The burning question on many peoples lips these days seems to be that of the state of the gaming hobby and in particular that of roleplaying! For many years roleplaying games seemed to dominate the other genres of games in the fantasy/sci- fi market, with the big three names being TSR, FASA and West End games who’s total contribution to the field made up more than half of the hobbies revenue. But a couple of years ago all this seemed to change with the arrival of more and more table top orientated combat systems and the ultimate arrival of the collectable card game.

Roleplaying seemed to take a back seat for a while and it looked as if the CCG’s where here to stay and would sound a death knell for the RPG industry as a whole. So what is the cause of this lull in game sales? Well many would be quick to point out that the price of rpgs is far to steep and cite this as a major reason. Not so! In fact compared to many other hobbies, roleplaying has more or less stayed at the same retail prices since the mid 70’s when it first started to take off. A copy of a AD&D adventure from TSR has hardly risen in price over the years say compared to the price of a new BMX or mountain bike so roleplaying games still seem to be affordable.

Others blame the root of the problem on the quality of the games that are being released these days and that too many systems are too similar in scope and mechanics. Shadowrun and Cyberpunk seem to go hand in hand along with Inomie and Nephilim, as all these games seem to use a very similar setting. Even the excellent Deadlands and Werewolf Wild West suffer from such accusations, but when push comes to shove it all boils down to the personal preference of the gamer in question.

Another comment is the seemingly constant rehash of games and their supplements these days. Just how many ways are there to kill a Vampire? Or how many times can we investigate the unknown. Many games seem to just churn out products not to please the gamers or meet a niche in the market, but rather to cash in on the people that will pay almost anything to get the latest games supplement. This can be annoying as a good many gamers are students or those on a low income and having to spend many hundreds of pounds or dollars to just get the basics needed to play a game if you are a newcomer can be off-putting to say the least.

But all this aside the one thing that most deem the destroyer of the roleplaying hobby is that of the collectable card game. Magic the Gathering is big business world wide and thousands of gamers buy millions of units each year, keeping this one of the top selling hobby products of all time. High sales of CCG’s seemed to affect the sales of roleplaying games and table top games alike in the first year of Magic’s release. A store could easily sell the CCG’s to first time players with little explanation of the system and always had the open cards on hand to show newcomers how to play or what they would get for their money. All that was needed was a small section of a table or counter and within a few moments the store person could teach the game, unlike the roleplaying systems that require a great deal of input or thought during character generation or table top games that need lots of space and hundreds of miniatures to play. Lets face it CCG’s are just so easy and practical compaired to other forms of gaming.

So did the CCG kill off roleplaying? Well in my own opinion; No. Granted roleplaying games are not as popular as they where say ten years or so ago, but bearing that in mind the sheer quality of rpgs nowadays is staggering. High production values and good marketing are the real key to the success of any product regardless of what it is, if you can get it across to your target audience then that is half the battle won. The 90’s saw the rise and fall of a good many companies and games’ both roleplaying and wargaming came and went. The harsh tactics used by some of the larger companies to muscle out the smaller ones even made the news at times and hostile take-overs seemed to be the order of the day for many companies at one time. But during all this time the roleplaying hobby remained, not selling as much as its rival table top and no where near as much as the card games, but still selling at a steady rate.

New companies have emerged over the past couple of years and breathed new life into the roleplaying hobby. Pinnacle Entertainment’s ‘Deadlands’ is a prime example of the state of the industry and how it may shape up into the next millennium. Deadlands gives the players a stream of very good quality products at low prices and the release schedules are spaced out well enough for gamers to get the system without going into debt over it. A lot of companies could learn a lot from looking at Pinnacle and with luck Pinnacle will be among the leaders of the gaming industry into the new century.

In answer to the question I posed at the start of this article. Is Roleplaying Dead! I must say No! Roleplaying is still a valued part of the gaming hobby and long may it remain so.

Marc Farrimond