Quote from: Malleus ArianorumIt's simple -- cause and effect.
Cause: They hardly ever play the game
Effect: Therefore they crave more.

Someone who loves roleplaying but hardly ever plays has to express that love in some other way, by meticulously painting miniatures, writing exhaustive backstories, constructing intricate houserules, carefuly selecting spell lists, planning feats to level 20 and any other labor-of-love stuff that can be accomplished without actualy playing a game.

This, I think, is the nub of it. When we played D&D three or four times a week, we had no time to sit around at home and study feat chains. All we needed to fuel our game was a steady supply of adventures.

I suspect that a hefty portion of today's RPG market either does not play at all, or plays occassionally and spend a lot of time between sessions writing backstories, planning feats to level 20, etc. That's why a game can have a thriving community, a steady of supply of supplements, and see no adventures published in all that activity. You only need adventures for actual play.

Look at the Ars Magical forum. Thread after thread after thread on new spells, house rules, and rules minutiae. Very occassional a newbie pokes his head in an asks, um, how do I actually run an adventure for this game. A couple cursory responses and it's back to the rules and spells workshop. It makes you wonder how many of the 'active' community are actually playing the game, rather than simply generating huge libraries of spells and making up mages they'll never use.

The same thing happened to wargames during it's maturation as a hobby. The games got bigger, more complex, and less playable. Turns out half of all wargamers play only solo, or never get past punching the counters, reading the rules, and playing through a turn or two. Publishers picked up on this, and started making games that were interesting to read and impressive in their contents, with thousands of counters, multiple maps, and rules chock full of historical chrome.

Strange things happen to a game hobby when most of the market is made up of collectors and system fiddlers.

Quote from: SaphimBecause nobody demanded anything else than rules and most people still don't do. How many people buy rules books and how many buy setting books in comparison?

When are we talking about? Because in the 80s, a typical RPG had no rules expension, and shitloads of setting and adventure material. Now the reverse is true. Something changed.

Quote from: SaphimAnd that is ultimately the reason why the rpg market is shrinking, most rpgs at least the meainstream ones, are fucking inaccessible. Ever tried teaching a rules heavy system to a group of people who never played a rpg before? Tried that a couple of times with shadowrun (which isn't even nearly as complex as say D&D) and most of the time only got blank stares when I pulled out the rulebook and started talking.

 I agree 100 per cent. The preferences of the hardcore gamer run contrary to the needs of the new gamer. Cater to the one and you drive away the other.

Quote from: WarthurThe problem with designing adventures for REIGN is that for the adventure to make even the slightest bit of sense you'd have to choose what kind of Company to pitch it at - you can't design a module which is equally suitable for the rulers of a kingdom, the kingpins of a thieves' guild, a threadbare theatrical troupe and the hidden leaders of a near-extinct cult. Anything you produce will be entirely unusable in half the REIGN campaigns out there.

Sure. But wouldn't much of the crunch also be unusuitable to half the REIGN campaigns out there? Or is the assumption that everyone always wants more crunch?

Quote from: HaffrungSo what changed? And why?

To be glib about it nothing and everything. Seriously early D&D was all about crunch since Greyhawk was released, followed by Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, etc.

Then three AD&D hardbacks, followed by Deities and Demigods, Fiend Folio then ....

nothing until 1985 with unearthed arcana.

The early 80's was the golden era of D&D adventures. Blazed by Judges Guild prodigious output TSR followed suit then came the success of Dragonlance.

However Unearthed Arcana "saved" the company and it's success didn't go unnoticed. But it wasn't until the release of 2nd edition AD&D that splatbooks started to be churned out by the bucketful. 3rd Edition did nothing to change the trend.

You got out in 1989 when 2nd edition hit so you missed the rise of the 2nd edition splatbook.

Quote from: HaffrungWhen are we talking about? Because in the 80s, a typical RPG had no rules expension, and shitloads of setting and adventure material. Now the reverse is true. Something changed.
/QUOTE]


I don't think anything really changed. What are Greyhawk, Blackmoor and the rest of the OD&D books but splatbooks.

Bledsaw, Owens and the rest of the Judges Guild crew are the guys who put adventure and setting products on the map. They were a success because of a) price and b) let's face it a lot of us didn't know what the hell we were doing and appreciated the help. When your world consisted of a handful of books why wouldn't an adventure sell. Plus many of the older adventures were tournament modules from conventions and had a hell of a lot of playtesting.

Basically the early 80's was the golden age and Dragonlance was the height of success for TSR. But changed was the success of Unearthed Arcana, and later the fall of Gygax and the release of 2nd edition.

The splatbooks succeed because everyone buys them (player and GM). Everyone uses them again and again unlike most adventures. However I believe that adventures can succeed if they a) priced right, b) truly save the GM time, and c) written well. If you can make it useful beyond the presented plot then that is a bonus (like a village or town you can reuse.

The Dungeon Crawl Classics succeed because of a,b and c. When you buy a DCC product you know what you are getting as far as quality goes.

Quote from: HaffrungSix months after Gamma World was published we didn't see the Book of New Mutations, or Gear of the Apocalypse. The only thing you saw were adventures. Same with Call of Cthulhu. And Stormbringer.

They followed the lead of TSR. And when TSR showed how splatbooks could pay people followed that. But White Wolf probably sealed the deal with how they published World of Darkness to rise to #2.

Note that Call of Cthulu is still adventure oriented. Probably due to the emphasize on investigation. Also Goodman Games has two distinct brand revolving around adventures. The premise, one of them, Xcrawl, naturally makes the adventure the primary product of the line.

My initial response to the thread title was "about crunch? When did crunch become a bad thing?", because it seems to me that if you had a game that, you know, had answers for questions to a good measure of common occurrences in the game, a vocal segment of the populace decries it for being "too crunchy".

But it appears we are talking about the rules supplement thing here. Which is, yeah, old news.

Quote from: HaffrungBut what I find difficult to understand is how many of today's small, independent games are also the domain of insatiable system wonks. I mean, weeks after games are published, you see calls for more options, more talents, more feats, more monsters, more spells, when the owners of the game can't possibly have come anywhere near exhausting the existing options. It's simply unfathomable to me how many gamers crave more options for games that they have hardly even played yet.

For example, take Mazes and Minotaurs. It's a simple, home-made, old-school game. From what I understand, only a handful of people have even played it. And yet, in the months after it was released, there was a busy community of contributors eagerly adding more rules, more options, more monsters, more spells. Meanwhile, nobody had actually written any adventures for the game. Heck, nobody was even playing it.

Quote from:  Bradford C. WalkerIt's far easier to trust a machine than a man.

I hate me too posts, but I have to say me too to both of these even if they diverge a bit from the main question. I am especially puzzled by the Mazes and Minotaurs example, and the general lack of directly play-relevant material. Most of my output as a fan has been in the form of adventures, and with about two exceptions, all of them saw actual gaming. Yet I am surprised to be almost alone in this respect. A lot of people make free crunch, but I don't know too many people who make free adventures (the DF publications are exceptions, and some OSRIC products may more or less count).

Quote from: Caesar SlaadBut it appears we are talking about the rules supplement thing here. Which is, yeah, old news.

I think a game can be "too crunchy" / "too heavy" for many people's tastes from the outset -- without any supplements.

Quote from: HaffrungThat's probably true.

Maybe my personal experience was skewed towards the casual players. In the heyday of D&D we were 10-15 years old, mostly guys who found the rules D&D already a bit bewildering and hated math and homework to begin with. Even among DMs, game preparation was all about drawing maps and populating dungeons. I don't remember a DM ever adding more rules to a game, nor a player asking for more spells/options. The PHB and DMG kept us going for 20 years.

In my 20 years of running D&D/AD&D1E/AD&D2E, I can say I started houseruling from the instant I started running it, back in 1977 - I played one session in an existing game before starting up my own group as a GM. I was used to kitbashing and houseruling board and war games, and didn't hesitate with RPGs. Each time a new edition came out, I'd take what I wanted from it and can the rest. Some of my players enjoyed the process as much as I did, and between us we made it pretty unrecognizable from a rules standpoint. Other players enjoyed the results, but not the process. They were casual gamers.

All of my players had PHBs, and several had DMGS and other books. At one time I had 14 players in my group coming every week, but I pared that down to a more comfortable 7-8 after a while by attrition. I no longer run D&D because of burnout - 20 years is enough!

My experience seems to have been very different from yours, so perhaps you just happened to have all casual players. I seem to have had an unusually high proportion of non-casual players. It's tough to draw conclusions from limited data.

-clash

At least some of this can be the result of the cyclical search for Utopia in gaming.  "What role-playing games need are more rules."  Nope.  No Utopia there.  "What role-playing games need are less rules."  Nope.  No Utopia there.  "What role-playing games need are more adventures."  Nope.  No Utopia there.  "What role-playing games need are less adventures."  Nope.  No  Utopia there.  More setting material?  No Utopia.  Less setting material?  No Utopia.  More meta-plot?  No Utopia.  No meta-plot?  No Utopia.

Quote from: HaffrungLook at the Ars Magical forum. Thread after thread after thread on new spells, house rules, and rules minutiae. Very occassional a newbie pokes his head in an asks, um, how do I actually run an adventure for this game. A couple cursory responses and it's back to the rules and spells workshop. It makes you wonder how many of the 'active' community are actually playing the game, rather than simply generating huge libraries of spells and making up mages they'll never use.

Ars Magica isn't just an example, it's the pioneer. First of all, there is plenty of out of game busywork that's well suited to solitary play. Secondly the rules usualy have at least three ways to achieve the same effect. For example, if you want to see well, you could get (1) a vision virtue, or (2) improve character attributes (perception) with a virtue, or (3) get a virtue that gives you extra character points for your seeing skill or (4) get a virtue that gives you a bonus to your seeing skill or (7) get a virtue that lets you buy farie virtues such as several that improve your vision ( or get a virtue that gives you a magical item that gives you improved vision and so on.... So if you want to fart around with your unique snowflake eyesight you can do so endlessly. Thirdly, there's a fetishistic aspect to the rules where the tabulating, adding, dice rolling and so forth don't just adjudicate the results, they also simulate the activity. The library, labwork and longevity rolls are especialy like this IMO.

By pioneer I mean that I credit the analogous game-structures found D&D3.x to the Ars Magica to Tweet and Rein*hagan. Erik Wujick's rules have a similar quality, but they have a

Quote from: HaffrungSure. But wouldn't much of the crunch also be unusuitable to half the REIGN campaigns out there? Or is the assumption that everyone always wants more crunch?

Most of the crunch in the supplements (to my disappointment) is culturally specific to the default setting of REIGN, and is mainly character-level stuff - new types of magic to study, new martial paths to master, that kind of thing. Most PC Companies will probably have characters who are interested in that kind of thing; conversely, only a few would be interested in, say, detailed trading rules or mass battle rules.

Quote from: HaffrungLook at the Ars Magical forum. Thread after thread after thread on new spells, house rules, and rules minutiae. Very occassional a newbie pokes his head in an asks, um, how do I actually run an adventure for this game. A couple cursory responses and it's back to the rules and spells workshop. It makes you wonder how many of the 'active' community are actually playing the game, rather than simply generating huge libraries of spells and making up mages they'll never use.

To be fair, Ars Magica is a game where the downtime is at least as important as the actual adventuring; much of actual gameplay involves coming up with new spells and other advanced magical research, so rules discussions and spell ideas are damn useful when you're actually playing a game.

Also, I've never seen an RPG forum where newbies saying "Hey, how do I actually run an adventure for this game?" get more than a cursory response. Experienced players/GMs of a particular game already know the answer to that question, and have probably already answered it on that very forum a dozen times. It's no surprise when regularly-asked questions get a couple of replies and a polite request to search the forum archives; repeating oneself gets very boring very quickly.

Quote from: HaffrungI'm not doubting there have always been players who preferred very complex systems and couldn't get enough new rules. I'm questioning why rules expansions went from being the domain of a particular style of RPG to an absolute necessity for all RPG systems.

Because players like answers to their questions and game designers like to stay in business?

Quote from: RPGPunditNo, they're not. They're overflowing with pretentious bullshit.  They were in fact some of the first to KILL setting by making Setting an excuse to sell "splatbooks".

SETTING is stuff like what you used to get in the Old World Gazetteers for Mystara. Lots of cool details, random tables for encounters and for fluff material, stuff on local challenges, culture, etc. and really cool hex maps.

RPGPundit

Did you skip your Metamucil this morning? It sounds to me like you even want crunch in your setting (i.e. random tables and hex maps).

Quote from: HaffrungWhen are we talking about? Because in the 80s, a typical RPG had no rules expension, and shitloads of setting and adventure material. Now the reverse is true. Something changed.

A typical RPG you played. Several examples of crunch-laden RPG splatbooks and systems from the 80s, including D&D itself, have been given.