Seattle Metro area, East of the puddle.

There are a lot of nerds here that like a bunch of dumb shit but some okay shit too. Bottom line there will be someone just as dysfunctional and available as you to play whatever sort of play-pretend game you want to.

Plenty of gaming venues to sit down and eat/drink/play; AFK Tavern, Moxx, etc. on top of several Uncle's games, Card Kingdom, etc. although our local mom'n'pop stores never seem to last longer than two or three years, probably in part because it's just plain expensive as shit to rent space here.

Definitely a very heavy storygame presence, anecdotally. And lots of people who are overly fond of their personal political agendas. Plenty of Magic players and wargamers, even if I'm not a part of either crowd.

Pretty much 5e for role playing. Lots of magic and a little warhammer. Some small groups for other rpg groups. Seems WOTC owns store/organized play around here.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1054541London's scene is large but a mixed bag.

Is the Orc's Nest still around? At least I think that's what it was called, if I'm remembering correctly. It was near the British Museum back when I lived there. Again, if I remember correctly, on the same little road as Atlantis Bookshop (one of the best occult bookstores around).

Quote from: RPGPundit;1054963Is the Orc's Nest still around? At least I think that's what it was called, if I'm remembering correctly. It was near the British Museum back when I lived there. Again, if I remember correctly, on the same little road as Atlantis Bookshop (one of the best occult bookstores around).

Orc's Nest by Seven Dials is still going strong. I like having enough money to buy the painted minis in the shop window. A child's dream come true.

(But Playing Games by the British Museum closed about 10 years ago).

Quote from: RPGPundit;1054963Is the Orc's Nest still around? At least I think that's what it was called, if I'm remembering correctly. It was near the British Museum back when I lived there. Again, if I remember correctly, on the same little road as Atlantis Bookshop (one of the best occult bookstores around).

Yep. I love getting the plastic bags from the place -- they're like little bags of nostalgia, hah hah. I recommend Orbital Comics as well, gotten my copies of American Vampire from there plus a few other things from Vertigo.

Quote from: S'mon;1054979Orc's Nest by Seven Dials is still going strong. I like having enough money to buy the painted minis in the shop window. A child's dream come true.

(But Playing Games by the British Museum closed about 10 years ago).

Had a brief chat with the guy who runs the place last time I bought something from there -- think it was a hardcover of SLA Industries, found it behind some other RPGs. Nice bloke. Happy to hear he's still doing fairly well out of the tabletop business, especially with what must be an extortionate rent and with people buying all their stuff online. Another reason to support your local gaming store instead of a corporate monolith that just so happens to sell the same products!

RPGs and boardgames here in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia are doing very well.
Quite a few stores and seem to be doing ok.  I notice most of the gaming stores have tables and facilities for people to use.
I mostly run and play DnD 5e, as it's easily accessible, easy to get players for and easy to drop in and out as you feel like.

I help out run a dedicated open table 5e DnD club fortnightly with a friend in a local library and it does well.
We usually get 15 to 20+ people coming regularly.

I also run another fortnightly gaming club that supports any RPGs and boardgames.  Currently that's about a 70/30 mix of RPGs vs Boardgames, although the evenings fluctuate. I Usually get similar sort of numbers.

There's a fair few "Mini conventions" that run throughout the year too for boardgames and RPGs, although my personal experience is there's usually some political agenda (usually left and/or far left politics) being pushed at these things here a fair bit, so I don't tend to go to those.
I just don't want to see politics at all at gaming conventions.

I recently moved (locally) and now have a dedicated gaming room again, so intend to do more gaming nights at my place where I'll run Stars without number and play CoC 7th Ed and whatever else people will run.

Seoul Expat RPGs seems to be trucking along about the same as it ever was. 5ed is popular but not seeing a lot of 5ed fueled growth, but that's probably because Korean expats in general are getting fewer and older on average as the English teaching boom years are long gone now.

In spite of having no gaming stores per se in the whole country, the state of the hobby here in Uruguay is remarkably strong.

In Atlanta, pretty dreadful.  It's all 5e and mostly adventurer's league stuff.  I tried joining a weekly pub game and they were a nice enough crowd, but I really disliked the game.  I do get to play in a DCC game about once a month, so that's fun, but haven't found anything else so I'm dependent on Roll20.

Sadly, here in OKC we have been reduced to 1 LGS, and while it does a brisk business, the crowd is largely Pathfinder and 5E. I am playing 5E in a group from work, but want to play other systems. I generally prefer to run in Hero System, but also would run 1E AD&D, and have put up flyers to that effect, but no bites. Pretty much, they play whatever the current trend is and that is all.

Yesterday, I went to Madness, the biggest game store in all of Dallas. Their RPG section has shrunk again and is now 1/2 of one aisle. They literally have more shelf space devoted to Funko Pops! than all RPGs combined (and that includes the SW RPGs). Less than 10 years ago, their RPG section was almost 1/3rd of the store.

I just wanted to quote this post for posterity. Because it's one of my favorite posts ever.

Quote from: FrankTrollmanNow, 5th edition is seemingly tanking much harder than 4th edition did. With 4th edition, it was the heir apparent, and on release prophetic people like myself were loan voices in the wilderness when we said that 4th edition was going to fail to be the #1 role playing game. We weren't even saying it was going to get canceled early, just that it was going to fail to be #1. With 5e, I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that it's going to unseat Pathfinder as the #1 game, the only question is whether it's going to run a full three years. Signs are pointing to no at this time, what with the fact that there's nothing on the production schedule and the DMG is delayed.

That, and this one:

Quote from: FrankTrollmanSo I've stated that 5e is Vaporware. I'm pretty sure of it. The more of the release teasers I see, the more convinced I am. But I get questions like this:

Quote from: BearsAreBrownMaybe I'm less experienced or maybe I'm less jaded, but Frank, why are you so sure about all this? You seem to be extrapolating heavily from a few paragraphs of text. Are the drawing from some source material I'm unaware of?

And yeah, that's reasonable. Why should you be convinced that 5e D&D is a Vaporware Product? It goes to who is making it, what they've said about what they are making, what they've made recently and in the past, and so on.

First, let's look at the track record of Mike Mearls. Remember when he fixed Skill Challenges? Sorry, remember the first seven times that he announced that he was fixing skill challenges? Remember Iron Heroes? The man has a history, going back several years and literally dozens of instances, of announcing with great fanfare that he was going to make a new subsystem, then announcing the subsystem was ready for publication, then announcing that criticism of that subsystem was unfair because it "wasn't really finished" and he was "working on something new and exciting".

Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twenty eight times, what the fucking fuck?

Now 5th edition is supposed to be layer upon layer of Mike Mearls blessed subsystem. Each one done up to the specifications of a different section of the fanbase. Each one interacting in some odd way with all the others, but every one of them optional. So, for example: if you make a cogent condemnation of the way they track movement or durations or whatever, they can claim openly that this version is "not for you" and is nebulously for some other group and obviously you should be using some other movement or duration tracking subsystem instead.

They have announced a platform that is perfectly suited for denial in depth of non-functionality. In order to show that there is a problem to the satisfaction of their ability to not simply dismiss it for you supposedly not being the target audience, you'd have to do each separate variant together. And then they could dismiss your complaint for being TL;DR.

In short: they've made an edition that would take months or years to expose as vaporware and the project leader is a man who has made nothing but vaporware since Kerry was running for president. And his second in command is a man who hired out his name to promote that guy's actual Vaporware in 2005. Remember: it was originally called "Monte Cook Presents: Iron Heroes" when it was originally released and sold for real money despite the fact that none of the subsystems worked properly and even Mike Mearls admitted that the magic system was just a draft taken from a brainstorming session. The number three guy is Bruce Cordell, who apparently didn't read any of the rules or setting material for 4th edition before writing rules and setting material for 4th edition. In short: a man whose design work has been literally monkeys on typewriters style vaporware paycheck writing for at least four years.

So the entire core group of authors have a clearly demonstrated history of making vaporware, and the hype is completely consistent with and even suggests a vaporware product. But how do we know that this is actually vaporware? Well, there are clues.

• Let's talk about they admit they haven't done: higher levels and hard numbers. That's... the entire design. It's a level based system, therefore if you haven't tested the leveling or the system, you haven't actually done anything. They are already putting up sign-ups for beta testers, but their actual product has been admitted to being in a pre-alpha state.
  
  
• Now let's talk about the things they've promised. They have promised that a character who gets pure numbers will be balanced with a character who gets abilities instead. We already know that's impossible, because we've played BESM and Champions. So we know we're being promised things that we know can't be implemented. Either they know that they can't really deliver and are jerking our chain because it's Vaporware, or they haven't actually gotten far enough down the design rabbit hole to recognize that fact, because it is fucking Vaporware.
  
  
• Now let's talk about the things they've actually shown people: Magical Teaparty. MTP, all the way down. The actions people took at the D&DXP were not on the character sheets, the DMs did not have DC charts. The DMs used their judgment to determine whether actions succeeded or failed. The actual game system, if there was one, was not used.

Now let's get into the "how did we get to this point?" part. In short: job security. WotC has held Christmas Layoffs every year (except last year, when the layoffs were in early Summer) for as long as they have been owned by Hasbro. The head of 4th edition D&D has been fired every year since 4th edition D&D was created. It's entirely possible that the people left at WotC believe that the only way they can keep their jobs is by releasing a faulty product that needs to be patched so that they will be retained. It's possible that they believe that their jobs are completely unrelated to their performance and that they will probably have to go look for work in the near future and are simply phoning it in.

Regardless of the motivations on the ground, it is clear that having an office filled entirely with new blood means that there is no process. There are no working relationships or project schedules, because heads roll too often for a corporate culture to actually show up. A half-assed, overly ambitious project is probably inevitable with a core set of demoralized hacks who are already looking for a new job leading a group of untested fanboys who don't know what they are doing.

But the promises being made for 5e are on the face of it absurd, the people in charge have a long and storied history of booting projects out the door in a totally nonfunctional state, they lack enough confidence in their mechanics to actually use them, and they've admitted that they haven't even tried to do so in-house. This is what Vaporware looks like.

-Frank

Just so precious.

Quote from: Mistwell;1055741I just wanted to quote this post for posterity. Because it's one of my favorite posts ever.



That, and this one:



Just so precious.

So the state of the hobby in your neck of the woods is that you are experiencing schedenfreude over something posted by a guy who isn't even here any more? That axe must be razor sharp after being ground for so long.

Quote from: jeff37923;1055772So the state of the hobby in your neck of the woods is that you are experiencing schedenfreude over something posted by a guy who isn't even here any more? That axe must be razor sharp after being ground for so long.

I literally had my pointer hovering over the report button for the obvious shitpost earlier today. It's cross-posted from rival forum tgdmb.com from a completely unrelated thread on that site -- had happened to see it minutes earlier. But I'd like to see first how Pundit feels about posts like that, then I'll know what to report going forward, hehehe...

I'm going back and forth.

Maybe you all want to call me crazy. I'm a what you would call a  SJW...  if being a SJW means that I want EVERY human being on this planet to be treated with respect. I Will fight for that. That's my definition of a SJW.

I don't necessary think ACKS as a game system is fundamentally against my personal views. And OMG, it is the game I want to run. I consider it one of the best OSR games in existence... and quite possibly (of all the OSR games) the closest to the OD&D style game play. But there seems to be a lot of negative connotations to this game. I disagree, politically, with the author of ACKS, but I still think its the best game for my campaign.

Just curious, is anyone else running ACKS? Are you dealing with any weirdness as a result of running the game?