The Year in Review: 2005

Internet access is random at best for me, aside from work, so here's an early Christmas present: a recap of the year 2005 in RPGs.



2005 was the year of the retread and the licensed game, making it look a lot like 2004, 2003, 2002, and just about any other year I can think of. Once again, new, interesting games in the mainstream were few and far between. One would almost say that they didn't exist.

The Retreads

Continuing a trend started last year by GURPS 4th edition and the World of Darkness reboot, 2005 saw Warhammer FRP 2e, Shadowrun 4e, and Mutants & Masterminds 2e as the major new editions of existing games.

Of these three, Shadowrun looks the strongest. SR has long been a slumbering giant of the RPG world. The game languished through a rules bloated third edition and an increasingly Byzantine back story. The new edition looks like it hacked the rules down to a lean, useful set, while the initial schedule of release looks set to support the game's core strengths (Trolls! With autocannons! Blasting the hell out of stuff!) It might be a wise move to avoid going too heavy on the setting material, particularly if the games is, as I suspect, luring in lots of retired SR players and newbies. The Shadowrun website lists a GM's screen, adventure, magic sourcebook, and setting sourcebook covering Hong Kong and Seattle. That looks like a good, balanced lineup to me.

Warhammer FRP seemed to have a strong launch, but its sales haven't shown consistent strength. The design stuck close to the original version, a decision that may have pleased grognards but perhaps turned away new players. The original Warhammer FRP rules were baroque at best, unintentionally comedic at worst, particularly if you used the critical hit and fumble rules. The revision didn't seem to address the system's fundamental shortcomings, a curious decision on GW's part given the game's history. GW has supported the game with an aggressive release schedule, but it remains to be seen whether this plan has borne any fruit. The game isn't available or supported in GW retail stores (at least the ones I've visited), and its Amazon.com numbers haven't been particularly strong in the long term, especially compared to evergreen titles such as Vampire and D&D.

Mutants & Masterminds 2e is much harder to read. The revised game mechanics have met with positive reviews, but the step back in illustrations and graphic design may have hurt it out the gate. The first edition suffered from a rather scattershot release line up (Seriously - a noir supplement?), but the new edition seems to be in good hands. The new edition of Freedom City gets the ball rolling on background material, while the Mastermind's Manual (listed on Amazon.com) looks like an excellent starting point for GMs. The first edition lacked many player-centric titles, but this looks like a good follow-up for 2e and bodes of good things to come. I don't see any reason why M&M can't continue to rule RPG superhero-dom.

Spycraft 2.0 is almost impossible to get a read on. AEG's struggles haven't done the game any good. The supplement lineup is sketchy at best. The game was widely regarded as one of the best d20 games out there, but there have been some murmurs that the second edition was a little too big, a little too bloated, and a little too cumbersome. It's almost impossible to get a read on it until the game lands on its feet.

The New Guys

There was one new mainstream game of relevance released this year, the Serenity RPG. With the movie doing a messy belly flop at the box office, it's hard to predict if this title has legs. The saving grace of the movie's failure is that it might allow Margaret Weiss Productions to serve as the de facto producer of Serenity background material. This model helped propel the Star Wars RPG to a successful run in the late 80s and early 90s. Yet, with a set of mechanics that are mediocre at best, it's hard to tell if this game has staying power. It could either settle into a comfortable zone a la the Babylon 5 RPG, or it could sink to the bottom to rest next to Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and other licenses.

d20

Publishers made a lot of noise about d20's spiral downward, but we still have yet to see a new system make a significant, enduring commercial impact on the market. d20 publishers are still mostly chasing each other's tails. Necromancer Games released a few big projects, though it always operated more as a profitable hobby than a business. In this case, that's a good thing: Necromancer seems willing to take more chances on products than other d20 publishers, such as with the massive Wilderlands of High Fantasy boxed set. Goodman Games (the stealth success story of the RPG market) continues to chug along with its Dungeon Crawl Classics line. A lot of smaller companies toss in the occasional release, but that's about it.

Green Ronin, Malhavoc, and Mongoose seem to be the remaining major d20 players, but of the three only Mongoose continues to cater to D&D players. Is that good or bad? The answer is at best unclear. It's always a mistake to assume that, in the RPG market, companies choose strategies based on economics. It is true that GR is going back to doing D&D adventures, with a fantastic spin on them, too. It's definitely an interesting development to watch in 2006.

If GR follows through on its Bleeding Edge brand, it could potentially capture a workable portion of the RPG audience. With nostaligia running rampant, this is a sharp move. GR's core d20 material has always been somewhat scattered. It's hard to say what their typical, D&D compatiable product does. This move could really pay off.

PDFs

The PDF market continues to "expand", but I put that in quotes because it isn't clear if we're seeing more people spending more money on product, or if there are simply more publishers squeezing the market drier and drier. Aside from Phil Reed, no one is making an actual, livable go out of PDF only, and even Phil seems to rely on release volume and wide but shallow back list sales. We still see successful PDFs attempt to go into print to make money. Print companies go into PDF only for the backlist sales and for the residual sales.

The Freelance Market

The tone of freelancers at GenCon was not pretty. There's not much work out there, and many companies are paying on a "we need to use you on the next project, so we're not going to piss you off" basis. Guardians of Order is all but gone. AEG looks like it has dumped RPGs. Atlas is pretty much out of RPGs aside from the ever enduring Ars Magica. Many companies have stopped paying freelancers or only do so to make sure the next product goes out the door.

On the home front, for the first time in my career I've gone unpaid for a book I wrote. I'm lucky in that I can absorb the loss, and to be honest I turned in the manuscript so late that hounding the company for payment would be a bit crass, but it is noteworthy. The line between the successful freelancer and the one stuck out in the cold runs through WotC. Writers who did d20 work and who have WotC contracts can likely still work freelance full-time. Otherwise, it's not looking good.

So, What Exactly Happened this Year?

We had another year without a clear, breakout RPG hit. We didn't see a Deadlands or Exalted this year, a new game that took off like a shot and gathered momentum over time. These days, a game comes out, RPG.net adopts it as its latest darling, and then it fades away. In a year or two, it's out of print. Established games, such as the new World of Darkness and Ars Magica, seem to do fine, but new titles (primarily licensed games) enjoy a few moments of fame, then fade away.

Does d20 have a death grip on the industry? It's possible that D&D 3e works so much better than earlier versions of the game that fewer games than ever skip from D&D to something else.

There's some strength to this argument. I have a theory that people who play D&D and then migrate to different systems aren't one mass of potential customers. Rather, they represent dozens of micro-markets, each seeking a specific play experience. If the total number of people leaving D&D drops, and the number of people in each micro-market drops below a critical level needed to support a mainstream RPG title, that spells trouble.

Are the distributors simply risk averse, especially in an increasingly challenging TCG market? That's also possible. The distros seem much happier to chase after "sure fire hits" in the form of licenses, conveniently forgetting all the other titles that tried that strategy and failed. Even if games are getting picked up in distribution, they don't seem to move all that well at the retail level. Amazon.com is quite useful in this regard, since it shows you what consumers, rather than stores, are buying.

It is interesting to note that distributors are now placing re-orders before their initial orders are coming in. They're strapped for cash, and thus consistently under-ordering RPGs. Given the magazine model that RPGs operate under, this is killer. Worst of all, this is a persistent phenomenon. I've seen it happen across different companies, different titles, and different price points, from adventures to core rulebooks to major new supplements.

Are companies simply bringing bad games to market? This is always true, so it can't explain everything. However, the strong push towards retreads and licenses shows that few companies are willing to take risks on new titles. "New" games are almost invariably new editions, relaunches, or takes on genres that have been beaten to death. For the nth year running, we had a pulp RPG explode and die on the launch pad. RPGs are becoming increasingly stale. And no, a license such as Narnia is not going to save them. Go ask Decipher how the Trek and LotR licenses did for them.

What's Ahead in 2006

GW is doing a DC comics RPG. I'm sure that the 40k RPG is in development. Given GW's financial difficulties, it'll be interesting to see how these play out.

SJG is promising more GURPS support after a thin 2005.

Exalted 2nd edition is due.

Mongoose is releasing a new edition of Runequest.

Let's see: licensed games and retreads. That sounds familiar, almost like 2005!

In fact, that is 2005.

Here's my prediction for 2006. I can cut and past the above entry, change a few names, and run it as is, and no one would notice.

The one exception is d20. Green Ronin's Bleeding Edge label could potentially pay off and push publishers in a more aggressive, more interesting direction. One can always hope!