While I've been sleeping in the land of the dead, I understand a thing blew up on the WOTC website. This link on JB's website (good catch, JB) is the most credible discussion of the material, if you're interested. The announcement affects less than 1/100th of 1% of people who play or make D&D, but of course that's a reason for pundits to scream into the wind about things they know next to nothing about. I have nothing to add to the discussion that I haven't already said on JB's blog.
However, if the reader might allow me a non-content post, I'd like to engage with Ryan Dancey on another matter for a moment. I've cheerfully trashed Dancey in the past. His appearance in the video linked above suggests he's more likeable than I would have guessed; and clearly he had far, far less control over the company than my original reading suggested. I was led to understand that he was fired; Dancey tells that he chose to leave, after it being suggested he had no place to go in the company. I don't know which is true. It doesn't matter.
That said, I'd like to address the following statements made by Dancey in the Roll for Combat podcast:
"You've made a few changes to some rules because you think the combat system should be more detailed or you want to have a new magic system, or you want to have a bunch of special ideas for how characters are created, or whatever ... people have been making fantasy heartbreakers forever, and we call them heartbreakers because people spend their time and energy and money making them, and then they don’t succeed, because if I have the choice between playing Dungeons and Dragons, and a game that’s just like Dungeons and Dragons except it changes this one thing that you don’t like, most people will just play Dungeons and Dragons, because of the network externality … it won’t work, because it’s not Dungeons and Dragons, and it doesn’t have the critical mass of all the people using it. Like the value is not in the product, the value is in the brand and in the network. The product is irrelevant."
This is a monstrous statement, made especially egregious in the slavering hero worship displayed by the podcast's hosts, who clearly had no idea what was being said. It reveals more than Dancey's personal contempt for the creators of non-official game content; it describes a reliance upon "trademark" as the ultimate be-all-and-end-all that reaches Ayn Randian proportions (and no, I'm not going to fucking explain that).
My partner Tamara worked in a hospital in Flint for ten years before we met. During that time it was common for doctors to refer to certain patients in the wards as "CTD." I've used this acronym with doctors here in Canada since learning it from Tamara, receiving a blank response every time. Yet what the acronym means is familiar to every person whose ever worked in a hospital environment. It stands for "circling the drain."
"Heartbreaker," for Dancey, is a similar call-out. It's a neat little way he has to casually put everyone who can't possibly affect D&D's bottom line into a box labled "loser," by another name. The key word phrase in the above is: "... and then they don't succeed." Succeed at what? Replacing D&D? Well, I suppose there are some people who want that ... but this isn't the context he uses when he describes people working on these "heartbreakers." He clearly seems to think that the goal in making these systems and metrics and whatever is to replace D&D ... and that augmenting D&D is a waste of time, because "it won't work" due to the mass of people who already play the game the way the company has written it.
My gameworld has not broken my heart because my game world doesn't exist according to Dancey's incredibly ignorant, narrow-minded precepts. I do not care if D&D continues to exist or not; I have no expectations that anything I write might replace D&D as a game system. But even if I did ... when compared to other human pursuits and goals, D&D is a spectacularly small market endeavour. If I were a chemist, having spent 40 years working on a single isotope of, say, rhodium, I'd have no reason to expect that any multinational chemistry-based corporation would know my name. But I have good reason to believe that Monte Cook and Ryan Dancey has heard of and seen this site ... and one strong basis for that is that the creator of the company's OGL is on a fucking youtube podcast created by two dorks with 13.4K subscribers. D&D is a small, small, small, small market.
Yet in Dancey's imagination, if you're not doing under the company's brand name, you're breaking your own heart, you loser, because you'll never succeed ... mwah hah ha ha!
"We call them heartbreakers ..."
Could you ask for a more elitist, smug, self-righteous position than that? I gaze upon the warm, positive smile on Dancey's face and I am reminded of a phrase,
"Meet it is I set it down that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain."
I believe it was Bill Gates who said, "Business is a game and money is the way we keep score." But maybe I'm misremembering.
ReplyDeleteThe heartbreak part of a fantasy heartbreaker is the dream that one's game will become the Next Big Thing in RPGs. Maybe that dream isn't so much about supplanting D&D; maybe it's just the aspiration to be the next Vampire or (even) the next Warhammer Fantasy RPG. The heartbreak is one of failing to make ANY money after putting a lot of time and effort (and money) into publishing a book...and probably paying huge printing costs for a small print run...and then utterly failing to sell one's inventory.
The term was coined by Ron Edwards in 2002. Publishing was different back then.
The FHB label is an outdated term, especially if applied to small press publishers as a term of contempt. But Dancey is an old man...and old men have a tendency to be glossy and less-than-specific with our terms, especially in semi-casual conversation (I know I fall into this problem on occasion).
A person publishing their own version of the D&D system for their PERSONAL USE isn't crafting a "fantasy heartbreaker," and never was by the way the term was intended. The person who wants to share their game with the MARKET in hopes of becoming a "game company" ...well, that's the folks that run the risk of breaking their own hearts. At least, that's the risk they ran in the past.
Dancey is approaching the subject matter of OGL and game publishing from an industry/biz approach. I don't think what he's saying applies much (or is intended to apply) to what you're doing here.
[and that's not a 'shot' at what you're doing; it's (my) statement that YOU are not releasing RPG tomes/systems into the wild...like many people ARE doing...and I believe those are the folks Dancey is addressing]
Then Dancey is either ignorant with his language or ignorant as to what's really happening with the industry. Because as you can see I'm very not making my own version of the D&D system for my personal use, nor am I interested in becoming a "game company" ... though if someone put several million in my hands, HOOO BOY! You'd see some remarkable stuff roll out.
ReplyDeleteI have exactly TWO "tomes" that I intend to release into the game world, if ever I get my concept together. It's a lot of work and I won't do a half-assed job. So yes, it very much feels like "a shot" at what I'm doing. From a jackass who doesn't know me. Done right, there's zero chance of my heart being broken, because my expectations as a businessman are rational.
Is an owner that owns one restaurant "heartbroken" because he's not McDonald's or Appleby's? FUCK Dancey's rhetoric and FUCK Dancey's narrowmindedness about what the industry really is.
Oh, and I'm as old as he is. It doesn't excuse me from being ignorant.
So, I wanted to respond to this post because I happen to love this blog site, but I think the way you interpreted that portion of the conversation was conflated and accidentally taken out of context.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I want to point out that I know Ryan. I briefly worked in the hobby game industry, serving as the Creative & Marketing Director for Alderac Entertainment Group from 2000-2004. John Zinser and Ryan are long-time, close friends in addition to sharing 30+ years of being in business together. To work for John was to come in contact with a lot of people in the industry — for me, that meant nearly everyone Ryan mentioned during the interview — and you get to know each them and their work. In short, I have a good handle on Ryan. I am not claiming to be a good friend or anything like that, but I have sat down with him enough times, talking about the gaming industry and the business of it, to know who he is and what he means.
So during the portion you mention, Ryan wasn’t glorifying D&D or WotC. If it came across that way to you, I encourage you to rewatch the video from the beginning up until the portion you quote. What he is talking about is critical mass. He’s talking about the history of hobby gaming products that come out and fail because there aren't enough customers product to succeed (stay afloat). He’s not putting down game creators who don’t create official content, or open source content, he’s explaining the effect of how products that are *too similar* to larger products just can’t find a large enough paying (and "playing") audience to sustain themselves. This happens all the time, and was especially common for CCGs and RPGs during the 90s.
One of the things John used to say — and he was probably paraphrasing Ryan or someone else in the industry — was, “The number one reason games die is because the person can’t find someone else to play it with.” What he means by that is: if not enough people want to play a game, then the game (as a business model) fails in the end.
This is especially true for products that are too similar to others (which Ryan explains). If product X is just like product Y, but with just a couple different rules (even if they are better rules), then people will continue to play product X because they are already comfortable with it and because there is an established install base. That’s the effect Ryan was explaining during your highlighted section.
Later in the episode, Ryan even uses the Heartbreaker term to describe D&D 4th edition, which is entirely accurate. 4th Edition’s design was contrary to what at least 50% of the audience wanted, which helped to fuel Pathfinder’s extraordinary rise. WotC basically gave half of their market to a competitor. It was a Heartbreaker in a different sense: 4th Edition deviated too far from the expectation of what D&D should be… so it lost a lot of its critical mass, it’s customers.
I’ve tried to make sense of the rest of your post, but I don’t know where you’re basing it from. Ryan doesn’t glorify D&D or WotC. He definitely doesn’t favor big corporations over smaller companies in the industry (as anyone who knows his work history, or current role at AEG can attest). Ryan was involved in a lot of Heartbreaker products before he worked on D&D. In short, he’s referring to a business model.
FWIW, I went back and skimmed over your other post about Ryan, and I can confidently say that you have either been fed a lot of misinformation or just don’t know enough about the gaming industry to arrive at your conclusions. That’s not meant as an insult, it’s just that you don’t enough about what was going on in the industry 20 years ago.
Coffeemate,
ReplyDeleteI'll be careful with my response. First, I'll accept your word on every statement you've made and concede that I'm less informed than you seem to be, as I don't know Ryan personally and I can't speak from direct experience.
"Heartbreaker" as a term to describe what may be an artist's life work is not a positive term. You might tell Ryan that. And you might suggest that while he's using the word, he might smile just a little less about it.
I was right here, alive, and deep into Dungeons and Dragons at the time that everything happened as described in the podcast, which I watched end to end twice. I may not have known what was happening behind closed doors at the WOTC, but I do know that among the groups I knew at the time, the OGL was not viewed positively. It was seen, at that time, as a way for the new masters to urge creators to create D&D content to further the value to the company. Dancey may be able to convince himself that he did so with the most gratuitous of intentions, but I believe he was only allowed to make it happen because the Businesspeople understood that inspiring unpaid creators to improve the company's BRAND would eventually increase the company's coffers.
And that's what it's done. Creators may have been compensated for their work; but the company has been compensated ALSO, without having to do anything except own the BRAND. Independent work has made D&D excel as a BRAND; but that independent work continues to be at the mercy of that BRAND, through the OGL. It's been a fantastic success for the company ... and thus, from Dancey's point of view, it's been a fantastic success for HIM.
But right or wrong, I think this has been BAD for hundreds and hundreds of independent creators, who are now at the company's mercy. The company has revealed it's dark side. It would have been better, in my opinion, if the matter had been challenged in court in 1999; or if the TSR had been allowed to die; or if the WOTC had gone on making cards and never gotten involved in RPGs. Then the market would be open and equal to ALL, not as a way to fill the troughs of corporate stooges, but as a freelance means to expand the game.
I hate the WOTC, because they continue to shackle the game of Dungeons & Dragons to the necessity of serving the BRAND, and not the participants. And Dancey is a part of that service. You may not see that; he may not see that; but he served the WOTC nonetheless, not D&D.
He's not, therefore, on my side. He's not on D&D's side. I'm running out of space, so let me continue on the next comment.
Let's talk about the "critical mass of all the people using it." I assume this is what you mean by "install base," a term I didn't use. Why does it matter how many people are playing a game? I have 8 people at present playing my game, plus a number of people I've influenced, plus those reading me online. What's this ... 50, 60 people? It certainly falls FAR, FAR short of the critical mass described by Ryan.
ReplyDeleteYet I have HARD DATA that says that if the game is better, then at least a few people won't continue to play the more popular product X, no matter how previously comfortable they were with the old rules. I have been rewriting D&D since 1980, and have been surrounded by many other DMs doing likewise; and all of us manage to convince people that YES, there is a better version of this game, no matter how many people exist that are ready to go on playing the shittier version.
I believe - and this is supported by the thousands of people who have bought my book How to Run and commented back to me on it - that people DON'T KNOW there's a better game because the WOTC has millions of dollars to support the notion that there isn't one. I don't have millions of dollars. IF I did, and could produce pretty content, and pay advertisers to plant stories in national newspapers, then I think I could VASTLY increase the number of people playing my game. I don't have such money; I will never have such money. But at least I think we can argue that the reason the critical mass of people play a certain version of the game is because people are kept deliberately ignorant about the alternatives.
Products that are similar to others succeed all the time. It just takes capital. Dancey's actions have helped to direct the existing capital surrounding role-playing games in the last 20 years to orbit Planet WOTC. But this doesn't make the WOTC "best"; it doesn't guarantee their future. At any time, they might do something enormously stupid and get themselves cancelled. Whereupon, all the people who hitched their wagon to the WOTC, because they failed to act on their own behalf, will find themselves floating on rafts, wondering what to do next.
I, on the other hand, don't have that problem. Because I didn't need Dancey's OGL. I didn't want his OGL. So please appreciate that I'm not moved to praise for someone's creating of something that I think was not needed, not helpful in the long run, not a good thing and ultimately wasteful of a generation's creative potential.