I don't really think that board games are having a nostalgia-fueled comeback, I think it's more economically driven. Board games tend to sell better when things are tight, even though they are slightly more expensive. The "bang for your buck" thought strikes dead center, here. As the US economy has worsened and shows little sign of stumbling to the next hurdle, sales of board games have, literally, skyrocketed. Which, to me, is a good thing. There are thousands of truly great games out there to cover the desires of any person, game player or not.

I'll freely admit little growth in the table-top RPG market, though. While great strides were made some years back with the advent of AD&D "3rd Edition," most of what was monumentally successful with that product was snatched away with the creation of a "4th edition." Any interest in earlier versions of the game system, or even similar games from an earlier production date may be due to the relative ease of locating the product cheaply through many different forms of electronic media, legal or otherwise.

The days of the brick-and-mortar stores are fast coming to a close. I'd wax nostalgic about that in fifteen years, I'll tell you!

Your points are well taken.

Re: Game world creation in RPGs; cool. I tend to agree. If it weren't for the players, many plots I created would have gone in a much more structured, defined path. With them playing their characters to the hilt, they've warped any ideas I come up with well beyond the intent. It's great!

Re: video/online gaming; agreed again. The current, "4th edition" rules of D&D are generally just a way to try to marry the two types of games. It doesn't work, but you can't fault them for trying. I just wished they had just separated the system and left well enough alone. Honestly, there is a growing portion of the game playing world out there that is eating up the old stuff and I think a lot of it has to do with the simpler rule sets and ability to create with your fellow player, rather than have the rules dictate too much to you.

I'm always up for a discussion of the connection between comics and games, having owned retail stores and run a convention for nearly a decade. I always felt there was a grave mis-step done somewhere to have so much disparity between the two... hobbies.

I'm fascinated by the way that RPGs (also through the medium of videogames) structures the way people think about storytelling, plotting and world-and-character building, how to . Not to mention the pop culture aspects (for example, Sonic the Hedgehog has been this incredibly successful title for Archie, and it's totally under comics' folks' radar). I'm interested in seeing avant-garde cartoonists using RPGs as both as a source of fantasy tropes that they can deconstruct and sometimes integrate rather sincerely. (Take this with a grain of salt, because I work for Fantagraphics, but I am over the moon about Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit.)

Funnily enough, a lot of comics folks I know, creators and critics, tried role-playing but, for whatever reason, it didn't work out -- probably because the isolation needed to be a cartoonist or a writer can sometimes be fueled by a bit of of "doesn't play well with others." At the same time, I read Tucker's piece about how videogames don't translate well into comics, and I thought many of his points applied to, say, novels based on RPGs, like those Forgotten Realms books.

Positioned as I am in the Pacific Northwest, basically the birthplace of RPG, makes me think about the material history of it too. (And those old roleplaying manuals, especially those '90s White Wolf ones, had some great art.) Not to mention the question of gender and gaming, the way that gamers are portrayed in the media ... I could go on and on. In fact, Kaz and I talk about gaming a lot in the second part of his conversation.

I'm curious about your thinking of storytelling structure in the media being influenced by RPGs. Do you feel it's a bad thing or just an interesting case study? I mean, watching a film like 'The 13th Warrior' and you'll just see one big D&D adventure, source material notwithstanding. Is it a bad thing or just a subtle, unnoticed and accepted foundation? I'll admit, I've used my own games as source material for stories, as have numerous fiction authors, just as I've used stories and movies as source material for the games I've run. It seems to me to be one big, circular, incestual way of gathering plots, whether it be RPGs, movies, television, comics or novels. Good or bad just depends on the outcome, I think. (Shall I mention Thora Birch in the first Dungeons and Dragons movie?)

Regarding others disinterest in gaming, well, it's all personal choice, I guess. I've never understood the complete aversion some people have towards gaming, whether it be RPGs or even board games such as Risk! I just shrug those folk off as lost causes.

I also think, in the case of those Forgotten Realms novels you mentioned, that they were being used as game plots for future game resource material. That whole gaming world was generating product to be used for an ongoing timeline that force fed ideas and events into the overall scenario. For me, a bad idea that ran me out of gaming as a whole for a few years.

White Wolf did indeed have some great art. They also had a great product that reinvigorated RPGs as a whole, in my eye. Without their initial success, you'd never see some of the great strides taken by other, newer publishers, much less the "old guard" of D&D, Chaosium and the others. You could go on to say that online gaming redirected some interest or focus, but I don't personally believe that. Then again, my interest and knowledge of online systems makes me feel like a man out of time.

I'm curious about your thinking of storytelling structure in the media being influenced by RPGs. Do you feel it's a bad thing or just an interesting case study? I mean, watching a film like 'The 13th Warrior' and you'll just see one big D&D adventure, source material notwithstanding. Is it a bad thing or just a subtle, unnoticed and accepted foundation? I'll admit, I've used my own games as source material for stories, as have numerous fiction authors, just as I've used stories and movies as source material for the games I've run. It seems to me to be one big, circular, incestual way of gathering plots, whether it be RPGs, movies, television, comics or novels. Good or bad just depends on the outcome, I think. (Shall I mention Thora Birch in the first Dungeons and Dragons movie?) I suppose I'm more interested in it as a case study, and probably as "subtle, unnoticed and accepted foundation" which could be "good or bad depending on the outcome." And, the fact that you can just take bits of things and make them into a story (I'm a history nerd, as well, so I can really geek out on period detail) a huge part of the fun for me: in fact, what I think makes playing an (tabletop, anyway) RPG game really fun is that it's a story that you literally couldn't create by yourself: that's it's a collaboration. I think that's where it really differs from comics, in that in comics, one person can create an entire world, all by himself or herself: the look of it, the characters, everything.

I mean, you don't want to conflate RPGs with bad examples of the fantasy genre (although for a lot of people, they're synonymous): in fact, it's interesting to explore the relationship between genre and RPGs (not only historically -- after all, D&D had to make some changes for legal reasons, i.e., change "hobbits" to "halflings" and all that). In fact, RPGs can be a way to play with the conventions of genre under the hood, so to speak. It might be useful as a tool for that.

I know lots of people who have no interest in gaming, and I wouldn't try to make them: some people's imaginations just don't run that way. (Which is actually how I feel about comics -- I was in an evangelical stage for a while, but now I think there are of people out there that have no interest in comics and frankly probably won't and shouldn't unless the right comic comes along for them.)

I do think there was a renaissance in gaming that was pretty influential within the field of tabletop RPGs, but I definitely do think think online gaming redirected some interest or focus, because a. even my friends who play the most frequently participate in MMORPGs b. it definitely increased and expanded who (kids, women, younger folk, older folk) might play an RPG-structured game c. is drawing away a younger generation. I don't know any children who don't have a videogame console or don't play little games online (granted, I don't know many children), but I know 0 who have indicated any interest in tabletop gaming. And if Wizards of the Coast didn't believe that online RPGs had had some kind of impact on D&D, why did they put supplements online, create "capability for online play via a virtual 3-D tabletop," and changing the rules and structure to be more amenable to someone familiar with computer games?