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Comics long Roleplaying

Hobbies for old people

I was thinking recently how roleplaying is going through the same sort of process that the comics field has gone through, namely, it’s catering more and more to an aging audience. Overall this is a good thing. If you are in that aging audience. For the hobby, though…


Let me elaborate.

You can tell your audience is growing older when instead of asking “Who’d win in a fight, the Hulk or the Thing?” they ask “Will Peter Parker ever marry Mary Jane?” Or, when instead of asking “which spell is the coolest?” they ask “how does the economy work, and where can we get a better deal on a 10′ pole?” (answer: eBay) When your fan base is obsessed about continuity and metaplot, when they read comics for the complex soap opera and new readers can’t figure out head or tail, when you need a stack of supplements and magazine articles to roll a character, well, you’re catering to the faithful, and not winning new converts.

Once the companies realized this, they try to maximize the revenue generated by the steadily shrinking audience with spin-offs and crossovers and splatbooks. And the audience buys this, for a while. Until they realize that they’ve become collectors instead of readers or gamers, and that they have shelves and boxes of unread comics and unplayed games.
Yes, I’m looking at myself, obviously.

Of course, the adaptation continues, and instead of parasitizing, the hobby industry actually starts to provide value to these older gamers and readers. So in comics, you have series “written for the trade”, because a sizable audience is going to buy the story in convenient trade paperback collections, and the collections have a long and healthy shelf life, much better then the single issues that have this bizarre life-cycle where they go from disposable ten-minute reads directly to an existence as either mylar-bagged “collectibles” or bargain-bin pickings. And in roleplaying games, you see, I think, games that are slowly adapting to the format of providing a short campaign with a simple, high-concept set-up for busy people with adult lives. Actually, I’d say gaming is lagging behind in this department, because it means more retooling then just breaking out a piece of story into a collection, but you see signs of this. Stuff like the Savage Worlds books, which are a setting and adventure combined, and the limited-scope lines from various publishers (White Wolf’s Orpheus), and the single book settings for GURPS. Of course, a lot of the indie games are optimized for this, often just a cool idea for a one-shot adventure with some very lightweight (and tightly focused) rules.

I think there’s a pretty coherent list of things that older gamers will like in a game that will make them enjoy playing it: simple (and familiar) rules, simple (or familiar) setting, high-concept, fun-now, characters drawn in big bold strokes, that sort of thing. Or maybe that’s just me. Textured settings, deep characters, angst and long spell lists, whether you’re talking of old Gloranthan Runequest (A game for graduate students) or nineties-ish Amber/White Wolf, that’s for younger people who have more time.

D&D, of course, is for 30 year olds with kids whose wives don’t let them build toy train sets.

On the other hand, in games they don’t really play, older gamers might value other things. I picked up Weapons of the Gods, Mage: The Awakening and White Wolf’s Chicago source book at the last Bigor, and I did it mostly because they were beautiful books. Hardcovers with (in the case of WotG) full color interiors or sleek exteriors. The two rulebooks here are pretty heavy with way too many rules for me to digest. This is the sort of product which makes you feel you’ve got good value for your money, but which I’ll never read thoroughly enough to play.

The sad side to this, as I hinted in my opening paragraph, is that while it’s good that the hobby industry is actually adapting itself to accommodate its aging audience, it’s depressing to see how the main players in the field are actively erecting barriers in front of newer, younger audiences. The wonderful Batman and Justice League animated TV series have got kids all excited about these comic superheroes; my nieces adore Wonder Woman. In the comics, Diana has just snapped Maxwell Lord’s neck (somewhere in the labyrinthine reaches of the Infinite Crisis mega-multi-crossover). Oh, and this series also really emphasizes that Batman is an asshole. Meanwhile, you need the convincing charm of mud to get my nephews excited about Dungeons and Dragons. But is there a red box type introductory set anywhere to be seen? Well, there might be something, but it’s in English. And just creating characters is such an arduous fiddly process that I imagine they’ll fail their fortitude saving throw before they roll up their constitution score.

So, animation, video games and CCGs trump comics and roleplaying, and the latter seem to be destined to be considered more and more geek hobbies from days of yore.