Did the nerds win?

[Ruin Explorer]

Or is it something that's just happened as nerds have grown up and started earning and spending money on things they like and the market responded to that? They have also birthed more nerds that are interested in the same sorts of things.

Yeah pretty much. I remember saying to my dad, when I was like, 16 to 18, "By the time I'm your age [i.e. mid-40s], RPGs will probably be pretty mainstream", which he seemed to think was implausible, and I even gently reminded him of this a decade or so ago when he sent me some NYT article basically saying "D&D is mainstream".

I would have guessed wrong if you'd made me guess which RPGs back in the 1994 or 1996 because D&D looked pretty doomed to me at that point, and WoD likely to build success on success, but still!

And as far as limiting the audience, so what? Does every game have to be as popular as 5e to be viable? Obviously not. A smaller audience is fine, especially since in many games, even those with a lot of math, the DM is the one who needs to interact with it the most.

"So what?" you say?

So every single RPG group I've ever played with, with absolutely not a single exception, not even one, has contained at least 1-2 people who fundamentally were not good at doing math, and not good at keeping track of numbers.

You want to exclude people already at your table? You want to cut down your group from say 4 to to 2? That sound cool to you? Like a fun time?

You can make up nonsense about "as popular as 5E", which obviously I didn't say, and weakens your entire argument because it's such a false thing to put in my mouth, but the reality is, it's about the lowest common denominator. If the worst person in your group at math can't handle a system, then you're basically making their experience bad and/or excluding them.

You're not making anyone's experience bad by NOT including complex math. Sorry, you just aren't.

Well, and movie special effects got cheap enough to enable the Lord of the Rings movies and the MCU.

Kind of the inverse I'd say - the effects didn't get much cheaper and still aren't cheap - they're ludicrously expensive, the MCU CGI ones anyway (even when the look terrible). But the rise of blockbuster movies in the 1990s meant Hollywood became willing to give out larger and larger and larger budgets, which meant those ludicrous costs could actually be considered.

LotR was mostly shot with techniques you could have used in 1990 or even maybe the 1970s, note, only a certain amount of CGI which could probably have been substituted with stop-motion or the like pretty effectively (though it did hit at pretty much exactly when CGI had got good enough to do some stuff really convincingly).

 

[Mannahnin]

Because no computer game is going to have all the depth and breadth a human can imagine in an RPG space, and the math nerds deserve to find their fun in that arena too, especially since the hobby "started" with a significant math aspect to it. Why should they have to move to computer games to play have the ROG experience they enjoy?

And as far as limiting the audience, so what? Does every game have to be as popular as 5e to be viable? Obviously not. A smaller audience is fine, especially since in many games, even those with a lot of math, the DM is the one who needs to interact with it the most.

This is pretty fair. I just think it's necessarily a more limited audience. It does seem like most math nerds are also happy to get that fix through digital games.

What kind of games are still out there for the analog math nerd? Mostly older ones, I guess. Stuff like Champions and Star Fleet Battles which have been around for decades. Car Wars got a big 6th edition Kickstarter 4-5 years ago, but that's in a simplified form, right?

I think Ruin Explorer has a fair point that the trouble with a math-heavy tabletop game is that it makes it even harder to find enough people hardcore enough to play.

 

[Umbran]

The problem with that is that it supports the idea that math nerds shouldn't expect to enjoy TTRPGs.

No. As Ruin Explorer said, it more suggests that RPGs are not a particularly good tool for the job of satisfying math-nerdiness.

 

[delericho]

You're not making anyone's experience bad by NOT including complex math. Sorry, you just aren't.

Not true. One of the members of my previous group bounced off 5e hard, precisely because it lacked the complexity that he craved.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is pretty fair. I just think it's necessarily a more limited audience. It does seem like most math nerds are also happy to get that fix through digital games.

What kind of games are still out there for the analog math nerd? Mostly older ones, I guess. Stuff like Champions and Star Fleet Battles which have been around for decades. Car Wars got a big 6th edition Kickstarter 4-5 years ago, but that's in a simplified form, right?

I think Ruin Explorer has a fair point that the trouble with a math-heavy tabletop game is that it makes it even harder to find enough people hardcore enough to play.

I concede that point (and did in the post). I just don't think it should mean math-heavier games (especially on the DM side, which I also mentioned) shouldn't be a thing for those who want them.

@Ruin Explorer , please don't frame my stance as anti-inclusive of those who aren't great at math. There are plenty of games, and plenty of tastes for games out there. They don't have to all be mathematically simple.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not true. One of the members of my previous group bounced off 5e hard, precisely because it lacked the complexity that he craved.

Huh. It's like those who prefer complexity deserve a good TTRPG experience just as much as those who don't.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Not true. One of the members of my previous group bounced off 5e hard, precisely because it lacked the complexity that he craved.

Math complexity though? Or rules complexity?

Because those are two different things. You can have complex rules without complex math, and you can have complex math without complex rules (though it is less common and usually indicates some kind of failure).

And really if 5E isn't complicated enough in either sense, what games did that guy find acceptable? Presumably only:

D&D 3.XE
PF1
Some Shadowrun variants
Rolemaster

What else? That's someone with incredibly narrow tastes. They'd reject ultra-popular games like CoC on the same basis or that's not their real objection.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No. As Ruin Explorer said, it more suggests that RPGs are not a particularly good tool for the job of satisfying math-nerdiness.

Maybe not as good in some ways, but you can't get the full experience of a TTRPG from a computer game, so you compromise. That compromise doesn't always have tobe to the way of those who prefer simple math and simple mechanics.

 

[Bagpuss]

You're not making anyone's experience bad by NOT including complex math. Sorry, you just aren't.

Sorry I disagree there are loads of groups that haven't moved to 5E because it just doesn't offer then same complexity that they enjoy. There are plenty of RPGs I avoid for long term campaigns because they don't have any real depth in their character generation systems, which I know my players enjoy.

 

[delericho]

And really if 5E isn't complicated enough in either sense, what games did that guy find acceptable? Presumably only:

D&D 3.XE
PF1
Some Shadowrun variants
Rolemaster

Pathfinder 1, with all the supplements added, was the least complex he could tolerate. Which was rather unfortunate, because I couldn't face that, either.

Fortunately, it was a reasonably wide group, so we were able to each do our own things without issue.