Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

David, I'm sorry; I did the 'quote thing' wrong. here's my response to you:

Agreed. My problem has always been that I'm a 'populist', with the exact same attitude that you have. And, as I demonstrated, it does sell the merchandise; I seem to be the only person who ever made decent sales with Tekumel stuff.

Everybody in these factions seems to think that there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and a ton of money for the one who can get the IP under lock and key. Getting my brain under their control is seen as a vital part of this; I seem to simply know too much for my own good.

Money changes everything. Sadly properties like Tekumel and Traveller will never achieve that status. They have obsessive fan bases but they don't have the ability to move beyond their niche and there just isn't that much money in that niche. I've always wished Traveller could have reached the heights Warhammer 40000 did. It's much more to my tastes and I believe a more grounded Star Wars with a grittier edge (don't get me started on T5 making psionics into the force) would do well in other media like comics and movies. But even at its peak the roleplaying industry isn't making people rich. I think it's because people don't have the frame of reference to understand how little money a million dollars really is. They don't see the costs when they think of the sales figures. And if the people in control won't let anyone else can make a buck on the property creative people are more likely to follow their own vision than have their work owned and controlled by people who don't have their best interests at heart.

It's the sad lesson of Jack Kirby's legacy. You can almost single handedly create multimillion dollar properties for people and they'll never love you enough to give you a fair cut.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Money changes everything. Sadly properties like Tekumel and Traveller will never achieve that status. They have obsessive fan bases but they don't have the ability to move beyond their niche and there just isn't that much money in that niche. I've always wished Traveller could have reached the heights Warhammer 40000 did. It's much more to my tastes and I believe a more grounded Star Wars with a grittier edge (don't get me started on T5 making psionics into the force) would do well in other media like comics and movies. But even at its peak the roleplaying industry isn't making people rich. I think it's because people don't have the frame of reference to understand how little money a million dollars really is. They don't see the costs when they think of the sales figures. And if the people in control won't let anyone else can make a buck on the property creative people are more likely to follow their own vision than have their work owned and controlled by people who don't have their best interests at heart.

It's the sad lesson of Jack Kirby's legacy. You can almost single handedly create multimillion dollar properties for people and they'll never love you enough to give you a fair cut.

I'd say that this is a fair summary of the situation. The game industry is tiny - even back when we were stumping the hustings, we kept our 'day jobs' to pay the bills. Even GW, the titan of the game hobby, is a very small player in the toy industry Their entire sales volume for a year is about what a company like Hasbro would take in for one single product. It's an entirely different economy. Look at the number of miniatures Kickstarters that have failed, as well-intentioned people drastically underestimate the costs of production and distribution of their products.

The idea that a particular IP is worth tons and tons of money in today's game industry is - at best - wishful thinking. The money just isn't there, from what I've seen over the years. Wanting it to be so isn't going to cut the mustard.

I really think there's room for the industry to grow these days. I've gotten at least a dozen kids into roleplaying and wargaming in my store, but what it's taken has been a lot of patience and hard work and patience. Mmporgs are a terrible training ground for even D&D. Right now one of those kids is DMing and I'm playing, I always feel that good players are the greater need these days. Everyone has a story to tell and everyone wants to be the star, but what's needed is a passing of the techniques required to survive outside a padded cell, and not just in games but in life.

Planning, caution, resource management, and problem solving skills are hardly in evidence among these refuges from the land of easy solutions spooned out like pabulum from flickering screens.

And don't forget, in a game like WoW when a new dungeon or raid comes out, the solution is posted online within a few days. They do not even pretend to teach figuring out what to do, they are all about following directions.

I know I've told the story of Gary in his last years commenting about how young players at conventions would roll characters, charge headfirst into Greyhawk castle, get wiped out by the kobolds because they knew nothing about positioning or flanks or even looking behind you, and then roll up new characters and to it all over again.

He never could figure out what was going on, but to anybody who's heard the "Tonight our guild made its fifth attempt to blah blah blah," it makes perfect sense.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

The idea that a particular IP is worth tons and tons of money in today's game industry is - at best - wishful thinking. The money just isn't there, from what I've seen over the years. Wanting it to be so isn't going to cut the mustard.

People who think that they are going to get piles of money out of an RPG IP in 2015 are just plain delusional. Companies are cagey about sales numbers but people who are in a position to know are talking about print copy sales in the hundreds and pdf sales in the tens with a book that sells in the thousands of copies being considered quite successful. WotC has drastically reduced the resources going into to D&D because even though it's one of the top two best selling RPGs it makes a pittance compared to what they make on Magic.

If they think they will make tons and tons of money if they can just get control of that IP, they are kidding themselves.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

And the various factions are still at it; too. I was taken out for breakfast last Sunday, my 59th birthday, by one of them as they wanted to 'kiss and make up' with me for all their legal threats - yes these are the same folks who cost me $800 in legal fees to get rid of them. I went, mostly because several of them had been friends for some thirty years.

Five hours later - but really good steak and eggs - I had gotten nothing from them besides all sorts of pressure to let them have my work and my book. No apologies, no excuses, no nothing; not even any remorse for the RICO conviction one of them had managed to rack up. (They have a fascinating legal history; the Internet is your friend. And my Missus is the Queen of the Internet.) They gave me the same old same old that they had given me the last time around, and I simply smiled sweetly and ate my breakfast. (Eggs over hard, please.) And with that, I got up, and several thirty-plus year friendships ended in a wet, rainy parking lot in South Minneapolis.

So it goes.

Oh, my, they HAVE been busy!

You know, besides the sheer shitheadedness of this all, the other thing that amazes me is that the myth of "big money in the RPG world" still persists. D&D hit its zenith in 1982 when it was featured in "E.T. the Extraterrestrial." It's been downhill ever since. Even though it's a good size niche hobby it's nowhere near what it was at its height. The fad is OVER; the bubble has burst, the craze has passed, the Third Age has ended.

Reminds me of a train show I visited in Milwaukee a few years back. I was at the Soundtraxx booth (computer chips to put inside engines that make sound) and some bozo was bitching out one of the VPs for how high prices were. After bozo left she just slumped, and I said "If it makes you feel any better, some of us really do understand how thin your margins really are." She said "If I wanted to make money I'd still be in investment banking, not model trains."

How do you make a million dollars with an RPG company? Start with two million.

I remember His Skarka-ness bitching and moaning about how he deserved to make a living as a full time RPG writer and couldn't. That was back when the market was larger and healthier than it is now. White Wolf has gone from selling 30,000+ copies of a WoD core book to relying on crowdfunding to get them out at all. The only real money to be made is in tie-in novels that mostly sell to people who don't play the game. Even then only the Forgotten Realms tie-in novels made any money and that's because people like the authors that write them rather than caring about the Forgotten Realms as an RPG setting.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I really think there's room for the industry to grow these days. I've gotten at least a dozen kids into roleplaying and wargaming in my store, but what it's taken has been a lot of patience and hard work and patience. Mmporgs are a terrible training ground for even D&D. Right now one of those kids is DMing and I'm playing, I always feel that good players are the greater need these days. Everyone has a story to tell and everyone wants to be the star, but what's needed is a passing of the techniques required to survive outside a padded cell, and not just in games but in life.

Planning, caution, resource management, and problem solving skills are hardly in evidence among these refuges from the land of easy solutions spooned out like pabulum from flickering screens.

Agreed. What you are doing in your store is a pretty big portion of what keep this hobby going. I'm delighted to say that after drifting away from this over the past few years, here in town The Source is coming back to this approach. Which is why I buy stuff from them, a half hour drive away, then from the game store that's five minutes away and where the store staff is way too busy looking at their laptops behind the counter...

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

And don't forget, in a game like WoW when a new dungeon or raid comes out, the solution is posted online within a few days. They do not even pretend to teach figuring out what to do, they are all about following directions.

I know I've told the story of Gary in his last years commenting about how young players at conventions would roll characters, charge headfirst into Greyhawk castle, get wiped out by the kobolds because they knew nothing about positioning or flanks or even looking behind you, and then roll up new characters and to it all over again.

He never could figure out what was going on, but to anybody who's heard the "Tonight our guild made its fifth attempt to blah blah blah," it makes perfect sense.

Agreed.

The famous convention story:
Player: "What edition of D & D will we be playing in this session?"
GM: "Hello, I'm Dave Arneson! Nice to meet you!"

And it works both ways, too; had a guest GM in for a game session in the game room a while back, and it was grim. He'd written murder mystery scenario for Tekumel, which was actually pretty good. He' a huge fan of 4.0, and he'd written the adventure in the form of a series of descriptive pages. He'd read the page, and the players would react to what they'd been read. The catch was that unless and until the players gave the only correct response, the game could not proceed to the next page of the scenario. It was like watching somebody read through a computer program; one of the players actually fell asleep at the table.

I had to intervene a couple of times, otherwise we'd still be in the basement yet. Unnerving, it was.

Originally Posted by yosemitemike

People who think that they are going to get piles of money out of an RPG IP in 2015 are just plain delusional. Companies are cagey about sales numbers but people who are in a position to know are talking about print copy sales in the hundreds and pdf sales in the tens with a book that sells in the thousands of copies being considered quite successful. WotC has drastically reduced the resources going into to D&D because even though it's one of the top two best selling RPGs it makes a pittance compared to what they make on Magic.

If they think they will make tons and tons of money if they can just get control of that IP, they are kidding themselves.

Could not agree more; there are a lot of very pragmatic realists in the business, who are fully aware of what is happening - and since they love the game, they create for the love of the thing.

And there are some people who are convinced, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that there are millions of dollars out there just waiting to be plucked by them. I've been having to deal with too many of the latter; I wish I'd been able to deal with more of the former.