Alright, so this is not a rant. It's something that'd been nagging in the back of my mind for several months now and I've wanted to exchange with someone to kind of understand my own thoughts and feelings about the matter.
I've been playing D&D since about 2000 with 3rd edition. I've only recently (2019) jumped into other RPGs (and I jumped pretty hard). I bought dozens of other RPGs and dozens of zines. I've delved hard in the OSR scene and the following NuSR movement. I've played about three to four new games each year but my library is growing pretty quick.
My first emotion was close to ecstasy. There seemed to be an endless amount of content online. So many games, so many settings. So many original ideas when you look at all these colorful colors and premises. And I did find some gems. Games and zines that are really different; they play different, they feel different and they lead to different experiences. Different dice mechanics, progression mechanics, narrative systems, etc.
However, there's one but.
Now that I've done a solid survey of the land, my emotion is slowly shifting to disappointment at the lack of originality in so many games.
5E
I love 5E. It's a good game, I played an uncountable number of hours of it. However, I was a bit turned off by the sheer quantity of 5E books that came out on Kickstarter every week. At first I dove in some of them, but very quickly it felt to me that except a new coat of finish, it was just more of the same thing. Most books often promised a different genre or setting (horror, grim fantasy, steampunk) with some gorgeous art, but looking at samples it just felt unimaginative. Which statblock can I copy paste, put a different art and tweak a number or two. Very rarely did I see some really innovative ideas. Things might have changed, I jump off the Kickstarter wagon about two years ago, but that's how I felt at the time.
The current situation with the OGL and the many companies jumping in to make clones of 5E is no different to me. I already bought these books some eight years ago. For me, the differences presented are not big enough for many of these projects to be considered a new game.
OSR
OSR had crazy promise, and I did find so many interesting things. But I cannot understate how many people release games patting themselves in the back, and when I look at the content, they've basically copy pasted the same framework that most of these games use, sometimes changing semantic, of having a few numbers being lower, or having three more things in the equipment list. This is not a new game, this is barely even a supplement at this point.
I'm not going to name anything, but I bought a small zine recently. And it basically had renamed Hit Points to Vitality, it lowered a few numbers because it was supposed to be grim and it renamed the basic B/X classes to things that were much darker in tone. This is not creativity to me.
I realized that even though there were a lot of interesting elements in the scene, it was basically a whole demographics that just wanted to keep playing the game they played 43 years ago; and the scene keeps on reinventing the same game over and over with slight changes.
I'm going to keep on looking at the OSR scene because there's some great stuff. But, my perspective of it changed.
NuSR
For those unaware, NuSR is an appellation that designates a movement of game design originated in the OSR but moved away from it. NuSR games tend to adhere to the same core principles that OSR games do, but they try to modernize their framework, mechanics and to try new things. Examples are: Cairn, Into the Odd, Electric Bastionlands, etc.
So, logically after my slight fall with the OSR scene, I discovered the NuSR scene and I thought "Ah, that's where all the innovation went." However, I quickly realized that even though, once again, there is a good deal of innovation happening there; there is also so much products that are just a rehashing of the same elements, barely changed except that basing themselves off B/X they base themselves off two or three very popular frameworks (see examples above).
Conclusion
I don't want to look overly negative. But this voyage has been one of excitement as much as it has been one of disappointment. The scene is less creative and innovative than I thought. Most of what I see are clones of games we already have and I just can't be excited for that. It's already something that plagues the industry I work in (video games) and for a while TTRPGs were my creative escape.
Anyone else feeling like this? Or feeling like I'm missing something? Did you felt the same way but changed your perspective?
