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Post by ayslyn on Aug 22, 2013 16:01:33 GMT -8
Those assholes who condemn you for such enjoyable crimes as eating meat, driving an SUV, and not donating all your money to Bono's shitty charities, do have a point. No. They really, really don't. Especially considering NONE of those things are crimes (and I mean that in the sense that you used the term, and not the legal sense). And, they don't because they miss the forest for the trees. Just because I think that Bono is a tool, and don't donate to HIS charity, doesn't mean that I'm not donating to ANY charities.
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Aug 22, 2013 18:27:34 GMT -8
In the new paradigm of online-store, print on demand and PDF published games, if the hobbyists don't get involved, then just how are we going to get new people into the hobby? As pointed out above, only folks like paizo and wizards can afford to advertise.
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Aug 23, 2013 1:28:14 GMT -8
Those assholes who condemn you for such enjoyable crimes as eating meat, driving an SUV, and not donating all your money to Bono's shitty charities, do have a point. No. They really, really don't. Especially considering NONE of those things are crimes (and I mean that in the sense that you used the term, and not the legal sense). And, they don't because they miss the forest for the trees. Just because I think that Bono is a tool, and don't donate to HIS charity, doesn't mean that I'm not donating to ANY charities. If cows didn't want to be eaten they wouldn't be so delicious. You don't see koalas going around getting eaten. You know why? because they taste like shit. And I think it is clear that pigs REALLY want to be eaten.
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Post by Kainguru on Aug 23, 2013 1:55:08 GMT -8
No. They really, really don't. Especially considering NONE of those things are crimes (and I mean that in the sense that you used the term, and not the legal sense). And, they don't because they miss the forest for the trees. Just because I think that Bono is a tool, and don't donate to HIS charity, doesn't mean that I'm not donating to ANY charities. If cows didn't want to be eaten they wouldn't be so delicious. You don't see koalas going around getting eaten. You know why? because they taste like shit. And I think it is clear that pigs REALLY want to be eaten. In fact every bit of a pig is usable from its trotters to its snout to its little curly tail . . . Even it's bristles can be used to make toothbrushes to clean your teeth after you've devoured the pig. Unlike cows pigs have only one use - as you can't shear them or milk them. Now here's one for the fellow Australian, back home there was The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. It had all sorts of animals including wallabies - especially one particular wallaby that was really randy all the time. They also had a rabbit . . . The rabbit wasn't for show . . . It was the randy wallaby's bitch. True story. Aaron
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Aug 23, 2013 2:43:19 GMT -8
In the new paradigm of online-store, print on demand and PDF published games, if the hobbyists don't get involved, then just how are we going to get new people into the hobby? As pointed out above, only folks like paizo and wizards can afford to advertise. That excuse doesn't cut it for me. I fail to see how the responsibility for sales and marketing efforts somehow transfers to me as a customer based on the size of the company. The whole 'new paradigm' of POD is pretty much what gygax and co. were doing when they were packing up and shipping box sets by hand. You have to start somewhere and to expect as a new publisher to be doing a print run of thousands and driving ferraris is very naive. Advertising is expensive, yes. There are types of advertising that only WOTC/Paizo can afford. None of this excuses smaller publishers from having to make an effort. An event appearance here, a banner ad there, hell - drop a few bucks in Adwords. Not to mention social media is free beyond the time you spend on it. By all means run a kickstarter if you know what you are doing - purely as a marketing exercise. There is a marketing truism, that for word of mouth to become self sustaining you need 1000 'core' customers (a bit arbitrary yes). Only a small percentage of your sales will result in a core customer who constantly talks you up and spreads the word. That could mean you have to sell 100,000 copies before word of mouth becomes meaningful. I will evangelize games that I think are really awesome. I don't expect that this is having any meaningful effect on the publisher unless they are backing it up by having a tangible presence in the marketplace. To rely on word of mouth alone is naive at best, plain lazy at worst. I would almost say there are TOO MANY small publishers doing not enough for the hobby which is forcing a glut of very cheap (or free) games upon a dwindling base. I want smaller publishers to succeed..... To be honest though lots of them just aren't business people. Someone needs to innovate here and come up with a way to get the message out. To be told this is my job as a customer is simply insulting. If a publisher gets my attention, and then causes me to have amazing experiences with their stuff, then they have earned my evangelising efforts.
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Aug 23, 2013 4:16:09 GMT -8
I'm not saying it is your job per se, but that it is in our own best interests to be mouthpieces for our hobby, because I think we're in a place where the companies aren't going to do it for us anymore. Gen con had record attendance, which is a good sign. But every game I am interested in lately is kickstarter driven, and I have a hard time seeing those games having an outlet to reach out to potential fans outside the hobby.
On the plus side, as rob said a few weeks back, a rising tide lifts all ships, so when paizo and wizards advertise for d&d and pathfinder, bringing people into the hobby benefits the hobby as a whole... But I kep thinking about how many times I hear d&d players who never knew there were games beyond dungeons and dragons.
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Post by Kainguru on Aug 23, 2013 4:29:37 GMT -8
I'm not saying it is your job per se, but that it is in our own best interests to be mouthpieces for our hobby, because I think we're in a place where the companies aren't going to do it for us anymore. Gen con had record attendance, which is a good sign. But every game I am interested in lately is kickstarter driven, and I have a hard time seeing those games having an outlet to reach out to potential fans outside the hobby. On the plus side, as rob said a few weeks back, a rising tide lifts all ships, so when paizo and wizards advertise for d&d and pathfinder, bringing people into the hobby benefits the hobby as a whole... But I kep thinking about how many times I hear d&d players who never knew there were games beyond dungeons and dragons. . . . And who is responsible for the market dominance of the D&D brand and it's cultural influences? Personally I don't a give fuck if there are other players playing D&D and they're unaware of the other games . . . They're lucky, they've found their niche and they're having fun leave them to it and don't fret: AT LEAST THEY'RE PLAYING. I'm sorry but it's a bit creepy when people think what we should be doing is sidling up to these naive youngsters and whispering "have you tried traveller?" *holds open dirty old mack to reveal several tatty traveller pamphlet editions*. Those players will find new games in their own time, of their own accord when they're good and ready to go beyond D&D. A good drug pusher does it subtly - "oh you've heard of LSD have you? What have you heard? It might not really be for you you know . . . ". Try too hard and you'll just scare them away . . . Aaron
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Post by heavymetaljess on Aug 23, 2013 4:59:28 GMT -8
No. They really, really don't. Especially considering NONE of those things are crimes (and I mean that in the sense that you used the term, and not the legal sense). And, they don't because they miss the forest for the trees. Just because I think that Bono is a tool, and don't donate to HIS charity, doesn't mean that I'm not donating to ANY charities. If cows didn't want to be eaten they wouldn't be so delicious. You don't see koalas going around getting eaten. You know why? because they taste like shit. And I think it is clear that pigs REALLY want to be eaten. Mmmm... delicious murder.
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Post by Stu Venable on Aug 23, 2013 7:24:15 GMT -8
We're going to discuss this tonight on the show.
Using your fan base for marketing is a double-edged sword.
Yes, "personal recommendation" scores very high when people talk about why they purchased a particular product or why they switched brands, etc. There is nothing a publisher or marketing department likes more than passionate fans telling their friends how awesome Brand X is. The people around you have far more credibility than some radio announcer or a print ad.
That said, this is the role-playing hobby. There are some among us who are -- how can I phrase this -- socially awkward.
Tonight, I'll relate the tale of one of my bandmates, who was exposed to the RPG hobby twice, and ran from it. He was driven away by the people.
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Aug 23, 2013 7:31:54 GMT -8
When I was interested in getting back into tabletop gaming a couple years ago - while Pathfinder was still in "beta" - I went down to the local internet cafe that has a bookshelf full of RPGs (I hesitate to call it a "FLGS") and a back room that they let be used for gaming, and got into a hybrid 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder game. If I hadn't been an experienced gamer - if I didn't know there was better than what happened at that table - I probably would never have gamed again either.
And, yes, if D&D is good enough for those people who find their way into the hobby, then good on 'em. And maybe my opinion is being shaped by there not being a real FLGS hereabouts... but I miss when I could actually find a group, and those groups aren't going to magically manifest themselves.
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Post by Stu Venable on Aug 23, 2013 8:03:19 GMT -8
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you.
Especially for more obscure games (ie, anything but DnD and maybe Pathfinder), getting into a group is often the only way to make new players.
I learned Champions from someone who already knew and watching them run it. I've done the same countless times for GURPS. I just think sometimes we work against ourselves.
The RPG hobby is weird. I don't think it's intuitive for most people to sit down and tell a collaborative story with game mechanics. The only way to make converts is to actually have them sit down and observe or participate so they can see how it works. THEN they can make the determination if the hobby is something they'll like.
I don't think you can make that determination in an informed way be reading a book. You have to witness the game being played.
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Aug 23, 2013 8:23:36 GMT -8
This is why I love Wil Wheaton's Tabletop show. I remember seeing some video'ed attempts to showcase the hobby a couple decades ago, and boy, mama... it was bad. Tabletop does a pretty good job of evangelizing games - mostly boardgames, sure, but there have been episodes with RPGs, and some "board" games that are pretty damn close to RPGs.
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D.T. Pints
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Post by D.T. Pints on Aug 23, 2013 8:24:46 GMT -8
The RPG hobby is weird. I don't think it's intuitive for most people to sit down and tell a collaborative story with game mechanics. The only way to make converts is to actually have them sit down and observe or participate so they can see how it works. THEN they can make the determination if the hobby is something they'll like. I don't think you can make that determination in an informed way be reading a book. You have to witness the game being played. And there are so many ways to play the same game. I've seen some Pathfinder society games ran by GMs I could get along with and actually enjoy playing. I've also seen min/maxing, adversarial GM 101 classes disguised as "Intro to Roleplaying Games". I wonder how many letters the show has received saying "I used to game and after listening to the show I got back into it again" or "after listening to your show I tried game x..." Its no coincidence that Savage World's Deluxe has that thanks to the show and cast right at the beginning. Shit, thats why I bought it. I think the disconnect that is happening in this thread is this idea of 'responsibility or obligation' to growing the hobby. Please refrain from ever trying to get me to run Beginner Box games with such words. However, I disagree with maxinstuff that we do in fact have a pretty amazing "opportunity" to grow the hobby. We can help push it in a direction that encourages collaborative story telling in a way that many games miss. Look at our resident Timothy Leary (aka Hyvemynd) I would never have picked up any of the Apocalypse World games. But, after playing them with the man from Osaka I bought them and have coerced some fairly ardent d20 coreheads to give it a try. Now he's going to help create a pandemic by touting his suitcase of tricks over to Los Angeles and just spread the hippy virus all over the place...There is a ripple effect that can happen.
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Post by guitarspider on Aug 23, 2013 13:37:05 GMT -8
How to grow the hobby? For gamers (of any sort) Run Primetime Adventures. There is not a single nerd out there who does not think he/she has the best idea for a television series EVER. PTA lets you throw your ideas together and make a series out of it. Plus, the narrative structure of tv series is so familiar to everyone, even relative non-nerds, that there won't ever be confusion about constructing scenes or having the characters take actions ("Can I do that" is never a question in PTA). The card mechanic is extremely simple and not obtrusive at all, the character sheets are very simple as well. So easy to get into the swing of things for non-nerds as well. I'll admit I never even say "roleplaying game" until I'm wayyy in, I just say it's a game where we do x. There are so many social games out there that roleplaying is really not that far off, if you're willing to use smaller games that fit your friends. Fiasco is narratively self-explanatory (hey, we've all seen movies...), A Penny for my Thoughts is great, 1001 Nights should work just fine. Penny worked great for me personally. These games have almost no rules. I've even used Baker's The Sundered Lands, a series of mini-games on a bus with a non-roleplayer recently, and he was very eager to play on after the first chapter. Which is actually the reason why I believe that Pathfinder and D&D and their ilk actually serve as barriers to entry in some ways: Fantasy just isn't interesting to everyone. Even worse, even a lot of gamers play mostly the same kind of game, mechanic-heavy, tactical elements, and so on, never mind the setting. That works for some (apparently D.T. Pints has been successful with that, and more power to him), but I can't help feeling like that means putting up more barriers than necessary by starting with D&D (or similar). To me the core of the hobby is telling stories. So if I want to help someone find out if they are interested in telling stories with others, why would I confront them with lots of rules and setting restrictions? Wouldn't I want to get them where they are? A game like Doomed Pilgrim (->Sundered Lands) is perfect for that, because while the default is fantasy, it's the easiest thing in the world to make it a sci-fi game or a real-world game or anything else you might desire. All you have to do is change three or four sentences. Even better, your friend just has to answer your questions. Barrier to entry: none. Driving for two hours and boredom ensues? How about we try this game, you just have to answer a few questions? And when your part of the story is done, you just offer to answer their questions next. I don't think I know a lot of people who would refuse. And that, I think, is the perfect way to introduce people to roleplaying: don't make it look like it's a big thing. That's what I tried to do on that bus. They may not stick with it, or ever play again for lack of opportunities, but they'll always remember that what we did while that bus was taking us from Galway to Ennis was lots of fun for being a simple question-and-answer game.
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Post by CreativeCowboy on Aug 26, 2013 3:37:47 GMT -8
A little backstory to my remarks below and how I feel about this can be found: HERE Brainstorm - Promoting RPGs as a Tool/SymbolHERE My remarks on this topic (audio). HERE Relevant corollary to this discussion. You want to know how to sell RPGs to average people those being outside the niche hobby? Stop selling RPGs! Stop the drum beat on systems. GM = System. Get to know the Game Authority because that is where the power lies. The game is supposed to be social construct, not a program matrix. (Excessive rules talk will cater to a small group of people, whom the vast majority of mainstream people do not want to associate because they are bores.) You know how you want to sell a movie you like? Do it that way with RPGs. Get people excited with the experience. Let that be your model and there ends your "responsibility." If you, as a man, start talking about how Tom Cruise is in the film and how this is a film that demonstrates how clever and talented he is you’re going to come off like A) a Scientologist, B) a fag, or C) both. And you will fail, padwan. But you grok that, don’t you? You've experienced douche bags before. Don't be that guy. Consider loving dissertations about dice mechanics and systems talk that completely severs people from who you are as a friendly person to become the fag Scientologist raving on Tom Cruise. Maybe the only thing missing to drive home this picture is a couch and Oprah Winfrey? I think the onus for growing the hobby lands squarely on our shoulders. Its too niche for the companies to be able to do much. And it will always be too niche until the industry wakes up. Most of the smaller companies cater to the audience they already have, same as WOTC and PF (fixed) or to the audience thats already receptive and "in the know" they don't(and can't) target the little guy who knows nothing about them. I disagree. They can and, moreover, should. Bigger companies like Paizo can(and do) market to the little guy, but even that is very small in the scheme of things. No, the bulk of growing the hobby is up to us... the ones in the trenches. If we blow it off as someone else's burden we'll quickly find ourselves with no games to join and no books to read. So what? I has games, legal and the outrageously-priced pirated copies. I plays games. Why should I collect every retro clone; every generic; every game book ever published? Is it my duty to self-impose a planned obsolescence where a game lasts only until a new one is published? Should I be required to burn my books every 3-4 years' cycle? Will that make me a real booster to the hobby? Why should I care about having more players than I can handle at my table? Industry sez: 4-6 is the limit by the book. I gots dat. Why should I care? I am contented.
Do I really want to interview the rejects from every other game group in my neighbourhood to expand my group against the industry advice on my free time? And what for? To have B.M.O.C. bragging rights and geek cred? SirGuido, do you really want to call out the person who expresses that opinion into a “edition wars” cock measurement kind of slag fest? Will that be good image? I am sure the “little guy” (your term for the person who never played RPGs?) is disinterested in who is more a RPGer. Your argument, though perfectly rational and well thought out, extends only to personal choice and in discussion leads to the dark side of argumentation: position. It is not our responsibility to sell WotC products. [replace WotC with any large or small publisher – I like to use WOTC as the example because it gets the appropriate rise.] So you can introduce a noob using pretty much any game system, and not have them throw it aside because it doesn't live up to their expectations, cause they have none. The industry doesn't need to innovate for me to sell my friends on RPGS. addicted2aa, it is precisely because you are selling the benefit of the product rather than touting the engineering of the product. This is how sales to the end-user occur. The industry as helicopter parent is doing the hobby a serious disservice. That's why most new players are recruited from in-group circles. The tabletop market is largely untapped. I say the potential to increase the number of people playing RPGs (growing the hobby market) goes ignored when lumped into the computer games market. I would almost say there are TOO MANY small publishers doing not enough for the hobby which is forcing a glut of very cheap (or free) games upon a dwindling base. As I have said before on this board, the current situation reminds me of the comic book industry of the 80’s when it seemed everyone was publishing a comic, and a lot of dreams were broken and the whole industry (including Marvel's and DC National's sales) slumped. Great presses like First! Comics and ComicCo came and went as the grab for disposable income became a desperate battle. Free means someone isn’t paying someone else whose livelihood and product depends upon that exchange relationship to continue. That means we all pay for it. Buying on credit means we just pay for it later and usually at a much higher price. Which is actually the reason why I believe that Pathfinder and D&D and their ilk actually serve as barriers to entry in some ways: Fantasy just isn't interesting to everyone. Even worse, even a lot of gamers play mostly the same kind of game, mechanic-heavy, tactical elements, and so on, never mind the setting. I think the barrier is not the genre or setting of a particular game. This is not literature where people have an immediate barrier according to a dominant preference or taste. These are supposed to be collaborative games where people choose and are selected for tabletop games as part of a social in-group (from which they are recruited). No one rejects Monopoly because it is a real estate setting. They may reject it because it is boring. Or because it is too complicated. The chief barrier between new people and RPGs is the rules and the barrier is the barrier between people this situation represents. For some people, let’s say people who share no trust or have adversarial experiences or prefer to munchkin their game for a win, this is not a barrier. But the game is no longer social either. Now we return to the Tom Cruise ambassador of RPGs jumping on couches telling the world how much in love he and his new system is. And we know how that ends. New people need social entrée. Yes, even the socially awkward asberger needs the social entrée that everyone isn’t going to make fun of them. That may actually prevent some acting out. New people are disinterested in becoming munchkins at a game we say has no winner (while the rules deliver the opposite message by assuring players are no losers in a standardized game) in a do as I say not as I do pretzel logic. New people are interested in being engrossed and involved in their entertainment if they choose analogue RPGs over digital games. That is a key selling point for the game! Having games designed for digital play at an analogue table is a barrier, as is weakening the social connection between players. As for the personal responsibility to be good ambassadors for the hobby, maybe all the rule books should includes a few rules for that to happen in a standardized fashion like: bathe daily; listen while others speak rather than waiting to talk; respect people’s rights and schedules; debate away from the game table; etc, etc. Those need to be spelt out to some people who read RPG rulebooks. Ask a nonplayer about those rules and see the response you get. If the person you ask has had a negative experience with role-playing, you will likely get a more engaged response than from a discussion about bennies, or AC vs armour soak.
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