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MadScientistWorking posted:Insider wasn't handled competently though. It was making money but you are deluding yourself to think it was handled competently. Would it be fair to say it was the best official product of it's type? Honest question, I haven't seen many other Insider style offers from other companies. Evil Mastermind posted:I thought Insider was another "shoot ourselves in the foot" thing, since having a subscription meant you didn't have to buy new character-based books. They got more profit out of me off Insider then they ever would have selling me those books.
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May 6, 2015 19:29
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Terrible Opinions posted:Do you count a Paizo subscription? I was thinking more "subscription to online tools/content" and less "Columbia House but for RPG books."
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May 7, 2015 04:57
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Effectronica posted:I will never stop finding the desire to cut the "game" part out of role-playing game bizarre. Sometimes what you're going for works better as Kings Quest then Fire Emblem.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:56
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It's mostly likely going to come down to accountability. If you can prove that you went bust for legitimate, justifiable reasons while trying to complete the project then them's the breaks what can you do? If you allocated $50k to 'buying a house to work on the book' then you are probably not in as good shape.
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Jun 11, 2015 18:42
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Terrible Opinions posted:I think somebody is projecting pretty hard over here. I think you just haven't been exposed to enough hard core OSR/3.X fanatics.
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Jun 23, 2015 23:37
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JerryLee posted:Speaking for myself, I've seen some of the most There's this weird tendency on the internet to see everything as two sides. Just because you've seen assholes who like a variety of different products doesn't mean anything other then that a lot of assholes play RPGs. On the other hand there's an entire company that established themselves catering to this sort of behavior who have a bunch of dedicated fans they gained via that behavior, which is why we lump them all into one group. Just because some people disagree with them doesn't magically make them into a unified group of anti-grogs.
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Jun 24, 2015 00:05
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examples in the grogs.txt thread... and I've also seen a lot of really offputting rhetoric from the other side.
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Terrible Opinions posted:I believe the preferred modern nomenclature is Steven Universe fans. There is an absolutely huge market of people making/enjoying media for an all ages audience, probably because of how absolutely up it's own rear end "adult" media tends to be. Stuff like Walking Dead and Game of Thrones do well but it all subscribes to the style developed by shows like The Wire and Breaking Bad, where everything is awful for everyone all the time. If you want stuff with an optimistic bent (or that just doesn't feature tons of graphic violence/sex/sexual violence) then your options are pretty limited outside of stuff aimed at the YA audience. Why do you think Dr Who, Sherlock, and Parks and Rec are so popular with the same sort of demographic? "Magical High School" stuff has been popular here forever though. Look at X-Men, Animorphs, or hell even Power Rangers! Then you've got Smallville, they did 10 seasons of that general formula. A $20-$30 starter box with a tight theme where you play as High Schoolers who have to deal with their parents, teachers, but also supernatural threats would likely do very well. You probably don't even need to sell books, just do extra content as a tablet/smartphone app that's all compatible with the stuff you sold them to start with.
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Jun 24, 2015 19:48
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Leperflesh posted:A WHOLE LOTTA GOOD WORDS Not that I've seen. From everything I've read it seems like it boils down to the margins not being enough to actually afford the sort of professional work that it would take, which is why I think if you want to make money in this hobby you've got to largely abandon the "book that has everything you need" model in favor of something more friendly to beginners. There's no doubt in my mind that we won't see another big success story until someone puts out a moderately priced starter set that includes a short introductory campaign and some characters and then directs you to an app that lets you buy the content you're actually going to use. I'm talking something like the old offline Character Builder where you can play premade characters or make your own low level guy, except then for a $1 you can buy access to new content. The idea is to divorce the "how do I play this game" part from the reference part, ideally putting the reference part entirely on a webpage or app. You could still sell a Player's Handbook type guide, but if you did it right then I think your digital implementation would satisfy most people's need for something with that narrow a profit margin. EDIT: I guess what I'm saying is that I bet you'd sell more copies if you treated the whole thing as a board game with RPG DLC. Misandu fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Jun 25, 2015 |
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Jun 25, 2015 15:31
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Flavivirus posted:Don't AW-derived games fulfill this, at least those whose playbooks are free to download? You can essentially grab everything you need to play for free, then buy the book to get advice on setting up and running a game, explanations of how moves work and ideas for creating your own content. I absolutely hate having to learn a new game from a book. If you put the FATE Core rule book on the shelf next to a theoretical FATE Core starter set that explicitly was just a starter adventure/campaign with pre-made characters for the exact same price I would buy the starter set every time for a system I was unfamiliar with. DriveThruRPG does a great job of proving that people are interested in this sort of model, I mean look at the people who're making side cash off of things like the "100 Random Bedroom Features" lists, and *World playbooks are the same general idea of self contained add on content that I just think needs to be monetized. The problem that people have when they design and sell RPGs is that they are almost exclusively catering to the people who are going to run the games, and they are doing a very poor job of monetizing the actual players. My players don't need a $30 book with advice on how to run a game or create their own content, they're just going to borrow my book if they want to do that. What would be great would be an app that lets them make a character and then runs them through a scripted adventure that shows them all the systems in play at a basic level so that when we sit down at the table I can just go "okay you're trying to get past the orc, roll whatever" and that will be familiar to them from the solo adventure/character creator. I bet if you did that in the vein of a choosable-path book (sort of like To Be or Not To Be) you could make a decent amount just selling solo adventures in your system.
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Jun 25, 2015 16:33
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RPGs don't make money is the #1 thing you hear from everyone involved in the discussion so it makes sense that everyone is trying to figure out how to change that, and going digital lets you work at much higher profit margins from print. That's why I think that the solution is going to be to shove all that necessary but expensive to print information into apps (or PDFs I guess) in order to give you the level of profit you need to sustain a game long term. You need to have a physical aspect to the game though, which is what board games are doing to beat RPGs handily. Lots of board games could easily be small books of just the rules, hell Print and Play versions are basically exactly that. Descent could easily be an RPG handbook with charts of what each dice roll means for each player but it would sell like poo poo. I don't know any numbers for Gamma World but I bet it sold significantly better as a box set then it would have as a $20 book. I'm not saying you shouldn't produce a book, but I think we're past the days where it's going to be the aspect of the game you rely on making you any money.
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Jun 25, 2015 19:32
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moths posted:I'd be interested in seeing what would happen if you brought the.Risk Legacy format to RPGs. Like a module that could only be played once, or a character whose choices made physical changes to its media which could not be undone. All RPGs are essentially Legacy style products as long as you consider your shared game world the "media" that you're making changes to. It would be interesting to see a game that establishes firm groups of NPCs whose power waxes and wanes as you interact with them, in a way that gives you some sort of mechanical benefits. The problem is that's the sort of thing that usually doesn't have firm rules attached to it. I sort of remember FATE's campaign design chapter having a lot of cool stuff related to that though, establishing stuff like plans of action for the game's major players and how things will change if the players don't engage them vs if they do.
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Jun 25, 2015 19:46
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Dr. Tough posted:Well, you don't really need rules for that, that's all supposed to be things that the GM and players take care of. I mean if you want your character to have kids, just say so. In an L5R game I'm in the GM said that a year had passed between story arcs, so I just said that my character now had a kid. No special rule needed. Off the top of my head the only RPG that really codifies that kind of stuff is Pendragon. The whole reason I'm buying a game though is for the rules. I would love to see a game that works something like XCOM, with the tactical combat of something like 4th Edition D&D, but also a Big Picture mode that has rules for how my players have influenced the world at large and what sort of mechanical effect that has had. moths posted:It would have to be something like one of the old boxed D&D campaigns. But there's absolutely the "rule" that all the information in a book is there. One player already knows what all the outcomes are. The more you explain this idea the more on board I am with it. Basically RPGs need to become more tightly themed, I don't need another quasi-medieval fantasy themed game but I would love a game that's all about the development of a few Kingdoms with rules for retirement and a new generation taking up the mantle of heroes. Pass on your equipment to your children FE4 or Phantasy Star 3 style so that they can tackle bigger threats. Actually I'm already working on something I could maybe develop in that direction. Hm.
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Jun 25, 2015 20:45
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Dr. Tough posted:Again, I just don't understand why there needs to be special rules for this. The rules for this are already there: it's called playing the game. If the PC's stopped the cultists from killing the king then the result is that the king is still alive and any cultists that the PCs killed are not. You don't need to roll on a table for that. Nothing should be part of the default rules for RPGs. That's a huge problem a lot of RPGs have traditionally had actually, is the assumptions of what the rules should cover. From the start of the hobby until very recently RPG rules have defaulted to being intensely focused on what happens when two people want to kill each other and gotten less interesting the further you got from that. Look at stuff like Ryuutama where travelling is a check you make, or Golden Sky Stories which revolves around helping out a small community and forming bonds with them.
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Jun 25, 2015 22:16
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Everblight posted:We did a whole episode about how to resurrect tabletop games on my podcast recently. My correct opinions start ~39m in. I think you're going a little too far into strictly digital realms with these ideas, but the gist of it seems pretty good. Stuff like an app with randomized IAPs is a totally bullshit idea that should be kept as far as humanly possible from the game if you want it to exist in anything resembling it's current form as a thing people do together around a table, but the tone of 'automate the tedious bullshit' is something I agree with. I also like how your, I guess co-hosts, sorta trip over themselves talking about how crazy you are right after that. Once again I think you need to have physical stuff as part of the package, you just shouldn't expect to make your money off of high cost low margin stuff like books that can't be errata'd (which you touch on).
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Jun 25, 2015 23:30
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Bucnasti posted:How would you go about monetizing a largely digital TTRPG? I think that success in the future for TTRPG is going to be more about a successful long term business plan than about the actual rules of the game. You sell the high margin implementations of those rules to the actual players directly by making them more convenient to use. Web/app based character builder that supports being used as a sheet in play. All the arguments for "oh this one book lets everyone in my group play" also applied to CDs in the not so distant past. People switched to MP3s and streaming services because they're more convenient, allow them to get the exact stuff that they want, and are easier to have with you without a ton of extra baggage. Again look at how successful DriveThruRPG has been. I think that to really see the type of breakout success that the old BECMI box had though you need to give it some solo content that gives people a reason to grab your app and try it out on their own. People keep talking about how D&D used to be sold at Toys'R'Us but the App Store is where you'd actually want to get into now. Even most of the big name board games come out with an app because there's way more profit to be made digitally then in toy stores. EDIT: Does anyone remember that D&D Facebook app? It seemed to be pretty successful, real shame they didn't have a way for it to spit you out a character to run an adventure with.
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Jun 26, 2015 15:38
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Halloween Jack posted:Maybe I'm just nerdy or old-fashioned, but personally I despise content platforms where you basically pay for a demo and are then confronted with a bunch of locked doors to more content. Maybe it's just because the quality of similar attempts in RPGs has often been pretty poor; for example, I don't think the 4e Red Box was well-received. I also hate tutorial levels in video games and guided tours through museums. When I started playing RPGs I bought the 3.0 starter box and had a good time with it. I bet if I had bought either 4th Edition Starter Box I'd have had just as good a time with it. The currently available starter products are and have been fine at getting new players who are actively interested in learning how to play into the games, it's just that they aren't being provided in the ways and places that younger more tech savvy players are going to find them. When I type "Dungeons and Dragons" into the App Store there should be something (ideally free) that lets me run a starter adventure for my friends off of our devices.
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Jun 26, 2015 18:03
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You know what here's an even better reason to have something on the App Store. When I type in Dungeons and Dragons I get a bunch of third party apps that are making money by showing up on that search, and it's mostly dice rollers and character apps. Why let your brand serve as a free ride for those developers instead of cashing in yourself with AT LEAST some basic tools.
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Jun 26, 2015 18:10
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Slimnoid posted:Is 5e even selling that well? Because this seems like either a desperation move for attention, or them dumping it out there because it's not worth making official content for. To me this comes off more as trying to get everyone to move from smaller platforms like Drive Thru RPG to their own D&D exclusive platform. "Don't distribute your stuff on those other websites, use ours and we'll provide you with support!" It's the same basic idea as the 3.X era, get everyone to just make stuff for D&D so it becomes the only game anyone plays. This time they're just fighting that fight online instead of on bookstore shelves.
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Jan 12, 2016 20:21
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unseenlibrarian posted:Well, except Drive thru RPG isn't a 'smaller platform' in any way when it comes to online PDF sales and this is literally just another Onebookshelf specialty site, owned by the same company as owned by Drive thru RPG, so... Didn't realize that! Then I'm going with: potatocubed posted:They're outsourcing their shovelware, and they're trying to enforce an exclusivity clause while they're at it. If there's one thing the Tournament of Rapists bollocks taught us, it's that we need less exclusivity in the RPG marketplace, not more.
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Jan 12, 2016 20:40
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Elfgames posted:I hate you people, i live in rural buttfuck nowhere Ohio and i'm pretty sure there are 0 gaming stores within 100 miles. Sounds like it's time to open your own mediocre money pit!
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Jan 15, 2016 16:40
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Halloween Jack posted:Of all the stuff I have read over the past few pages of discussion, this is the topic I find most confusing, for several reasons. I don't know how many Pathfinder customers actually jumped ship back to 5e and made it their primary game. My SWAG (situational wild rear end guess) is that most Pathfinder players LIKE that Pathfinder is the 3rdiest 3rd that ever 3rded a 3rd. Thus, they have little reason to switch back to 5e besides brand identity (and I expect a lot of them did buy the core books) and the Pathfinder designers have little reason to make a new edition based on a very loose,generic version of D&D. From the PF players I know, there are basically three types of PF player; 1.) The ones who like it because it's the "3rdiest 3rd that ever 3rded a 3rd". These people definitely exist and they just want as many obscure splash books as humanly possible, or they felt personally betrayed by Wizards putting out 4e for some reason. These people are probably never coming back. This is the group of people who shouted about how 4e wasn't "real D&D." 2.) The ones who just don't want to learn new rules, or are super used to ignoring most of the rules. I know a bunch of people who just weren't interested in learning 4e D&D because they thought it was too different, or they tried it once and didn't have a good time. These people love 5e because it's different enough from PF to justify buying new stuff, but not so different that they have to bother learning new rules. These are the people who love to tell you crazy stories about cool things their characters did that could have happened in any system because they had nothing to do with any of the rules anyway. 3.) The ones who are new to RPGs, and got told by someone from group 1 or 2 to play PF. I have actually seen a TON of these people embrace 5e because the books are gorgeous. Groups 2 and 3 are the bigger groups by far, but group 1 is the loudest.
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Jan 18, 2016 18:43
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Kai Tave posted:The difference being that boardgames are pretty popular at the moment, and increasingly even complete randos have heard of something like Settlers of Catan. LatwPIAT posted:Some acquaintances of mine have been running D&D regularly for "beginners" at local LAN parties and cons, and the process by which they try to get people interested in D&D/roleplaying is to start with 2-4 hours of 3.5/Pathfinder character generation. I participated once on a whim (I had an open spot on my con schedule) and the way they were throwing D&D at people was to present them with 10 kg of printouts of the SRD. I think you hit the nail on the head here; the amount of time and effort you'd have to devote to the minutiae of selecting Feats and gear just to get your first taste of D&D seems to have a really poor pay-off when what happens afterwards is a 3-hour game of technically arduous but not really difficult or interesting combat scenarios.
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Jan 29, 2016 16:27
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Evil Mastermind posted:Hell, I made the same mistake with a Fate Accelerated demo. I figured that since it's FAE, character creation would be really simple and quick. And it is...if you've got the types of players who can wrap their heads around the idea of Aspects or can come up with character descriptors on the fly. But when you have people who aren't used to having to come up with a bunch of stuff on the spur of the moment, well... I think going forward *World is going to be remembered as the game that taught us to hand the players everything they needed for their character in one neat little bundle. Playbooks are such an incredible distillation of the splat book idea.
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Jan 29, 2016 16:54
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bongwizzard posted:That was my exact point, that in my experience getting people to "play pretend" is actually pretty hard if they don't have any context for doing so, beyond it being "something little kids do". Getting over that hurdle alone is tough as hell with teens especially. All RPGs have this problem though, it's just that D&D is almost exclusively about murder so the kind of situations you should put new players in is more obvious. In something like FATE or *World you still need to set up situations where new players can lean on hard mechanics to get comfortable, it's it just doesn't always need to be a fight.
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Jan 29, 2016 19:57
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bongwizzard posted:Well yeah, for little kids going right into kobold murder is not a great idea, but I was talking more about getting people into the idea of roleplaying in general can be tough and to me seems really close to getting people into improv. All RPGs are basically just improv, yes. For example you're describing the general structure of most campaigns right now. The party goes into the dungeon and kills some goblins. Next the party goes into the dungeon to kill some goblins but the door is locked, what do you do? Later you know that the Goblin Shaman is trying to wake the Red Dragon that sleeps in the caves in the Misty Hills and that's going to be a real pain for the town of Mistville, what do you do? The difference is the sort of scene you can set based on what the system can handle well. Think of different RPG systems as being similar to groups with different backgrounds. The kind of scene you script out for a group with a comedy background might be different from the scene you set for high school groups. Even if they're the same scene they're going to play out very differently based on the group. Your group of aspiring adult stand up comedians might do great with a prompt like "Unfortunate One Night Stand with the Boss" but your High School students are probably going to be more comfortable with something like "Football Player gets Bullied by Chess Club." Either group could do improv based on either prompt, but they're maybe more suited to particular things.
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Jan 29, 2016 20:48
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paradoxGentleman posted:Didn't Barbie recently got a set with different skin colors and body types? I wonder how those are doing. The other companies that have been making much more diverse sets probably ate that lunch a long time ago.
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Feb 6, 2016 18:31
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Isn't a huge part of Man of Steel supposed to be to set up the conflict of Batman v Superman? Everyone gave the movie a bunch of poo poo for showing billions of dollars in property damage and the over the top loss of life from it all, but isn't all of that supposed to explain why Batman gets involved to start with?
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Feb 9, 2016 20:16
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Leperflesh posted:I mean, what I see is stuff like this: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modiphius/robert-e-howards-conan-roleplaying-game There's no way that a Conan RPG doing well is an indication that the TTRPG industry is in a good way. If this was some campaign for an up and coming YA series or something then sure that would be a great example of how the industry wasn't catering to an ageing audience, but Conan? I would love for WotC to pick up on how people perceive the name "Dungeons and Dragons" to mean "TTRPG" and run with it. Just make a ton of RPGs and call them all "Dungeons and Dragons:_______." First up Dungeons and Dragons: Cybertron. Don't even have character creation rules, just give everyone premade characters from the movies or the comics that are running right now.
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Feb 19, 2016 00:54
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ImpactVector posted:I can actually see a bit where this mindset could have originated though, because even now the GM often ends up having to play designer (picking and choosing what rules modules to use, on the fly errata, fixing broken games) and distributor (copying relevant sections into cheat sheets for their group), among others. You also have things like the people in charge of 5e D&D answering rules questions with "Ask Your DM."
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May 9, 2016 20:45
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After reading the profiles on the site the whole thing comes off as "I didn't see any of my friend's names on that list."
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May 13, 2016 16:05
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