Soapbox: About the Industry

The Other Magic: Niche Hobbies and Other Markets

Sandy Antunes
April 6, 2001

This soapbox is about another hobby of mine, and starts a short run on comparing the RPG market to other niche hobby markets. We'll tackle today a hobby that runs similar to the way RPGs evolved from wargaming. And perhaps, shows a path the RPG industry might return to. It's called Magic.

No, not the card game. Not the occult stuff. The bunny stuff-- and the card tricks, stage illusions, Houdini stuff. Many people enjoy watching magic in theaters, on television, and all over the place at Las Vegas. A smaller number of folks dabble in it-- know a card trick or two. And a very small group actually practice it avidly.

Extending the analogy to gaming, we can equate those who merely watch as 'fantasy fans'. Folks who know a trick or two as CCG players or people who played a game or two in school. And practitioners-- that's us gamers. With magic, dabbles at this level translate to RPG's 'players', while the professional term really fits 'GMs'.

Let's look at what Practitioners do. They buy gear. They buy books. Ah, books, that's what I'll focus on-- how the magic industry book trade compares with RPGs.

The way magic writers stay in the magic book business is by appealing to the core customers-- those who buy large quantities of materials. There are really only two main magic-book-buying groups: the dilettantes who get a mass market book or two for a present, and the serious dabbler or professional who buys an entire shelfs' worth on a given sub-niche or topic.

First off, for magic Content is King. Most magic books are rules books. They give tricks and presentations and patter, in an orderly fashion. A book may be praised for having 'useful illustrations' that better define what is happening, but rarely is the art commented on in an aesthetic sense. Indexes are luxuries. Sometimes, spell-checkers are luxuries. In many ways, this echoes the earlier days of RPGs, when a photocopies set of rules was 'a viable product'.

In a similar fashion, items one step up from photocopied pamphlets are still standard items. Most other books are limited run small press. They have very high prices and small quantities. They often sell directly from the author. We're talking runs as small as 250 books, at maybe 48 pages, selling for $30.

And then there are completists' dreams-- multi-volume sets fully collecting a given magicians work. These are still usually limited runs, but with higher production values-- and costs that start at $50/book and go up.

Compare this with RPGs: print runs of 2000 are standard, costs are typically under $30 for 128 page books, and art and layout are considered critical. Let's see... 2000 times a profit of maybe $6/book for an RPG, versus 250 times a profit of maybe $20/book. Woah... sell out a couple o' smaller runs and you're competitive!

Magic books are, like RPGs, hard to find. Unlike RPGs, though, this is intentional. There's a lore-like aspect to finding a good magic book. You may rely on magazine reviews-- but more likely, you're pointed to it by the folks at the local magic shop (which exists in most larger cities). Getting to these shops is often tricky.

Email lists and web sites provide a bit more leads on good books, but you still have to hunt. And word of mouth is still the best way to learn of items.

Magic books sell by aiming mostly at "GMs", with "players" being slightly secondary and everyone else ignored. Which is kinda how the RPG trade started. My goodness. Imagine going back to the days when gamers were actively seeking out the latest arcane product. When rules and systems, err, ruled. When production values paled next to "The Idea", that grant concept which the book was based on. When print costs were low and prices were high.

Now, it's evolved into glossier reading material. Most RPG books (it's generally estimated) are never actually used for a game session, simply read and collected. We've shifted from a Content (and Non-Fiction) market to an Entertainment (and Fiction IP) market. Shifting back would involve alienating a small market-- would there be enough core customers in the end to make it worth doing?

In some ways, it would be interesting to see a return to the old Content days. Hogshead's "New Line" games actually hinted in this direction-- publishing shorter works by name designers in a straightforward format at reasonable price. And hey, given the distribution market at the time, they were hard to find-- just like magic books!

Right now, new companies in the RPG industry seem to have a hard time getting into stores; stores have a hard time staying open; people think tabletop RPGers are a shrinking market. While I don't think the magic market model is viable for RPGs anymore-- gamers are too used to high production values-- I do think it's useful to look at other niches.

Regardless of whether Hasbro drops WotC, or if distribution changes, or if some other massive change hits, RPG gaming itself will survive. If it starts to slide underground, the magic hobby shows that such niches can still provide a viable income to its writers (though less so to 'companies').

That would involve a shift from the current IP market back to something closer to RPG's roots: the wargaming/rulebook/neat idea market. Ironically, it seems that pure ideas can be sold for a higher prices than actually fleshing out that idea. But such can only be sold to fewer people. Such is how the RPG market evolved. We're now entertainment.

In my next column, I'll continue cross-market comparisons by looking at RPGs versus pornography. Which is also (I'm told) entertainment.

Until next month,
Sandy