Quote from: Shasarak on February 04, 2022, 04:16:14 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 04, 2022, 12:20:36 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on February 03, 2022, 11:24:52 PM

Quote from: Jaeger on February 03, 2022, 05:27:40 PM
IMHO, the RPG hobby was as its best when D&D was not as strong as it is now, and the #2 RPG was a different genre from D&D.

In the 90's there was D&D, then we had Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC still banging around.

All talked about, all actively played, with dedicated fanbases. And all available on the shelves at your FLGS...

Now we just have D&D, and D&D's clone, with the flavor of the month rotating the other top three positions...

Not that we'll ever really get back to the swinging 90's... the d20 OGL has done it's work. But IMHO the hobby as a whole is better off when D&D is not the 80'000lb gorilla it is now taking all the air out of the room.

Was there ever actually a year in the 90s where Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC seriously challenged DnD?

Its most likely just nostalgia.

From where do you get the "seriously challenged" part?

I don't see it in Jaeger's post.

We always have had other games that are not DnD.

At some stage you just have to face the facts that games like Vampire target a niche audience.

Right, but that wasn't the point being made, so my question stands. From where do you get the "seriously challenged" part?

The question of modern D&Ds supremacy is to why.

Is it like a Mad Max situation? Everything else has dried out, leaving D&D the emperor of a dead hobby?
Is it like alien terraforming? Where tons of casual fans have forced gatekeepers to adapt to them?
Is it like fractured government? More mini nations of other hobbies exist that people go to instead (CCGs, Minis, etc)?

In theory, while still niche, the TTG industry has grown from squat to squat and a half over the 2020s.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 04, 2022, 10:33:37 AM
The question of modern D&Ds supremacy is to why.

Is it like a Mad Max situation? Everything else has dried out, leaving D&D the emperor of a dead hobby?
Is it like alien terraforming? Where tons of casual fans have forced gatekeepers to adapt to them?
Is it like fractured government? More mini nations of other hobbies exist that people go to instead (CCGs, Minis, etc)?

In theory, while still niche, the TTG industry has grown from squat to squat and a half over the 2020s.

I would say terraforming.  For the uninitiated Role-Playing games and D&D are synonymous.  So, as 'nerd culture' goes mainstream 'D&D' becomes part of the lexicon of the cool kids.  Which is inexorably tied to D&D as lifestyle brand.  It's the name that's important, the larger hobby isn't particularly relevant.

I knew a lot of people in the 90s who were big into role playing games, but never played D&D.  And asking someone in that environment 'Do you play D&D?' meant AD&D, 2nd Edition.  A Vampire player would say 'no.'  These days I run into a lot of newer players who are playing PF, WoD, or something else and still say they play D&D.  The brand is becoming one and the same with the product, like a Band-Aid. 

As a result, anyone coming into the hobby is going to be pushed towards D&D because that's what comes up on Google.  They aren't walking into a game store to be confronted with dozens of options.         

D&D as a brand has escape velocity. It transcends just TTRPG's and will always be the McDonalds of TTRPG's.

This notion of "dethroning" it is pointless. It's as pointless as making (or rooting for) a burger joint JUST to compete with McDonalds to "outburger" them.

The reality is you have to support your game-companies of choice/start your own, and be an active part of that following. Which means quality production, good content, and constant outreach. You know? Just like we did during the Basic to AD&D era. You gotta do that with those other systems. Those of you of that vintage can remember when YOU KNEW every D&D group within a 20-mile radius. You *had* to cultivate new players. People have gotten soft, and pretend it's hard to find players. What they really mean is they don't want to put for the effort required to find or evangelize people off the D&D McBurger Menu.

Well... like it or not, that's reality. Just keep eating at the D&D trough, or find something better and don't look back.

I'm not blind to the fact that when it comes to TTRPG's that D&D is the sky all other TTRPG's lives under. What amazes me is the amount of clinging people do to this brand that has no reason to be on most people's main menu for consumption. It becomes more bizarre when the most vitriolic threads based on the current direction of the D&D Brand is literally telling us that *we* are not the desired customer-base.

I get that people (which includes me) have cherished memories of the bygone days of D&D when it was great. But the mechanics at best are stale - the best editions are behind it (which could more easily take elements from later editions you like and pin them on, or go OSR). The settings we loved are fucked up now and not well supported. The content they're making are watered down re-hashes of content we already have - because it's *not* made for us.

There are tons of settings and systems out there that can do "D&D Fantasy" better than D&D itself. At minimum that's what the OSR is there for, right? But I say why even stop there?

I'm glad D&D is going mainstream. I hope it goes so mainstream people start dressing like their characters, sing songs about it, open D&D themed restaurants, D&D Monopoly, D&D Nerf weapon, D&D Hip-Hop, whatever,  because it'll get oversaturated and run its natural course. And it appears it's on that trajectory.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 03, 2022, 05:10:35 PM

Quote from: Jaeger on February 03, 2022, 03:50:54 PM
The Game VS the Brand:
https://grumpywizard.home.blog/2022/01/20/the-game-vs-the-brand/

The claim that OSR has had a big influence on 5e is fricking DELUSIONAL. They played YOU to give them good buzz, not the other way around.

Oh the irony. The biggest champion of that view came right here, from our very own leader.

There were literally dozens of threads championing 5e as OSR influenced back in 2014. This thread I link to below is not the worst or best of them. It's pretty average in fact. But it will give yuu a taste. And then if you click back to the threads near there, you will see pages and pages of threads where, usually, someone here mentions the victory for the OSR that DNDNext/5e represents.

Thread D&D Basic: I Told You So

So yeah, this place right here was the epicenter of promoting 5e as OSR inspired. The people who "played" others about it were...us. The people posting here.

By the way I don't feel played at all. 5e does in fact harken back to some of the stylistic choices of 1e that I like, and I don't think it's a false sense at all. In the context of 3e and 4e, the layout and language and style choices and setting call-outs and focus on rulings and house rules and options over Rules As Written and Basic rules for free and the starter set, it is all legitimately OSR inspired in my view. I don't think Pundit was playing anyone by touting these things and advocating for them. But if you do think it was all just WOTC playing people, then you know who shares some of that blame. Us. This message board and it's users. This was the hub of that discussion in the key release years.

Quote from: Mistwell on February 04, 2022, 12:55:07 PM

Oh the irony. The biggest champion of that view came right here, from our very own leader.

I never saw him as my leader, I like the platform and discourse but I don't like pundits content or "public" persona.

But so much of OSR is nostalgic gut feeling over any sort of design. Its more united by hate then love.

And I run an OSR game, but I see it as a extreme outlier.

QuoteIn the context of 3e and 4e, the layout and language and style choices and setting call-outs and focus on rulings and house rules and options over Rules As Written and Basic rules for free and the starter set, it is all legitimately OSR inspired in my view.

STW/WWN/Godbound have good sections going into how to manage expectations and how to generate good house rules/ new content. 5e just has big sections of content missing altogether, with no such good advice. Your taking absense of effort as intentional.

But 5e is FULL of rules and elements that people HATED in 4e/3e, just given a coat of 1e style presentation.

Greetings!

D&D 5E is a great game. It's very much influenced by OSR elements, and is flexible, fun, and accessible.

Fuck all the crybabies and negative nancy's. It's easy enough to go play something else.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Omega on February 04, 2022, 02:20:04 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 03, 2022, 06:55:37 PM
Vampire has an obnoxious counterculture narrative where it's impossible to advance without literally cannibalizing your elders and the fan favorite Sabbat (an apocalypse cult that wants to enslave mankind) is characterized by doing this.

Mage operates under the premise that science is a lie created by The Man to enslave humanity and everything will be better if we start believing in pseudoscience and homeopathy instead.

Wraith is about fighting slavery in the afterlife, because for some reason the writers didn't think playing dead people with evil split personalities was harsh enough.

All of those are political statements. It's an insane franchise that sucks up all the market share in the urban fantasy genre.

1: I have or had 1st ed Vampire and back then the Sabbat had not literally sucked all the fun out of the setting yet.

2: I have Mage 1st or 2nd and back then the Technocracy had not literally sucked the fun out of the setting yet.

3: I have Wraith 1st or 2nd and back then the er... whatever... had not literally sucked the fun out of the setting yet.

4: White Wolf went downhill sometime around the advent of the edition treadmill and 2e. And by 3e things were not so much downhill as leaping off a cliff.

x: I have Orpheus, WW RPG and the first installment is fine. Then the second installment... yep, you guessed it. Sucks all the life from the setting. I havent actually gotten to the third part of the set because the 2nd was so freaking depressing. And yeah its political as all hell as the government and law and media and everything else are turned against the PCs. It didnt even get a chance to go downhill. They skipped straight to CLIFF!

x2: Same with Aberrant. Trinity comes along and, yep, things somehow got actually bleaker and more political.

Those things I described were present since first edition. Maybe they were more heavily emphasized in later editions or maybe groups just didn't read the books, but they were always there.

I actually recall hearing some employees providing a reason for why the direction shifted into metaplots. During the 90s the RPG market was going through a crunch due to increasing competition from video games, from which it still has never really recovered. Roleplayers didn't buy into the supplement treadmill, they just bought a few books and then made up the rest themselves. The marketing department decided the best way to combat this was to lean even harder into the supplement treadmill and introduce metaplot that changed the settings over time, in the form of the "Year of X" branding. This wasn't successful. Then the company decided to reboot the games, which was apparently fairly successful (VtR rulebook apparently sold 100,000 copies at its height IIRC, which is supposedly a success in the newly shrunk marketplace). But the problem was that the market just wasn't interested in urban fantasy games, so nothing they did really solved the ongoing shrinkage.

Then White Wolf got bought so that the WoD IP could be whored out in video games based solely on the reputation of the cult classic VTMB (which is a boneheaded decision for multiple reasons), dissolved, sold again (still based on VTMB's cult status), and now their current owner has cancelled new game production indefinitely to focus on DLC for their existing properties. The WoD video game brand has never been successful and I've heard other video game devs outright call it cursed.

Paradox has churned out some shovelware games made under license with other companies, and these have consistently stunk and failed to tap into what made VTMB a cult hit. Most of them are text-based adventure games and these have none of the charm that Troika's writing did. Troika's writing worked because it was written by a non-fan who liked to poke fun at the conventions of the IP and generally wrote in a irreverent manner, and because it was also just dialogue with the rest of the game providing the visual and audio components. The text games are painfully overwrought and pretentious slogs because they have to include descriptions too and were written by diehard fans who treat the game books as holy writ. The diehards will eat that shit up, but there's nothing there to hook a casual gamer just browsing through the markets.

The 3D games were awful. Earthblood has a terrible reception on Metacritic. Bloodhunt is a generic free to play battle royale game. Battle royale games are simple to make and will invariably make money as long as the quality isn't completely terrible, which is why the market is oversaturated with them. But it's a complete waste of the WoD IP and pretty much everybody agrees on this. The gratuitous Spanish in the game also confuses Spanish speakers (as most players know nothing about the IP since they just go through battle royale games like candy) who think the bruja class is a spellcaster class when it isn't. The game received such a horrible reception that it got temporarily delisted from Steam.

Quote from: Shasarak on February 04, 2022, 04:16:14 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 04, 2022, 12:20:36 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on February 03, 2022, 11:24:52 PM

Quote from: Jaeger on February 03, 2022, 05:27:40 PM
IMHO, the RPG hobby was as its best when D&D was not as strong as it is now, and the #2 RPG was a different genre from D&D.

In the 90's there was D&D, then we had Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC still banging around.

All talked about, all actively played, with dedicated fanbases. And all available on the shelves at your FLGS...

Now we just have D&D, and D&D's clone, with the flavor of the month rotating the other top three positions...

Not that we'll ever really get back to the swinging 90's... the d20 OGL has done it's work. But IMHO the hobby as a whole is better off when D&D is not the 80'000lb gorilla it is now taking all the air out of the room.

Was there ever actually a year in the 90s where Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC seriously challenged DnD?

Its most likely just nostalgia.

From where do you get the "seriously challenged" part?

I don't see it in Jaeger's post.

We always have had other games that are not DnD.

At some stage you just have to face the facts that games like Vampire target a niche audience.

It's a niche within a niche, even. There are a ton of things that the company could do to open up the IP to a wider and more profitable audience, but they refuse to do these things. If anything, Paradox is actively doubling down on everything that critics had previously criticized. Changeling: The Lost was widely praised for it's extremely diverse and open-ended setting that gives a lot of customizability to players while not crushing them with a bazillion years of irrelevant backstory politics, to the point where it exceeded the marketing department's expectations for it. No other game has done that AFAIK. If they applied the same formula to their other games (and got rid of that gratuitous Spanish, among other things), then I suspect it would attract much needed new blood to this insular and toxic fandom.

But that's no going to happen, at least not for V5. Hunter: The Reckoning, however, is apparently being retooled to something more like Hunter: The Vigil. Which is strange, considering that the "Reckoning" was an in-game event that doesn't apply to hunters outside the Imbued but they're keeping the name anyway for the brand name value.

Quote from: SHARK on February 04, 2022, 02:17:02 PMFuck all the crybabies and negative nancy's.

Yeah you show em. Don't ask questions. Just consume product and get excited for next product.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 04, 2022, 09:43:05 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on February 04, 2022, 04:16:14 AM
We always have had other games that are not DnD.

At some stage you just have to face the facts that games like Vampire target a niche audience.

   The difference is like the difference between a product holding 75-90% of the market--dominant, but with some room for other products to serve niches--and it holding 99% of the market, where it suffocates nearly everything else.

But the difference is like 90% of a market place of 100 and 99% of a market place of 1000.

You can still find your 10 people that want to play your particular game.

Heck there is even room in current gaming for thirsty sword lesbians and thats far more niche then Vampire.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 04, 2022, 10:21:16 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on February 04, 2022, 04:16:14 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 04, 2022, 12:20:36 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on February 03, 2022, 11:24:52 PM

Quote from: Jaeger on February 03, 2022, 05:27:40 PM
IMHO, the RPG hobby was as its best when D&D was not as strong as it is now, and the #2 RPG was a different genre from D&D.

In the 90's there was D&D, then we had Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC still banging around.

All talked about, all actively played, with dedicated fanbases. And all available on the shelves at your FLGS...

Now we just have D&D, and D&D's clone, with the flavor of the month rotating the other top three positions...

Not that we'll ever really get back to the swinging 90's... the d20 OGL has done it's work. But IMHO the hobby as a whole is better off when D&D is not the 80'000lb gorilla it is now taking all the air out of the room.

Was there ever actually a year in the 90s where Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC seriously challenged DnD?

Its most likely just nostalgia.

From where do you get the "seriously challenged" part?

I don't see it in Jaeger's post.

We always have had other games that are not DnD.

At some stage you just have to face the facts that games like Vampire target a niche audience.

Right, but that wasn't the point being made, so my question stands. From where do you get the "seriously challenged" part?

Would you prefer "hilariously challenged?

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 09:07:04 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 03, 2022, 08:57:44 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 08:56:58 PMIf you want to hunt monsters in a modern setting then you need to wait till I'm done with my take on it.

Or do Monster Hunter International.

Ive heard good things of it. It's based of off Hero no?

   There is a Savage Worlds version

Quote from: Shasarak on February 04, 2022, 03:59:23 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 04, 2022, 10:21:16 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on February 04, 2022, 04:16:14 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 04, 2022, 12:20:36 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on February 03, 2022, 11:24:52 PM

Quote from: Jaeger on February 03, 2022, 05:27:40 PM
IMHO, the RPG hobby was as its best when D&D was not as strong as it is now, and the #2 RPG was a different genre from D&D.

In the 90's there was D&D, then we had Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC still banging around.

All talked about, all actively played, with dedicated fanbases. And all available on the shelves at your FLGS...

Now we just have D&D, and D&D's clone, with the flavor of the month rotating the other top three positions...

Not that we'll ever really get back to the swinging 90's... the d20 OGL has done it's work. But IMHO the hobby as a whole is better off when D&D is not the 80'000lb gorilla it is now taking all the air out of the room.

Was there ever actually a year in the 90s where Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC seriously challenged DnD?

Its most likely just nostalgia.

From where do you get the "seriously challenged" part?

I don't see it in Jaeger's post.

We always have had other games that are not DnD.

At some stage you just have to face the facts that games like Vampire target a niche audience.

Right, but that wasn't the point being made, so my question stands. From where do you get the "seriously challenged" part?

Would you prefer "hilariously challenged?

I would preffer you were accurate as to what was being said and then argue against or for it.

Quote from: oggsmash on February 04, 2022, 04:10:13 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 09:07:04 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 03, 2022, 08:57:44 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 08:56:58 PMIf you want to hunt monsters in a modern setting then you need to wait till I'm done with my take on it.

Or do Monster Hunter International.

Ive heard good things of it. It's based of off Hero no?

   There is a Savage Worlds version

Is it in DT? I might consider risking my wife's ire to buy it. Not so much with HERO (Except Lucha Libre Hero, that book is priceless).

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 04, 2022, 04:23:12 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on February 04, 2022, 04:10:13 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 09:07:04 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 03, 2022, 08:57:44 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 08:56:58 PMIf you want to hunt monsters in a modern setting then you need to wait till I'm done with my take on it.

Or do Monster Hunter International.

Ive heard good things of it. It's based of off Hero no?

   There is a Savage Worlds version

Is it in DT? I might consider risking my wife's ire to buy it. Not so much with HERO (Except Lucha Libre Hero, that book is priceless).

  Dunno ordered it off Amazon about 8 months ago.  I like Larry (not so much his books, a whole bunch of gun porn and a dude who is an accountant wishing he was a fighter in those) so I got it with some other stuff last year when I went a bit nuts on increasing the size of the library.   The book is good though, and gives backstory to the organization and its members and where players might fit in.