Do we live in the d20 Dark Ages?

[AslanC]

+1 to Hussar's comments! This man see the forest AND the trees!

 

[Umbran]

As for your comments on the history and literature, there's more to what inspired D&D than Appendix N.

AD&D was published in 1977. Everything that inspired the original game must, of course, have been written before that time. And, in general, literature is a product of its time. The 1960s and early 70s were better, admittedly, but still not great. Why don't we focus instead on whatever stories would inspire players of today instead of worrying so much about the distant past?

RPGs are the means and the end in itself to many players.

If that's how they want to play, who are we to gainsay that? Maybe it is as much that many of the rules-hungry people who in the past would have played wargames are now playing RPGs instead, and want as rich a rules-experience in their RPG-skirmish game as they had in their wargame?

And you're right, the judgement has been going on since Day 1. Yet I think it's gotten worse. Maybe 5e will bring the community closer together, maybe not. I'm not counting on it.

Moreover, what you're encountering here has nothing to do with RPGs, specifically. The entire human race keeps itself quite busy drawing lines between Them and Us. It is an extension of our tribal nature, and has been going on since the dawn of time. If it has gotten worse of late, it is because our culture has perhaps been engaged in rather more of this than usual in the past years. Or maybe the internet has simply made the same amount of tribalism just that much more visible. I don't know. But let us not lay at the feet of games what is a much larger problem.

 

[Ulrick]

AD&D was published in 1977. Everything that inspired the original game must, of course, have been written before that time. And, in general, literature is a product of its time. The 1960s and early 70s were better, admittedly, but still not great. Why don't we focus instead on whatever stories would inspire players of today instead of worrying so much about the distant past?

If D&D leads people beyond the game to literature out there, both past and present, great.

Yet the OSR brought the past back into the lime light, which has had some influence of the end 4e. It's not so much worrying about the past, the so-called Golden Age, its a commentary on the state of the hobby at the present.

If that's how they want to play, who are we to gainsay that? Maybe it is as much that many of the rules-hungry people who in the past would have played wargames are now playing RPGs instead, and want as rich a rules-experience in their RPG-skirmish game as they had in their wargame?

Moreover, what you're encountering here has nothing to do with RPGs, specifically. The entire human race keeps itself quite busy drawing lines between Them and Us. It is an extension of our tribal nature, and has been going on since the dawn of time. If it has gotten worse of late, it is because our culture has perhaps been engaged in rather more of this than usual in the past years. Or maybe the internet has simply made the same amount of tribalism just that much more visible. I don't know. But let us not lay at the feet of games what is a much larger problem.

All good points.

Yet the games we play reflect the values of the culture we live in. Furthermore, "Dark Ages" and "Golden Age" are cultural terms.

We are part of the gamer sub-culture. And I'm using the term "gamer" broadly, but mostly meaning tabletop RPG players, specificially D&D players in whatever edition/version/clone they play. If WotC or whatever company promotes at "rules heavy edition" of D&D, what does that tell us about the gamer sub-culture?

5e is supposed to bring gamers back to official D&D as it supposed to appeal to players of all versions/editions/clones of D&D, as touted by its designers. Thus, it is supposed to unify the gamer sub-culture.

Yet, what do they bring back as part of their playtest: The Keep on the Borderlands, a module from the "Golden Age." What does that tell us about the gamer sub-culture? Why not say, The Sunless Citadel, or a module from 2e?

It tells us that the sub-culture is fragmented, edition-warring.

Does this meant that d20 gamers are in a cultural dark age? I'm leaning toward 'yes,' but I'm not entirely convinced, which is why I posed the question.

 

[Libramarian]

No thanks. If I wanted to read more racist, misogynistic and offensive literature, I'd head out to the local neo-Nazi bookstore. Most of the literature that inspired the hobby makes me want to wash my eyeballs with bleach after reading it. Howard? Lovecraft? Burroughs? No thanks. It's hard enough to get non-white middle class young men into the hobby. Emphasizing literature that is derogatory towards pretty much everyone is not how I want the hobby to grow.

I will say this about the fragmentation of RPGer subculture...whatever fragment this is coming from, I don't want anything to do with. I'm comfortable drawing a line here.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The grognards have had their say, the Golden Age of D&D is long gone.

I have three answers to that.

1: The nadir of D&D was the 2e era when they were pumping out five splatbooks a month (most of it appeared to be Extruded Fantasy Product) - but the creative energy and interest was all with White Wolf.

2: This might be the dark age of D&D - but for RPGs it's closer to a golden age. Those who want to play hack and slash have WoW which scratches that itch. Those who want rich deep settings have all the old material. Those who want narrative storytelling games have more and better games than ever before - that side of the RPG hobby has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade.

Genuine Golden Ages aren't where everyone's united. They are where there is a bubbling mass of creativity and everyone is getting what they want rather than being forced into a box that doesn't quite fit.

As for Mongoose's opinions on the RPG market, their main recent original product has been Stars Without Number - a d20 space based sandbox setting and system or in other words D&D IN SPAAAACCEEE! Now correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that the design goal of Traveller in 1977 (a licence Mongoose owns). In fact I'd call Traveller their main product line right now - a minor update to a 35 year old system. Their other lines include Paranoia (1984 or so), a recently updated Judge Dredd game which they've shifted from D20 rules to Runequest rules, a multiplayer expansion of a line of fighting fantasy gamebooks, a fantasy game using Runequest rules, and some D&D (or rather Pathfinder) compatable books. There is nothing in that line that appears to be other than well placed ... for the gaming market of the late 1980s.

Off the top of my hat, Paizo are doing well, so are Evil Hat, Margaret Weiss Productions, Cubicle 7 Games, Pelgrane Press, Kenser, and the kickstarters from Monte Cook, Vince Baker, and for the TBZ translation. (WotC would be doing rather better if they put out some product...) Mongoose have problems finding the pulse because they are looking at the gaming market as it was 25 years ago and trying to produce almost the same products that would have worked then. If you can't find the pulse and others demonstrably can, either look at what they are doing and you aren't or take up necromancy.

Edit: And the supplement Mongoose is talking about that utterly bombed from a leading company? Almost certainly Mezobarranan: City of Intrigue. Which pissed off 4e fans by being ... not 4e, and didn't have a market outside that. There's a chance it was the previous book; The Dungeon Survival Handbook which is far the most ill-thought out 4e supplement and was over half full of advertising for other D&D products. If both those bombed they deserved to. The failure of either or both should stand as proof that you can't just put out anything, call it 4e, and have 4e fans buy it.

 

[Obryn]

Mongoose have problems finding the pulse because they are looking at the gaming market as it was 25 years ago and trying to produce almost the same products that would have worked then. If you can't find the pulse and others demonstrably can, either look at what they are doing and you aren't or take up necromancy.

That's a very good point. I have a few of their Flaming Cobra imprints ... but that's for Earthdawn, which is still basically stuck in the mid-90's, including about 95%+ of the flavor text.

I also have Paranoia, but as has been mentioned, pretty much all you need for it is the core book and maybe a few adventures. The idea of sourcebooks for Paranoia I frankly find baffling, because I run it as 90%+ of everyone seems to run it - as a one-off romp here and there, and as a break from more serious RPGs. (I mean, the "campaign mode" Straight setting is interesting, but the rules support a more jokey Classic style a lot better.) So it's not at all surprising to me that it's not very successful as a product line.

-O

 

[Umbran]

Yet the games we play reflect the values of the culture we live in.

Only in a very broad sense.

Furthermore, "Dark Ages" and "Golden Age" are cultural terms.

And are only generally applicable in retrospect. You have to be out of the Golden Age, and find one's current age to be of somewhat lesser value, before you look back at the past and see the Gold.

If WotC or whatever company promotes at "rules heavy edition" of D&D, what does that tell us about the gamer sub-culture?

Nothing we didn't already know. RPGs came from wargames, remember. There is absolutely nothing new to gamer culture having a hefty contingent of folks who want rules-heavy play. It is only starting with 3e, and even moreso with 4e, that RPG game design has developed to the point where it could produce a cohesively designed game to really address the desires that have been there since the dawn of the hobby.

5e is supposed to bring gamers back to official D&D as it supposed to appeal to players of all versions/editions/clones of D&D, as touted by its designers. Thus, it is supposed to unify the gamer sub-culture.

Not in the way that seems to imply. 5e, if anything, will only unify us in the way a supermarket unifies us - we all go to the same store, but one person's cooking Italian, and the other guy's doing Tex-Mex.

It tells us that the sub-culture is fragmented, edition-warring.

You realize that the sub-culture has been edition warring (or game-warring, really) since at least the rise of White Wolf back in the 1990s, right? If the existence of hardcore fans wiling to take personal swipes at each other is an indication of our being in a Dark Age, then we've been in said Dark Age since well before the invention of "d20".

 

[Ulrick]

Only in a very broad sense.

I agree. We are speaking in generalities.

And are only generally applicable in retrospect. You have to be out of the Golden Age, and find one's current age to be of somewhat lesser value, before you look back at the past and see the Gold.

And that is what's happening with the OSR.

Nothing we didn't already know. RPGs came from wargames, remember. There is absolutely nothing new to gamer culture having a hefty contingent of folks who want rules-heavy play. It is only starting with 3e, and even moreso with 4e, that RPG game design has developed to the point where it could produce a cohesively designed game to really address the desires that have been there since the dawn of the hobby.

Yet there is also a contingent that wanted rules light, and that's been there since the beginning. To name once example: the folks who played D&D, but when AD&D came along they just used the D&D combat system.

Not in the way that seems to imply. 5e, if anything, will only unify us in the way a supermarket unifies us - we all go to the same store, but one person's cooking Italian, and the other guy's doing Tex-Mex.

So are you saying that WotC really isn't about unifying the gamer "culture"? They couldn't care less as long as they buy 5e in whatever version(s) they publish it in?

You realize that the sub-culture has been edition warring (or game-warring, really) since at least the rise of White Wolf back in the 1990s, right? If the existence of hardcore fans wiling to take personal swipes at each other is an indication of our being in a Dark Age, then we've been in said Dark Age since well before the invention of "d20".

I'm using "d20" to connote the use of the d20 in D&D, not necessarily the "d20 System."

As for White Wolf, I did talk about my experiences with Vampire and LARPing on my blog last week.

So what you said fits into the d20 Dark Ages timeline (1989 to the present).

The timeline itself is my own argument. I chose 1989 because that's when 2e was published. Others, like Grognardia, have different timelines, and he sidesteps what happened afterward. http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/01/ages-of-d.html

I do, however, after looking over this thread, need to work on my definitions. I need to define (if broadly) what I mean by "d20", "gamer sub-culture," etc.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I also have Paranoia, but as has been mentioned, pretty much all you need for it is the core book and maybe a few adventures. The idea of sourcebooks for Paranoia I frankly find baffling, because I run it as 90%+ of everyone seems to run it - as a one-off romp here and there, and as a break from more serious RPGs. (I mean, the "campaign mode" Straight setting is interesting, but the rules support a more jokey Classic style a lot better.) So it's not at all surprising to me that it's not very successful as a product line.

I've got four of their Paranoia books on my shelves - the XP rulebook (of course), the R&D supplement because it's fun, and Flashbacks 1 and 2 for the adventures. This is serious overkill - but is a problem with quite a lot of gaming systems if you want to run an RPG company. How do you get more than a couple of books out of a system? (There are a few answers floating around to this question).

Yet there is also a contingent that wanted rules light, and that's been there since the beginning.

The big problem with rules light is publishing to them. I mean I have some awesome systems on my shelves - but I'm never going to buy a second book for Dread or Dogs in the Vineyard. Not profitable.

So are you saying that WotC really isn't about unifying the gamer "culture"? They couldn't care less as long as they buy 5e in whatever version(s) they publish it in?

Pretty much. Or if he isn't I am.

 

[Umbran]

And that is what's happening with the OSR.

Except, of course, that the OSR movement a small niche within gamers. I don't see anything like a wide agreement that the old stuff is really "Golden". And, of course, in most other areas (comic books, for example) we refer to a Golden Age, but we don't actually use that term in the sense of something we want to go back to, or that we really even try to emulate in the current time. We recognize it with respect, and understand its historical relevance, and then move on anyway.

So are you saying that WotC really isn't about unifying the gamer "culture"? They couldn't care less as long as they buy 5e in whatever version(s) they publish it in?

Wow, there's so much spin on that it simply whirrrrrs! And the emotional baggage you've laden that with! Even Hercules would have to work to budge it. But, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that "uniting gamer culture" is not a realistic task, in the way you seem to mean it, and that we likely never really were all that united, ever. Not even when OD&D was the only game on the block. We didn't all want the same things from our games. We didn't all play the one game the same way.

D&D was first published in 1974. Take a look at Wikipedia's Timeline of RPGs for a second, and look at how many different games there were by 1984 - still half a decade from the start of your supposed Dark Age. There's something like 61 games in there! And you suggest we were "united" at that point? Diversification began almost immediately!