White Wolf discussion (split)

[Valamir]

The World of Darkness is more popular than all of those. It is one of a handful of games that people who are new to RPGs actually play.

What does that prove?  Why is that constantly brought up over and over again.  Because a company has a bigger marketing budget that makes its products more newbie friendly?  Because a company has established relationships within a distribution channel that is set up largely to serve the WW publishing model to begin with, and they thus have an incredible advantage at getting shelf space at retailers they're more newbie friendly?

What does popularity have to do with newbie friendlyness?


If you took 5 non gamers who've never roleplayed before and handed them a copy of WoD core rules and other non gamers who've never roleplayed before and handed them a copy of My Life with Master, which group do you think would be up and running and enjoying actual play first?

THAT'S what newbie friendly means.  

and the fact that White Wolf writes to that audience,

Evidence of this?   Where in the text of any WW book is there evidence that non roleplayers are more than a peripheral target market.  If you mean using a goth themed game to appeal to the goth culture fad...sure that was a well timed marketing effort...but where do we see that in the actual rules of the game?  If we were talking about Vampire LARPs you'd have more leg to stand on because LARPing is something that has expanded it audience into non traditional roleplayers.

Its a simple question really.  What actual words written into the text of the current WoD release were written especially to help non gamers figure out how to play the game?  How do they accomplish this?  

Can you offer any quotes from the text?  I'm betting no.

and in the vast majority of cases, "indie" designers do not.

And your evidence of this is what?  I would love to see the study of all of the indie game designs currently on the market that you've done in order to substantiate your claim of "vast majority".  Surely you must have personal first hand experience with hundreds of indie titles to make such a claim.  What criteria did you use in your study to determine the games level of newbie friendlyness?  Did you base your criteria on number of hours from purchase to play to get started?  What is your actual working definition of being accessible to new gamers.

Or should I simply put this statement down to talking out your hat?

Funny thing about calls for "proof" Malcolm.  They work both ways.  

The hard truth of the matter is that mean 'ol profit-mongering White Wolf long ago realized that the best way to regularly feed children to the fiery belly of Mammon was to get them to *actually play* their games. Not just talk about them. Not just read them.

Again, what does this have to do with being accessible to new players.

There is no doubt that WW sells alot of games.  I'm even more than willing to spot you that there are actually lots of groups actually playing them.  My experience shows more people read them then play them and that actual play in Vampire LARPs exceeds that of the table top game by an order of magnitude, but lets go ahead for purposes of this thread and presume your experience is more accurate than mine in that regard.

Where are the new players?

If White Wolf ranks among the best selling product lines out there (a given)

and If White Wolf is actually being played as much as you seem to think (stipulated above)

and If White Wolf actually designs their games to be appealing to non roleplayers.

Then we should be seeing legions of non roleplayers storming out of the wood work to join the roleplaying hobby.


Hmmm, funny, the hobby doesn't seem to be bursting at the seams with new growth and new players to me.  Retail store sales suggest that RPGs are among their lower profit centers.  In the gaming market as a whole it seems to me that Clix and German-style board games are creating far more new minis and board game gamers than White Wolf is creating new roleplayers.

Do you have evidence to the contrary?


No it seems to me that the reason we aren't seeing new roleplayers flood into the hobby is because there has yet to be a company that combines huge market penetration with a legitimately new gamer friendly game.

White Wolf has the market penetration (including presence on mainstream book store shelves) but their game is definitely not new gamer friendly.  I have plenty of non gamer friends.  I know exactly what they're reaction would be if I handed them a WW book to read...eyes glazed over in minutes.  

Indie games like MLwM, PTA, and Universalis are vastly more new gamer friendly than anything WW has ever even imagined doing.  But our market penetration is fairly small.

So until someone combines the new gamer appeal of these indie titles with the market presence of WotC or WW...there won't be any growth in the RPG hobby.

Clix increased the new gamer accessibility of minis wargaming.  Euro-style games increased the new gamer accessibility of strategy board games.   If roleplaying is ever going to grow as a hobby it will be with an RPG that increases new gamer accessibility in a similiarly revolutionary manner.

And that sure as hell isn't going to look like d20 or WoD...because if it did...we'd be there already.

Anyway, the critique of the inaccessibility of the traditional RPG structure is an interesting one. I think that if computer games have taught us anything, it's that the assumption that non-gamers couldn't hack extended multi-session play is mistaken.

Computer games have many differences.  Civ-2 is a single player experience.  It can be played anywhere you have a computer and doesn't rely on scheduling sessions with other players.  On line shooters have match ups that allow you to log in, find a server, and start playing.  Again, no scheduling difficulties.  That's far more common than scheduling LAN parties.

Plus there is no prep that isn't actual play.  You may spend hours practicing Counter Strike...but that practice is still actual play.

The closest thing to a actual RPG style game prep that goes on in the computer game world is the Modding community.  That's a very small, very insular, very specialized, and very hard core community.  The vast majority of people who've ever played Counter Strike aren't modders and never would dream of being.  They might PLAY the mod.  But they aren't making them.

The challenging level of abstraction is in the social dimension and the goals of play, but any advice about this needs to be variegated -- because like most successful games, WoD isn't about assuming that the players (ncluding the GM) are idiots who need authorial direction through the bog-standard indie design -- that is, one that acts as if players can't be trusted with anything that supports something other than the game author's preferred mode of play. That's why it can't be friendly to the dominant design ethos here: It's not about the game some author wants them to play. It's about the game they want to play.

Awful, but true, I'm sure.

Rubbish.

You apparently are incapable of discerning between catering to the hard core gamer and catering to the mainstream non gamer.  The above is exactly what WoD does.  Its exactly what hard core gamers want.  And its exactly what mainstream non gamers aren't interested in.

Your biases are absurdly obvious "indie games appeal only to idiots who need their hands held"...what an amazingly typical hard core gamer sentiment.

2) understand so little about that even their honest efforts are unlikely to be useful.

Yup...if you honestly think that what you wrote in the above paragraph is really what appeals to mainstream gamers than you fall under this above.  Its what appeals to hard core gamers...but most regular people out in the world...have little to no desire for any of that.  If they did...they'd be gamers already.

[John Kim]

If you took 5 non gamers who've never roleplayed before and handed them a copy of WoD core rules and other non gamers who've never roleplayed before and handed them a copy of My Life with Master, which group do you think would be up and running and enjoying actual play first?

THAT'S what newbie friendly means.  

I largely agree with Ralph here about what newbie friendliness means.  On the other hand, I think he's presuming an answer -- while I'm not sure.  A set of core rules like Vampire has a longer page count, but I don't think that is a vital measure.  I have never handed any White Wolf game to a newbie, but I have done so with D&D (given it as a gift to cousins or friends).  I think that the 80's-era basic set D&D was very newbie-friendly, for example.  On the other hand, if I handed a copy of MLWM to a group who hasn't role-played before, I'm pretty sure they'd put it on the shelf and not be up and running and enjoying actual play after any period of time.  

I mean, read it.  It launches into talking about the GM and players and Fear and Reason.  What's a GM?  What the hell is this?  I'm playing in a MLWM game now, and it's fun, but I don't think you can call it newbie-friendly.  Sure, you can pull a role-playing newbie into a group with an experienced GM, but you can do that for tons of games.  

Evidence of this?   Where in the text of any WW book is there evidence that non roleplayers are more than a peripheral target market.  If you mean using a goth themed game to appeal to the goth culture fad...sure that was a well timed marketing effort...but where do we see that in the actual rules of the game?  If we were talking about Vampire LARPs you'd have more leg to stand on because LARPing is something that has expanded it audience into non traditional roleplayers.

Its a simple question really.  What actual words written into the text of the current WoD release were written especially to help non gamers figure out how to play the game?  How do they accomplish this?  

OK, I'm not familiar with the current WoD release.  I'm actually doubtful about Vampire second edition (which seems written more to existing Vampire players than newbies).  However, the original Vampire I think is good at this.  There are lots of things you can note in the text that most games don't bother with.  For one, it has a clear introduction to role-playing and the basic mechanics.  Character generation is clearly described step by step.  It introduced the idea of fill-in-the-dots instead of numbers.  It has it's little comic-story-in-the-corners which encourages one to flip through the rulebook.  It has an interesting introductory scenario.  It has it's rough spots but I think it was a good effort (particularly from a small magazine publisher that White Wolf was at the time), and significantly better at newbie-friendliness than the average RPG.

I have plenty of non gamer friends.  I know exactly what they're reaction would be if I handed them a WW book to read...eyes glazed over in minutes.  

Indie games like MLwM, PTA, and Universalis are vastly more new gamer friendly than anything WW has ever even imagined doing.  But our market penetration is fairly small.

So until someone combines the new gamer appeal of these indie titles with the market presence of WotC or WW...there won't be any growth in the RPG hobby.  

OK, have you actually tried handing a copy of MLWM to a non-gamer?  I'm thinking of trying it now.  I'm pretty sure it'll be nearly incomprehensible.  My experience with indie games is that they are largely written for older,  experienced role-players who have become disenamored of D&D, Storyteller, and/or GURPS.  Which is not to say that the current crop of White Wolf games are necessarily any better.  Certainly 2nd edition Vampire was a step backwards from 1st edition as far as newbie friendliness.  

In my opinion, the truly newbie-friendly games were in the 80's, which came in boxed sets complete with dice, an adventure, sample characters, and other stuff to start up quick.  These days, I would lean towards Guardians of Order as making the most newbie-friendly games.  I think that there are lots of good ideas in indie games which can be used for newbies, but the games themselves are almost always written for experienced roleplayers.

[daMoose_Neo]

Hm~

To be honest, I'm here at the Forge cause I like these games - I'm seeing various, and simple!!, ways to play RP's I hadn't seen before.
AD&D/d20 was my prior experiance to coming here. Thumbed through some WW products but my mind literally did glaze- twas like "Huh?! What did I just read?!". Mind does the same on d20 even now actually.

What I like about the Forge? With a basic gamers vocabulary, I can read these playtest games, actual play notes, and samples and go "Okay, I see what he's talkin about! I get it!"

On WW, I'm sorry but its not all that. It caters to dark gamers, most of whom cut their teeth on D&D and invariably return to D&D. I know of two WoD players: one is an unusual, teenaged girl who is "interested" in it (I think because her boy toy of the week likely is) and the other is a shop owner who got into it when it started and is now selling his books. As for D&D? The same shop owner is still playing. His shop has a board for people to post new campaigns (which has a few notes on it). My community college campus has three groups running. I work at a Wal*Mart where I got sucked into a game as a Half-Elf Ranger.

Stats are nice, shop sales are great, how many people do you know playing it? I know more people in my area playing (even just READING) Forge material than I know people playing/reading WW/WoD RP products.
Hard cold stats? Nope. Observations from the field? Yup.

[John Kim]

On WW, I'm sorry but its not all that. It caters to dark gamers, most of whom cut their teeth on D&D and invariably return to D&D. I know of two WoD players:
...
Stats are nice, shop sales are great, how many people do you know playing it? I know more people in my area playing (even just READING) Forge material than I know people playing/reading WW/WoD RP products.
Hard cold stats? Nope. Observations from the field? Yup.  

This is the core of why people disagree, I think.  Different people will have different experiences.  To me, it seems easily possible that Malcolm is correct for his experience -- and that you are correct for your experience.  Your circles both of gamers and non-gamers are probably different, and will have different reactions to the same games.

[Walt Freitag]

Starting with Malcolm,

I'm sorry you're not free to answer my question about design features targeted for new players. I would have been very interested in your prespective on this. I quite understand your situation, though.

Even granting that non-indie designers and publishers' ability to feed themselves and their children depends on how well they get new people gaming, I'm skeptical that this actually results in their making an effective effort to do so. The problem is that while next year's revenue might depend on the rate of new people gaming, tomorrow's revenue usually depends on the appeal to the existing core customers who often have diametrically opposite demands from the potential newbies. Again and again, in many industries, those circumstances combined with human nature and the tragedy of the commons has resulted in companies eating their seed corn and chasing a boom-and-bust cycle. I've seen this from the inside as a professional computer game designer, as an interested customer and amateur designer in RPGs, and as a completely disinterested outsider (long-ago customer) in the comics industry.

(Why is Marvel teetering when the Spider Man movies were huge hits? I have no inside knowledge at all, but I do know that several different friends of mine -- all of them with kids -- have told me of going to look for Spider Man comic books after seeing the movie(s), and being unable to figure out what title to buy or what the heck was actually going on in the issue(s) they read. No doubt Marvel was in dread of insulting the intelligence of their readers by publishing a comic whose storyline a new reader could easily grasp -- but it's not the new readers' intelligence that's the problem, it's their patience. No doubt any Marvel creator would agree that their ability to feed their kids depends on attracting new comics readers. Yet they're producing books that are uninviting to potential new readers, and they're reportedly going broke. Go figure.)

Eschewing the "system mastery" aspect of role playing games (or ceding that niche to the competitor who already has it pretty much locked up) seems like a wise business decision, and this probably will indeed help make WoD more accessible to newbies. In the recent past, though, participating in the social scene around WoD (which is required to get involved in an actual game, except when a group of newbies all start from scratch with each other at the same time) has appeared to me to require a roughly analogous mastery of setting and metaplot. That might change with the new edition, but it might not, depending on whether a new flood of setting material is on the way in. (And why shouldn't there be? The "mastery" element of participation and play, whether it's of system or something else, can be very appealing to current customers, the ones with your tomorrow's revenue already in their pockets.)

Ralph,

My tough question about the newbie accessibility of leading indie games is this: how often are these games played with an entire newbie group, as opposed to a few newbie players with an experienced "bass player" to lead and inspire them? Also, we've seen many examples of players who have never role-played "getting it" and becoming excellent players instantly when unftettered by mechanics-mastery concerns, but are there not also new players who lack that aptitude and would actually do better using game mechanics as a crutch at first?

Yes, I'm raising the opposite issue for indie games that I did for WoD, where I focused on those trying to enter "the scene" as individuals rather than new groups starting out together. But given the sparser market penetration of the indie games, it makes some sense to shift the focus that way.

Now, in general:

It seems we talk a lot about appealing to potential new players as if they're one homogeneous group. Is it not quite possible that indie games and industry games appeal to different and perhaps even non-overlapping populations?

In one extreme view, everyone who doesn't play role playing games is a potential new player. That makes it impossible to differentiate new players, market to them, or really understand them in any way at all, because it's a negatively defined group about which we only know one thing: they don't play role playing games. In the opposite extreme view, to be a potential role player someone must walk into a game store (or Web site, etc.) and say, "I want to start role playing, what should I do?" Those few people are indeed far more likely to take home a WoD book than an indie book, and I'll venture to say that those few people are probably pretty well served already by the industry.

A more common approach to "who is a potential role player?" is to look at current role playing gamers, assess their characteristics (age, socioeconomics, other interests, etc.), and designate everyone who fits that same profile but doesn't already play RPGs as a potential role player. This is IMO only slightly less bizarre than the previous two assessments. It serves the industry well by focusing on those who are most likely to be well served by the industry, but it's self-defeating as far as attracting new role-players to feed the children etc. is concerned.

It's pointless to argue about who's attracting potential role players better, without defining who we're actually talking about. What are the characteristics of a potential player of Indie games? Of WoD games? Who are these people exactly?

- Walt

[Valamir]

Ralph,

My tough question about the newbie accessibility of leading indie games is this: how often are these games played with an entire newbie group, as opposed to a few newbie players with an experienced "bass player" to lead and inspire them? Also, we've seen many examples of players who have never role-played "getting it" and becoming excellent players instantly when unftettered by mechanics-mastery concerns, but are there not also new players who lack that aptitude and would actually do better using game mechanics as a crutch at first?

I'm not sure what you're saying here.  I've no disagreement at all that there are new players who would do better using the game mechanics as a crutch at first.  In fact, my position is that that's true of most folks who aren't currently roleplayers.  Most people's experience with "games" includes the notion that there are rules that say what to do, and when and how to do it.  When they pick up an RPG that's what they're going to look for...and most of the time...not going to find.

So absolutely.  One of the big keys to being newbie accessible is to be very specific about what to do, and when and how to do it while useing as little as possible "gamer language" that carries with it the assumption of common knowledge.


I'm certainly not trying to say that every Forge design achieves this in spades.  In point of fact, since we generally don't have the capability to target the "general populace" as a market it any major way, most of us still design primarily for gamers and our game texts (especially the quickie Iron Chef and 24 hour contests) still achieve brevity by assuming a good bit of common knowledge.  But the general design principals common to many Forge games are certainly farther along the newbie friendly spectrum than traditional designs.

Those principals include:  Reduce pre game prep.  Reduce character creation time.  Reduce Purchase to Play delay.  Maintain a clear and understandable game focus (most games non gamers are familiar with start out with "The Object of the Game is to:...").  Reduce special cases and exceptions and the need to look up rules during play.  Reduce the extreme distinction in authority and responsibility between players.  Cater to a more familiar game structure.

IMO if you rate each of these items (and probably a couple more I forgot to list) on a scale from 1-10, the higher your score the easier the game will be for a new gamer to pick up.  The more explicit and step by step the rules are the easier the game will be for a new gamer to pick up without guidance from an experienced bass player.

I won't argue that My Life with Master could be worded differently if it were to be the end all be all of mainstream appealing games.  But in terms of the above principals it nails them in spades.  

Character creation takes a minimal amount of time.  Game prep is not excessive.  The focus of the game, right down to having a clear definable object (kill the Master), is right out front.  There are different rules for how to roll for each thing that you do, but there is such a limited number of things that you do that its less of a problem.  And the game structure is pretty familiar.  Everyone gets 1 turn and everyone gets to do 1 thing (more or less) on that turn.  


Having carefully delineated and defined play parameters I think is essential for a game to have mainstream appeal.

[Walt Freitag]

Ah, sorry, I was very unclear.

The issue I'm interested in isn't difficult or unfocused rules, but difficult in-game decision-making and substantive creative contribution via play. Something that many indie games specifically pride themselves on having.

I don't know whether this is really an issue or not, but I do remember that in my very first role-playing sessions, my character could do about five different relevant things in most in-game situations. And I mean very specific things like swing a sword, fire an arrow, cast his (one) spell, or run away. It's decades too late for me to try to imagine whether, if that first session had involved decisions weighing my character's passion for truth against his loyalty to his family, or requiring me to describe how my character would go about convincing the blacksmith's daughter to seduce the sheriff, I would have been more attracted, or less so. Similarly, I can't tell whether getting to improv bass-playing GMing woud have been easier or harder right out of the gate, without the prior experience of GMing pre-planned adventures/environments.

Have I missed Actual Play examples of "never played an RPG before, just GMed MLWM, it rocked" or even "never GMed a role playing game before, just GMed PTA, it rocked?" I'm ready to believe them if there are people out there saying that. I don't have any reason to believe it's not likely. Just haven't seen the evidence yet to compare against novices playing and GMing industry games, to support a claim that the indies are more accessible to new players.

- Walt

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Iin agreement with Ralph, BUT ...

I'd like to add this qualifier: actual and reliable appeal to folks who have no prior experience with "adventure gaming"* is terra incognita. Whether the original TSR dream of seeing D&D under every child's Christmas tree will be realized by any modern large-scale company (Hasbro at the deep end, obviously) is unknown, although I think the prognosis is grim. Whether games designed and written more in the, oh, Dust Devils model have a better chance - or at least a better chance of eventually producing such a game - is even more unknown.

Here's my take: "even more unknown" compared to, in my view, historically demonstrably a dud doesn't seem so bad.

Best,
Ron

* unofficial blanket term with few/bad defining boundaries: CCGs, RPGs, wargames using miniatures, card games based on imaginative input, etc

[Ron Edwards]

Whew! Here's the longer post I was working on.

I'll begin with the observation that the Forge is founded on the notion that "play sells," and furthermore on the notion that "publishing = available." Both of which have been borne out numerous times, and increasingly continue to do so. Hence there's no point of disagreement with Malcolm's claim about White Wolf's marketing-ideology. What differs is what sales are, and how many are considered successful - and what constitutes success.

The business model followed by White Wolf, AEG, and a number of other game companies is notable not for any distinctive approach to play, but rather for its remarkable adaptation to the three-tier publishing environment.

I'll start with what "popular" means in that environment.

Popularity among game store customers is a feeble variable. Examining market-share among them is a little like finding out whether Spider-Man sells better than Batman this particular month - of great interest to Marvel and DC flacks, to be sure, but no particular indicator of what other sorts of comics might be successful, or how they might be sold.

Why would I say such a terrible thing? Because game store owners are in a hard position - their first priority is to move stuff they've already bought off of their shelves. This stuff is raw bleeding debt, and they'll order deep on something that's supposed to move, in order to make even the barest black margin before next month hits.

Hence they will push that stuff hard. They'll shelve it accordingly, talk it up accordingly, and cultivate an in-store community accordingly. Shelfwar publishing tactics (i.e. tons of supplements to create a single-color wall) reinforces this behavior on their part and even, to an extent, can be considered "trapping" a retailer into a must-reorder must-keep-up pattern associated with a particular company. Popularity, in this case, means locking down store orders via well-timed promotion and release.

Therefore what White Wolf, AEG, et al. are doing so well is to hit the retailer's ordering patterns and expectations (which are not driven by sales, but rather by debt) dead on target. The company goal is to move books downstream and to fill the shelves. "Sales" means two things: orders of new product and re-orders of old product which moves. Only the latter includes an actual breathing customer, and it doesn't even have to be the primary consideration if new releases are emphasized and promoted.

This has led to the "supplement treadmill" policy for many companies, in which supplements are supposed to drive sales of the original core books. However, this policy is a deadly trap for the company and has killed many of them, especially over the last decade. Very few companies to date have profited by "the treadmill," but the survivors/victors include White Wolf and AEG. Why?

Because they additionally practice scorched-earth corebook tactics. What this means is to shift to a new game and new corebook, with which to do it again. Bring it out, release supplements, ride that wave briefly, and then do it again. Layer these releases in such a fashion that people are still emotionally committed to buying your older product's supplements when the wholly new product hits.

I credit AEG with true mastery of this tactic, especially with the whole L5R, Oriental Adventures, and Rokugan thing, a truly dizzying feat.

Anyway, back to White Wolf. Its four-game, supplement-heavy treadmill tactic failed in the mid-90s. People are gonna argue with me about that, but you'll have to get over it. It failed. The goth thing was over, and the company's initial success based on becoming gear for goths was past its sell-date. The company faced financial crisis.

The company survived, in my view, by switching away from the supplement-support of those four games and into the scorched-earth approach, by regularly releasing new games. By new games, I include highly-colored revisions of old ones, new settings for them, and so on. (I hesitate to speculate on whether and how shifts of power and ownership within White Wolf itself, at this exact time, are related to this shift in policy. None of the insider accounts are especially pretty, but all of them seem so jaundiced that I have no idea where to assign credibility.) This takes us through Trinity, Aberrant, Adventure!, Hunter, etc, etc. Arguably Dark Ages and Kindred of the East count too, earlier.

The recent "starting over," brand-new World of Darkness releases are consistent with my point - the old titles were exhausted of the last of their sales potential, so simply ... re-do them. Here they are: new games! Thousands shipped to distribution (cha-ching at WW central). Hundreds filled the shelves in stores. Initial sales are high, I'm sure, and as I see it based on the "ooh, it's the new thing" mentality of the already-existing customers. For a look at this mentality, see multiple threads asking "should I sell my old books off?" on other forums. These folks belong to a semi-imaginary club based on their consumerism, and the dues have come due once again. Twenty-unit-per-month sales in a given store are probably not off the beam ... but not for a whole lotta months.

Well now, where does all this bring my point for this post?

My point is that popularity and sales of this type are simply not comparable between (say) White Wolf and (say) Adept Press. The terms don't even mean the same things.

Adept Press will almost certainly never sell twenty units of a given title from any given game store in a single month. However, it sells all of its books steadily from release date to present, both via stores and via on-line sale. Game-play and purchase spreads through usage and through community networking. One copy of each book on select retailer's shelves is exactly what I'm looking for, not only as a source of sale but also as an advertisement over time. The retailer does not need to move 20 copies a month as he did not go into debt to acquire them in the first place. It keeps spreading from store to store, state to state, and country to country, for all titles. Retailers are finally in the habit of re-ordering them because they notice each copy passes the register, once a month, like clockwork.

It's a different sort of popularity, which is to say, not a subcultural phenomenon or fad (at best), or (more realistically) even an impressive spike at the first month's release, but rather a sustainable market of whatever size (in this case, smallish but highly profitable for me, and growing). Furthermore, it's a different sort of "sales," which in my view are not sales unless a customer clutches the book itself. Adept Press practices full returnability for just this reason. I'd be interested to know whether any company which practices WW/AEG scorched-earth publication does so.

Anyway, there's my little talk. Slinging around "popularity" as an unqualified term isn't very useful when comparing the actual use, success, financial status, or word-of-mouth buzz of role-playing games.

If anyone has substantive historical information which modifies my consumer's-eye analysis of White Wolf publishing history, I'm willing to learn.

Best,
Ron

[eyebeams]

1) I'm not making any judgment about the quality of one game or another, really, except to say that the WoD is designed to work a certain way. Whether or not you approve of that way is not something I find relevant, except to ask whether or not your feelings are backed by an experience of play, and whether or not I ought to believe your experience of play better than somebody else's.

2) On newbie appeal: The fact remains that the social dynamic of gaming is something that's foreign to most people. That remains constant throughout virtually all RPGs. The things that have been mentioned as so wierd in *this* discussion, though, are all elements that are a part and parcel of recreational culture. And if you don't believe there's any prep outside of RPGs? well, there are a hundreds of HALO websites that disagree, and millions of inane conversations about HALO level design and tactics that supplement it.

3) I've heard this claim that few people really prefer the second highest-selling RPG in the world quite a bit. As much as I am . . . intrigued by the alternate explanations proffered, I think it's a bit rich to claim that it's because game stores aggressively push something they bought a lot of. Most game stores are happy if you buy *anything* and more and more make RPG orders by request, adding 1 or 2 to stock their shelves. White Wolf's relationship with mainstream goth culture probably peaked in the mid-90s -- a decade ago -- and harping on it as a fad . . . well, we'd all like decade+ fads, wouldn't we?

As for the White Wolf "financial crisis"; it was on par with the same crisis that every single company had from 1993 onward. We're talking about a decaade where the threshold for success for most companies dropped by 80%+ here.

4) Many views about the supplement treadmill are so mistaken that they warrant an entire separate thread, but it's not a Forge topic, really. Suffice to say that it's a fancy name for something almost universal to publishing and that even WotC now realizes it needs to run the treadmill like everyone else. It's a useful metaphor in that it's led to higher quality books that have a more central relationship with individual lines (and with less redundancy -- the term was originally coined to talk about TSR's problem competing with itself), but past the core, new product sells better than old product. Always has.

5) I can run the themes of My Life With Master by applying some tweaks to the WoD engine, and when some of my players want something else, I can run that, too -- I can even do both at the same time. The reverse is not true. Drift is not an aberration that only a few groups can survive. Drift is the default state of gaming groups unless you apply artificial intervention. The basis of my model of play is that I actually run games for people, no matter what mood they're in, I know what I'll pick most nights, and puctuate it with more specialized fare on others.

6) The best thing is to get *both* games and hybridize. Then I expand the continuum of play and can please my players in all seasons. Drift is good. Drift is the way to be. Drift is, in fact, the ideal form of gaming, provided people do not intervene with their own agendas in bad faith. You fix that pretty easily though, by not gaming with people you don't like.

That's the essence of it, really. There are no competing models to a smart gamer. WoDMLWM couldn't happen without both. I like coming here because there are glimmers of innovation that you don't see elsewhere, but I'm not holding my nose about anything else that works, either.

[Valamir]

Malcolm, the comments I made were in no way shape or form anything about the quality of anything.  

My contributition to this thread was directed entirely and exclusively at your assertion that WoD is more friendly to new gamers than indie designs are.

So far you've responded to none of the points made in that regard and instead have retreated into into this "defend White Wolf against the Forge haters" schtick.

Somewhere you got this big chip on your shoulder about how the Forge hates and bad mouths White Wolf and you need to leap to their defense.  Well, 1) that's not really relevant to the discussion at hand, 2) you offer no evidence at all to contridict any of the statements made other than arguement by authority, putting yourself forward as an authority because you've worked with them, and 3) if anyone who is actually a representative from White Wolf really wanted to come and set the misconceptions straight they're more then welcome...and fully capable of "defending" themselves should they feel the need to do so.


So should I take your silence on any of the issues or questions I asked above to be a concession that WoD games aren't really designed with new gamers in mind?

[komradebob]

Wow, what an exceptionally testy thread.

I gotta say, I really do love the WoD. As a setting, yeah, even with the early '90s goth-zeitgeist thing in play.

However, I really only love it as a setting. Honestly, whenever I've bought I WW product, I've truly wished I could magically eliminate all mechanical references from it, keeping just descriptive text and artwork. Don't feel bad Eyebeams: I feel that way about several other games as well ( Jorune comes to mind).

As for newbie accessibilty, I gotta tell ya, Universalis has it in spades. The only things more newbie friendly I've seen are two freebie kiddie-rpgs ( Shadows and The Nightime Animals Save the World). It would be nice to see companies, like WW that do have name recognition and market access actually experiment with more "rapid-deployment" game design.

I will most likely be picking up the nWoD materials. I'll likely be playing inthe setting with non/new gamers. But I'll probably be using Universalis as the engine...

k-Bob

[DevP]

My experince has shown that WW games, as a whole product, are far from the best way of attracting true newbies into the game (that is, they have several wrinkles that can get in the way), but more interestingly, it *IS* (in my experience) frequently used as a gateway game, and even successfully. Granted, I'm fueled by local anecdotes, but I think the logic makes sense. Why it's a gateway:

[list=1][*]The worlds they create. The WoD (or Exalted-verse, for that matter) have proven very hooky to several different kinds of people. It's a cominbation of factors:

[*]a single core idea ("Magic? Cool!")
[*]world-building by a small number of factions/splats/whatnot, which I actually find to be a characteristic of world-building (for RPGs, fiction, or otherwise) for many associated within the gamer culture)
[*]said splats are quickly grabbed onto / self-identified with ("Wow, I'm just like a Ventrue/Ecstatic"). The Traditions of Mage are notable for, really, catering to almost each of an idealized geek's archetypal wants.
[*]touching on maturer themes (and promising an escape from some dysfunctional play that a GM, who is probably not a newbie, might already have experieinced)[/list:u]
[*]The supplement model (as well as extra "swag", like jewelry for different Vampire clans) offers lots of chances to buy in, and for a GM to further self-identify with this "brand". (And, I indeed do notice WW-GMs branding themselves as "especially a Werewolf/Mage/Dark Ages GM".)
[*]The GMs totally buy in, and are evangelists for the product. The pitch itself isn't a terrible stretch (vampires = sexy) and the world sounds cool, so you've got a Group Buy-In, and the game is up.[/list:o]

So: (1) World-building, (2) Addiction, (3) GM-buyin and an easier sell. Makes sense?

P.S. I just recently work at BzzAgent, and it appears that some of the language from there has eked into my text. <g>

[Callan S.]

I just want to clarify some points so this threads easier to read next time.

And if you don't believe there's any prep outside of RPGs? well, there are a hundreds of HALO websites that disagree, and millions of inane conversations about HALO level design and tactics that supplement it.

But they don't need to do this to play HALO, correct?

To clarify, the issue is about necessary pre game prep.

Drift is good. Drift is the way to be. Drift is, in fact, the ideal form of gaming, provided people do not intervene with their own agendas in bad faith.

Drifting is also a skill/series of skills, the learning of which can be aided by a book.

Unless it's something that must be learnt/developed in issolation to ensure the artisitc purity of the eventual drift? Or so the user doesn't follow the guideline like a robot? Is that what you meant?

[eyebeams]

Malcolm, the comments I made were in no way shape or form anything about the quality of anything.

My contributition to this thread was directed entirely and exclusively at your assertion that WoD is more friendly to new gamers than indie designs are.

Well, that's handy Ralph, because I wasn't responding to your point with that. It was the apple/kiwi thing.

Apropos of your point, though, I haven't been saying that one is bettter for new gamers than the other. I've said that indie designs have no need to cater to new gamers whatsoever because new gamers almost never, ever buy them.

However, I will rise to the bait though, and say that, yeah, the WoD is more accessible than most indie games, because most indie games are designed to be played one particular way and thus, will be dead boring to anybody who doesn't want to play that way. I know that this observation is probably so pedestrian -- so mind-numbingly *normal* as to probably be rejected out of hand by more sophisticated appraoches, but new gamers aren't sophisticated theoreticians either, I've noticed.

Actually, scratch that. I've gamed with lots of people who are sophisticated theoreticians in fields that actually have broad cultural relevance, like art, politics, film, theatre and music. Buddy of mine is a PhD cultural methodlogies candidate who really likes playing D&D, Rifts, and Vampire -- an obvious Philistine.

So far you've responded to none of the points made in that regard and instead have retreated into into this "defend White Wolf against the Forge haters" schtick.

Somewhere you got this big chip on your shoulder about how the Forge hates and bad mouths White Wolf and you need to leap to their defense. Well, 1) that's not really relevant to the discussion at hand, 2) you offer no evidence at all to contridict any of the statements made other than arguement by authority, putting yourself forward as an authority because you've worked with them, and 3) if anyone who is actually a representative from White Wolf really wanted to come and set the misconceptions straight they're more then welcome...and fully capable of "defending" themselves should they feel the need to do so.

Pardon? I know I'm a handy cipher for the Man here (this is, by the way, a real hoot), but this isn't really about anything I've been actually writing.

What I'm saying is pretty simple:

1) White Wolf does not work the way a lot of you think it does or, perhaps, wish it did for the sake of ideological justification.

2) One of the aspects that may surprise you is that it designs its games to be played.

3) It is apparently even more surprising that these games have to be written to have broad appeal that encompasses new gamers.

4) By contrast, Indie games never have to mandatorily sell themselves to neophytes, ever.

5) Regardless of whether or not you find the system clunky, aesthetically revolting or somehow worthy of Redefined Capitalized Terms, people do play it. New gamers play it. Lots and lots.

6) None of the above is an indicator of the relative quality of anything (WW put out WoD: Gypsies for God's sake, and I have a special hatred for the book Destiny's Price -- please do not assume I have unqualified praise for the company), since that's the faction of an individual's agenda.

7) However, if you want to get right down to it, my personal agenda is player driven, and I think extremely narrow games that try to shove the game author's creative agenda down the players' throats is horse hockey. I think Drift is the way God Himself intended us to play, and if you disagree with me fundamentally on this point, we are simply two solitudes.

So should I take your silence on any of the issues or questions I asked above to be a concession that WoD games aren't really designed with new gamers in mind?

Hell, if this is going to be how you draw your conclusions, you can assume that I'm a card carrying member of the communist party, too.

Alternately, you could come to a less silly conclusion, like the fact that I'm bound by contractual obligations. The fact is, though:

1) I have been as specific as I can be.

2) If I knew one thing to be true about the design agenda, I would not argue its opposite.

3) You see that I have said several times now that new gamers do matter to the company. I have not pointed out.

So you are left with believing I'm a liar, or not. Do you think I'm a liar?