Munchkins thrive on increasing personal power and squeezing as much ‘edge’ out of the system as possible. Given that, systems like Champions (HERO) and other third-generation products were much better suited to munchkinism than cut-and-dried second-generation, very deterministic systems like RoleMaster. Your Uber-character in RoleMaster died just as easy from an arrow in the throat as any kobold. I always felt that GURPS, a kinder and gentler HERO system (like all Steve Jackson designs, a simplification of existing systems rather than an original system) was the most prevalent Munchkin game.
At least among rules-laywer type Munchkins. The less analytic kind always preferred Palladium’s offspring RIFTS, near as I can tell, with its built-in godlike powers.
First is that WOTC continues to dominate the D20 world. (Not counting D&D here.) They opened up the system, but with Star Wars and Modern, they also took a lot of the market back.
White Wolf is a close second with their Sword & Sorcery supplements. I’m also guessing that the Warcraft one won’t do nearly as well as their Everquest book did a year before.[/quote]
Having played the demo of the Warcraft book at GenCon, I’m going to agree. The adaptation rules were clearly written by someone from the “more power == more fun” school of thought. I’m willing to grant that the Warcraft setting should be high-energy, but this was like somebody who always wanted to play the blue furry elves in Shadowrun but whose GM would never let him getting their revenge. Broken. The only thing that saved it for us was playing it as a comic relief session, and the exploding guns did help in this regard.
I don’t have inside info on D20 sales for WotC or White Wolf, so I’ll grant you both of these points. I probably should have qualified my comments by stating that they apply to the smaller publishers, which seem to be anybody not these two.
So, the guys running the seminar where I heard this are The Game Mechanics, who are ex-WotC guys (by way of pink slip, purple envelope, or white folder, all amounting to being fired) publishing under Green Ronin, so I think it’s fairly safe to assume their numbers apply. I’m not saying that Green Ronin can’t make a go of it, but a 2000 print run product is going to be of a different quality than a 15,000 print run product. The artwork, paper, covers, layout, printing, etc. swallow a lot more overhead. The small guys are having to adapt to a different business environment than they thought. As a side note the insider message from these guys was that while everyone asks for adventures because they don’t have time to make them up themselves, what they really want is an adventure tailored to the levels and numbers and abilitiesof the party they’re playing in, and that’s too fragmented a market to target effectively or make money off of. I did stop by the direkobold.com booth, however, and they’ve got a good pitch at cracking this customizable adventure nut. I can’t use it immediately, but I plunked down cash for a subscription.
The .pdf world is even unkinder. A good product will sell 100 copies. Stan! has a top ten or #11 product on rpgnow.com (actulally I think it’s #13 D20 Modern Player’s Companion) with a couple to a few hundred sales. .pdfs are coverng cost, and that’s about it. The Game Mechanics are counting on packaging their products for print with Green Ronin to actually make money on it, which they haven’t necessarily done yet. One of the guys was wrapping up a freelance gig for WotC to pay the bills, in part because WotC pays too much to say no to and to not go after. My belief is that Monte Cook is the exception that proves the .pdf market rule.
You know Cheapass grew to be more than a one-man show, and then laid everybody else off because they didn’t continue to make more money, right?
The hobby game industry is a lot more fragile than the computer game industry. There a couple of big companies making some money, and the vast majority of that is CCGs. RPGs are a much smaller business in dollar and probably player terms. There are people working out of their garages while they hold down day jobs for the love of it. And there are smaller companies that sometimes do ok, once ina while hit that blockbuster that puts them in the big leagues, and often are scraping by on the skin of their teeth. The sentiments I heard expressed were that scraping by has become more commonplace, and some companies, for whatever reason, aren’t going to make it.
Here’s the anecdote that really floored me in the end. When they were really revamping D&D and D20, WotC had about 50 something full-time designers on staff. After they moved into more maintenance and Hasbro directed the “restructuring”, there are now 12 full-time RPG designers at WotC, the biggest player in the industry. Everything else is done on a freelance basis. That doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies about the ability of the hobby game market to support its developers. I’m not sure what the number breakdowns are on how many players there are out there, and how many D&D vs. other D20 games are running, but I’m sure it’s less than I want it to be.
And that’s the creepy Darwinian beauty of the D20 plan Dancy envisioned. The designers with original products that stand our, the ones who can make a quality product and sustain a fan base, the ones that make products that support their players and referees are the ones that will survive. But the low cost of entry means that you really have to execute to stand out from the crowd, and the current business environment is starting to thin the unfit from the herd.
And on that note, good luck with your own product. I hope you get it in print and it pays off for you, one way or another.
I haven’t had a chance to read through it extensively yet, but you may want to look at Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed. Look at his site http://www.montecook.com for details.
Munchkins thrive on increasing personal power and squeezing as much ‘edge’ out of the system as possible. Given that, systems like Champions (HERO) and other third-generation products were much better suited to munchkinism than cut-and-dried second-generation, very deterministic systems like RoleMaster. Your Uber-character in RoleMaster died just as easy from an arrow in the throat as any kobold. I always felt that GURPS, a kinder and gentler HERO system (like all Steve Jackson designs, a simplification of existing systems rather than an original system) was the most prevalent Munchkin game.
At least among rules-laywer type Munchkins. The less analytic kind always preferred Palladium’s offspring RIFTS, near as I can tell, with its built-in godlike powers.[/quote]
My apologies. I was thinking of the KoDT strip where they play the game with more dice than can safely be rolled without a forklift and the players feel like they’ve died and gone to heaven. I was less focused on the min/max whoring that is also the trademark of the munchkin.
Nice analysis Rob. I think we’re in agreement here.
Entertainment is a tough business no matter where you try to angle into it. Millions of people are trying to “break in”, and any real success is rapidly commercialized and streamlined for maximum profit. At least hobby gaming has a thinner layer of sleaze then any other industry I’ve ever been involved with…
And on that note, good luck with your own product. I hope you get it in print and it pays off for you, one way or another.
Thanks. So far it’s been more work then anything I’ve done, without any of the acclaim, success, and paychecks that my “professional” projects have brought me. If it’s a hit everyone gets a free beer.
