A person said they were writing a new game system and I had a certain viewpoint on that.  I didn't want to hijack the thread, though, so I'm starting a separate discussion.

Let me go off on a tangent for a moment.

Let me bring up World of Warcraft and other MMO's.  Blizzard spent just over a decade bringing out really great games and building their fanbase.  WarCraft ('94), WarCraft II ('95), Diablo ('96), WarCraft II expansion ('96), Diablo expansion ('97), StarCraft ('98), Diablo II (2000), Diablo II expansion (2001), World of WarCraft is announced (2001), WarCraft III (2002), WarCraft III expansion (2003), World of Warcraft (2004).  In that decade they built a massive fanbase, people who loved their games -- they sold over a million copies of WarCraft III within a month and sold more than 4.5 million copies overall.  When they came out with World of Warcraft, they had that huge fanbase of gamers already primed to buy a game and ready and eager to jump into WoW.

You have all sorts of big intellectual properties now that have looked at WoW and decided to create their own MMO.  The fans of those properties aren't all gamers, however, and they have no experience with the company (Lord of the Rings Online), or they actively didn't like things that happened in the past (Lucas Arts rushed out KotOR2 and Episodes 1-3 stunk, how can SW:TOR be any good).  Naturally, although the games represented huge massive intellectual properties with "ginormous" fan bases, the MMO's just weren't bought into as heavily as people bought into WoW.

Ok, getting back on track a little, you probably want to make money from your game system, right?  It's cool to have your own, but it's even cooler to see other people actually using your system and it's nice to be able to pay the bills without working a 9-5 job doing something that you don't like very much.  So do what Blizzard did.  Spend a decade coming out with really cool things and building a fanbase until you can bring out your own system.

I think Crafty Games had it right.  Bring out Spycraft, build up a huge fanbase, bring out Spycraft 2.0, get more fans (then downsize the company because of some mistakes elsewhere in the company), and finally bring out Spycraft 3.0 which will be built completely on their own system.

I think Paizo had it right.  They were responsible for publishing the Dungeon magazine and the Dragon magazine.  Finally Wizards of the Coast decided to bring that in house and Paizo went off to build this little Pathfinder game that you may have heard off, and since they already had a huge audience that they'd built up over almost 40 years, Pathfinder has been a huge success.

So, what's your opinion?  Should one person who may or may not have any RPG writing experience (might not have sold any published things in an RPG realm) focus on expanding a current system with additional adventures, etc., or should they just jump right in with a new game system?
This message was last updated by a moderator, as it was the wrong forum, at 05:20, Fri 18 Apr 2014.

While it would be nice to make money with it, I am actually making it so I can play it. There are several things I like about 3.x but I hate classes and anything related to the concept. So I made it classless, then added a few minor fixes and a couple innovations. For example, I added a bell curve, characters are flat footed at the beginning of combat only if they are surprised and unprepared, etc

I wanted magic to be versatile yet still have a reason for fighters to use swords, cause that part of DnD/PF just doesn't make any sense.

If my system gets played by me and friends, then I'll be happy. If it goes beyond that, then even better.

Besides, it would be mostly compatible with d20. Most mismatches are obvious to add elsewhere, such as bab bonuses apply to attack rolls 1 for 1. Mostly the difficult parts to cross use are class specific abilities or spellcasting (since spellcasting is no longer a sure thing and doesn't use slots.)  Even most magic items would work just fine.

Although, there is far less issues with "level differences"
This message was last edited by the user at 04:52, Fri 18 Apr 2014.

My opinion is that it's entirely up to that individual.  They're the one taking the risk.  Saying that people with no history of published work should stick to just writing for existing systems restricts the evolution of the hobby because eventually it gets to the point where the only thing being done, by anybody, is tweaks/additions to a limited number of systems.  Independent games, published by newcomers, are often a breath of fresh air.

After all, at one time nobody had any experience with writing/publishing RPGs - where would the hobby be today if somebody had told Gygax, Miller, Loomis, or any of those early RPG creators, "You shouldn't do this because you have no experience of doing this."
This message was last edited by the user at 05:49, Fri 18 Apr 2014.

I would say two things:

1 - Do what you feel is right. If you want to create a new system from scratch, for for it. If you want to build a game world, go for it. If you want to write some adventures for an existing system, go for it. Whatever makes you happy.

2 - Dream big, target small. By that I mean you can dream of being the next Gygax (or for that matter, the next Tolkien, Rowling, etc.) everyone should have big dreams. But set yourself small, realistic targets that are achievable. You won't become a millionaire author overnight, but you can get smaller pieces of work out there and read/used by others and grow from there. As Genghis said at the beginning of this thread it is worth building a loyal fan base to help with future works.
This message was last edited by the user at 05:53, Fri 18 Apr 2014.

Gygax and Arneson didn't spring from a vacuum either.  Gygax was head of a wargames club, then he started the International Federation of Wargamers to promote battles across clubs.  He started a convention so everyone could meet together and play (Gen Con), where he met Arneson.  Gygax started a company to promote a new wargame that he'd come up with (Chainmail) and Arneson had these great ideas for how to have this cool game with friends if you played a single soldier who could "level up" instead of as a warband.  They started D&D and Gygax started TSR to publish it.

By the time Gygax's TSR was publishing D&D, he had a ton of people who knew him, who looked up to him in a leadership position from the IFW and Gen Con, who were open to new ideas and experimenting with different games (they traded different rules and games through the IFW), and his "followers" were scattered across the US, so there was plenty of opportunity for word of mouth to spread things even further (and TSR did plenty of its own advertising as well).

None of which changes the fact that there were no other RPGs out there for him to gain experience with before publishing his own.

Playing a game intended for friends first (and getting advice from others regarding it) seems to be exactly what was intended in the post you were originally talking about.  So still not seeing any real difference between the two situations, I'm afraid.

I'm not sure how much it affects your point, but Gygax/Arneson and Blizzard didn't really start out with that end state in mind.

Blizzard had success with a bunch of games, notably the Warcraft franchise, which led to lots of money and an internal culture. The MMO market was becoming a big thing, so they took another business venture leveraging the name recognition of "Warcraft" and their own studio's recognition, along with elements of previous MMOs they thought would work well with a huge sum of money, and it worked. Unless there's a secret history I'm missing, Blizzard wasn't founded to rock the MMORPG market 10 years before there was one.

No, I'm not saying they started working building more familiar things in order to release their more revolutionary thing down the road and garner tons of praise and money.  I am saying that they did start working building more familiar things and didn't really attempt more revolutionary things until they were farther down the road.  So they didn't go down the path with their end result in mind, but I think we can look at how they walked down the road and get some suggestions for how we might better walk down our roads in life.

That's my idea, anyway. :)

Having developed modules/adventures/home-brew settings as well as supplements, I can tell you that it's a lot of up and down.  There's times the ideas keep flowing and other times you might as well be in bed.

Best advice I can offer is this: Do it for the fun of it.  When it becomes "work" then you'd best hang it up and try something else.

It's funny to hone-in on the WoW development.

Yes, the statement that having the fan-based primered helped a LOT.  It's likely the only reason that WoW is still doing well today (it's actually awful, but people like lore/fluff they can readily remember from prior games.)

That being said - I believe this question is a matter of drive.

CCP games made Eve (one of the longest running MMOs, and easily the most currently in-depth one out there for its time) almost entirely from scratch.

Now to actually answer your question without "whatever feels good" platitudes:

1) If you want to develop reputation and see if "you can succeed" before you dive into the deep end of the business, then it might be best to make modules, do small projects in an existing system that already sees a lot of traffic.  (This is why Wizard's OGL was a boon for small-publishers, but a nightmare for retailers.)

 - Small and new publishers got a chance to enter the industry, at a much faster clip than having to design their own unique system, and hope to make it work against Wizard's massive marketing machine.

- Retailers hated it because it was hard to discern a quality product from garbage in advance, and know what to waste money on stocking.  However, with enough outcry it becomes easier to decide upon what to keep in the stores.

-- positives to this route? If you can actually read and write in ENGLISH and not gibberish, and make the time to product a product that looks decent - you can easily get into the publishing industry this way.

2)  Write your own system, brand it, and then immediately decide whether you want to be "closed" (DnD 4th) or "open" (DnD 3.X).  The first option will make it take MUCH longer for your game to gain traction, as there is less (not necessarily little) incentive for others to get involved what your product.  If you go with open, you will be allowing others to keep with you on your own product - however; it becomes much easier to market through "abundance."

These larger-market behemoth publishers seem to make it harder for smaller/indie companies to flourish, but that isn't always true. The huge success of D&D's 3rd edition, put -many- companies in business, even ones with no stake in OGL products.

They bring attention to this genre of gaming, which drives up sales across the board as normal, even if they are fad purchases. You should publish your book and have it sold alongside North Face jackets. That will get your titles out there, regardless of the purchasers knowledge of RPGs.

Crazy strategy? Perhaps, but it would probably work. Take a booming product and attach to it with what you have. Take older editions of D&D for example. I would wager the amount of Basic/1st/2nd edition D&D players has drastically increased since the release of 3rd edition. I would wager that the purchase of any MMO product has drastically increased since the release of Star Wars Galaxies/World of Warcraft/etc.

Fate is a recent system that started from nothing with pretty much no relations to the D&D wave aside from being a role-playing game. Now, in its 3rd edition(Core), it has a huge following.

Make a good product you believe has a place in the catalog of products, have it produced and marketed well, and you are set.

As I mentioned about about cling-marketing, many companies cling their new products alongside more well-known ones(OGL-style) to get their foot in the door.

The bit you're forgetting, I think, is this...

Every single one of those was their own game system/engine using their own intellectual property, or an update of a previous game system/engine they developed or an advance of their own intellectual property. They didn't start by using someone else's IP nor someone else's game system/engine.

Sure, things can be a lot easier when you start with an open source game system, especially something hugely popular, but your analogy doesn't quite work the way you think it does.