The Future of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Refplace

That part is good news, hope it continues, though I wonder why the increase?

I have no special knowledge of this, but I'm going to guess that the market is both growing, as well as more products going through Kickstarter and other forms of crowd-funding. The hard part about the market size for this segment of hobby games is sales data, and Kickstarter moves data from "gee I hope 1,000 hobby game stores, or a few companies, make announcements we can parse into market size" to "HEY EVERYONE! LOOK AT MY PROJECT!"

[bert]

If TRPG games grew 22% last year, is there any indication of how much the number of titles grew in the market? That could perhaps give an indication of the challenge publishers are facing today. Even when I visit my local friendly game store, I see a bunch of titles (in swedish!) that must sell in very small numbers. It feels like either you are one of the bug names, or you grab a vanishingly small portion of a very fragmented market.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by bert

If TRPG games grew 22% last year, is there any indication of how much the number of titles grew in the market? That could perhaps give an indication of the challenge publishers are facing today. Even when I visit my local friendly game store, I see a bunch of titles (in swedish!) that must sell in very small numbers. It feels like either you are one of the bug names, or you grab a vanishingly small portion of a very fragmented market.

This is entirely accurate. At any given time, there seem to be dozens to hundreds of RPGs on Kickstarter, most of which are low-funding requirement and low funding achievement (including, regrettably, my most recent one, but not Hall of Judgment, which was my most successful KS to date).

[DarkPumpkin]

Originally Posted by Refplace

That part is good news, hope it continues, though I wonder why the increase?

Anecdotally, D&D5e has been growing strongly the last 2-3 years, which would probably explain most of it.

If the market is $55m, and the average product is $40, that's 1.375m units. If 75% of them are WotC/D&D, that means only 300k units for the rest, scattered over an enormous field of medium and small publishers. Sell a measly 3k units, and you're at 1% of the entire non-Wizards RPG business.

I would be looking for a tenfold increase in overall non-D&D TTRPG sales before anyone noticed in the corporate world or pop culture. Which is around the scale of what has happened in hobby board games over the last decade, but not in RPGs.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I'll take my share of the blame: From 1995 to present (in fact, I really started in late 1994, so call it 24 years), I've worked on precisely one boxed set, and the Dungeon Fantasy RPG was it. I'm positive I made some bad calls on what should go in the box, especially how many books; on how thick box-sized books could get and still fit in the box; on how much content would fit in one box-sized book; and on the amount of work required to do the non-game-design parts, such as layout, art, and print-buying (all of which I've worked on zero times).

I'll stay out of commenting on the internal business (of which I know nothing) and try to keep my comments very general about external business.

From a customer perspective I remain very happy with the DFRPG. The state of actual GURPS rules is at an all time high (that's what 14 years of refinement does).

I hope that there is a very long tail for DFRPG that makes up for all the problems.

[David Johansen]

Whereas I hope for a steady but strong growth climb but to each their own.

No, I don't think it's an unreasonable hope but I will agree it's an unreasonable marketplace.

[SolemnGolem]

Originally Posted by lachimba

his worry for the D&D type RPG (of which DFRPG) is close enough was that games like Gloomhaven gave the same feel or effect of them easier and potentially better. (He went on to advocate for different types of RPGs/games)

For what it's worth, I own Gloomhaven and cracked it out with my circle of friends. We spent Xmas day playing it and getting familiar with the rules.

My circle of friends, myself included, more or less summarized the experience as "fun, but we may as well just do a tabletop RPG instead".

I'm looting Gloomhaven for the maps, minis, and lore etc. for my GURPS sessions. The actual game, with its maddening mechanic about exhaustion, will likely not get much play again.

[GM Joe]

Originally Posted by SolemnGolem

My circle of friends, myself included, more or less summarized the experience as "fun, but we may as well just do a tabletop RPG instead".

That was our impression of those sorts of games as well. The marginal additional effort to learn and run a traditional RPG like DFRPG vs. the RPG-like boardgames is far outweighed by the freedom traditional RPGs offer, at least as far as my group is concerned.

It's a shame DFRPG didn't achieve the retail penetration of the RPG-like boardgames.

But I'm remaining hopeful for the future...

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by GM Joe

That was our impression of those sorts of games as well. The marginal additional effort to learn and run a traditional RPG like DFRPG vs. the RPG-like boardgames is far outweighed by the freedom traditional RPGs offer, at least as far as my group is concerned.

For my boardgame group that'll probably be a selling point: None of that "acting" nonsense.


Though I'm hoping Gloomhaven becomes the gateway drug into rpgs for them since my roleplaying group broke up a while ago.

[GM Joe]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

For my boardgame group that'll probably be a selling point: None of that "acting" nonsense.

Though I'm hoping Gloomhaven becomes the gateway drug into rpgs for them since my roleplaying group broke up a while ago.

I hope it works out for you!