The games and the products need to be of quality, fun and affordable. The number of players needs to remain at a level that can support the companies providing these products. Even if growth is marginal.

As an older gamer who started back in the earlhy 80′s, I had a fear that computer games might squash the tabletop industry. I can’t predict the future, but I think the industry is healthy. There is good competition among companies and the players I know are sharing their games with non-gamers.

I agree with the above poster who said that FLGS’s do need to evolve. It’s the face-to-face connection that makes the tabletop games so great. The stores need to become more service based, offering great places to play these games, easy ways to coordinate games, and even organizing local events.

Anyway, we’ll talk more about this in a future podcast. Stop in if you get a chance. http://www.flagonsanddragons.com/ Cheers!

http://tenletter.wordpress.com/2010/07/31/growing-the-hobby-harming-the-hobby/

A response to a South African’s paper’s coverage of our largest annual gaming event.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions so far!

Tony Hoffart, one of the content developers at Nevermet Press, had something to say about growing the hobby on the local level with gaming clubs.

* How would you like to see the hobby grow?

I’d like to see more brick and mortar shops dedicated to tabletop gaming, brick and mortar shops that embrace the fact that while they cannot compete with a guy working out of his garage, offering 30% discounts on books, they can offer so much more – a clean, well-lit, friendly gaming environment, for example. There are very few places like that any more, and I’d like to see the hobby grow in that direction.

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* How can the community or publishers help grow the hobby?

We need more independent publications – and I don’t just mean niche fanzines – out there in people’s hands. More stuff that hearkens back to THE SPACE GAMER and what WHITE DWARF used to be.

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* What are you doing to advance the hobby?

I have plans, but they’re niche at best. A ‘zine, a gameday/con, taking my massive dwarven forge OD&D/AD&D extravaganza on the road (to local hobby shops).

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* What is hindering the growth of the hobby?

Corporate infighting, the idea that THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE! It needs to stop. We should all hang together or we will all surely hang separately.

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* Is technology a key component of growing the hobby?

This is too vague a question. “Technology” is a lot of things. The dice, paper, and pencils themselves are “technology”. If the question means “iPads and DDI mandatory at the table” then GOOD GOD NO. There are things that can be done to streamline and unify; THE DRAGON and THE SPACE GAMER both featured type-in computer programs nearly thirty years ago. There’s room for technology. The key is to not rely on it to the point that you’re racing to the bottom (see “pitfalls” below)

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* Is the hobby fine the way it is?

Probably; or at the very worst it’s not as bad as some would suggest. There’s a danger of having a Cassandra Complex about the whole thing but everything is cyclical. Everything. Books, movies, all hobbies. RPGs are still an order of magnitude bigger than they were in say 1977. It’s easy to forget that when you see the mountain of dross created by the d20 licensing system, and witness the number of game shops closed (in no small part by that very mountain) between 2000 and now.

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* What are some pitfalls in trying to grow the hobby?

Becoming convinced that you must compete with computer games or computer experiences to be successful. That you must ignore the “greying market” and only try to grab the attention of (and I apologize for the get-off-my-lawn seeming term, but there we are) kids to be successful. Remember, D&D was an adult-aimed hobby game. Really, until BASIC D&D (not Holmes’ D&D!) hit, can we even consider that D&D was aimed at anyone but adults, the AVALON HILL game players, the sandbox wargamers…

Trying to convince someone to play a pen and paper RPG versus buying a new video card, STARCRAFT II or wasting a day on TWITTER by trying to make your pen and paper game like, or interface with, those things is a death spiral, in aviation terms. When an inexperienced pilot enters IFR conditions, and begins to heel over, they ignore their instruments and go with what they “feel”. They see the altitude drop, so they pull back on the stick. G-forces push them back in the seat, convincing them that they are going up against gravity rather than being subjected to ever increasing centrifugal forces. They ignore all of their instruments, except the altimeter, which is winding down. They pull harder on the stick, feel more Gee, and the altimeter winds down faster still. They ignore their instruments, and pull harder on the stick until at last they hit the ground or the water.

This is what the hobby must not do. Don’t enter that death spiral of trying to keep altitude by applying pressure on computer games and applications! This hobby came from the table top! Unless the leaders want to just give up and say “We’re only making a computer game called D&D (or EXALTED or ATOMIC HIGHWAY or CASTLES & CRUSADES etc. ad infinitum),” don’t do it at all.

Stay true to what makes the games great: adventure participation, facetime, friendship, imagination.

Abandon those things and you’ve lost the plot, and then the hobby is doomed.

Let’s kill the Worst. Stereotype. Ever.

For everyone else following along, Nevermet Press posted an entry:

Publishers Must Engage Their Tribes or Get Left At The Bus Stop