Tabletopocalypse Now - GMS' thoughts about the decline in the hobby

[Stormonu]

The top 5 are 2 versions of D&D and 3 licensed IP games. That represents basic creative failure.
.

This is different from the top 5 being AD&D 2e, BECMI, (WEG) Star Wars, Anne Rice's ... Er, White Wolfs Vampire and the myriad licensed worlds of GURPS how?

 

[prosfilaes]

The top 5 are 2 versions of D&D and 3 licensed IP games. That represents basic creative failure.

I don't count Warhammer/Warhammer 50K as licensed IP games; they've been in the hobby since the start. And it really gets me that you're dismissing Golarion because it uses the D&D rules and the FATE system because it's set in licensed setting.

Dogma is very much an amateur thing.

When's the last time you saw a three-wheeled car out of one of the major automobile companies? Or how about the Boeing 787, which is basically the 767 built with lighter materials?

Companies stick with what sells, because many companies have bet on the new thing and lost. It's an amateur thing to go with what's new and untried, because they've got nothing to lose and everything to win.

 

[Korgoth]

If gamers sat around Cafe Marxisme in berets smoking clove cigarettes and playing Artaud: the Malaise, that wouldn't mean that role playing games were suddenly more creative and interesting. "Dogma" isn't amateur... there are good dogmas and bad dogmas. The good ones are good, and the bad ones are bad. That they are dogmas may establish the conditions for their being good or bad, but it doesn't necessitate that they be one or the other inherently.

The successful games are successful because relatively more people buy them. From that, I must conclude that they either give people what they actually want, or what they think they want. Either way, they are the ones that get taken off the shelf and up to the cash register. That's no mean feat nowadays.

Creativity? Why just this evening I took a mere handful of numbers and terse expressions and made them into, if I do say so myself, a very memorable character about whom I received positive reviews from the others at the table. That's creativity. And that was done with Classic Traveller... the Ref was using his beat up old 1977 boxed set. Avant Garde's got nuthin' to do with it.

 

[Lanefan]

Creativity? Why just this evening I took a mere handful of numbers and terse expressions and made them into, if I do say so myself, a very memorable character about whom I received positive reviews from the others at the table. That's creativity. And that was done with Classic Traveller... the Ref was using his beat up old 1977 boxed set. Avant Garde's got nuthin' to do with it.

Not that I agree with eyebeams' points in the slightest, but I suspect the reference being made is to industry-level creativity rather than creativity at the individual or game-group level.

That said, as long as the creativity at the individual or game-group level remains healthy and ongoing, the hobby will survive no matter what happens at the industry level.

Lan-"can you translate those positive reviews into a Rookie of the Year award?"-efan

 

[Perram]

My reply is at:

The Zombie RPG Industry | Mob | United | Malcolm | Sheppard

Basically, "death" is harped on to shift goalposts when we're talking about "descent into an irrelevant degree of attenuation" and anyone with common sense knows it, and industry activity is in no way responsible for the observable decline of broad-based interest.

Sites like this select for the hardcore. By and large hobbyists, not companies, are losing interest in tabletop RPGs.

I think many of you sense that there's something hollow about the creative direction of RPGs. The top games are all derivative and the spinoff movements are all examples of dogmatic schools of design. We're currently at the tail end of a economic meltdown compounded by an unprecedented intrusion of the values of marketing and commerce into interpersonal relationships via the Internet. Gamers are among the segment that I have observed uncritically absorbing these values and reproducing them.

The natural results: derivative games (they have a history with known quantitative metrics -- sales and hits), an obsession with system over complex player/game relationships (they can be modelled in the absence of players to make qualitative statements) and other problems. Ironically, even while gamers say they want quantitative solutions, they don't vote for them with dollars or even page views.

It's supposed to be all about the numbers, but the numbers say you don't care about the industry *or* hobby -- or anything in between.

Have you actually read the Dresden Files RPG? It isn't getting the praise it is getting because it is set in the Dresden universe. All industries are filled with licensed properties that merely 'Cash In.' Video Games, for example, are especially notorious for this.

It is getting the praise because of an extremely well used FATE system and a presentation that was absolutely fantastic. The margin notes alone sold half the copies at my FLGS.

That book is incredibly creative and original, and to condemn it because it happens to be licensed is a foolish dismissal. There are tons of BAD licensed games out there, it takes something special to make a GOOD one.

 

[eyebeams]

Would you care to unpack this? I'm pretty sure you're spouting nonsense, but I'd like you to confirm exactly what sort of nonsense it is before I dismantle it.

You immediately knowing what this is would have been a basic qualification to demonstrate that you are informed enough to have a conversation about this. So, no.

 

[Dausuul]

You immediately knowing what this is would have been a basic qualification to demonstrate that you are informed enough to have a conversation about this. So, no.

So, you are the indisputable authority and anyone who disagrees with you is too uninformed to possibly discuss the matter.

...Or, you don't think your point can hold up under debate and are dodging the question.

 

[MrGrenadine]

The top 5 are 2 versions of D&D and 3 licensed IP games. That represents basic creative failure.

I'm very interested in hearing what a creative success in an RPG would be, even if you paint it in very broad strokes.

Do you think the licensed RPGs are successful mechanically, but since they're licensed, they fail in terms of backstory and setting? Would Pathfinder be a success if it was based on Golarion, but used different character creation and conflict resolution methods? Do you want to see games that don't use dice, or don't include the concept of magic, or that are set in settings unlike anything you've seen before?

Would love to know.

 

[MrGrenadine]

So, you are the indisputable authority and anyone who disagrees with you is too uninformed to possibly discuss the matter.

...Or, you don't think your point can hold up under debate and are dodging the question.

Wanted to give you XP for calling out this silliness, but must spread it around. So instead:

QFT.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

So, you are the indisputable authority and anyone who disagrees with you is too uninformed to possibly discuss the matter.

...Or, you don't think your point can hold up under debate and are dodging the question.

[Devil's advocate hat]
Or, BotE was seen as posturing and uncleverly insulting in his question--"you're spouting nonsense", "I('ll) dismantle it"--telegraphing his style of answer and found not worth the time spent typing a detailed reply.
[/Devil's advocate hat]

I know a fair amount of good people who will just walk away from such believed posturing.