What do you want for the 35-year anniversary?

[scc]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

Well, that and basically being a "Isekai", since the Banestorms basically just drop off people from across the multiverse.

Isekai is only popular in Japan/Anime circles and even there it seems to be something of a fad that's dying out, and that still doesn't help the problem of not having a story to develop

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

I want an improved GCA (one that makes designing your own settings and templates for the program easier and actually documented) and to combine it with support for at least one of the popular virtual tabletops.

I think you could do a BANESTORM tv series if you set it in Tredroy and made it clear that to the protagonists 'Crusader' is a synonym for 'dangerous idiot'.

More likely to happen, but still has problems.

Originally Posted by Kromm

That is really what it comes down to.

There might have been a time when RPGs were a "hobby industry" that people who were mostly not professional writers did as an adjunct to their days jobs (a bit like the situation many freelance writers are in today). When nobody much had a full-time job in RPGs. When the products looked a little like the typewritten leaflets of political radicals at the university.

I'd argue that this is still somewhat true outside of big publishers, at least the hobby industry bit.

Originally Posted by Kromm

On the customer side, gamers now expect the products to look polished. There are big players who can afford seriously glossy production values, support in the form of things like miniatures and computer applications, and involvement in video games and even movies. They set a very high standard. On some level, every gamer wants their favorite game to compete with that.

This is fine, as long as the polish adds something to the game. I mean artwork is nice, but we don't need expensive art every 4 pages or so.

Originally Posted by Kromm

There's a bit of a disconnect between the two: A lot of longtime gamers seem to buy into the second but not the first. That is, they want everything to be polished, they don't want to wait for the products they desire, and they are constantly disappointed when various licenses or new technologies don't materialize . . . but they don't see that getting what they want requires paying a lot of full-time salaries, which means either accepting regular and sometimes significant price increases, or buying higher volumes at more modest prices.

Wage stagnation is something you grouse about later on

Originally Posted by Kromm

I think in some ways this is a result of those who have the most money being the elders of the gaming hobby, whose vision of how stuff works froze in time back in the 1970s, 80s, or perhaps 90s.

Their wages most certainly have stuck in this time period, there's also another factor, but I'd be tempting a warning, at least, if I brought it up.