The roleplaying industry is stagnant, and it’s causing people to quit the hobby. When I first wrote Why We Need to Innovate or Go Home last week, it came out of a growing frustration I have with the stagnation of the community. I find myself, and many others, turning away from roleplaying games and looking for other forms of interactive entertainment. Looking around I see most everyone I play with being far enough away that it’s inconvenient to get together on a regular basis to play. Nowadays I’m more likely to pick up a controller then dice; opting to spend time in a virtual world instead of my imagintion. So what steps can we take to start moving our hobby towards being able to break down the barriers of play?

In the war on our attention, what are we doing to truly innovate in our community? Not only bring new people to the table, but new ideas?

“Innovate or Die.” I read this poster almost daily at a client’s offices; it features some dead animal carcasses in the middle of a desert road. I think the constant exposure to the image makes it less gruesome then it sounds, but the words are burned into my skull none the less. I see innovation everywhere, the internet makes seeing the new trends as easy as turning on my computer. Every industry is experiencing a revolution, newspapers are making way to blogs, big R&D firms are turning to the masses to solve problems, and Twitter birthed a political revolution.