I guess D&D and its brethren are trying to combat extinction by taking an idea from the relatively successful Free Comic Book Day (first Saturday of May) and Record Store Day (mid April) promotions.
Extinction?
That’s the litany you usually hear about record stores with the rise of iTunes, Amazon, Wal-Mart and other sources of downloadable MP3s.
Comic books share the same dilemma as other periodical publications plus they are suffering from a similar Napster-esque distribution system which probably gives Marvel and DC’s parent corporations fits. (Fear not, I only subscribe to a few physical titles through my local store and when I’m done with them, I give them away. If you wants some, please ask for a list of what I get.) Recent issues of Justice League of America or Spider-Man running at $3.99/issue certainly fuels the arguments of the people the copyright holders call pirates or thieves. The recent successes their properties have made through movies, DVDs, legit downloads and merchandise aren’t enough to compensate. Maybe the Kindle and iPad will solve it.
However, I think a well run, specialty comic store will endure as the equivalent kind of record store and book store. The shift going on through the Internet will just remove the big-box stores from the distribution system. Fewer music choices through Best Buy, no more comics at the grocery store and Wal-Mart only carrying books their base purchases.
RPGs on the other hand don’t have much to hope. That’s why this me-too move resembles another one of the numerous hail mary passes its industry has attempted since the dawn of World of Warcraft. Admittedly, there have been a other MMORPGs before WoW. Everquest and Ultima Online quickly come to mind but I think WoW’s appearance was the iPod/iPhone of the genre; if it’s being incorporated into South Park, then the majority of the Western world knows about it. Thus WoW is supplanting D&D’s place in popular culture. Personally, I think the tabletop RPGs will be gone in another 10 years. Not gone as in 100 percent, nothing left. Gone like the Shakers or operational Model Ts. Why the pessimism? It’s not negative feelings, it’s really coming to grips with the pending reality.
Over 15 years ago, my sensei Lester gave Frank Chadwick (the president of GDW) some parting advice before he left for TSR (the former publisher of D&D). In short he said to stop wasting GDW’s dwindling, finite resources on publishing more wargames. Computers are solving all the genre’s audience’s problems: the maps, the counters, the cumbersome rules and most importantly finding someone else to play with. If you had ever seen GDW’s Europa: Fire in the East in “action” at GenCon which simulates the Russian front campaign of WWII (a critical time in the war’s outcome yet it’s a boring-as-hell game), even the most ignorant person understands why computers “work.” Frank obviously didn’t heed Lester’s statement as a suggestion on what to shift GDW’s energies toward; stop making paper-based wargames, do only computer-based ones. Frank more likely took Lester’s words as a snide kiss off from an employee who betrayed him to work for the competition. Today, D&D through Fourth Edition is Frank.
Now the RPG which supplanted the wargame is going through the process of getting its comeuppance and this giveaway won’t slow the bleeding as button-mashing, PVP frigtards become the new dominant species of gamer.
I’m no fool though. I scored the free Pathfinder and revised Dark Sun adventure with the Cthulhu thing for my friend Narlyhotep.