D&D General D&D "influencers" need to actively acknowledge other games.

[Willie the Duck]

Really? That's the reply you think will engender active and fruitful discussion?

I think you could have avoided a lot of this by titling your thread "Would it be beneficial for D&D 'influencers' to actively acknowledge other games?" or "I wish D&D 'influencers' acknowledged other games more frequently." Framing the discussion in terms of need-tos/shoulds naturally leans the discussion into who gets to tell who what they should or shouldn't do.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Yes if you’ve ever only tried one flavor of ice cream and it’s good enough for you, then yeah sure.

I think that, that is a pretty stupid analogy. TTRPGs require a large investment of time and energy, more than watching a series on streaming or reading a novel.
There are rules to be learned and even to learn how to play. It does not necessarily come naturally to people and perhaps that is a flaw in our society but real none the less. It is enough a barrier to entry that most people still do not do it.
That people learn and stick with one game that does the job and not lean other games in the vast sea of options people have to entertain themselves should not come as a surprise.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

A problem for the fans too I think. If you have one company that is the industry's linchpin then it's health is everyone's problem.

I do not believe that this is as big an issue.

The worst that could happen to D&D would be that Hasbro shutters the game. If that happened in 2014 most of the people that did not go to Pathfinder would have gone to something else. I might have gone to Savage Worlds or looked 13th age or similar games like that. Many 4e fans would have continued playing it but the big difference to the industry would be that D&D would no longer be the pipeline to onboard new fans.
That would most likely be Parthfinder and if not someone else.
This would have a big impact in how popular the hobby is and the opportunity for new players and new authors and designers to get started but those of us with established player would toddle along playing the existing material as long as we were able.
I mean, how much of the published material out there has any one person used? or even read?

 

[Umbran]

When WotC tried the OGL change recently there were so many people whose livlihood was threatened and that's a sign of an unhealthy landscape.

I disagree, and this position fails to allow for how ecologies and interdependent systems operate.

The OGL fiasco threatened to be a metaphorical forest fire in the RPG world, yes. And if it was allowed to grow, many would have gotten burned, yes. But forest fires happen in healthy forests. That many would get burned isn't a sign that the forest was unhealthy, but just that it was very large.

In a more balkanized RPG landscape, filled with smaller games and companies, no one game company could threaten the livelihood of as many creators, true. But then that smaller, balkanized RPG landscape wouldn't support so many livelihoods in the first place!

Broadly:

Balkanized landscapes are resistant to single massive disruptions, but they only support small populations. And they are at risk of attrition - the individual small elements cannot threaten each other, but neither can they offer each other support, and if one dies off, there's not much of a tendency for them to regrow.

Large, interdependent systems support very large populations, and are more resistant to that attrition. They can ignore most small disruptions, but generally have some sort of central vulnerability that can massively disrupt them. But even in that failure, they have a larger ability to regrow. Forests come back from fires in ways that separated copses of trees cannot.

 

[Umbran]

That’s like saying you are well traveled but never left your home city or state

No, it isn't. Because "being well traveled" is not the goal.

Ultimately, the basic purpose of playing RPGs is personal entertainment. For some, that entertainment is best achieved though breadth of experience, "being well-traveled". That's fine, perfectly valid.

But for others, personal entertainment is best achieved in other ways, and if they harm none, that's also fine, perfectly valid.

 

[Umbran]

Really? That's the reply you think will engender active and fruitful discussion?

It may be active, but armchair quarterbacking isn't normally considered "fruitful".

 

[DEFCON 1]

The OGL fiasco threatened to be a metaphorical forest fire in the RPG world, yes. And if it was allowed to grow, many would have gotten burned, yes. But forest fires happen in healthy forests. That many would get burned isn't a sign that the forest was unhealthy, but just that it was very large.

In a more balkanized RPG landscape, filled with smaller games and companies, no one game company could threaten the livelihood of as many creators, true. But then that smaller, balkanized RPG landscape wouldn't support so many livelihoods in the first place!

This is exactly it. The reason so many livelihoods were threatened by the forest fire were because so many people made their livelihoods in this particular forest because it was the largest and healthiest and therefore the best way for their livelihood to also grow large and healthy. They chose to move into this forest (IE use the D&D SRD and the OGL) and thus assume any and all potential risks, seen and unseen about being within it.

Had the forest fire been from a seen risk... say that D&D just became less and less popular over the decade like most fads tend to do... everyone's livelihoods would have dropped off as well, but people would have been more accepting of it and been able to start adjusting their plans. But it was the fact that the fire was unseen and completely unexpected (the OGL being removed altogether) that caused issues for people because they hadn't had time to pack up their campsite and get out of the forest before potentially being burned.

Thankfully the OGL fire fighters came in and were able to reduce things to a controlled burn so that most of the D&D forest is still healthy and still able to be used by other people. But some folks have decided to take the opportunity to go find their own forests to hike in now, and others still maintain an anger towards the forest fire that will probably never get doused.

 

[mamba]

When WotC tried the OGL change recently there were so many people whose livlihood was threatened and that's a sign of an unhealthy landscape.

eh, the alternative is to simply have fewer creators overall, not really for them to be more evenly distributed, because you cannot make a living (and I use that term loosely) when you create stuff for a game .1% are interested in and still have to compete with 10 others doing so as well to meet the ‘not-D&D’ quota…

Demand drives production, not the other way around, so you will have to change the demand side if you want to see a change here

 

[NotAYakk]

All RPG journeys are valid. Even if they start and end at D&D.

I mean, the homotopy group of D&D is Z+Z+ZxZ. No simply connected path can start and end in D&D and visit all of D&D.

You need to go outside of D&D, or project it and form a cone, or something, if you want to visit it all in one path.

 

[overgeeked]

Technically, GinnyDi’s job is to get eyeballs on YouTube ads. Doing that well often requires different things than what would theoretically produce the best-quality version of whatever type of content a YouTuber makes.

Exactly. Now if we could just get people to realize that’s how all businesses work. Their job is not the production of quality stuff, it’s the largest possible quantity of sales. Those two are generally not positively linked. Mostly it’s a negative correlation.