9's Project A-ko RPG had an A-ko card game--nothing to do with the RPG--stuck in the back. I could see short games with literary style appearing in Sweeney's or New Yorker, simple anime-inspired games in Otaku USA, that kind of thing.

Posted By: komradebob'Course, that undercutrs the whole indie conecpt of creator control for the game itself, so maybe that's it.

The creator control thing in the indie RPG scene serves a definite purpose, but it's decidedly not for everything or everyone.

Posted By: JuddGI think what the comic is saying is correct, you don't market to people who will not like your product. You market to people who enjoy products like yours and the people who WOULD like your product if they were made aware of it. You do not try and sell games to people who don't play games, you try and make people who would like to play your game, but have not yet played similar games, aware of and attracted to your game.

The Blue Ocean Strategy book dedicates an entire chapter to looking at how to attract non-customers, with a lot of emphasis on how to take away obstacles like price or inconvenience that prevent people from taking an interest in a given product. While there's some stuff intrinsic to RPGs that make them difficult for many people to play (mainly the logistics of getting a bunch of people together on a regular basis), that so many people just plain don't know about them is the much bigger obstacle, and doubly so when it comes to indie RPGs, or anything that isn't D&D, really. When someone asks you what you're doing on Friday night and they have no idea what an RPG is, it's tempting to say "They're stuff like D&D", but we have a heck of a lot of games that, apart from being RPGs, are nothing like D&D, and could appeal to a lot of people who'd be put off by D&D for one reason or another.

Hence, "marketing innovation" is a big and important hurdle. The piggybacking approach for example could not only put a game in lots of people's hands, but raise awareness of what the heck an RPG is among the people who pick up whatever it is that's being piggybacked on.

Witch Girls Adventures, an RPG that combines elements of comic books, Harry-Potter-esque fantasy and role-playing.

To me, this is the Blue Ocean. Just like what Belle Sara did for young girls and collectible card games. This is your new market.

I agree it'll likely happen the other way - some other industry/group/subculture/whatever latching onto roleplaying as an extension of their own thing.

MGM/UA talked to me about writing a game tie-in for Valkyrie; the deal fell through, but as a marketing tool for their movie they saw the potential. (I should talk about this somewhere in more detail, it was pretty interesting.)

Posted By: Roger

Posted By: Jason MorningstarMGM/UA talked to me about writing a game tie-in forValkyrie; the deal fell through, but as a marketing tool for their movie they saw the potential. (I should talk about this somewhere in more detail, it was pretty interesting.)

YES, yes you should. Probably in its own thread.

Hell, I just want to hear about the game idea.

(Also, I call dibs on Rommel)

I was going to put my City of Masks RPG in the back of my City of Masks novel, but didn't get it playtested enough in time. Eventually someone will do this. And possibly somewhat later, someone will do this and it will be a commercial success. :-}

One thing to look at is how game consoles and computer games have broken out of their ghettoes and attracted "non-gamers".

The Wii attracted people who weren't console gamers because they took a new approach to content and made the games fun and accessible to non-geeks who didn't want to sit for hours and kill things by pushing buttons.

And both "casual" PC gaming and things like iPhone games attract a wide audience by similar strategies - easy to pick up and put down, you can do a level really quickly, and they often have some kind of ordinary-life thing going on as a theme. I was watching my wife play a game on her iPod Touch last night that, I swear, was the Martha Stewart game. You bought stuff at yard sales and tarted it up so that you could furnish your house and win the street's Best House competition.

It's a good thing.

Yes, I saw a very telling piece of marketing at my local mall recently - a big poster advertising the DS, showing a woman in her late 50s or early 60s using it.

We've had crap that is equivalent to Transformers: the RPG. It consistently fails to make the Mega Big Bucks.

I don't believe that dumbing things done is ever going to be the answer to bringing games to more people. The masses actually tend to like things that are functional, simple, trendy, and fun. Wiis and ipods are easy to grok and can be used by anyone, and you can use them in all sorts of ways... and famous people like them. All big selling points!

A crunchy game with a supplement treadmill? That's like the anti-ipod.

Well, as for mind-set, the core activity of RPGs is actually pretty easy: Play Pretend + some rules/structure making it a bit more like a game ( what type of game being a bit trickier to describe usually).

What Number6inthevillage seems to be getting at is more like,erm, getting folks to go from exposed to the Play Pretend+... concept to being full-on, long-term gamers. To me, that's where part of the disconnect occurs.

Getting the PP+ concept out there simply requires a different approach. It may not be a real big money earner either ( although I'm sure some smarter monkey than myself could figure that out).

Again, I think some of this comes down to "What do you want out of a new BOS approach to RPGs?"

For me, it's the exposure of a wider audience to PP+ game/activity concepts. I couldn't really care if any number later became so enthusiastic about PP+ or RPGs or SGs that they became hard-core hobbyists or designers.

As for mechanical or presentation innovation ( which seems to be Neko's main interest), starting from "Who is my target audience and what do I know or suspect about them?" is probably a good place to begin. Thinking about it outsdie of monetary gain might also be a good idea, although using your imagination to posit some distribution not based on the indie designer-retains-control model might be a key here as well. While an awesome and awe-inspring idea for getting out your self-published project to like-minded hobbyists, it does let designers off the hook where it comes to accessibility to a wider audience.

Most people don't want to Pretend - or more accurately, deny how much pretending they do in everyday life. They'll play a closed-end game with an obvious victory condition, but not something that requires imagination.

The point is, that very few people are conscious at much more than the level they have to be to live their lives. It's not that they don't have the capability - just that they prefer the pseudo-comfort of a mindless existence.

Even gamers who are able to see multiple levels through roleplaying can still fall into that. The GNS arguments are a great example. Some people just can't conceive of the fact that all theories are contingent - useful to examine things from a certain perspective but never able to be a description of absolute reality.

Posted By: Number6intheVillageMost people don't want to Pretend - or more accurately, deny how much pretending they do in everyday life.

I totally, totally reject that assertion. I think most people desperately want to pretend. They yearn to pretend. They want to pretend like nothing else and can feel the life drained out of them, drop by drop, dying by degrees every day that they don't pretend. But they also feel exhausted by the time they get home from work, and don't think they have the energy to pretend. On top of that, they buy the line that pretend just means kid's play, that adults don't pretend.

But I also think that like dancing, singing, or any other participatory folk art I can think of, you feel kind of silly when you start, like everyone's watching you, but eventually you figure out that everyone really has more interesting things to do than to watch you, and you've just got to get over that. I think of the person who feels uncomfortable about roleplaying because it seems silly very much like the person who feels awkward about getting up on the dance floor, or doing karaoke.

So, having asked a lot of my non-gamer friends what keeps them away from RPGs, there were some who said they don't care for the "let's pretend" aspect, at least as it's presented in RPGs. I don't think everyone has an unfulfilled hunger to pretend and create residing within, but there are definitely more people who are sufficiently creatively inclined to enjoy playing RPGs than there are existing RPG players. For some people a game like D&D4e, where you can dial the creative aspects back some, are a better fit, while for other people would do better a game like PTA where the creative part is the main thing.

Anyway, on to other stuff:

As a little side-project, I started working on a simple card-based fantasy RPG, tentatively titled "Dragon Oracle". When I posted about this on LiveJournal, I was informed that there was in fact a CCG/RPG hybrid (different from what I'm trying to do, but still really neat), Dragon Storm. This game originally came out in like 1997, and it's apparently still going, and the creators are making new material and doing lots of convention appearances (mostly local) to this day. I don't know how much of a commercial success it was, but not many games stay around for 12+ years no matter what.

Two of my friends are potentially interested in other kinds of games with RPG aspects--one played CCGs like L5R and Doomtown a lot, and the other is more of a computer gamer, but sounded like the tactical side of 4e appealed to him--who basically said they don't like doing that kind of creativity in a large group.

Another friend, although a creative person in general, said he just has trouble taking RPGs seriously in play. As he put it, if he's hanging out with friends, he's rather goof off with the real people instead of their avatars.

One of my sisters listed "imagination" as one of the things that RPGs were very intensive of.

Posted By: jasonMaybe it says something more about me than anyone else, but that kind of response just sounds a lot like people who won't get up and dance at a party or sing at a karaoke bar. I will admit, participatory art in general seems hard to take seriously from an outsider's perspective. You need toparticipatein it before you can take it seriously. For a lot of people, that can pose a difficult barrier to entry.

So, perhaps another angle for a "Blue Ocean Strategy": how do you lower that particular barrier to entry?

I don't know that it's a real BOS, but I'm fond of the one-off, self contained, short game concept. It just plain strikes me as an easy barrier-lowering format.

I suppose a person could just keep making that sort of thing and tossing it out there to see which ones stick, and only then building out from that.

Edit:Hmm. I'd think that a "training excersise" would be pretty easy to build, especially for the core activities common in RPGs. I doubt it would be much of a game in itself, but it would certainly get total beginners who were curious over the initial hump, before barraging them with vastly more detailed games.

I would probably be torn between the GM or No GM options, though. Certainly it seems like some GM training would be a good idea. Maybe a series of short situations with instructions for both the GM and character players, meant to be played in just a few ( like ten) minutes?

Posted By: simjamesMy girlfriend isn't much interested in RPGs.

However, to watch the way that she plays Battlestar Galactica: the board game, you'd never know it.

Does she do any RPG/SGish stuff while playing BSG:tbg? Like maybe speaking in-character or making suboptimal choices for her character because it makes sense in the context of the BSG TV show?

Another example: Vampire LARP. There was less system to grok (although there was still too much, IMO) and getting rid of the dice made it a lot easier to play in public places.

(Edit: formatting)

Posted By: jasonMaybe it says something more about me than anyone else, but that kind of response just sounds a lot like people who won't get up and dance at a party or sing at a karaoke bar. I will admit, participatory art in general seems hard to take seriously from an outsider's perspective. You need toparticipatein it before you can take it seriously. For a lot of people, that can pose a difficult barrier to entry.

So, perhaps another angle for a "Blue Ocean Strategy": how do you lower that particular barrier to entry?

I'm more than a little hesitant to try to tell people how they "really" feel, but whether someone genuinely doesn't like something or they're in denial about it, the effect is the same from our perspective. For those folks, I think the trick is to emphasize the game over the role-playing, without totally discarding opportunities for the latter. Different gamers already like the role-playing and game parts in differing proportions, from freeform with an occasional die roll added, to a tactical minis game with some role-playing elements. As James' girlfriend has apparently demonstrated, even games without explicit RP elements can bring it out in people, and even if it doesn't, as long as it's fun as a game, they're still coming out ahead.

Has anyone here used, say, Talisman or HeroQuest as a stepping stone to D&D or similar? (Themselves, or to draw in friends.) Because it seems like a very natural progression to me.

Posted By: Dirk RemmeckeAnother example: Eee PC.

Or how about the Sony Walkman? Someone figured out that a tape player can be more useful in some ways if it doesn't have any speakers attached.

Posted By: Chris PetersonI think YouTube is proof thatmany"regular people" are interested in creating and sharing their own stories. Is there a YouTube-like opportunity for RPGs?

Could you talk a bit more about how people are using YouTube as a storytelling medium? I see a lot of screeds and rants on YouTube (which is what I get for following atheist blogs), but I wouldn't know where to look for stories per se. In terms of leveraging technology fpr collaborative/social storytelling, the aforementioned online role-play stuff is already doing it in many ways.

There could be a lot of potential for someone who could create an online service that's an effective medium for role-play with features well beyond what a forum could provide, but that could be a seriously massive undertaking.

(Also, given that you can get a decent webcam for like $30, and that YouTube allows for subscriptions, comments, response videos, etc., the possibilities there are tremendous...)

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

Posted By: komradebobDoes she do any RPG/SGish stuff while playing BSG:tbg? Like maybe speaking in-character or making suboptimal choices for her character because it makes sense in the context of the BSG TV show?

Speak in character? Absolutely - not for very long, but comparable to a very mechanically-focused player in campaigns I've played with D&D, for example.

Making suboptimal choices? Certainly not deliberately so, but she certainly chooses her role as a character rather than a playing piece, and tries to make choices in-character for that role.

(I know plenty of roleplayers who baulk at making suboptimal choices.)

Kaytee doesn't get into character portrayal or motivations as much as folks did when we were playing Wraith, but that was a very character-focused narrative. But if you change "BSG" to "OD&D" and take away the game board, she'd fit right in.