I suppose I am confused as to what the
expectations of sales are.
The top seller RPG is, and will remain, Dungeons & Dragons. And 5th edition is doing better than all previous editions of D&D. There's nothing to compare it to. It is the game people think of when they think "RPG" -- and nothing is going to change that.
Then there are several contenders. Pathfinder from Paizo, and Star Wars from Fantasy Flight Games.
And after that...? About 800 other RPGs. With new RGP products being launched on Kickstarter every month.
On my shelf I currently have:
- Lamentations of the Flame Princess
- Classic Traveller
- Burning Wheel
- RuneQuest 2nd Edition
- HeroQuest in Glorantha
- King Arthur Pendragon
- Primetime Adventures
- The Mountain Witch
- Sorcerer
- Sorcerer & Sword
- Mouse Guard
- Hollowpoint
- Blades of the Iron Throne
- The Nightmares Underneath
- Apocalypse World
- Whitehack
[
I should add I have owned countless games over the years -- including games I worked on years ago. This what I have on the shelf now
A few things to consider:
Those are just the games on my shelf. There are
countless games that I don't own.
I could happily pull any one of those games off the shelf and run them for my Monday night group.
Any one of them. And yet I can only run one at a time.
Even the games I own and love are competing for each other for attention to get played. If I am playing one it means more than a dozen games I own are not being played.
Many of those games are game many of you have never heard of. Which is sort of the point! How many games are out there right now? Lots! How many games are worthy of play? Lots!
On top of those games I have a ton of fantastic supplements and adventures I could be using with many of them. Particularly for the Lamentations and Basic D&D variants I have enough modules and setting material for
years of play.
YEARS. If I were to run
King Arthur Pendragon with the
Great Pendragon Campaign for my group once a week that would be two years of play right there. Two years!
Each is a great game. Each of those games offers up all sorts of different play styles and kinds of fun. If I'm playing one I'm not playing another one. And that list is crazy incomplete. I have friends I game with who have shelves full of games they are playing with other groups that I don't own and have not played yet!
With all this in mind exactly what are some people here expecting? That Traveller (as a game? as a setting?) suddenly sweep away all the competition and become the dominate RPG that everyone is talking about? In what sense? in what way?
Here is a think about RPGs -- at least here is a thing about RPGs for
me:
RPGs exist in
play. It doesn't matter when a game came out. It doesn't matter how old or new a game is. It doesn't matter how much people yack about an RPG online. What matters is gathering up some friends and playing the game. Then the game is alive.
It is like a book.
The Odyssey can sit inert on a shelf for years. But the moment I pick it up and read it, it is alive again.
I believe the same holds true for RPGs. And there are so many games right now, with a limit on the number of players and the number of hours in any lifetime that can be played that
of course most people are not playing any given game. Of course most people are not playing
Traveller (in any version) because
most games on any given night are not being played.
But if one wants to play a game, you pull the game out, you gather some players and you play. (And there are now many, many methods of gathering up players for play!)
Traveller can't "make a comeback." And it is in no need of renaissance.
It never went away. Different versions that deliver different kinds of play and different kinds of fun are readily available right now. What people are talking about on a website or what number of units are being sold in a hobby shop has nothing to do with whether you, or you, or me wants to sit down and play the game with friends.
There are people playing
Original Dungeons & Dragons right now. There are people playing
RuneQuest 2nd Edition right now. There are people playing
Mongoose Traveller, Fate, and
Dungeon World right now. And that is because someone set up a game and people showed up and the game happened.
To expect more... to expect somehow that everyone is going to care about what you care about given all the options and limits on time is a kind of craziness. Because at the end of the day when it comes to RPGs only one thing matters:
You pick up a game you want to play. You gather some folks. You play.