The Business: The Death Grip of the RPG Design Cargo Cult (Part 5)

Let's start putting things together.

• Dungeons & Dragons is the most commercially successful RPG ever published.
• People wanting to make money, especially outside of tabletop RPGs, noticed this and tried to replicate it.
• The people replicating the design did not understand why it worked, only that it did.
• It took people familiar with the gambling business to begin explaining why D&D's design worked.
• Only now are RPG designers, especially in videogames, being deliberate in exploiting gambler psychology to extract more value from players.
• You do not need to ape D&D's form to achieve the function of its design if you know why it works.
• You also don't need to be a predatory shitheel and port in casino fuckery to make fat sacks of cash.
• Mastering this knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient, to succeed.

All RPG designs are not equal.

We're leaving the week-long focus on leveling to the side to bring up one other critical aspect, something metric fuckloads of wanna-bees and also-rans screw up, and screwing this up means that your game goes out like Jek Porkins.

Welcome to another dirty secret of RPG design: Your setting and campaign premise matters.

Remember that gameplay loop? The context wherein that loop occurs matters, and it matters because players--especially new ones--need that style to assimilate the substance. This is not new; "Five Elements of Commerciall Appeal in RPG Design" still makes the rounds after all these years and people--idiots--still refuse to heed this proven wisdom. Then they wonder why they have to rely on crowdfunding to have enough cash to eat and pay bills while Wizards of the Coast can actually function like a real company.

There is one thing that the linked Five Elements nails that makes or breaks games: Anarchy. A lack of anarchy, both for the characters and the players, is what sinks games time and again.

Said article nails the character end of the issue. Commercial success relies on the characters being able to come and go as they please, untied to any long-term commitments of any kind; we have over 40 years of field experience across the world now to draw upon, and it is nigh-universal that players regard the imposition of such as things to be shunned, shirked, shrugged off, or shot through the head. No "kings by their own hand" here. (It's one of the reasons the old D&D endgame of Domain Management died off.)

What people have forgotten is that this also applies to the players themselves.

Since the rise of the Internet in the 1990s, complaints about establishing and maintaining a group long-term have been constant topics of discussion. Players do not want to make long-term commitments to a game unless they're "having fun" (i.e. getting consistent dopamine hits). This is nothing less than saying "Fuck you, PAY ME!" Gamers are consistent in this behavior, and have been for decades; they'll stick around so long as they get their dopamine fix, and as soon as that dries up they dip out.

(This, of course, doesn't account for external interference--change of work, change of household, change in marital status, etc.--imposing itself on a group.)

In short, your game design has to allow for drop-in/drop-out play as the default condition. Your gameplay loop must be short enough to complete in a single sitting; an hour or two per loop at the maximum. Blizzard Entertainment gets this; leveling in the present expansion (Shadowlands, as of this post) and the three preceding ones (Battle For Azeroth, Legion, Warlords of Draenor) when they were current had this nailed down, and shortened it further as the expansion went on.

Guess what authentic D&D accidentally nailed early on? Exactly this. As reported by Jeffro Johnson, and explained by Dave Weasely before him, this is the real default gameplay loop of D&D. This is present here and now in the winning MMORPGs--World of Warcraft & Final Fantasy XIV--and non-RPGs are picking this up deliberately now in their multiplayer modes (e.g. Call of Duty: Warzone).

Tabletop RPGs, as a class, remain mired in this false myth of the Ever-Persistent Group. Then they wonder why games and campaigns fall apart, and products languish in retail such that smart stores stop stocking them entirely in favor of yet more Magic: The Gathering and Warhammer 40,000 product. Either you accept that this is not, and never has been, the norm and live forever in a narrow niche or you swallow that pride (and the blackpill within it) and actually make what the players want.

What the players want is a satisfying gameplay loop that makes them feel good--accomplished--through dopamine hits that they know exactly how to acquire, which is what playing the game is al about. They can dress this up as a fantasy adventure of treasure hunting, but you can dress this up as a superspy mission (Spycraft), as a hunting trip to gank a gnarly beast (Monster Hunter), as a heist caper (Shadowrun, Cyberpunk), as autonomous mercenaries in a weird war (TORG), and more. These are the ill-spoken, but proven, limits of the RPG as a medium.

It also proves by demonstration that is IS a wargame derivative medium and NEVER a form of storytelling or other narrative bullshit. (That's why narrative "games" fail.)

Conclusion:The RPG is a wargame derivative that relies on a premise of anarchic chaos for the unit and anarchy lack of commitment for the player along with a promise of reliable dopamine satisfaction disguised as a core gameplay loop. That is your game design. You need no Classes to do this. You need no Levels to do this. You need only create the structure to produce those effects, and you need to default to drop-in/drop-out short-term commitment for multiplayer play. Do this and win.

That lack of knowing why it is so, and only blindly aping what works, is why RPG design remains in the grip of a cargo cult.