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<blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1781161" data-attributes="member: 10201"><p>I think part of your situation is something that i've been decrying about the RPG industry far years now: it's all the same. That is, i look at your list, and i see a whole lot of very similar stuff: with the exception of Star Wars [d6]--and maybe even that--it's all of about the same crunch level; the style of that crunch is all pretty close to the same (i.e. gamist/simulationist in roughly equal measure, again excepting Star Wars); the settings are all fairly straight-forward humans-plus-near-humans-in-a-familiar-world-with-different-trappings; they're all about larger-than-life heroes in those settings; and so on. In movie terms, you've got action movies covered--sure, some are scifi action movies (Predator), some are fantasy action movies (Conan the Barbarian), some are comedy/action movies (True Lies), some are action thrillers (Eraser), some are superhero action movies (Batman & Robin), and some are even deconstructionist action movies (Last Action Hero), but they're still all action movies. There isn't a single Dangerous Liasons, Kissed, or Monty Python and the Holy Grail among them. </p><p> </p><p> So, yeah, why *would* you want more of the same, especially since, unlike movies, you're not just stuck with what you've got--you get to mix-n-match the bits to create endless variations on a theme, and even if you don't, no two sessions are gonna be the same. And this isn't an attack on you: as commercially-visible RPGs go, you've got a fairly broad selection. But 95%+ of commercially-visible RPGs fall into maybe 5%, tops, of the potential spectrum of the RPG medium.</p><p> </p><p> The things you list that you don't need, don't surprise me, because they're more or less "more of the same". And, unless you're a collector, once you have more of one thing than you need, you have enough. And a lot of the stuff you don't have, you can create quite easily: you don't need another book full of alternate planes, because you have the toolkit bits in MotP [however anemic i may think that toolkit is], and your imagination. But RPGs are a big category, and there're things out there that are *very* different from what you have, and could give you things that you *don't* already have, and couldn't easily improvise (the important word here is "easily"). Frex, Control makes control of the GM's seat a competitive exercise. Or Trollbabe, where scenario building and challenge levels are in the hands of the players instead of the GM. Or Everway, which is subjective and holistic instead of numerical and reductive. Or Dread, which aims to simulate a mood rather than a setting or genre. Or Donjon, which puts narrative control, rather than success, at the center of the mechanics. Or EPICS, where you start playing the character before you create the character. Yes, some of these things can be done with one or more of the RPGs or RPG supplements you list, with varying degrees of effort and fiat. But none of them are *intended* to handle that, and certainly none of them encourage it. </p><p> </p><p> So, yeah, if my collection looked like yours, and all i saw at my FLGS were more books of the same stuff, just different widgets, i'd probably be done buying for a while. Even if my tastes ran to preferring that style of RPG, which they don't. In fact, i more or less reached that point more than a decade ago, in a lot of ways--i had more than enough of what i already had, and needed to get something different. Which is part of why my RPG collection doesn't look much like that at all. I don't have a single WotC book newer than Faeries, though i have probably 6 shelf-feet of AD&D1/2, and a fair number of fantasy D20 System books. In fact, right now i'm actually at almost the exact opposite point: i've had my fill of narrativist systems for a little while, and have just started a D&D game [Arcana Unearthed, Book of Drawbacks & Distinctions, Grimoire II, Mystic Secrets, and Artificer's Handbook for the crunch, Land of Fate (Al Qadim) for the setting]. In the end, i'll probably gravitate back towards the lite narrative systems, because i get frustrated with all the crunch rather quickly. But for right now, it's a welcome change of pace. </p><p> </p><p> Of course, all this is not to say that there's anything wrong with just not buying RPG stuff anymore--it *should* be about the playing, not the buying. But if nothing is catching your eye any more, it just might be because you're jaded, and it'll take something different to intrigue you again--and you're not likely to find something different among the commercially-visible RPGs.</p><p> </p><p> Oh, except you can never have enough dice. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="woodelf, post: 1781161, member: 10201"] I think part of your situation is something that i've been decrying about the RPG industry far years now: it's all the same. That is, i look at your list, and i see a whole lot of very similar stuff: with the exception of Star Wars [d6]--and maybe even that--it's all of about the same crunch level; the style of that crunch is all pretty close to the same (i.e. gamist/simulationist in roughly equal measure, again excepting Star Wars); the settings are all fairly straight-forward humans-plus-near-humans-in-a-familiar-world-with-different-trappings; they're all about larger-than-life heroes in those settings; and so on. In movie terms, you've got action movies covered--sure, some are scifi action movies (Predator), some are fantasy action movies (Conan the Barbarian), some are comedy/action movies (True Lies), some are action thrillers (Eraser), some are superhero action movies (Batman & Robin), and some are even deconstructionist action movies (Last Action Hero), but they're still all action movies. There isn't a single Dangerous Liasons, Kissed, or Monty Python and the Holy Grail among them. So, yeah, why *would* you want more of the same, especially since, unlike movies, you're not just stuck with what you've got--you get to mix-n-match the bits to create endless variations on a theme, and even if you don't, no two sessions are gonna be the same. And this isn't an attack on you: as commercially-visible RPGs go, you've got a fairly broad selection. But 95%+ of commercially-visible RPGs fall into maybe 5%, tops, of the potential spectrum of the RPG medium. The things you list that you don't need, don't surprise me, because they're more or less "more of the same". And, unless you're a collector, once you have more of one thing than you need, you have enough. And a lot of the stuff you don't have, you can create quite easily: you don't need another book full of alternate planes, because you have the toolkit bits in MotP [however anemic i may think that toolkit is], and your imagination. But RPGs are a big category, and there're things out there that are *very* different from what you have, and could give you things that you *don't* already have, and couldn't easily improvise (the important word here is "easily"). Frex, Control makes control of the GM's seat a competitive exercise. Or Trollbabe, where scenario building and challenge levels are in the hands of the players instead of the GM. Or Everway, which is subjective and holistic instead of numerical and reductive. Or Dread, which aims to simulate a mood rather than a setting or genre. Or Donjon, which puts narrative control, rather than success, at the center of the mechanics. Or EPICS, where you start playing the character before you create the character. Yes, some of these things can be done with one or more of the RPGs or RPG supplements you list, with varying degrees of effort and fiat. But none of them are *intended* to handle that, and certainly none of them encourage it. So, yeah, if my collection looked like yours, and all i saw at my FLGS were more books of the same stuff, just different widgets, i'd probably be done buying for a while. Even if my tastes ran to preferring that style of RPG, which they don't. In fact, i more or less reached that point more than a decade ago, in a lot of ways--i had more than enough of what i already had, and needed to get something different. Which is part of why my RPG collection doesn't look much like that at all. I don't have a single WotC book newer than Faeries, though i have probably 6 shelf-feet of AD&D1/2, and a fair number of fantasy D20 System books. In fact, right now i'm actually at almost the exact opposite point: i've had my fill of narrativist systems for a little while, and have just started a D&D game [Arcana Unearthed, Book of Drawbacks & Distinctions, Grimoire II, Mystic Secrets, and Artificer's Handbook for the crunch, Land of Fate (Al Qadim) for the setting]. In the end, i'll probably gravitate back towards the lite narrative systems, because i get frustrated with all the crunch rather quickly. But for right now, it's a welcome change of pace. Of course, all this is not to say that there's anything wrong with just not buying RPG stuff anymore--it *should* be about the playing, not the buying. But if nothing is catching your eye any more, it just might be because you're jaded, and it'll take something different to intrigue you again--and you're not likely to find something different among the commercially-visible RPGs. Oh, except you can never have enough dice. ;) [/QUOTE]
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