This image and the post title will take a little time to develop, stick with me.
I have long argued that agitation is the path forward to the truth. When people are sitting around having polite conversation over tea, very rarely does the truth emerge. Instead, people primp and position themselves so that they can look their best. They can spin the information, conceal their true beliefs, etc. Only when you start getting rough, only then does the truth come out. When people get defensive, they drop the normal niceties and they fire both barrels. That's how you get the real good stuff.
As a brief aside, if you go to far, you end up like YDIS. You end up as a douche. So take that wisdom with a grain of salt, ok?
Well, I wrote a post a few days ago and I put Ryan Dancey and Erik Mona in the crosshairs. I wasn't too rough, I don't think, but I did cast a few stones. And in the end, my prodding pulled a nice gem out of Ryan Dancey in the comments for that post. I got him to reframe his position in a way that I think makes a lot of sense and which I haven't seen him talk in other venues before. I had seen bits and pieces of this argument in his writings, but never as stridently or cogently as what he wrote today (though I could be wrong, if anyone can link it). Erik Mona also showed up, slightly peeved, sorry Erik but you were an innocent bystander in this affair.
Below is a paraphrase of Ryan's comments, I am not trying to spin it myself, I will do that in a sec. I would encourage you to link over and read the actual comments, but I know most of you will not.
Ryan argues two points that I want to highlight.
The first is that the RPG industry is full of ideas, lots of ideas, and most of them are crap. The number of great concepts is few, the number of great concepts that can be made profitable is even smaller. In the past, the games he felt did best have taken new directions rather than stick in an old rut, or taken existing genres and split off a new segment from that, kind of like a tree branch splitting in two directions (though he didn't use that analogy). So either you can make a new genre or you can split a genre, but that is the only way forward.
The second point is that the first point is largely irrelevant because there is very little new blood coming into the hobby that is not coming through D&D boxed sets and that almost all non-D&D games are either feeding off each other or feeding off relapsed gamers, not actually making new gamers, not even White Wolf.
End of paraphrase
Now let me start by saying I agree with Ryan. I agree that is the way that the industry is. But that is not the way it has to be. It is this way because of a lack of vision, leadership, and boldness. I feel that people like Ryan and Erik are trapped in their risk-averse corporate positions. They answer to someone else, or to investors, or board members, or whatever. Ryan said himself in his response to my comment about him calling White Wolf an imprint, he was dancing to someone else's tune.
And so they fail to see the ways forward. They fail to see how to break out of Ryan's second point. Ryan's second point is only constraining if you cannot think your way out of that box. If you keep trying to gain marketshare through cannibalization rather than seeking new frontiers, you will stay in that box.
Now, to connect the dots and bring this back to the post title...
I think that based on Ryan's commentary, we can slightly reframe how we think about RPGs. I have always thought of RPGs as a giant tree. And to go back to my use of the branch analogy above, D&D is the trunk of the tree, and then there are tons of branches going off in all directions. Relatively, the center of the tree is highly developed (medieval fantasy) and the branches are thin (Sci-Fi, Vampire, Modern, etc.)
What I think Ryan's commentary really solidifies is that D&D is the only thing touching the ground. It has deep roots, but it is the only trunk. D&D is.... it. It is the alpha and the omega. It is the only door.
And the way forward to the build another tree.
I think I have figured a way to do just that.
So far, I have only shared it with my brother during the 4th of July weekend when he was home from military service. For now, I will keep it under my cap. I know that sucks, but I can't let the cat out of the bag just yet. To be fair, I have hinted about it on this blog the past few weeks. If you were paying attention and able to pick up on the clues I have left, you might have figured it out by now. Probably not. Anyway, I leave that challenge to you.
Or you can just wait for me to tell you. But I have to finish Novarium first.
Stay thirsty, my friends.