Worse from the big publishers. Better from the small press publishers.

Page count is up, but without much actual play value.

Production "prettiness" is up, but that's appeal to the collector's market, not enhancing actual play.

And most of the major publishers have politicized themselves and chosen sides in a divisive culture war to the detriment of the RPG community.

But we live in the Golden Age of the Small Press Publisher, aka the game designers who give a shit about actual play. The small press is extremely active, producing all sorts of interesting bits and have platforms like Kickstarter, Amazon and DriveThru with both PDF and POD to reach their audience without kneeling at the feet of distributors and big printers.

THAT is seriously awesome for the hobby.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1072109Page count is up, but without much actual play value.

Production "prettiness" is up, but that's appeal to the collector's market, not enhancing actual play.

Are you talking big or small, here? I'd criticize some small press stuff for erring on the side of low page count to the point where it feels rushed and incomplete.

Little to not art I can understand, except when there's a big Kickstarter going on. But then there are some basic text formatting tricks that wouldn't cost anything at all to implement!

I wouldn't say that "prettiness" specifically appeals to a collector's market. If you're talking art, I think it can make the book look nicer, and help find and convey information.

QuoteAnd most of the major publishers have politicized themselves and chosen sides in a divisive culture war to the detriment of the RPG community.

Eh, so have a lot of small press publishers.

Well I've liked each new edition of Savage Worlds and they don't invalidate previous content with each edition.

So better and better for me.

Quote from: finarvyn;1072082In 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 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.

The question I have is what are you looking up? It is section 3.14 of Procedure B or to read the write up on Improved Cleave ability or what the Corrupt spell does.

If it is the former then the rules are poor presented or too detail for one's taste. If it is the latter the only way is to cut down on the amount of "stuff" less spells, less abilities, less magic items, less monsters, etc. Unfortunately the problem is the stuff I would do without is not the same as the stuff you would do without.

Quote from: finarvyn;1072082Some 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.

Given the economics of publishing in the 21st century, I think this is self-correcting. For every publisher who feels they have to go at it alone, there is another who happy to play in a given rule system's sandbox.

The consequence of any publisher going at it with different terms or different system is they have to build up their audience from scratch.  I don't think publishers always get this.

If Pathfinder 2 is any guide, they're definitely getting worse.

Better. Production values are improving. New approaches are being tried all the time. And as we continue to innovate designers have more options available for mechanics.

And most importantly, there are so many publishers out there making so many different designs that you can find a game today catering to every taste. Old-school or new-school. High complexity of low complexity. Dedicated or casual. With every setting and theme under the sun.

If you can't find something to suit your tastes in today's RPG market, you aren't looking very hard.

Is there any hobby or field of entertainment getting worse at all? I mean, look at sports (say, NBA). It's been getting fairer and faster rules, less boring/more spectacular, more health friendly, more diverse ethnic/culture wise, etc.

I think it will be hard to find any segment of entertainment that's becoming worse, honestly.

Overall, I don't feel like things like games really are evolving 'towards' something. They are non-teleological like that. So overall, they aren't getting seriously better or worse. There have been a few waves of culling the cruft, so some stuff that was around from BITD perhaps because of technological issues (or production value issues, as no one can doubt that computers have made things just plain easier on some basic fronts there) has been cut. But overall, level based games are made as reaction to what was popular/losing popularity when they were designed now just like they were when Tunnels and Trolls was made as a reaction to oD&D. Open character designed games are being made by people who played GURPS or Hero System, 'but wanted it to...' just like TFT and Champions were designed 30+ years ago. There's no real forward or back, just reaction B to state of affairs A has changed into reaction Y to state of affairs X. Life keeps happening, I guess is what I am saying.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1072106Worse. 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.

'Set to' is the right word. The default is indeed easy, but it has clear, obvious and well-advertised rules right there in the core books that ramps it up to comparable to any other edition of the game (or even harder, if you turn all the knobs to hard, as even whatever edition you or I cut our teeth on assumed having magic items would be available to fight monsters resistant/immune to nonmagical ones). I don't know why designers didn't think of it before: design a system to be resilient to having an easy mode for playing with kids or the first time through when everyone is learning the rules, and a hard mode when you want to get down to brass tacks.

As others have mentioned, production quality is clearly generally improving, but it's also getting worse. The number of books with dominating fancy artwork and fancy page borders is increasing. I want artwork, but it does't need to be on every page, and I generally dislike the fancy page borders and such. And I'm sure there's still plenty of poorly bound books and such. But there's plenty of stuff coming out that has simple but elegant page layout with quality bindings and modest artwork (sometimes just B&W).

The drive for more and more complex rules will always be with us. Sure, certain game lines will go through periods of simplification (mostly D&D, but probably other lines also).

But I'm also mostly out of the market, and personally, other than Burning Wheel Gold, have mostly gone for earlier edition games (often preferring the actual first edition [Traveller 1977, RuneQuest 1]).

Frank

Quote from: S'mon;1072139If Pathfinder 2 is any guide, they're definitely getting worse.

A lot of effort was spent streamlining D&D3.5 without reducing any complexity or fiddlyness. PF2e is a testament to "bad idea from conception" and they still managed to put together a 400+ page book and at least one room of people thought it was a good idea.

If that doesn't convince you that PF2e isn't an elaborate and niche form of absurdist art, then I don't know what will.

For each Pathfinder book there's an OSR, a PbtA and a Gumshoe one. Convoluted rules are not a norm, but just a flavor nowadays.

Quote from: Haffrung;1072141Better. Production values are improving. New approaches are being tried all the time. And as we continue to innovate designers have more options available for mechanics.

And most importantly, there are so many publishers out there making so many different designs that you can find a game today catering to every taste. Old-school or new-school. High complexity of low complexity. Dedicated or casual. With every setting and theme under the sun.

If you can't find something to suit your tastes in today's RPG market, you aren't looking very hard.

This. It's not just a matter of quality but of variety too.

Of all of the things to be critical of in PF/PF2E, I really can't be critical of the size of the book.  It's a consolidated DMG and PHB, so it's really not any larger than the competition.  I'd rather pay $60 for a combined book, than $50/each for two separate books.

As far as stuff getting better or worse, eh, yes to both?

The more mainstream stuff seems to have an ever-increasing creep of bullshit identity politics making their way into it, so worse there - but, the books themselves are absolutely gorgeous, so better, but with that, they're getting far more expensive, so back to worse.

The not-so-mainstream stuff seems to be getting better, in general.

There's something to be said for some nice, crisp pen-and-ink art, instead of trying to grayscale a color image, which I still see far too much of.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1072106Worse. 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.

I would see this mostly as a GM issue - the fights are what you make them. (no comment on published adventures - I don't use them).

Quote from: S'mon;1072139If Pathfinder 2 is any guide, they're definitely getting worse.

Well, if you read the "So what is the consensus on PF2e?" thread on the Big Purple's d20 ghetto, Pundit will be proven right in his predictions.

Pazio hit lightning in a bottle with PathFinder due to a combination of several WOTC own goals: culmination with 4e going over with the D&D fanbase like a fart in a cathedral.

But those conditions no longer exist.

I believe Pundit is correct, and Pazio should recognize the 5e market shift and quietly slow their support for PF and start dual stating all their modules/adventure paths with 5e.

A gradual shift/downsize back to what made their name in the first place would have been the safe bet.

Now IMHO, if they were gonna take a chance on a PF 2nd edition. They should have been more bold: Go even more back to the roots of D&D than 5e did...

The PF 2e design goal should have been to be the B/X rules set to 5e's "advanced" rules. Take out all the crunch you can whilst still being able to dual stat the modules/adventure paths so that PF 2e would be more or less "Upwards Compatible" with the worlds most popular RPG...

They'd get to ride 5e's successful coattails, and PF2e would still have a reason to exist as its own thing.

Now whether or not enough of the current PF fanbase would follow that big paradigm shift to make it worth the time and money? That is a different question. (I tend to think probably not.)

But as it stands now, I think Pazio is proving that when left to their own devices game design is not their forte.

Quote from: Razor 007;1072047Serious Question.

I don't know.  The books that made the biggest impression on me and my gaming life are from the '80s and '90s, but I can't decide whether that's because they were better or because I was young when I read them and they sort of set my tastes.

I do think that self-publishing and the ease of online publication means there are a lot more mediocre, bad, or worse books out there.  There are also some really good ones.

Quote from: soltakss;1072081They are building on the past and improving mechanics.
Games are taking mechanics from each other and blending them.

I don't know if I buy this.  Too often new games just seem to want something "new" and "innovative," and completely ignore older games that did the same thing.

Quote from: soltakss;1072081Production quality is much better than it has ever been.
PDFs and Print on Demand open up the game to individuals rather than companies.

This on the other hand I agree with.