What does it take for an RPG to die?

[Umbran]

Looking at my bookshelf, to decide if there's anything on it that I'd consider "dead"...

...what, hey? I have a 1983 box set of Gamma World up there? When did I get that? Back in 1983, I suppose...

 

[payn]

We were just talking about Battletech "city Tech" box set. BT is alive and enjoying a renaissance, but city tech is still in the grave.

 

[MGibster]

I think there's anti-value, in that it leads to someone declaring "X is dead" and then having to argue with stans of X over whether you are correct. Who needs that?

Sure, but once there's a general consensus on what dead means then it should aid conversation. There's always going to be someone who doesn't buy into the consensus and wants to define it their way, but that's true for many things.

 

[aramis erak]

For you, what determines when a game is "dying" or even "dead"? What are some examples of games you consider dead.

Dying: no further printings, no further supplements, and no willingness to sell the IP.
Dead: as dying, but also down to almost no players.

D&D as a tabletop game? no. Not dying.

D&D Losing a bunch of players? Yes, but it might be drawing in a new audience...

Making some dubious choices? Yes. Trying to move it from tabletop, removing some of the inbuilt setting texture? Yes. The moves driven by political correctness? Yes, but not because they're unpopular with the majority of the fanbase — but because a few wealthy fans are pissed by it and considering buying HasBro or just WotC to stop it.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

We were just talking about Battletech "city Tech" box set. BT is alive and enjoying a renaissance, but city tech is still in the grave.

CityTech wasn't its own game, it just added rules for urban combat, vehicles and infantry to the BTech game - it was the very first supplement for it IIRC. The modern version of those rules are all part of the current edition of BTech, so definitely not out of use, just no longer an independent product in the same way as Aerotech.

You thinking of Battletroops instead? That was its own game with a focus on infantry, point-to-point movement on differently-scaled maps, and relatively little integration with BTech itself. The game engine got used as for the Shadowrun IP's DMZ skirmish board game as well, but you could probably say both are long dead and staying that way.

 

[Clint_L]

I feel like those involved in the current tariff situation read the title of this thread and replied, "challenge accepted!"

 

[darjr]

licensed games come to mind.

I was thinking of The Black Company setting from Green Ronin, not a whole game, alas. Out of print, out of license, and can’t get any legit PDFs. If you know it’s publication history it had an unfortunate troubled beginning and was probably already dying through no fault of the game itself.

But I thought of other licensed games like the 007 game or the Ghostbusters game. The old Star Wars d6 game had a bit of a revival, at least in availability.

Do games based upon an IP that has gone on to live in other systems count? Like Star Wars?

This lead me to look up Stormbringer and now I need to take a look at Mournboade.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, but once there's a general consensus on what dead means then it should aid conversation. There's always going to be someone who doesn't buy into the consensus and wants to define it their way, but that's true for many things.

The problem is that the "consensus" is always going to skew toward people who only think of a game as alive when its play population is relatively large, and by that standard a lot of indie games are DOA.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Dying: no further printings, no further supplements, and no willingness to sell the IP.
Dead: as dying, but also down to almost no players.

I can kind of see the former, but the latter still turns on someone's definition of "almost no players." Like I said in the above post, its entirely possible there are still more players for some long-out-of-print games than some recent indie ones. Are the latter "dead"?

 

[Micah Sweet]

For me, I typically thought of an RPG as being dead when it was no longer in print. But what does it mean to be out of print in the age of PDFs?

To be a licensed game after the license has ended or been revoked. And even that doesn't kill the game, what with 3pp, homebrew, secondary market, and "creative" downloading.