Roleplaying and the Lack of Inclusive Characters

Over at http://blackroleplayersorganization.blogspot.com/ , the author has many a note on how race and roleplaying fall together for him. Its interesting reading and I wander over there every now and again to see what is being written about. Another good one for fantasy and race is the chronicles of harriet, http://chroniclesofharriet.com/.

I've mentioned it before but I think getting more authors and creators of content of various ethnicities will bring far more diversity than other white people creating more 'token' pictures and places. I think that for a company, a corporation, like WoTC to be more inclusive they've got to have a 'show me the money' moment as sales of say, Nyambe and other non-standard European knight settings tend to be flat or poor.

Studies and other benefits of how inclusion is awesome for morale and confidence levels are all well and good, but if there's no MORE money to be had from it, a company whose making a new edition to make money off of the old edition fans, isn't probably worried about that. Then there's the 'lame horse' argument that the company 'has to get it right' so that they're not accused of using racist portraits and stylings in the first place. 

In terms of successful African styled fantasy games and popularity, or lack of, this isn't always the case though. Recently Spears of the Dawn, an OSR style project on 'fantasy' Africa, ran a fairly successful kickstarter and delivered ahead of time!

This isn't necessarily just a RPG problem as much as a 'geek' problem. How about comics? I remember reading Milestone when they first came out. Hardware and Icon were some of my favorites but that imprint didn't last and DC's later efforts to incorporate it into the mainstream have fallen flat every time. 

The fact that the initial imprint didn't last, I believe, has more to do with comic glut, the failure of new comics in general, and well, DC being a bone head about things. If you're name isn't Deadpool and you started out in the 90's and are still around now as a comic character with your own title, good work!

Take Hardware for example. Marvel has three movies about a rich guy in a suit. If there was anyone looking for a character like Iron Man in the DC universe, they don't have a lot of options there. Hardware would also give DC another rich person who wasn't Bruce Wayne or Lex Luthor and more opportunity to play with the tech side of the universe. 

In terms of fiction, even one of the original non-Caucasian fantasy heroes, Imaro, couldn't have his initial series published by Night Shade Books through all the way through and had to take the last two volumes self publishing. If you're one of the people who wants to see more inclusion in fiction and other mediums, you have to support it when it's available to start off with so guy buy a copy of Griots, a sword and soul anthology and speak with your wallet. Show your support with money, not internet posts talking about what you want. 

Is there a potential audience that they could be missing? As role playing games shrink in total, the potential buyers of any type shrink. Could more inclusive art reverse that? Well beyond my scope but...

I don't think that's what WoTC is betting on. I think WoTC is betting on, "We've bent over backwards to show how OSR like we are and how cool we are despite you know, not having any of the old artists or losing so many of the old writers but hey, OSR feel in the rules amirght?"

You want real inclusiveness? Get Charles Saunders to write a book for WoTC or Paizo. 

More importantly though, with the low cost to content creation, and the cost getting lower all the time, if you want to see something, if you rely on the corporations to bring it to you, you may be waiting a long time. Paizo makes good use of the OGL license and other people can build on that success or do material like Spears of the Dawn with a different take on things altogether.

All my own opinion and subject to change and be expanded upon as the topic goes back and forth. The internet is at best a poor substitute for 'real' communication.

DnD Next: Player's Handbook $50?

There have been several reportings of the next edition of the Player's Handbook for Dungeons and Dragons running $50 at Barnes & Nobles.

I can see why Wizards of the Coast would charge that much. I've heard that the 3rd edition Player's Handbook for example, was a loss leader and that it lost money. Mind you that was short term as it was meant to draw gamer's into the buying of more expensive supplements that came out generally two a month.

In addition, many role playing games have more expensive core books. The Pathfinder core book for example, is running for $33.98 at Amazon, but the cover price is $49.99. Legend of the Five Rings, a game I feel is awesome but am loathe to buy a physical copy to go with my PDF from Drive Thru RPG because my group is flaky, runs $43.32, also from Amazon, from a cover price of $59.99. The PDF from Drive Thru is currently $34.99. I know I bought that on one of the sales. Expensive books yes?

Both are generally all you need to play. Well, not quite. Pathfinder really benefits from a bestiary of some sort, and to be honest, all the supplements I've seen for 4th edition L5R have looked awesome and highly useful.

I'm sure someone could pull up better examples of fairly expensive single role playing books that allow you to start up right away like Call of Cthulhu but I'll leave that to the better minds.

Dungeons and Dragons is and has been for many years, built on a three book foundation of Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual. In the past, some of the books have cost more than others. In more recent times, all have been equal price.

Assuming an equal pricing schedule this time around, this puts the game at a retail of $150 to get started.

I'm not saying that the initial sales won't be good. They might be great. Anyone remember when 4th edition first came out and a certain spokesperson for Wizards of the Coast mentioned how awesome it was doing? Something along the lines of 3rd edition was good, 3.5 was even better and 4th edition doing even better than that? And then Essentials and all sorts of other weirdness with a fairly short shelf life? Initial sales are not long term sales.

While Wizards of the Coast is doing a better job getting non-gamer excitement going, I'm not seeing that level of excitement in my own gaming group. Mind you I fully know that we are a terrible indicator of what's happening. My group is so eclectic in their taste that I don't play half the games they do. I'd rather catch up on painting or do some prep work for running games.

But from looking online, they're not the only ones.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying no one is interested. There are a lot of groups interested in the game. But looking at places like Facebook and other social sites, their interaction with the existing crowd base seems... small. This may be a result of changes Facebook has instituted or something along those lines, but I see a potentially different thing happening.

If to you, Dungeons and Dragons was 3rd edition, you've probably stuck with it or moved onto Pathfinder.

If to you Dungeons and Dragons was 2nd edition or older, you've probably embraced the OSR and it's many clones or used the variety of premium reprints to get yourself back into the game.

If to you Dungeons and Dragons was 4th edition, well... I don't know to be honest. The game is still relatively knew despite it's lack of support so maybe you're still enjoying it. Maybe you've gone onto 13th Age.

And for every player and every game master, maybe you quit playing altogether because you've got better things to do with your money. You don't need to worry about getting a group of people together at the same time to play in person when you've got Diablo 3 or are waiting on Titanfall. You've got whole seasons to go through on Netflix. The movies that have been hitting the theater are taking up all your time. Your online addition to social media leaves no time for actual socialization!

I think that long term, a core trio of books at this price point is the end of Dungeons and Dragons.

We can talk about inflation, but then we have to talk about minimum wage which has essentially never kept up with inflation. We can talk about deep discounts to keep people buying, but then we're not talking about hobby stores at this point as Amazon and other online sites are going to smash brick and mortar retailers. And for a lot of people, all of their transactions are already done at this point and the hobby has continued.

Without seeing the final rules, without knowing what type of 3rd party support via OGL/GSL that Wizards of the Coast is planning, it's hard to get an idea of whats actually going to happen. A lot of variables there.

But, and I've been wrong many a time before, I think that this is going to cause Dungeons and Dragons to fail, after an initial sell through at Gen Con, and after that failure, the role playing game will be shelved and mined for ideas.

And to be honest, Hasbro could do worse. Battleship the movie anyone?

Gen Con 2013: The Loot

Remember when I talked about resellers? Bam! That's what this pile is. From left top to bottom right.

First pile is some high elf lion axe men on top of some Freebooter assassins that were on massive discount from the Warstore. Remember when I was talking about resellers? Yup. They had a ton of Freebooter stuff, a lot of other small company stuff that wasn't moving, and some of the larger company stuff that wasn't moving. Guy was taking offers on lots of stuff because they didn't want to carry it back.  I wasn't going to buy them at all but I have a fondness for high elves from the Warhammer world. I probably have a thousand points or so of them and one day may actually play. The Freebooter assassins? The box was $20 bones and some of the individual figures can run that cost.

Second pile is paint. I'm always looking to expand my paint collection with stuff I don't have or in the Winter Weathering set, techniques I'd like to try. That pile of L5R stuff? Three for ten or one for five. I'll probably never use it but I've had an itch to rum some Samurai action and if nothing else, it may prove inspiration for something else.

Second row is a metal mule. While I love Privateer Press, I hate that new plastic mercenary model in and of itself, especially for the mule. I've been looking for a metal one for a while and this one was like $18. Speaking of the mule, I picked him up in the auction hall across from the dealer's room. Another pitfall to being a game publisher and creator of content coming to the con to sell, is having to pit your wares not only against the resellers, but against your former buyers who are selling your stuff at the auction. I went twice to the auction hall and it was rammed both days.

That pile of historical books? Got it from the same place I picked up the paints and it was buy one get three free. I've just started on the Samurai and the Sacred and it's pretty good, but at this point, I think anyone whose read any Osprey books on Samurai is expecting to see Stephen Turnbull's name on such a book. 

On the left is the new edition of Wyrd's Malifaux which sold out quickly. On top of that is the Nightmare Edition. I'm disappointed by how small it is. In theory, Wyrd moved to plastic because of the price of metal. They've made larger metal models than this sucker. I admit to 'suckertude' because I bought it due to the limited nature along with the book so I could get the last one on top, Miss Step, a female cyborg con exclusive that you had to spend $100 bones or more to get. I was thinking about getting some more stuff but to be honest, I'm not playing the game yet. One of my friends does though and I'm hoping to get into it in that way but as I've noted, other sellers had the other material Wyrd did, sometimes at rock bottom prices. I figure I'll try and finish some stuff this way and see where it goes.

In the center on top are three decks, all illustrated the same, with some dice. They're like zombie cards. I figure I'll keep a deck for Wyrd, as it uses normal cards, and give one to my g/f who is a fan of all things gothic. I picked it up because they were inexpensive and I don't want to say novelty, but I haven't seen them outside the con.

In the center under that is the limited edition adventure being sold by Gale Force Nine. Ugh. It looks like crap on the inside. By deliberate design, they've taken art and other elements from every edition and put little 'cute' yellow sticky notes all throughout the book with rules, by their own admission for DnDNext that are outdated. And they decided to make it a con exclusive that costs $30. You know, when most of the rule material is actually online for free eh? Yeah... I'm thinking they should have charged less, made it vastly widely available and put it online to download for free. When you're boasting in the interior how the new game has 140,000 people on it but you've noted in previous discussions that MILLIONS of people have played, well, I wouldn't be talking about those numbers and would be trying with much more effort to get the game out there. Here's an idea, go see what Paizo did with some of their playtesting and improve on that. Ugh. Ugly ass book.

The Grex is me being a sucker. I have a Patriot 105 that I've been using for base coating and three layer coating where you basecoat one dark color, spray from a slightly higher angle a lighter color, and then almost from the very top an even lighter color. Do that and a wash and some touch ups and you've got some good table top miniatures going. The guy running the Grex booth allowed us to actually use it. Not so the guy running the Badger booth. He also didn't have a credit card minimum.

Don't misunderstand me, the guy running the Badger booth was a wellspring of knowledge. He had a lot of information on how the different types of brushes work, he, unlike the Grex booth, had the new line of paint as well as cleaner and other bits Mind you I didn't see any air compressors but I could have just missed it,  Still, not having a sample of the tool available for people to use, and having a minimum to charge... those things struck me wrong. We'll see if I made the right decision as time goes on but hey, at least I'll be using some of that Badger paint in the machine eh?

 

 

And the last pile of loot starts with some Doctor Who goods from Cubicle 7. While I'm not a huge fan it's an easy system to run and the reading is easy. The books on top are Never Unprepared and Odyess, both by the guys who do Gnome Stew. I bought the former because of store credit and the later because they were relatively inexpensive impulse purchases.

Next to them are some miniatures for the Razor Coast by Center Stage miniatures. I enjoyed razzing the guy about the late 28mm Demons and Devils stuff but he took it in the spirit it was meant and tossed some right back at me. I enjoyed the banter and hope I didn't come off as too much of an ass.

I initially was going to buy some GCT studio's Bushiod but they only took cash so I returned to the OSR booth and got in an order for the giant frog demon. The other miniatures there are some Bombshell Babes. When the guys doing the Bombshell Babes initially did their Kickstarter, I thought it was too T&A. It's not that I've got anything against T&A but let's face it, for most female miniatures, that's ALL they've been. There are exceptions of course but the vast majority is T&A so I've been well covered for years on that front. I was glad to be wrong thought as there are several great figures here including one that would be a perfect female version of Solomon Kane. I bought these miniatures because I haven't seen them in the store and hey, I can save on shipping and handling.

Above them is a book that's like City State of the Sea Kings or something. A massive tome for the old City State of the Invincible Warlord setting. I'm a sucker for that setting. While I was introduced to it through the 'vile' version by Mayfair, I've since gone back and picked up a lot of the older Judge's Guild stuff. I haven't looked at it yet though.

That map and the little booklet under the Gale Force 9 miniatures is proof that Dwimmermount is still chugging along. While the book itself was supposed to be available at the convention, that fell through but at least something made it to the wilds eh?

Speaking of Gale Force 9, the miniatures I bought because I haven't been able to get them from Games Plus. All Games Plus, a normally fantastic hobby shop, has been able to get, was 'Wave One', the purple worm and mind flayer raiders. Now here's the 'funny' thing. They were supposed to have some other figures as well and even had a price sheet for them on the main sheet. These weren't large banners or anything so I'm puzzled as to why they didn't just take those price sheets down and remake them. They were standard sized sheets for Gumby's sake.

In addition, they also got hit by the 'shipping demon' as many of the figures didn't make it the first day. That worked out for me thought because the line to buy was around the booth. The next day it was pretty much a walk in and buy. A 'funny' store about my purchase. I told the guy that I was buying so much because my FLSG couldn't get the Wave 2 and later releases. He told me NONE of the material had actually been shipped. Uh... I may have mentioned above that I already have some of them and heck, even painted the purple worm. He actually argued the point with me. Why he would do that I have no clue. Heck, unless I'm misremembering, some on RPG.net swear they got Wave 2 stuff. Ah well.

I didn't even look at the Privateer Press limited release bit. While I've actually been painting up stuff and am prepping for actual play, the limited mini did nothing for me and it's going to have a more general, and to me, more useful release down the road.  I'm sure I missed some other opportunities like Coolminiornot had options to get some limited figs if you spent X but I'm not playing Hell Dorado, and despite having a good selection of Anima figures, not playing that so no need to buy those at full price to get something I'm not going to probably ever play.

While I spent more than enough money, I'm pretty happy with the fact that most of the stuff I bought falls into a few small categories. It's either stuff I could only find at Gen Con, or stuff that was so inexpensive that buying it at full price later would mean it's simply not going to be bought.

Anyone score any awesome swag? Anything you missed that you wanted to buy?