I just want to add to this that the best evidence of the small size of the market is the price of the books. They have always been priced as niche luxury products, not as 'every family should have this' products. Supply is just a matter of printing more books so it speaks more to an inelastic demand curve typical of niche markets.
It has always been thus. This also makes it a tougher market to break into. Even if you are offering your product for free, or an introductory version for free, it is harder to get your product out when there are fewer interested people to reach.
Also there is a significant time risk involved in committing to a campaign of any TTRPG and the genre tends to be more personal than most, with personal emotional investment in characters, meaning even more risk in trying anything new or different. This further limits the market for any game seen as unproven, even other less-successful-than-D&D games that actually are well proven over time.
Crowdfunding platforms have made it easier to manage the risk of devoting time and resources to a project like getting a new TTRPG off the ground. It works, there are dozens of successful new TTRPG campaigns on Kickstarter every year.
The downside however is what happens when the campaign ends. Assuming you were successful and got funded you finish your development, produce your rewards for the backers and fulfill the pledges, but from there on you don't have the visibility Kickstarter offered anymore, stores typically are less interested in your product because 95% of the prospective customers already backed the campaign and setting up distribution and mass production in hopes of continued large sales brings back all the risk you avoided with crowdfunding in the first place (this doesn't apply just to TTRPGs either - ridiculously profitable campaigns like Cool Mini Or Not's Zombicide sets probably generate 90% or more of their value through Kickstarter and sell very little through retailers afterwards, and CMON is large enough to be able to navigate sales through Amazon and the like).
So, I don't think TTRPGs are as tough as that to break into. It's a really hard market to introduce a product with a long-term shelf life into, however.
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I would say too, it's not the price of the individual books that gets you -- but the total price of all the books you "need." A DM will need, minimally, DMG, PHB, and MM, to get going. (Yes, I know there is an Essentials Kit and there are some basic materials online, but if you are going to be serious about it, you need those 3 books.) The "list price" of these books, per Amazon, is $50, although right now they are "on sale" for considerably less. Still, the "sale" price total for these 3 books is around $100 combined, and "list" price would be $150. This does not count shipping. If you throw in the DM screen and some dice, and include that shipping, you're just getting started in the hobby and you are into it for upwards of $200. That is quite a cost to sink into it. And we all know that if you get a long-term group going and you guys play a lot, you're going to be buying Xanathar, Volo, Tasha, Mord, etc. If you add all that up, plus the PHBs for several players, we're talking what now, for the cost to the entire group of players combined? $500? More? So that is definitely one major aspect to this... there is a major expense to these games.
And it is not just D&D. If you want to run Star Trek Adventures, sure, you can just buy the ($64) sourcebook (admittedly, $22 for PDF only, if you want that), but then there are many other books that the GM, at least, will need. There are books for the 3 main divisions (command, science, and operations) weighing in at around $36. And there is a book for each quadrant... you'll probably need at least Alpha Quadrant (the main area of the Federation), depending on what you intend to play, but if adventures take you "where no one has gone before" you're gonna probably need gamma, delta, and/or beta quadrant as well - Another $36 each. Figuring conservatively, core book + 3 divisions + 1 quadrant = $208 for the hardbacks, or around half that ($90) for the PDFs. And again, that is pretty much just to get started. If you end up in a long campaign, you're going to ultimately need *all* the books.
So... Kotath is right, these are not cheap hobbies, especially for the DM. We've not even talked about the cost of things like VTTs, subscriptions to D&D Beyond or similar places, purchasing electronic assets like map sets, token sets, buying miniatures, and the like. Do you *need* to do those things, no. But this is not a hobby for the short on cash. So I agree with Kotath, it is largely a "luxury item." Goodness knows I have the luxury of affording multiple RPG books (in hardcover, not just cheaper PDFs) and am a bit of a collector. But I am fortunate that I have a little disposable income to do it. And I have massively cut back things like travel expenses during the pandemic for obvious reasons, so I have more to spend on silly things like Call of Cthulhu books I'll probably never use in live play, just because I want them.
Now to bring it around to D&D dominance... if you do happen to have the money to spend a couple of hundred bucks as a table to buy all the books, dice, etc., that you need, what are the odds you're going to want to do that more than once, for other games? This is why most people pick one game, the most visible game, and stick with it.
I think it is a complex combination of Investment and time.
We all know that it is hard to get a group together to play consistently. That makes the time you do have to play precious. Do you risk spending money on a game that you may or may not like AND do you risk the limited time you have to try it out? If it is the only game the group is going to get to play this month, do you take a chance?
There are a lot of TTRPGs and a lot of them aren't even half is good as D&D 5e. Those that are good tend to be more niche than D&D (which is just generic fantasy). Star Trek is a good example. Even if it is good, it is only going to draw a very specific audience. That is were a lot of the modern RPGs tend to fail, they target a very narrow market inside of an already narrow market so can't sustain sales and players are less willing to try out new things given the limits of money and time.
I'm not saying TTRPGs aren't a niche market, they are. I'm saying it's not as hard to break into as it used to be, with the added caveat that usually new TTRPGs that successfully get published earn back their development cost and then some (they wouldn't be successful otherwise), but that's all early on. Staying power is something else. If a Kickstarter campaign provides X profit after delivery of the pledges and maybe 20% of X on top of that over the next two-three years that's financial success and a solid project economically. What it's not is a growing customer base providing a steady income for an indefinite, long-term period.
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The contention in some posters that Star Trek just doesn't work for TTRPGs isn't really historically aware. Not even getting into the role Star Fleet Battles and publications like The Space Gamer had in the protean days bridging Table Top Wargaming into RPGs (before there was a need to put table top in front of the acronym). During TSR's hey day one of the other big houses was FASA, who yeah hit the sweet spot for the gaming public with Shadowrun, but a game generation prior to that had pretty respectable business in their Star Trek role playing game line. It was a very popular game. The present Star Trek TTRPG doesn't seem as aggressive as what FASA did (though the present Klingon separate core rule book I think speak to it being a self-aware "high end" publishing bracket).
I think a lot of publishers of licenses properties sort of know if they put out a core mechanic system, it's not hard these days for a community to cover the rest of the canon through online fandom (which has taken over the role of fan showcasing publishing organs these days by and large) ... FFG's Star Wars was sort of of the exception because Star Wars as a brand has always been tied to excessive merchandising (and for what it's worth WEG's Star Wars did sort of serve as the spark that lit the fire of the old EU). Whereas Star Trek not as much. Same could be said for the recent Robotech lines. On the other hand, fandoms like Star Trek do like having "print bibles" that sort of serve as technical references that TTRPG sourcebooks sort of perform (FASA had ovrerlap with both the Star Fleet Battles crowd -- the latter eventually departing from canon I believe -- with also whoever was putting out the technical reference books).
I'm curious what's going to happen with this new Marvel TTRPG in the works.
Riffing off Pang's point about Kickstarters, I often wondered how much longevity the Kickstarter products have. Seems there's a sort of short tail presumptive economics going on. I think Steve Jackson gets it right, but they are also in a hybrid "traditional" publisher who also does Kickstarters. I'm curious about these sort of patron economics where designers just go from de facto freelance production to de facto freelance production (really no idea, but do these design shops that actually produce kickstarters year round actually provide benefits beyond pay to their designers?). I mean the "pay" for designers as I understand it have never been on par with other spaces for creative/writing (both creative writing and technical writing) skillsets so I guess whatever is going on with the patron/kickstarter economy isn't any worse. To be fair, MCDM Studios I think gets it right (also I'm presuming tries to engage in practices building off -- that is, improving -- practices in the computer game industry) but their Kickstarter windfall as I understand it was pretty unprecedented.
{as far as the Chain of Command objection, TTRPGs "unbridled creativity encouragement" aside are still games that rely on mechanical standard operating procedures. TTRPGs has had a place amidst military cultures to the point where it is often used along with table top wargaming as a training tool. Yes, there is, and I have acknowledge this, a powerful influence of counter culture in the history of TTRPG's particularly early D&D, but there's always been something to it that also spoke to people living in or close to military lifestyles. I mean the "creative" parts of TTRPG done right with balance and maximum cooperation and minimal problematic spotlighting is basically collaborative problem solving ... much like a starship or RL naval commander and their section chiefs ... ).
Speaking of the new Robotech RPG, my group of friends looked at that and came to the same conclusion. It's system doesn't work for us. It isn't the pool of d6s dice mechanic, it was the all skills can do all things mechanic. It doesn't allow for anyone to be an actual specialist if the player next to you can use Rapid Fire to fix the busted computer terminal just as good as the person that chose to take the appropriate tech skills. We were all thinking "Why even have skills" so we just decided to stick to the old Palladium system for our Macross games.
This is just an example of "new doesn't always mean better" and "there are some bad systems out there."
Speaking of the new Robotech RPG, my group of friends looked at that and came to the same conclusion. It's system doesn't work for us. It isn't the pool of d6s dice mechanic, it was the all skills can do all things mechanic. It doesn't allow for anyone to be an actual specialist if the player next to you can use Rapid Fire to fix the busted computer terminal just as good as the person that chose to take the appropriate tech skills. We were all thinking "Why even have skills" so we just decided to stick to the old Palladium system for our Macross games.
This is just an example of "new doesn't always mean better" and "there are some bad systems out there."
Which Robotech? I guess there's Savage Worlds and Strange Machines now. I think you're talking about Strange Machine's but I don't know either other than breeze through of PDFs on Drivethru I think.
Speaking of the new Robotech RPG, my group of friends looked at that and came to the same conclusion. It's system doesn't work for us. It isn't the pool of d6s dice mechanic, it was the all skills can do all things mechanic. It doesn't allow for anyone to be an actual specialist if the player next to you can use Rapid Fire to fix the busted computer terminal just as good as the person that chose to take the appropriate tech skills. We were all thinking "Why even have skills" so we just decided to stick to the old Palladium system for our Macross games.
This is just an example of "new doesn't always mean better" and "there are some bad systems out there."
Palladium is a system I wish I had a chance to play and at least see how it was. I knew of Palladium campaigns, but never got to play in one :(
Kotath etches into discussion:
Palladium is a system I wish I had a chance to play and at least see how it was. I knew of Palladium campaigns, but never got to play in one :(
I can't speak to Palladium fantasy as I don't know how the magic system worked at all. I can say I liked Robotech's line for the lore, but the game felt more like Battletech done theater of the mind than Robotech, just without heat caclculations. I remember liking TMNT and the related After the Bomb mutant animals (sorta furry Gamma World), and I think Ninja and Superspies and a superhero title I can't remember supposedly having a similar feel. Never bothered with Revised Recon because I had Twilight:2000 so why? I never understood Rift's popularity, especially since TORG just did it better IMHO but Palladium was able to keep churning Rifts products out years after WEG shuttered. I guess I never cared for Rifts because it seems like expansions came out not because they were needed, but just because they could sell to its fan base.
Speaking of the new Robotech RPG, my group of friends looked at that and came to the same conclusion. It's system doesn't work for us. It isn't the pool of d6s dice mechanic, it was the all skills can do all things mechanic. It doesn't allow for anyone to be an actual specialist if the player next to you can use Rapid Fire to fix the busted computer terminal just as good as the person that chose to take the appropriate tech skills. We were all thinking "Why even have skills" so we just decided to stick to the old Palladium system for our Macross games.
This is just an example of "new doesn't always mean better" and "there are some bad systems out there."
Which Robotech? I guess there's Savage Worlds and Strange Machines now. I think you're talking about Strange Machine's but I don't know either other than breeze through of PDFs on Drivethru I think.
Speaking of the new Robotech RPG, my group of friends looked at that and came to the same conclusion. It's system doesn't work for us. It isn't the pool of d6s dice mechanic, it was the all skills can do all things mechanic. It doesn't allow for anyone to be an actual specialist if the player next to you can use Rapid Fire to fix the busted computer terminal just as good as the person that chose to take the appropriate tech skills. We were all thinking "Why even have skills" so we just decided to stick to the old Palladium system for our Macross games.
This is just an example of "new doesn't always mean better" and "there are some bad systems out there."
Palladium is a system I wish I had a chance to play and at least see how it was. I knew of Palladium campaigns, but never got to play in one :(
Kotath etches into discussion:
Palladium is a system I wish I had a chance to play and at least see how it was. I knew of Palladium campaigns, but never got to play in one :(
I can't speak to Palladium fantasy as I don't know how the magic system worked at all. I can say I liked Robotech's line for the lore, but the game felt more like Battletech done theater of the mind than Robotech, just without heat caclculations. I remember liking TMNT and the related After the Bomb mutant animals (sorta furry Gamma World), and I think Ninja and Superspies and a superhero title I can't remember supposedly having a similar feel. Never bothered with Revised Recon because I had Twilight:2000 so why? I never understood Rift's popularity, especially since TORG just did it better IMHO but Palladium was able to keep churning Rifts products out years after WEG shuttered. I guess I never cared for Rifts because it seems like expansions came out not because they were needed, but just because they could sell to its fan base.
Palladium was a terrible system to be fair. But we as a group really liked the Mega Damage vs Regular Damage system for our giant robot battles. It was also easily accessible since it was readily available at the local game store unlike a lot of other games at the time.
edit: We also liked that we could do a exploration version of Robotech that visited strange worlds with dragons, demons, Glitter Boys and anything else we could think of because Palladium had a book for pretty much everything even though it didn't do any of them well.
Palladium was a terrible system to be fair. But we as a group really liked the Mega Damage vs Regular Damage system for our giant robot battles. It was also easily accessible since it was readily available at the local game store unlike a lot of other games at the time.
edit: We also liked that we could do a exploration version of Robotech that visited strange worlds with dragons, demons, Glitter Boys and anything else we could think of because Palladium had a book for pretty much everything even though it didn't do any of them well.
BUT could you be Glitterboy Juicers who flew Veritech mecha? Yeah, the introduction of MDC v SDC in Robotech was definitely a turning point for Palladium. Without it, I doubt we would have had Rifts. Other games eventually did scales of damage better (I think) but Palladium starting with Robotech might've been the first. Though I think Southern Cross got a bit weird with all the branches wearing MDC body armor and MDC issued side arms. I don't think that fit with Robotech canon, but definitely was tide signal for Rifts. I want to say the Sentinels books game DMs good rules for broad space exploration (which wasn't unique to TTRPGs) but I might be remembering wrongly ... I know they pushed thinking of a Sentinels game as WWII Island hopping, though now my memory is fuzzy on whether there was mechanical support to create a variety of worlds.
I _did_ think they expanded the Invid Genesis pit and human experimentations in pretty neat ways. Some pretty creative world building, if only they weren't so married to mechanics that were basically a half step evolution from AD&D mechanics.
Lastly to circle back to the thread, I am meta-aware that some of my Rifts hating could be recognized as parallel or similar to present 5e hating. Rifts definitely took up a lot of real estate at game and comic shops back in the day, they were definitely a smaller company than TSR but I think moved an impressive amount of product for a smaller sized company.
To sum up the thread..."D&D hate" in RPGs seems to come from the same place as "WoW hate" in MMOs... "Windows hate" in PCs (though I would argue if any company has a reason to be hated, Microsoft would be it)... "Starbucks hate" in coffee (yes, it is real... I lived in Seattle for 7 years, trust me).
A friend of mine who loved coffee but did NOT look down his nose at Starbucks as most "coffee connoisseurs" do (probably because he was from South Carolina not Seattle), said he'd heard the line, "Starbucks taught us to appreciate good coffee, so we don't drink their coffee anymore."
The "Juggernaut" gets hate from large segments of the population simply because it *is* the juggernaut. And some of this is also because, as the juggernaut, they have to churn out quantity at speed, so they cannot produce the "hand crafted quality" you'd get from the smaller company. WOTC has to churn out product X number of times a year to keep sales going to support their giant company, and so they put out books that have content that sells to the masses, rather than content that is objectively "excellent" (I don't think anyone here would argue that all or even most of their books are "excellent"). Starbucks, Microsoft, WoW, and D&D sell based on name brand to large numbers of "non discerning" customers, and even to millions of discerning ones who have no choice (there may only *be* a Starbucks in your area, if you aren't in Seattle...). And so this "generic" quality combined with the fact that they stifle much of the competition breeds some resentment from some quarters. It's a fact of big business.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Ditto to a lot of what BioWizard says and I also think all the major stereotypical industries of Seattle (I mean Boeing too, right?) analogy is spot on. Re: Starbucks I think the "we don't drink their coffee anymore line" is on target, the U.S. wouldn't have had the so-called "third wave" coffee boom in U.S. major metros if Starbucks hadn't already seeded the ground (and I actually know coffee growers in places like Rwanda and Guatemala who actually credit their improved material and quality of living standards to the transformation of American coffee culture). I don't think the next tier game presses and definitely the indie TTRPG would have remotely near the audiences they have now if it wasn't for "Big D&D". D&D isn't Big Oil. Big Game is more like "Big Coffee." I admit myself to sorta eye-rolling at WotC spending page counts explaining Session 0 and boundary settings which I've just thought of as gaming best practices for a few decades, but it's D&D's work in the industry does have to do service to base line "fair play" establishment. Much like Starbucks spends a lot of its energy not only on "good accessible coffee" not just in terms of the actual stuff you drink but the customer relations, making menu and space accessible and welcoming (I think Starbucks was the first biz to either develop or at least run with the "third space" concept). And you had curious lateral impacts, where Dunkin Donuts and to an extent McDonalds as well sorta rejiggering their operations with some lessons learned from Starbucks.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
To sum up the thread..."D&D hate" in RPGs seems to come from the same place as "WoW hate" in MMOs... "Windows hate" in PCs (though I would argue if any company has a reason to be hated, Microsoft would be it)... "Starbucks hate" in coffee (yes, it is real... I lived in Seattle for 7 years, trust me).
A friend of mine who loved coffee but did NOT look down his nose at Starbucks as most "coffee connoisseurs" do (probably because he was from South Carolina not Seattle), said he'd heard the line, "Starbucks taught us to appreciate good coffee, so we don't drink their coffee anymore."
The "Juggernaut" gets hate from large segments of the population simply because it *is* the juggernaut. And some of this is also because, as the juggernaut, they have to churn out quantity at speed, so they cannot produce the "hand crafted quality" you'd get from the smaller company. WOTC has to churn out product X number of times a year to keep sales going to support their giant company, and so they put out books that have content that sells to the masses, rather than content that is objectively "excellent" (I don't think anyone here would argue that all or even most of their books are "excellent"). Starbucks, Microsoft, WoW, and D&D sell based on name brand to large numbers of "non discerning" customers, and even to millions of discerning ones who have no choice (there may only *be* a Starbucks in your area, if you aren't in Seattle...). And so this "generic" quality combined with the fact that they stifle much of the competition breeds some resentment from some quarters. It's a fact of big business.
"Some pretty creative world building, if only they weren't so married to mechanics that were basically a half step evolution from AD&D mechanics."
Sadly this was actually a selling point for more than a few players. The rules were familiar enough that it was really easy to jump in and play.
I honestly believe that if a company really wanted to succeed they should take a lot of lessons from D&D instead of reinventing the wheel and trying to "set themselves apart". It has worked really well for Pathfinder. Make a game system that is familiar to what people know but works for the genre you are aiming for (like Starfinder). Once you have built up a following then you can begin to innovate (just like Pathfinder 2nd edition).
"Some pretty creative world building, if only they weren't so married to mechanics that were basically a half step evolution from AD&D mechanics."
Sadly this was actually a selling point for more than a few players. The rules were familiar enough that it was really easy to jump in and play.
I honestly believe that if a company really wanted to succeed they should take a lot of lessons from D&D instead of reinventing the wheel and trying to "set themselves apart". It has worked really well for Pathfinder. Make a game system that is familiar to what people know but works for the genre you are aiming for (like Starfinder). Once you have built up a following then you can begin to innovate (just like Pathfinder 2nd edition).
I'd argue Pathfinder is more of an example of D&D's iron fist ruling TTRPG land, to be honest (though maybe and hopefully your experiences are different): Pathfinder was a massive success when D&D slumped, being able to gobble up the large part of the 3E player base dissatisfied with 4E, but at least insofar as I can tell Pathfinder 2 is much less successful because of 5E's surge in popularity gobbling up a large part of the Pathfinder player base in turn. Free League Publishing is doing really well, but without treating their (by now many) product lines as vaporware their continued wellbeing seems predicated more on launching more and different RPGs than building an empire on a single one, WotC/D&D style. Turning a new RPG into a lasting cash cow is hard. WotC significantly reduced their release frequency with 5E, yet other TTRPG publishers typically don't match even that frequency for any single product line by a significant margin.
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"Some pretty creative world building, if only they weren't so married to mechanics that were basically a half step evolution from AD&D mechanics."
Sadly this was actually a selling point for more than a few players. The rules were familiar enough that it was really easy to jump in and play.
I honestly believe that if a company really wanted to succeed they should take a lot of lessons from D&D instead of reinventing the wheel and trying to "set themselves apart". It has worked really well for Pathfinder. Make a game system that is familiar to what people know but works for the genre you are aiming for (like Starfinder). Once you have built up a following then you can begin to innovate (just like Pathfinder 2nd edition).
I'd argue Pathfinder is more of an example of D&D's iron fist ruling TTRPG land, to be honest (though maybe and hopefully your experiences are different): Pathfinder was a massive success when D&D slumped, being able to gobble up the large part of the 3E player base dissatisfied with 4E, but at least insofar as I can tell Pathfinder 2 is much less successful because of 5E's surge in popularity gobbling up a large part of the Pathfinder player base in turn. Free League Publishing is doing really well, but without treating their (by now many) product lines as vaporware their continued wellbeing seems predicated more on launching more and different RPGs than building an empire on a single one, WotC/D&D style. Turning a new RPG into a lasting cash cow is hard. WotC significantly reduced their release frequency with 5E, yet other TTRPG publishers typically don't match even that frequency for any single product line by a significant margin.
PF2E has a massive release schedule tho...
They have had a lot of releases in the last two years.
"Some pretty creative world building, if only they weren't so married to mechanics that were basically a half step evolution from AD&D mechanics."
Sadly this was actually a selling point for more than a few players. The rules were familiar enough that it was really easy to jump in and play.
I honestly believe that if a company really wanted to succeed they should take a lot of lessons from D&D instead of reinventing the wheel and trying to "set themselves apart". It has worked really well for Pathfinder. Make a game system that is familiar to what people know but works for the genre you are aiming for (like Starfinder). Once you have built up a following then you can begin to innovate (just like Pathfinder 2nd edition).
I'd argue Pathfinder is more of an example of D&D's iron fist ruling TTRPG land, to be honest (though maybe and hopefully your experiences are different): Pathfinder was a massive success when D&D slumped, being able to gobble up the large part of the 3E player base dissatisfied with 4E, but at least insofar as I can tell Pathfinder 2 is much less successful because of 5E's surge in popularity gobbling up a large part of the Pathfinder player base in turn. Free League Publishing is doing really well, but without treating their (by now many) product lines as vaporware their continued wellbeing seems predicated more on launching more and different RPGs than building an empire on a single one, WotC/D&D style. Turning a new RPG into a lasting cash cow is hard. WotC significantly reduced their release frequency with 5E, yet other TTRPG publishers typically don't match even that frequency for any single product line by a significant margin.
PF2E has a massive release schedule tho...
They have had a lot of releases in the last two years.
Don't I (and my wallet) know it! They're pretty much an exception though, and Pathfinder games have gotten much harder to find for me since 5E without much of a resurge when PF2 was released. Which is a shame, I think it's an overall improvement over PF1.
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I'm of the opinion that I honestly dislike almost everything about the rules in dnd, all editions. Yet I still enjoy playing them and I love it. It's conflicting.
The thing is, like people pointed out already, while there are a few rules for out of combat encounters, they arent as emphasized in the rules. Of course it depends on what gm and group you have in the end but as for the rules I have no idea how social interaction challenges are made in a way compared to combat. When I dm I make up my own though and I don't have any issues with that. In fact, many times I kinda like that it doesn't, because it let's us focus much more on the roleplaying aspects of a social encounter. Having rules for it risks turning it into just a few rolls to see how it goes.
It's a practice thing though, in combat we usually add in cinematic effects for fun, like holding out your hand with the petrified eye of a newt, muttering a few words in abyssal, crushing the eye in your hand then casting a spell.. I presume, with social encounter rolls we would add in them as well.
Compared to let's say mouse guard which simply treats anything the same, you can encounter enemies, a flood, a wall, or a guard that won't let you inside the town. You then more or less, depending on what encounter it is, pick a main skill and iirc a main attribute... Then perhaps if someone can aid you, you might get an extra die. You need to justify which skill you're using so this could mean you explain how you use your boat building skills to survive the flood, or your persuasion for the guard situation.
Depending on successes you take or give penalties, from character traits, and resolve the situation.
This kinda system is simple and uses the same base rules for everything, which means you know how to do it and then just focus on describing how and why kinda.
In the end I'd prefer a light system for social encounters and I think dnd has a lot of flaws in many ways. It's still really fun though and experienced dms have no issues with them because they know how to improvise well enough to not have any issues really.
Idk, its not great but it's still so much fun :p and I love it!
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Crowdfunding platforms have made it easier to manage the risk of devoting time and resources to a project like getting a new TTRPG off the ground. It works, there are dozens of successful new TTRPG campaigns on Kickstarter every year.
The downside however is what happens when the campaign ends. Assuming you were successful and got funded you finish your development, produce your rewards for the backers and fulfill the pledges, but from there on you don't have the visibility Kickstarter offered anymore, stores typically are less interested in your product because 95% of the prospective customers already backed the campaign and setting up distribution and mass production in hopes of continued large sales brings back all the risk you avoided with crowdfunding in the first place (this doesn't apply just to TTRPGs either - ridiculously profitable campaigns like Cool Mini Or Not's Zombicide sets probably generate 90% or more of their value through Kickstarter and sell very little through retailers afterwards, and CMON is large enough to be able to navigate sales through Amazon and the like).
So, I don't think TTRPGs are as tough as that to break into. It's a really hard market to introduce a product with a long-term shelf life into, however.
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I would say too, it's not the price of the individual books that gets you -- but the total price of all the books you "need." A DM will need, minimally, DMG, PHB, and MM, to get going. (Yes, I know there is an Essentials Kit and there are some basic materials online, but if you are going to be serious about it, you need those 3 books.) The "list price" of these books, per Amazon, is $50, although right now they are "on sale" for considerably less. Still, the "sale" price total for these 3 books is around $100 combined, and "list" price would be $150. This does not count shipping. If you throw in the DM screen and some dice, and include that shipping, you're just getting started in the hobby and you are into it for upwards of $200. That is quite a cost to sink into it. And we all know that if you get a long-term group going and you guys play a lot, you're going to be buying Xanathar, Volo, Tasha, Mord, etc. If you add all that up, plus the PHBs for several players, we're talking what now, for the cost to the entire group of players combined? $500? More? So that is definitely one major aspect to this... there is a major expense to these games.
And it is not just D&D. If you want to run Star Trek Adventures, sure, you can just buy the ($64) sourcebook (admittedly, $22 for PDF only, if you want that), but then there are many other books that the GM, at least, will need. There are books for the 3 main divisions (command, science, and operations) weighing in at around $36. And there is a book for each quadrant... you'll probably need at least Alpha Quadrant (the main area of the Federation), depending on what you intend to play, but if adventures take you "where no one has gone before" you're gonna probably need gamma, delta, and/or beta quadrant as well - Another $36 each. Figuring conservatively, core book + 3 divisions + 1 quadrant = $208 for the hardbacks, or around half that ($90) for the PDFs. And again, that is pretty much just to get started. If you end up in a long campaign, you're going to ultimately need *all* the books.
So... Kotath is right, these are not cheap hobbies, especially for the DM. We've not even talked about the cost of things like VTTs, subscriptions to D&D Beyond or similar places, purchasing electronic assets like map sets, token sets, buying miniatures, and the like. Do you *need* to do those things, no. But this is not a hobby for the short on cash. So I agree with Kotath, it is largely a "luxury item." Goodness knows I have the luxury of affording multiple RPG books (in hardcover, not just cheaper PDFs) and am a bit of a collector. But I am fortunate that I have a little disposable income to do it. And I have massively cut back things like travel expenses during the pandemic for obvious reasons, so I have more to spend on silly things like Call of Cthulhu books I'll probably never use in live play, just because I want them.
Now to bring it around to D&D dominance... if you do happen to have the money to spend a couple of hundred bucks as a table to buy all the books, dice, etc., that you need, what are the odds you're going to want to do that more than once, for other games? This is why most people pick one game, the most visible game, and stick with it.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
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I think it is a complex combination of Investment and time.
We all know that it is hard to get a group together to play consistently. That makes the time you do have to play precious. Do you risk spending money on a game that you may or may not like AND do you risk the limited time you have to try it out? If it is the only game the group is going to get to play this month, do you take a chance?
There are a lot of TTRPGs and a lot of them aren't even half is good as D&D 5e. Those that are good tend to be more niche than D&D (which is just generic fantasy). Star Trek is a good example. Even if it is good, it is only going to draw a very specific audience. That is were a lot of the modern RPGs tend to fail, they target a very narrow market inside of an already narrow market so can't sustain sales and players are less willing to try out new things given the limits of money and time.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I'm not saying TTRPGs aren't a niche market, they are. I'm saying it's not as hard to break into as it used to be, with the added caveat that usually new TTRPGs that successfully get published earn back their development cost and then some (they wouldn't be successful otherwise), but that's all early on. Staying power is something else. If a Kickstarter campaign provides X profit after delivery of the pledges and maybe 20% of X on top of that over the next two-three years that's financial success and a solid project economically. What it's not is a growing customer base providing a steady income for an indefinite, long-term period.
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The contention in some posters that Star Trek just doesn't work for TTRPGs isn't really historically aware. Not even getting into the role Star Fleet Battles and publications like The Space Gamer had in the protean days bridging Table Top Wargaming into RPGs (before there was a need to put table top in front of the acronym). During TSR's hey day one of the other big houses was FASA, who yeah hit the sweet spot for the gaming public with Shadowrun, but a game generation prior to that had pretty respectable business in their Star Trek role playing game line. It was a very popular game. The present Star Trek TTRPG doesn't seem as aggressive as what FASA did (though the present Klingon separate core rule book I think speak to it being a self-aware "high end" publishing bracket).
I think a lot of publishers of licenses properties sort of know if they put out a core mechanic system, it's not hard these days for a community to cover the rest of the canon through online fandom (which has taken over the role of fan showcasing publishing organs these days by and large) ... FFG's Star Wars was sort of of the exception because Star Wars as a brand has always been tied to excessive merchandising (and for what it's worth WEG's Star Wars did sort of serve as the spark that lit the fire of the old EU). Whereas Star Trek not as much. Same could be said for the recent Robotech lines. On the other hand, fandoms like Star Trek do like having "print bibles" that sort of serve as technical references that TTRPG sourcebooks sort of perform (FASA had ovrerlap with both the Star Fleet Battles crowd -- the latter eventually departing from canon I believe -- with also whoever was putting out the technical reference books).
I'm curious what's going to happen with this new Marvel TTRPG in the works.
Riffing off Pang's point about Kickstarters, I often wondered how much longevity the Kickstarter products have. Seems there's a sort of short tail presumptive economics going on. I think Steve Jackson gets it right, but they are also in a hybrid "traditional" publisher who also does Kickstarters. I'm curious about these sort of patron economics where designers just go from de facto freelance production to de facto freelance production (really no idea, but do these design shops that actually produce kickstarters year round actually provide benefits beyond pay to their designers?). I mean the "pay" for designers as I understand it have never been on par with other spaces for creative/writing (both creative writing and technical writing) skillsets so I guess whatever is going on with the patron/kickstarter economy isn't any worse. To be fair, MCDM Studios I think gets it right (also I'm presuming tries to engage in practices building off -- that is, improving -- practices in the computer game industry) but their Kickstarter windfall as I understand it was pretty unprecedented.
{as far as the Chain of Command objection, TTRPGs "unbridled creativity encouragement" aside are still games that rely on mechanical standard operating procedures. TTRPGs has had a place amidst military cultures to the point where it is often used along with table top wargaming as a training tool. Yes, there is, and I have acknowledge this, a powerful influence of counter culture in the history of TTRPG's particularly early D&D, but there's always been something to it that also spoke to people living in or close to military lifestyles. I mean the "creative" parts of TTRPG done right with balance and maximum cooperation and minimal problematic spotlighting is basically collaborative problem solving ... much like a starship or RL naval commander and their section chiefs ... ).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Speaking of the new Robotech RPG, my group of friends looked at that and came to the same conclusion. It's system doesn't work for us. It isn't the pool of d6s dice mechanic, it was the all skills can do all things mechanic. It doesn't allow for anyone to be an actual specialist if the player next to you can use Rapid Fire to fix the busted computer terminal just as good as the person that chose to take the appropriate tech skills. We were all thinking "Why even have skills" so we just decided to stick to the old Palladium system for our Macross games.
This is just an example of "new doesn't always mean better" and "there are some bad systems out there."
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Which Robotech? I guess there's Savage Worlds and Strange Machines now. I think you're talking about Strange Machine's but I don't know either other than breeze through of PDFs on Drivethru I think.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Kotath etches into discussion:
I can't speak to Palladium fantasy as I don't know how the magic system worked at all. I can say I liked Robotech's line for the lore, but the game felt more like Battletech done theater of the mind than Robotech, just without heat caclculations. I remember liking TMNT and the related After the Bomb mutant animals (sorta furry Gamma World), and I think Ninja and Superspies and a superhero title I can't remember supposedly having a similar feel. Never bothered with Revised Recon because I had Twilight:2000 so why? I never understood Rift's popularity, especially since TORG just did it better IMHO but Palladium was able to keep churning Rifts products out years after WEG shuttered. I guess I never cared for Rifts because it seems like expansions came out not because they were needed, but just because they could sell to its fan base.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The Strange Machine Games version
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Palladium was a terrible system to be fair. But we as a group really liked the Mega Damage vs Regular Damage system for our giant robot battles. It was also easily accessible since it was readily available at the local game store unlike a lot of other games at the time.
edit: We also liked that we could do a exploration version of Robotech that visited strange worlds with dragons, demons, Glitter Boys and anything else we could think of because Palladium had a book for pretty much everything even though it didn't do any of them well.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
BUT could you be Glitterboy Juicers who flew Veritech mecha? Yeah, the introduction of MDC v SDC in Robotech was definitely a turning point for Palladium. Without it, I doubt we would have had Rifts. Other games eventually did scales of damage better (I think) but Palladium starting with Robotech might've been the first. Though I think Southern Cross got a bit weird with all the branches wearing MDC body armor and MDC issued side arms. I don't think that fit with Robotech canon, but definitely was tide signal for Rifts. I want to say the Sentinels books game DMs good rules for broad space exploration (which wasn't unique to TTRPGs) but I might be remembering wrongly ... I know they pushed thinking of a Sentinels game as WWII Island hopping, though now my memory is fuzzy on whether there was mechanical support to create a variety of worlds.
I _did_ think they expanded the Invid Genesis pit and human experimentations in pretty neat ways. Some pretty creative world building, if only they weren't so married to mechanics that were basically a half step evolution from AD&D mechanics.
Lastly to circle back to the thread, I am meta-aware that some of my Rifts hating could be recognized as parallel or similar to present 5e hating. Rifts definitely took up a lot of real estate at game and comic shops back in the day, they were definitely a smaller company than TSR but I think moved an impressive amount of product for a smaller sized company.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
To sum up the thread..."D&D hate" in RPGs seems to come from the same place as "WoW hate" in MMOs... "Windows hate" in PCs (though I would argue if any company has a reason to be hated, Microsoft would be it)... "Starbucks hate" in coffee (yes, it is real... I lived in Seattle for 7 years, trust me).
A friend of mine who loved coffee but did NOT look down his nose at Starbucks as most "coffee connoisseurs" do (probably because he was from South Carolina not Seattle), said he'd heard the line, "Starbucks taught us to appreciate good coffee, so we don't drink their coffee anymore."
The "Juggernaut" gets hate from large segments of the population simply because it *is* the juggernaut. And some of this is also because, as the juggernaut, they have to churn out quantity at speed, so they cannot produce the "hand crafted quality" you'd get from the smaller company. WOTC has to churn out product X number of times a year to keep sales going to support their giant company, and so they put out books that have content that sells to the masses, rather than content that is objectively "excellent" (I don't think anyone here would argue that all or even most of their books are "excellent"). Starbucks, Microsoft, WoW, and D&D sell based on name brand to large numbers of "non discerning" customers, and even to millions of discerning ones who have no choice (there may only *be* a Starbucks in your area, if you aren't in Seattle...). And so this "generic" quality combined with the fact that they stifle much of the competition breeds some resentment from some quarters. It's a fact of big business.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Ditto to a lot of what BioWizard says and I also think all the major stereotypical industries of Seattle (I mean Boeing too, right?) analogy is spot on. Re: Starbucks I think the "we don't drink their coffee anymore line" is on target, the U.S. wouldn't have had the so-called "third wave" coffee boom in U.S. major metros if Starbucks hadn't already seeded the ground (and I actually know coffee growers in places like Rwanda and Guatemala who actually credit their improved material and quality of living standards to the transformation of American coffee culture). I don't think the next tier game presses and definitely the indie TTRPG would have remotely near the audiences they have now if it wasn't for "Big D&D". D&D isn't Big Oil. Big Game is more like "Big Coffee." I admit myself to sorta eye-rolling at WotC spending page counts explaining Session 0 and boundary settings which I've just thought of as gaming best practices for a few decades, but it's D&D's work in the industry does have to do service to base line "fair play" establishment. Much like Starbucks spends a lot of its energy not only on "good accessible coffee" not just in terms of the actual stuff you drink but the customer relations, making menu and space accessible and welcoming (I think Starbucks was the first biz to either develop or at least run with the "third space" concept). And you had curious lateral impacts, where Dunkin Donuts and to an extent McDonalds as well sorta rejiggering their operations with some lessons learned from Starbucks.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Sadly this was actually a selling point for more than a few players. The rules were familiar enough that it was really easy to jump in and play.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Yes, I thinks this pretty much sums it up.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I honestly believe that if a company really wanted to succeed they should take a lot of lessons from D&D instead of reinventing the wheel and trying to "set themselves apart". It has worked really well for Pathfinder. Make a game system that is familiar to what people know but works for the genre you are aiming for (like Starfinder). Once you have built up a following then you can begin to innovate (just like Pathfinder 2nd edition).
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I'd argue Pathfinder is more of an example of D&D's iron fist ruling TTRPG land, to be honest (though maybe and hopefully your experiences are different): Pathfinder was a massive success when D&D slumped, being able to gobble up the large part of the 3E player base dissatisfied with 4E, but at least insofar as I can tell Pathfinder 2 is much less successful because of 5E's surge in popularity gobbling up a large part of the Pathfinder player base in turn. Free League Publishing is doing really well, but without treating their (by now many) product lines as vaporware their continued wellbeing seems predicated more on launching more and different RPGs than building an empire on a single one, WotC/D&D style. Turning a new RPG into a lasting cash cow is hard. WotC significantly reduced their release frequency with 5E, yet other TTRPG publishers typically don't match even that frequency for any single product line by a significant margin.
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PF2E has a massive release schedule tho...
They have had a lot of releases in the last two years.
Don't I (and my wallet) know it! They're pretty much an exception though, and Pathfinder games have gotten much harder to find for me since 5E without much of a resurge when PF2 was released. Which is a shame, I think it's an overall improvement over PF1.
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I'm of the opinion that I honestly dislike almost everything about the rules in dnd, all editions. Yet I still enjoy playing them and I love it. It's conflicting.
The thing is, like people pointed out already, while there are a few rules for out of combat encounters, they arent as emphasized in the rules. Of course it depends on what gm and group you have in the end but as for the rules I have no idea how social interaction challenges are made in a way compared to combat. When I dm I make up my own though and I don't have any issues with that. In fact, many times I kinda like that it doesn't, because it let's us focus much more on the roleplaying aspects of a social encounter. Having rules for it risks turning it into just a few rolls to see how it goes.
It's a practice thing though, in combat we usually add in cinematic effects for fun, like holding out your hand with the petrified eye of a newt, muttering a few words in abyssal, crushing the eye in your hand then casting a spell.. I presume, with social encounter rolls we would add in them as well.
Compared to let's say mouse guard which simply treats anything the same, you can encounter enemies, a flood, a wall, or a guard that won't let you inside the town. You then more or less, depending on what encounter it is, pick a main skill and iirc a main attribute... Then perhaps if someone can aid you, you might get an extra die. You need to justify which skill you're using so this could mean you explain how you use your boat building skills to survive the flood, or your persuasion for the guard situation.
Depending on successes you take or give penalties, from character traits, and resolve the situation.
This kinda system is simple and uses the same base rules for everything, which means you know how to do it and then just focus on describing how and why kinda.
In the end I'd prefer a light system for social encounters and I think dnd has a lot of flaws in many ways. It's still really fun though and experienced dms have no issues with them because they know how to improvise well enough to not have any issues really.
Idk, its not great but it's still so much fun :p and I love it!