I've noticed over the last few years that there's loads of really awesome boardgames out there.
The production quality and stuff you get with them are really impressive, like loads of good quality boards, dice, figures and all sorts of stuff.
I regularly goto a gaming club at our local community centre (on a Tuesday) and we play RPGs, board games etc.
About half the people who come play Boardgames the rest RPGs and everyone seems to play equal amounts of either so no particular preferences individually of RPGs over Boardgames.
Even so, I would have said some years back I would prefer playing RPGs over boardgames, but these days the Boardgames are really interesting and just great fun to play, especially for one off sessions.
Anyone else noticed this?
I wonder if the high quality of boardgames are good or bad for RPGs.
One one hand they probably DO take people away from RPGs, but I bet they bring people into RPGs as well..
Also Boardgames take less organization so the prep vs fun level is great.
Still there's nothing quite like playing an RPG and having characters that develop over time and storylines that continue etc..
Its about as good or bad as the state of basketball's popularity is for football, I would say.
There been a generational change in boardgames lead by the euro-games such as Settlers of Catan and Carsonne. The quality of the current crop of games is quite high.
I like boardgames, but given a choice, would play an rpg every time.
For me, a boardgame is plenty fun at the moment, but an rpg gives me more with its long term nature.
I think boardgames make a good entry drug. There's not that much of a conceptual leap from Doom or Descent or Super Dungeon Explore to an RPG.
I just dropped an embarrassing amount of cash on Catan, Munchkin, and Dominion. Why? Because my kid likes them better than RPGs...
Quote from: danskmacabre;571922Anyone else noticed this?
Boardgames have been on the up and up for sometime compared to RPGs. They really hit their stride around 10 years ago with the surge of German board games.
I don't think that board games and RPGs are necessarily competitors. I find them to be complementary. However, board games seem to have been more successful in adding RPG elements than RPGs have been at adding board gaming elements IME. This may make it seem like board games are making in roads.
As you say though, board games will never be able to fully scratch the itch that and RPG does. However, games like Road to Legend for Descent do show that you can have characters that develop over time and storylines that continue in a board game (a 120+ hour campaign in the case of RtL).
Quote from: Skywalker;572143As you say though, board games will never be able to fully scratch the itch that and RPG does. However, games like Road to Legend for Descent do show that you can have characters that develop over time and storylines that continue in a board game (a 120+ hour campaign in the case of RtL).
While this is true, a lot of what I said in the other thread about the XBox holds true for boardgames as well:
1) Boardgames require less preparation, and typically take less time to complete
2) There is less impact if someone can't make a given session
3) They are typically easier to learn/master than a given RPG
Stuff like that...
Quote from: mcbobbo;572145Stuff like that...
I agree. I play board games a lot when RPGs are impractical as they have a number of advantages over RPGs. I think the same is true in reverse too though.
Quote from: Skywalker;572147I agree. I play board games a lot when RPGs are impractical as they have a number of advantages over RPGs. I think the same is true in reverse too though.
But more board game improvement then necessitates more RPG improvement, and some of the nasty gotchas aren't flexible.
Well companies like FFG keep trying to make RPG hybrid Board games like Decent and Warhammer FRP 3e some like them some don't, I have both and enjoy them but the setup and takedown time involved is the problem for me, so they get played less than a standard rpg. Except maybe for my Zombies! board games, those are fun and quick to play.
Boardgames have been a big fad the last few years, the way CCGs were a few years before that. It remains to be seen if the bulk of them will end up prevailing, or split up into smaller micro-fandoms/hobbies, or mostly just vanish. I'll be curious to see if anyone will actually be playing Cataan, much less anyone new, in 20 years.
RPGPundit
I know your point was will Catan be played still 20 years from now, but FWIW Settlers of Catan is already 17 years old.
Quote from: RPGPundit;573103Boardgames have been a big fad the last few years, the way CCGs were a few years before that. It remains to be seen if the bulk of them will end up prevailing, or split up into smaller micro-fandoms/hobbies, or mostly just vanish. I'll be curious to see if anyone will actually be playing Cataan, much less anyone new, in 20 years.
They've been doing fine for 17 years already. The adult board games hobby isn't a fad, although it's definitely in a protracted growth phase right now. The CCG industry came into existence, boomed and then collapsed to its current steady state in less than a decade.
I've noticed I can have a pretty good time playing a boardgame with total strangers.
For rpg's, I need to be playing with my friends.
(These are my two biggest hobbies, with RPG's being #1)
Quote from: RPGPundit;573103Boardgames have been a big fad the last few years, the way CCGs were a few years before that. It remains to be seen if the bulk of them will end up prevailing, or split up into smaller micro-fandoms/hobbies, or mostly just vanish. I'll be curious to see if anyone will actually be playing Cataan, much less anyone new, in 20 years.
RPGPundit
Uh, not a fad, and not just the last few years. They started in the 1970s in Germany. The Spiel des Jahres game of the year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiel_des_Jahres#Game_of_the_year) awards go back to 1979 with Hare and Tortoise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_and_Tortoise) (a 1974 game), and Essen (the GenCon of Euro-games) started in 1983.
They reached the US 17 years ago, but were already big in Europe before then. Really they've been around about as long as D&D.
You might be interested in this history of the Euro-games (http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GermanHistory2.shtml) article, which is told from the North American perspective.
Quote from: Mistwell;573337Uh, not a fad, and not just the last few years. They started in the 1970s in Germany. The Spiel des Jahres game of the year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiel_des_Jahres#Game_of_the_year) awards go back to 1979 with Hare and Tortoise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_and_Tortoise) (a 1974 game), and Essen (the GenCon of Euro-games) started in 1983.
They reached the US 17 years ago, but were already big in Europe before then. Really they've been around about as long as D&D.
You might be interested in this history of the Euro-games (http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GermanHistory2.shtml) article, which is told from the North American perspective.
Were they as mainstream-popular in Germany prior to the big boom in board games of the last decade?
The point is that the euro-game boom has relatively ordinary people playing a variety of weird board games, some of them quite good, others definitely not. Sooner or later, I think that's going to burst as a bubble, and you'll be back to regular people playing monopoly and fringe geeks playing games like carcassonne.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;573727The point is that the euro-game boom has relatively ordinary people playing a variety of weird board games, some of them quite good, others definitely not. Sooner or later, I think that's going to burst as a bubble, and you'll be back to regular people playing monopoly and fringe geeks playing games like carcassonne.
I doubt that anyone who has tried something better than Monopoly (which is a horrible, horrible game) will ever want to go back. The classic games like Clue have brand recognition but that is pretty much all, when newer games can offer more consistent playtime, more engaging game mechanics and less reliance on luck. I have no doubt that certain publishers and games will eventually hit the wall (Steve Jackson Games & Munchkin I am looking at you), but there is no way of going back to the situation 20 years past.
Pundit's just doing his Mike Myers "Scottish shop" routine. Pay no mind.
Quote from: RPGPundit;573103fandoms/hobbies, or mostly just vanish. I'll be curious to see if anyone will actually be playing Cataan, much less anyone new, in 20 years.
RPGPundit
Talisman has been around since the 80s. It's probably as popular now as it ever was.
I expect there probably WILL be a retraction in the popularity of boardgames at some stage, but really the quality is very high atm and older boardgames are getting reworked as well.
Quote from: danskmacabre;574058I expect there probably WILL be a retraction in the popularity of boardgames at some stage, but really the quality is very high atm and older boardgames are getting reworked as well.
My ten year old loves them. More than computer games and even more than his DS. He's in it for the socialization aspect, and likes to test his mettle against the adults.
Will that change? I rather doubt it.
Further I think the quality of the Catan set we just recently purchased is so high, I expect he'll be able to introduce it to his own kids.
I started playing Axis and Allies, Diplomacy, Talisman, Dungeon etc when I started RPGs in the early 80s. Unlike RPGs, they seem to steadily get stronger over at least as many years. I am pretty sure board games are in no danger of just being a fad.
Quote from: danskmacabre;571922Anyone else noticed this?
I went to Gencon this year for the first time in a decade. I noticed a couple of things:
(1) There was still plenty of young blood walking those convention hallways.
(2) The average age increased by at least 5 years (possibly 10) the instant you walked into the RPG rooms.
Right now, boardgames and CCGs are just flat-out better at attracting new blood than RPGs.
CCGs and boardgames are memetically viral in all the ways that RPGs used to be but no longer are: No long-term commitment, variable group composition, minimal learning curves*, and easy pick-up play. They are inherently open tables (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1223/roleplaying-games/opening-your-game-table) the way that RPGs were open tables in the '70s and early '80s.
(*Even a more complicated boardgame like
Twilight Imperium still has a rulebook that's a fraction of the size of a typical RPG.)
Why did wargames die? Because they went from games that featured all the advantages of boardgames to a specialized entertainment that required long-term commitments, static group composition, steep learning curves, and a complicated set-up that prohibited pick-up play. They stopped being memetically viral.
RPGs have followed the same path: The industry is dominated by specialized games that are built around a long-term commitment to a multi-session campaign; a static group made up of the people playing in that campaign (and expected/required to attend every session); steep learning curves in which even creating a character can require reading a 300 page rulebook; and a requirement for complicated, time-consuming prep work.
I just attended Gen Con Indy as well, with my son, nephew, and niece (12, 12, and 8) in tow. I would agree that board and card games are continuing to grow in popularity, and they are pulling in younger players, couples, and families much moreso than RPGs.
Regarding CCGs, Magic: The Gathering was still enormous at the con. Collectible card games might not be growing like they once were, but they are established at a very popular level. A MtG toolkit is at #12 in the Amazon bestselling games list, just behind Uno and way ahead of Monopoly.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/toys-and-games/166220011/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_t_1_2
I think that almost certainly most of the current explosion of board and card games are going to be passe, but I think there will be plenty that survive and thrive in future decades.
One anecdotal difference in board game popularity is...I bought HeroQuest at Wal-Mart. That was my first "GM" experience. Much like how RPGs used to be found at Toys'R'Us, I haven't seen any of the cool "gateway" games outside of specialty shops.
Well, Settlers of Catan is seventeen years old, so it's not just the past decade or so for the boardgame boom.
I look at it as cross fertilization, particularly in a game store environment. You get some people who play boardgames who come in and decide to try an RPG based on a play session at the store, and you get an RPGer to play for a quick fix while waiting for everyone else in the game group to show up.
Looking at the dealer hall in GenCon, some people might flip out over the lack of RPG space, but I look at the overall size of the dealer hall and think that there's plenty of room for both groups. What'd worry me more in GenCon is if you start getting far too many non-gamer related booths popping up, because those would be taking away from potential gamer vendors. It'd also indicate that the faddishness of gaming is approaching bubble levels, because people not even associated with gaming were trying to cash in.
(The last time I went to the Dayton Hamvention and roamed the flea market, there was a marked uptick in the number of non-electronics/amateur radio/shortwave radio booths out there, which disappointed me. I didn't go to Dayton to buy jam, for fuck's sake; I was hunting for a Hammarlund HQ-180A.)
My own experience has been RPGs first, then RPGs go on the back burner (except for that long running 3.0 campaign), then RPGs ascendant again as the kids discover them. I can see both RPGs and boardgames played in our house, and that's fine with me.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;574240Why did wargames die? Because they went from games that featured all the advantages of boardgames to a specialized entertainment that required long-term commitments, static group composition, steep learning curves, and a complicated set-up that prohibited pick-up play. They stopped being memetically viral.
That's why I think Colombia Games' wargame line is brilliant. Their block system make their wargames easy for a pickup game. Same thing with Richard Borg's Commands and Colors system.
Quote from: Tommy Brownell;574404One anecdotal difference in board game popularity is...I bought HeroQuest at Wal-Mart. That was my first "GM" experience. Much like how RPGs used to be found at Toys'R'Us, I haven't seen any of the cool "gateway" games outside of specialty shops.
You aren't going to find adult-oriented board games in toy stores/departments that are aimed entirely at children, which is what Toys 'R' Us and Wal-Mart's toy departments are.
Here in Canada, for instance, there's a hobby shop in every mall with a selection of these games, and during Christmas the kiosks in the mall concourse are filled with a larger selection. Chapters/Indigo (a national brick and mortar book retailer) used to stock large quantities of Eurogames during the Christmas season; now the larger locations stock them year-round.
It's possible the retail chain is significantly different between the US and Canada, but I suggest you look in places that sell adult parlour games, rather than children's toy stores, and see what their selection is like.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;574240Why did wargames die? Because they went from games that featured all the advantages of boardgames to a specialized entertainment that required long-term commitments, static group composition, steep learning curves, and a complicated set-up that prohibited pick-up play. They stopped being memetically viral.
Die?
Wargames are bigger now than they have ever been. Even the halcyon days of Avalon Hill, SPI, et. al. of the 1970's couldn't match today for variety, quality, aesthetics, diversity, or sheer volume. Wargames have been on a strong, steady upswing since about 2001 (even the hex based ones).
You also can't rule out that the big hex wargames didn't die, they just migrated to the computer.
Matrixgames has been cranking out massively complicated hex-style wargames for years, successfully.
Quote from: SJBenoist;574479Die? Wargames are bigger now than they have ever been.
Fascinating. Tell me about the multiple wargames each year selling 50,000+ copies. Point me in the direction of the dedicated magazine with 30,000+ subscriptions.
Quote from: SJBenoistDie? Wargames are bigger now than they have ever been.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;574753Fascinating. Tell me about the multiple wargames each year selling 50,000+ copies. Point me in the direction of the dedicated magazine with 30,000+ subscriptions.
These statements aren't necessarily incompatible. Has a wargame magazine every had that many subscribers? I know that Dragon Magazine had a peak of a little over 30k subscribers back in 1984-1985, but hasn't come close to that since then. I don't think that any of the wargame magazines were ever that popular.
So maybe by Justin's definition wargames have always been "dead" - but SJBenoist's claim could also be true that they are bigger now than they have ever been. Wargames were never particularly mainstream, and they didn't have a peak fad like D&D did in the early 80s.
Quote from: jhkim;574849These statements aren't necessarily incompatible. Has a wargame magazine every had that many subscribers?
Strategy & Tactics.
I said wargaming died because it
died. Admittedly, it died right around the time I was being born. But I'm assuming that people like Jim Dunnigan, Greg Cotsikyan, and Lou Zocchi aren't just lying to us all about what wargaming was like in the '70s.
Your reasoning is faulty, and you should never assume :) The perceptions of those men are not facts, and while their contributions are to be respected, if they claimed what you write, they are absolutely mistaken.
The number of magazine subscribers to S&T is not proof the market was larger.
That said, even with the amazing decline of magazines in the 21st century, I think you'll find White Dwarf well exceeding those numbers by about 300%. And that magazine only covers a single company's products.
Nor are sales of any single title, which are currently unavailable as companies no longer release data like that.
However, when the number of companies has grown over 10-fold, and a single company has 32 titles currently in production for release, another 14 shipping, it's a lot harder to sell as many copies of one title as it used to be when your market had only one or two choices.
If you are not a wargamer, I understand you may very well be completely ignorant of what has occurred in the last decade, how many wargame companies have emerged, and what kind of business companies like GMT are doing.
Just for a quick example, consider the options for squad-level, hex-based, WWII:
1960's and earlier:
(nothing)
1970's:
Squad Leader
Tobruk
1980's:
Advanced Squad Leader
1990's:
(nothing)
2002 and onward:
Advanced Tobruk System
Band of Heroes
Conflict of Heroes
Combat Commander
Valor & Victory
Retro
Band of Brothers
(Fringe cases for Memoir '44 & Tide of Iron)
That's more than twice as many titles as the whole hobby had ever seen, and this list is ignoring expansions, as the 2002 onward category would be absurd and on the order of 100's ... though there would be less than 4 for the 1970's in total.
And this is cardboard chit, hex-based tactical only, the "deadest" of all wargame types (or so I read, lol).
You'll find this repeated even more severely for most types of wargames, and at all levels of wargame (simple, moderate, complex). You'll find the same for solo games, for miniatures games, for strategic games, for operational games, for probably any type of wargame you can think of.
Does that sound "dead"? When was this "death" supposed to have happened?
(Zombie Wargamers!? ... hmmm.)
Quote from: Tommy Brownell;574404One anecdotal difference in board game popularity is...I bought HeroQuest at Wal-Mart. That was my first "GM" experience. Much like how RPGs used to be found at Toys'R'Us, I haven't seen any of the cool "gateway" games outside of specialty shops.
Yeah I noticed this in our local Toys 'R' Us in the UK. They no longer stock any of the various boardgames they used to, it's all monopoly and generally all the mainstream stuff.
It was quite disappointing actually, I used to (many years ago) love to goto Toys 'R' Us and explore the large range of boardgames.
Still, it does mean we goto the smaller specialist RPG/boardgame stores like "Forbidden planet" and independent RPG stores to browse and actually for boardgames which are a much more visual affair (meaning I want to physically see it before buying), I DO tend to go into a shop to buy rather than buying online.
Quote from: SJBenoist;575022Your reasoning is faulty, and you should never assume :) The perceptions of those men are not facts, and while their contributions are to be respected, if they claimed what you write, they are absolutely mistaken.
You're claiming that Jim Dunnigan's perception of how many subscribers S&T had isn't a fact?
Oh, fuck off.
If you want one reason why now is a pretty good time to be a wargamer, it's because the wargame companies are healthier than they've been in a long while.
GMT is the flagship here, because of the P500 they print only when they've got enough commitments for a print run to at least break even. With companies following the GMT model, they can afford to print wargames that they know will be supported.
The wargame model itself has been hybridized into newer boardgames, such as Twilight Imperium III. (TI 1 was a lot closer to the standard wargame than III, but if you look you can still see some of the wargame elements in III.)
While the sheer number of players isn't as big as found in the 70s and 80s, the wargame industry still survives on a decent financial footing.
Wargames have moved to the computer interface.
War games are ideally suited for this and the number of people playing wargames on their PCs/consoles is much bigger than the number that ever played hex and chit or minis based wargames.
You can argue the same is true of RPGs. A lot og people get their RPG kicks from WOW and other online games or even first person shooters that are a migrate from RPGs in effect.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;575110You're claiming that Jim Dunnigan's perception of how many subscribers S&T had isn't a fact?
Oh, fuck off.
Wait .... what? :/
I'll take this as conceding the point while trying to save face :)
I commented that anyone who tries to tell you wargames are dead is mistaken, regardless of who it is.
I answered your subscription question, and I didn't even bother to note that there are more wargaming magazines lines printed today.
I'd imagine the biggest wargame company right now is probably Games Workshop.
I would also say total number of players is probably as high (or higher) than it has ever been. The difference is the number of options available have spread the population over hundreds (maybe over a thousand) different games, whereas the 70's saw pretty much everyone playing the same stuff.
People tend to exclude whole categories of wargames when assessing size, which is odd as most wargamers I've ever met have played wargames of every type (or most types). Hex & Chit, Miniatures, Pre-Painted Models, (true) Solo, Card Games, Computer games, Historic, Fantasy, and so on.
Sometimes one of the subtypes will experience a boom, then cycle back to normal. This recently happened with some "clix" style wargames, though right now pre-painted wargames are on the rise.
Everytime the subtype normalizes (IOW, the "boom" ends), people declare it "dead", whilst totally ignoring the other 95% of wargaming.
Quote from: SJBenoist;575196I'd imagine the biggest wargame company right now is probably Games Workshop.
That kind of begs the question whether GW is a wargame producer, or a "paint and collect minis" producer.
Yes, I think there's a terminology problem here. While I agree that things like WH/40K are certainly wargames of a type, the people in this thread using the word "wargame" seem to be using it to exclusively mean "hex and chit board wargames".
I've seen people do that, but it seems to be mostly non-wargamers. I've actually seen definitions of "wargame" that seem to be "Exclusively Avalon Hill, SPI, and maybe Yaquinto", which to me is like defining RPG's as "TSR with Gygax, and nothing else". It's particularly odd as the heyday of the 70's, you would not have been able to find someone who did not label miniature games as "wargames".
The distinction seems to come from the 1990's.
The first generally recognized hobby wargame (as opposed to military tool) is H.G. Wells Little Wars, which is a miniatures game.
Chainmail, universally described as RPG's "wargame roots", is a miniatures game.
Advanced Squad Leader, the standard for chit & hex for 20 years, is also a miniatures game (ASL Deluxe, 1/285 scale).
Many games use hexes, chits, & minis all at once, like BattleTech & Tide of Iron.
To add to the problem of trying to separate the two are games like Battleground and Wings of War (now Wings of Glory), which don't actually require miniatures at all, but use miniature rule-sets.
Quote from: SJBenoist;575303I've seen people do that, but it seems to be mostly non-wargamers. I've actually seen definitions of "wargame" that seem to be "Exclusively Avalon Hill, SPI, and maybe Yaquinto", which to me is like defining RPG's as "TSR with Gygax, and nothing else". It's particularly odd as the heyday of the 70's, you would not have been able to find someone who did not label miniature games as "wargames".
The distinction seems to come from the 1990's.
The first generally recognized hobby wargame (as opposed to military tool) is H.G. Wells Little Wars, which is a miniatures game.
Chainmail, universally described as RPG's "wargame roots", is a miniatures game.
Advanced Squad Leader, the standard for chit & hex for 20 years, is also a miniatures game (ASL Deluxe, 1/285 scale).
Many games use hexes, chits, & minis all at once, like BattleTech & Tide of Iron.
To add to the problem of trying to separate the two are games like Battleground and Wings of War (now Wings of Glory), which don't actually require miniatures at all, but use miniature rule-sets.
I agree that 40k is a wargame just like the tin soldier battles like came before it. My point was that GW's business model isn't focused around that, but the collect and paint portion of their catalog.
Right, I agree about GW's wanting to sell paints, (though lately they are returning to wargame productions that still require painting, but do not offer any further model sales, such as Dreadfleet, Space Hulk, possibly the upcoming LOTR game). I don't see that as making them a different hobby though. Painting was always big. See Osprey books and their abundance of full-color uniform pictures in every wargame shop 30 years ago.
They were for making sure you painted your 1692 Cuirassiers to spec.
(BTW, historically accurate paint schemes and OOB were the common table argument of the day, moreso than any rules debates)
To put it another way, GW is both. They sell paints, models, and wargames.
The point I was making is "wargames are dead" is hyperbole, and that they are doing better than ever, even the 8-year period the modern generation is fixated upon for some reason (1977-1985).