RPG – Page 2 – Order of Eris

July 28, 2009

The Bucket

It’s been a while since I posted. Long story for another post.

I came across this post on Adventures in Gaming. And, I have to admit, I think Mishler is right.

There is one core issue that keeps adventure game industry small and micro press role-playing game companies from being able to charge what they need to in order to be able to afford all the bells and whistles much larger companies can afford: the price sensitivity of the gaming consumer.

The RPG industry is slowly dieing. Local gaming stores are difficult to operate without losing money or having another source of income. There’s a solution.

Grow the market.

The market is too small to sustain the companies in the industry. Growing a market is hard work, though. I’m not really sure anyone working in the industry is going to put aside their livelyhood today in order to save their job five years from now. From a consumer and corporate viewpoint, building the market up will cost more money. Money that people will say they can’t afford to spend.

So, in short, if you aren’t willing to spend money just to grow the market, you are essentially saying you are fine letting the RPG industry die a slow and painful death. This means spending more money for consumers by purchasing RPG materials from gaming stores instead of online, direct from distributers. It means companies trimming production costs and spending money on gaming stores and advocacy.

The music industry is currently going through a huge upheaval. A good summary of their new gameplan is given by Michaek Masnick from techdirt.

Connect With Fans (CwF) + Reason To Buy (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$$)

I bring this up because it’s a simple concept of how to make money. And, while it’s fun to play RPGs, the only way to keep getting great RPGs and new RPGs is for people to make money publishing and writing RPGs. This formula is very simple and easy to understand, and I can say that in the past several years, the RPG industry has done almost nothing but try to put their biggest connection with fans out of business. The direct sales model has pulled an end-run on the RPG industry’s largest fan building system, which is the local gaming stores. I’m not going to say that going back to that model is the only way to connect with fans, but it’s a good start in lieu of a better idea.

The other half of this equation is the reason to buy. In the context of the music model Masnick is talking about, the music is usually given away for free and you have to find a reason for fans to give you money. Often in the context of value-add that is original, unique, and highly desired by fans. So, why not apply this same concept to an RPG? Give the core mechanics away for free. The meat of the game. Free. Allow it to be downloaded in PDF for free to anyone who wants it. But what could you sell? Maybe a black and white, soft-back version of the rules for $15. And a full color, hardbound for $40. And a limited edition signed by the authors/artists for $130, of which you only have fifty copies. You could sell miniatures if the game needs them. You could sell modules, adventures, tools, etc. Maybe you give modules away for free, but you charge money for printer copies like your core rules. These versions for sale could include color maps, etc. This kind of model offers options for people across a wide swath. People looking for a new game might download the free version, then order a black and white copy for play. Dedicated fans might purchase the hardbound version. And your rabid fans who mail you their panties could purchase the signed copy of the core rules. Options are always great!

If the music industry is any indicator, this model could possibly make money and grow the market at the same time. Worst case scenario, you get a great game out into the public and build your market at the loss of some revenue. Revenue that you are going to lose over time regardless. Any market is like a bucket with a hole in it. You are always losing customers. You have to keep adding water to the bucket!

June 12, 2009

Miniature Troubles

Sometimes I have a pretty huge chip on my shoulder that I want to share here. I furiously begin writing down my ideas in some form of irrational prose. And then I scrap it because my entire point gets lost. Maddening!

Let me say plainly that all I want are plastic, pre-painted miniatures sold in a way that lets me buy what I want. I don’t want random monsters. I don’t want to paint them myself. I don’t want to use glass beads or cardboard tokens. No clever marketing gimmicks.

Reaper seems to be catching on. But Wizards of the Coast doesn’t seem to get it. They keep trying to somehow sell their miniatures as collectables. If you are going to make a table top role playing adventure game that (by the book) requires miniatures to play, don’t jerk me around!

May 25, 2009

More Keep on the Shadowfell

Except this time, with a dice tower. It had an amazing impact on game play. Mostly because people had trouble seeing their results, or seeing the map over the giant tower. I’ll have to focus on making it smaller and easier to see the dice roll results.

I think it does a good job of actually removing the dice or the person as the problem. In my mind, that means rolls are more random and I didn’t see any long streaks of bad rolls. But, to others, it means the dice tower must be the problem when a bad roll happens. 🙂

I still maintain that it’s nothing more than a gimmick if you are a good dice roller. But we all get lazy, and we all have tables that are not ideal rolling surfaces. And those things, coupled with a D4, for example, are just asking for trouble. In the end, it’s just a die roll and the tower just gives you a better view of your own naval.

May 17, 2009

v2

I wasn’t really happy with the first one. You might think a dice tower is a dice tower is a dice tower, right?

WRONG.

The first one had two major problems. It was way too large, and the baffles inside were not tumbling the dice well. The size was easier to fix. In the second version, I made it a tad taller, but I made it much narrower and the dice catcher can flip up against the tower. As for the baffles inside, I made sure the new one had the baffles at a very steep forty five degree angle. I also added a third baffle. This has the dice fly out of the bottom of the tower spinning.

The dice feel more random than ever after going through this new tower. 🙂

May 16, 2009

Tower of Chaos!

We all have those nights. Your playing a game that involves dice and you just can’t seem to roll anything worthwhile. Is it the dice? Is it the black cat that crossed your path while you walked under a ladder after breaking a mirror? Did someone put your dice in their mouth to curse them? Or do you just need to learn 2 roll, noob?

Turns out that there is a thing called a Dice Tower. And I’m not talking about those monuments to boredom you build with your dice. It’s a dice randomizer. Toss the dice in the top and they bounce around and come out totally random.

I just had to make one. Since I’m cheap and the one I wanted costs way too much. Now, do I name it the Battle Box? Or maybe Eris-o-matic?

April 20, 2009

Revelation and Fallout

More RPG fun! This time, I get to play. And talk. And mostly crack jokes and complain. We made it to the end of combat, which makes the fight pretty fast for how many enemies and players there are. This is a homebrew setting on top of the Buffy game system, fashioned from sticks and some model glue by the GM, Stone. Tonight we used a battle mat to run combat … and combat seemed better. A revelation! Combat with miniatures is better?! Wah?

Obviously my big metal robot leanings have exposed me to miniatures combat from the first days of my RPG life. Battletech, Aerotech specifically, was my serious indoctrination into the hobby, and those games are seriously miniatures and map centric. And then I played a bit of Robotech, never using a map or a miniature. All those times I played both with and without maps and miniatures, and I never really looked into how combat unfolds in each. The maps make a large difference in how I see combat and my options.

Without the maps, combat is often randomly direct attacks between enemies and player characters. Lots of time and effort have to be expended by the GM keeping the scene straight and conveying it clearly to the players. Maybe that’s advanced play. And maybe if your games are combat light, it’s no big deal. I am seeing that a map and character markers are really valuable tools. Focusing fire, creating bottlenecks, flanking, and many other tactical options come into tangible view on the table. Even if the game system doesn’t specifically reward these maneouvers, it can help facilitate more teamwork. And in my specific game night of play, it can even help everyone get a quick look at the situation and decide what to do, because someone told a really funny joke and you weren’t paying attention. Now the GM doesn’t have to re-explain what just happened, or tell you which enemy is in sight or posing the greatest threat.

And why is this anything even close to a surprise for myself? Mostly because I used to consider maps as a crutch, or a distraction. Too “game-ist” or “simmulation-ist” maybe. In my eyes, table-top gaming was just a complex board-game and had no place in role playing games. Would people who want to play an RPG be ok if I whipped out a map, some miniatures, and started a game of Battletech in the middle of their game? My recent experiences with Fallout and D&D 4e seem to indicate that it will work fine. Would it work with every system? Probably not. But when it does, I think it’s a great way to enhance the combat in a game.

April 12, 2009

Keep on the Shadowfell

I’ve given this blog a rest. I’ve pretty much stopped playing World of Warcraft and I’m not really looking back. I play some Warhammer Online every so often. I’m not really happy with any video games recently. Maybe something better will come along.

Until then, I’ve started running a weekly D&D session. It seems to be all the rage in the nerd community to get back into D&D with the latest edition, as is evidenced by “The Podcasts”. I can’t argue with the prevailing logic that fun things are fun. Curse you logic!

I used to hate D&D. The third edition was quasi skill based without having any solid footing in a setting. I’m not a fantasy kind of guy. These issues, which are mine alone, turned D&D into a bitter experience that I avoided, or managed to tolerate in the company of excellent friends. I was always more attuned to the Robotech, Battletech, and Heavy Gear persuasions of RPGs. I skew big metal robot, I suppose.

And then D&D 4e came along and when I saw it, it said, “I’m totally a game, and you can kill enemies and take their stuff.” Something inside me just shrugged and said, “I can dig it.” The setting is a plane of squares. The game is downright devilish in it’s design, bridging the gap between a complex board game and seriously serious role playing with two page character backgrounds and people crying when their character dies. That’s some crazy bridge, I tell you. A bridge that I imagine many people spend their entire lives on. Never really wanting to go to either extreme.

In the image above, you can see that combat has commenced, enemies hiding out of sight, while our fearless Warlord, Mortiz, has rushed headlong into a trap. The faceless Warlock, Slayn, stands next to him, planning to hurt evil goblins. They managed to not die that night. But they aren’t out of the dungeon, yet.