TheRPGSite

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.

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.

Quote from: Jaeger;1072152I 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).

How is "sleeping off any injuries short of death in s single night" (5e D&D) or "I took a direct hit from a shoulder launched missile but because I haven't previously suffered any critical hits, it can't possibly kill me" (FFG Star Wars) an issue with the GM rather than the rules?

Quote from: HappyDaze;1072162How is "sleeping off any injuries short of death in s single night" (5e D&D) or "I took a direct hit from a shoulder launched missile but because I haven't previously suffered any critical hits, it can't possibly kill me" (FFG Star Wars) an issue with the GM rather than the rules?

If you are describing an issue with verisimilitude or realism, that is one argument (cue 'what do hp represent' argument in 3... 2... 1...), but your argument was that the game was, "set to

• easy," and that the games, "focus on the assumptions that the PCs must always win." Neither of those are a problem that the 5e rule in question specifically relates to. If the party is winning too much and too readily, the DM is supposed to step up the challenge. Some games do that more easily than others, and yes, obviously, some games default to a more 'hard mode' gaming. However, D&D 5e has a pretty decent set of knobs and levers built right in to fine tune the challenge as the DM sees fit.

Overall, pretty much the same.
There's just a LOT more of everything. So whilst there's a LOT of crap out there. There' still lots of great stuff too.

Still. For me, Whilst I see and look over a lot of great RPG material. I'll probably be running less and less variety of RPGs.
I think I'm starting to feel the effects of age more and just don't have the energy or will to pursue/learn more RPG material.

My interests are more diversified now than ever and I've more or less settled on what I enjoy for the moment with RPGs and devote less time and energy to it.

But from what I have seen of newer RPG material out there, a lot of it looks pretty darn healthy and interesting, I just won't be a part of it I think.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1072162How is "sleeping off any injuries short of death in s single night" (5e D&D)...

Ahh, yes... the great Hit points are an abstraction representing x,y,z blah, blah, blah, debate...

At this point if hit points in D&D still bother you. Stop playing D&D.



 

Quote from: HappyDaze;1072162...or "I took a direct hit from a shoulder launched missile but because I haven't previously suffered any critical hits, it can't possibly kill me" (FFG Star Wars) an issue with the GM rather than the rules?

You got me there.

FFG games are a bunch of over complicated, under play-tested, first draft games with glossy presentation, that would be a whole lot better if they weren't designed around funky dice that try to do too much.

If the star wars rpg was just another sci-fi rpg that had any other name on the side of the tin, it would have went down faster than a blond on prom night.

In fairness, the new legend of the five rings RPG gets a lot of stuff right. Still could have been play tested more though...

Quote from: 3rik;1072077Needless OOC mechanics seem to be on the rise.

Nah, we're well past the peak of that BS. Still, would rather play AW than MERP. At least I can get a some hippy dippy game up and running in a reasonable time frame.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1072162How is "sleeping off any injuries short of death in s single night" (5e D&D)

This has been an issue with hit points and D&D from 1E imo. It is not unique to 5E. At least with 5E one can easily fine tune the rules to make it more deadly. The damage taken by player characters in D&D is not mean to be realistic. Otherwise taking an arrow would kill if not injure most player characters and they would need to have the arrow removed.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1072162"I took a direct hit from a shoulder launched missile but because I haven't previously suffered any critical hits, it can't possibly kill me" (FFG Star Wars) an issue with the GM rather than the rules?

How is it any different than " I have high strength and can resist damage better than characters with low Strength" from Star Wars D6.

It's not to say I'm a fan of the new FFG Star Wars. I dislike the dice mechanic yet let's also not pretend that the older rpgs were flawless either. I'm beginning to think your viewing your favored rpgs a certain way and those you dislike much more less objectively.

I'm not sure RPG's are getting better. I am getting better though. And thus my games are getting better.

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.

That's true but we're still in the era of "try hard" mechanics. Every game seems to want it's own special, too clever by half mechanics instead of just going with reliable designs.

I'm looking at you FFG and Modiphius.

I don't think RPGs are capable of getting worse. For the sake of argument let's say everything being put out these days is terrible - you still have a wealth of excellent games from previous years.

This hobby isn't like the comic book industry, or the film industry - you can play for the next 10 years on the stuff that's already out there and worthwhile without noticing the "industry" much. You don't need new material, you just may want new material.

As someone currently working in the industry this is one of its bigger drawbacks.

//Panjumanju

Quote from: Panjumanju;1072252I don't think RPGs are capable of getting worse. For the sake of argument let's say everything being put out these days is terrible - you still have a wealth of excellent games from previous years.

This hobby isn't like the comic book industry, or the film industry - you can play for the next 10 years on the stuff that's already out there and worthwhile without noticing the "industry" much. You don't need new material, you just may want new material.

As someone currently working in the industry this is one of its bigger drawbacks.

I'd say that there are more good choices than ever before, but the signal to noise ratio is about as horrible as it has ever been.  They market may or may not be putting out a gem I'd really like, but the effort to find it in the muck is sometimes prohibitive, such that I'd just as soon make my own.

Quote from: Jaeger;1072201You got me there.

FFG games are a bunch of over complicated, under play-tested, first draft games with glossy presentation, that would be a whole lot better if they weren't designed around funky dice that try to do too much.

If the star wars rpg was just another sci-fi rpg that had any other name on the side of the tin, it would have went down faster than a blond on prom night.

In fairness, the new legend of the five rings RPG gets a lot of stuff right. Still could have been play tested more though...

I've play-tested for FFG SW. There's a lot of stuff that gets brought up, but even when multiple groups point something out, FFG rarely changes anything. The play-tests started to feel like the FFG writers just wanted the groups to give them fawning praise. After a few hard tries to get broken crap addressed in play-test, I dropped out.

Quote from: Panjumanju;1072252you still have a wealth of excellent games from previous years.

you can play for the next 10 years on the stuff that's already out there and worthwhile without noticing the "industry" much.

//Panjumanju

Absolutely true. I could easily game once a week for the rest of my life and not even touch all the AD&D Campaign Setting boxes I have (and I don't even have all of them).

Quote from: sureshot;1072218I'm beginning to think your viewing your favored rpgs a certain way and those you dislike much more less objectively.

Yes, I'm human. Thanks for noticing.

Quote from: Piestrio;1072237That's true but we're still in the era of "try hard" mechanics. Every game seems to want it's own special, too clever by half mechanics instead of just going with reliable designs.

I'm looking at you FFG and Modiphius.

Or fucking custom dice. Good point.

Quote from: Daztur;1072286Or fucking custom dice. Good point.

Not a fan of that either. Thankfully the only rpg that uses them that I own is Star Trek Adventures. Even then one can get by with regular dice.

DCC uses special dice......

Quote from: Razor 007;1072294DCC uses special dice......

Not the same thing.  DCC uses non-traditional numbered dice (i.e. D3, D5, D7, etc.) - the dice folks here are referring to are things like pictographic dice and other nonsense.

Not the same thing. Just as annoying though. Proprietary dice, specialty dice made just be damn different same thing to me.

Except, the weird-number dice aren't exactly proprietary, there just aren't many people making them.

I like the idea of what DCC is trying to do with them.

I appreciate what they did with DCC. It's also myself being pretty much wanting to use the standard set of dice. It's what's stopping me from buy the book. I may still buy it though my group will probably not be interested because of the dice.

Quote from: sureshot;1072313I appreciate what they did with DCC. It's also myself being pretty much wanting to use the standard set of dice. It's what's stopping me from buy the book. I may still buy it though my group will probably not be interested because of the dice.

Yeah, I would have bought the book a year or more ago, except for the oddball dice required.

Quote from: sureshot;1072293Not a fan of that either. Thankfully the only rpg that uses them that I own is Star Trek Adventures. Even then one can get by with regular dice.

Which is a black mark aganist it for me. Not a deal breaker but certainly makes me less likely to play the game.

Quote from: Daztur;1072315Which is a black mark aganist it for me. Not a deal breaker but certainly makes me less likely to play the game.

To be fair one needs D20s abd D6s and you can get by playing STA.

RPG design follows the Hegelian dialectic as we approach the best of all possible worlds. Thus each newer iteration is objectively better than its predecessor, as a form of technology. Though these technologies improve within different foci as its design pendulum swings between the Gamist and Simulationist aesthetic.... bwa ha ha ha! :D  Sorry, I tried.

Yeah, dude, it's just some rules on "Let's Pretend!" to resolve "Nuh-uh!" "Are too!" arguments. Some people had their needs met earlier than more recent offerings. Some people are still looking for that personally sublime Goldberg Machine of dancing widgets. 'Better or worse' categorization is gonna be a rather frustrating topic here, I believe. :)

I think it goes 3-steps forward, 2-steps back.

Game Design has certainly gone a long way into different directions to help synthesize at the *very* least how people prefer different styles of play. But I still maintain there is an evolution of tastes that certain systems have a better/longer hangtime with.

Quote from: tenbones;1072365I think it goes 3-steps forward, 2-steps back.

Game Design has certainly gone a long way into different directions to help synthesize at the *very* least how people prefer different styles of play.

I think this is true for Game Design in theory -- that is, new and better elements of game design have emerged over the years. But as to RPGs themselves, as materially realized, the trend looks different to me: for every new and better game design element that an RPG provides, 2 lame ones (new or otherwise) are also included. So while game design moves forward in theory, in practice the quality of RPGs winds up hovering about the same place.

I honestly think the hacks (White hack, black hack, blue hack, and so on) got it right along with Kevin Crawsford's osr rpgs.  Now only if there was a perfect mix of the two...

Quote from: Opaopajr;1072333RPG design follows the Hegelian dialectic as we approach the best of all possible worlds. Thus each newer iteration is objectively better than its predecessor, as a form of technology. Though these technologies improve within different foci as its design pendulum swings between the Gamist and Simulationist aesthetic.... bwa ha ha ha! :D  Sorry, I tried.

Yeah, dude, it's just some rules on "Let's Pretend!" to resolve "Nuh-uh!" "Are too!" arguments. Some people had their needs met earlier than more recent offerings. Some people are still looking for that personally sublime Goldberg Machine of dancing widgets. 'Better or worse' categorization is gonna be a rather frustrating topic here, I believe. :)

My personal take on the RPG Design Hegelian Dialectic:
-People had trouble with 70's RPG design because it resulted in wildly inconsistent play from table to table, which was a problem for running competitive touraments and for all those people who wrote deeply emotional letters to Dragon magazine about how falling damage wasn't realistic. As a result people made less flexibile and more "realistic" rules.
-People had trouble with 80's RPG design due to cumbersome "realistic" rules bloat. As a result people tried to focus more on the story than on the rules.
-People had trouble with 90's RPG deisgn due to focusing on the "story" often meant being herded through your DM's unpublished novel. As a result people tried to bake the story into the rules so that the story came out from play organically not through a fuckign railroad.
-People had trouble with 2000's RPG design due to *insert any of a 1001 rants about Forge-based design.* As a result people went back to basics.

Of course that's an over-simplification since 90's-style design in D&D goes back to the DL series of modules in the 80's but that's close enough.

The next decade will be a reaction to the OSR or a continuation of it.

Makes total sense to me, Daztur.

Perhaps the 2000s rant had also to do with the rigid mechanicism of the solutions (both Forgite and D&D3) and thus "rulings not rules" and "fiction first" came back strong.

Quote from: Daztur;1072408My personal take on the RPG Design Hegelian Dialectic:
-People had trouble with 70's RPG design because it resulted in wildly inconsistent play from table to table, which was a problem for running competitive touraments and for all those people who wrote deeply emotional letters to Dragon magazine about how falling damage wasn't realistic. As a result people made less flexibile and more "realistic" rules.
-People had trouble with 80's RPG design due to cumbersome "realistic" rules bloat. As a result people tried to focus more on the story than on the rules.
-People had trouble with 90's RPG deisgn due to focusing on the "story" often meant being herded through your DM's unpublished novel. As a result people tried to bake the story into the rules so that the story came out from play organically not through a fuckign railroad.
-People had trouble with 2000's RPG design due to *insert any of a 1001 rants about Forge-based design.* As a result people went back to basics.

Of course that's an over-simplification since 90's-style design in D&D goes back to the DL series of modules in the 80's but that's close enough.

The next decade will be a reaction to the OSR or a continuation of it.

Throwing the baby out with the bath water--a staple of game design from the very beginning. :)

Quote from: kythri;1072307Not the same thing.  DCC uses non-traditional numbered dice (i.e. D3, D5, D7, etc.) - the dice folks here are referring to are things like pictographic dice and other nonsense.

It's effectively the same thing to me. It means that in addition to buying the rules, I'll have to special order a product that costs $30 just to try your game.

Quote from: Daztur;1072408My personal take on the RPG Design Hegelian Dialectic:
-People had trouble with 70's RPG design because it resulted in wildly inconsistent play from table to table, which was a problem for running competitive touraments and for all those people who wrote deeply emotional letters to Dragon magazine about how falling damage wasn't realistic. As a result people made less flexibile and more "realistic" rules.
-People had trouble with 80's RPG design due to cumbersome "realistic" rules bloat. As a result people tried to focus more on the story than on the rules.
-People had trouble with 90's RPG deisgn due to focusing on the "story" often meant being herded through your DM's unpublished novel. As a result people tried to bake the story into the rules so that the story came out from play organically not through a fuckign railroad.
-People had trouble with 2000's RPG design due to *insert any of a 1001 rants about Forge-based design.* As a result people went back to basics.

Of course that's an over-simplification since 90's-style design in D&D goes back to the DL series of modules in the 80's but that's close enough.

The next decade will be a reaction to the OSR or a continuation of it.

Even as a simplification, I don't think this is right. The key is that there are usually multiple trends going on at the same time. As I would put it,

70s design had a lot of D&D imitation, with inconsistent assumptions. I think Runequest was the most influential in setting the pattern for skill-based games, as standards started to arise.

80s design had some heavy rules, but also a lot of variety. It was failing market as the D&D boom faded. There were some rules-heavy games like Champions and GURPS, but also key others like Pendragon, Ghostbusters, Ars Magica, and Star Wars D6.

90s design standardized around Shadowrun and World of Darkness - medium-heavy rules and dice pools. Second ed D&D came out. Most games conformed to a similar pattern, and modules added more story - which was preplotted into acts and scenes. Metaplot for game worlds was introduced.

00s design saw the simultaneous rise of D20 and the reaction of Forge games, both of which were a reaction against the White Wolf story trend. D20 shifted more focus onto system mastery and game play which intensified in 4th edition, while Forge games tried to create alternative story games to the perception of railroading in dramatic games like White Wolf.

10s design saw some the rise of OSR along with more mainstreaming of story games with the introduction of Apocalypse World and the spread of FATE. 5th ed saw more OSR influence into D&D.

Overall, better. The marketplace of ideas has produced many interesting iterations of the original flavor.

It's still the same ice cream, however.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1072403I honestly think the hacks (White hack, black hack, blue hack, and so on) got it right along with Kevin Crawsford's osr rpgs.  Now only if there was a perfect mix of the two...

My preferred mix of ideas in this area is Black Hack, flipped to roll high, with DCs commensurate with levels/power/special abilities (EX: Orcs, lvl 1, DC21; Medusa, lvl 5, DC25; SPECIAL: Gaze turns to stone (fight at disad [eyes averted], or save vs. DC30). Couple that with Dungeon World usage mechanic, and I have a light system I can use for my old fart gaming style.

RE: RPG's "Hegelian Dialectic"
Way to beat a joke to death, guys. :(  But as long as everyone's having fun, carry on. ;)

Quote from: cranebump;1072778Overall, better. The marketplace of ideas has produced many interesting iterations of the original flavor.

It's still the same ice cream, however.

So you are saying we are in the Age of: TCBY, Coldstone, or Pinkberry? :confused:

These analogies must be forged into blades of pedantic vengeance! :mad: The internet demands acrimony for the acrimony god!

Quote from: cranebump;1072778Overall, better. The marketplace of ideas has produced many interesting iterations of the original flavor.

It's still the same ice cream, however.

Blue Bell, Cookies & Cream for the win!!!

Quote from: Opaopajr;1072781So you are saying we are in the Age of: TCBY, Coldstone, or Pinkberry? :confused:

Between the time when the oceans drank Dairy Queen and the rise of the sons of FroZenYo, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Coldstone, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Ice Cream upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high sugar!

Quote from: Opaopajr;1072781So you are saying we are in the Age of: TCBY, Coldstone, or Pinkberry? :confused:

These analogies must be forged into blades of pedantic vengeance! :mad: The internet demands acrimony for the acrimony god!

Quite true. The acrimony god is constantly thirsty for new angst and gnashing teeth. To the fray!

S&W=vanilla
BECMI=neapolitan
 4th=frozen yogurt
5th=vanilla, with lots of toppings
DW=Vanilla shake
FATE=chocolate

(yeah, I'm just making shit up here...)

Quote from: Haffrung;1072432It's effectively the same thing to me. It means that in addition to buying the rules, I'll have to special order a product that costs $30 just to try your game.

Remember when the "conventional" polyhedral dice were hard to get?

http://20facesoffate.com/throwback-thursday-dice-chits/

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1072794Remember when the "conventional" polyhedral dice were hard to get?

http://20facesoffate.com/throwback-thursday-dice-chits/

I honestly don't. In 1979, my Holmes boxed set came with a set. And they were also available in every hobby story in my city that sold D&D.

The DCC dice not only aren't available at any of my FLGS, they're not even available from online retailers in Canada. I'd have to order them from the U.S., which means paying in U.S. dollars, shipping, etc. And of course if my players want a set (because it's a pain to have six guys share one set of dice), they'd have to buy them from online U.S. retailers and pay through the nose as well.

It's just a fucking dumb barrier to play with no good reason besides the whims of Joe Goodman.

Quote from: cranebump;1072779My preferred mix of ideas in this area is Black Hack, flipped to roll high, with DCs commensurate with levels/power/special abilities (EX: Orcs, lvl 1, DC21; Medusa, lvl 5, DC25; SPECIAL: Gaze turns to stone (fight at disad [eyes averted], or save vs. DC30). Couple that with Dungeon World usage mechanic, and I have a light system I can use for my old fart gaming style.

More of a fan of the roll down system myself to be honest.  Then again I always enjoyed percentage dice games like Dark Heresy.

Quote from: Haffrung;1072816I honestly don't. In 1979, my Holmes boxed set came with a set. And they were also available in every hobby story in my city that sold D&D.

The DCC dice not only aren't available at any of my FLGS, they're not even available from online retailers in Canada. I'd have to order them from the U.S., which means paying in U.S. dollars, shipping, etc. And of course if my players want a set (because it's a pain to have six guys share one set of dice), they'd have to buy them from online U.S. retailers and pay through the nose as well.

It's just a fucking dumb barrier to play with no good reason besides the whims of Joe Goodman.

One easy out is to just use the next larger Die from a standard set, and reroll any result that's too high.

Example:  DCC calls for a d3 roll.  Just roll a d4 instead, and reroll any 4s.

Quote from: Haffrung;1072816I honestly don't. In 1979, my Holmes boxed set came with a set. And they were also available in every hobby story in my city that sold D&D.

The DCC dice not only aren't available at any of my FLGS, they're not even available from online retailers in Canada. I'd have to order them from the U.S., which means paying in U.S. dollars, shipping, etc. And of course if my players want a set (because it's a pain to have six guys share one set of dice), they'd have to buy them from online U.S. retailers and pay through the nose as well.

It's just a fucking dumb barrier to play with no good reason besides the whims of Joe Goodman.

It's even worse than FFG Stars Wars imo. At least I can find FFG proprietary dice easily at two LGS in my area. If the DCC dice are that difficult to get their goes any interest I had in the rpg. Sure I can wing it with my regular gaming dice. I really should not have too. Especially not at the whim of Joe Goodman

To answer the question posed by the topic.

I don't think that RPGs are getting either better or worse. But that they are what they are.

The experience comes down to your individual game group. They color the experience you have with the game most of all.

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.

Question for you, to test a hypothesis of mine: Are the games where combat is easy, or PC victory seems too guaranteed, also prone to having very detailed characters and very time-consuming character creation?

I ask because my hypothesis is that the more investment of time, effort and thought players make in creating their characters, the more peeved they are to have this investment wasted by a too quick or too easy death. One of the design decisions I always admired about the (now) almost-forgotten Palladium game RECON, which was about the Vietnam War, was that it knew PCs were very likely to die quickly and without warning and so made the process of generating new ones as quick and easy as possible as well.

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1072791Between the time when the oceans drank Dairy Queen and the rise of the sons of FroZenYo, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Coldstone, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Ice Cream upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high sugar!

I'll have that with a waffle cone-an, thanks.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1072840Question for you, to test a hypothesis of mine: Are the games where combat is easy, or PC victory seems too guaranteed, also prone to having very detailed characters and very time-consuming character creation?

I ask because my hypothesis is that the more investment of time, effort and thought players make in creating their characters, the more peeved they are to have this investment wasted by a too quick or too easy death. One of the design decisions I always admired about the (now) almost-forgotten Palladium game RECON, which was about the Vietnam War, was that it knew PCs were very likely to die quickly and without warning and so made the process of generating new ones as quick and easy as possible as well.

I am reasonably certain your hypothesis is correct.

When all you do to create a character is roll 3d6 six times, pick a race/class (sometimes they're the same thing), roll a hit die for your hit points and buy a few things (armor, a weapon or two, a backpack, rope, light source and rations) and you're done (you can record the actual save scores and THAC0 if the character lasts more than a session or two) and these fresh PCs could be among your hirelings who just never got focus until now (i.e. super easy to jump back into the action) then yeah, death is cheap because you could have a new character ready in minutes (magic users had to get some first level spells by rolling for what's in their spellbook, but that's about the only significant increase in complexity). In a big enough game (I've seen some old-school games where 10+ players wasn't uncommon) you might have a new character ready to go by the time your turn comes up again.

By contrast, newer games often use point buy abilities (which takes longer than rolling, though an array is actually faster than either rolling or point buy), then you also have to pick skills (or assign skill points in many cases), possibly some other bennies (feats, racial/class options, background, etc.) and maybe even some other roleplaying things (ex. bonds, flaws and goals in 5e).

Even at one minute per stage (choose race/race options, choose class/class options, choose background, buy abilities, select skills, choose bond/flaw/goal, buy equipment, select spells) you're probably looking at 8 minutes for a rushed PC in 5e. More realistically its going to be 20-30 minutes because the game encourages you to put some thought into the character you're designing; not just throwing the results of random rolls onto a page and calling it done.

Also worth noting is that many modern systems do NOT encourage henchmen/hirelings as part of the adventuring band which also means a readily available pool of replacement PCs isn't right there with you in the dungeon (or at worst, back on the surface guarding your mounts/camp), but requires the party to go someplace where a new PC could be found (often a town) or the GM has to alter the dungeon so that the party can find the new PC while still in the dungeon.

In other words, losing a PC in the first system might mean the player misses the rest of a relatively short battle before they can promote one of the henchmen/hirelings already with them to PC-status, but losing one in a more modern game system pretty much puts you out of action for the rest of the session; both because you need to create a new PC and then the party has to get someplace where the new PC can join them.

While some might just say this is why you need to play the old systems where death is cheap and PCs easily replaceable, for people who want more defined characters out of the gate, that's no more practical than telling someone who wants a nice steak dinner that you can get a McDonald's hamburger in a quarter of the time and for a sixth the price. Both are (technically) beef, but pretending the latter will satisfy someone looking for the former is silly.

Quote from: Chris24601;1072850While some might just say this is why you need to play the old systems where death is cheap and PCs easily replaceable, for people who want more defined characters out of the gate, that's no more practical than telling someone who wants a nice steak dinner that you can get a McDonald's hamburger in a quarter of the time and for a sixth the price. Both are (technically) beef, but pretending the latter will satisfy someone looking for the former is silly.

Yeah, but one is a game and the other isn't.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1072840I ask because my hypothesis is that the more investment of time, effort and thought players make in creating their characters, the more peeved they are to have this investment wasted by a too quick or too easy death. One of the design decisions I always admired about the (now) almost-forgotten Palladium game RECON, which was about the Vietnam War, was that it knew PCs were very likely to die quickly and without warning and so made the process of generating new ones as quick and easy as possible as well.

I think you are right.  I remember Scion where it took me a week to make the sheet and more importantly for the GM the multi page backstory.  Mind you the backstory was never seen again and frankly I forgot most of it.  

Point is my character got killed by a explosion after winning a battle and running away from the explosion.  Wait...  What?  Yeah even though I told the GM I am running the fact is we hadn't figured out the running mechanic.  By the way thank you White Wolf for your "masterful" job in making clear rules that anyone can understand.  

So instead of just saying we ran away and survived the GM thought we should walk away.  Yes walk away.  Which amazingly enough the group managed to speed walk their way out of danger except for my character who had low epic dexterity.  I got blown up so hard even my character's soul got killed.  My character was deader than dead.

I am ashamed to admit this, but I fucking cried.  I guess out of frustration because character creation took so damn long and I didn't even last two months.  Just some random battle which I won, made the right moves, and it was a mechanic fuck with GM stupidity that killed my character.  Not my best moment and thankfully the game was played over on the internet.

Quote from: Chris24601;1072850While some might just say this is why you need to play the old systems where death is cheap and PCs easily replaceable, for people who want more defined characters out of the gate, that's no more practical than telling someone who wants a nice steak dinner that you can get a McDonald's hamburger in a quarter of the time and for a sixth the price. Both are (technically) beef, but pretending the latter will satisfy someone looking for the former is silly.

What this doesn't explain is why the steak eaters glommed on to those McD burgers when they hit the market, and why they've bitched about the meat ever since even after a steak house opened down the road.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1072840Question for you, to test a hypothesis of mine: Are the games where combat is easy, or PC victory seems too guaranteed, also prone to having very detailed characters and very time-consuming character creation?

How does WFRPG 1st ed. fit into that hypothesis? Relatively involved character creation, but still quite deadly.

Quote from: Chris24601;1072850By contrast, newer games often use point buy abilities (which takes longer than rolling, though an array is actually faster than either rolling or point buy), then you also have to pick skills (or assign skill points in many cases), possibly some other bennies (feats, racial/class options, background, etc.) and maybe even some other roleplaying things (ex. bonds, flaws and goals in 5e).

In terms of general RPG design, things like skills and point buy were already common by 1980. I have trouble conceiving about Traveller, RuneQuest, or TFT as a "newer games".

I think the trend over the last 10 years has been towards more streamlined, faster character generation. Powered-by-the-Apocalypse and FATE are pretty quick, and within D&D editions, 3rd edition is probably the slowest.

When I think of actually newer games, I would think more of something like Dungeon World - which has actually very quick class-based character creation. Grab a sheet, pick and array and fill in a few details.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1072840Question for you, to test a hypothesis of mine: Are the games where combat is easy, or PC victory seems too guaranteed, also prone to having very detailed characters and very time-consuming character creation?

I ask because my hypothesis is that the more investment of time, effort and thought players make in creating their characters, the more peeved they are to have this investment wasted by a too quick or too easy death. One of the design decisions I always admired about the (now) almost-forgotten Palladium game RECON, which was about the Vietnam War, was that it knew PCs were very likely to die quickly and without warning and so made the process of generating new ones as quick and easy as possible as well.

I think you have that backwards. I would agree that games that have a good probability of a high casualty rate do tend to favor faster chargen. War based RPGs in particular often follow your thinking, not only Recon, but also Behind Enemy Lines, Delta Force and Merc.

At the high degree of success / low casualty rate you find both simple chargen and detailed chargen. There are tons of rules lite games that don't expect bad things to happen to the PCs.


On the other end though, going against your theory is no shortage detailed chargen games with a high casualty rate, Call of Cthulhu high among them, but even regular Runequest has a fairly high body / maiming count. Rolemaster and Warhammer were not super simple and crits could easily take out a character. Many modern day GURPS settings can have a fairly body count and it is not a quick or easy chargen system.

Quote from: Chris24601;1072850I am reasonably certain your hypothesis is correct.
By contrast, newer games often use point buy abilities (which takes longer than rolling, though an array is actually faster than either rolling or point buy), then you also have to pick skills (or assign skill points in many cases), possibly some other bennies (feats, racial/class options, background, etc.) and maybe even some other roleplaying things (ex. bonds, flaws and goals in 5e).

Agree with jhkim on this. You are referring to concepts used by some of the earliest RPGs following D&D, Runequest 1978, Bushido 1979, Space Opera 1980, The Fantasy Trip 1980 (1977 if you count Melee as an RPG), Hero System / Champions 1981, Aftermath 1981.

Pretty much everything you mention was in common use by the mid 1980s, more than 30 years ago.

Quote from: RoyR;1072864How does WFRPG 1st ed. fit into that hypothesis? Relatively involved character creation, but still quite deadly.

Total speculation, but I would guess that was why the Fate Point mechanic was added. WFRP1E was the earliest game I recall reading where that was formally incorporated into the rules.

Tannhauser, you're giving too much credit to rpg authors/designers. History of the hobby proves success/popularity is not really related to the kind of coherence you postulate. For each game with coherence like that there's double that number as a huge mess. See Palladium and Shadowrun, for eg.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1072880Total speculation, but I would guess that was why the Fate Point mechanic was added. WFRP1E was the earliest game I recall reading where that was formally incorporated into the rules.

Just to fill in about this - WFRP came out in 1986, I think. It was preceded by Top Secret in 1980 that had optional rules for Fame Points and Fortune Points that could save a character. James Bond 007, published in 1983, had Hero Points as a core mechanic.

As for the general premise - I can think of a bunch of low-fatality games that still have simple character creation. Toon, Ghostbusters, and some other comedy games have low fatality but still simple character creation.

But for high fatality games, there is a trade-off. If character creation is too easy, then death just becomes a minor inconvenience that players brush off - which could eliminate the impact of being high fatality in the first place. I think Call of Cthulhu is an example of having relatively involved characters creation for a reason. It's not supposed to be that easy to jump back in.

Something the modern era has birthed is Kickstarter RPGs with massive founding budgets such that ideas can be fully developed in ways they never would be if they had to work up to that level of money the old fashion way.

We have "one-shot" RPGs now, rather than all the highly funded RPGs being games with decades of History and well established fan bases.

On one-hand subpar mechanics get pretty art and great writing, on the other-hand subpar mechanics get pretty art and great writing which is just fascinating to see an idea like that fully formed.

Quote from: Itachi;1072881Tannhauser, you're giving too much credit to rpg authors/designers. History of the hobby proves success/popularity is not really related to the kind of coherence you postulate. For each game with coherence like that there's double that number as a huge mess. See Palladium and Shadowrun, for eg.

History has shown that it is far more important to be First in a particular RPG genre niche. So long as the mechanics are "good enough", and the game line is halfway competently managed, It almost doesn't matter what the competitors do.

I really have to unpack my answer to the OP.  I think RPGs have reached a sort of plateau, they've peaked and are probably going to enter, or have entered a stagnant/decadence phase.  We really aren't seeing new designs anymore. Even the 'fresh new ideas' seem to be a decade or older, and as a result 'new' games tend to quickly fall into a handful of successfully established rule sets, which is why almost everything out there is Savage Worlds, Fate or D&D, with a much smaller second tier of 'Traveller' 'BRP' and so-on.

So I pick up a 'New' Game like 'Witchhunter' and it turns out to be a near exact rip of of The White Wolf House engine, or I pick up Genisys and it turns out to be a generic (skinless?) version of the Star Wars games, or Wild Talents, which is just a rehash of Godless from 10+ years ago...

When a truly new game comes out it inevitably falls into one of three catagories: An utterly simple take on common mechanics usually in a narrow take on existing genres, too fucking weird to live, or a parlor game full of meta mechanics (the player to your left controls your left hand!) and barely constituites and RPG at all (FAITH is a card game with RPG mechanics skinned on top, as an example).

Because we've done it all. Every easily imagined, and a few not so easily imagined, mechanic has been tried and battle tested. Innovative ideas died in the fires of actual play because they were too awkward, and we've distilled it all down to the workable essences, and frankly few designers and fewer players really want to keep redesigning the wheel. Even settings are largely done. How many takes on spacy-future do we really want?  How many ways can you twist the simple idea of Elves and Dwarves before they become unrecognizable and unlikeable?  Dragons in Space? I can name four different games off the top of my fucking head.

So we're down to polishing the apples. In one sense its great, games are better designed, more smoothly built than ever before. On the other hand, its dead as disco... you'll never find anything new and exciting on the shelves, just endless takes on existing rules and existing settings, and the less familiar they look, the worse they play because 'innovation' comes at the cost of reinventing the wheel, or stripping out usefull, even necessary 'kludge' to try and make it 'lighter' and 'faster'... not better, just... hollowed out.

And it will stay that way until some mad genius does what is impossible for the sane and practical and comes up with something that changes the paradigm, that has a mechanic that we've never seen, but can't imagine how it never occurred to us to try it before.  And then the cycle will take another spin, but that could be a decade away, or tomorrow.


And chances are that the hobby is dead already, that its just us lonely old fucks who grew up before video games got better than the movies, when spending a long afternoon with friends was the normal and not the exception, who keep it going until, one by one, we all take the long sleep, with no one remaining to pick up our dice for the next throw.


Or I could be a jaded curmudgeon...

Quote from: HappyDaze;1072162How is "sleeping off any injuries short of death in s single night" (5e D&D) or "I took a direct hit from a shoulder launched missile but because I haven't previously suffered any critical hits, it can't possibly kill me" (FFG Star Wars) an issue with the GM rather than the rules?

Hit points are not only injuries.  They're an abstract of several factors, including luck, skill and fatigue.

Quote from: Spike;1072921And chances are that the hobby is dead already, that its just us lonely old fucks who grew up before video games got better than the movies, when spending a long afternoon with friends was the normal and not the exception, who keep it going until, one by one, we all take the long sleep, with no one remaining to pick up our dice for the next throw.


Or I could be a jaded curmudgeon...

You're definitely a jaded curmudgeon! The RPG hobby has been in a 5e D&D-driven explosion since 2014/15.

The King is Dead!  Long Live the King! :)

Multiplayer video games have hit a slump they are either:

1. Filled with microtransactions

2. Short lived and relatively expensive to keep buying new games.

RPGs on the other hand have tons of staying power and don't even require buy-in to play with people with books. It's unsurprising that RPGs are only getting more popular as nerdyness is going mainstream and no one can afford to eat out or go to the bars all the time.

After thinking about it for the little while and I have to say...  Neither.

There are MORE RPG's now than ever before, but there's the same amount of good and bad (which is subjective anyway...)

Quote from: Toadmaster;1072871At the high degree of success / low casualty rate you find both simple chargen and detailed chargen. There are tons of rules lite games that don't expect bad things to happen to the PCs.

On the other end though, going against your theory is no shortage detailed chargen games with a high casualty rate, Call of Cthulhu high among them, but even regular Runequest has a fairly high body / maiming count. Rolemaster and Warhammer were not super simple and crits could easily take out a character. Many modern day GURPS settings can have a fairly body count and it is not a quick or easy chargen system.

True, but I'd point out that CoC is a horror game if played properly, not an action game. Players go into that game, if they understand the basic orientation of the world, with an understanding of the increased mortality rates and the different optimal survival strategies.  GURPS likewise puts in enough adjustment options for rules and style that it's reasonably easy for groups to adjust their lethality meters to taste (and speeding up character creation is exactly why they always provide fairly detailed starting template options, as well).

There's a term from engineering and power technology that I've always liked, called EROEI -- Energy Return on Energy Invested.  If you change that first E to Entertainment, I think you still get a fairly applicable basic formula for game design: The time and effort you spend on pre-play preparation has to be exceeded by the entertainment value you get out of the play itself for it to be worth doing. Part of the reason that older games, I think, could get away with a fairly low EROEI ratio on their initial learning curve was that when RPGs were still a new and thrilling pastime, the process of character creation was in itself as entertaining and interesting as the rest of the game, especially to the kind of detail-junkies and rules monkeys who were the leading adopters of the games. Now, we not only have a more varied consumer audience but more convenient options for competition, so the entry-time demand has gotten a lot stricter and the interest in getting some value for that time has gone up.

Quote from: S'mon;1072940You're definitely a jaded curmudgeon! The RPG hobby has been in a 5e D&D-driven explosion since 2014/15.

...and a PbtA-driven explosion since 2010
...and an OSR explosion since 2012
...a Fate-driven explosion since 2013 (?)
...and a Pathfinder, Gumshoe, Year Zero, FFG/Genesys, Cortex, BRP, etc, etc, etc.

We're living in the golden age, folks, because there are games for all tastes and styles (including new AND old ones) being released left and right.

Quote from: Itachi;1072957...and a PbtA-driven explosion since 2010
...and an OSR explosion since 2012
...a Fate-driven explosion since 2013 (?)
...and a Pathfinder, Gumshoe, Year Zero, FFG/Genesys, Cortex, BRP, etc, etc, etc.

We're living in the golden age, folks, because there are games for all tastes and styles (including new AND old ones) being released left and right.

Excluding Pathfinder, I think the 5e impact is a couple orders bigger in number of gamers than that lot. And I think the OSR (& Fate) peaks were a bit earlier. But yes there is plenty of good gaming going on.

Quote from: S'mon;1072983Excluding Pathfinder, I think the 5e impact is a couple orders bigger in number of gamers than that lot. And I think the OSR (& Fate) peaks were a bit earlier. But yes there is plenty of good gaming going on.

Yeah. Mainstream D&D has always been the biggest RPG on the market by far - here including Pathfinder since it is literally a version of D&D. From all the estimations I see, even White Wolf at its peak in the 1990s was still less than half the market share of D&D which was at a low point.

Still, other games have plenty of fans - and they're having a great time playing both old and new games. As far as I can see, there is just as much enthusiasm over new games now as there was enthusiasm for new games in the 1990s and 2000s.

Quote from: jhkim;1072986Yeah. Mainstream D&D has always been the biggest RPG on the market by far - here including Pathfinder since it is literally a version of D&D. From all the estimations I see, even White Wolf at its peak in the 1990s was still less than half the market share of D&D which was at a low point.

Still, other games have plenty of fans - and they're having a great time playing both old and new games. As far as I can see, there is just as much enthusiasm over new games now as there was enthusiasm for new games in the 1990s and 2000s.

Not to mention that some subset of D&D fans will want to explore other games--whether due to lack of satisfaction with D&D or simply to try something new.  I guess some see that as a zero-sum arrangement, but I see it as symbiotic.  Some people stay in gaming because they have a non-D&D outlet that keeps them in it.  Some people stay interested in D&D because they have a non-D&D outlet to experience some variety.  To the extent that another game is doing well enough to attract its own fans without filtering through D&D first, that still helps D&D in the long run.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1072892Something the modern era has birthed is Kickstarter RPGs with massive founding budgets such that ideas can be fully developed in ways they never would be if they had to work up to that level of money the old fashion way.

We have "one-shot" RPGs now, rather than all the highly funded RPGs being games with decades of History and well established fan bases.

Yeah, it's pretty cool that games like the Forbidden Lands can attract enough funding to put out a really quality product right off the hop.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1072956True, but I'd point out that CoC is a horror game if played properly, not an action game. Players go into that game, if they understand the basic orientation of the world, with an understanding of the increased mortality rates and the different optimal survival strategies.  GURPS likewise puts in enough adjustment options for rules and style that it's reasonably easy for groups to adjust their lethality meters to taste (and speeding up character creation is exactly why they always provide fairly detailed starting template options, as well).

There's a term from engineering and power technology that I've always liked, called EROEI -- Energy Return on Energy Invested.  If you change that first E to Entertainment, I think you still get a fairly applicable basic formula for game design: The time and effort you spend on pre-play preparation has to be exceeded by the entertainment value you get out of the play itself for it to be worth doing. Part of the reason that older games, I think, could get away with a fairly low EROEI ratio on their initial learning curve was that when RPGs were still a new and thrilling pastime, the process of character creation was in itself as entertaining and interesting as the rest of the game, especially to the kind of detail-junkies and rules monkeys who were the leading adopters of the games. Now, we not only have a more varied consumer audience but more convenient options for competition, so the entry-time demand has gotten a lot stricter and the interest in getting some value for that time has gone up.

There is another saying, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

You seem to be picking and choosing the games you look at to support your theory and then finding reasons to exclude the games that still don't fit into your theory.

Quote from: S'mon;1072983Excluding Pathfinder, I think the 5e impact is a couple orders bigger in number of gamers than that lot. And I think the OSR (& Fate) peaks were a bit earlier. But yes there is plenty of good gaming going on.

Yep, no doubt about that. But my point is that all those other games are enjoying a huge following proportionally to what was seen in previous eras. KS brought us a great flow of constant releases, and dedicated communities like Google Plus, Reddit and Discord show that each game has a great volume of actual play. It's the best era ever for finding games or discussions about that game that you love but is not the elephant in the room.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1073007You seem to be picking and choosing the games you look at to support your theory and then finding reasons to exclude the games that still don't fit into your theory.

More that I'm only commenting on the games I'm personally familiar with.  I've never played Rolemaster or Runequest.

RPGs are getting better as a whole. Shorter skill lists, lest dice rolling and re-rolling, less tables that contain nothing but numbers, no more "confirming criticals", AAC is easier for newbies, etc.

But Moldvay basic is STILL undefeated.

I designed and recently released an entire RPG system BECAUSE there are things I love about role-playing games and things that I... think are just plain shitty about more than a few of them.

Hopefully, as I put out more product, I will be helping to keep positive trajectory RPGs are moving in.

Well I just started running Primeval Thule (5e D&D version) and I'm extremely impressed how well designed & presented it is for maximum playability. It blows away anything I've seen from the '90s, never mind the '80s and before. It does seem to have benefitted from some evolution in game/supplement design.

I believe the industry is dying, or getting stagnated.  The hobby itself is alive and well because anyone can make a book without a publisher.

Quote from: S'mon;1073856Well I just started running Primeval Thule (5e D&D version) and I'm extremely impressed how well designed & presented it is for maximum playability. It blows away anything I've seen from the '90s, never mind the '80s and before. It does seem to have benefitted from some evolution in game/supplement design.

I've been thinking about picking that up from my FLGS. What's the vibe or theme the setting's going for?

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1073890I've been thinking about picking that up from my FLGS. What's the vibe or theme the setting's going for?

I would say the closest fit is Marvel's Savage Sword of Conan comics. Ostensibly it is a Kull/Conan swords and sorcery setting, but because it uses the 5e D&D rules basically unchanged there is a lot of magic in the adventures and (probably) used by the PCs. So it tends to remind me of SSOC, Marvel's take on the Conan mythos - an ostensibly low magic world, with pretty super-heroic protagonists often facing high-magic threats.

Game-wise I find this works brilliantly, it's far easier to run than a genuinely low-magic game, but some people are offended by the disparity. It's incredibly flavour rich; the Heroic Narratives (replacing Backgrounds) are brilliantly done for integrating PCs in the world, and once I took an hour to do a list of all the named NPCs in Quodeth (the starter city) the setting really came to life. I've run two sessions now and it's been some of the best gaming I've had in years.

Free setting taster - https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/129630/Primeval-Thule-Travelers-Guide

You can check out my Thule blog at https://simonsprimevalthule.blogspot.com/

Quote from: Snowman0147;1073880I believe the industry is dying, or getting stagnated.  The hobby itself is alive and well because anyone can make a book without a publisher.

Well it's like a lot of stuff from movies to computer games, the Triple A stuff keeps on trucking and the Indie stuff is blossoming due to the internet but everything in between is getting gutted.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1073880I believe the industry is dying, or getting stagnated...

That's true whenever D&D is popular.

Quote from: S'mon;1073909I would say the closest fit is Marvel's Savage Sword of Conan comics. Ostensibly it is a Kull/Conan swords and sorcery setting, but because it uses the 5e D&D rules basically unchanged there is a lot of magic in the adventures and (probably) used by the PCs. So it tends to remind me of SSOC, Marvel's take on the Conan mythos - an ostensibly low magic world, with pretty super-heroic protagonists often facing high-magic threats.

Game-wise I find this works brilliantly, it's far easier to run than a genuinely low-magic game, but some people are offended by the disparity. It's incredibly flavour rich; the Heroic Narratives (replacing Backgrounds) are brilliantly done for integrating PCs in the world, and once I took an hour to do a list of all the named NPCs in Quodeth (the starter city) the setting really came to life. I've run two sessions now and it's been some of the best gaming I've had in years.

Free setting taster - https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/129630/Primeval-Thule-Travelers-Guide

You can check out my Thule blog at https://simonsprimevalthule.blogspot.com/

Appreciate the text and links. This helps bring me to a "likely buy."

Quote from: Razor 007;1072047Serious Question.

I buy less RPGs than I used to. That's probably the surest metric. I'm a simulationist and given that the viral marketing of gamists (D&D, OSR) and narrativists has been overwhelming in the last 10 years, I cannot say that the picture is great.

That said, the picture is more complex. There have been innovations, a few. Less than there have been touted though. The book design has overall improved. We have much more color art. The problem is that the color art is generally of poor quality, however. So, overall: some improvements, lots of it is just marketing though and games have gone in directions I am not entirely comfortable with.

But we'll see a resurgence of (genre) simulationism in the 2020s. Pretty sure of it. The stage is set.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1073880I believe the industry is dying, or getting stagnated.  The hobby itself is alive and well because anyone can make a book without a publisher.

I believe my game has some new angles to offer. It's just the beginning of a new generation of simulationist games that emulate their respective genres closer than ever before.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1073962But we'll see a resurgence of (genre) simulationism in the 2020s. Pretty sure of it. The stage is set.

Interesting. How would you say this genre-simulation differ from the genre-emulation we've been seeing for some time now?

Quote from: Itachi;1073965Interesting. How would you say this genre-simulation differ from the genre-emulation we've been seeing for some time now?

I wouldn't say it does. But I would say that the term genre simulation is more compatible with the term simulationism, that's why I have come to prefer it.
I would also like to add that D&D and PbtA dominate a lot of the online discussion with simulationst games at times being regarding a thing of the 90s or so. I think we're going to see a resurgence in gamer conversations about the simulationist aspects of RPGs, spurred but improvements in simulation. (Or emulation, if you prefer.)

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1073993I wouldn't say it does. But I would say that the term genre simulation is more compatible with the term simulationism, that's why I have come to prefer it.
I would also like to add that D&D and PbtA dominate a lot of the online discussion with simulationst games at times being regarding a thing of the 90s or so. I think we're going to see a resurgence in gamer conversations about the simulationist aspects of RPGs, spurred but improvements in simulation. (Or emulation, if you prefer.)

Thanks for clarifying!

Don't you think the latest boom of BRP (Mythras, RQ: Glorantha, Delta Green 2, Unknown Armies 3, CoC 7, supplemenets like Mythic Britain, Rome, etc) is a sign of that already hapenning?

Quote from: Eric Diaz;1073154RPGs are getting better as a whole. Shorter skill lists, lest dice rolling and re-rolling, less tables that contain nothing but numbers, no more "confirming criticals", AAC is easier for newbies, etc.
...

Agreed. There has been a refinement to RPG design that has gone on the last 10 years that has largely fallen under the radar. Unfortunately it is almost totally confined to the Indie/small press RPG's.

By and large - aside from legacy systems the design trend has been for much less crunch than one would see from new games in the 80's and 90's.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1073880I believe the industry is dying, or getting stagnated.  The hobby itself is alive and well because anyone can make a book without a publisher.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1073919That's true whenever D&D is popular.

True but in this case D&D's traditional industry competition is basically no one.

Its D&D, and then essentially indie/POD/Small press RPGs now.

D&D basically has no competition. The Gulf in sales between D&D and it's "competitors" is bigger than it ever has been.

Outside of pathfinder - who I think will start to hemorrhage customers after their 2e flops. Who is there that is really putting a visible alternative to D&D out there?

Everyone else has mishandled their properties. (In fairness without WOTC, D&D's future would have been interesting.)

But no one else got a WOTC white knight charging in to save them. White wolf is gone. Vampire sequels are niche POD titles now. RQ was never going to challenge D&D, (or even come close) because Glorantha. Hero, Gurps - got to big and bloated, totally on life support. WHFRP RPG was always second fiddle for GW. Traveller? Who even plays that now?

(Yes hyperbole is in full effect here. Save your: B,b,but what about meeeeee! For someone else.)

The RPG hobby is utterly awesome these days.

The RPG industry is D&D. Period.

Quote from: Itachi;1073998Thanks for clarifying!

Don't you think the latest boom of BRP (Mythras, RQ: Glorantha, Delta Green 2, Unknown Armies 3, CoC 7, supplemenets like Mythic Britain, Rome, etc) is a sign of that already hapenning?

Yes, but it's a long way from the vocal supporters that D&D and PbtA or Fate have. For the record, I also consider Star Wars FFG and Conan 2d20 part of the attempt to capture a given franchise more closely. For me, the simulationist games of the future have a clearer vision of what they need to simulate (actually emulate but I think I stated why I go with the misnomer) and strike greater accuracy while not going beyond rules-medium in complexity.

Quote from: S'mon;1073909I would say the closest fit is Marvel's Savage Sword of Conan comics. Ostensibly it is a Kull/Conan swords and sorcery setting, but because it uses the 5e D&D rules basically unchanged there is a lot of magic in the adventures and (probably) used by the PCs. So it tends to remind me of SSOC, Marvel's take on the Conan mythos - an ostensibly low magic world, with pretty super-heroic protagonists often facing high-magic threats.

Game-wise I find this works brilliantly, it's far easier to run than a genuinely low-magic game, but some people are offended by the disparity. It's incredibly flavour rich; the Heroic Narratives (replacing Backgrounds) are brilliantly done for integrating PCs in the world, and once I took an hour to do a list of all the named NPCs in Quodeth (the starter city) the setting really came to life. I've run two sessions now and it's been some of the best gaming I've had in years.

Free setting taster - https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/129630/Primeval-Thule-Travelers-Guide

You can check out my Thule blog at https://simonsprimevalthule.blogspot.com/

Primeval Thule is an awesome setting.  I've been running a weekly 5e game for about 5-6 months now.

The GM Companion https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/168153/Primeval-Thule-5e-GM-Companion?manufacturers_id=6416 and the
Player Companion https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/171518/Primeval-Thule-5e-Players-Companion?manufacturers_id=6416 both have great stuff in them as well.

I've found the adventures useful as well...the authors wrote a variety of different types and they are easy to modify to fit your group/campaign.

I am definitely going to check out your blog S'mon.

Quote from: moonsweeper;1074045Primeval Thule is an awesome setting.  I've been running a weekly 5e game for about 5-6 months now.

The GM Companion https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/168153/Primeval-Thule-5e-GM-Companion?manufacturers_id=6416 and the
Player Companion https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/171518/Primeval-Thule-5e-Players-Companion?manufacturers_id=6416 both have great stuff in them as well.

They have a lot of individual cool stuff, I love the Slayer Barbarian in PC and the encounter tables in GMC. Also more monsters, and the most elegant mass combat system I've seen for D&D!

Mmm... encounter tables. Something too many campaign settings are missing these days!

Quote from: S'mon;1074065They have a lot of individual cool stuff, I love the Slayer Barbarian in PC and the encounter tables in GMC. Also more monsters, and the most elegant mass combat system I've seen for D&D!

I'm interested in seeing how the mass combat works.  I'll probably know soon since 4 of the 5 PCs in my campaign are going to get followers in a few levels.

The GM screen they did is nifty as well, although I believe this is the only place you can get it from
https://sasquatch-game-studio.myshopify.com/products/primeval-thule-gm-screen-pack

I specifically got it because I knew it had a road atlas style travel matrix in it.  The random plot complication/someone attacks charts are a blast as is the Great Old One gibberish table.  It even comes with a poster map of Quodeth, City of Thieves.  The background starting location cards are useful as well.

...wondering if we should start a new thread for this?

Quote from: moonsweeper;1074111I'm interested in seeing how the mass combat works.  I'll probably know soon since 4 of the 5 PCs in my campaign are going to get followers in a few levels.

The GM screen they did is nifty as well, although I believe this is the only place you can get it from
https://sasquatch-game-studio.myshopify.com/products/primeval-thule-gm-screen-pack

I specifically got it because I knew it had a road atlas style travel matrix in it.  The random plot complication/someone attacks charts are a blast as is the Great Old One gibberish table.  It even comes with a poster map of Quodeth, City of Thieves.  The background starting location cards are useful as well.

...wondering if we should start a new thread for this?

I noticed I couldn't buy that GM's screen anywhere!

A Thule thread could be nice - I know I've had a bunch of queries recently, and been doing stuff like a Quodeth sunset calendar others might find useful.

I noticed that even though 'north' in Thulean Greenland is actually geographic west, towards Canada, the Tower of Dawn in Quodeth that catched the first rays of the rising sun is exactly where it should be to catch the dawn irl... ie real south east if you orient the map the way Greenland actually is. I love those little touches.