Serious Question.

Yes. No. Maybee.

Honestly things are about exactly the same aside from the current spate of SJW incursions Virtue signalling and all that garbage.

There are good games, bad games and WTF games same as theres allways been.

Yes and no. I seem to see/hear more about bad ones than good ones, though.

Needless fiddliness seems to be seriously in decline. I tried reading my old copies of MERP the other week and you just don't see stuff like that anymore.

Both, I think overall production quality is way up, even a guy putting his house rules together can turn out a decent looking game with a little effort these days. I remember buying a few games that were really just photo copied pages in a binder. Also lots of games where you kind of had to fill in the blanks and guess at how some rules were supposed to work, it wasn't uncommon to find situations where the rules were just kinda sorta implied.

On the other hand there is a lot of bloat these days, largely caused by an apparent need to spell everything out in excruciating detail. One example isn't enough, often there are two or three examples just to make sure nobody is confused.


I miss the days where you could get a good complete game in 64-128 pages.

Quote from: Daztur;1072057Needless fiddliness seems to be seriously in decline. I tried reading my old copies of MERP the other week and you just don't see stuff like that anymore.

Needless OOC mechanics seem to be on the rise.

There are so many different games out there that you're sure to find something to your taste. In that way things have got better. However, the chances of hitting a game that you hate has also increased. But on the whole, new RPGs in this decade tend to be complete (for what they are), well presented and playtested. Which is more than can said for some of the late 80s/early 90s games!

Quote from: Razor 007;1072047Are RPGs Getting Better, or Worse?

Better.

They are building on the past and improving mechanics.
Games are taking mechanics from each other and blending them.
Production quality is much better than it has ever been.
PDFs and Print on Demand open up the game to individuals rather than companies.

Some great answers so far, and mine mirrors some others: both.

In the old days I could run a game with just a GM screen (yellow one through Judges Guild) or a handful of reference sheets. Now games require more frequent rules look-up.

I think that RPGs are better in terms of production value, artwork, stuff like that. They also have more information to explain to a novice how to play, which is great until you learn how to play and then is needless extra pages. (They should make all "how to play" stuff a separate booklet which can be set aside.) In general they are better written.

I think that RPGs are worse in terms of the sheer volume of rules, but as was noted before this is improving over the worst era (which is D&D 3E IMO) as games are more streamlined. Some RPGs are worse written because they go out of their way NOT to use the vocabulary from other games; I assume they think this makes their game "original" but instead it just confuses a person trying to pick it up quickly.

Quote from: Razor 007;1072047Serious Question.

They are getting branding. That's for sure. But in the old days though, players thought that splat books would ruin RPGs.

10 steps forward, 9 steps back.  The overall trajectory is positive, but there are lots of vantage points from which you can't see that.

To be fair to the "uses different terms than other RPGs do" one significant reason for that is avoiding even the potential for a lawsuit if you're not using the OGL (I'm not... there are more than enough differences in my system for it to be its own thing and the fine print isn't worth it).

One can call that being gunshy, but my experience with legal matters and business is that right and wrong doesn't matter, it only matters that you're willing to pay more than the other guy to win.

The other reason, and one my biggest reasons for changing some terms, is that those terms have baggage. One of the biggest problems 4E had in several cases was in using previously established terms in ways that didn't line up with often decades worth of baggage. When DMs spend years describing every hit along the lines of "the axe cleaves into your gut" then a system where hit points only make sense when they're non-physical is going to feel incongruous (to the point even Mearls mischaracterized the warlord's healing as "shouting people's hands back on.").

So if calling them Edge and saying "you spend your Edge to avoid taking serious injuries" helps people to not think of them as "meat points" (which is what my playtests found) then using Edge in place of hit points is worth it.

Better. Games overall are better presented, better explained and better playtested than in the past.

Worse. Most of the recent games I've seen are set to easy and combats are like pillow fights. Even D&D5e makes an overnight rest into a massive restoration of hit points. Too many of these games focus on the assumptions that the PCs must always win.

Quote from: Itachi;1072104Better. Games overall are better presented, better explained and better playtested than in the past.

Agreed and seconded.

I find newer rpgs etter organized, presented and easier to learn. Unlike my younger tabletop  gaming days l no longer have the time and more importantly the desire to learn any rpg that does the reverse. Nor am I interested in any where combat takes forever to finish or learn.