The Loss and Curse of Relevance

I was born way, way, way too late. 1954 would have been a good birth year. That's right. I'm complaining that I am way too young. I missed so much, as the prime opportunities involving my interests passed decades ago.I get depressed easily when reading about the future of things I enjoy.

Here is a thread on RPG.net about gaming and e-readers. I don't doubt this is where the future lies.

But I like books. Shit, I just went almost two months with no phone service. I have a pre-paid plan, and 10€ covered me from January through the beginning of September. I just put 25€ more on it and I expect that to last me most of the next year. The last time I made an actual phone call was back in May I think, to schedule a dentist appointment.

Mainly, I use the thing as a watch when I bother to take it off the bookshelf at all. Oh, and as an alarm clock because my actual alarm clock's alarm is broken. The last thing I want is an electronic doohickey that reads my books, plays my music, and blows me on command.

But some clever person is going to be cutting edge and put video and music into their electronic RPG releases, and publishers will be expected to keep up. Not just writing and layout anymore, but video and audio production. For a role-playing game. And keeping up on the latest handheld reading technology that will change every few years, because it's easier to re-sell that than those uneconomical books that can occupy a shelf (and be swapped and re-sold!) for years and years without generating ongoing revenue.

Of course the big RPG "properties" aren't even the core businesses of the companies making them anymore. While this shows the realities of business on a corporate scale, I think this distorts the possibilities on more human scales. D&D is just a portion of Wizard of the Coast's business, and not the largest portion (and Wizards of the Coast, in turn, is a nearly not-worth-mentioning portion of Hasbro's business). Any normal human being would look at the revenue D&D produces and go, "Oh wow holy shit!" But through the eyes of big corporate scale, it's minuscule. And which scale do gamers seem to pay attention to?

Both!

"D&D is ohmygod wow the biggest thing there can ever be it's the monolith!"

"D&D is probably underperforming so badly for Hasbro that they're probably going to cancel it. They just keep it for the IP anyway."

That D&D has taken big steps towards the electronic subscription model, which, by many accounts (and despite the horrid missteps of their "Digital Initiative" early on), does enhance the playability of the 4e game design. This is the future. Which conceals a message: "Are you actually working out your game with a pencil and paper? How quaint!"

Which undoubtedly will drive publishers with resources to do the same.

Or maybe it'll be something different.

Fantasy Flight Games is doing that Warhammer 3rd Edition monstrosity. Here is a promotional video for it. I know people are going crazy waiting for this, but the manipulative intent of this video makes my skin crawl. The slick, scripted manner in which the "interviews" are done (their word choices here are not spontaneous, they are very deliberate; listen), while the "game components" (read: elements which will ensure that you can't just buy a book and be done with it) are showcased using dramatic filming techniques (and music!) to make it look like their box is a major cinematic experience... all to sell you a game that's been done, and done well, twice already without all the extras.

Quite an impressive, and epic, piece of advertising trying to convince you how down and dirty their game is.

Some of it sounds neat in theory. But you need their cards, their dice, their prepackaged sets in order to play the darn thing. And to achieve all these interesting concepts, it seems the game is awfully rules-heavy with half a million condition flags. As I understand it, they have something of a feat system which will only exist on these cards. Not in the rules. It's like the character sheets they sell are already filled in. Wonderful. McRolePlaying.

Both the "physical goodies" and the "electronic presence" elements squeeze the idea of a traditional role-playing game into "obsolescence." No longer are games powered by your imagination, they're powered by a computer, or a ton of cards and interlocking pieces.

Don't have one of those? Left behind!

Compare these to Labyrinth Lord or Swords & Wizardry, which both offer unlimited adventure in a single book.

But things go in the other direction as well. The One Page Dungeon is of no use to me. It's a sparse presentation, but to me the difficulty in preparation is not a map or a key, it's the detail. How do things fit together, what's the relationship between setting element A and B? To me, what makes an adventure good is that after you've done your exploration, fought the monsters, and collected the treasure, there was something unique and intriguing about the location. It becomes a character of its own.

And then there's something like this:

In studying the needs of DMs who all have specific campaigns with real histories, characters and plots of their own, it became apparent that the idea of mainstay adventure modules, such as many based upon TSR’s old model of assumed expediency, has shifted greatly with the contraction of that market and an ever present need over the years for specific game material created by each DM.

That from Rob Kuntz, who is now promoting his new Dungeon Sets line. He's also promoting a Dungeon Trappings line. No complaints about these by themselves, as Dungeon Trappings sounds not dissimilar to Green Devil Face, and unkeyed geomorphs have been with us as a product for 30 years. These will look great, as they're being designed by Ramsey Dow, who I've mentioned before as having done the maps for the next few LotFP releases.

My problem is that this sounds like Kuntz is stepping away from creating complete adventures entirely in favor of these fragments. He writes great adventures, and if they're not selling, I think the problem is somewhere other than the fact that people supposedly don't use adventures.

I have a vested interest in all of this. Yes, I am a publisher, but even as just a simple fan and patron of particular publishers' work I was driven nuts about the things I wanted not being available in forms I could buy. I don't want to skip from game to game, I don't want my game to change, I don't want game elements I can't use and play with on a pad of paper, and I don't want an ever-increasing amount of rules and "character options."

I want adventures. Adventures to spice up my game with something different, adventures I can fit into my campaign without rewriting half of it, adventures that make me think of things I never would have thought of on my own.

That's what I want, and that's what I do.

Enough reflection and prognostication and other luxurious uses of leisure time. In four hours, I have a group of people coming over to enjoy outdated and archaic game play. On Wednesday I will do that again. Yesterday I gave a pile of money to Ramsey and Laura, and did layouts so that tomorrow I can give a shitload of money to Valopaino.

The Grinding Gear is coming, you see. Soon. It'll be a cruel and challenging and perhaps rewarding experience for your players. It'll fit nicely between your own adventures in your own campaign. It'll look nice. It'll feel nice. But it'll be nothing but paper (or even less than that if you get the PDF). It won't have audio or video, it won't sing or dance, it won't include minis or custom dice or cards. It'll take a human being applying judgment and effort to make it come to life and be what it's supposed to be. It has one room that I fear will be seen as so goofy as to belong in this thread, but I couldn't help myself. You'll like it (the adventure... maybe not the room). And it'll cost, shipping included, about the same as a single movie ticket and a bucket of popcorn at your local cineplex, or less than a new-release DVD, while taking longer than 90-150 minutes to use.

How's that for blatantly manipulative and rehearsed marketing language?