In a message dated 11/08/2001 3:47:28 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

> The problem with intimately knowing the people who play the game is that > you have 
>to carve a niche at some point then. IronClaw is a great
> example of this, and I mean that in a good regard. They intimately know > what their 
>target wants. They are serving that specific audience rather > nicely. They will 
>never see the level of success that a more generic, 
> d20 style game sees however because they took the time to get to know 
> their players.

The assumption I am thinking from is that D&D is not at all generic.  It is very hard 
to market "D&D" to parents and the elderly, for example.  Now, coffee is generic.  It 
is cool to everyone from the hip teens hanging at the local open mic to the sweet old 
ladies who meet every other tuesday for breakfast.    

So, maybe d20 can be like coffee.  D20 is generic and could eventually become 
synonymous with "roleplaying". If RPG companies don't have to worry about the rules to 
the degree they were in the past, then hopefully they will have time to just sit back 
and focus on finding more customers.  A vast majority of people in this world are 
ignored as potential RPG customers.  The only way to reach them, however, is to 
intimately know them.  So, I guess we are both right, but I see that this new niche 
could potentially be larger than the current RPG market, not a smaller niche of a 
small niche of the general public.

Maggie

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