Quote from: ggroy;456953A similar parallel can probably be made for TSR.

If WotC didn't buy up TSR, then there is the possibility that TSR could have filed for bankruptcy.  D&D would have been tied up in bankruptcy court for many years, effectively taking it off the market.  There would not have been a d20 boom to revive the tabletop rpg market.

It also should not be overlooked that WotC made the money to buy TSR out from CCGs.

In my area if Magic died out nearly every nerd shop would be out of business, or at the very least, hurt to the point of eventual closure anyhow.

We have 3 local stores in the region.  They all pull huge numbers every prerelease or FNM.  Like around 200 people in the stores that are maybe 10-15 minutes away from each other.

It really did a number on gaming.  On one hand people can pick up and play, and its stupidly revenue generating.  1 Magic expansion sells more than entire YEARS of an RPG line.  On the other many people playing aren't interested in learning or playing any other game, and many are outright hostile to other people even gaming in the same store.

Hell, I've seen stores say "Saturday is prerelease of Magic Expansion X.  Don't even bother coming down if you aren't in to Magic".  They can't even fit all the Magic players in store!

Back when I was in Virginia we had Magic players outright reserving tables to play so they could ensure a table.  (Of course Campaign Headquarters near the Navy base in the mid 90s was pretty much becoming 3-4 cliques of gamers who all had the tables reserved for eternity anyhow, so its more a symptom of reserved tables than entirely Magic's fault.  Sunday one table belonged to one group of middle aged Battletech players utterly uninterested in anyone or anything but their solitary game they were in.  They got through 1 turn a week.  Hell, one Sunday I saw another group playing Battletech and neither table was even acknowledging the other's existence!  Then again, Battletech players are generally terrible people..)

Quote from: Benoist;456500It just got me thinking... could a case be made (amongst about a zillion possible definitions) that vintage gaming is more or less about games which were published prior to the explosion in popularity of the Magic trading card game? If so, is this just a matter of coincidence, the two elements having no precise relationship with each other, or is there more to it than that?

The term "vintage gaming" has literally no meaning to me whatsoever.

If it's being used in the same sense that "classic rock" is used, then I would agree that, yes, it's a matter of convenience that Magic happened to come out 20 years ago which is also the basic cut-off for that sort of term.

In 10 years, 3E will be "vintage gaming" or "classic gaming" or whatever. That's how it works: When the kids in college have never known a world without it and the guys in their mid-thirties are getting nostalgic about their high school years... Bam. Classic rock. Vintage gaming. Retro clothing. Whatever.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;457205Magic happened to come out 20 years ago which is also the basic cut-off for that sort of term.

Sometimes I'm just going along all happy and stuff and then I read something that makes me stop and think, "Really? Was it really THAT long ago?...."

Dang, I still think of Magic as that upstart, "new" game...


...oh yea, and "Git off mah lawn!"

Quote from: Justin Alexander;457205If it's being used in the same sense that "classic rock" is used

Yes, that's more or less the sense I attach to the expression.
Something broader than the "old school" that is so often associated with the OSR and D&D now.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;457205The term "vintage gaming" has literally no meaning to me whatsoever.

If it's being used in the same sense that "classic rock" is used, then I would agree that, yes, it's a matter of convenience that Magic happened to come out 20 years ago which is also the basic cut-off for that sort of term.

In 10 years, 3E will be "vintage gaming" or "classic gaming" or whatever. That's how it works: When the kids in college have never known a world without it and the guys in their mid-thirties are getting nostalgic about their high school years... Bam. Classic rock. Vintage gaming. Retro clothing. Whatever.

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" is considered "classic rock" these days?  :rolleyes:

It seems like it was just yesterday.

My perception of time seems to "speed up" as I get older.  I remember when I was a kid, time seem to "drag on" really slowly or felt like an eternity to pass.

Quote from: ggroy;458123"Smells Like Teen Spirit" is considered "classic rock" these days?  :rolleyes:

According to some of my local stations, yes. So does U2.

I'm frankly appalled by the idea, and as far as I'm concerned Classic Rock died in the 80s, murdered by hair metal.

And I say this as a 90s child, who listened to Manson and Nirvana and still listens to Cake religiously.

Quote from: J Arcane;458127According to some of my local stations, yes. So does U2.

Same here.

Quote from: J Arcane;458127I'm frankly appalled by the idea, and as far as I'm concerned Classic Rock died in the 80s, murdered by hair metal.

I remember when I was growing up, "classic rock" was considered stuff like Elvis, the Beatles (before Sgt Pepper), etc ...  (ie. Rock music of the late 1950's to early-mid 1960's era).

Quote from: ggroy;458123"Smells Like Teen Spirit" is considered "classic rock" these days?  :rolleyes:

It's being played on the classic rock stations around here.

When I was growing up, "classic rock" was stuff from the '50s and '60s. That's still what I first think of when the term is used, but in actual practice the "classic rock" stations are mostly playing stuff from the '70s and '80s now. They only occasionally bump up into the early '90s at the moment, but I'm 100% confident that within the next 3-4 years the '70s stuff is going to start dropping off the play lists and the '90s play lists are going to open wide.

Any cutoff you select will be arbitrary. If Magic had a big effect on the stuff you want to talk about, go ahead and use it. For people that don't care about that stuff or don't think it had a big effect, they will reject that cutoff and have their own.  I think probably the best way to track "eras" in the hobby is by versions of D&D, since it has always been the overwhelming majority of what was happening in the hobby.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;456504I would say the most immediate influence would be the incidence of more strict timing rules in RPGs.

I think the influence was more subtle, and more insidious.  The stricter timing rules are a specific instance of the broader trend towards exception based rules.  These are de rigeur in card- and board-games; I often point to this as a major demarcation between those and role-playing games.  Obviously, there is a distinction between exception based and flexible, but that is a different discussion, I think.

QuoteAttempting to emulate MtG and Pokemon led WotC to start pushing the minis game aspect of D&D, which for the short term did give us cheap minis, bet led to a marketing mentality that I don't think was well suited to the D&D game.

I agree.  Although I would say WotC having little experience with anything other than M:tG was a prime mover that coloured every decision made in regards to D&D.

Quote from: The Butcher;456522People left RPGs for M:tG in droves.

Most of these same gamers, I'll bet, left M:tG for something else (or nothing, most likely) in droves, a couple of years later. If they didn't, I wonder why is it that it's become so rare to see people my age playing M:tG.

MtG changed its release schedule to be more frequent. That made it obvious how much of a money drain it was trying to keep up. I played during those times and that is what everyone I knew said was why they quit.
Now I play Pauper and Peasant format and it keeps the costs manageable.

Savage Worlds allows for RPG play without requiring a degree in Game Rules, so life is good. When the same people are reliably available we RPG, when not we MtG.
=

Quote from: Greentongue;458591MtG changed its release schedule to be more frequent. That made it obvious how much of a money drain it was trying to keep up. I played during those times and that is what everyone I knew said was why they quit.
Now I play Pauper and Peasant format and it keeps the costs manageable.

Savage Worlds allows for RPG play without requiring a degree in Game Rules, so life is good. When the same people are reliably available we RPG, when not we MtG.
=

Yeah currently my game group is down to 2 due to real life (though I am making Origins in June ) so we have switched to playing MtG.

We pick up a box of boosters from an old expansion and just booster draft out of it. 36 boosters in a box, so 6 weeks out of a box and we can then make block constructed out of the cards till we tire of them. If I wanted to I could then sell the rares to pay for the boosters though I probably won't bother.

My one concern is that they seem to roll out a bunch of new mechanics for each expansion block and then they seem to drop those so all these allies I have from Zendikar don't really tie into other expansions. its still great fun though

Luckily by the time M:tG rolled onto the scene I had already self-identified my compulsion to collect and knew that if I was in for a penny then I would be in for a pound, and so I never bought a single deck of cards.  Greatest decision I ever made because otherwise I would've pissed dollar after dollar away on those crack sticks.

I was working in my local community college bookstore at the time.  It was all old ladies that ran the place, but I was friends with one of the daughters who worked there as well, and we were into some of the same stuff.  We convinced the bookstore ladies that selling the cards would be a good move, and they went for it.  Selling M:tG cards that the college bookstore was the biggest move for that store in decades.  It was a cash cow and we milked it daily!

Quote from: ggroy;458123My perception of time seems to "speed up" as I get older.  I remember when I was a kid, time seem to "drag on" really slowly or felt like an eternity to pass.

No kidding.  I felt like ages 12-22 was an eternity of experiences.  I have recollections of hundreds of different things of significance happening in my life.

I can hardly remember what I did from 23-33.  The sum total of those ten years seems to boil down to my divorce, buying a new car, buying a new house, and switching a couple of jobs.  Oh, and maybe one or two trips/vacations of note.  That's pretty much it except for some misc humorous anecdotes.


Anyhow, I'm cool with MtG being the cut-off for vintage gaming.  I get what the OP means.  The industry really started to die in the late 90s and hasn't felt the same since.

I do also agree with Pundit's point that White Wolf was actually the driving force for change.  I just think that MtG was the defining event - just like Nirvana's rise with Smells Like Teen Spirit is a great event to base the rise of alternative music off of, or Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It for moving from 70's rock to 80's rock.