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

[Dannyalcatraz]

My reaction to this is: what companies had any sort of releases other than the ones listed here?

I mean, we have D&D, Pathfinder, Warhammer Fantasy and Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader before Dresden Files. What were the other major releases, period, during this timeframe?

I guess what I'm saying is that the sky isn't exactly falling yet.

--Steve

What time frame are we talking? I know M&M, Savage Worlds, GURPS, HERO and RIFTS have all had multiple releases in the past 18 months.

 

[Chaos Disciple]

Your math is a little off: chess as we know it today dates back to 1475- 535 years ago- with the exception of the current rules for stalemate, which only date back to the 18th century.

My math is just fine.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#History

The earliest evidence of Chess is found in the neighboring Sassanid Persia
around 600 where the game came to be known under the name chatrang

 

[ggroy]

When our hobby shrinks, it becomes harder to find people to game with. It especially gets harder when we want to play some of today's niche RPGs. That doesn't mean it is impossible, and it doesn't mean that we might not recruit more. However, when we reach a certain point, the difficulty in finding like-minded, available players because too much of a hurdle for many. Those players drop out, thus shrinking the hobby more, and compounding the problems.

In my limited personal experience, this is already the case for the more niche and/or older OOP rpgs. The only times I get around to playing niche rpgs, is at gaming conventions or the occasional one-shot evening games with certain particular gamer friends.

I certainly don't believe the hobby surrounding roleplaying games is going to disappear in any of our lifetimes. However, I certainly consider it possible that it will decline to a level where the number of players is only a very small fraction of today's players. To me, not having several groups of local players to game with would consist of, at best, the hobby "barely surviving."

In my expanded circle of local gaming acquaintances, most niche rpgs are for most practical purposes "nonexistent". It's only the few really hardcore rpg gamers, which are even aware of anything beyond D&D.

For example, many of the casual gamers in my local gaming circles don't even know what Pathfinder is.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My math is just fine.


Chess - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nope, your math is still off, just as i said- read further down in the same article:

Around 1200, rules of shatranj started to be modified in southern Europe, and around 1475, several major changes made the game essentially as it is known today.[32] These modern rules for the basic moves had been adopted in Italy and Spain.[35][36] Pawns gained the option of advancing two squares on their first move, while bishops and queens acquired their modern abilities. The queen replaced the earlier vizier chess piece towards the end of the 10th century and by the 15th century, had become the most powerful piece;[37] consequently modern chess was referred to as "Queen's Chess" or "Mad Queen Chess".[38] These new rules quickly spread throughout western Europe, with the exception of the rules about stalemate, which were finalized in the early 19th century. To distinguish it from its predecessors, this version of the rules is sometimes referred to as western chess[39] or international chess.[40]

 

[pawsplay]

My math is just fine.


Chess - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You said it has changed very little, in a thousand years, which is not true. In the west, it gained castling in the past couple of centuries after several variants were tried. Meanwhile, in Japan, it spawed a completely different lineage which led to shogi, which solidified into a 9x9 variant a few centuries ago, as well. Meanwhile, there is also Chinese chess, and a number of other chess variants in the Arab and Turkish world, all of which have different rules.

 

[Chaos Disciple]

Nope, your math is still off, just as i said- read further down in the same article:

Looks like chess to me.

Shatranj - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[prosfilaes]

What time frame are we talking? I know M&M, Savage Worlds, GURPS, HERO and RIFTS have all had multiple releases in the past 18 months.

GURPS? Correlating between GURPS: Generic Universal RolePlaying System and Amazon.com (which seems to be the easiest source of printing dates), in hardcopy, GURPS has released one new hard-back in the last 18 months, GURPS Vorkosigan Saga, and a softback, 88-page, edition of GURPS Psionic Powers, which I believe originally came out in PDF sometime before that. GURPS is massively scaled back from its heyday, and is mostly doing shorter direct to PDF releases, along with PDF reprints of their archives.

 

[prosfilaes]

Looks like chess to me.

Shatranj - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Did you look at the rules? The pieces don't move at all the same. I don't know how you can complain about the changes in D&D between 1977 and 1999 if you consider that to be the same.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Looks like chess to me

Then either we're talking about different games or you need to look closer to notice the lack of a piece that moves like the Queen; the inclusion of a piece that jumps spaces on the diagonal (which is not the same movement as the knight type piece, which is also present) AND only moves 2 spaces (IOW, not a bishop); pawns which cannot move 2 spaces at once (or en passant); no castling at all; and a White King whose initial position was not fixed.

 

[jonesy]

And you can win without a stalemate. And a stalemate isn't a win if your opponent captures your last piece (other than the king) on his next turn. And by Medina rules that's a win, so getting a bad stalemate can actually make you lose.