Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition wins Origins Game Fair Awards

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
D&D has always been the elephant in the room. The challenge from 90's WOD was the exception, not the rule.
 
Well, actually you don't know that. The retail sales are still the most significant thing in gaming - far more than PDF sales - and the reach of things like Amazon is not to be underestimated. D&D is undoubtedly the biggest seller, but it has always served as a gatekeeper to other RPGs. Some of these, including Vampire, have become recognosable brands in their own right.

V5 has been turning up in local game stores and selling, from things I have seen - it certainly made the Top5 in retail charts at least, and has sold through it's initial print runs. It is Modiphius best seller -they actually went out of their way to take management of the license when the previous management were dissolved. I wouldn't know if this all amounts to hundreds of thousands of units just yet, but these numbers have been reached by RPGs other than D&D before - again, including Vampire.
The top 5 chart is from hobby stores. I hope you’re right but I am guessing you’re not. If it was selling that well and anywhere near the old Vampire game, we’d hear something like “Vampire 5E is the best selling Vampire” like we do with D&D.

I know that D&D is the 500lbs gorilla in the room. I’m not wanting games to outsell D&D. I think I read that there are like 10 million D&D players. And, I don’t know if that means people playing all editions or just 5E. I just want a couple companies to be able to sell a few hundred thousands of their books. The audience is there. I mean we have gobs of young, hip, twenty somethings, that are all about D&D. Maybe Vampire will do it with the new computer game coming out.

The dark horse is Call of Cthulhu because it is like the old faithful of non D&D gaming that is very popular around the globe, and the starter set might help get some of these D&D folks to try it out.
 
Bro, Fate, PbtA and OSR never sold so well.

I never said they did. I am not an OSR gamer. I don’t really care about the OSR. I like Palladium, BRP, and as a young man GURPS.
 
D&D has always been the elephant in the room. The challenge from 90's WOD was the exception, not the rule.


It just wasn’t Vamprie in the 90’s. It was Rifts, GURPS, Vampire, and some other titles would blip up. I’m going to be the guy that is rooting for D&D to be less successful and Vampire or any other game to be more successful. It’s why I’m really big on trying to run “intro” games at conventions for new folks。 At GaryCon, GameHoleCon, and Nexus, I always run “introduction” to games and I’ve had good luck with 5E folks signing up to try something new. It’s where I learned how important that introduction box set WoTC put out was. I’ve also seen that with my eldest daughter and her friends at school. Target is super important to kids when it comes to D&D discovery. I’d say far more than Twitch but maybe Twitch is more important for the twenty somethings
 
Because network effects are important when:
- You want to find a good selection of informed people to discuss the game in depth with.
- When you want a sense of community and belonging beyond just your playgroup.
- When you want supplemental material (official and unofficial) to help expand your game.
- When you are looking for players.
- When you are trying to pitch the game to potential players.

Are network effects essential in this hobby?
No, but in my personal experience they are very convenient.
Compared to the '90s, network effects are much easier to achieve now, even for smaller games. Back then, getting a game off the ground relied on selling it to the people around me. Currently, I am confident that given a few weeks of effort, I could recruit a decent-sized group to run a game in video chat of any obscure game in my library.

People can cite sales charts all they want. Books sales have always been a poor indicator of the size of gaming. When I was in high school, it was rare for anyone in my gaming circle to buy a game someone else had, and we lent them around freely. When I became an adult, I spend years gaming with people who never owned game books at all.

All I know it that I live in a time when I could hypothetically game every single day with different people if I had no other responsibilities, and that I get a steady supply of new gaming products over a wide spectrum of games coming in every month. I feel you have to really try hard to be a pessimist about gaming these days.
 
My point is that D&D 5E is experiencing a boom. The overall hobby isn't. Vampire 5E isn't selling hundreds of thousands of books. D&D has grown the D&D business.

My expectation is that within the next 2-3 years we will see the D&D boom begin to translate into a wider boom across the RPG sector.

The open question is whether that boom will take the form of seeing a larger number of game lines selling 10's of thousands of copies or if it will take the form of even more indie RPGs that sell hundreds of copies.

The other thing that's going on right now is that the entire industry is trying to figure out how to have sustainable success with an RPG line. The supplement treadmills of the '90s made it possible for companies to create revenue, but the treadmills burned out and the attempts to reboot the treadmills with new editions was always a losing proposition in the long run.

Why not just do more "done-in-one" games? Because RPGs tend to suck in audience and then hold onto them. If I release 6 board games in a year, a decent percentage of my fanbase will buy them and -- importantly! -- play more than one of them. RPGs don't seem to have the same dynamic. You just keep fracturing your audience. That's why the supplement treadmill worked: You continued monetizing the substantial portion of your fanbase who had entered into a long-term, usually monogamous, relationship with your game.

If you could change that perception of RPGs -- that they're a thing you enter into a long-term monogamous relationship with -- then it would be a lot easier for RPGs to duplicate the success the board game sector has been enjoying over the past decade. But that's really not trivial.

For example, I've been working to develop 20 minute demo versions of Atlas' RPGs -- so that stores can demo them the same way that they demo board games. But we're fighting a perception battle: People think of RPGs as being this thing that you need to dedicate 4 hours to. The idea of doing a quick little sample of the game even in a demo capacity doesn't fit into the way RPGs live in people's brains.
 
For example, I've been working to develop 20 minute demo versions of Atlas' RPGs -- so that stores can demo them the same way that they demo board games. But we're fighting a perception battle: People think of RPGs as being this thing that you need to dedicate 4 hours to. The idea of doing a quick little sample of the game even in a demo capacity doesn't fit into the way RPGs live in people's brains.
Not just four hours, add prep time beforehand, and the campaign play that most RPG's are designed with the assumption of. An RPG is a lot of time investment, compared to a board game which you can get through and end in that same four hours, or even less.
 
Indie games are built more around one shots, shorter sessions and campaigns. The OSR also seems to be moving more in that direction with the growing idea of open drop-in tables. Apparently in Japan games that facilitate shorter sessions and campaigns are also popular.

I wonder if the younger generation approaches RPGs with the same long continuous campaign assumptions. There could be a shift over time.
 
There appears to be a huge disconnect between online communities and regular gamers.
You don't say:shock:!


Not just four hours, add prep time beforehand, and the campaign play that most RPG's are designed with the assumption of. An RPG is a lot of time investment, compared to a board game which you can get through and end in that same four hours, or even less.
Prep time? What is that:tongue:?
 
I don't assume long meandering campaigns these days either. Maybe it's because I like horror scenarios, but a handful of sessions to deal with a particular situation is more generally what we end up playing... and that with sessions averaging a few hours at most. I've never been a fan of those legendary sessions where we played for hours and hours till we passed out. Six was pretty much my limit, and that only occasionally.
Not that I'll shy away from a longer sandboxy campaign, IF the setting is interesting and I like the Players. Even if we stick with the same game/setting we might switch it up with different characters doing different stuff.
Of course, that kinda works against the zero-to-hero trope... which I never was all that into... but people sure like their character builds and seeing themselves grow in power, which I'm not sure will feel the same if you try to cram it all into a couple of hours.

Maybe work out something like wargame campaigns, where we have a higher level PBEM discussion going on about the setting, dropping into an actual game with our stable of PCs when we feel something warrants it... like the GM tosses in a hook we all want to follow.
 
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Welp, there goes the last bit of respect I once had for the Origins Awards....:hehe:

On a more serious note, I am cautiously optimistic about the future of RPG's and I think things will get better with D&D 5E doing as well as it's been doing which will eventually trickle into the other parts of the hobby somehow. The real question is what form will that success take?

If Cyberpunk 2077 does well, we could see more interest in Mike Pondsmith's upcoming remake of Cyberpunk 2020 and that could lead to more diversification of the hobby as well.
 
The top 5 chart is from hobby stores. I hope you’re right but I am guessing you’re not. If it was selling that well and anywhere near the old Vampire game, we’d hear something like “Vampire 5E is the best selling Vampire” like we do with D&D.

I know that D&D is the 500lbs gorilla in the room. I’m not wanting games to outsell D&D. I think I read that there are like 10 million D&D players. And, I don’t know if that means people playing all editions or just 5E. I just want a couple companies to be able to sell a few hundred thousands of their books. The audience is there. I mean we have gobs of young, hip, twenty somethings, that are all about D&D. Maybe Vampire will do it with the new computer game coming out.

The dark horse is Call of Cthulhu because it is like the old faithful of non D&D gaming that is very popular around the globe, and the starter set might help get some of these D&D folks to try it out.
There was no declaration about D&D5 being the best selling edition for several years after it's initial release. It's way too soon to say for V5. However, it is doing well by all accounts. Beyond this, it's really one for the statisticians. If you like the game and have a group that you can play with, everything else is just a discussion point. Vampire has been outselling Call of Cthulhu too, in the last quarter, incidentally.
 
Something I didn't see anyone touching:

Where D&D3 was exclusive, D&D5 is inclusive. Where D&D3 trained a horde of teens that only played D&D and nothing else while preaching it's Magic: the Gathering like class-feats-combos as the be-all end-all (oops, forgot the saying, sorry) of RPG, D&D5 encompass a wider gamut of styles and makes it's players open-minded enough to look and try other games as potential sources of good ideas to mine, be it narrative, OSR or something completely different. And I find this awesome.

Well at least this is the pattern I see in my circle of D&D players. I don't have data to confirm it as a universal trend :tongue: . Does it relate somehow to your experiences?
 
Something I didn't see anyone touching:

Where D&D3 was exclusive, D&D5 is inclusive. Where D&D3 trained a horde of teens that only played D&D and nothing else while preaching it's Magic: the Gathering like class-feats-combos as the be-all end-all (oops, forgot the saying, sorry) of RPG, D&D5 encompass a wider gamut of styles and makes it's players open-minded enough to look and try other games as potential sources of good ideas to mine, be it narrative, OSR or something completely different. And I find this awesome.

Well at least this is the pattern I see in my circle of D&D players. I don't have data to confirm it as a universal trend :tongue: . Does it relate somehow to your experiences?
Semi related, but this year the bunch of new students we recruited were a lot more enthusastic about trying new systems.

Nobody was running D&D this year, but we had Pathfinder.

Generally (there were some exceptions to this):

Those who had played before had only played D&D and they strongly wanted to play Pathfinder, although some of the most adventurous ones decided on Symbaroum instead

The same was true of those that had comes across RPGs via Critical Role although to a lesser extent.

There were a handful of lasses who'd come across the concept of roleplaying via Yogscast - specifically a Call of Cthulhu session. They were notably the ones most attracted to lesser known games and unusual settings and they steered clear of high fantasy entirely. (They actually remind me pretty strongly of the kind of women that were attracted to WOD in the early nineties).
 
Something I didn't see anyone touching:

Where D&D3 was exclusive, D&D5 is inclusive. Where D&D3 trained a horde of teens that only played D&D and nothing else while preaching it's Magic: the Gathering like class-feats-combos as the be-all end-all (oops, forgot the saying, sorry) of RPG, D&D5 encompass a wider gamut of styles and makes it's players open-minded enough to look and try other games as potential sources of good ideas to mine, be it narrative, OSR or something completely different. And I find this awesome.

Well at least this is the pattern I see in my circle of D&D players. I don't have data to confirm it as a universal trend :tongue: . Does it relate somehow to your experiences?
Not to say what you describe didn't happen, but my experience was the opposite. I ran 3E with a group of casual and noob players, and while they had fun for a while, they had such system fatigue with character building and long combats that when I proposed playing Savage Worlds as it was quicker and easier, it was one of the easiest game pitches I have ever made. They eagerly gave it a try and never looked back.
 
I like Palladium, BRP, and as a young man GURPS.

Palladium and GURPS are underperforming not because of market forces but rather because of the choices made by their publishers, either financially or creatively.

BRP is experiencing regular releases from both Chaosium and Design Mechanism. Both of which seem to be doing their job as very few in hobby are rushing out to pick up the available content and "fix" problems with either. And the problems that did occur are again the result of the publisher making mistakes not market forces like kickstarter screwups.
 
There were a handful of lasses who'd come across the concept of roleplaying via Yogscast - specifically a Call of Cthulhu session. They were notably the ones most attracted to lesser known games and unusual settings and they steered clear of high fantasy entirely. (They actually remind me pretty strongly of the kind of women that were attracted to WOD in the early nineties).
Color me unsurprised:smile:.

Not to say what you describe didn't happen, but my experience was the opposite. I ran 3E with a group of casual and noob players, and while they had fun for a while, they had such system fatigue with character building and long combats that when I proposed playing Savage Worlds as it was quicker and easier, it was one of the easiest game pitches I have ever made. They eagerly gave it a try and never looked back.
I think the difference is that he's describing players who retained a nice attitude towards the previous system, while you're describing a case of "this sucks mightily, what did you say about an alternative?"
 
Color me unsurprised:smile:.


I think the difference is that he's describing players who retained a nice attitude towards the previous system, while you're describing a case of "this sucks mightily, what did you say about an alternative?"
Well, my players liked 3E in the early going. I didn't actually realize they were as ground down by the increasing crunch as I was until I suggested an alternative.

But yeah, you have a point. The players that latch onto games like 3E are the ones that are heavily invested in their system mastery. If you know every feat and prestige class and how to deploy them for maximum gain, suddenly picking up and changing to a new system can make you feel robbed. The feeling can be even more so if they change is a to a lighter system that doesn't give them the chance to revel in mastering a new complicated system.
 
Something I didn't see anyone touching:

Where D&D3 was exclusive, D&D5 is inclusive. Where D&D3 trained a horde of teens that only played D&D and nothing else while preaching it's Magic: the Gathering like class-feats-combos as the be-all end-all (oops, forgot the saying, sorry) of RPG, D&D5 encompass a wider gamut of styles and makes it's players open-minded enough to look and try other games as potential sources of good ideas to mine, be it narrative, OSR or something completely different. And I find this awesome.

Well at least this is the pattern I see in my circle of D&D players. I don't have data to confirm it as a universal trend :tongue: . Does it relate somehow to your experiences?

How old are you?
 
If anyone is paying attention to ICV2 reports and NPD Bookscan, you can see that non-traditionally popular RPGs are experiencing a big boom. If you know anything about the trad book world, cover-facing placement is everything. Take a look at what's spine forward at your local brick & mortar, and look at what's being placed cover first. Alliance and GTS are showing ever-growing sales around non-D&D properties, and brick & mortar are giving these titles cover-facing placement. Pick up last month's GTS Magazine to understand what I mean.

The fact of the matter is that Gen Z, who is the largest growing demographic of the D&D market, is maturing beyond it. As they have aged/have more funds, they're actively scouting for new RPGs. However, the experience they have with D&D (influencer-driven gaming, lifestyle branding, digital toolsets, event-driven stories, high end luxury gaming items) will make 'hooking them' with other RPGs extraordinarily difficult. Why you ask? Because other RPG companies fall flat in this respect - they can't seem to get it right. The example I always compare to is Amazon shopping: all other online CPG experiences fall flat compared to Amazon, because Amazon offers THE best shopping experience. Gen Z (and some Gen Y) who discovered D&D 5e as their first game (e.g. Amazon) will compare other RPG experiences back to D&D. And if it's not met, they'll be less likely to become customers you'll be able to nurture; they'll be one and done.

If the D&D experience is the best RPG experience, then companies who want to attract Gen Z customers must develop an MVP that models this. They don't even need to compete against D&D; they just need to do it better than other RPG companies whose name doesn't start with Wizards and end with Coast. Whoever can get their first will be the next Paizo. My opinion is that licenses aren't enough any more: they won't win in the long run. Customer-centric experiences do, and it is a truism across every market.

I'm considering a panel at GenCon about this very topic: how to master the RPG ecosystem from a marketing perspective.
 
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Something I didn't see anyone touching:

Where D&D3 was exclusive, D&D5 is inclusive. Where D&D3 trained a horde of teens that only played D&D and nothing else while preaching it's Magic: the Gathering like class-feats-combos as the be-all end-all (oops, forgot the saying, sorry) of RPG, D&D5 encompass a wider gamut of styles and makes it's players open-minded enough to look and try other games as potential sources of good ideas to mine, be it narrative, OSR or something completely different. And I find this awesome.

Well at least this is the pattern I see in my circle of D&D players. I don't have data to confirm it as a universal trend :tongue: . Does it relate somehow to your experiences?

100%. It was a massive rebranding exercise that was handed down from Hasbro to WotC.

Their inclusivity initiative was buoyed by strategic hires and a 360 degree change in tone & voice from previous editions. The brand of D&D was doomed to fail coming out of 4e - particularly if you look at the investment Hasbro put into growing D&D after acquisition.

And this isn't even a consideration of a change in mechanics: D&D remains a combat-heavy game with rules as complex as previous editions (if only more elegant in presentation). Looking passed the edition itself, they turned the D&D ship around and have attracted an incredibly large demographic: Gen Z.

5E wasn't just about a new edition; it was a market-driven decision by Hasbro, and a smart one at that.
 

At the very least, in Fall ICv2 had V5 in the top five list.

Coincidentally, have you ever wondered by we don't see top-selling indie RPG sellers from DTRPG on ICV2's list? Because DTRPG's relationship with Ingram's Lighting Source requires DTRPG to generate unique ISBNs that don't feed into NPD Bookscan (which is the primary source ICV2 uses to evaluate best selling titles).
 
Coincidentally, have you ever wondered by we don't see top-selling indie RPG sellers from DTRPG on ICV2's list? Because DTRPG's relationship with Ingram's Lighting Source requires DTRPG to generate unique ISBNs that don't feed into NPD Bookscan (which is the primary source ICV2 uses to evaluate best selling titles).
I imagine most of them wouldn’t register in terms of sales regardless. Drivethru’s sales Milestones are tiny, tiny numbers, that D&D almost certainly annihilates without blinking.
 
If anyone is paying attention to ICV2 reports and NPD Bookscan, you can see that non-traditionally popular RPGs are experiencing a big boom. If you know anything about the trad book world, cover-facing placement is everything. Take a look at what's spine forward at your local brick & mortar, and look at what's being placed cover first. Alliance and GTS are showing ever-growing sales around non-D&D properties, and brick & mortar are giving these titles cover-facing placement. Pick up last month's GTS Magazine to understand what I mean.

The fact of the matter is that Gen Z, who is the largest growing demographic of the D&D market, is maturing beyond it. As they have aged/have more funds, they're actively scouting for new RPGs. However, the experience they have with D&D (influencer-driven gaming, lifestyle branding, digital toolsets, event-driven stories, high end luxury gaming items) will make 'hooking them' with other RPGs extraordinarily difficult. Why you ask? Because other RPG companies fall flat in this respect - they can't seem to get it right. The example I always compare to is Amazon shopping: all other online CPG experiences fall flat compared to Amazon, because Amazon offers THE best shopping experience. Gen Z (and some Gen Y) who discovered D&D 5e as their first game (e.g. Amazon) will compare other RPG experiences back to D&D. And if it's not met, they'll be less likely to become customers you'll be able to nurture; they'll be one and done.

If the D&D experience is the best RPG experience, then companies who want to attract Gen Z customers must develop an MVP that models this. They don't even need to compete against D&D; they just need to do it better than other RPG companies whose name doesn't start with Wizards and end with Coast. Whoever can get their first will be the next Paizo. My opinion is that licenses aren't enough any more: they won't win in the long run. Customer-centric experiences do, and it is a truism across every market.

I'm considering a panel at GenCon about this very topic: how to master the RPG ecosystem from a marketing perspective.

Everything you say is true in this day and age, but...bleah. It’s not an “RPG Experience” you’re talking about, it’s “Everything except the RPG experience”.

It seems we have two competing forces.

On the one side is the creation of the RPG, which thanks to the increasing advances in technology, put the ability to make professional looking RPGs into the hands of everyone.

On the other side is the creation of the RPG-Lifestyle, a transmedia community based on customers interfacing with the brand across all aspects of their life and making it part of their personal identity. This requires a large amount of money/time.

Only WotC can count on a true grass roots group of social media influencers because they have the name, Dungeons and Dragons. Anyone else is going to have to pay to AstroTurf their media footprint.
 
If anyone is paying attention to ICV2 reports and NPD Bookscan, you can see that non-traditionally popular RPGs are experiencing a big boom. If you know anything about the trad book world, cover-facing placement is everything. Take a look at what's spine forward at your local brick & mortar, and look at what's being placed cover first.
Speaking as a former Borders employee, cover-facing placement can mean a number of things. If there are enough copies in stock that a book can be shelved face-forward while taking up the same or less space than putting it spine-forward, booksellers could put any book face-forward at their whim. You'd also get fans of a book (and the authors, of course) turning it face forward while browsing too.

Then there were books that had "shelf talkers", those little cardboard strips under a book on the shelf that have a blurb about a book. When I started at Borders, those were something staff could make on their own to recommend a book they liked, but they largely stopped that in favor of pre-printed shelf talkers that were sent out by corporate. Shelf talkers meant a book was either overstocked, the published was paying for it to be featured, and there were also books that got shelf talkers simply for being classics. Ender's Game, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and To Kill a Mockingbird perpetually seemed to have mandated shelf talkers.

Then there were the endcaps, the books on the display on the end of the side of the bookcase. Those were almost entirely paid advertising space, and we had to police them throughout the day to make sure they were correct in case a checker for a publisher came by and saw their book wasn't there.

My point here is that if you see a book facing forward in a store, it is hard to make any judgment about its popularity. It may even mean that that the book is overstocked due to not being as popular as originally thought.
 
Speaking as a former Borders employee, cover-facing placement can mean a number of things. If there are enough copies in stock that a book can be shelved face-forward while taking up the same or less space than putting it spine-forward, booksellers could put any book face-forward at their whim. You'd also get fans of a book (and the authors, of course) turning it face forward while browsing too.

Then there were books that had "shelf talkers", those little cardboard strips under a book on the shelf that have a blurb about a book. When I started at Borders, those were something staff could make on their own to recommend a book they liked, but they largely stopped that in favor of pre-printed shelf talkers that were sent out by corporate. Shelf talkers meant a book was either overstocked, the published was paying for it to be featured, and there were also books that got shelf talkers simply for being classics. Ender's Game, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and To Kill a Mockingbird perpetually seemed to have mandated shelf talkers.

Then there were the endcaps, the books on the display on the end of the side of the bookcase. Those were almost entirely paid advertising space, and we had to police them throughout the day to make sure they were correct in case a checker for a publisher came by and saw their book wasn't there.

My point here is that if you see a book facing forward in a store, it is hard to make any judgment about its popularity. It may even mean that that the book is overstocked due to not being as popular as originally thought.

Publishers pay for cover-forward placement via Simon & Schuster. Sure - I have a tendency to turn my own books face forward on trad shelves when I see it, but it's a contractualized, paid requirement with some books and stores. B&N and Books-A-Million comes to mind.
 
Still do not understand why people like quoting icv2.

Good question. It is the standard among the publishing industry, next to NPD Bookscan.

To be more specific, I can look at every RPG that's currently being sold with an ISBN-13 in Bookscan, and tell you distinctly what the sales are to-date. It's how ICV2 derives its data outside of tertiary sources.
 
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As long as RPG products are on certain lists.
Most isn't direct sales.
 
I could actually see Gen Z getting a non D&D RPG that attracts them, much like Gen X and VTM.

It would need to feel like "theirs" and tap into whatever they'd consider the current zeitgeist. If that happens, you're likely to see an opening for other RPGs, much like happened in the early to mid nineties.

Unfortuantely, this is largely a matter of random chance though; it's not something you can force. Despite later revisionism, I'm strongly of the view that VTM's success was a happy accident as opposed to some kind of act of marketing genius on Rein-Hagan's part.
 
How to put this. What much of the above is true but it only true to a point. It depend on one's goal. One of Daniel's goal has been to bootstrap to the point where he is publishing and marketing at the highest tiers in the industry. I realize this sounds a bit clinical but it more than just making something that is fun to play but making sure the logistic are there as well. That an author doesn't run themselves into the ground along the way.

Others like myself have different goals. What vital for me and others at my level is that we can make a profit to continue to do the projects we want to do. The above and the rest of your post while interesting is not germane to what I and other do.

What prized is a nebulous quality called authenticity, often perceived as a clearly stated creative vision, coupled with works that represents the author's best, and finally with a attitude of openess and friendliness. Behind the scene, this involved figure up a business model that is profitable.

My view there are several broad approaches to this. Each with their own requirement in terms of what needs to be done.

There is the path you have taken which if successful ultimate leads to the placement of one's work in all the different venues, book stores, game store, conventions, PDF digital, Print on Demand, direct sales, etc.

There is the approach where one does what they can within the time they have for a hobby. Profit is pursued so that the effort is self-funded.

Another approach it pursue it to where it is your primary source of income. But not quite to the point where you are trying to get one's work everywhere it could possibly be.

Another still is one where you decide to become part of a collective effort. For whatever reason you join a group and together purse different creative projects and release the result. This often a add-on to one of the previously mentioned approaches. In that as a group you could do this in the time you all have for a hobby. Do it as means of income, and finally do it as part of an effort to climb to the top tiers of the industry.

None of these are bad or good, all of them have consequences. As long as people involved are aware of them and accept them then it all good.
 
I find dealing with Gen-Z as straightforward as dealing with any other arbitrary group of people. Play sessions with them, listen to what they have to say, be honest with yourself about their reactions, and if you find something that works with your vision then tweak. Rinse and repeat until you are satisfied with the results.

The problem is that it is labor intensive to do this. You have to go to open game nights at stores, use VTTs, or conventions to get a broad enough spectrum of players to see the process to completion.
 
I find dealing with Gen-Z as straightforward as dealing with any other arbitrary group of people. Play sessions with them, listen to what they have to say, be honest with yourself about their reactions, and if you find something that works with your vision then tweak. Rinse and repeat until you are satisfied with the results.

The problem is that it is labor intensive to do this. You have to go to open game nights at stores, use VTTs, or conventions to get a broad enough spectrum of players to see the process to completion.

The other problem is that when anyone expresses an interest in anything other than exactly what some old schoolers think is ideal play, they get mocked.

Asking Gen-Zers or any other gamers what they want out of a game has to come with actually listening and not treating what they are saying as "entitled" or anything like that.
 
The other problem is that when anyone expresses an interest in anything other than exactly what some old schoolers think is ideal play, they get mocked.

Asking Gen-Zers or any other gamers what they want out of a game has to come with actually listening and not treating what they are saying as "entitled" or anything like that.
As is so often the case, I think that's an Internet thing, rather than something that actually happens at game tables.
 
The other problem is that when anyone expresses an interest in anything other than exactly what some old schoolers think is ideal play, they get mocked.

Asking Gen-Zers or any other gamers what they want out of a game has to come with actually listening and not treating what they are saying as "entitled" or anything like that.
So, with more kiddie gloves than were applied to dealing with Gen Xers:tongue:?
 
The other problem is that when anyone expresses an interest in anything other than exactly what some old schoolers think is ideal play, they get mocked.
It more far more naunced than that. My opinion is that both side of the argument miss the point.

Asking Gen-Zers or any other gamers what they want out of a game has to come with actually listening and not treating what they are saying as "entitled" or anything like that.
If I wasn't clear, you play and listen. Not the same thing as asking what one likes. Playing and watching what is far more informative. I agree with needing to get past one bias over whether they feel they are "entitled" or not.
 
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