Mearls Offers an Argument

[calithena]

ODDD member Mike Mearls wrote the following on rpg.net:

Here's something to consider when you look at WoW and RPGs.

Imagine it's 1979. You're a hex and counter wargamer. You buy every title SPI releases. You love them.

Now, keeping in mind how everything played out, let's imagine a bit of a twist in the eventual decay of the wargaming hobby.

There are these home computers, Apple ][s, IBMs, Tandy computers. As luck would have it, this new company called Snowdrift starts making computer versions of games that look a lot like SPI games. In a lot of ways, they're SPI titles taken almost hex for hex and put on a computer.

It turns out that these games are HUGE hits. They make Snowdrift one of the biggest, most profitable entertainment companies in the world.

Knowing what you know about how the wargame hobby went, what would you want SPI to do in that situation?

In that situation SPI should have gotten into making computer games.

However, I take Mearls' point here really to be about D&D vs. Warcraft. Wizards has already tried and failed to take D&D online, though there's always another chance (all you need with an established name, which D&D is, is one good release and your franchise is set up).

I do think that online roleplaying is eroding the tabletop RPG base some. I don't think it's taking from the hard core, but I do think that lots of casual players drift away from TT and into the WoW or whatever.

On the other hand, the overall pool of people who do some kind of fantasy gaming is incontestably growing.

When I look at this from the perspective of the individual committed GM or world builder or play group, it's not a bad thing. You can still find players and there are people doing WoW or whatever who are pretty cool who would probably join a well-run TT game if you asked them. So from the point of view of serious participants in our hobby this isn't a bad thing. It may mean there are less games going on at any one time but the ease of finding people who want to play in a good game has probably never been greater. It will be even easier in a few more years when social networking takes the next step IMO.

(Some games produced in the indie scene are essentially for groups of GMs. Those are a blast for some groups but they don't really grow the hobby; they're a refuge for the hard core. Games that grow the hobby involve a motivated GM and maybe one or two motivated players entertaining everyone else. There has to be a casual entry. OD&D and AD&D provided that entry: does your game? Can an average dude who's never played before sit down and run the fighter?)

Now, from the point of view of a company which holds the D&D license, what should they do?

1) On the one hand, they can't give up on computer games and the online world. License the title to a winner if you can't do it in house. It's leaving money on the table. Heck, a fairly simple Castle Greyhawk MMO that spared no expense on amazing graphic animations of the standard D&D beasties and demigods would probably draw a lot of interest.

2) Next to (1) and WoW, etc., traditional tabletop games are a losing commercial proposition. The reason isn't interest or technology or any of that, there are still a ton of people playing tabletop RPGs; the reason is margin. One million people paying $10 per month beats one million people where only 400,000 have bought even one product ever for say a $10 margin once and only 40,000 have bought more than that. The margins just aren't there more than once every twenty years when people re-buy in (1982, 2001).

3) On the other hand, money can be made supporting tabletop play too. The tabletop games are just different. What makes them fun? Do you really need to recreate the same kind of fun in tabletop play that you get in online play? I personally don't think so. I think that the things online play does better actually frees us up to focus on the things that TTRPG still, and maybe ever, can't be beat at: creativity at the table in dealing with situations and in GM prep in creating worlds, adventures, etc.; immersion in a totally individual character; spontaneous social interaction; and a bunch of other stuff.

I guess the gist of all this is that I think Mike's analogy isn't really right. What SPI should have done was clear because there just isn't that much difference in the end between hex and counter tabletop play and a hex and counter computer games. (There's a little, sure, but not much.) Whereas tabletop RPGs still provide a unique experience that MMO's and computer games can't duplicate.

It may be that there's not as much market for that experience as there used to be, and so it may be that a company like Wizards/Hasbro has a problem making money for its shareholders. But there are still a ton of people playing these games and still plenty of opportunity for those who like them to have fun with them.

[geoffrey]

I'd love to see the following occur:

1. WotC makes a D&D computer game that can do everything Warcraft can, only better. The D&D computer game makes obscene amounts of money.

2. WotC notices that their new computer game is making 99% of the money that is made with the D&D name, while the pen-and-paper D&D game is making less than 1%. So WotC ceases to publish pen-and-paper D&D.

3. Consequently, WotC voids the copyrights on every RPG copyright it owns (while keeping the D&D trademark name, of course). The WotC suits say to each other, "Who the devil cares what those filthy losers do with their grubby books? Let them do whatever they want. Pen-and-paper D&D is a loser." This allows anyone to republish the OD&D books, the AD&D books, etc. All that has to be done is white-out "D&D" and "Dungeons & Dragons".

(Not a prediction. Only a wish.)

[fitz]

There's one problem with your scenario: copyright is not voided simply by ceasing publication. In most of the world, a copyright work produced by a publishing company (as opposed to an individual) remains copyright for 70 years from its publication date. I believe in the USA it's 90 years, and likely to be longer just as soon as Micky Mouse approaches its next public domain threshold.

WotC could *choose* to release its copyright works into the public domain, but I suspect the chances of that happening are vanishingly small.

[thegreyelf]

In the U.S. it's 70 years after the death of the author.

[James Maliszewski]

It's just a rephrasing of the old "Evolve or die" chestnut, implying that roleplaying, like wargames before it, must ape a different medium entirely or face extinction. I think the argument is deeply flawed, both as a matter of history (neither SPI nor wargaming in general declined in popularity primarily due to the rise of computer games) and on the level of theory (imitating one's more successful competition is the key to success for oneself).

People continually and willfully forget that the late 70s to mid-80s boom in the popularity of RPGs was a fad unlikely to ever be repeated again. I don't think any type of "innovation" or "borrowing" from computer games is going to change that. Indeed, the more RPG designs attempt to do so, the more likely they are to draw attention to how much "better" computer games are than traditional tabletop RPGs. For my part, I think RPG designers would be wiser if they emphasized what RPGs can do that electronic games cannot. By using the widespread success of computer games/MMOs as a polestar of one's design goals, you're already conceding the field of battle to them. It's a losing proposition from the get-go.

[tavis]

I think it's hard to read Greg Costikyan's analysis of the decline of SPI and not draw parallels with events from D&D's corporate history.

Science fiction, like RPGs, is often said to have a greying fanbase & its impending death is oft-discussed. In both cases, what's being lamented is the shrinking of the audience for its original form - print fiction (especially short-form) or face-to-face tabletop gaming. At the same time, more people than ever are thrilling to rocketships at the movies & on TV or killing orcs online. I dearly love the original forms and celebrate their unique virtues, but I think it's important to acknowledge that they've become less popular in part because once upon a time they became popular enough to pass big chunks of their core appeal on to newer & more mass-market forms of media.

[calithena]

If the question is 'what do we do to make money with the D&D license', presumably online play and/or computer games are the answer. Though RPGs could certainly continue as a niche product - they have some value.

If the question is 'what do we do to save RPGs,' then I'm down with James M. as I said in the original post - make games that emphasize the kind of fun that RPGs are best at providing and try to get them widely distributed enough so that people will play them. (WotC is not terrible at this, by the way, though they've made some choices that I wouldn't have.)

But if the question is how do I combine both of those, then I don't think worrying about tie-ins between the second and the first is all that important, except at the level of color and corporate promotion. Very vague mechanical similarities (like say the similarities between WoW and AD&D1 or D&D3) are more than enough.

Anyway, yeah, I guess I responded to this because it felt vaguely like Mike was making a 'we have to make it more like WoW or die' argument, which I don't think is right even given what's going on. And if the suggestion was that in the fantasy scenario in question SPI should have made their games more like the online games, that doesn't seem like the right answer, except in the cases where there was a cool on-line innovation and you wanted say the boardgame and computer game to run by exactly the same rules.

If we were to read out these tea leaves further along the lines of that analogy, we might think that a big online version of 4e, meant to compete with WoW, was about to get released. But why would you want the two to follow the same rules? The only way is if you could somehow get interesting meaningful crossover between your tabletop games and the computer world and take your character back and forth between the two.

I can see some ways to do that, but very few that allow GMs and groups to do really interesting freeform stuff at the table.

Hmmm....now it's time for me to play coy. On the off chance that anyone wants to hire me for the ideas I do have on how to make this work for an MMO, I may be looking for work soon.

[chgowiz]

Sept 21, 2009 9:37:52 GMT -6 calithena said:

I may be looking for work soon.

Say it ain't so... you've had your share of the caca-fairy sitting on your head!

[Melan]

Mike said:

There are these home computers, Apple ][s, IBMs, Tandy computers. As luck would have it, this new company called Snowdrift starts making computer versions of games that look a lot like SPI games. In a lot of ways, they're SPI titles taken almost hex for hex and put on a computer.

This is where the analogy fails. Roleplaying games have something to offer current computer technology can't even approximate - the spontaneous development of a campaign through group interaction, content creation through fiat and pitching ideas to each other, and a high level of emergence. What 4th edition D&D is doing is eroding its appeal by formalising and codifying the game experience and undercutting its potential as a spontaneous endeavour. In the short term, this is a profitable approach since it leverages fans to buy into a subscription model that actually provides a decent value for people into the whole thing. In the longer term, D&D's owners have accepted that the game will dwindle away into commercial irrelevance, as in the niche it is competing, there are superior digital alternatives. Of course, it is possible this would have happened anyway, and the game is doomed (or blessed!) to return to its DIY hobby roots.

[palmer]

Just so, Melan. In attempting to mimic the characteristics of MMOs, the newer editions are cutting themselves off from the very heart of the game. They are sacrificing the randomness and unpredictability that makes possible the very best RPG experiences, in favor of a uniformity of outcome because of a fear of, or distaste for, the possibility of a bad experience.

New game design is ment to ensure a consistant and repeatable Gaming Experience Product every time. It's like eating at McDonalds rather than taking a risk on the independent corner bistro. The assumption of the designers and players is that it's better to avoid the risk of disappointment by rigorous codification of the rules, rather than take the chance that the game could be extraordinary, or might just suck.

[Deleted]

The biggest problem with this analogy is that wargames and rpgs are very different creatures. Despite what Costiygan (sp?) has written, I think that computer gaming killed wargaming dead due to one simple fact- most wargames were played solitaire (proven by polls done by SPI) and computer wargames provide a far better play experience than just playing by yourself. Rpg's are social by their very nature and computer rpg's are unable to provide this element in their play no matter how connected you are.

Wotc should simply be trying to compete with Blizzard by making D&D crpgs. Unfortunately, Hasbro hamstrung them by selling off the license and taking it out of their hands.

Note that Avalon Hill did try to get into the computer wargame market, but most of their efforts were rather weak. They certainly didn't try to produce boardgames that looked or played like their computer counterparts.

[kenmeister]

Well let me ask this: has on-line poker playing significantly eroded the amount of table-top poker that goes on? We should look to our fellow gaming hobby for an answer.

[ssfsx17]

Sept 23, 2009 19:26:57 GMT -6 kenmeister said:

Well let me ask this: has on-line poker playing significantly eroded the amount of table-top poker that goes on? We should look to our fellow gaming hobby for an answer.

Poker has a significant advantage: it has been around long enough that nobody has any misconceptions about the meaning of "Poker."

[benoist]

Mike's reasoning is fatally flawed. Tabletop RPGs and computer RPGs do not share the same properties and are not, in effect, the same thing AT ALL.

Instead of playing a losing game with the big boys of the MMO world by emphasizing the commonalities between these two media, the tabletop scene should emphasize what is DIFFERENT between TRPGs and CRPGs. The social component of the game itself (which is fundamental to its enjoyment, IMO), the lack of boundaries to the users' imaginations (as opposed to a CPU and program raising barriers to what you can accomplish), the do-it-yourself, craft approach of tabletop gaming, and so on, so forth.

We should accept the fact that TRPGs and CRPGs are not the same thing, and realize that the instant gratification of CRPGs will make them more popular than TRPGs. TRPGs will survive nonetheless, due to the fundamental differences between the two media.

What Mike's logic does is just ensuring that the TRPG hobby gets in the end absorbed by the CRPG hobby. It's similar to the notion of Appeasement in War time. It's stupid, nonsensical, and should be rejected at every single opportunity, IMO.

[Deleted]

Oct 5, 2009 11:45:41 GMT -6 benoist said:

the lack of boundaries to the users' imaginations (as opposed to a CPU and program raising barriers to what you can accomplish)

Indeed! It is quite frustrating to have a character who can laugh as he slaughters his way through a horde of orces to engage an ancient red dragon singlehandedly ... be blocked by a low barrier in the computer generated landscape that a 12 year old child could easily step over.

[jjarvis]

RPGs are different from MMO's because at any point a half dozen guys can say ..."Hmm this isn't as much fun as it could be, let's do something different" and they can next week, tomorrow or in an hour or two, they don't' have to wait for a patch an add-on or an entirely new game. The authentic Tabletop/lounge chair/picnic-bench RPG and how it's played is all theirs.

[ewilen]

Many of you have already expressed the fundamental truth in reply to Mearls' parable: computer RPGs and tabletop RPGs aren't comparable.

Furthermore the fundamental reasons that computer games beat both wargames and RPGs has nothing to do with "design" in a way that could be transferred "back" to the pen & paper medium. You can't transfer animated computer graphics onto the tabletop. Just as important, you can't transfer the ease of "running" a computer game, in the sense of just getting everything right procedurally, to a tabletop RPG--not without dumbing down the latter to the level of '60s rules-in-the-boxtop-lid boardgame. (Or Talisman, at most.)

Also, as mhensley pointed out, the wargame companies of the '70s did get into computer wargames. Some of the Avalon Hill computer games weren't bad--at least I played some of them in '90s on an Apple II emulator and I remember enjoying a game on the Bismarck. Al Nofi and James Dunnigan, of SPI, moved on to an online Hundred Years' War game. (Which still exists.) But "proper" wargames translated to the computer screen were swamped by the popularity of arcade games, shooters, Empire/Xconq descendants, RTS, etc. There are a few companies making computer wargames, such as Steel Panthers, but I don't get the impression that they're dominating the field--they're a niche just like the remaining cardboard wargames hobby vis a vis the flowering of CCGs and "Euro" games.

Because of this, if you look at the most successful computer games as a model for how to write board games, you're looking at what's been enabled by the mass-market power of computing: first people flock to computer games (because they're easy to play), then computer game writers follow the money to the interests of the masses. It's a reversal of cause & effect to see tabletop RPGs or wargames as needing to emulate the most popular computer games.

[coffee]

And all that is why I'm an ANALOG gamer; the computer just doesn't do what I want it to do. Or at any rate the programmers don't.

(Or if they do, it's not what the "gamers" out there want, so it doesn't succeed.)

But when a computer can give me the social interation of a rpg, the look on a wargame opponent's face when he realizes I've outmaneuvered him, the really bad (but still funny) Monty Python reference, THEN I'll be a digital gamer.

[palmer]

Heh! I'm with Coffee here, CRPGs will have to make it to the Holodeck level of sophistication before they'll interest me.

[barrataria]

Has TSR/WotC/Hasbro EVER successfully licensed the name or leveraged it? I can think of the cartoon. And that's it, with that deal struck by EGG in the brief period he had power in TSR in the mid-80s.

I was thinking this very thing yesterday, as I watched the DVD version of the execrable "Dungeons and Dragons" movie. As I watched I wondered what would have happened if that film had looked or succeeded anything like the LOTR films.

I think the whole computer vs. PnP issue is interesting but may not matter to the extent that the considerable goodwill of the trade name has never been extended into any other kind of media. On the one hand, I'm glad that the various promotions have never really transitioned into the public conscious ("Official Dungeons & Dragons Beholder-Os! Now with 75% more sugar!"). On the other hand, a Keep on the Borderlands movie might have been pretty interesting.

But unless I'm really forgetting something, it's never been leveraged into other media well so I dunno that we should be too surprised by the CRPG flops.

[Deleted]

They licensed a couple of D&D games for Mattel's Intellivision video game system that weren't too bad.

It is amusing, and perhaps appropriate, that what many consider the best D&D game for the Intellivision wasn't a licensed D&D game, "The Tower of Doom." This particular game is quite diverting, and took up many hours of my life.

www.intvfunhouse.com/games/doom.php

[chgowiz]

I have to admit, the old CRPGs like Bards Tale, Ultima and even up to Morrowind did interest me greatly. BT/Ultima for the new experience and the simplicity and slash/hack; Morrowind for the immersiveness and sandbox. For dungeon diving, I like nethack.

But nothing beats the play at the table.

[palmer]

"On the other hand, a Keep on the Borderlands movie might have been pretty interesting."

Your right! It really could be. Consider if they used the Keep as a hub, or set piece for a series, like DS9 used the station in Trek. You'd have the Keep out there on the edge of the wilderness, with the Caves of Chaos as it's immediate threat, but you could also have it as the focal point of overlapping regional powers intrigue and skullduggery. A large group of starring characters and a stable of rotating parts to flesh out the cast.

[deodanth]

Never mind the rest of this -- who is Snowdrift and how can I order their products??!

(Kidding. I adored Squad Leader and Outreach back in the day.)

[dwayanu]

My experiences with computer wargames have been largely unsatisfying. I would really like games that in fact are like the classic board games -- but then I would probably prefer just the "AI" in digital, and the actual physical components to manipulate. Most computer games just don't look so interesting to me, and I have often run into the situation of seeming unable to make a move (although it can be hard to tell) ... long enough, anyway, to kill my interest. With a board game, I can look over the components, maybe set up a few pieces and try out rules as I read. I note that Hasbro owns most of the AH (and SPI, I think) catalog ...

The truly mass market always was something different. You can reach the world online, but what the world wants is not what the hobbyists want. There can be some crossover, for sure, especially in terms of hobbyists crossing over to enjoy mainstream offerings; but I don't see the rise in digital form of anything resembling the old historical wargames hobby. It's not (as far as I can tell) as if the likes of Napoleon and the Archduke Charles or Great Battles of the American Civil War is leaping out now from the little screen. Relatively small publishers are still turning out board games (from very cheaply produced to very fine) for the small audience of devotees.

I think there's something to the move not only to very fancy books but to incorporation of more board-game-style components and an increased emphasis on figurines. Those tactile qualities are things the computer games can't offer.

Of course, neither can the low-budget publisher. On the other hand, what we can do with PDFs and print on demand services is pretty neat. The "by hobbyists for hobbyists" field is thriving!

And that, really, is where I think we always end up looking anyway for the kind of material that really hits the spot.

[shadowheart469]

The best computer wargames I've found so far are by Paradox Interactive. Europa Universalis III (inspired by the board game) and Hearts of Iron III. EUIII starts in the 14th or 15th century and goes til 1792 or 1821 (depending on whether you get the basic game or expansion packs). Like the board game, you decide what units to build, what technologies to pursue development of, what countries to make treaty with or go to war with, etc.
Hearts of Iron III is basically the same, but World War II, from 1936 to 1947.
The best part about both games is that it really does feel as though the designers understand what makes a board wargame fun, and also what advantages a computer have.

[Falconer]

I dunno. Everyone I know thinks World of Warcraft is for losers. Even close friends and family who may have dabbled in it at one time realize it's an antisocial waste of time and money. I don't doubt WoW has some good numbers, but do these numbers stack up against movie tickets? No way. There's some very narrow thinking going on at WotC if, to them, emulating WoW is “reaching for the stars”.

Just about everyone saw the The Lord of the Rings movies. Just about everyone saw the recent Star Trek movie. If I were running WotC I would have made it a top priority to do tie-in RPGs. Hello? Sovereign Press/Margaret Weis Productions' first Serenity RPG book outsold their entire Dragonlance line, by a mile. And Serenity is a niche/cult movie that bombed! I mean, let's get real. Tabletop RPGs are never going to be “huge” like movies. But what’s with the snobbish attitude that insists on keeping D&D for nerds only and out of the mainstream?

The other problem is, even when some company does come out with like a The Lord of the Rings RPG, you get a hardcover monstrosity that spends 300 pages on character creation, and that’s it. Despite the intro section which invariably tries to painstakingly, condescendingly explain what a role-playing game is, this product is not friendly to newbies, non-gamers, or kids. It depresses me, because IMO it’s so simple. What you need is some dice, the Holmes rulebook with cosmetic changes, and a simple setting/adventure akin to Keep on the Borderlands; slap them in a beautiful box that says “Dungeons & Dragons” AND “The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game”. Or put it on shelves as a book; that’s fine too. As long as it keeps it simple and gets to the good stuff!

Ah well, what do I know? I guess my point is just it seems that the “gaming industry” is too inbred and incapable of looking at the big picture, or of keeping it simple. Obviously, movie tie-ins are only a starting place, but LotR would have been a great opportunity to for D&D, and it was completely squandered. A good long-term strategy for WotC would be to publish better books with its novels division—ideally stuff like Burroughs, Lovecraft, Howard, de Camp/Pratt, Leiber, and Vance. For too long, WotC has been tying-in with fantasy worlds of its own making; it could have done a better job of selecting those worlds. Unfortunately, that boat has sailed, as Howard and such are now being mass-produced by other publishers, and WotC no longer has the novel audience it once was able to influence.

Just some thoughts. Regards.

[geoffrey]

Awesome post, Falconer.

[Falconer]

I’m just warming up!

(Thanks.)

[dwayanu]

But what’s with the snobbish attitude that insists on keeping D&D for nerds only and out of the mainstream?

I have never seen or heard of anyone having to guard the doors to keep out the hoi polloi!

The other problem is, even when some company does come out with like a The Lord of the Rings RPG, you get a hardcover monstrosity that spends 300 pages on character creation, and that’s it.

How about ICE's Lord of the Rings Adventure Game (1991-99), with 2d6 system just a step up from the Middle-Earth Quest books?

The price of a license may be producing nothing but a loss-leader -- or, alternatively (and what the game distribution scheme favors) a very short-lived "blow out the doors" fad phenomenon.

I guess my point is just it seems that the “gaming industry” is too inbred and incapable of looking at the big picture, or of keeping it simple.

The industry can't sustain itself on simple. Simple doesn't add up to four or more books per player, or even to DMs with 10 or more (e.g., 1st ed. AD&D MM, PHB, DMG, L&L, FF, MM2, UA, OA, WSG, DSG ...). It probably doesn't get a lot of subscribers to magazines -- note the AD&D dominance in old Dragon and Dungeon -- and is not likely to get subscribers to computerized play aids.

Maybe someday someone will come up with a tabletop RPG that makes enough profit from the mainstream to be worthwhile for a big company with employees who actually make a decent living at it. If so, my guess is that it's probably going to look a lot more like Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game -- or something else that has already proven popular -- than like Swords & Wizardry. It's NOT as if role-play gaming has had no chance to be a big hit; really, it was remarkably successful in its being so prominent for a few years.

A good long-term strategy for WotC would be to publish better books with its novels division—ideally stuff like Burroughs, Lovecraft, Howard, de Camp/Pratt, Leiber, and Vance.

I'll have what you're drinking! What makes you think those would be ideal for WotC? Are any of them outselling WotC's actual book lines? (Mirrorstone, or whatever the kids' imprint is called, seems to me probably a much more lucrative plan.)

The bottom line is that the bottom line for a big business is probably not what would make us happy. I'm not looking to spend enough, and if you are then then the question is whether enough more are.