Quote from: dkabq on January 07, 2024, 06:40:34 AM
A part of the "Golden Age" argument is the influx of causals/tourists into the hobby as a net benefit.

I read a blog post where the author broke down how such an influx into a hobby (I believe he used the terms "scene"), if not destroys it, fundamentally changes it.

Does that jog anyone's memory? So far my google-fu has been sufficient to find it.

I do believe the hobby as a whole has changed because of the explosion of 5e tourists.  I think that many, more than half, are good changes for everyone.  IMO, I think the 90s VtM surge was much worse for the hobby. 

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 06, 2024, 05:56:31 AM

I don't think people are going to just stop playing 5e entirely.  That didn't happen with any other edition.  5e may retain more players than any other edition if 6e is as close to it is WotC implies. 

I always suspected that a lot of the WoD people were like that too.  A lot of them seemed to talk about it a lot and read the books but not actually play.

oWoD is still being played locally. Some players keep trying to recruit me despite or because of my relationship with White Wolf. Sometimes they just want me to come in and NPC a villain. Which is pretty funny. Up till covid there was an ongoing WoD LARP still being hosted by one of my players.

Also saw it played alot at cons.

I think what killed WoD was 2nd ed. They lost far more customers than they gained and the writing got worse.

One of the big things with WW books was they immersed you in the setting like practically no other system books ever. Sure TSR had tons of novels. But you had to know they were out there and find a copy. Problem is the prose started crowding out the increasingly lacklustre rules. And the quality of the prose dropped.

Quote from: Trond on January 06, 2024, 08:45:58 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on January 06, 2024, 06:52:02 AM

Fortunately that's never going to happen, cuz the 90s were the last true decade. The only real cultural achievement since then has been social media. What are people going to remember about the 2000s? 9/11? "Support the troops?" What was the distinct sound of the 2000s onward?

The early 2000s were pretty raunchy. A lot of people were trying to shock in films, TV etc (think e.g. Tropic Thunder and Little Britain, Sarah Silverman in blackface, podcasters using the "n" word etc). Then, the woke era started, particularly early in gaming (2011 or so). Gamergate was the earliest reaction to that in 2014.

The 00s were the cooldown after the incessant moral guardianship of the 90s

You could see the first tentative tentacles of social justice infestation as early as 2009. 2010 was when it kicked in with storygamers at the forefront for god unknown reasons. by 2012 it was starting to gain momentum and was going near full bore by 2014.

We should be in a cooldown period before it kicks in again in the 2030s. But so far they just keep escalating the insane demands and infiltrating more and more venues.

Quote from: Jam The MF on January 07, 2024, 04:47:09 AM
I believe creators who have already established themselves as quality creators, will continue to make money for a while.  How long and how strong will that opportunity be?  I'm not sure.  There are so many digital distractions available today, which constantly compete for peoples' time and money.  OD&D, B/X, and AD&D didn't have to compete with these digital distractions.

Has 5E enjoyed a new golden age?  Yes, but it has been different from D&D's classic era golden age.  5E has enjoyed many advantages in this era, which have allowed it to spread to the masses more quickly.

This will last only till the woke run off all the good creators and replace them with their own trash.

At the moment I'm thinking that the 5E crowd will probably split into thirds. One third is the D&D hardcore fan who stand with the loony politics and are willing to ignore the Pinkerton stupidity and play on the VTT. Another third probably will drop out of the market like Pundit projects.

But there's also probably a third of the D&D following who will step into the indie RPG scene. Both the Critical Role "Daggerheart" system and the "MCDM RPG" are basically indie RPGs which are aimed firmly at pulling off parts of the existing 5E fandom and directing them into their particular indie RPG. Thing is, I don't think either of these games can hold onto players long term quite like D&D, so I am expecting these players to meander into OSR and deeper into the indie RPG scene in a few years.

So I am expecting a precipitous decline in D&D dominance. D&D's marketshare will probably collapse by about 50%, maybe more if they keep pushing terrible product and alienating their players, the indie RPG scene will probably expand marketshare by about 50%, and chances are OSR will see about half of that growth.

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 07, 2024, 06:33:38 AM

Quote from: Omega on January 05, 2024, 11:25:58 PM
wotc is going to screw up 6e massively.

Just listen to Perkins go on about the new "totally legit would we lie to you its really still 5e!" DMG changes alone.

The changes to the system across the board is more dumbing down of the system and pushing storygamer dogma of "The DM is only there to serve the players. Every player is a DM!"

Yes, that's because no one left at D&D knows how to design, and I'm definitely including Perkins and Crawford on that list. The people now in charge of D&D are mediocrities at the very best. Vegan Cookbook Writers at the very worst.

/shudders  Such crimes against flavor shall not stand!  What did butter ever do to you, O Hasbro?

Quote from: Jam The MF on January 07, 2024, 01:47:29 PM
At the very least, 4E has become a distant memory.  5E has been so much more commercially successful, than 4E was.  But the irony, is that WOTC can't leave 5E alone.  They are hell bent on destroying any and all good will established with 5E.  It is perplexing....

Part of it is because most of the people now having influence hated the people who created 5e. Part of it is because they think it will give them a new influx of cash; and no doubt the sales of the three new core books might give them an influx relative to the past year, but I'll bet that what they get in sales will be much smaller than what the 5e core books did.

Quote from: Opaopajr on January 07, 2024, 07:19:03 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 07, 2024, 06:33:38 AM

Quote from: Omega on January 05, 2024, 11:25:58 PM
wotc is going to screw up 6e massively.

Just listen to Perkins go on about the new "totally legit would we lie to you its really still 5e!" DMG changes alone.

The changes to the system across the board is more dumbing down of the system and pushing storygamer dogma of "The DM is only there to serve the players. Every player is a DM!"

Yes, that's because no one left at D&D knows how to design, and I'm definitely including Perkins and Crawford on that list. The people now in charge of D&D are mediocrities at the very best. Vegan Cookbook Writers at the very worst.

/shudders  Such crimes against flavor shall not stand!  What did butter ever do to you, O Hasbro?

I wasn't joking, though. It's literally true. The Vegan Cookbook writers came in as nepotism hires of Ajit George's friends.

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 08, 2024, 09:02:55 AM

Quote from: Opaopajr on January 07, 2024, 07:19:03 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 07, 2024, 06:33:38 AM

Quote from: Omega on January 05, 2024, 11:25:58 PM
wotc is going to screw up 6e massively.

Just listen to Perkins go on about the new "totally legit would we lie to you its really still 5e!" DMG changes alone.

The changes to the system across the board is more dumbing down of the system and pushing storygamer dogma of "The DM is only there to serve the players. Every player is a DM!"

Yes, that's because no one left at D&D knows how to design, and I'm definitely including Perkins and Crawford on that list. The people now in charge of D&D are mediocrities at the very best. Vegan Cookbook Writers at the very worst.

/shudders  Such crimes against flavor shall not stand!  What did butter ever do to you, O Hasbro?

I wasn't joking, though. It's literally true. The Vegan Cookbook writers came in as nepotism hires of Ajit George's friends.

Oh, we know.  That's what makes Opaopajr's joke funny though rather dark.

"I have experience taking all the joy out of food, now it's time for gaming."

Quote from: Jam The MF on January 05, 2024, 09:20:31 PM
WOTC's hail Mary pass in 2024; will be shiny new core books with new AI art pieces, and a level 1-20 adventure with Vecna as the big bad.

If that stuff doesn't sell like hotcakes, they are screwed.  The only other potential aces up their sleeve, are both problematic.  The Queen of Spiders herself, and Dark Sun.

FTFY


WOTC needs to get more 3pp into DNDBeyond and become the app store like Apple has for all your VTT needs.  Foundry and others do this quite well but if  the market leader decides to pay our royalities Epic Game Store style with bonus' then folks will flock like no tomorrow.

Quote from: BadApple on January 08, 2024, 09:14:48 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 08, 2024, 09:02:55 AM

Quote from: Opaopajr on January 07, 2024, 07:19:03 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 07, 2024, 06:33:38 AM

Quote from: Omega on January 05, 2024, 11:25:58 PM
wotc is going to screw up 6e massively.

Just listen to Perkins go on about the new "totally legit would we lie to you its really still 5e!" DMG changes alone.

The changes to the system across the board is more dumbing down of the system and pushing storygamer dogma of "The DM is only there to serve the players. Every player is a DM!"

Yes, that's because no one left at D&D knows how to design, and I'm definitely including Perkins and Crawford on that list. The people now in charge of D&D are mediocrities at the very best. Vegan Cookbook Writers at the very worst.

/shudders  Such crimes against flavor shall not stand!  What did butter ever do to you, O Hasbro?

I wasn't joking, though. It's literally true. The Vegan Cookbook writers came in as nepotism hires of Ajit George's friends.

Oh, we know.  That's what makes Opaopajr's joke funny though rather dark.

"I have experience taking all the joy out of food, now it's time for gaming."

I can't wait to see them on the street with posters showing the Battle Of Helms Deep alongside Holocaust images, with "Ask yourself, how are they different?" written underneath. Fucking Vegans/PETA, man.

For some context, here's a Reddit thread with Ben Riggs, who is the author of Slaying the Dragon, argument laid out. The comments are pretty clear that Reddit didn't agree.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/18xtxdq/the_golden_age_of_ttrpgs_is_dead/

QuoteWe are watching a bright and special time in the TTRPG industry pass away before our eyes.

Around the start of the 2010s, we saw the dawn of a new golden age of tabletop roleplaying games. Since then, huge numbers of new players have found the hobby thanks to Stranger Things and actual plays like Critical Role. These new fans discovered a vibrant and thrumming TTRPG industry. There was the D20 fantasy family of games, dominated by D&D 5E, but rich with other games published under the OGL and the fertile depths of the Old School Renaissance. There were other mainstream publishers with storied brands, such as Call of Cthulhu, Deadlands, and Shadowrun. Lastly, there was a flourishing indie TTRPG scene that revolutionized what a TTRPG was, such as Apocalypse World.

This influx of gamers created a rising tide that lifted all boats. Novice gamers started out playing D&D 5E, yes, but went on to discover other great games. Because of the OGL, countless companies and designers could make money creating for D&D 5E. Because of the increasing number of gamers, even strange, freaky, or weird TTRPG ideas could find an audience. Have you heard of Apollo 47 Technical Manual the RPG?

But recent developments make clear that this radiant golden age is ending, as surely as the steam engine ended the age of sail, or hobbits bearing a ring ended the Third Age of Middle-earth.

The Doom of Our Time Approaches

In the wake of the Open Gaming License scandal of this past winter, a number of companies have successfully launched new TTRPGs intended to move them past the possibility of Wizards of the Coast ever threatening their businesses ever again. Some of the games grossed millions in crowdfunding campaigns. All have been positively reviewed.

Some cite the success of these games, which are intended to replace 5E/OGL content for the companies involved, as signs of the continued health and growth of the TTRPG industry.

They are not.

Rather, they are signs that the industry has peaked, and may be about to enter a decline.

Why?

After the Open Gaming License crisis of 2023, I became pessimistic about the damage the attempt to kill the OGL had done to our hobby. Others told me that the result of the crisis would be the blooming of a thousand flowers. Discouraged from using 5E by Wizards of the Coast's attempt to kill the OGL, we would all get amazing new TTRPGs.

Maybe every single one of those new TTRPGs is going to be amazing. Maybe every one will be so fun and so captivating that lawns will go unmowed, pets unfed, and diapers unchanged because we are all so busy playing one of those games.

The problem is the TTRPG business is devilishly difficult. Only very rarely does the creation of a phenomenal game actually lead to financial success.

And the death of the OGL and the creation of these games has fundamentally changed the industry in such a way that it will be harder for those companies to make money in the future. A difficult business is about to become more difficult.

Consider the state of the industry a mere eighteen months ago; countless publishers, from MCDM and Kobold Press to Wizards of the Coast, were all making 5E material; it was easy to purchase products from multiple publishers because if you were running 5E, you could use the work of all these companies at your table; this made it easier for companies to share customers.

The new TTRPGs birthed by the OGL crisis are about to make that sort of customer sharing much, much harder. MCDM is publishing a TTRPG where you roll 2D6 to hit. Pathfinder's 2nd edition remaster has no alignment and changed ability scores. Critical Role has dropped 5E like a dead cockroach and is playtesting its own new fantasy game, Daggerheart, which uses 2D12s, and a horror game named Candela Obscura.

And of course, there is the rising Godzilla that is 6th edition D&D, which scientists say will attack our shores in the spring of 2024. So far, there is no hint of an OGL for whatever that game will be.

The problem is, 5E was not just a game. It was a massive community of players. Countless companies could thrive making products for that community.

These new games are a shattering of that community. Instead of countless companies working to make your 5E game better, they are now asking you to become MCDM, or Darrington Press, or Paizo, or D&D 6E players. We are entering an era of division, faction, and balkanization.

The companies are now asking fans to choose sides. It also means that it is going to become more difficult for them to share customers. How interested will a Pathfinder fan be in an MCDM product? Or 6th edition? History suggests these sorts of barriers depress sales.

All This Has Happened Before

In the 1990s, TSR, the first company to publish Dungeons & Dragons, embarked on publishing setting after setting after setting for the game. By 1997, over a dozen settings were sold by the company. Fans stopped being fans of D&D, and instead became fans of a particular setting, and would only buy products for that setting. In 1997, TSR was near death as setting releases had plummeted from the hundreds of thousands of copies in the 1980s, to a mere 7,152 copies sold for the Birthright campaign setting in its first year of release. D&D was only saved from a terrible fate by Wizards of the Coast and their fat stacks of cash. They purchased TSR in the summer of 1997.

Some might say it is unfair to compare the different settings of the 90s to the different systems of today. Settings and systems are different, after all. And I do agree with the point. Switching systems is a BIGGER ASK than switching settings, therefore this change should have a LARGER IMPACT ON SALES.

And it is all happening again. The TTRPG audience is fracturing at the seams, and it will hurt sales and growth.

To focus only on MCDM, this current BackerKit is likely the most successful campaign the company will ever see. Every campaign after this will struggle to get the same sort of sales numbers as people slowly bleed away to the competition. Paizo will say check out our competing fantasy game. WotC will batter us all with a punishing wave of marketing trying to convince all of us of the newness and hotness of D&D 6th edition. (May it be both new and hot! But I have my doubts...) And fans will bleed away.

Furthermore, what will happen to the YouTube channel that is the foundation of MCDM's success? Matt Colville is a master communicator and was a major evangelist for D&D in his channel's heyday. He is passionate, intelligent, and inspiring. If Dungeon Masters could go into the locker room and get a pep talk from their coach in the middle of a game of D&D, that coach would be Matt Colville.

How much time is Colville going to devote to D&D now that it is essentially his competition?

In the past year, he has put out less than 20 videos on his channel. Those videos now range widely in topic, from TV reviews and interviews with language scholars to some D&D content, and a discussion of the creation of his new RPG. Go back five years, and Colville was putting out video after video after video of fantastic advice about running D&D, usually with 5E as the default. He dispensed some of the best advice on TTRPGs I have ever seen.

But it appears his content is fundamentally shifting, and he is asking that his audience go with him somewhere new.

Let's look at MCDM's recent efforts from the point of view of Wizards of the Coast. It is all ruin, disaster, and calamity. Master communicator and D&D fanatic Matt Colville has gone from convincing people to try D&D, and explaining how best to play D&D, to instead asking his 439,000 subscribers to stop playing D&D and play his game instead.

Not to mention that Critical Role—a huge reason for the recent surge in popularity of D&D—is likewise stopping their support of D&D, and asking their 2.1 million YouTube subscribers to start playing one of their two new games instead. I will not mention that, lest it further trouble the sleep of the D&D people at Wizards of the Coast... (What if 2.1 million people simply don't buy 6th edition?)

In summary, all these events are interfering with the developments that created the golden age of TTRPGs. The removal of D&D from Critical Role likely hurts everyone involved. For years, Critical Role's pitch was "Watch voice actors play D&D!" (A concept even my 80-year-old Aunt Sonja understands.) Now, the pitch is "Watch voice actors play Candela Obscura!"

But what is Candela Obscura? (If asked, Aunt Sonja might guess Candela Obscura was a potpourri scent.) The brand recognition that drove people to Critical Role is gone.

Simultaneously, the splintering of the D&D 5E community will make it harder for new designers to break into the industry, and harder for established companies to attract new customers. Growth in the TTRPG field will slow.

What the Future Might Look Like

And if I'm right, and this is how the golden age of TTRPGs dies, certain things follow naturally from these events. Here are my predictions—Prophecies?—that I may be held accountable for my rashness in writing all this down. I may be wrong, but if I'm right, the following things seem likely to pass:

Sixth edition will not do as well as 5th edition. Even more firings will follow. Wizards, which struggled to know what to do with D&D when it was a success (No Honor Among Thieves Starter Set? Really?) will be flummoxed by what to do with it when it is perceived as a failure.

No MCDM RPG crowdfunding campaign will ever do better than this initial campaign to fund its TTRPG.

Kobold Press's post-OGL game, Tales of the Valiant, has been criticized for being too similar to 5E. For Kobold Press, I see two futures. Perhaps they will slowly bleed fans in the same way that MCDM will. But if D&D 6th edition is too different, and people really don't want to move on from 5E, Kobold has positioned themselves to be the next Paizo, and Tales of the Valiant, the next Pathfinder.

The frequency of million-dollar TTRPG Kickstarters will decrease.

Attendance at major gaming conventions will plateau.

TTRPGs will become less interesting. Less exciting. Less creative. And despite all the new systems, it will also grow less diverse as it becomes even harder to make money in a TTRPG community broken into factions.

And so a golden age ends sputters out.

Unless something truly dramatic and game-changing hits the industry.

What could change this grim future? I suppose a group of publishers coalescing around a single system might change matters.

Or something truly inconceivable, something like giving 6th edition D&D an OGL, or putting the rules in the Creative Commons.

And after last month's blood sacrifices upon the altar of profitability, who is even left at Wizards with the power and experience to advocate for such a thing?

It has been a grand era to be a gamer, one which we have been fortunate to live through.

Reading that post made me so glad that I have a Rules-Lite system in my back pocket based on Shadowdark that I can pull in content from nearly anything put out in the last 50 years and toss it into my game with minor difficulties.

D&D is Dead. Long live the TTRPG

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 07, 2024, 06:30:12 AM
The Storygamer/Forge-refugees have been trying to claim that story-creating RPGs would become as popular as real RPGs for nearly 20 years now. It's not going to happen. It'll keep being the domain of aging pseudo-intellectual hipsters.

I've been thinking about this statement for a day now, trying to articulate my thoughts.  This is still a little rough but this is the best I've come up with.

First, I don't think it will be an equal split, I think it will be about a 10th of the size of the traditional hobby at best.  However, I think there will be a cluster of things that will be on the other side of the gulf from classic from RPGs, not just Storygamer/Forge games.  Because they will be so loose, they will have a lot more titles just like PbtA is now. Lets call them literary games for lack of a better term.  I think they will be the toys of aging hipsters but also the playthings of theater kids, tumblr style "artists," and wannabe literature creators and playwrights.

First, are the collaborative story games.  These are the single most glaring.  Then there are the journaling games, those odd little dives into your own bitterness.  There's the GM fiat games where the dice mean little and the GM simply rules on whether you decision resulted in your goal based on nothing more than their own guess at how things might work.  Collaborative world building games like Kingdom and Microscope.  Then there is the very experimental games like Everyone is John.

I think there will be an effort to drag more regular RPGs over the chasm, but that particular crowds' disdain for constraints will mean that any mechanically rich game they claim will die an ignoble death.  (I hope they take WOD/COD with them.)  I also believe they will call themselves the "real role players" while denigrating us with infantalising pejoratives and accusations about being various forms of evil. 

The reason I think this is important is that they will decide they don't see the need to share spaces with us.  They will be happy to see their "games" next to board games and to do their thing next to Magic the Gathering.  They will feel that is their natural habitat.  However, we are a blight, we that do war games and have 200 page rule books with double sided PC sheets for RPGs.  They will demand that some convert to their more "true and refined" role play while trying to exile the rest of us from our LGS.  This will be what I saw in the late 90s early 2000s with WOD.

Quote from: Klytus on January 08, 2024, 01:17:28 PM
For some context, here's a Reddit thread with Ben Riggs, who is the author of Slaying the Dragon, argument laid out ...

What's good for the hobby is only tangentially aligned, at times, with what is good for the industry.  We are about to enter a time where the industry shrinks, the market will probably shrink, and there will be some good, long overdue effects on the hobby.