What is the biggest hole that needs to be filled in the RPG industry?
Pelgrane:
I'd be very surprised if anyone was offended. I suspsect it's of interest, but you are posting asking publishers what the best thing for them to pubish is. They are either publishing the best thing they can think of to publish already, or are intending to. If I knew the answer to your question, you can be sure I'd be doing it to.
The people to ask would be potential customers, not publishers, and I very much doubt that this is the place to ask - but even they aren't likely to know exactly what they are missing.
Anyway, a warning - the best way to end up with a pile of money in the RPG industry is to start with a bigger pile. Almost nobody makes any money at all in this hobby. cf Ron's essay on the Fantasy Heartbreaker.
Still, I'll give it a go.
The best way I can think of to set up a viable business in the RPG market is to service the whole market with utilities. A decent NPC utility which could be used on a handheld device with a massive bank of portraits, random names, personality types and drivers would be great. A GM organiser, as it were. I'd buy that. The reason I think it's the best way is because it's what I know, as co-owner of ProFantasy Software.
If you insist on an RPG and you have money, then a licensed property might be the way to go. I'm quite taken with Sherlock Holmes, but there are others.
Here are ideas for RPGs I've always hoped someone would publish, but I'm not likely to:
1. An RPG with a resolution system based on snippets of text from The Prince.
2. An RPG disguised as a board/card game which would appeal to the mainstream.
3. A LARP called "The Ambassador's Reception"
But, unless you are paying someone else to write the game (and this isn't the place to discuss that!) then the amount of money you are sitting on is hardly relevant - what really matters is your writing and design chops. So, if you want to write a game, my advice would be write it, playtest it and don't even think about publishing it until you know how people react. You'd better be prepared, though, for a modest reponse until you have established yourself though word of mouth.
My Precious:
Perhaps patience is not my strong suit.
I figure those who publish their own games are also consumers of other games, and are perhaps some of the best-informed consumers of games, which is why I'm asking here. In all my lurking I've seen very strong opinions expressed, and wanted to hear some.
And indeed, I hope not to offend. I just felt a little guilty for asking "does the world really need another steampunk game" when I pictured someone reading it who has been working on, say, a new steampunk game.
I have heard similar advice re: some sort of hand-held utility, though I doubt I have the technical chops to pull that off. That's exactly the type of suggestion I'm looking for though, so thank you! Indeed, a buddy of mine made a starmapping utility for his iphone and its been one that we've used at the table over and over to great effect. So you may have something there.
As for the money, I think the best thing to do is to save it for marketing and, more importantly, convention appearances. Other than that, I see my goal as self-publishing in the PDF format, just as I would if I had no money. I don't think sinking money into the project will make it better. This is found money so I don't mind losing it. I don't expect to make any serious money in this field. I've some close friends on the publishing side who have assured me there are very few people who do. I'm not worried about my writing or design skills, which have been honed in the magazine industry for more than 20 years.
Game-design wise, I've tried dozens of different approaches and playtested thoroughly at my local store. I feel good about it, and was thinking of posting it here until I read all the "winter" stuff and realized I started posting way too late in the game. No sense in starting something up at this point, though maybe I should post it and get some comments before it all goes away. The reason I'm hesitant to release my own system/setting is because of the way I, as a consumer, react to such things. Unless it's just shockingly new and original, I'm not particularly interested in more iterations on the traditional themes. Too many others are doing that. I'd feel better about doing something folks needed to have, rather than what I, for emotional reasons, need to publish. Hope that makes sense.
BTW, love Fractal Terrains!
Ron Edwards:
OK, let's see what I can do with this ...
WHAT YOU WANT / WHAT THEY WANT
Clinton Nixon articulated a common point of view between him and me when he wrote about designing games one really wants to play, about stuff one really cares about, with the intended audience only being those who shared those feelings to any meaningful degree. In other words, seeking a target audience beyond one's own interests is a slippery slope to designing without heart, and as he saw it, with reduced hope of making a game worth playing. I agree with this point of view, although I readily admit it is quite touchy-feely.
You mentioned "too many systems special to their creators, that might not be all that interesting to anyone else." I think that observation is debatable. First, one's own eyes are not everyone's eyes. Second, and more importantly, any number of those creators might be satisfied by reaching as many people who satisfy Clinton's criteria as they can, and never mind how many that might be, or how many everyone else might be.
JUST ANOTHER [FILL IN THE BLANK] GAME
During a long-ago panel featuring Vincent Baker and me, he presented two questions that he considered fundamental not only to good design, but also to commercially-viable design. Begin with someone telling you they are designing a game about pirates. The questions are (i) "Why a game about pirates?" and (ii) "Why a new game about pirates?"
The first question addresses whether the creator actually thinks anything about the topic fun, or whether he or she is merely aping what's all around them, or any other non-productive decision-process that falls short of fun. The second addresses the fact that people really can "play pirates" with literally hundreds of available role-playing systems, so what does yours offer which makes it do pirates notably well.
I went ahead and thought a lot about those two questions over the years and applied them as part of a how-to-publish discussion model at GenCon last year. I describe it in detail in GenCon 2011: at the booth; in a way, it's pretty much an already-written reply to a number of your concerns.
WHAT'S MISSING
In line with my first point, the only perceived holes in a market that I trust are those I feel myself. I don't trust much talk about people perceiving a need, then stepping up to fulfill it, in some kind of entirely analytical and observational way. Nor do I place much stock in so-called research polls that seek to discover an unmet need. That process seems to generate crap as often as not. I think ... well, I think that if Clinton's point is attended to, and if Vincent's questions are asked and answered, then one may well find that there was a hole that needed filling.
My main concern with your phrasing about holes is the implication that there exists a demand for what's being filled, and not only that, a substantial demand, in terms of dollars and eyeballs just waiting to be directed that way.
For example, I think the designs I talked about in Three games about religion are rather well suited to a gaping hole in role-playing design topics. I think even in their current rough state they offer rather strong play experiences for those who are interested. However, I don't think they are particularly marketable and I don't plan to release them in a financially risky way. So, hole? Yes. Big hole? Conceptually, yes. Big demand? Probably not.
This is a pretty big issue, in fact. When talking about holes in a perceived available range of design, we may well be missing the far more important insight that the range itself is pitifully narrow. You can poll and poll and poll, and never get information about the possibilities outside it.
Comics offer an excellent analogy: that to "do comics" one must stay within a fairly narrow range of topics, i.e., superheroes of a particular visual type, or they "aren't really comics." This may sound odd today but it was a brutal debate among comics folks three decades ago. The first chapter in Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics was devoted to getting away from topic and focusing on medium, using the analogy of a pitcher (comics as a medium) holding any kind of liquid (superheroes or otherwise). You can see some of my views about that in Mainstream: a revision (I shudder to think that was nine and a half years ago ...), also inspired directly by the comics biz.
For me, the biggest topic outside of that narrow perceived range in role-playing is real-world politics, which as a term has become so debased and misunderstood that it leads me to daily despair. As it happens, I also consider its absence to render almost all modern printed science fiction blithering idiocy. Therefore, I think Spione is my best work, hands-down. Despite delays, a similar book-and-game, Shahida, is still coming along. My personal ambition is simply to carry on with this and similar work, with secondary projects (Sorcerer's annotated version, the religon games, reviving Gray Magick with a new name God help me) being fun and psychologically/creatively necessary, but not central.
Vincent offers some points about the absence he's perceiving, also turned toward that out-of-the-range space that we can't perceive well from within our own structural insider framework, in Monster Mania Con: barriers to interest. He's not talking about topic, though, but rather about presentation and positioning, in terms of consumer perceptions.
Well, that's what I've got at the moment. I hope some of it was at least interesting.
Best, Ron
David Berg:
Hi My Precious,
My first thought is that if you want to grab the eyeballs and dollars of current roleplayers, you should make something like D&D that's as easy to successfully GM as it is to play.
I'm imagining your audience as people who have played D&D, but aren't currently playing it because they (a) can't find a DM and are scared by the work and responsibilities DMing entails, or (b) have burned out on DMing. Or people who are currently DMing and not loving it.
Personally, I consider this a major game design challenge. There are tons of fantasy games that are like D&D and easier to GM in some ways. But I certainly don't know of any that reduce the barriers to GMing to the point that that's their hallmark.
In terms of a void in fictional content, I have two separate thoughts:
1) Ride the zeitgeist. What seems big right now? For example, I'm working on a game inspired by the Occupy protests.
2) There is no void in content. Any setting or premise you can think of has been done. But! There is always room to do it better. For me, this comes down to how the content is delivered during play via the game's design. If you can consistently get players to leave your steampunk game going, "I've never felt so steampunk in my life!" then you're golden. I don't think the world's steampunkiest setting will get you there, though.
I'm happy to discuss any of this further if you'd like.
Ps,
-David
tymotzues:
Hi Precious
So yes, you need to be patient around here for your responses, but at least you know they're going to be worth the wait :)
I think I agree with some of what Ron said and I've been thinking about this a lot with my own game having just gone live and receiving some interesting responses. And the thinking is this, which is that you need to love what you are doing, that it needs to be the game 'you' want to play, and then it will attract an audience with the same playing style/goals/interests.
When Tolkien was asked why he wrote the Lord of the Rings he replied because it was what he wanted to read and no one else was writing what he wanted to read. My illustration lecturer said something very similar to me when I told her that I was concerned my art was too niche and not commercial enough for gallery display; she answered, let the audience find your work. And if you don't show it then the audience that wants it won't find it.
Most people don't really know they want something until they experience it.
But putting all that aside I know in my own musings about games to produce I always look for two things - a game which in some way explores the human condition, and a setting in which that condition is put to ultimate tests; emotional, physical, mental and spiritual. Now if I can add undiscovered territory to that then I've scored a hat trick.
T
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