Quote from: Kahoona on June 01, 2023, 07:37:11 AM
Something I did find interesting and why I haven't gone to any big events for a few years, the virus aside. There's normally more booths and sellers dedicated to Storygames then anything else at these conventions. And they tend to sell alot of product unless, they had the same product the previous year. In which case they are hard press to sell anything. On the other hand, other games tend to have fewer sales but will still sell the same products the following year.

This is normal, considering what they're selling. Would you buy twice the same campaign setting, especially after having played it already ?
Storygames are little more than ready to play single campaigns with integrated rules that allow for very little variance in play and effectively zero replay value.

Quote from: FheredinThis is basically a self-fulfilling prophecy because your feed customizes to your interests, which are OSR, not story games.

Yup, this. A quick look at the Reddit pages for say, Blades in the Dark and Dungeon World shows there's a buncha people playing those right now, same with pages of say, Black Hack or DCC. And if anecdotes are on the table, my 2 current groups play both PbtA and OSR equally, and only a small portion are active on internet forums (3 out of 15 people).

So, the difference is in the eye algorithm of the beholder. Receiving constant feeds about X game on your Youtube/Twitter page only says about your own interests.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 08:26:54 AM
Even if you were able to confirm that OSR sees more online discussion, I do not grant that popularity equals good. All games start with zero players, therefore game quality exists in abstraction, before any players actually picked up the game. Appealing to popularity means you understand these factors exist, but rather than actually trying to understand them...you just take popularity on face value.

We are 17 years in from the release of OSRIC (2006), 21 years after the rise of the first major classic D&D communities (2002). Maybe you had a point back in 2013. But it is 2023 and the OSR i.e. classic D&D-related is not slowing down in terms of quantity or quality. It is easily equal to two or three mid-tier RPGs in terms of the niche it occupies in the hobby and industry.

Let me put on the devil's advocate hat for a minute or two...

In my practical experience, some story games have replayability.  For example, while someone may not use the same PbtA playbooks twice in a row, they can be customized enough to appear different when re-used by others.  Is that any different from classes in D&D?  Some games like Monsterhearts also have a stupendous number of fan made playbooks.  Uncharted Worlds had a strong classic Traveller vibe and has what it needs for campaign play.  Traveller itself offered fairly stagnant characters after generation so that is far from something new.

I also see a fair amount of focused indie stuff in the solo game community.  There is a tendency for lighter weight mechanics there.  Ironsworn and Starforged are PbtA powered and very popular for campaign play.  Me, Myself, and Die is a stellar example of that (season two used Ironsworn, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDvunq75UfH_Z92nrYPUsTO_fTHnLTNaT) Of course, there are folks that also use solo tools for traditional games like D&D or Call of Cthulhu.

Having said all that.  I don't think the game system matters as much as is implied.  The demographics, the gamers themselves, have changed.  Even WotC has admitted that campaigns are much shorter than they used to be.  (The average being six sessions.)  So, I think the one-shot and mini-arc thing is actually a reflection of people's changes in desire, attention span, and commitment.  It could be argued that story games are a reaction to that and not a flaw at all.  Many traditional RPGs have great sprawling epic stories, but it takes years to get there and a lot story games offer a sweet and short path to get there.

Tangent time, have you all seen the Candela Obscura quick start?  It is specifically geared to one shots and mini-arcs.  It appears to be direct opposite to the intent of the yet to be seen Daggerheart.  Critical Role thinks there is room for both styles of game in the market.  From the biggest mistake in RPG design perspective, with will be interesting to see how these play out.

The CO rules appear to have a strong PbtA influence.  While it uses a dice pool, the results do the standard PbtA results thing; miss, hit with complications, hit, and hit with multiple successes/bonuses.   

Quote from: estar on June 01, 2023, 02:12:14 PM
We are 17 years in from the release of OSRIC (2006), 21 years after the rise of the first major classic D&D communities (2002). Maybe you had a point back in 2013. But it is 2023 and the OSR i.e. classic D&D-related is not slowing down in terms of quantity or quality. It is easily equal to two or three mid-tier RPGs in terms of the niche it occupies in the hobby and industry.

Yup.

In my opinion; the play of past editions of D&D has never been a bigger part of the hobby than it is now.

Part of it is due to the OGL, and part a reaction to various Wotzi shenanigan's over the years.

It doesn't hurt their cause that these system still basically do what it says on the tin when you actually sit down and play them.

Quote from: zircher on June 01, 2023, 02:45:43 PM
Tangent time, have you all seen the Candela Obscura quick start?  It is specifically geared to one shots and mini-arcs.  It appears to be direct opposite to the intent of the yet to be seen Daggerheart.  Critical Role thinks there is room for both styles of game in the market.  From the biggest mistake in RPG design perspective, with will be interesting to see how these play out.

The CO rules appear to have a strong PbtA influence. While it uses a dice pool, the results do the standard PbtA results thing; miss, hit with complications, hit, and hit with multiple successes/bonuses.   

CO is just a Blades in the Dark hack. Which itself is a PBtA derivative.

Quote from: Vestragor on June 01, 2023, 08:17:41 AM
@Kahoona:
World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness games, despite using the Storyteller System in various incarnations, are not storygames; they tend to be a lot more "character squabbling" friendly than, say, AD&D, but they're still RPGs.
True storygames arose from the Forge as a sort of reaction to the popularity of WoD because, according to good ol' Ronnie himself, playing Vampire and the like caused "brain damage".

Fair enough, and I do recall Ronnie saying such. I just got some reason had "story teller system" paired with Storygames. Probably because the name.

Quote from: Vestragor on June 01, 2023, 08:30:50 AM

Quote from: Kahoona on June 01, 2023, 07:37:11 AM
There's normally more booths and sellers dedicated to Storygames then anything else at these conventions. And they tend to sell alot of product unless, they had the same product the previous year. In which case they are hard press to sell anything. On the other hand, other games tend to have fewer sales but will still sell the same products the following year.

This is normal, considering what they're selling. Would you buy twice the same campaign setting, especially after having played it already ?
Storygames are little more than ready to play single campaigns with integrated rules that allow for very little variance in play and effectively zero replay value.

The people buying the same games the next year aren't the same people, and that's the point. The poster is seeing OSR games maintain a long tail of new players, while storygames flash in the pan and are gone.

Quote from: estar on June 01, 2023, 02:12:14 PM
But it is 2023 and the OSR i.e. classic D&D-related is not slowing down in terms of quantity or quality.

I'm not sure this is true. (EDIT: probably better to say I'm not sure if I agree with this, as phrased)  As far as quantity goes, maybe. There are lots of new OSR games published every year, but they're kind of all the same, and nobody seems to play the vast majority of them (similar to PBTA, come to think of it). As far as quality goes, the quality of OSR games is going to be pretty stable, because again they're all very similar. They haven't really gotten worse, but it's hard to argue they've gotten any better either.

Thing is, if you look at the the OSR games that any significant number of people seem to be playing: OSE, DCC and C&C, primarily, but you could potentially add in LOTFP and Hyperborea as well. All of them have been around since at least the early teens, sometimes earlier. Has any new OSR game released in the last five years made any kind of a splash in the RPG scene?

I'm genuinely asking, because the best example I can think of is Shadowdark. Firstly, it remains to be seen if anyone will be playing that game a year from now. Secondly, Shadowdark was mostly remarkable for being totally unremarkable. The people who like it say "it's great because it's got all the stuff we like from other games" and the people who don't say "it sucks because it has all the stuff we have in other games".

Quote from: zircher on June 01, 2023, 02:42:39 PM
Having said all that.  I don't think the game system matters as much as is implied.  The demographics, the gamers themselves, have changed.  Even WotC has admitted that campaigns are much shorter than they used to be.  (The average being six sessions.)  So, I think the one-shot and mini-arc thing is actually a reflection of people's changes in desire, attention span, and commitment.  It could be argued that story games are a reaction to that and not a flaw at all.  Many traditional RPGs have great sprawling epic stories, but it takes years to get there and a lot story games offer a sweet and short path to get there.

I think you're right, here. I was trying to think of what there has been in terms of general design trends in RPGs lately, and this might be the big one. There have been a huge number of products (especially games and settings) published in recent years which are designed for running one specific campaign, seemingly once. And at the same time, an apparent drop in the release of games setting out to be "the game you play for the next 30 years". This seems to be true both in the story-game and traditional RPG worlds. However, I'm not sure if this is purely the result of changing tastes, or just because that kind of project seems to be perfect Kickstarter-bait.

Quote from: estar on June 01, 2023, 02:12:14 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 08:26:54 AM
Even if you were able to confirm that OSR sees more online discussion, I do not grant that popularity equals good. All games start with zero players, therefore game quality exists in abstraction, before any players actually picked up the game. Appealing to popularity means you understand these factors exist, but rather than actually trying to understand them...you just take popularity on face value.

We are 17 years in from the release of OSRIC (2006), 21 years after the rise of the first major classic D&D communities (2002). Maybe you had a point back in 2013. But it is 2023 and the OSR i.e. classic D&D-related is not slowing down in terms of quantity or quality. It is easily equal to two or three mid-tier RPGs in terms of the niche it occupies in the hobby and industry.

This really misses the point of discussing popularity in the first place. In the video at the start of the thread, Pundit equated popularity with quality. This has never really been about if OSR is popular, but if that popularity is enough that it does things like make storytelling games redundant or theorycrafting unnecessary.

I see a great deal of sectarianism here, and a strong desire to not give rivals an inch.

Ultimately, the root cause here is ignorance of broader game design theorycrafting. Popularity is a fallback metric for when you don't actually understand what virtues make a game good. I am willing to wager that if Pundit understood game design theory, he probably would have articulated his position using a different metric, because popularity is so broad as to practically be useless.

And bear in mind I mean broader game design theorycrafting and not just The Forge. Yeah, I've studied the material from The Forge, but I really consider myself more a student of video game and board game design. Video games especially are a multi-billion dollar industry, so the theorycrafting behind them tends to be razor-tight. If I had to describe my design approach, it would be to use board games as a parts bin to take game experiences and theory structures from video games and bring them into tabletop RPGs. Frankly, the theorycrafting and single-player experiences found in the cream of the crop of video games far eclipses the experience in tabletop RPGs. Why? Because video game design theories include haptic feedback. They call it game feel. And board games have a wide variety of mechanics and tool-sets designed to create a similar sense of haptic feedback in the tabletop game space.

How much use was the Forge, really? Well, it told me what not to do, which is itself a useful thing.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 08:26:54 AM

Even if you were able to confirm that OSR sees more online discussion, I do not grant that popularity equals good. All games start with zero players, therefore game quality exists in abstraction, before any players actually picked up the game. Appealing to popularity means you understand these factors exist, but rather than actually trying to understand them...you just take popularity on face value.

That statement was so pretentious I got a film degree just for reading it...

First of all, people aren't disagreeing with you because they don't "understand" game design theory.  They are disagreeing with you because they think you are wrong (which you are).  Maybe you don't understand as much as you think you do.

As to popularity, popularity is directly nor inversely related to quality... but that doesn't mean they aren't related.  Some games are high quality and popular.  Some are low quality and popular.  Some are low quality and unpopular.  And some very few are high quality and unpopular.  These ratios are not proportional.  You will find that most high quality games are also pretty popular.  You will find a decent number of low quality games are also popular.  So positive popularity does not insure quality.  There are a handful of high quality games that, for some odd reasons, never become popular.  But these are rare, compared with the reverse.  And there are many low quality games that are unpopular.  In fact, this is probably the norm.

So seeing that a game is popular does not ensure it is high quality.  But seeing a game is unpopular is overwhelmingly indicative of low quality.  That's the domain inhabited by most storygames...

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 01, 2023, 08:26:04 PM
nobody seems to play the vast majority of them

That has not been my experience. What is true that there isn't a single dominant product line out there. There are some that are used more often than others but in the OSR kitbashing is the norm, not the exception. Most OSR gamers will focus on a single version and then leaven it with other material.

Over the 14 years as Bat in the Attic games I have sold 8,300+ units totaling over $60,000 in sales. As for free stuff, there isn't a day that goes by where at least a handful of people download Blackmarsh from DriveThruRPG. Resulting 15,000 unique downloads from 2010. I am not a top tier OSR publisher but solidly in the middle tier. And I am just one of dozens of authors out there who sell in the low hundreds clearing a grand or two every year. 

More importantly, is the feedback I get. About people who use my stuff in various ways for their campaigns. From talking to other OSR authors, I am not unique in this.

Individually, we are all minuscule publishers. But when you tally all of our efforts, and look on social media for actual play accounts, various conventions, the number becomes staggering. Hence I confidently can state that the OSR as a whole is equal to two or three mid-tier RPGs. With the advantage that without a central publisher we are not vulnerable to a company disappearing. And thanks to Wizards releasing the 5e SRD under Creative Commons not even the revocation of the OGL can kill the OSR. The same hack that was used to make retro-clones from the d20 SRD can be applied to the 5e SRD.

The fact this the OSR is centered on the classic editions is what keeps the whole thing from flying apart. They are what they are resulting OD&D, B/X, BECMI, AD&D 1e/2e providing common foundation

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 01, 2023, 08:26:04 PM
Thing is, if you look at the the OSR games that any significant number of people seem to be playing: OSE, DCC and C&C, primarily, but you could potentially add in LOTFP and Hyperborea as well. All of them have been around since at least the early teens, sometimes earlier. Has any new OSR game released in the last five years made any kind of a splash in the RPG scene?

Old School Essentials
Worlds without Number
Shadowdark
DM Yourself
Knave 1e
Black Hack 2e
Gardens of Ynn

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 01, 2023, 08:26:04 PM
I'm genuinely asking, because the best example I can think of is Shadowdark. Firstly, it remains to be seen if anyone will be playing that game a year from now. Secondly, Shadowdark was mostly remarkable for being totally unremarkable. The people who like it say "it's great because it's got all the stuff we like from other games" and the people who don't say "it sucks because it has all the stuff we have in other games".

Look at the metal level on DriveThru. Look at the OSR category on DriveThru. Do a kickstarter search and look at the high dollar OSR games. It is not hard to find through search. However don't rely on Enworld, RPG.net or any of the news sites to be reporting this. Like all mid tier RPGs, the OSR only gets mentioned once a great while.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PM
This really misses the point of discussing popularity in the first place. In the video at the start of the thread, Pundit equated popularity with quality. This has never really been about if OSR is popular, but if that popularity is enough that it does things like make storytelling games redundant or theorycrafting unnecessary.

I see a great deal of sectarianism here, and a strong desire to not give rivals an inch.

The Pundit don't agree on a lot but one of the things we both agree on that the industry has skewed the perception of hobbyists into thinking that RPG editions are like software upgrades. That the newer editions are "better" objectively than older editions.

Storytelling games has in large part rested on marketing themselves as the next generation of RPGs. Roleplaying 2.0. Parallel to that is the emergence of the idea that RPG design can be rationalized in a theory. And somehow older editions of D&D seem to wind up in the category of "stuff not to do" or held up as a "bad example" in these theories.

Then there is the fact that Storygames have a very different focus than OSR RPGs and supplements.

Finally, the OSR was the first niche of independent publishers to take advantage of print on demand and internet distribution. And after a time left the old independents who were wedded to print runs and traditional distribution in the dust. But to be clear by the late 2010s pretty much everybody was caught up in that regard. But having actively published, and promoted OSR I ran into more than a few ex-Forge publishers who couldn't believe the success the OSR was having circa 2010 to 2015.

What this add up to is a disinterest if not disdain for Storygames and RPG theories among folks involved in the OSR including myself. For my part I could not give two shits about helping hobbyists tell stories with my stuff. I focused on creating compelling settings and interesting situations for adventures. Compelling enough to make some folks go "Interesting, I wonder what would be like to visit there as a character looking for adventure.". After it all is said and done, they may have fond memories and use them to tell stories of their exploits.

None of what I do is covered by any theory I read since I first ran into them in the 1990s. The only maxims I follow is to make sure that I have what a referee needs to in order to describe or adjudicate something. And that the players have enough information to understand what the referee is describing so they can make an informed choice about what they want to do as their character.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PMUltimately, the root cause here is ignorance of broader game design theorycrafting. Popularity is a fallback metric for when you don't actually understand what virtues make a game good. I am willing to wager that if Pundit understood game design theory, he probably would have articulated his position using a different metric, because popularity is so broad as to practically be useless.

For a leisure activity like tabletop roleplaying, people don't play things they consider stupid. There is a reason why we have a sizable community of hobbyists playing certain RPGs especially when you combine it with time. Because those RPGs are interesting and fun.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PM
And bear in mind I mean broader game design theorycrafting and not just The Forge. Yeah, I've studied the material from The Forge, but I really consider myself more a student of video game and board game design. Video games especially are a multi-billion dollar industry, so the theorycrafting behind them tends to be razor-tight. If I had to describe my design approach, it would be to use board games as a parts bin to take game experiences and theory structures from video games and bring them into tabletop RPGs. Frankly, the theorycrafting and single-player experiences found in the cream of the crop of video games far eclipses the experience in tabletop RPGs. Why? Because video game design theories include haptic feedback. They call it game feel. And board games have a wide variety of mechanics and tool-sets designed to create a similar sense of haptic feedback in the tabletop game space.

What one has to do to make a good videogame and a good boardgame is not relevant to writing material to help people run tabletop roleplaying campaigns.

I will repeat this point again. The point of running a campaign is NOT to play a particular game. It about, players pretending to be characters having adventures in a setting. What makes it work is the human referee and the procedure I outlined in other posts I made. The rules are an aid to make it easier and more fun. But the rules are NOT the point. Until you realize this then RPG design will be for you frustrating.

Quote from: estar on June 02, 2023, 12:33:17 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PM
This really misses the point of discussing popularity in the first place. In the video at the start of the thread, Pundit equated popularity with quality. This has never really been about if OSR is popular, but if that popularity is enough that it does things like make storytelling games redundant or theorycrafting unnecessary.

I see a great deal of sectarianism here, and a strong desire to not give rivals an inch.

The Pundit don't agree on a lot but one of the things we both agree on that the industry has skewed the perception of hobbyists into thinking that RPG editions are like software upgrades. That the newer editions are "better" objectively than older editions.

Storytelling games has in large part rested on marketing themselves as the next generation of RPGs. Roleplaying 2.0. Parallel to that is the emergence of the idea that RPG design can be rationalized in a theory. And somehow older editions of D&D seem to wind up in the category of "stuff not to do" or held up as a "bad example" in these theories.

Then there is the fact that Storygames have a very different focus than OSR RPGs and supplements.

Finally, the OSR was the first niche of independent publishers to take advantage of print on demand and internet distribution. And after a time left the old independents who were wedded to print runs and traditional distribution in the dust. But to be clear by the late 2010s pretty much everybody was caught up in that regard. But having actively published, and promoted OSR I ran into more than a few ex-Forge publishers who couldn't believe the success the OSR was having circa 2010 to 2015.

What this add up to is a disinterest if not disdain for Storygames and RPG theories among folks involved in the OSR including myself. For my part I could not give two shits about helping hobbyists tell stories with my stuff. I focused on creating compelling settings and interesting situations for adventures. Compelling enough to make some folks go "Interesting, I wonder what would be like to visit there as a character looking for adventure.". After it all is said and done, they may have fond memories and use them to tell stories of their exploits.

None of what I do is covered by any theory I read since I first ran into them in the 1990s. The only maxims I follow is to make sure that I have what a referee needs to in order to describe or adjudicate something. And that the players have enough information to understand what the referee is describing so they can make an informed choice about what they want to do as their character.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PMUltimately, the root cause here is ignorance of broader game design theorycrafting. Popularity is a fallback metric for when you don't actually understand what virtues make a game good. I am willing to wager that if Pundit understood game design theory, he probably would have articulated his position using a different metric, because popularity is so broad as to practically be useless.

For a leisure activity like tabletop roleplaying, people don't play things they consider stupid. There is a reason why we have a sizable community of hobbyists playing certain RPGs especially when you combine it with time. Because those RPGs are interesting and fun.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PM
And bear in mind I mean broader game design theorycrafting and not just The Forge. Yeah, I've studied the material from The Forge, but I really consider myself more a student of video game and board game design. Video games especially are a multi-billion dollar industry, so the theorycrafting behind them tends to be razor-tight. If I had to describe my design approach, it would be to use board games as a parts bin to take game experiences and theory structures from video games and bring them into tabletop RPGs. Frankly, the theorycrafting and single-player experiences found in the cream of the crop of video games far eclipses the experience in tabletop RPGs. Why? Because video game design theories include haptic feedback. They call it game feel. And board games have a wide variety of mechanics and tool-sets designed to create a similar sense of haptic feedback in the tabletop game space.

What one has to do to make a good videogame and a good boardgame is not relevant to writing material to help people run tabletop roleplaying campaigns.

I will repeat this point again. The point of running a campaign is NOT to play a particular game. It about, players pretending to be characters having adventures in a setting. What makes it work is the human referee and the procedure I outlined in other posts I made. The rules are an aid to make it easier and more fun. But the rules are NOT the point. Until you realize this then RPG design will be for you frustrating.

Greetings!

Brilliant, Estar! I agree entirely! Especially with this salient commentary:

"I will repeat this point again. The point of running a campaign is NOT to play a particular game. It about, players pretending to be characters having adventures in a setting. What makes it work is the human referee and the procedure I outlined in other posts I made. The rules are an aid to make it easier and more fun. But the rules are NOT the point. Until you realize this then RPG design will be for you frustrating." (Quoting Estar.)


Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Zalman on June 01, 2023, 06:53:54 PM
The people buying the same games the next year aren't the same people, and that's the point. The poster is seeing OSR games maintain a long tail of new players, while storygames flash in the pan and are gone.

Nope, the point is that since storygames (especially PbtA) are effectively campaign guides with massive hardwired limits on party size, composition, interaction and player action (the almighty playbook is a lot more restrictive than a class in this regard), they have practically zero replay value.
If you've been a player in a campaign "long" lasting string of games the chances that you'll want to see the other side of the screen are next to none.