How Much Do You Care About Novelty?

[Ruin Explorer]

2e? Think Fallout with the 1e AD&D rules. It was okay. Only played a couple of times.

Nah the Alternity version, which was apparently the 5th edition of Gamma World.

 

[Reynard]

Nah the Alternity version, which was apparently the 5th edition of Gamma World.

4th edition GW (1995?) is peak GW for me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They literally are, though.

That's why it's called steamPUNK.

That's the core of the old conflict about what should be called "steampunk". If there's no dystopia and no resistance to that dystopia, and there's no punk element, and you haven't got steampunk. You've just got some kind of romanticized Victoriana alt-history. But the aesthetic became more dominant than the actual meaning of the trope - that happened by the end of the 1990s, so "steampunk" is still usually used to describe romanticized Victoriana and HG Wells-esque retrofutures that as @Umbran says would be better described as "gaslamp fantasy" or just as Victoriana.


I'm sorry but absolutely not.

It's not at all a stretch to suggest that or categorize it that way in the UK, which is where the majority of this stuff was set. Maybe in some newly-built city in the US or Canada or on the frontier or whatever you can easily dismiss dystopia (particularly as the US also had a shiny new political system, not the decrepit and failing one the UK had - the US also had a lot lower "oligarch count"). But in, say, London in the UK? Absolutely much of the Victorian era was easily dystopian, truly horrifying, in every way that mattered. And, to be clear - worse than the immediately preceding period in many places.


Maybe not but it seems utterly horrific to me to set a game in Victorian England (or similar) and expect the players to just ignore the extreme horrors of that setting and enjoy being jolly gentlemen (and anachronistic jolly ladies) in top hats as their society basically throws starving children into machinery for profit. As living standards for much of the population absolutely nosedive solely for the sake of the mighty pound. Only because in reality, people did resist, did push back, did things improve.

Personally I just refuse to play in games that are set horrifying societies but where the GM wants us to be advantaged members of that society yet to not actually do anything about what's wrong with that society.

That's a personal choice to be respected, but it certainly isn't any more than that. You're certainly allowed to use a historical era in a game without having play focus on its social injustices (which as I'm sure you know exist in every era, including our own).

 

[Reynard]

That's a personal choice to be respected, but it certainly isn't any more than that. You're certainly allowed to use a historical era in a game without having play focus on its social injustices (which as I'm sure you know exist in every era, including our own).

Right, but -punk promises that you will.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Nah the Alternity version, which was apparently the 5th edition of Gamma World.

Never played that (or Alternity). I think I was playing WEG Star Wars d6 and FASA Star Trek when those were current.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Right, but -punk promises that you will.

Perhaps, but I'm not sure every -punk game keeps that promise.

 

[Reynard]

Perhaps, but I'm not sure every -punk game keeps that promise.

Oh, they certainly don't. That's what rubs some folks the wrong way.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Personally I just refuse to play in games that are set horrifying societies but where the GM wants us to be advantaged members of that society yet to not actually do anything about what's wrong with that society.

Considering at least one member of that campaign’s party was a foundling/orphan, I think you may be making assumptions.

And again, that campaign’s focus was about that society being potentially replaced by something much worse.

But your reply also begs the question: do you play in games in faux medieval/feudal settings that are commonplace in many FRPGs? What societies form the settings for the games you DO play in?

 

[VelvetViolet]

Today's industry is more accessible, creative and diverse than it has been since that first Post D&D late 1970s rush.

We clearly value completely different things then. I don't see any of that in the areas that I personally care about.

This is very true. We might moan about some cool older settings being MIA because they've effectively been IP vaulted by WotC, but they're usually at least available as PDFs of the old books,

They're not. WotC took the Alternity pdfs off drivethrurpg back in 2008 and never put them back.

Besides, just because the pdfs might be available on drivethru for some games doesn't translate to it having players. There are countless games on that site that nobody plays.

Nobody is even making spiritual successors either.

and what we're getting today is insanely more diverse in every possible meaning of the word diverse than what we were getting even 20 years ago, let alone in the 1990s or earlier.

We clearly value completely different things then.

I myself have a bias for older ttrpgs, including ones from before I even got into ttrpgs and ones that I never played. Nightlife, Unisystem, Amazing Engine, Alternity, d20 Modern, Polyhedron magazine mini-settings, Chronicles of Darkness, etc. I have this feeling that current ttrpgs are overall less diverse, less creative, and lower budget than they were 20 or more years ago, in the areas that I personally care about. Often when a new ttrpg is genuinely inspired, and I've found a few, it often doesn't get the traction it deserves.

I'll list a few comparisons I'm personally familiar with:

All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a universal zombie ttrpg. Rather than being restricted to a single setting, it gives you rules to create your own zombies and multiple books of pre-written "deadworlds" to get you started. This is awesome and how I think all ttrpgs should be written. After Eden Studio shuttered a decade or so ago, AFMBE and other Unisystem games have faded into obscurity. The community forums are long gone. Pity, because I think they're awesome.

Night's Black Agents is a universal vampire hunter conspiracy thriller ttrpg. Like AFMBE, it doesn't have a single setting but gives you the tools to create your own take on vampire conspiracies. One online article even gives provisional rules for applying this formula to werewolves! There's an official discord which is still active as of this writing. It's fun.

Feed is an obscure kickstarter game about playing vampires. Like AFMBE and NBA, it's a toolkit that gives you tools for creating your own rules for vampirism from scratch. By far the most interesting mechanic is its humanity mechanic. Rather than subtracting points for breaking arbitrary rules and going arbitrarily crazy, it uses a mechanic similar to lightside/darkside from Star Wars and the dual character sheets from City of Mists. Characters are created in an abstract manner with freeform traits, and characters start with mostly human traits describing their human life. As a vampire alienates their human traits in play while pursuing their addiction to blood, they can sever human traits entirely and at this point the trait is replaced with a vampiric trait representing a vampire power, connection or possession. Very cool, but unfortunately it never got any further supplements and there's no community I could find.

Alternity Star*Drive is my favorite space opera setting. It feels distinct from Star Trek, Star Wars and Traveller because it was written in the 90s and with the intent to showcase as many scifi tropes as possible. WotC cancelled it after two years to get the Star Wars license. Describing SD succinctly is hard because the setting is a pastiche of as many scifi tropes as the writers could fit, but imagine if Babylon 5, Halo, Andromeda, Alpha Centauri, Schismatrix, Robocop, X-Files, Farscape, The Dead Zone, and various other scifi classics from 1980 onward were thrown into a blender. It has been 25 years and I haven't found a comparable setting. I've checked out Traveller and Stars Without Number, but they don't compare. No offense.

The biopunk genre is a niche within a niche. It's similar to cyberpunk, but with a focus on biotech over cybertech. Genetic engineering, wetware implants, etc. There's like two or three ttrpg settings I'm aware of that focus on it, Kromosome, GeneTech and GURPS Bio-Tech, and two old tv shows: Mutant X and Dark Angel. GeneTech is probably what I would consider the simplest take on the genre: it takes place in then-contemporary times (the late 90s/early 2000s) and focuses on the lives of genemods created for black ops operations in poorer countries, such as animal-human hybrids and slightly modified humans. Those who have broken away from their handlers have to deal with racism from the muggles. It's pretty hard to find biopunk settings and they always have various complications added that limit their applicability.

The psipunk genre suffers similar problems to biopunk. There's WotC's old Agents of PSI in the d20 Modern rulebook, there's I Psi for QAGs, but otherwise the genre is ignored.

Conspiracy thriller? Same boat. Classics of the genre like Bureau 13, Conspiracy X and Dark•Matter haven't received new editions in decades and the fandoms have evaporated beyond a couple of die hards. Meanwhile, Delta Green somehow survives due to its usage of oversaturated Cthulhu tropes. I don't like Delta Green's take on ufology tropes because they're perfunctory and play fourth fiddle to the cthulhu tropes. E.g. In those other games Roswell grays are their own civilization with their own mysterious goals, in DG the grays are a psi-op manufactured by Yuggoth to distract humans from their activities.

I've checked out The Magnus Archives ttrpg due to the positive reviews of the anthology. The chapter on monsters is serviceable and the stripped down archetypal nature of the monster writeups makes it easy to slot them into a variety of different times and places. Unfortunately, the rest of it just doesn't inspire me like, say, Chill, Dark•Matter, Hunter: The Vigil, or the Chronicles of Darkness bluebooks from the 2000s. It just comes across as excessively generic.

Monster of the Week definitely feels like one of those games I wish had come out 20 years ago, but in other ways it feels lacking. While it makes copious reference to various tv shows when designing its classes, the class-based nature of the rules and the large number of classes means that about half of them feel redundant or overlap the others. It doesn't have the plethora of organizations and conspiracies that games like Dark•Matter or Hunter: The Vigil had. One supplement tries to write a conspiracy thriller setting, but it's about playing as a mysterious evil organization that arbitrarily keeps magic secret from muggles. That premise is oversaturated and just doesn't appeal to me. DM and Vigil had a variety of organizations with a variety of goals that spanned the moral gamut.

StokerVerse looks totally awesome, but it seems to have slipped under the radar and been canceled. Ugh.

There are numerous experimental ttrpgs on itch.io, but the lack of any further attention for readily expandable concepts is why I find them forgettable or even aggravating. I buy game books because I'm too lazy to make my own, not because I want to do the author's work for them.

The development of ttrpgs just feels like a crapshoot to me. While there are undoubtedly good and useful innovations and advancements, these are canceled out by the loss of perfectly good ideas elsewhere. I can't go back to old games since I can see their flaws, but I can't move to new games because they lack everything I liked about old games.

I'm tired of it.

Re: Alternity I personally found the settings for it pretty dire as well so I feel like it's a bit strange to see people praising them as if they were angelic creations from a better age.

I'm not saying they're perfect, but nothing made after is even remotely similar or interesting to me. We also clearly value completely different things, since I love those games.

Dark*Matter sounded cool and zeitgeisty on paper, but some insane reason, it took a very weird and specific right-wing approach to conspiracies (with tons of bonus xenophobia and racism), which I've written about before here, and was absolutely insane in a bad, bad way.

To be fair to the authors, most conspiracy theories at the time were invented and promoted by televangelists. I think it's fair to criticize this bias because it would alienate potential players. My suggestion is to balance out the bias by inserting more left-wing conspiracy theories, as well as spin doctoring some of the right-wing conspiracy theories to account for the various scandals.

Hide and Seek with Samara Weaving shows how you can take stuff like the Satanic conspiracy and spin it in new ways for new audiences. There's a lot of opportunity for satire.

Star Drive was an extremely mid and unexceptional/unremarkable sci-fi setting, which seemed to be dedicated to making the galaxy as unexciting as humanly possibly, which technically still being "space opera". It was also specific enough that it wasn't hugely helpful for making your own space opera settings.

Yeah, we totally disagree here. Star*Drive is the only space opera that I still find interesting anymore and I'm so disappointed that nothing made since comes close. I've checked out Traveller, Stars Without Number, etc and they just don't interest me.

Star*Drive is diverse, has aged so much better because it has smartphones, and did I mention it's diverse? The various stellar nations have inspired me way more than the bland sterile takes on human culture seen in games like Mass Effect. There's space cowboys, clones, mutant supremacists, etc. There's also aliens. There's lot of things to do, like politics, trading, frontier colonialism, netrunning, archaeology, fighting pirates, fighting bugs, using psychic powers to investigate crime scenes, etc.

If you think that's the most boring scifi setting you ever read, then I don't know what to tell you.

 

[Umbran]

You are letting you emotions interfere with your objectivity

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