Popular and damaging

[Marco]

Ralph wrote:

At any rate, IMO Call of Cthulhu stands with GURPS as what I consider to be the two most damaging games to the development of the hobby (precisely because of their popularity). GURPS because it derailed the trend of customized game systems linked to their genre in favor of "universal mechanics" leading inevitably to the whole "system doesn't matter" dogma; and Cthulhu because of what it taught a generation of gamers on how story telling gaming should be (helpless players participating in a collosal illusion).

As someone who has never found what he's looking for in the system-linked-to-genre games, I (as I'm sure is predictable) see this in quite the opposite way. Oddly, and maybe importantly, in both cases.

GURPS doesn't show that "system doesn't matter." It just points out squarely that if you're in the mainstream Sim/Gam mechanics with vanilla Nar story-making you're basically golden in any FLGS. You see, just about freaking everything mainstream caters to you ... about equally minus *specific* mechanics. And guess what: System Doesn't Seem To Matter. You play Hero 5th. You play Mutants and Masterminds. You play Tri-Stat SAS ... and nope ... nope ... doesn't really matter. Seems ... 'bout the same ... what are those Forge weirdoes talking about?

When I played CoC it was almost always without modules. And you know what? Didn't teach me a damn thing about "how to play." I read the book. I read the adventures. I gotta disagree. Yeah, the modules didn't really inspire me. Neither did the AD&D modules--but if they had, it wouldn't be "teaching" so much as *enjoying* the way they worked.

Ralph, I also think yer doin' a huge disservice to the players by assuming that they aren't the ones choosing the game--if they are--and they are particiapting in the illusion, they're still in charge (telling the GM to "work us up a cool story" is fine. Being railroaded still isn't. I wonder if you're conflating one with the other).

But finally, both of these are so popular because they work. Becasue they result in superior experience for the people who dig them (and they're popular ... so what does that suggest?) Because when I play I'm interested in the GM's Intellectual Property (same as when I read a book by my favorite author--and if you go assuming I want to be railroaded when I play, or even particiapte in some kind of conducted all-roads-lead-to-rome/GM pre-arranging-results-behind-the-scenes/a-bunch-of-other-things illusion then that's a misunderstanding based on taking the analogy farther than I mean it).

Because for me (at least--and a buncha other people online--judging from posts) GURPS *is* a superior choice than the hypotetical perfect game for the genre that in many cases doesn't exist.

It's not like universal systems were screaminly popular when GURPS came out. It's not like Lovecraft was, you know, a top selling author. The "damage" you're seeing is, I think, the fact that as the industry stands you're at a narrow end of the bellcurve and wonder why "they don't play your music on the popular radio stations."

-Marco

[Valamir]

It's not like universal systems were screaminly popular when GURPS came out. It's not like Lovecraft was, you know, a top selling author. The "damage" you're seeing is, I think, the fact that as the industry stands you're at a narrow end of the bellcurve and wonder why "they don't play your music on the popular radio stations."

Well, you could see it that way I guess, Marco.

Or one could see that if gaming had taken a different path rather than the one it did it might not be a fringe, barely viable, low profit, niche industry today.  

You could see it in a way that suggests that just possibly more people would be playing, enjoying and supporting this hobby today if the industry hadn't made the choice to cater to the hard core fringe for the last 20 years.

"Both of these are so popular"...hardly.  

When I say these games were damaging to the hobby, I mean just that.  There was a point when gaiming might have reached the mainstream.  Might have become as broadly an enjoyed hobby as MMORPGs or LAN-party shooters.  Heck there was a time when there were 3 whole shelves of the game section in KMart dedicated to D&D.  It might have kept growing from there.

Might have.  But didn't.  Why?  Because gaming took a left turn at Hardcore Boulevard and doomed itself to perpetual insignifigance.

For me, I point to games like GURPS and Call of Cthulhu (among others) as being the signposts marking that choice of highway.  From that point on the formula was solidified and for the next 2 decades its been religiously followed.  Tweaked, altered, given a new paint job but essentially the same formula in game after game.  Result:  the hobby is right about the same size as it was 20 years ago.

Gaming is about the only industry I can think of where you can look at 2 decades of flat or nearly flat growth and then have someone (and far more someones than just you, Marco) point to GURPS and CoC and say "See how popular they are".

Sorry if that sounds horribly bitter; but thems the facts as I see 'em.

[jdagna]

Ralph, are you seriously saying that GURPS and CoC catered to the hardcore audience, thus causing D&D to get pulled from KMart's shelves, and thus dooming the hobby to obscurity?

As if D&D itself were such a great thing for the hobby.  Or as if the whole D&D=Satanism thing were totally irrelevant to KMart's RPG-savvy executives.

Bottom line for me: soft-core gamers want entertainment.  They like pretty pictures and cool music.  Thus, as video games passed the Pong stage, they started moving away from RPGs.  The group who stayed were the hard core ones who want what only an RPG can give.  Products like GURPS and CoC didn't cause the shift, they responded to it (or at least rode on it).

[Marco]

Hi Ralph,

It's sort of an article of cannon around here that if games were more like, say, indie (sorry, alternative) designs, they'd be more popular. While anyone can hold any opinion on an alternate timeline they want, I think there are some serious questions of consistency there.

1. If the argument is that games would have moved to radical, rules-lite, GM-less, Narrativist design and that would've been popular then, well, who knows? But that's making an argument that one node of the GNS triad is destined for glory while the others are damning the hobby to FLGS'es. If anyone is saying that, then well, that's pretty extreme--and while it can be couched in SDM talk, the actual theory suggests that all three are necessary and equal.

2. The limiting factor for widespread tradtiona (and that means S/G) gaming (which you nail directly) is not players--but GM's. What do MMPORG's take out of the equation? GM's. What does host-a-murder remove from the equation? GM's. What do all kinds and brands of fantasy boardgames, single player computer games, mainstream speculative fiction and cinema remove from the equation? GM's (and maybe players in the last bit--but it proves that Lord of the Rings isn't of super-limited appeal).

GMing is an intellectual and creative exercise. It's probably an order of magnitude harder than being a player.

And what makes for a good GM? Matter of opinon. Maybe you think that a given system X "gives you" a better GM than system Y. As a GM, I agree. For me, X=GURPS. For a whole lot of other people X=GURPS. For some more, X=Hero. For some X=BRP. The popularity is there because it was, for us, a better way. So system does in fact matter. But not in the way you necessiarily want it to.

I think RPG's come in about like Chess. It's an intellectual exercise that just isn't going to appeal to everyone--it's going to have a medium level of popularity and that's where it comes in at the mainstream level of acceptance. I think in terms of Occam's Razor, that's a more likely conclusion than GURPS and CoC sinking the popularity ship.

-Marco

[Valamir]

Ralph, are you seriously saying that GURPS and CoC catered to the hardcore audience, thus causing D&D to get pulled from KMart's shelves, and thus dooming the hobby to obscurity?

Not at all.  What I'm saying is that the idea that RPing could today be a mainstream widely accepted hobby with order(s) of maginitude more popularity and acceptance is not an absurd what if.  The hobby was well on the road to making inroads into mainstream pop culture.

Then it stopped making those inroads and became relegated to a backwater footnote as far as "entertainment in America" goes.

There are a number of factors that contributed to that I'm certain.  Not the least of which is that the folks running the business side of the industry were not as business savvy as say Hasbro execs at identifying and targeting market segments.

But I do believe that one of the contributing factors (note I said the games were "damaging" not that they "caused everything") was that game design began to vear farther and farther away from what would appeal to the general public as a mainstream form of entertainment.

The limiting factor for widespread tradtiona (and that means S/G) gaming (which you nail directly) is not players--but GM's. What do MMPORG's take out of the equation? GM's. What does host-a-murder remove from the equation? GM's. What do all kinds and brands of fantasy boardgames, single player computer games, mainstream speculative fiction and cinema remove from the equation? GM's (and maybe players in the last bit--but it proves that Lord of the Rings isn't of super-limited appeal).

GMing is an intellectual and creative exercise. It's probably an order of magnitude harder than being a player.

That is a very interesting point, and worthy of further discussion.  

Perhaps not surprisingly, I'd frame things a little differently.  Its not GM's that those games are doing away with.  Its extensive prep and long "buy to play" times.

It takes a long time after the purchase of a game like GURPs before a GM is ready to run the game competently, especially if the GM isn't experienced with other games either.  It takes a long time to successfully prepare for a game even by a competant GM.

Even chess doesn't have this problem (and I'd say there are vastly more chess players than RPers VASTLY more).  Chess takes minutes to learn out of the box for the first time and less time to set up.  You can buy the game set it up and be playing almost immediately...not well...but playing.

MMORPGs are the same way, install it, log-on, and start playing almost immediately...again not well...but playing.

Only RPGs (and wargames) ask you to spend hours and hours studying the rules and then hours and hours getting the game into a format where you could start playing.

Those old D&D books that you could get at Kmart...you could pretty much start playing those right out of the box.  Character creation took almost no time, and with a module like "Keep on the Borderlands" you were off to the races almost immediately.

So I don't think its the GM role per se.  Its the truly yeoman's effort that games require GMs to go through to get from rule book to play session that's the issue.

To say that the reason RPing isn't more popular is because its more intellectual and creative than most people are interested in vears into the same territory as "RPers are smarter than the average person"...which, while as a RPer, I'd love to believe...just isn't the case.

There's plenty of smart creative people who simply don't see the value in RPing.  Some of that is certainly "different strokes different folks" and all that.  But some of it I think comes directly back to the direction RPing took years ago.

[Ian Charvill]

Ralph

Whilst I'm not keen on nailing GURPS and Cthulhu to the cross - in large part because of positive past play experiences - I do have to sound a hearty note of agreement here:

Those old D&D books that you could get at Kmart...you could pretty much start playing those right out of the box. Character creation took almost no time, and with a module like "Keep on the Borderlands" you were off to the races almost immediately.

Here I think you really have something in terms of a problem with how rpgs are put together.  I'm not sure GURPS/CoC are really exemplars of this problem.  But it is, I think, an issue in the take up rate of gaming.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I am probably going to cause so much trouble posting this but, well, we'll see.

Let me start by saying I am going to begin by comparing RPGs to computers. I am prefacing this because such an analogy is problematic. All analogies are. I am using it to point out a similarity between the computer industry and the RPG market.

I am stuck by Ralph's comments about prep time and see a similarity to older computer systems. Really old machines, like the Altair requires a "bootstrapping" proceedure before you could do any work. That is, you had to flip certain switches in a certain order before you did anything. I had read somewhere that Steve Wozniak had the Apple I's bootstrap committed to memory, but Apple turned it into firmware on a ROM so the bootstrap would load automatically when you turned it on.

I can see a similar issue with start time/accessibility. I suppose it can be expressed mathematically as the length of time it takes to start up T times the amount of effort required from the end user E equals the start up accessibility X  

T x E = X

My Windows XP machine can take a few minutes to start up, so that's a fairly high T or it feels like it. But all I do is press the power button to turn it on. That's a very low E. Getting X down was necessary to making home computers more mainstream.

Back in the day of the Altair, it was mostly the computer enthusiasts and hobbyists who were using it. I can imagine someone suggesting figuring out a way around the bootstraping and the other members of the computer club asking "why?" It's not *that* hard to preform the bootstraping proceedure, is it? Perhaps not but the average person, the mainstream market does not want to have to flick twenty switches before using a computer.

So lowering the X in RPGs would help them appeal to the mainstream.

However, I have my doubts that RPGs had ever been poised to enter the mainstream or that such a thing is even possible, really. However I don't think discussing the what if is going to get us anywhere. It's easy to argue either position and in the end, we'd still be where we started.

I hate to think of any game as "damaging" except for perhaps games that market itself as one thing and is another in play. Like V:TM. It sold itself as a "story game" whatever that means, so many thought and think it is how RPGs do "story" whatever that means.

Of course the only ones who noticed V:TM were vampire (the concept) fans and existing roleplayers. I don't think the mainstream has notice a single RPG besides D&D

[Calithena]

I don't know how popular RPGs can be, and I don't know if anyone really does. I do think that fairly rules-lite systems (like OD&D, btw), with imaginative, eye-catching packaging, is probably the road to success with the mass market. Well, that and access to good distribution channels, and someone who already has a lot of money thinking they can make more out of it, all the usual capitalist stuff.

One thing that makes me wonder whether it really has to be a niche market are some of the stories I hear from old-timers like Bob Bledsaw of Judges Guild. In his original game, he had over twenty players, most of whom were workers at the factory and other locals in Decatur, Illinois. These people were so into it that they would follow Bob around, call his house, hang on to his car when he was going to go on vacation, etc. so they could find out what was going to happen next! We're talking serious emotional investment here.

So for all the reasonable arguments that it 'has' to be a niche market, there's at least one sociological observation that suggests it doesn't have to be. And when I look at these endless rows of tract McMansions going up here in the Midwest (and I know they're in Jersey and Cali too), it seems to me that the social isolation that produces is just the kind of thing that games ought to be able to break down a little in small gatherings - especially if they're fun and don't require a lot of ramp-up time.

[RaconteurX]

I for one would love to know how highly atmospheric, intelligent horror roleplaying hurt the hobby. Call of Cthulhu is a signpost... in fact, it is the signpost... of the faithful rendering of a literary setting for roleplaying use. I refer to the original Basic Role Playing edition, of course, not the d20 iteration. I have been closely involved in the industry since the mid-1980's, and have seen nothing to support Ralph's assertions.

[Valamir]

Several people have taken a bit of umbrage at that.  But I would direct your attention to the fact that I said "damaging to the development of the hobby".  Not "horrible game design that no one likes".  

To be clear about my point its not that CoC was a "bad" game, but rather it IMO was instrumental in defining what an RPG of the story based variety should look like...much as GURPS was instrumental in defining what RPG mechanics should look like*

While those definitions are appealing to many gamers, they serve (again IMO) as one of the barriers that stood in the way of the hobby gaining more mainstream success; and as a result the RPG "industry" in terms of size, growth, and revenue has been largely stagnant ever since.

I find it incredibly poignant that the single biggest thing to hit the gaming industry in years was the release of a new edition of the first big thing to hit the gaming industry.

I think these game's role in defining and codifying what a "standard" RPG looks like and influencing most every subsequent RPG release is fairly indisputable.  These two games were I think of paramount importance in helping set the direction of the hobby (and others as well to be sure).

Whether one finds that direction a good thing or a bad thing is perhaps a matter of personal taste, but I stand by the rather pathetic barely scraping along state of the RPG industry as whole as evidence for my choice of the word "damaging".


*no that doesn't mean that the characteristics that make up these games were the first, or that the given "style" of play didn't exist prior to them.  I'm not talking about where the idea was first invented.  I'm talking about when the standard began to be "carved in stone".  There were certainly cars for many years before the Model T.  It was hardly the first or even best.  But it set the standard on how cars would be designed and built from that point on.

That's the role I'm talking about.  The standard setters.  And musing as to whether the hobby wouldn't be larger and more profitable today if a different standard had been set.

[b_bankhead]

Then it stopped making those inroads and became relegated to a backwater footnote as far as "entertainment in America" goes.

There are a number of factors that contributed to that I'm certain.  Not the least of which is that the folks running the business side of the industry were not as business savvy as say Hasbro execs at identifying and targeting market segments.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I'd frame things a little differently.  Its not GM's that those games are doing away with.  Its extensive prep and long "buy to play" times.

It takes a long time after the purchase of a game like GURPs before a GM is ready to run the game competently, especially if the GM isn't experienced with other games either.  It takes a long time to successfully prepare for a game even by a competant GM.

Even chess doesn't have this problem (and I'd say there are vastly more chess players than RPers VASTLY more).  Chess takes minutes to learn out of the box for the first time and less time to set up.  You can buy the game set it up and be playing almost immediately...not well...but playing.

MMORPGs are the same way, install it, log-on, and start playing almost immediately...again not well...but playing.

Only RPGs (and wargames) ask you to spend hours and hours studying the rules and then hours and hours getting the game into a format where you could start playing.

Those old D&D books that you could get at Kmart...you could pretty much start playing those right out of the box.  Character creation took almost no time, and with a module like "Keep on the Borderlands" you were off to the races almost immediately.

So I don't think its the GM role per se.  Its the truly yeoman's effort that games require GMs to go through to get from rule book to play session that's the issue.

To say that the reason RPing isn't more popular is because its more intellectual and creative than most people are interested in vears into the same territory as "RPers are smarter than the average person"...which, while as a RPer, I'd love to believe...just isn't the case.

There's plenty of smart creative people who simply don't see the value in RPing.  Some of that is certainly "different strokes different folks" and all that.  But some of it I think comes directly back to the direction RPing took years ago.

I couldn't agree with you more Valamir.  Present traditionally structured rpgs target themselves at a small group of people who are willing and capable  of designing their whole lives around the hobby.  Game rules that require reading and understanding hundreds of pages ,play styles that require commitments that may last months into the future, and an insular and ingrown culture (that is very self satisfied with the situation) and makes no real effort at outreach, are the real factors keeping rpgs down, not the silly idea that roleplaying requires some brain surgeonlike intellect to understand  and appreciate.

Indeed my major priority in what constitutes a good rpg is what I call 'Roleplay NOW!' I firmly believe that any rpg that takes more that 15-20 to explain to people and to prep for  isn't worth the paper its printed on.  I also believe a complete and satisfying scenario should be playable in less than 2 hours, preferably in an hour.

 I  believe that any really revolutionary effort in the field of rpgs HAS to be directed outside the existing culture.  The feedback mechanisms that keep the rpg landscape on it's present path are too strong, the selection pressures to focused for any change to come about from within it.

For a more detailed discussion of my take on this issue, take a look at my essay, 'Rpg Structures and issues of Recruitment'

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I think the blame is being placed in the wrong place, if blame really needs to be placed anywhere. Neither GURPS nor Call of Cthulhu were damaging. It was the inability of designers to make games that were not built on assumptions based on those games.

I still have my doubts about any potential for mainstream success and these assumptions serving as a barrier.

Possibly it has deprived people who doggedly continue in the hobby but as not satisfied with it because they games they really want are not written or people who tried it and then left for that same reason.

Whether catering to these different tastes while it would be nice, whether that would make it mainstream or not remains to be seen.

[RaconteurX]

So revolutionize the industry, Ralph, and tell us how you will single-handedly turn things around so we can cater to the lowest common denominator and thereby "save" the hobby. Not that the hobby will be worth engaging in, once that happens.

[Ian Charvill]

I think it's useful to cross reference this thread with one here.

To add another datapoint, from the ages of 11 to 16 there were very few people I knew as friends with whom I didn't game at one time or another.  We're talking I would say thirty people into gaming one time or another (unlike America, 11-16 represents a single school experience, so my social group was relatively static at that time).  Only, I think, one of those people just played once - others played from half-a-dozen sessions to the whole period.

I never made any particular evangelical efforts.  It was just a fun thing I did, we we're friends, the gaming was just part of those friendships.  It wasn't until sixth form, uni and after that the flow started going the other way (i.e. gaming with strangers, some of whom became friends).

Now, my point is: those thirty or so people represeted a fair cross section of people.  The only demographic it didn't really hit was girls (one female player that whole time).

So - that's just more anecdotal evidence to support the idea that gaming could be more mass-market than it is.

[Valamir]

So revolutionize the industry, Ralph, and tell us how you will single-handedly turn things around so we can cater to the lowest common denominator and thereby "save" the hobby. Not that the hobby will be worth engaging in, once that happens.

No one single handedly revolutionizes anything Michael.  I think there's alot going on right now, both at the Forge and at the tons of product to be found on places like RPGNow et.al. that didn't originate here that show a return to the idea of small passionate individuals contributing to the hobby (which was a hall mark of the early days of RPing).

I'm not going to stand here and tell you that games like Universalis and My Life with Master are the cat's meow and going to take the world by storm.  But I do think they (and many others with them) represent a look at the vast diversity of possible forms and formats gaming can go in.  And not just game design here either, but assumptions about ownership and distribution as well.

Is it possible now to overcome the stigma the public associates with RPing, the entrenched insular nature of much of the hobby, and to actually compete in the face of far more ways to spend ones entertainment dollar than there was in 1985.  Don't know.

But if you're going to retreat into the tired old "the more popular it is, the more it must suck" defense* as indicated by your "lowest common denominator" quip, then there really isn't anything more I can say to you on the issue.

*and the corrollary "I feel special and superior because I'm engaged in a hobby not many others appreciate, and I choose to think of that as if they can't appreciate it because they're not as sophisticated as me" attitude that often accompanies this sentiment.