Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Okay, so -- what about Encounter Critical?

:confused:

I've seen this mentioned many times, yet I do not know what it is.

Save me from my ignorance, someone?

Quote from: Akrasia:confused:

I've seen this mentioned many times, yet I do not know what it is.

Save me from my ignorance, someone?

Knowest thou not the GOOGLE?

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceKnowest thou not the GOOGLE?

-clash

But that would involve some minimal effort on my part.

Quote from: AkrasiaBut that would involve some minimal effort on my part.

The Good Lord helps those who help themselves.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceThe Good Lord helps those who help themselves.

-clash

Ah, well, I'm an atheist ... :joecool:

In any case, I was just hoping for a short overview.

Quote from: J ArcaneOh I see where this is going.

Yeah, I read the whole "If we make the Soap Opera game, normal people will start playing RPGs, and we won't be geeks anymore!" one too many times back on RPGnet, thanks.  

Take it to the Forge.

I like rpg.net (if I didn't I wouldn't post there), but I admit that those threads annoy me to no end, the ones wherein people say nonsense like "If I went back in time with a time machine to the seventies and handed copies of [insert Forgie game here], everybody would be playing it, D&D wouldn't exist and we all would get laid!!!!!". How can some people be so self-delusional? :confused:

Quote from: AkrasiaIn any case, I was just hoping for a short overview.

But that would be spoiling all the fun.

EGG designed AD&D to be popular.

He included many rules and races that he didn't play with, just to have a broader appeal.

I think if anyine builds a game to have a broad appeal and not just fr the "RPG market" they will be successful.

Broad appeal is the reason Vampire overtook D&D for a little while, it didn't rely on the RPG market, it appealed to a wide spectrum of fans for a wide spectrum of reasons.

As so often lately, KJ makes a rather good point, and one that's different from the MMORPG argument.

Contrarily to what some people said earlier on, the popularity of fantasy has been steadily overtaking sci-fi ever since the... gee, 80-ies definitely, probably already starting in the 70-ies. The tendency has been and still is the same in any kind of media - novels, films, and apparently, RPGs.

As to the reason for this process, the long version would involve several dissertations. The short version is that the main cause was probably a global disillusionment with technology as something that would "make the world better". It sure did look so up to the first half of the century, and its inertia has carried some of the sentiment up to the 60-ies. Nevertheless, the half century after the golden age of sci-fi has seen World War 2 with the Atomic Bomb, Vietnam with Napalm, the Cold War and a hundred other ways in which technology has made our lives worse, while the benefits of progress were much less than previously expected. Thus the audience has gradually turned away from the naive "technology will create a better future" philosophy of sci-fi, since it just no longer reflected the to world as they perceived it.

And that's exactly why fantasy has been on the upswing for so long - it offers an avenue of escapism towards a never-has-been past.

I am not sure that people are noticing more that science can be a sharp sword both ways and more that people are more and more treating science as some sort of mumbo-jumbo.

I'm not sure wildly esoteric theorizing (27 dimenional super-straw universes) help anyone in this regard.

Notice the Intelligent Design proponents dismissing Darwinistic evolutionary theory as if it were a competing religion, and the public acceptance of this sort of behavior.  

This also holds true of those... what were they? Evolutionary Psychologists? who are not 'allowed' to demonstrate how animal behaviors can be used to model human behaviors on the grounds that 'humans are superior to animals'...

And I am not entirely certain this is a new trend, either... though it does seem to be gaining severe momentum during the last few years... or maybe I just see it more clearly now.

Quote from: SpikeI am not sure that people are noticing more that science can be a sharp sword both ways and more that people are more and more treating science as some sort of mumbo-jumbo.

True, but I'd say that a significant portion of these people became like that exactly because general interest has shifted away from science after a half century of disillusionment. It's not about consciously noticing it, it's just part of the changing zeitgeist.
Fundies are a different matter, they're just a bunch of rabid idiots, no big mystery there.

Quote from: Premier[reams and reams of boilerplate cultural criticism 101 excised here] Thus the audience has gradually turned away from the naive "technology will create a better future" philosophy of sci-fi, since it just no longer reflected the to world as they perceived it.

It seems to me that the two major and massively popular subgenres scifi has produced after 1980, cyberpunk and transhumanism, contradict this statement. The one revelled in dystopianism, the other revived the naivety.

It's also misguided to state that scifi before 1980 was beholden to that naivety. See Dick, Ballard, the whole "new wave" movement, great writers from Eastern Europe like Lem or the Strugatskijs...

Fantasy may sell more than scifi, and I still would like to know how much and since when exactly. But that's nothing to do with scifi being stuck in some bygone escapism. Its escapism is fully up to date, alas alas.

On that note, I'm not clear on how it's not naive to retreat from a naive technophilia into a naive fantasy neverneverland, if that's what's being implied?

1. Akrasia, get off your ass and go get the free Encounter Critical download, it's on S. John Ross' Cumberland Games website. In addition to being cool, it was briefly a successful hoax.

2. People who say dungeons are railroads don't know what the fuck they're talking about. People who say they eventually 'evolved' into something more double-don't know what the fuck they're talking about; dungeons 'evolved' towards being more of a railroad, not less, for a variety of reasons. You've got a map, different monsters and traps, competing factions, spying, diplomacy, tactics, strategy, and open-ended use of equipment. All of this is totally open for the players and GM to do whatever the hell they want with. That's not a railroad, whatever other problems there might be.

3. I believe that things have changed, and that fantasy is now substantially more popular than science fiction, but that back in the early to mid-seventies, science fiction was substantially more popular than fantasy. D&D actually bears a significant part of the responsibility for this shift.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityIt seems to me that the two major and massively popular subgenres scifi has produced after 1980, cyberpunk and transhumanism, contradict this statement. The one revelled in dystopianism, the other revived the naivety.

Cultural trends are not like school classrooms. It's not like "Yeah, we have this trend until 11:30 Jan 1 1970 sharp, then it's something else". So yes, of course there are late birds, and yes, there are writings that go against the grain. Doesn't change the general tendency, and doesn't change the fact that more people are reading adn watching fantasy.

Also, you yourself said cyberpunk is dystopian. If anything, this  just further reinforces that the age of optimism was over.

QuoteIt's also misguided to state that scifi before 1980 was beholden to that naivety. See Dick, Ballard, the whole "new wave" movement, great writers from Eastern Europe like Lem or the Strugatskijs...

See above for "general tendencies". And seriously, stop deliberately misconstructing and oversimplifying what I said to a point where it sounds entirely different.

QuoteOn that note, I'm not clear on how it's not naive to retreat from a naive technophilia into a naive fantasy neverneverland, if that's what's being implied?

It not a question of naivety, on the contrary. Sci-fi and the technological optimism it accompanied have let us down, People really thought it will be all better. It promised something it couldn't deliver, hence the disappointment. Fantasy never made such a promise, that's why it's not a let-down and why people are reading more of it.