Are Game Lines Smaller Today?

[bloodtide]

Yes.

There is a lot of society and economics mixed in here.

It was cheep enough to make, distribute, market and sell most RPG books. Back in the days of game shops, they would often have at least one whole bookcase full of such books. And gamers bought them up. A shop that got a box of ten of a book, were likely to sell most of them as soon as they came out.

And you have the thing such as I had a friend that wanted to "get into" White Wolf, so we went to the game store and he just bought like $100 worth of what was on the shelf.

Of course, books prices were cheep.....and most people had large disposable incomes too. There was a thing where many gamers felt the need to buy a new book every week or two. It was big with players too. Have a DM run a fun game X, and the players would run out and buy as many books as they could find before the next game to become 'experts'.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Are fewer books being published for RPGs across the board?

Do you mean across the industry as a whole and counting digital/POD?

If so I am very confident you are very wrong to think that there are fewer, and that the people agreeing are, with respect, not actually thinking about the industry as a whole, just individual games, and they're seemingly not even thinking very hard about those, quite frankly.

There are probably multiple times as many books coming out for RPGs now, in 2025, as there were in say, 1995, or 2005.

But the difference is they're not for a relatively small number of games which produce number of supplements, they're for a very, very large number of games, most of which produce only a single gamebook, or a small number of supplements.

We've gone from a situation where, to use made up numbers, there might be 10 popular gamelines, with an average of 50 supplements each to a situation where there are literally uncountable numbers of gamelines, but they're probably averaging about 2 supplements each, if that.

Just look on Itch.io, look on Drivethru, and realize that even those together are only a fraction of what's going on with RPGs today (probably the majority but still).

Furthermore, the average design quality of RPGs today - even one-person indie efforts - is significant higher than in the 1990s or 2000s.

Broadly, it's a shift across multiple mediums as well. You can read about the same trend in movies; there are less "mid budget" movies now, with studios putting out either high budget blockbusters or indie and/or Oscar stuff on the lower budget side. The video game market also has less stratification; you have really big AAA games and lots and lots of small indie publishers, with less in between.

Your videogame example shows how you're fundamentally wrong to assert that this means there are "less"/"fewer".

There far, far, far, far more videogames produced per year now than at any time before. It's not even remotely comparable. Most of them are indie games, sure, but indie games now are produced to higher qualities than good quality mainstream games were in the 1990s in many cases. Single programmers or tiny teams now routinely do what a team of a dozen or two dozen or more people did in the 1990s (albeit often over 1-3 years instead of six months - but a even "decent" selling indie now utterly nukes from orbit the sales of a good AAA from the 1990s - Ultima 6 sold a bit under 100k copies in the first year - there are indies that aren't even that successful that do that in a day or a week or a month or two).

Also using relative values - I'm sorry but that's just not good practice. Because values aren't relative in that way. You can't a mid-budget movie is now $70m or whatever, even if that's technically "the middle" of the budget range of movies today - that's still an insane amount of money, that's still gets you a lot, lot more than $20m did in say 1990. Also movies are a terrible model here because unlike videogames and TTRPGs, there hasn't gigantic explosion in the number of indies - unless you start counting TikTok etc. - which maybe one should? I dunno.

The shift from a bunch of mid-size products to a few larger ones and a lot of smaller ones is real - albeit not as pronounced in the RPG industry as some of you seem to think, but overall we're getting:

A) More RPGs, much more diverse RPGs (in literally in all senses of the word).

B) Much better quality RPG design than were were.

And like, I feel like even when we talk mid-size and so on, I don't think a lot people are really aware of just how much is going on. Like how many RPGs and supplements get released, get Kickstarted, and so on, every month. There are a whole game-lines out there, entire complete RPGs with many supplements that I've barely even heard of. That wasn't true in the 1990s or 2000s.

Like seriously, if you just keep paging back in top selling RPGs in Drivethru, you'll see games that are sustaining entire lines of products that you've never heard or barely heard of. It's wild. And again, I must emphasize that the quality of an RPG today is typically higher than one in the 1990s in ways except perhaps art/visual design/layout (simply because those are much more expensive, and can't be done 1-2 people usually).

I don't mean this meanly but like I am genuinely shocked at people casually agreeing with this demonstrably incorrect suggestion that we have fewer RPGs now. I expected more awareness of the sheer size, diversity, and quality of the RPG market.

Hell, ENworld's own Morrus has multiple different RPG lines. That's insane by 1990s standards! That's a major publisher by 1990s standards - and he's one of many!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah, the long product lines of yesteryear, especially with TSR and White Wolf, relied on returnable books being sold to book chains. Without that model, which TSR abused by cranking out books that at least some staff members knew weren't actually selling to consumers, I don't think we would have seen those deep catalogs of supplements and adventures in the 1990s.

And, honestly, I feel like it's a lot healthier to have essential books crowdfunded by an audience that explicitly wants them and, if there's a demand for follow-ups, they'll fund those as well.

So many games, even great games, don't really need the kind of support that Vampire or 2E AD&D received. A great corebook and maybe a handful of great supplements and you're good to go.

And the world of open licenses means that, for instance, the Arcane Library doesn't need to crank out dozens of adventures and supplements -- as much as many Shadowdark fans might like them -- because everyone can sell their own compatible stuff by taking some minimal steps to do so.

And that's even more true in the wider OSR space, where things are widely compatible and GMs are fine with converting say, Into the Wyrd & Wild to Shadowdark, Old School Essentials, 2E AD&D, or whatever. Once consumers make that step, they're suddenly faced with more available material for OSR games especially than TSR ever imagined.

Every year, more 1E/OSRIC material is released to the public than TSR ever produced for the line. And when you look at B/X material, a huge mountain of material -- some of it the best roleplaying gaming material produced today -- is released annually.

Yeah I don't get why people are saying there are less books - it's wild to me. It's obviously and provably untrue. It's just the sources are different - and I know I keep saying this, but frankly the average quality of everything but art is higher (and art isn't better because of economic factors which drag skilled artists rapidly into certain industries, where they're still underpaid, but it's more reliable work).

Re: Vampire and AD&D 2E - neither of them needed that level of support either. Hell, it's part of what killed both of them! They produced too much stuff and ended up dealing with a lot of bookshop returns which hurt them. An awful lot of AD&D 2E supplements, were frankly, both not great, and not necessary, and many weren't even fun or interesting!

The market looks very different, but I am not sure we can say it is smaller or less active than previously without really digging into the details.

Just looking at Itch.io and DriveThru I can very confidently say it's both larger and more active.

 

[Piperken]

The trend you are noticing is real, and is not specific to gaming. Kids books, for example, also saw a huge shift from pulp printing of multiple lines to a few major lines. Specifically: multiple high-book-count series like Goosebumps, Baby Sitters Club, Animorphs, etc, all went down, and the industry circled the wagons around huge brands like Harry Potter. It's a shift across lots of genres.

Broadly, it's a shift across multiple mediums as well. You can read about the same trend in movies; there are less "mid budget" movies now, with studios putting out either high budget blockbusters or indie and/or Oscar stuff on the lower budget side. The video game market also has less stratification; you have really big AAA games and lots and lots of small indie publishers, with less in between.

You can find research into this independently for each of the mediums I mentioned above...

As above, particularly true for book publishing industry generally; there are fewer houses available who will take risks in a thin-profit (if any) business.

There was concern about digital copies ruining the book (tm), but much like vinyl, readers have passionately rediscovered they like the act of opening a book! And digital readers are helpful for those that like the convenience and accessibility they provide.

So it's not an end for smaller, independent presses; if you have or know ones whose work you like, support them how you can!

 

[mearls]

TTRPG lines have made a decided shift toward fewer releases. I think Paizo is the only company still doing monthly, physical releases for a game line. There are a bunch of reasons for this:

• Back in the day, distributors really liked product lines that had monthly releases. A line meant a regular cadence of products to keep people coming back. It trained retailers to order the new Pinnacle or AEG book each month. Otherwise, it was an uphill battle for a sales rep to pitch a retailer on a TTRPG supplement for a game that came out six months ago (which is an eternity in the business, unless the game is hot and customer are still asking for it). However, long-term a lot of stores found out the hard way that a growing line eventually petered out. They ended up with books that simply didn't sell well.
• The shift to color art and a greater density of art increased the cost per product. If you look back at the release-heavy days of the 90s, products tended to be in black and white and have a lot less art. As expectations increased, budgets went up.
• A similar thing happened with product format. You don't see many 96 page, softcover, black and white books anymore. Products tended to be smaller. Today, products are boxes or high quality hardcover books. Books were cheaper, so you could do more within the same budget.
• The internet makes it much easier to rely on freelance writers for any publisher. Back in the day, a publisher making a full-time go at selling RPGs had at least one full time writer on staff. That writer has to do something, so you end up churning out a lot of text. Combine that with lower art costs and smaller products, and you end up doing more stuff.
• When planning for the 5e product line, we found that people wanted about 1 new product per year. The monthly release schedule was choking the game line to death. People who bought everything were playing a game that looked completely alien to people who bought just the core rulebook. 3.5 had entire action categories that were standard in books released after a certain point, but the rules for them weren't in the PHB.
• Finally, TSR embraced a volume strategy to remain on top of the market. They knew that any product they released would soak up some percentage of a distributor's TTRPG budget. If they did a bunch of products each month, that left far fewer dollars available for their competitors. They also believed that a high volume of products would crowd out competitors on retail shelves in book and game stores. That exacerbated the first point. Once your product line fell out of mind, it had a hard time pushing back in.

I think the TTRPG publishing ecosystem is much healthier today due to those changes. Back of the envelope, adjusting for inflation I think the overall market is probably about double what it was in 1995. There are far more outlets and far more creators around today, and that adds up quickly.

 

[MGibster]

Do you mean across the industry as a whole and counting digital/POD?

I specifically excluded PDFs. The number of GURPS books would have been greater had I included PDFs.

If so I am very confident you are very wrong to think that there are fewer, and that the people agreeing are, with respect, not actually thinking about the industry as a whole, just individual games, and they're seemingly not even thinking very hard about those, quite frankly.

I was thinking of number of books/products published for specific game lines rather than gaming books in the aggregate. I certainly haven't noticed a shortage of RPGs in general these last few years.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I specifically excluded PDFs. The number of GURPS books would have been greater had I included PDFs.

The vast majority of work being done today in RPGs is primarily on PDFs, and even major Kickstarters often printing much stuff to go to stores, they're sort of working as aggrandized POD.

I don't think you can exclude them unless you want intentionally completely ruin the comparison to the point it literally doesn't make sense and provides no informative value whatsoever unless we're solely discussing "what will you find inside your FLGS"? Which is a very different question to the one you asked.

I'd invite you to add in the PDF-only figures for GURPS.

I was thinking of number of books/products published for specific game lines rather than gaming books in the aggregate.

It's definitely going to be lower per-game in general, though if we include 3PPs, and we should, 5E will probably have many times as much material for it as 2E did, and perhaps multiple times as much as 3E, even.

Part of the reason it's going to be lower though is that's there's a lot less cruft and junk. Even when publishing to PDF is pretty cheap compared to physical, designers just aren't into this model of kicking stuff out the door solely for the sake of selling stuff anymore - by and large, anyway. As I noted, doing that helped get WW into trouble and killed TSR.

What we aren't seeing though, in general, is the sort of rapid conceptual change within single game lines that we saw in the 1990s. I'm less certain on the reasons for that.

 

[Jd Smith1]

In what way are they a burden?

I feel they discourage any significant changes to the actual system, and contribute to the insane power-bloat and 'spell for everything'. Tacking on inexplicable talents and racial abilities instead of changing the combat system from its endless 'death by a thousand cuts'.

 

[Jd Smith1]

• The shift to color art and a greater density of art increased the cost per product. If you look back at the release-heavy days of the 90s, products tended to be in black and white and have a lot less art. As expectations increased, budgets went up.

Without adding a thing to the hobby itself.

• A similar thing happened with product format. You don't see many 96 page, softcover, black and white books anymore. Products tended to be smaller. Today, products are boxes or high quality hardcover books. Books were cheaper, so you could do more within the same budget.

Pdfs render this arguement invalid.

• The internet makes it much easier to rely on freelance writers for any publisher. Back in the day, a publisher making a full-time go at selling RPGs had at least one full time writer on staff. That writer has to do something, so you end up churning out a lot of text. Combine that with lower art costs and smaller products, and you end up doing more stuff.

Which was good.

• When planning for the 5e product line, we found that people wanted about 1 new product per year. The monthly release schedule was choking the game line to death. People who bought everything were playing a game that looked completely alien to people who bought just the core rulebook. 3.5 had entire action categories that were standard in books released after a certain point, but the rules for them weren't in the PHB.

Which doesn't explain the torrent of 3rd party splatbooks, nor the dearth of innovative adventures.

• Finally, TSR embraced a volume strategy to remain on top of the market. They knew that any product they released would soak up some percentage of a distributor's TTRPG budget. If they did a bunch of products each month, that left far fewer dollars available for their competitors. They also believed that a high volume of products would crowd out competitors on retail shelves in book and game stores. That exacerbated the first point. Once your product line fell out of mind, it had a hard time pushing back in.

I think the TTRPG publishing ecosystem is much healthier today due to those changes. Back of the envelope, adjusting for inflation I think the overall market is probably about double what it was in 1995. There are far more outlets and far more creators around today, and that adds up quickly.

If sheer volume mattered, you would be right. If you apply quality standards, discount the 'more art instead of actual substance' philosophy, and take in the lack of innovation and depth, the hobby is in much worse shape. Yes, there's a tidal wave of 5e splatbooks, but not a lot of substance, innovation, or depth for a gamer who wants something other than the tired D&D engine to run endless 'save the world/nation from evil whosis' crawls.

 

[Staffan]

TTRPG lines have made a decided shift toward fewer releases. I think Paizo is the only company still doing monthly, physical releases for a game line. There are a bunch of reasons for this:

• [SNIP]
• When planning for the 5e product line, we found that people wanted about 1 new product per year. The monthly release schedule was choking the game line to death. People who bought everything were playing a game that looked completely alien to people who bought just the core rulebook. 3.5 had entire action categories that were standard in books released after a certain point, but the rules for them weren't in the PHB.

That's a good point, but I see two problems with this mentality:

1. Different customers want different things. Just to take a random example, someone might be interested in a Baldur's Gate sourcebook, someone else might want an adventure, a third person would like more magic rules, and a fourth would want a sourcebook about mercenary companies. The old cadence would satisfy all of these within a reasonable time frame.

2. Most game companies have adjusted their product schedules to the new reality, but not their core games. If you're only going to do a book or two per year, then perhaps your core product shouldn't try to be All Things to All People. Instead, do a more focused game that does One Thing Well. Then, a few years down the line, maybe you can do a new game that does a Different Thing Well, using the same engine (perhaps tweaked for the new context).

As a bad example, take Aeon. Let's ignore that it's a setting for a wider game, Trinity Continuum, and pretend we have a single game that consists of both those books. Aeon prides itself on being flexible and allowing for many different types of science-fiction stories, and having tailored different locations within the setting to cover these stories. You could be fighting an oppressive fascist society in the Federated States of America, or you could be exploring the Final Frontier out in space, or you could be rooting out corporate corruption on Luna, or solving crime and dealing with media fame in Sydney. NO! The game doesn't have room to explore all those beyond about a paragraph each on the campaign styles and maybe a page on the sub-setting. And the supplemental material doesn't have enough either.

By comparison, although I haven't played the game myself, I'm told that Blades in the Dark is absolutely awesome. One of the reasons it is awesome is that it's focused on the adventures of your little band of criminals in a a vaguely defined city. So everything is focused on heists or "scores". It does one thing, and it does it really well.

The Old Way would often create a core game that touched on all sorts of angles, and expect to expand on them in future sourcebooks. You want to play pirates? Get the High Seas sourcebook. You want to do magic university intrigue? Get Academia Arcana. Wanna do monsterhunting? That's what the Slayer's Book of Slaying is for. But the modern world won't let you publish all those – you might get one, if you're lucky. So instead decide that this is the game for doing X, and make sure it does X brilliantly and has all the stuff you need for X. If someone wants to do Y instead, there's a different game for that out.

Or, in the words of Ron Swanson: