Plus clearly the Enterprise-A is the best one.
Game design has "moved on"
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
Plus clearly the Enterprise-A is the best one.
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
Sure. I am not saying it i all just fashion. But much of what people mistake for advances in game design, really is just trend and fashion. If it were like cell phones, which are an undeniable advance that i htink we all agree wont be reversed any time soon, you wouldn't have so many people playing AD&D 1E again. These are not just a few die hard fans refusing to buy cell phones. They are not just the flks who didn't transition from 1E to 2E and 2E to 3E. Many of them are poeple who "moved on" to 3E but went back as retroclones and old school gaming gained traction. There were enough of them, that wotc of the coast not only re-issued the first edition core books, they released some of the old modules in hard cover as well. And some people have taken these older systems, cleaned them up a bit and released them as new games that actually doing well. Lamentations of the Flame Princess is pretty popular for example.
Ooh, careful there.... I don't think the numbers support you there.
You agree with me on smartphones. But, check it out - in the US, 56% of adults have smartphones.
But, according to Morrus' "Hot Games" page, which takes a pretty broad sampling, less than 5% of D&D discussion is about the OSR and those old games.
Sure, WotC reissued the old core books. But I think that was to fuel nostalgia, and to show the range of thought in the company. I don't think there's call to say there are enough OSR folks themselves to have made them a real business driver.
If we look at cell phones, and say, at 56% penetration, that really, the new tech is in, and the old tech is out, when we look at OSR, which is quite clearly way, way down the list of games people are playing, should we not say the same thing?
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Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
I would be very, very surprised if that 5% number is correct. I don't know what measures morrus used, but i just see too much OSR online and in regular gaming to believe it would be as low as five percent. I dont have data to support this though. But that number seems far too low to be accurate.
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You do have data; it just doesn't say what you think it should, so you casually dismissed it as worthless. Confirmation bias is a powerful, powerful thing!
Yes, there IS lots of OSR online. But there's also CRAPLOADS of other stuff online, too, in vast, vast, endless quantities. The amount of modern D&D stuff is staggering; as is the amount of Pathfinder stuff, FATE stuff and all sorts of other games. Just because it's not where you're looking doesn't mean it's not there in quantities which you might find amazing.
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Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
You do have data; it just doesn't say what you think it should, so you casually dismissed it as incorrect. Confirmation bias is a powerful, powerful thing!
Yes, I am being a bit dismissive of the data offered. But only because it does not match my overal experience. I just see too much OSR discussion to conclude it is such an insubtantial part of the market. I am not saying your data is wrong. I am sure you measured online discussions and five percent is what you got. I just suspect that may not reflect the reality of what is going on. If you had multiple studies showing this again and again, i would be a lot less dismissive. But one online analysis alone isn't enough to convince me what I am seeing on the ground isn't reflected more broadly in the community,
There's a saying which contains the words "anecdote" and "data"... how does that go again?
It measures it constantly in real-time, every day. It's not a one-time analysis, it's a continual tracking of over 1000 sites and nearly a third of a million forum members. You can use it to see historical data. It takes a broader view - by an order of magnitude - than any human could.
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Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
By the way, i am in no way saying, that OSR is as popular as pathfinder or even int he same ballpark. I just am a little suspicious of that five percent numeber based not only on the volume of osr discussions I have seen on forums and blogs, but also what I see locally. I don't know the details of how the analysis was done, but i would think it would be harder to measure than say pathfinder, because most discussions of old school material use a variety of terms and labels.
OK, fair enough. What's the correct percentage of overall online RPG dicussion which is OSR?
You have a good point there, and a terrible one.
"What I see locally" is a terrible point (I don't see Americans locally, but I'm pretty sure they exist) or Ford Mustangs (but I'm pretty sure they exist, too). Even "what I see on the blogs I read" is a terrible point, for obvious reasons.
The difficulty accommodating different terms and labels is absolutely a relevant point. I continually add new ones to the OSR category, but you're right - I can never be 100% accurate.
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
There's a saying which contains the words "anecdote" and "data"... how does that go again?
Yes, but again this is just one analysis by one person. I am not doubting your abilities to do online research. I am just saying that particular point of data is so out of sync from what I see that i would really need to see more to conclude it reflects that OSR is that small a part of the market. For example, you may well have found only five percent, but when reprints come out of rpgnow they tend to do pretty wel upon release. Our own OSR game did considerably better than our others, and i even see emergin OSR discussions in unexpected places like story-games.com.
Fair enough. But what key terms does it use to seperate osr D&D from regular d&d. Does it include all rpg forums and all rpg blogs? Again, i am sure you did a good job with it. But it is just one source of information for me.
