Where Did You Go, Tabletop Joe?

It’s no big news that tabletop games are at or near the lowest point they can hit. This actually creates the illusion of a recovery because once something bottoms out to long tail activity it’s not going to get much worse. Lots of fans talk about how the industry can die in a fire for all they care and they’ll keep gaming. Later on, some of these fans often go on to confess they don’t game any more, or pretty much pick up whatever they can get online or at conventions. And that’s the hard core – folks who participate in online communities and some kind of definable “scene” beyond an immediate circle of friends. Look beyond them, and tabletop RPGs turn into the things people used to do before WoW and/or graduation.

So really, “Look at my anecdotes! I played D&D yesterday!” is just a stupid response. Stop using it.

You Maniacs! You Blew it Up!

What’s really going on? That’s a hard one to crack. Some of the most popular narratives about what happened to tabletop RPGs are designed to sell you something. One obvious falsehood is that tabletop games are missing critical design characteristics. You can tell this isn’t true because adherents have failed to produce a breakout. Most of the people that get a “story game” played D&D yesterday and will play it tomorrow.

Next you’ve got the argument that some other hobby stole the tabletop’s thunder. I’ll give this one partial credit. I’ve heard and read testimony about what Magic did from folks who would know and were not trying to sell me anything. MMORPGs are huge time sinks too – but before WoW we were wincing at the supposed threat of competition from Neverwinter Nights. I think these hobbies may have hurt certain styles of tabletop RPG gaming (does anyone generate solo dungeon adventures by hand any more?) but the irony is we have a great consciousness of these because so many people do them in addition to playing a tabletop RPG.

But what if it’s all your fault? Let’s make a few accusations, just for the sake of discussion.

The core influences on RPG production (fans, creators) are losing touch with contemporary culture.

The fans, designers, pros and semipros in and around RPG communities are typically in their 30s to 40s. Many have technical or low level service backgrounds with no academic or professional connection to what people 10+ years younger than them are interested in. (Yes, being liberal arts blind really is a problem. Lacking culture-focused critical thinking skills also make lots of gamers patsies for the next dubious promo scheme or press release, but that’s another essay.) A decline is good for many of these guys, since it provides breathing room to perfect nostalgic approaches to gaming instead of having to catch up with something more recent.

The core fandom demographic crosses over with the social media power user demographic, providing unprecedented influence on creative decisions.

Social media protip: Despite all the jokes about kids on Facebook, the most avid adopters of online conversation tools have been older, in the same age range as core RPG fandom, in fact. When a developer wants to know about what’s the kids think is cool in the tabletop RPG world, she actually reads what somebody who experienced THAC0 as an innovation thinks is cool. This is where story gamers think they get off the hook, but the desire to wring respectability from high school English story structures is an Old Person thing too. Sorry. You suck too.

I’m not just talking about recent social media either; current social media roots in older interactive tools. Gamers have been dragging the hobby away from relevance through them for a while.

The resulting decisions have been bad ones that drive away contemporary relevance in favour of dogmatic, disconnected cliques.

The OSR, “indie” scene, D&D players and concept/build addicts all share a desire to codify permitted practices, books and things. This is natural (if annoying), but when it’s mixed with a disconnection with what’s happening in the rest of the world on all but the most superficial level, we get games nobody outside the scene faithful care about.

Knowing what’s hot on TV isn’t an example of staying relevant. Knowing that the literary novel form has focused on stylistic and character-centered issues since the postwar era, and that mechanistic plotting is widely derided, is. This doesn’t require an English degree. It means you have to read literary fiction that’s less than 50 years old, and think of it with a modicum of intelligence.

People who just want you to know how much sparkly vampires suck, repeatedly, and use the words “Gygaxian” to describe pulp with extra goalpost shifting, or “Narrativism” to try and jazz up inane Tinkertoy story structures are really boring. Game companies should start ignoring them.

No, video game envy doesn’t count.

“But look,” you may say, “What about all the stuff out there on lessons from video games? Video games are hella modern!” That’s true, but in my opinion a lot of the analysis . . . isn’t – at least for the purposes of the tabletop hobby. I know it’s cool beans to say you’re into “interactive storytelling” or just “games” and not some hole in the wall hobby, but that hobby has its own needs and strengths, and just pasting over an insight won’t cut it. Cross-media insights are genuinely valuable when we reflect on how they apply to the main medium under discussion.

Okay, they sort of count, but it’s an easy out for idiots, too, so I’m going to pretend they don’t.

Is it Time to Fire the Fans?

That’s the tough question. I’ve been in fan-firing situations before. Fans hate the idea. They scream “The customer’s always right!” but it’s really, “Sometimes the customer’s right,” with “right” understood in the dating/friendship sense, not the customer relations sense.

A couple of years back, I had a client who wanted early adopters from roleplaying communities. We got the word our, attracted participants and things moved along. After a few months, the client wanted them gone. He didn’t want them wrecking his venture by being unfriendly and unwilling to participate in good faith, and he was willing to lose their business to look for growth elsewhere.

(Yes, the above makes tabletop RPG fans look bad. Yes, it actually happened. No, I can’t tell you the project. I suspect that this problem has happened elsewhere.)

Similarly, if there’s room for growth in one group, but to please them you have to piss off the shrinking group with the entitlement issues, you have these choices:

1. Please the old fans and ask them to perform outreach to new fans in exchange for cookies and ego stroking.
2. Gradually alter the game to get new fans and migrate old fans (Helooooo new edition! Metaplot!)
3. Hit the new fans hard; invite the old ones to come along for the ride, but don’t hold up the bus for them, so to speak.

Gamer conservatism has poisoned #2 to the point where it’s basically firing the fans anyway. #2 is difficult when the fans have dropped to the point of dedicated cloisters, as they pretty much have. #3 is the Step into My Office! moment.

How can the current, counterproductive fan base avoid being sacked? Good question. What do you think?