State of the Pen and Paper Industry

Syberghost writes "Kenneth Hite's annual 'State of the Industry' report has been released in his online column Out of the Box for gamer news site http://www.gamingreport.com. Among other interesting bits; Margaret Weis Productions is the sixth-largest RPG maker, on the sales of their sole RPG product line, the Serenity RPG. Sales overall were down, again; the RPG industry as a whole isn't doing well." Sad but not surprising.

Comments

There's more to it.

[Stachybotris]

It's not just the price or the time needed to play. It's also the fact that it's really hard to convince most gamers that they need to continue buying supplements. I'll admit that I have a lot of 3e/3.5e books, and I'll also admit that 3.5 was basically a cash-grab by WotC. Having said that, however, the truth is that most of the more recent supplements aren't things that I feel the need to buy. It's either stuff that I'd come up with on my own already, or it's material that is kind of cool, but not interesting enough to warrant purchasing. Hell, I don't even use half of the material in half of the supplements that I have now. Why would I need to buy more?

Also, there is the fact that the industry moves in cicles. If you recall, there was a significant drop-off in the market during the late 80's and 90's, which would correspond to the time between the initial frenzy over 2nd edition and the release of 3rd. I think that the same thing is happening here, and that when 4th edition comes out, we'll see a big boom in the market again (at least for a few years).

Another factor this time is the sheer glut of 3rd edition materials that were released. Everyone and their brother jumped all over the open-source nature of the d20 system, so there's even more dross to sort through and more competition in the market than ever before.

Burning Wheel

[Schezar]

The new hotness is Burning Wheel. Independent games written and published by creative individuals beat the hell out of the book-spam WotC has been promoting these days.

Of course, WotC also has the problem of selling a durable good: these books don't just wear out. Once they're sold, they're on the market forever. No gamer will ever buy more than one. They've tried to mitigate this with tricks like "3.5th edition," but few gamers ever bothered updating. Throw in the rampant piracy of the books and rules themselves, and there's really no way WotC can continue with D&D as it is.

(I prefered AD&D 2nd Edition anyway ^_~)

Genre can't support an industry

[Cy Sperling]

Pen and Paper RPGs have always been more niche than industry. This is a business that cannot survive on terms of growth, only in servicing the niche. TSR collapsed under the weight of their attempts to grow outside of the confines of the niche. They were producing far too many boxed games built on expensive liscences (Indiana Jones RPG?) and simple name shufflings of the D&D rulesets (Star Frontiers, Gamma World). Rather than focus on a fixed set of products that would be profitable, they kept spending to try and grab more marketshare where there wasn't any. Hasbro/WOC were smart- they realized that the real power in D&D is the liscening, not the game itself. All of the startups and ex-TSR company people are at a huge disadvantage by not having a compelling IP to go along with the pen&paper products. Even White Wolf, arguably the most successful RPG system outside of D&D has only a sliver of the name recognition that D&D has.

Re:Gurps

[Bacon Bits]

I think it ends up being the same problem everyone has. A good GM tells the story and lets you play the game. You don't worry about the rules so much has trying to roll big numbers and have fun. A good GM does all the number mods in the background.

My GURPS GM ran with all kinds of mods, and you had to remember to ask about every little bonus or mention that you did something in a certain way or you'd always fail. So the game was dumb. My D&D GM's just ran the stupid game to make sure the players had fun. Ultimately, the rules should never interfere with your ability to have fun.