Contemporary Simulationist TTRPGs [+]

[GobHag]

Does it have any current success? It's well over a decade old (2012) and the relevant subreddit (r/Autarch) has had a single lonely post in the past month, three the previous month, and one the month before that.

ACKS 2 released this year and their discord is quite active. His youtube channel does get pretty decent views too.

I don't disagree that Simulationism is unpopular however.

 

[Enaknomolos]

I don't see how it could have. If there was a large demand for simulationism then people would have found or made a simulationist game with less toxic associations than ACK has or a less toxic OSR game would have drifted that way. And e.g. GURPS still exists. If there's only one major game doing that it's already on life support.

There is Stara Szkoła which is very much combat-focussed sim; but the same publisher Codex Integrum also do settings based on the medieval baltic, guides to historical weapons, and so on. They're very sim-orientated, although Stara Szkola also aims to be very light and fast.

That said, as far as I know it's a mega-niche game with a very small following, so your overall point stands.

 

[TwoSix]

Does it have any current success? It's well over a decade old (2012) and the relevant subreddit (r/Autarch) has had a single lonely post in the past month, three the previous month, and one the month before that.

The ACKS II kickstarter raised 333K in 2023, and I believe most of the community had migrated to Discord. Which makes sense considering the overall controversy around the game’s creator.