I cannot for the life of be understand Venger's plight, A rising tide lifts all boats when it comes to the OSR.


He's either a dunce or more likely he left for an entirely different reason and threw a grenade on the way out for shits and giggles.

The thing about niche products is even if they don't function as a stand alone game they make for a good supplement to another.

I first encountered the question of "why was everything better in the past?" at uni in 1990 during a class on poetry. Specifically, they were talking about the likes of Wordsworth. I didn't know the term then, but I said it was simply survivorship bias. I said, "Plenty of crap was written in 1850, but nobody bothered reprinting it. People mostly only bother reprinting the good stuff. And that's what we've got left over. A hundred years from now people will be asking why there's no good stuff written in 2090, but there was so much in 1990."

People here obviously never heard of the term "penny dreadfuls."

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on September 07, 2024, 10:55:23 PMI first encountered the question of "why was everything better in the past?" at uni in 1990 during a class on poetry. Specifically, they were talking about the likes of Wordsworth. I didn't know the term then, but I said it was simply survivorship bias. I said, "Plenty of crap was written in 1850, but nobody bothered reprinting it. People mostly only bother reprinting the good stuff. And that's what we've got left over. A hundred years from now people will be asking why there's no good stuff written in 2090, but there was so much in 1990."

People here obviously never heard of the term "penny dreadfuls."

Most people are too young and/or never went down the literary rabbit hole to encounter the term.

You could say the same about the Pulps, how many do we know about? (even I am too "young" to remember them) Most didn't survive the test of time, and not only the racy ones.

Most of us have lived through a few decades and do have direct experience of the sudden cultural decline that began around the 1st decade of the 21st century. Certainly the 2010s and 2020s seem like a bit of a wasteland compared to prior decades. It's not just survivorship bias I think. Some good stuff is still being made, I like Christopher Nolan films for instance, but it seems to be far less than in the past. The 1980s in particular were an embarrassment of riches.

I don't think the ratio of good to bad has changed at all.

What has changed is that there's a much larger volume of stuff now. Anyone can make a movie and put it on YT, on Netflix I could spend a lifetime just watching movies and series from Nigeria, of all places, books are easily self-published, and so on.

This large volume of stuff can make you cynical and jaded. If nothing else, when looking at the huge amount of stuff we have to choose from, it's easy to be daunted by it all and just shrug and choose nothing.

I think the other change is that of medium - from big to small screen, and from printed to smaller screen. Star Wars wouldn't have been as great a success if it'd first been shown on TV - if nothing else, the opening credits and scene wouldn't have the same impact. And a book you can zip through with a finger's swipe quite simply isn't as good as a printed one. As well, you used to have to watch a movie at its scheduled time - you couldn't stop it and pick up a week later, or never. This change of format has tended to make people overall less engaged with each particular movie, show or book.

You know the saying, "nobody clicks on links"? Just check anyone's sharing of their RPG materials here on this forum, you can see how many downloads it had. It's invariably a tiny number. "It's crap, I know because I never even looked at it. I'm just too busy... doing what, you ask? Complaining that stuff is crap!"

Most stuff isn't very good. Some stuff is excellent. The ratio hasn't changed, we just have more stuff overall, are less engaged and have shorter attention spans. Those guys complaining everything's crap? I guarantee you that if we gave them a free RPG or book they would not read it well enough to write up a review here. I'd bet money on it.

For those who think everything is crap-if that is the case then create your own stuff. I do it all the time. I create stuff for my own enjoyment and to share with my players. Beyond that, I have enough rpg material already. So when I see a lot of crap being released I just shrug and keep going.

I think you all make good points. There is definitely over saturated marketplace that makes it hard for products to stand put and find an audience. The fantasy genre in particular, and I'm completely burned out on that genre. I'm burned out on Cthulhu mythos too.

That said, I definitely think that writers are getting lazier. I'll provide some specific examples:

In the 90s and 00s we had indie urban fantasy games like Everlasting and WitchCraft that wrote large rulebooks and multiple supplements full of crunch and fluff. Nowadays, I haven't found any games that remotely compare. I guess there's Liminal, but it doesn't grab me at all.

In the 90s we had unusual cyberpunk games like Kromosome that bucked typical cyberpunk tropes. It was anarcho-capitalist, the planet was barely inhabitable, millions were dying all the time, wetware/bioware was commonplace... but nowadays cyberpunk is so cookie cutter. There's no point in playing anything outside Cyberpunk 2020, and no point playing 2020 if you want something more creative.

If you wanna play something like X-Files? The only game that people still play is Delta Green, but that's a Cthulhu spin-off. If you wanna investigate Roswell grays and mothmen and stuff, then you have no real options.

It's not survivorship bias. It's the opposite. Good games with creative premises don't survive and don't inspire innovation. Those that survive become de facto monopolies, fossilized, and ultimately soulless. They're going through the motions due to inertia, but all the creativity and passion is long gone.

Like, how old are the franchises that dominate ttrpgs? D&D, CoC, Battletech, Traveler, Cyberpunk 2020, WoD... Almost all of them date back the 1980s at latest. Nothing else has been able to establish a niche. Aside from D&D's ogl scene, it's very bland and homogeneous.

I think what people are observing is the corpratization of everything.  Corporations want franchises and safe bets, they let other people take risks and then buy up the properties and bowlderize them and then wonder why their new product isn't hailed as the most brilliant and greatest thing.

But even in music, we're in the kareokie age.  It's heavily dominated by remaking songs from the seventies and eighties.  This is partly due to movies like Shrek and Guardians of the Galaxy but it's also coming from the TV shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent.

If we're not careful we'll see the day when you have to pay by the word for every word you write and say due to corporate ownership of language.

Quote from: David Johansen on September 08, 2024, 10:04:41 AMI think what people are observing is the corpratization of everything.  Corporations want franchises and safe bets, they let other people take risks and then buy up the properties and bowlderize them and then wonder why their new product isn't hailed as the most brilliant and greatest thing.

But even in music, we're in the kareokie age.  It's heavily dominated by remaking songs from the seventies and eighties.  This is partly due to movies like Shrek and Guardians of the Galaxy but it's also coming from the TV shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent.

If we're not careful we'll see the day when you have to pay by the word for every word you write and say due to corporate ownership of language.

Yep.  Survivorship bias is a thing, but it also doesn't explain why certain times have way more literature survive than others.  The Romantic period (Wordsworth, et al.) was a short burst of about 40 years, followed by about 5 decades of much fewer "classics" surviving, even though more literature was being produced.  It has to do with the zeitgeist, the prevailing cultural winds, and also the economic and social structure of the time.  There's a reason that Chinese thought and invention flourished during the Warring States period, just like there's a reason that the Romantic Period produced more memorable authors than the previous or following 50 years.

The whole "today is just like every other time" mantra is both true and false.  People haven't changed.  We are still fundamentally the same organisms we were 50,000 years ago, with the same biology, limitations, and moral failings.  But our environment changes, our social and political structures change, and most importantly, the cultural incentives of our times change.

How much truly good literature or film came out of the Soviet Union?  There was some, but nowhere near what was coming out of the West in the 70's and 80's.  Our culture (and its emphasis) clearly contributed to that proliferation of good movies and books.  Well, why should we be surprised when the level of our media declines as our western societies copy more and more of the ideals of the Soviets (censorship, political correctness, top-down management and thinking, etc.)?  Culture matters, maybe more than any other factor.  And our culture is different than the culture that spawned the classic RPGs of the 70's and 80's.

So, no, it isn't just our perspectives that have changed.  The actual quality of works today has declined.  At the beginning of each "Open Bar", the Critical Drinker will read off the top grossing movies of a year from the 80's, 90's, or early 2000's.  When you compare just those top twenty or so movies, any of them would shine compared to all of the movies produced in the last ten years.  And Hollywood was putting out ten of them every year.  Our culture has changed, and it's hurting our creativity...

Quote from: David Johansen on September 08, 2024, 10:04:41 AMI think what people are observing is the corpratization of everything.  Corporations want franchises and safe bets, they let other people take risks and then buy up the properties and bowlderize them and then wonder why their new product isn't hailed as the most brilliant and greatest thing.

But even in music, we're in the kareokie age.  It's heavily dominated by remaking songs from the seventies and eighties.  This is partly due to movies like Shrek and Guardians of the Galaxy but it's also coming from the TV shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent.

If we're not careful we'll see the day when you have to pay by the word for every word you write and say due to corporate ownership of language.

Exactly.

That's exactly why I want copyright terms on works for hire to be shortened from 95 years to about 30 or so. Trying to get creators to be creative and productive nowadays is like herding cats, so using old dead IPs as a foundation seems like it might work better. It's a natural human impulse to recycle older stories, and copyright has stifled creativity by leaving creators rudderless in an ocean of content. Not only is it hard af to find and study older works for research despite Google existing, but you're legally barred from recycling ideas you find even on abandonware.

It's absolutely stupid that apathetic corpos can just squat on their abandonware IPs until 2095, when all the fans are long dead. Who does that benefit?!

Quote from: Eirikrautha on September 08, 2024, 10:31:48 AM

Quote from: David Johansen on September 08, 2024, 10:04:41 AMI think what people are observing is the corpratization of everything.  Corporations want franchises and safe bets, they let other people take risks and then buy up the properties and bowlderize them and then wonder why their new product isn't hailed as the most brilliant and greatest thing.

But even in music, we're in the kareokie age.  It's heavily dominated by remaking songs from the seventies and eighties.  This is partly due to movies like Shrek and Guardians of the Galaxy but it's also coming from the TV shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent.

If we're not careful we'll see the day when you have to pay by the word for every word you write and say due to corporate ownership of language.

Yep.  Survivorship bias is a thing, but it also doesn't explain why certain times have way more literature survive than others.  The Romantic period (Wordsworth, et al.) was a short burst of about 40 years, followed by about 5 decades of much fewer "classics" surviving, even though more literature was being produced.  It has to do with the zeitgeist, the prevailing cultural winds, and also the economic and social structure of the time.  There's a reason that Chinese thought and invention flourished during the Warring States period, just like there's a reason that the Romantic Period produced more memorable authors than the previous or following 50 years.

The whole "today is just like every other time" mantra is both true and false.  People haven't changed.  We are still fundamentally the same organisms we were 50,000 years ago, with the same biology, limitations, and moral failings.  But our environment changes, our social and political structures change, and most importantly, the cultural incentives of our times change.

How much truly good literature or film came out of the Soviet Union?  There was some, but nowhere near what was coming out of the West in the 70's and 80's.  Our culture (and its emphasis) clearly contributed to that proliferation of good movies and books.  Well, why should we be surprised when the level of our media declines as our western societies copy more and more of the ideals of the Soviets (censorship, political correctness, top-down management and thinking, etc.)?  Culture matters, maybe more than any other factor.  And our culture is different than the culture that spawned the classic RPGs of the 70's and 80's.

So, no, it isn't just our perspectives that have changed.  The actual quality of works today has declined.  At the beginning of each "Open Bar", the Critical Drinker will read off the top grossing movies of a year from the 80's, 90's, or early 2000's.  When you compare just those top twenty or so movies, any of them would shine compared to all of the movies produced in the last ten years.  And Hollywood was putting out ten of them every year.  Our culture has changed, and it's hurting our creativity...

Nothing to add, but that was really insightful.  Good post.

Quote from: Mishihari on September 08, 2024, 01:33:28 PMNothing to add, but that was really insightful.  Good post.

Thanks!  Hey, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on September 08, 2024, 03:13:32 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on September 08, 2024, 01:33:28 PMNothing to add, but that was really insightful.  Good post.

Thanks!  Hey, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while...

And now we know why Eirikrautha takes his disbabled rodent to the urinal with him...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on September 08, 2024, 10:31:48 AM

Quote from: David Johansen on September 08, 2024, 10:04:41 AMI think what people are observing is the corpratization of everything.  Corporations want franchises and safe bets, they let other people take risks and then buy up the properties and bowlderize them and then wonder why their new product isn't hailed as the most brilliant and greatest thing.

But even in music, we're in the kareokie age.  It's heavily dominated by remaking songs from the seventies and eighties.  This is partly due to movies like Shrek and Guardians of the Galaxy but it's also coming from the TV shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent.

If we're not careful we'll see the day when you have to pay by the word for every word you write and say due to corporate ownership of language.

Yep.  Survivorship bias is a thing, but it also doesn't explain why certain times have way more literature survive than others.  The Romantic period (Wordsworth, et al.) was a short burst of about 40 years, followed by about 5 decades of much fewer "classics" surviving, even though more literature was being produced.  It has to do with the zeitgeist, the prevailing cultural winds, and also the economic and social structure of the time.  There's a reason that Chinese thought and invention flourished during the Warring States period, just like there's a reason that the Romantic Period produced more memorable authors than the previous or following 50 years.

The whole "today is just like every other time" mantra is both true and false.  People haven't changed.  We are still fundamentally the same organisms we were 50,000 years ago, with the same biology, limitations, and moral failings.  But our environment changes, our social and political structures change, and most importantly, the cultural incentives of our times change.

How much truly good literature or film came out of the Soviet Union?  There was some, but nowhere near what was coming out of the West in the 70's and 80's.  Our culture (and its emphasis) clearly contributed to that proliferation of good movies and books.  Well, why should we be surprised when the level of our media declines as our western societies copy more and more of the ideals of the Soviets (censorship, political correctness, top-down management and thinking, etc.)?  Culture matters, maybe more than any other factor.  And our culture is different than the culture that spawned the classic RPGs of the 70's and 80's.

So, no, it isn't just our perspectives that have changed.  The actual quality of works today has declined.  At the beginning of each "Open Bar", the Critical Drinker will read off the top grossing movies of a year from the 80's, 90's, or early 2000's.  When you compare just those top twenty or so movies, any of them would shine compared to all of the movies produced in the last ten years.  And Hollywood was putting out ten of them every year.  Our culture has changed, and it's hurting our creativity...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on September 08, 2024, 10:31:48 AM

Quote from: David Johansen on September 08, 2024, 10:04:41 AMI think what people are observing is the corpratization of everything.  Corporations want franchises and safe bets, they let other people take risks and then buy up the properties and bowlderize them and then wonder why their new product isn't hailed as the most brilliant and greatest thing.

But even in music, we're in the kareokie age.  It's heavily dominated by remaking songs from the seventies and eighties.  This is partly due to movies like Shrek and Guardians of the Galaxy but it's also coming from the TV shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent.

If we're not careful we'll see the day when you have to pay by the word for every word you write and say due to corporate ownership of language.

Yep.  Survivorship bias is a thing, but it also doesn't explain why certain times have way more literature survive than others.  The Romantic period (Wordsworth, et al.) was a short burst of about 40 years, followed by about 5 decades of much fewer "classics" surviving, even though more literature was being produced.  It has to do with the zeitgeist, the prevailing cultural winds, and also the economic and social structure of the time.  There's a reason that Chinese thought and invention flourished during the Warring States period, just like there's a reason that the Romantic Period produced more memorable authors than the previous or following 50 years.

The whole "today is just like every other time" mantra is both true and false.  People haven't changed.  We are still fundamentally the same organisms we were 50,000 years ago, with the same biology, limitations, and moral failings.  But our environment changes, our social and political structures change, and most importantly, the cultural incentives of our times change.

How much truly good literature or film came out of the Soviet Union?  There was some, but nowhere near what was coming out of the West in the 70's and 80's.  Our culture (and its emphasis) clearly contributed to that proliferation of good movies and books.  Well, why should we be surprised when the level of our media declines as our western societies copy more and more of the ideals of the Soviets (censorship, political correctness, top-down management and thinking, etc.)?  Culture matters, maybe more than any other factor.  And our culture is different than the culture that spawned the classic RPGs of the 70's and 80's.

So, no, it isn't just our perspectives that have changed.  The actual quality of works today has declined.  At the beginning of each "Open Bar", the Critical Drinker will read off the top grossing movies of a year from the 80's, 90's, or early 2000's.  When you compare just those top twenty or so movies, any of them would shine compared to all of the movies produced in the last ten years.  And Hollywood was putting out ten of them every year.  Our culture has changed, and it's hurting our creativity...

Yeah, great post. At least this offers the hope that the golden age will one day return, whether or not we'll be alive to see it. There have clearly been numerous such periods throughout history, eg the late Roman Republic.

With the sheer volume of stuff that is coming out and has already been produced, Sturgeon's Law does apply. However even 1% of all that volume of stuff is still more than enough to keep me satisfied for decades.

Then again, I'm that kid in a stable full of shit convinced there is a donkey I'm gonna find.