levelonewonk

[levelonewonk]

Another Weekend, another update! DrivethruRPG best sellers, Mothership Month, a System Split between Death in Space and Mothership, and the dramatic potential of roleplaying games!

[levelonewonk]

"There are few direct network effects or switching costs involved with the act of playing a game: You find a group of your friends who are willing to play (and maybe learn) the game, then you play it. If you want to play something else, you put it down. For better or worse, though, roleplaying games are a hobby which involves multiple points of interaction and modes of social signaling. And while the hobby may not have switching costs, it does have barriers to entry. These are both real barriers, like finding a group of people you play well with, scheduling multiple game sessions, and spending a fair amount of time prepping campaigns and characters, as well as imaginary ones, like the amount of effort it takes to learn the next new system, and the risk of playing the ‘wrong game’. It’s important to acknowledge perceived barriers to entry because that’s where network effects within the hobby begin to affect your behavior; specifically, indirect network effects are quietly encouraging you to play D&D." - @levelonewonk

[levelonewonk]

"Zombie World is both flexible and fast, and from my experience playing I can say it handily takes the zombie horror crown away from incumbents like All Flesh Must Be Eaten. Even if the physical copy is required, Zombie World provides both smart game design and an intense game experience that will make many horror fans very happy." - @levelonewonk

[levelonewonk]

"Zombie World is both flexible and fast, and from my experience playing I can say it handily takes the zombie horror crown away from incumbents like All Flesh Must Be Eaten. Even if the physical copy is required, Zombie World provides both smart game design and an intense game experience that will make many horror fans very happy." - @levelonewonk

[levelonewonk]

"Where people want to go in their escapes will always be different, but gaming has a way of inspiring the imagination." - @LevelOneWonk

[levelonewonk]

"Sweden is the home of Free League and Denmark is the origin country of LARP camp, so of course I couldn’t take a trip like this one without visiting some gaming stores. What I experienced was quite a bit different than the norm in the US…and to be honest, better in a lot of ways. Given that I had just gone over the landscape of RPG retail maybe a month before, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to bring the Guide for the Perplexed series to Scandinavia for a little bonus." - @levelonewonk

[levelonewonk]

"October continues to be a good month! We’ve got tactics, we’ve got tarot, we’ve got an ill-considered podcast adaptation, we even have a fantasy heartbreaker that just might break my heart with what it’s promising. It’s a good time to be a Kickstarter aficionado and, with all of these interesting games poking their heads out after the collective hangover of the D&D 2024 release, it may even be a good time to be a gamer as well." - @levelonewonk

[levelonewonk]

Weekend Update: 9/21/2024

Welcome to the Cannibal Halfling Weekend Update! Start your weekend with a chunk of RPG news from the past week. We have the week’s top sellers, industry news stories, something from the archives, and discussions from elsewhere online. Continue reading Weekend Update: 9/21/2024

[levelonewonk]

"Welcome to the second installment of Guide for the Perplexed! Last time I introduced three of the largest RPGs that aren’t D&D, games with long enough histories and big enough communities that they’re easy to get into and find players. Now I’m going to talk about a different angle for finding games and finding players: The places you go to shop for games.

I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a lot easier to find games online; between DriveThruRPG and itch.io virtually every game imaginable is one click away (and the two publishers that don’t use these sites are huge and have their own). That said, the ‘friendly local gaming store’ can not only give you access to games, but also advice and even networking. Admittedly the reputation of the game store has been pretty negative for a lot of the hobby’s history; game stores were historically seen as unfriendly to women and minorities and the progenitor of many horror stories as a result. Luckily this is changing, and as even D&D itself is aiming to become more welcoming and accessible, few stores are going to stay in business without putting some effort into the ‘friendly’ part of the moniker.

There are other places to buy games besides a dedicated hobby store, namely bookstores. I’m lucky enough to have an independent used bookstore near me that has a few used RPGs pass through their shelves, and I’ll make some purchases there. Most bookstores that carry RPGs, though, are going to be large ones, the remaining chains like Barnes and Noble. Shopping for RPGs at a mass-market bookstore isn’t going to be the best experience, but if it’s all that’s near you, it still presents an opportunity to find a couple well-financed games that, thanks to either popularity or a popular license, you should be able to find nerds who want to play." - @levelonewonk

[levelonewonk]

"Welcome to the Crowdfunding Carnival for September! September is a classically thin month, sitting in the shadow of GenCon. It was so thin five years ago that I actually skipped wonking about it to write an editorial. This year, though, is a bit better. Seven campaigns is still thin, yes, but these are all good ones. Also, interestingly, this may mark one of the first months where the majority of campaigns aren’t from Kickstarter! That’s right, four out of seven campaigns are from Backerkit this month. Backerkit was the best contender for second place pretty much since they started doing crowdfunding, but this may indicate a sea change.

Sea change or not, we’ve got some solid games this month. Solo games, Year Zero, and a generic Onyx Path game are all waiting for you to peruse and perhaps pledge. Without further ado, let’s check out some games." - @levelonewonk

[levelonewonk]

"Welcome to the Crowdfunding Carnival for September! September is a classically thin month, sitting in the shadow of GenCon. It was so thin five years ago that I actually skipped wonking about it to write an editorial. This year, though, is a bit better. Seven campaigns is still thin, yes, but these are all good ones. Also, interestingly, this may mark one of the first months where the majority of campaigns aren’t from Kickstarter! That’s right, four out of seven campaigns are from Backerkit this month. Backerkit was the best contender for second place pretty much since they started doing crowdfunding, but this may indicate a sea change.

Sea change or not, we’ve got some solid games this month. Solo games, Year Zero, and a generic Onyx Path game are all waiting for you to peruse and perhaps pledge. Without further ado, let’s check out some games." - @levelonewonk

[levelonewonk]

"Welcome to the Crowdfunding Carnival for September! September is a classically thin month, sitting in the shadow of GenCon. It was so thin five years ago that I actually skipped wonking about it to write an editorial. This year, though, is a bit better. Seven campaigns is still thin, yes, but these are all good ones. Also, interestingly, this may mark one of the first months where the majority of campaigns aren’t from Kickstarter! That’s right, four out of seven campaigns are from Backerkit this month. Backerkit was the best contender for second place pretty much since they started doing crowdfunding, but this may indicate a sea change.

Sea change or not, we’ve got some solid games this month. Solo games, Year Zero, and a generic Onyx Path game are all waiting for you to peruse and perhaps pledge. Without further ado, let’s check out some games." - @levelonewonk

[levelonewonk]

"

Imagine for a moment that you’re a recent entrant into the tabletop RPG hobby. In all likelihood you entered via D&D; the longest lived brand in the hobby almost certainly holds a majority share of hobby sales and definitely of hobby mindshare. If you wanted to stay in the realm of D&D, that’s easy; the game has the largest community by far, the volume of official supplements is solid, and the third party support is massive. Even if you tire of D&D 5e itself, there are a number of directly comparable games to play; you can go Pathfinder if you want something more granular and more complex, or go to the OSR for something more imagination-and table-driven. But let’s say you want something different. How do you figure out what’s going to appeal to you?

Guide for the Perplexed is going to be a series of articles looking at finding new games outside of D&D. The key angle here is accessibility: These games will be easy to find and it will be easy to find other players. To that end, I’ll be looking at three different approaches to finding new games: Games which have the outright largest player bases, games which are easy to find at your local game store, and games with active communities online. As the series progresses the discussion will not only be about the games, but also about the channels that the games come through. Gaming at your local gaming store isn’t just about what books you can find on the shelf, it’s about the events being offered. The same goes for local gaming cafes or even your local library. Similarly, ‘online community’ can mean a lot of different things, but it’s important to see which ones are welcoming and support gameplay, including subreddits, forums, and living communities.

For today, though, we’re just shooting across the bow of the biggest games outside of the D&D ecosystem here in 2024." - @levelonewonk

[levelonewonk]

"Invention is a word that most people understand. Inventing is the process of creating something new, and thanks to the patent office we even have broadly accepted standards for what constitutes an invention (novel, unique, non-obvious). Innovation is a bit more difficult to put a finger on, in no small part due to its continual dilution as a popular buzzword. Broadly, though, innovation is the combination of invention and value creation, the ability to make new things useful. I’ve actually talked about the invention/innovation dichotomy before, when I opined on how Most Games Don’t Matter. Indeed, a lot of the gap between invention and innovation in the tabletop RPG world is the gap between the hundreds if not thousands of games that come to market and those which actually make a market impact. That said, I don’t need to retread the grounds of how oversaturated the RPG market is. I want to discuss the innovation that does occur and what it actually means to bring that innovation to market." - @levelonewonk

[levelonewonk]

The GenCon crowdfunding slump has been obliterated by a new licensed behemoth that will probably outstrip Avatar, more indie mecha games trying to take all my money, and a ton of stuff in between! @levelonewonk hit the search so you don't have to!

[levelonewonk]

"The difference between an RPG fleet and an RPG collection is that the fleet is a specific subset of games that you keep going back to again and again." - @LevelOneWonk

[levelonewonk]

"Nostalgia plays aren’t limited to TV, and of course in the TTRPG world we see them all over. There’s arguably two angles to nostalgia within TTRPGs: The RPG as nostalgia tendril, where the game is simply the marketing device used to exploit the audience’s existing love for Star Wars, or Marvel, or My Little Pony. These games can be good or bad, but they’re built around their existing property and serve that property (and its licensors) first. There’s also nostalgia for the TTRPG itself. While a cynic may call the OSR solely a nostalgia play, there’s much more obvious examples at play here; Goodman Games is clearing half a million dollars in crowdfunding for what is effectively a reprint of a module from 1979. They’re making a t-shirt as part of this campaign, so it’s definitely at least a little bit for the money. That said, I don’t think the Caverns of Thracia reprint is entirely indefensible. Goodman is doing a service by taking a great old module and keeping it available, including updating it for new rulesets; it’s still arguable whether that’s worth half a million dollars and t-shirt sales. And that’s the primary issue with nostalgia: Where do we draw the line between archiving and reviewing the past, and wallowing in it?" - @levelonewonk