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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5291084" data-attributes="member: 80487">Having looked at your essay, I think that heading in the direction you suggest actually makes RPGs less accessible.Universalis might seem "accessible" because it involves no preparation. It is totally about the personalization, design activities, and "springboarding" you laud.I fear it's also totally for geeks who already hang out at RPGnet.I think the "design game" -- what we used to call "making up cool stuff" -- has always appealed in its extremes to a limited demographic. The original D&D game and T&T and so on were for many just too much of that. As folks are more likely to put it, there was too little to them.What has actually succeeded is going in the opposite direction. As indicated above, I think that has probably appealed in the long run to a bigger audience. More significantly, perhaps, it appeals to a customer base more likely to fork out money for product than people who prefer to "roll their own".It's not that people don't keep on being creators as well as consumers, or that there is no money in providing tools for the DIYers. That is still what RPG rule books in essence are. From Judges Guild's debut to the present, though, gamers -- to the surprise of Gygax and co. -- have been eager to buy "canned" scenarios.I think RPGs have largely lost the segment that really was not after them in the first place. Video game consoles and personal computers also hit the scene in a big way in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but the graphics and other features had a long way to go to become what they are today. I think a lot of people played RPGs at one time because it was the closest thing to a generation of video game that had yet to arrive.Computer games often don't even kill old computer games, in terms of people continuing to play them. However, there is a huge gulf between what is viable for an individual or two of modest means to make as a hobby -- including things that could have been big sellers in the 1980s -- and the Hollywood productions that commercial offerings have become.</blockquote>

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