About seven months ago, after Gen Con Oz, I wrote:

"There were two separate booths advertising card-based RPGs, one kind of something like Runebound and another like Descent but smaller scale. The latter was called Dash-In Dungeons and although it looked rather primitive it did strike me as a possible indication of trend. With D&D 4E moving more and more towards Descent (and Descent moving more and more towards D&D) it seems that it is the confluence of gaming – the confabulation of board, online and roleplaying games – that may be the future. That is, after all what 4E seems to be: a miniatures based RPG with heavy MMORPG influences. If Eden ever publishes the City of Heroes RPG it could be equally interesting. But this doesn’t mean all RPGs have to turn into 4E; rather it is a reminder that confluence has always been a way of breaking barriers. Ghostbusters, one of the best RPGs ever designed had equipment cards and special dice. Recently, Exalted bought back the boxed set. While costs drive smaller publishers to PDFs, I wonder if those who can hit the shelves could take a lesson on this. Would Star Wars Saga benefit from coming boxed with map tiles and several Star Wars Clix? Should Hunter: The Vigil come bundled with a CD which contains a player-finder program and a dedicated server for online play? Is there more we can learn from MMORPGs than just tanking and damage per second?"

I have been vindicated in this prediction somewhat as the two RPGs I'm working on right now are both coming in a boxed set, complete with funky dice and shiny cards - and both of them ALSO have tie ins to major computer games. Syncretism is the word.

I've been thinking about board (and card) games of late, too. Judging by what industry skuttlebutt I pick up on the lists I'm on, outside computer gaming, board gaming is becoming increasingly popular and more importantly, increasingly profitable. Despite the rising production costs to meet the demands of the pretty and despite the golden age of design creating wall-to-wall consumer choice, a decent card game or board game can now carry an entire company, and help pay for the RPGs.

Of course, any time there's a successful industry, RPGs can do more than just benefit financially. That is to say, there's a lot to be learned and borrowed, in all directions. As mentioned above, there's the idea of RPGs that look like board games - the boxed set idea, and its kinesthetic inclusions. Such things certainly make it harder to have your game destroyed through pdf theft, which, in case you were wondering, continues to gut the RPG industry like a polar bear guts a penguin. And it's not just big companies and big production values: the indie game FreeMarket has its own card deck and chips. It and others are also starting to tout the virtue of low or zero prep games, because of course that's what board games have over RPGs. Indeed, great swathes of the indie movement could be characterised as a move towards board gaming ideas: they tend to be heavy on equivalent roles for all, on strange new (and heavy) dice mechanics and of course their numerousness encourages variety, just as with board games. Once upon a time you played one RPG for years. Now, as with board games, you pull open the RPG cupboard and get a whole new rules-set every evening - maybe even two or three.

Meanwhile, of course, we have things going the other way. FFG's Arkham Horror is rife with roleplaying opportunities and also works hard to create atmosphere and story moments. There's similar stuff in Last Night on Earth and Darkness Rising. Then there's Descent which resembles not just the old Hero Quest but the old AD&D Introduction Set - and of course, is just a skill system away from 4E itself. And then there's Android, a game which is actually based around resolving your characters' personal demons.

I read a quote once from Gary Gygax in about 1982, where he's talking about what RPGs might become in the future, and he describes something almost identical to the SSI games of the late 80s and early 90s, such as Champions of Krynn, and Eye of the Beholder - ie CRPGs. I have often thought that if computer technology had happened slightly earlier or Gygax had come along later, RPGs as we know them might never have existed because there would be just no need for them. That is, everything Gygax (originally) saw RPGs as being can and is done in CRPGs and MMORPGs. Luckily, others mashed those early skirmish mini games into something else, some strange marriage of improv theatre and internet newsgroup self-insertion shared fanfiction (a hobby also called roleplaying, and which again, had it existed in the 70s, might have stopped RPGs from ever existing). And now that board games are catching up, in a sense, with the production values of computer games and the social dominance of them, we wind up in a similar place. If Gygax had had Descent, he wouldn't have needed to put Greyhawk down on hex paper.

In short, for what people want out of an RPG - to move through something like a plot, to have a character of their own design, to make meaningful choices about goals and combat, to roll dice and produce random events, to make choices IN character even if they work against what might be best for winning the game...all of these are being met, more and more, in board games. And cleverly, just as 4E made itself resemble an MMO, many RPGs are turning themselves into semi-board-games to tie into that. And this is no bad thing. But like MMOs, we must wonder if it is a somewhat futile effort, in the sense that if a much wealthier, prettier, quicker and visible industry can give people most if not all of what they want, is it silly to try and pretend an RPG is a MMO or a board game? Can it actually compete, commercially or in simple terms of attractiveness to the average player?

I'm biased. Of late, I have discovered that if I have a choice between 4e and Descent, I'll choose Descent. And I'm also at the point where I'll probably choose Arkham Horror over Call of Cthulhu. It's far less work, and it's more social, and I can choose at any moment if I want to roleplay it out or just play it as a tactical game. And if I do roleplay, I'm going to generally want do something as far away from a board game as possible (otherwise there's no point), which means something very simple and mostly diceless. I can't be the only one.

I'm not saying the industry is dying. I am saying, that the BRPG has probably arrived, and like the CRPG and the MMORPG, it can't be ignored. It's in ur market base, taking ur players. So I don't know, you might want to wear a hat.