Popular and damaging

[Jack Spencer Jr]

How many people walking into Kay Bee toys even knew what Everway WAS or was for?

My point exactly. Everway got into mainstream sales channels, not unlike D&D products in K Mart, but this was not enough to sell it to anyone. Getting a product into a store alone doesn't sell it. It needs to be promoted. You have to get people to want it.

(Actually, remember how D&D products were cropping up in KB at significant markdowns? Unless I am totally wrong, this was due to TSR's distributing deal with Random House. This eventually led to TSR going bankrupt again and then bought up but Wizards of the Coast)

[Walt Freitag]

Sorry for weighing in so late in the thread. It's been a very interesting discussion on all sides.

To illustrate how I see the problem, I'm going to step back to the exchange between Ralph and Marco about systems for the creation and/or description of vehicles.

Here's the problem. I'm a player (possibly but not necessarily the GM) and I've evolved a situation in which further exploration requires the introduction of an appropriate and cool vehicle. Perhaps because the player-characters want to build or obtain one, perhaps because they're about to encounter vehicle-borne enemies, perhaps for some other reason. Doesn't matter why. The question is, where does the vehicle come from? In other words, how do I and the other participants go about imagining the vehicle?

I submit that all answers to this question that are embodied in current role playing game systems and resources have drawbacks that disqualify them from "mass market appeal."

75-page vehicle construction rules: Too hardcore. Too many rules to learn; scares off the potential players when they see the book.

75-page rules, but the GM designs the vehicle beforehand: The GM must then force the situation to match the vehicle. Railroady.

75-page rules, but the GM knows them so well he can design and describe the vehicle off the cuff during play to match the situation: Great, if you have the genius GM. But you're "mass market" players, so you don't.

Big Sourcebook Of Vehicles: Too hardcore.

Big Sourcebook of Vehicles, but the GM chooses the vehicle beforehand: Railroady.

Big Sourcebook of Vehicles, used by the GM on the fly during play. It's awkward; the tool wasn't designed for it, so you still need the genius GM.

Rules-lite, just pick a few key stats and the rest is description: Unsatisfying. As a mass market newbie role player, it's not enough for the system to just let me do what I want, it has to take what I want and amplify it and tell me how cool it is. Basically, the problem John Kim described: doesn't tell the players what to do. Or more precisely, doesn't give them feedback that confirms that what they're doing is cool. (And if you think that's an absurd expectation, think again about what "mass market" means.)

Rules-lite, GM facilitates the imaginative heavy lifting and/or provides the hey-that's-cool feedback: Great, if you have a GM who knows how to do that.

Rules-lite, overt player consensus mechanics: "Huh? We just kinda vote on what the vehicle is like? What kinda game is that?" Role playing without the semblance of objectivity in the imagined space is not mass-market accessible; really, it's hard-core in a different way.

So, my surprising conclusion is this: Mass-market-accessible role playing games haven't been invented yet. That is to say, not in any general-solution way. You can't portray any setting, style, or genre you want in a role-playing game and have it be mass-market-accessible. There is no mass-market-accessible role playing game system that has customizable vehicles, for instance.

There is one role playing game that is anywhere close to an unquestionable mass market success: AD&D "1e", the original three 1987-78 hardcovers only. Which I'm going to refer to as MMPHDMG after those three books.

The key to the mass-market accessibility of MMPHDMG is that the setting is a microcosm, complete and yet amazingly limited. Okay, there's a lot to read in those three books, but when you're done you've been told literally everything there is to know about the setting. The rules tell you all the abilities your character can have or might eventually obtain, every creature dangerous and otherwise, every object your character might come across in your adventures, what your character eats for dinner and how much it costs.

Sure, to some, the lists and descriptions in MMPHDMG are only a starting point, only a limited window into a much larger quasi-medieval fantasy universe. But the important thing is, they don't have to be. Does the world contain oppossums, outhouses, or dandelions? You can answer yes or know as you like, but you can also choose not to ask the question. Even without a module or other supplemental materials, the GM and the players alike can, if they so choose, make every single decision needed to set up and play the game, as a selection of one of a small number of specifically enumerated options. Need to design a non-railroady adventure? Grab some graph paper and start placing rooms, doors, corridors, pits, and poisoned needles. Need a complication on the fly? Pick a monster. There are only a few hundred of them, which you can easily narrow to a handful based on terrain and experience level. Time to reward the players? Roll on the treasure tables.

You want a vehicle? Here's a horse. You want a bigger vehicle? Here's a big horse. You want an armored vehicle? Here's a horse wearing armor. You want a vehicle with cargo capacity? Here's a horse pulling a cart. Simple, simple, simple. Limited as hell, but it doesn't look nearly as limited as it is, because it's not like you were expecting to find humvees or learjets in a "medieval fantasy" world.

Only a few role-playing systems ever had this quality of "finite setting." Besides MMPHDMG, there was Tunnels and Trolls and The Fantasy Trip. Paranoia and Toon came close, and Call of Cthulhu was in the ballpark. These were either too overshadowed by MMPHDMG or too special-interest in genre to be mass market contenders. Settings and genres with wider recognition, like space adventure (Traveller), just couldn't be (or at least weren't) summed up in easily managed lists and tables the way D&D's medieval fantasy was. Even the TSR other-genre extrapolations (Boot Hill, Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha) were so much more open-ended that you just couldn't play them with the same techniques as MMPHDMG -- or if you did, such as by re-creating dungeon crawls with alternate genre trappings (a lost mine in Boot Hill, a derelict spaceship in Metamorphosis Alpha), it felt like you were missing the point of the genre.

Alternatively, you could use modules (which, because they had to constrain an infinite world of possibility into a definable module, came off as much more railroady than a basic dungeon-map module). Or you could make stuff up. Which was a wonderful revelation for many players but, sorry to say, also takes the activity right out of the mass market. Or you could decide that the failure of the game text to enumerate absolutely everything possible in the game world was a shortcoming of the game system, to be corrected by a system of construction/description rules, leading to the "hard-core" route and the 75 pages on vehicles.

Even in MMPHDMG itself, the prospects for "finite play" were short-lived. Quite likely, "finity" was never intended to be a quality of the system. The DMG itself has "finity leaks," rules such as temple building that to put into effect pretty much requires interaction with the larger world of open-ended possibilities. And supplements were on the way. Some types of supplemental materials (such as Grimtooth's Traps or magazine articles describing a dozen or two new magic items) do not, in moderation, make the game more difficult to manage. But major supplements, as well as certain other kinds of magazine articles such as treatises on different types of medieval city governments, rapidly undermine the notion of a complete self-contained setting in favor of the game texts as a limited (though ever-growing) window on a fundamentally unlimited world.

(When I say "world" in this context, I'm not just referring to the imagined setting itself. I mean the universe of possibilities for all that can happen in that setting as well.)

Adding open-endedness to AD&D's setting was completely understantable and worthwhile at the time. Only Gamist play can continute to meet player goals in a finite world over the long term. Most long-term players had already come to see the setting as an open-ended world. The fad was due to peak anyway, and the business needed to sell supplements. But, open-ended settings are far more daunting, either in the amount of rules that must be used to cover a wide range of possibilities, or in the amount of improvisation, judgment calling, and decision-making that must be brought to bear to create and resolve elements not covered by rules. Too daunting, it appears, to have led to any mass market success so far.

Some partial successes with partially open-ended worlds, though. Vampire: finite choices of character stats, along with an intense focus on the characters. Despite the system's coherence problems, it's pretty clear that if you're designing custom vehicles in Vampire, you're not playing to the system's strengths. But the world is open-ended (it's reality plus); too much falls on the GM for the game to be mass-market accessible. It's a near-miss on the too-open-ended side.

Champions succeeded in abstracting the world to the point of finite simplicity (stop the bad guys' latest plan in a generically urban-downtown setting), leaving the characters and their powers as the focus. The powers system is also, technically, finite. Champions is not very much more challenging (tactically or creatively) to GM than it is to play. But making the rules a complete description of all possible powers required those rules to be extensive and complex. It's a near-miss on the too-hardcore side.

But for the most part, the mass market was lost when role playing systems came to be seen as partial descriptions of unlimited worlds, instead of as complete descriptions of limited worlds. Role playing prematurely ceded the latter domain to computer games.

But hey, does it matter? I'm not sure there are many mass markets left out there for products other than SUVs, soft drinks, heartburn drugs, tooth-whitening strips, and fast food. At least, that's what most TV commercials seem to be for nowadays.

- Walt

[Jonathan Walton]

As a mass market newbie role player, it's not enough for the system to just let me do what I want, it has to take what I want and amplify it and tell me how cool it is. Basically, the problem John Kim described: doesn't tell the players what to do. Or more precisely, doesn't give them feedback that confirms that what they're doing is cool.

This reminded me of a quote by R. Sean Borgstrom:

"Why do the rules exist? Today I think it is to get the players to feel cool and clever on a regular basis."

Shreyas' responding comment in this thread was:

"Think of what the statement implies - it is possible for the rules to obstruct enjoyment of the game, making the players feel thick-witted and uncool."

I think this is what you get with heavy tomes that don't cater to a new audience.  You get games that are disempowering -- making players feel thick-witted and uncool -- instead of empowering.  And this is where you lose the mainstream, when you can't empower people.

[Matt Snyder]

Jonathan, doesn't that maxim also imply that feeling cool may be more important than acutally doing cool things. That is, your point seems to be a cry against thick tomes.

However, a very thin tome might also craft rules such that players get glassy-eyed, but then are later disappointed because they really didn't get to do anything they wanted. This could be the case very easily in som "lite" illusionist game, for example.

[Marco]

75-page vehicle construction rules: Too hardcore. Too many rules to learn; scares off the potential players when they see the book.

75-page rules, but the GM designs the vehicle beforehand: The GM must then force the situation to match the vehicle. Railroady.

75-page rules, but the GM knows them so well he can design and describe the vehicle off the cuff during play to match the situation: Great, if you have the genius GM. But you're "mass market" players, so you don't.

Big Sourcebook Of Vehicles: Too hardcore.

Big Sourcebook of Vehicles, but the GM chooses the vehicle beforehand: Railroady.

Big Sourcebook of Vehicles, used by the GM on the fly during play. It's awkward; the tool wasn't designed for it, so you still need the genius GM.

Rules-lite, just pick a few key stats and the rest is description: Unsatisfying. As a mass market newbie role player, it's not enough for the system to just let me do what I want, it has to take what I want and amplify it and tell me how cool it is. Basically, the problem John Kim described: doesn't tell the players what to do. Or more precisely, doesn't give them feedback that confirms that what they're doing is cool. (And if you think that's an absurd expectation, think again about what "mass market" means.)

Rules-lite, GM facilitates the imaginative heavy lifting and/or provides the hey-that's-cool feedback: Great, if you have a GM who knows how to do that.

Rules-lite, overt player consensus mechanics: "Huh? We just kinda vote on what the vehicle is like? What kinda game is that?" Role playing without the semblance of objectivity in the imagined space is not mass-market accessible; really, it's hard-core in a different way.

- Walt

This is a well reasoned and well illustreated point. Thank goodness our rules come in at a crowd pleasing 74pgs.

But honestly. A discussion with SJohn Ross brought up this:

He's doing a game set in a hard-boiled San Francisco. This is going to be one of the most meticulously researched games ever released (my assessment, not his words--but I've followed what he's done with it). In this game the characters want "a car."

They go to the book and find three or four different sedans. Generic sedans (Generic luxury 4-door: PRICE ###.###).

Then they turn to the back of the book and find every real-world sedan in that class with a complete pure English description of it.

(Now, to get these prices he did all kinds and brands of research--number of vehicles on the road by make and model, adjusted prices, adjusted again for the game's wealthy system, etc.) The generic model has the stats. The specific one has the English.

Now--this will not work so well for a Fenris Assault vehicle with twin swivel rocket pods and a Grav-Beam on the front. It will, for one thing, be difficult to research the real ones to get your baseline. Secondly, the "wing" on the back that gives better handling at 90+ mph will be hard to model if there's nothing but an English description of it.

So his idea has some, perhaps, limitations--but it occurred to me that it might come closer to a mass-market appeal than, say, what we're  doing (me and my team).

I have another experience to relate.

In the post-app game we're playtesting a new--but avid and quick-study gamer brought his girlfriend. She was newly arrived from Latin America--with no idea of even what D&D was.

The characters were shopping and I gave her the "giant book of weapons" (over 100, 50pgs with rules and armor listings). She was told she could choose from like 5 of them to start with (first page of handguns and rifles).

She examined the book and begin reading it. "How do I get the rest of these weapons?"

She was serious too--it wasn't a pure effectivness thing, I asked about that (and explaned that the guns she could buy were plenty effective)--and it wasn't a "character image thing"--she was a gunslinger and wanted the sixshooters. She found the whole thing interesting and engaging and was interested in 'going out and getting some of those things.'

So I do think that the big book of cars/guns/gear/spells/mutations/etc. *is* to a degree newbie-friendly. Mass-market friendly. Choosing from lists--where the author has made some attempt to make each list item "sell itself" (we re-wrote the list of super powers in our suppliment to go from 'the character can move in all three dimensions' to "You've got the power of flight!") is less daunting than it might first appear.

-Marco

[quozl]

So I do think that the big book of cars/guns/gear/spells/mutations/etc. *is* to a degree newbie-friendly. Mass-market friendly. Choosing from lists--where the author has made some attempt to make each list item "sell itself" (we re-wrote the list of super powers in our suppliment to go from 'the character can move in all three dimensions' to "You've got the power of flight!") is less daunting than it might first appear.

-Marco

You are right.  Just look at all the "monster manuals" there are!  In fact, it was looking through the original Monster Manual that got me wanting to play an RPG.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Interesting theory, Walt. Upon reflection, you may be right. Thing is, I don't think just lists will work with the mainsteam. Simple lists are. McDonald's made billions all because they introduced a limited menu of only 7 items. Some complained, but many more bought it. So I think it's possible to overload the mass market with choices as well. With finite, well designed choices, you will get the public attention.

[Calithena]

The 3e PHB went multi-platinum. The only reason it was not a commercial success in an absolute sense is that their pricepoint was too low. I'm not saying this because I like 3e, but I think that it's wrong to leave the 3e PHB out of any description of 'mass market' success in RPGing.

[Walt Freitag]

In general, I agree with Marco and Jonathan. Lists-of, big-books-of, tables-of, catalogs-of (I'll just call 'em: enumerations of) game elements are relatively newbie-friendly and mass-market friendly. My main thesis here is that AD&D (the MMPHDMG version included) is mass-market-friendly, and it happens to be stuffed full of enumerations. Most notably, the spell lists, magic item lists, and monster manual; but also the shorter shopping lists: character races, character classes, armor, weapons, misc. equipment, etc. What's really unusual (how odd it seems to be thinking of AD&D as an unusual role playing system, but a shift of mental gears and there it is) is that these enumerated things -- monsters, magic items, spells, weapons -- are what the game is all about. Plenty of derivative games also have lists of things (sometimes even the exact same lists, as Ron pointed out in the first Heartbreakers essay), as do later interpretations and versions of AD&D, but most of them are really all about some form or another of plot that has to come from outside the enumerated stuff.

For comparison, Marco's example of the sedans from Ross's hard-boiled game does sound pretty useful and friendly, and an excellent tool for color. But I wonder, how much does it actually help you to set up and play the game? It might help a lot, if the game is mostly about this sort of trappings (aka color). But if the game is all about solving cases, I'd probably be more impressed with a catalog of cases or of components of cases (deeds, motives, clues, complications). It would be nice for a GM to be able to put a "case" together as easily as he can open up the AD&D books and match up a monster, its treasure, and the trap on the door to the room where it lives. I know that is a very tall order. I know it because I'm trying to do almost exactly that for Precious Fluid, which is about solving cases.

Similarly, a big sourcebook of vehicles would be helpful for making a game that's all about vehicles more mass-market-friendly. The reason I included that sourcebook among the less mass-market-friendly options is that it's more common for such a sourcebook to be one of many sourcebooks covering many different aspects of the same game world (one for vehicles, another for buildings, another for personal gear, one each for several different classes of weapons, one for major religions, etc.). To the point where it becomes a major task to decide which sourcebooks to use, and the massive array of possibilities becomes burdensome seemingly long before the material becomes complete enough to provide what you're actually looking for.

The real problem that undercuts mass-market-friendliness is open-ended scope of decision-making. Enumeration-type sourcebooks don't cause that problem, they actually do help, but they can only help so much.

Which speaks to Jack's point as well. Yes, simple lists are mass-market-friendly. But I think more extensive lists can be mass-market-friendly too, if they're important enough to play to focus a lot of players' attention on. (How many Pokemon are there now? They started with 150. I suspect that they're now up to a sufficient number to discourage new players.) That is, if there aren't too many of them, and you know which one to use when.

- Walt

[Valamir]

So I do think that the big book of cars/guns/gear/spells/mutations/etc. *is* to a degree newbie-friendly. Mass-market friendly. Choosing from lists--where the author has made some attempt to make each list item "sell itself" (we re-wrote the list of super powers in our suppliment to go from 'the character can move in all three dimensions' to "You've got the power of flight!") is less daunting than it might first appear.

I actually would agree with this.  As long as the book is at least partially illustrated, has plain english text with interesting factoids and is not littered with space saving abbreviations that most people won't get...this would be (of Walt's) list something that I think would have mass market appeal.

I know several people who can't wait to get their new edition of The Sportsmans Almanac or Joe Bob's Book of Guns You're Not Allowed to Own, or even just the latest issue of Car & Driver.

I think people do like flipping through a big book of stuff (after all what's more mainstream than a catalog)...as long as the presentation doesn't go overboard on the geeky stuff I think this could easily be an effective technique.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Which speaks to Jack's point as well. Yes, simple lists are mass-market-friendly. But I think more extensive lists can be mass-market-friendly too, if they're important enough to play to focus a lot of players' attention on. (How many Pokemon are there now? They started with 150. I suspect that they're now up to a sufficient number to discourage new players.) That is, if there aren't too many of them, and you know which one to use when.

I can see this kind of thing developing into a game were the core book has the simpler options and then the company releases suppliments with more extensive options.

What?

Already done?

[Gordon C. Landis]

Walt mentions Pokemon - anyone notice how like a list a deck of cards is?  And how similar building a deck is to picking some things from a list?

Spin Magic/Pokemon/etc. more towards RPG'ing (Nar, if you like), maybe put 'em in a box with a board (scene elements placed by the GM, character actions placed by the players), and sell 'em as a hybrid between those CCGs and Monolpoly/Trivial Pursuit/etc.  But make sure it fully *is* an RPG, by whatever sense that is important to you - shared creation of story, maybe.  Or S, or G, or some blend.

Do that - do it well, in both creative and business terms - and if it doesn't succede, then we'll prove the "general public" really is just not interested in that kind of game.  If I hit the lottery, I'll give it a shot myself (yup, gotta design percolating that could work for this).

But it may not be possible - a game somewhere close to Monopoly or Risk and etc. in terms of complexity, that still provides all that is needed to fully support a GNS goal.  Only way to find out is to try, though . . .

We had a thread a while back where I referred to Greg Costikyan's "Grognard Capture" notion.  I translate Ralph's post into that concept - that building something to appeal only to the more extreme elements of your potential fan base ends up excluding the non-extremists.  I think it is entirely reasonable to wonder if those non-extremists even EXIST (in large numbers) for RPGs, but to the extent that GURPS (or whatever) led to a constricted understanding of what an RPG *must* be . . . sure, that's a negative.

Gordon
(back from vacation - appologies if I missed some of the posts over the last few weeks that bear on this issue)

[Green]

I've been following this thread with a great deal of interest, and regarding the popularity of tome-like RPGs like D&D and White Wolf's games, I think it has to do with being able to gradually introduce new players to different levels of complexity.  It's one thing to just read the book, but in my experience, the best way to show newbies how to play is to show them during game how things work a little bit at a time.  D&D and WWGS are both good at teaching newbies, little by little, how to play the game and what you are expected to do in a game.  I believe this last point is more pertinent than anything else regarding the number of pages the book has or how simple the mechanics are.  It's easier to introduce newbies to a game where it's easy to figure out what they can do then learn how they can do it.  A better way to say things is that D&D and White Wolf do a great job of showing players what they can do because they: have clearly written rules (though not always concise), give plenty of examples (even short ones), and repeat vital information throughout the piece.  While it would seem inefficient to us experienced gamers, looking at things as a complete "foreigner" to the "language" of RPGs, I can see the necessity of doing so.  Since most newbies have at least glanced at a textbook, they can easily determine how to find the information they want and to apply the things they know as they learn them.  Mainstream RPGs, in a sense, are really good at teaching the activity of roleplaying, albeit they do so with frequently narrow visions of what roleplaying is.

In more freeform or rules-lite systems, though, that process is not described in enough detail.  People new to roleplaying, while they could get the gist of it, don't fully understand the idea until someone is patient and generous enough to take them under their wing.  In my game, I have attempted to alleviate this by giving analogies to activities more well-known to the general public, or by giving more detailed examples throughout the text.  I am not sure how successful I am at it, though.

[quozl]

Spin Magic/Pokemon/etc. more towards RPG'ing (Nar, if you like), maybe put 'em in a box with a board (scene elements placed by the GM, character actions placed by the players), and sell 'em as a hybrid between those CCGs and Monolpoly/Trivial Pursuit/etc.  But make sure it fully *is* an RPG, by whatever sense that is important to you - shared creation of story, maybe.  Or S, or G, or some blend.

This was actually done already by Wizards of the Coast.  Take a look at the Pokemon Adventure Game, which I can pick up at my local KayBee Toy Store for about $2 now.  Supposedly, it sold really well but they never put out a follow-up product like they planned.  There's a good thread or two about it on rpg.net if you care to search for them.

[b_bankhead]

I've been following this thread with a great deal of interest, and regarding the popularity of tome-like RPGs like D&D and White Wolf's games, I think it has to do with being able to gradually introduce new players to different levels of complexity.  It's one thing to just read the book, but in my experience, the best way to show newbies how to play is to show them during game how things work a little bit at a time.  D&D and WWGS are both good at teaching newbies, little by little, how to play the game and what you are expected to do in a game. .

Actually I have to take exception to this. D&D and WWG are NOT good at doing this, rpg PLAYERS are.  Which is why the worst possible thing you can do for an rpg 'virgin' is shove the book under their nose without preamble. The overwhelming majority of rpg players learn how to play by playing not by reading.  As I have said the 'read the book' model doesn't work because very few 'virgins' won't bolt when they see the book.