Quote from: FrankTrollman;389278Transmedia is about selling or distributing related products in other media, your examples are just leaving room for sequels within the same medium.

I don't think that what the proponents are talking about. They are not tie-ins but integral parts of the story itself. In other words you don't get the complete picture unless you view all the media they have to offer. From what I am getting each part could be enjoyed on it's own but needs all to be viewed to get the entire picture.

And it not limited to events in the "present" of the story. But could include stuff in the past or the future. I.e. prequels and sequels. So the argument of "all they were doing was writing sequels." about past efforts doesn't ring for me.

Again the big limitation in the past is that you needed a large wad of money to do anything in multiple media at the same time. Hence most example are limited and confined to a single media (books, tv, film, etc) Today the amount of money you need is considerably lower allowing even individuals to attempt this.

After reading this, it occured to me that RPGs are a rare case of a hobby where people make stuff and give it away free, and it's of comparable quality to products you pay for (in game usefulness if not production values). So the actual assertion that we "can't have nice things" is wrong.

Quote from: jeff37923;389276I thought The Citadel of Chaos only dealt with vintage games and not retro-clones.

Vintage gaming, Sir, which certainly may include clones, IMO. Nuance.

Quote from: jeff37923;389276I thought The Citadel of Chaos only dealt with vintage games and not retro-clones.

Of course not!  Some of the example games in the Strategy Review section:

AD&D; B/X (Moldvay/Cook), BECMI (Mentzer) D&D; Holmes Basic; Labyrinth Lord; OSRIC; Swords and Wizardry; White/Brown box D&D (Greyhawk, Blackmoor)

They just don't get all that much discussion because the OSR has them pretty well covered.  There haven't been any retro-clones of other systems yet, so D&D clones are about all there is to talk about.

Quote from: StormBringer;389349O

They just don't get all that much discussion because the OSR has them pretty well covered.  There haven't been any retro-clones of other systems yet, so D&D clones are about all there is to talk about.

Ahem, see this post.

Quote from: Silverlion;389368Ahem, see this post.

Ok, yeah, I was exaggerating a bit.  There are others out there, but as you mentioned there, little support and even less recognition.

But hey, that is what the Citadel is for!  Start the talking, and pull in anyone you know!

Quote from: Melan;389241RPGs are games about hospitality and getting together in an age where letting strangers into your personal space, let alone home is becoming a strange event. It is an inherently social hobby; in part I think this is why it magnifies social friction and conflicts between individuals.

This is a brilliant observation.

Thank you Melan.

Quote from: Benoist;389246The vast majority of new gamers are introduced to role playing by people who already are gamers.

I am not so sure about this anymore.  

We have no idea if "playing D&D with Dad as a tyke" is going to translate into becoming a teen and gaming with fellow teens.   It may just be the "Daddy plays with me!" phase of pre-adolescence and tweenage.  

Back when RPGs exploded, it was young adults and teens converting over people of their same age group.    As gamers became old fucks, most stopped converting their fellows.

Though possibly, this is because adults interact in work environs or family environs, neither which is especially conducive for RPG discussion.   Sure, it occurs, but obviously its rare compared to schoolyard conversions.

The ENWorld version of this thread got shut down.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;389569The ENWorld version of this thread got shut down.

In part because the mods pussied out over me saying that Shep and Skarka can go die in a fire if they can't be bothered to produce stuff worth buying.

And yes, EN World's modclique pussied out.  It's a bullyboy move, and I just sighed when I got the PM telling me that I couldn't even view the thread anymore.  (Which I got around by using another browser, which is how I got to see the close- anticlimatic.)

*sigh*

The points I made stand: We don't need them anymore, and if they want our custom then they have to step up and do better than what we can get for free on our own (and with minimal time invested).  More and more gamers grok this, as they can come up with cool shit they think is fun while playing Halo or watching Iron Man 2 or getting laid or cheering on the squad at the bar.  I'm thrilled to see this wholesale reclaimation of the original culture, as it will mean more gaming for all that actually want to fucking play the game.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;389569The ENWorld version of this thread got shut down.

Wow. I'm shocked. So surprising.

Quote from: two_fishes;389121I find the complete lack of self-awareness exhibited in your response to be... well actually, I find it hilarious. Coming from someone whose online persona revolves around cynical judgment and incessant criticism of product you dislike, and just plain all around constant bitching, the irony is thick. Pundit, you are one of the most toxic personalities in the online RPG community. Nearly every point listed above can be applied directly to you.

Except for the most important one, that of feeling positive about the product itself. The people who are killing the gaming hobby are the ones who think gaming itself is "dysfunctional" (ie. the Forge Swine) as Melan so aptly pointed out earlier in the thread, while having a vested interest in recreating the hobby as a minority interest founded on their pet concepts.

I love gaming and I want it to grow. Those that are ruining the hobby are those who either actually hate gaming and want to remake it as "art" or "pseudo-intellectual pursuit" (like the Forge Swine) or those who don't actually give a shit about gaming but have hidden in it as a "subculture" where their personal social retardation and disgusting personality disorders are "tolerated" (the Lawncrappers), thanks to geek social fallacy.

And increasingly, the hobby is designed to drive more and more regular people out and to become a willful haven for the lawncrappers and the pseudo-intellectuals.

RPGPundit

Quote from: The Butcher;389150Thread won at post #2.



The Swine I'm familiar with, but who are the Lawncrappers?

The Lawncrappers!

RPGpundit

Quote from: Koltar;389187I know I've said a version of this in other threads - however.....

Pundit, you're wrong on this one.

 If anything RPGs and gaming is actually closer to the mainstream or has even merged with it.

More and more people have either tried D&D/RPGs or have been in a campaign at some point in their lives.

The problem crops up when some news media and some gamers do not recognize this fact and are still reacting to things based on the out-of-date cliches and stereotypes.

When I see "overweight neckbeards" in the store, they are not the RPG players and purchasers - they are the miniatures gamers for the most part. We're talking the ones that play WARHAMMER 40K, WARMACHINE, BATTLETECH, Star Wars Miniatures, etc..


Most of the D&D and Role playing gamers are clean, mostly normal looking people with good hygiene.

- Ed C.

I'm not trying to negate your personal experience at the FLGS, Koltar, but I think we're talking about two different things.

Look at my "Lawncrappers" essay; as I pointed out there, back when I started the hobby gaming was something that everyone was doing, that you didn't have to be an obsessive nerd to involve yourself in. There were always obsessive nerds in the hobby, but they didn't dominate the hobby. You could be a really "casual gamer"; and there was no more stigma at that time (aside from "satanic panic") to playing RPGs than there was to playing backgammon or monopoly.
But today, games are all oriented to gamers: the people who are being sold product and who are being encouraged by the industry are the most insular, most compulsive "fanboys", and the regular dude doesn't really have any game on the market that's simple enough or accessible enough for them to just pick up and game spontaneously.

That's problem one.

Problem two is that over time, as more of those "regular" people left the hobby, more of the extremists with personal social-retardation issues began demanding "tolerance" for their extreme behaviours.  Its like I've said before, I LONG for the time when your mom was afraid that if you started playing D&D you'd end up worshiping Satan; because now, if you start playing D&D your mom is likely to worry you'll end up a 40 year old virgin living in her basement.

And the more we've come to tolerate the Lawncrappers, the more regular people choose to leave; its a vicious cycle. The orientation in the industry to the hardcore fan has reduced the presence of regular people playing, which has in turn increased the influence of the Lawncrappers, which in turn leads more regular people to leave, and finally leads Lawncrappers who otherwise would never have cared about gaming to start gaming just because its seen as a "lawncrapper-safe" activity.

Finally, the third big problem is with the failed-novelists (as someone said above) and would be "Artistes" and "Pseudo-intellectuals"; the Swine, in other words, who actively WANT gaming to be a tiny subculture, because of their disdain for regular people who they think of as the (ironically) "Unwashed"  masses. These people don't want games to be easy or fun, the sort of things that attract regular people; they want them to have "Meaning" or "address story" or other bullshit, and dream of being in charge of a hobby (no matter how small) where they rule over a cadre of social retards.

I'm glad that you've personally seen evidence that lots of regular people are still gaming or getting into gaming; and I agree that I don't think by far that its "too late" for gaming to be "saved" (unlike, say, Furry fandom).   But the answer to all this is to gear gaming as a hobby away from the fanatics and toward the mainstream, so that these people feel like its their hobby, and not the Swine or the Lawncrapper's.

RPGPundit

Quite a number of people who I've met outside of the "gamer" subculture (ie, coworkers, friends of friends, boyfriends of friends, girlfriends of friends, etc.) actually are casual RPers who either gave it up because their group disbanded, lack of time, or whatever, but who wouldn't mind getting in on another game.

At least half of the people I know who do or who have played RPGs in the past are people I never would have expected to be gamers.  Quite a few either started with 2e or 3e (considering I'm only 22), and just never bought into the next iteration since their social circles changed with college and whatnot.  I'd say not to underestimate the number of casual and/or "normal" players the d20 boom brought in.

Obviously it's just that life got hold of them and media that's easier to fit into their lives (movies, video-games, etc.) have replaced RPGs.  What I wonder is if it's even possible to control the size of the hobby, or maybe it's just had its heyday and that's it -- culture everywhere is changing and there may be nothing we can do.

It's not that these people wouldn't play given the right group -- most of them seem more than willing to sit down at a table and play (the culture certainly didn't scare them away, since most of them played with high-school or college friends), but will they given the choice between tabletop or some other medium.  Wizards is currently attempting to address this issue with Encounters, but I'm not sure that style of play necessarily caters to enough tastes to draw back in more than a fraction of the lapsed casual players.

3e was a lucky break and very good timing, since it managed to catch a lot of lapsed players (and their kids and younger relatives who they could share the game with).  Whether or not we'll see this "perfect storm" again (or some alternate boom) for the people who started gaming in the 90s/early 00s, I'm not sure.

Well Pundit has a point about the Lawncrappers, but there's another force at work: age.

People stopped playing RPGs when they got out of high school or college the same way people stop doing everything they did in high school or college.  They get jobs, get married, move to different locations, lose track of old friends.  These people would probably game if they had time or people they liked to game with.  In the military RPGs are still popular, lawncrapper's haven't done anything there.

The problem is, the people who kept playing RPGs after college most of the time were people who weren't too successful at other aspects of life.  80s and 90s weren't exactly laid back, people were serious about work and money.

I think it's more a case of the normal people left just because life called, and Lawncrappers were all that were left.  I think once Virtual Tabletop gets more sophisticated you'll see some people come back, but then again, some people just aren't willing to designate a few hours a week as gametime anymore, instead they game on the console or online here and there.  The irony is, that always adds up to way more then if they just sat down to game.