>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.
actually, not a bad analogy. problem is, i can't stand coffee. (correction: i've never actually *had* a sip of coffee, because i find the odor so repulsive that i can't imagine getting the stuff close enough to my face to drink it.) D20 is already much like the coffee and softdrinks of the RPG world--and i'll gladly pay $3 for a 12oz bottle of 100%-pure juice rather than get a liter of juice drink for that price, or 2L of soda for a buck. and i'm not the only one, since there are clearly enough people to keep the premium-juice market alive. >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. true. but i question if D20 [1] even *can* be the right tool to get their attention. IME, a significant segment of the populace that does not currently game is sufficiently aware of the experience to have made a semi-informed decision against the hobby. they are correct that, for them, "gaming" as they understand it is not a good choice. what they may be incorrect about is which elements of an RPG are integral to the RPG--in short, they mistakenly believe that the structure of D&D holds true for all RPGs. [1] that is, "D20" as defined by Ryan Dancey's recent article: characters defined by six basic attributes (str,int,wis,dex,con,cha) with scores ranging from 1 to infinity; rolling higher is always better than rolling lower; to see if a character's action is successful, roll a d20, add some modifiers, and compare to a target number. -- woodelf <*> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.home.net/woodelph/ If any religion is right, maybe they all have to be right. Maybe God doesn't care how you say your prayers, just as long as you say them. --Sinclair _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
