| RPGs as a hobby and a comparison to bridge |
[Apr. 4th, 2008|01:44 pm] |
The D&D article making the rounds the last few days (which showed up lots of places via AP) here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23903817/ Prompted by this blog post by ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) maliszew on his grognardia blog: http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/04/d-in-news.html Here’s the part of the post I totally agree with and am piggybacking off of: “I simply think that what we are seeing is that the last vestiges of D&D's faddishness are finally falling away and the game is revealed for what it always was: a peculiar little hobby activity for a small group of peculiar people.
Again, I say this without contempt. In fact, I rather look forward to the days when roleplaying is comfortable being what it really is. Those days of tremendous success were oddities. The hobby has been coasting on momentum from the mid-80s and inertia is finally exerting its inexorable pull. My own kids will probably be roleplayers, but only because their father is. They might in turn spread this hobby to some of their friends, but the odds are not great. Like model railroad building or playing bridge (a fad of its own -- the D&D of the 1950s), roleplaying games will eventually become a marginal activity that a small portion of the public finds joy in. For myself, as one of the people who finds such joy, I see no problem in this future. My only concern is that, in their quest to regain something that can never be regained, D&D's current custodians will sell the game's soul and history for a bunch of magic beans.”
My first thought is that maybe D&D/rpg players should grow more to this point: be content with the status quo. Don’t worry about “growing the game” or actively seeking out new blood, beyond recruiting people you’d actually play with. Starter sets or gamer evangelism might not have to be roads to take. I’m talking on an individual level here, not a business perspective though. The other thing that really struck me was the comparison to playing bridge. I have a tangential connection here, since my dad is a bridge die-hard. He has some vague idea about rpgs, since he was the one buying them for me back in the 80s. I talked about how the game (either bridge or rpgs) are a constant social outlet that can allow one to connect, wherever they go. Here’s what he wrote: Yes, I think you are definitely on the right track about the parallels.
I don't think it is a fad as much as it is the core group. After 40 years
of playing bridge for me, I still learn things every week. Also in bridge
there are people I call "Bridge Nazis". They get upset and go ballistic
over things they consider major offenses, but ordinary people don't much
notice. Your mother stopped playing all games because I was a Bridge Nazi
in the 70s because I saw that behavior and thought that was the way it was
done. Later, I learned to be more human first and be a better bridge player
second. The Bridge Nazis drive people away and the bridge playing
population has declined. It is also very rare to see anyone young, under
50!!, playing; young people who try it are often run off by the behavior.
On the positive side, I have been welcomed into some groups because of
bridge. The whole group of friends I had in Palos Verdes is a
good example. Another was in 1967 when I was taking MAC flights from
Schofield Barracks in Hawaii home to Chicago for leave before I went to
Viet Nam. I was on a Navy flight from Pearl Harbor to Vandenberg Air Force
Base. I was a SP4/E4 enlisted Army guy. 3 Navy officers asked if I played
bridge and I said I did and I was invited to sit in 1st class with them.
Also, some Navy enlisted guy waited on us by bringing drinks and food
during the flight. You don't see many army enlisted guys with officers of
any branch except for a bridge game.
If you have all of these benefits with gaming it is a wonderful way to keep
growing a social network. If they are like bridge players they are very
interesting people to meet and know. You can pretty much do a find/replace for bridge to rpgs and the second paragraph can strike close to home, in my experience. (Well, except for the part about my mom. J ) I would posit that even roleplaying diehards can be more likely to drive people away, rather than expand the player base.
Rpgs are a hobby. You can still identify highly as a roleplayer (I do), but the hobby doesn’t really have to be any bigger than it already is. However, I’m not sure most roleplayers see it that way.
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| Comments: |
Hm, I don't know; while there might be a comparison there, I'd point out that there are not just bridge clubs everywhere (and I mean everywhere, my brother the bridge player once got game at 2 am on a Saturday in Teaneck, NJ), but the actual population of people who play bridge either at clubs or in tournaments is higher today than it has been in history. Their might indeed be fewer "local" groups of bridge players, but I know from my expierience with my brother's groups and on my own that Bridge is actually alive and well and bidding up a storm.
It's also important to understand that bridge and RPGs are two fundamentally different things, because bridge is, at it's heart, a competitive application, with a clear end-condition, while RPGs aren't (well, if played correctly, anyway). I personally think that given the gigantic number of players of various on-line games, whether you admit to any RPing in MMOs, are probably only a friend or two from being table-top players, as well. WoW has, what, 10 million users? That's a lot of potential books sold.
Will people be playing DnD? I don't know. I'm not sure I even care. But I do believe that the people I know, and their children, and their friends and their childrens' friends, will be playing something, because it is entirely too easy to get hooked on gaming.
I think the much more likely scenario is that the RPG publishing industry will move even more into a Print-on-demand model for most things, as the itemized costs in production drop, and with 3D rapid prototyping and construction, we'll start to see the cross-marketing of things like custom miniatures and whatnot from small, garage- and basement-sized companies. With an initial investment of $40K, I can start making miniatures that you can design with my web front-end, for (say), 2 bucks a pop, and ship them to you with your custom-bound rulebook of...whatever. (Note, I'm pulling the unit price out of my ass since I don't know what the actual cost is; I do know that I can get a moderately functional rapid-prototyping machine for in the neighborhood of $40K, though). With a little tooling, then I have custom 'clix for any given game (or something like that; I'm not familiar enough with the IP around the clix concept to know whether that's legal or not).
All of the above said...I'm not sure I wouldn't be happier if the hobby wasn't a little smaller. I seem to sort through gamers who are actually good people at a ratio of about 10:1. I had to metaphorically kiss a lot of frogs to find the people I enjoy gaming with, and I'm of the opinion that no game is better than bad game. I think as a population we're starting to grow out of the Geek Falacies, especially since our generation, the ones that really have been gaming all of our lives, are now starting to have kids and adult relationships and everything.
Of course, my prognosticator has been extremely wrong about predicting the future before.
I didn't mean to indicate that the scale was the same, because bridge is still much more mainstream. However, would you say it's comfortable at it's size now? Also, although distinct on a competetive/cooperatve axis, both activites basically involve people getting together and playing games.
Beyond that, I would also think that there are probably more roleplayers now than ever as well, in drawing a parallel from your post. ;) I think rpgs are alive and well - they're not going anywhere either - but that they'll probably never reach mass market appeal and that's the disappointment I believe many gamers harbor.
Roleplaying gaming, in varying forms, has hit the big time several times, and is still in it.
It happened with D&D, with How to Host a Murder, with WoW. The central "amalgam" group that keeps all the elements scrambled in is puny, sure, and will stay that way.
Gamers keep hoping that the amalgam will somehow leap skywards. It won't; I suspect it will keep spitting out these weird offshoots, though. | |
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