RPG Marketing Postulate

[stevekenson]

Any RPG that does not have all components needed to play it (including dice, character sheets, minis, etc.) packaged with it, will never break into the mass market. Discuss.

Comments

[wordwill.livejournal.com]

As several people here have alluded to, an RPG with all the components needed to play may be able to break out into the mass market were it to be mistaken for something other than an RPG. Though we have examples of this we can examine, like the MB board game HeroQuest, which is what happens who you package an RPG with all the necessary components, except for the RP part.

I've seen mock-ups of games that focus on RP and are utterly self-contained, and I believe they could enter into the mass-market as "imagination games" or "storytelling games," if we can agree that they are, more or less, RPGs.

Someone who knows better than me should also bring up the Pokemon adventure game, which is another example of this theory in action, and apparently sold gangbusters by RPG standards.

[cassandra-e.livejournal.com]

The Pokemon Jr. Adventure Game was the first thing I thought of in the discussion of mass-marketing RPGs. My son received it as a gift and it took about 30 seconds' study for me to realize, "Hey, this is a Pokemon role-playing game!" (Although it was all over the living room two weeks ago, I cannot find it to refer to now.)

The game is a little bit like a choose-your-own-path adventure except that it has a moderator (not the term used in the game), which the instructions assume to be a parent. The parent reads text aloud to the player(s), stops at key points to ask for a decision, and then carries on based on the decision. The main thing it needed to be an RPG was a note at the end that said, "Use your imagination to think of even more adventures like the one in this book!"

The game was easy enough that my daughter and son were able to play it together at ages 8 and 6; all it takes is a reasonably fluent reader. Prior knowledge of the Pokemon "world" is helpful; play would be not be as much fun otherwise.

The game did indeed come with everything needed to play; just open the box, read the instructions and go. The package is a tuck box with a slide-out tray. It is (going by memory here) about 3x6 inches and about 2 inches deep. The box could be displayed hanging, like collectible card sets. (Photos of the box and contents are available at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/images/game/1625)