Bradford C. Walker ([info]bcwalker) wrote,
@ 2008-03-27 19:10:00
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[Gaming] Player Skill & Gear Influence In RPG Commercial Success
I find it interesting that there is significant resistance in both tabletop and electronic gaming when the twin issues of player skill and character equipment influencing a character's performance during gameplay arise in conversations regarding RPGs. I also find that the most popular RPGs, across all media, are ones that either demand high degrees of player skill and character outfitting to maximize the odds of success or outright build their game around it from the ground-up while RPGs that attempt to eliminate or downplay it are--at best--something like cult classics; even amongst the abominations and train wrecks of RPGs, those that embrace it are more success and better-regarded than those that reject it. Regardless of genre, this remains a constant: gear matters, and so does player skill.

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[info]maliszew
2008-03-28 02:11 am UTC (link)
What brought on this discussion?

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[info]bcwalker
2008-03-28 03:28 am UTC (link)
The juxtaposition of a few threads at the official World of Warcraft boards regarding various endgame dungeon and raid instances against their tabletop RPG counterparts at RPG Net talking about their group's campaigns (often to bitch about some underperformer) set me off, but this is a thing that's been burning low and slow for some time now. I've sought that very thing that differentiates tabletop RPGs from electronic ones as well as from tabletop games that aren't RPGs but tread the same ground, and along the way I encountered (again) the claim that it would be better if TRPGs didn't require players to develop any mastery of the game, or that gear ought not matter when playing. Comparing games that attempted to remove player skill and character outfitting as factors for success against those that embrace it showed that the latter group of RPGs are more popular, have larger user bases and enjoy greater commercial success. Genres that allow for embracing these two elements are more popular (etc.) than those that don't.

While I haven't found that specific differentiation versus CRPGs/MMORPGs/Decent yet, aside from that previously-expressed "Life-as-lived in a fantastic other world or time.", I think that these two elements are key in achieving such a thing. The best tabletop RPGs accept that life is unfair, yet it can be mitigated through application of skill and knowledge as well as employment of the right tools at the right time for the right task, and they eschew that whole "PCs are Precious Special Snowflakes" nonsense- such that assumed as normal for PCs in D&D 4.0 according to [info]mearls.

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[info]maliszew
2008-03-28 11:34 am UTC (link)
The "life is unfair" element is one I find very important specifically to differentiating D&D even from other fantasy RPGs, so I'm not sure it's a major element of what makes RPGs different from other types of games. I do agree, though, that it's one of the things that I think makes D&D one of the best RPGs (Call of Cthulhu has this too) and why I look at 4e with nothing but trepidation.

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