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.