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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TerraDave" data-source="post: 6288292" data-attributes="member: 22260">Feel free to check out the links in my sig...Lets see a "few" general trends:*Agree, production values have tended to get better, with big leaps early on then roughly every decade. Current trend to full color started around 2000 and became standard around 2005;*D&D has always dominated, with dominance fading as an edition gets old in the tooth, then returning with some new polish and modernising;*Lots, and lots, (and lots) of other games have come and gone; some, like Call of Cthulhu or Traveler, have established lasting niches, some, like Vampire and, briefly, Gurps, challenged for the crown, and many have largely been forgotten;*In the early days, there was a tendency for games to get more codified and complicated, this probably peaked in the 1990s (..MegaTraveller, full on Gurps, Aftermath, Role Master and Champions in that era) and the trend since then has been towards streamlining overall;*But, there has always been a back and forth; Basic D&D, Vampire, and CoC where popular with simpler systems, where as Pathfinder cannot really be described as "rules light";*Overall, complexity for complexity sake has tended to come, and go; the tendency towards more standard, "universal" mechanics started in the 80s and then spread to just about all games; But there is still a (counter) tendency to build out rules;*Speaking of Pathfinder, D&D has always faced competition from other FRPGs, but we do live in a unique era. Instead of one D&D dominating, we have a few, with not many other games really challenging them;*In terms of "passe", because of its dominance, this has often been D&D...yet it hangs on, whereas as games that do not use levels, do not use classes, do not use HP, do not use fire and forget spells, do not use ability scores, do not have dungeons, are more story based, etc etc come and usually go, though again, some, like Savage Worlds or FATE, can hold on to a substantial niche through time;*Some would argue that there has been a trend to empower players over GMs, and to emphasize player choice and optimization; I think this trend has actually been around for a while, like decades;*Though the push towards more coherent and universal rules may have empower players by reducing DM discretion (maybe);*And I do see the idea of really "building" a character moving from board games like Car Wars and niche RPGs like Champions to becoming mainstreamed in D&D, but again, this took place a while ago;*The dance between complicating and streamlining takes place on both sides of the screen, and one real trend is the belated realization that over complicating the GMs life is a bad thing;*"Indie" games, a sort of recent trend, are shorter, super niche games like Sorcerer and Dogs in the Vineyard, and these are very light, but other games like Burning Wheel, which are grouped with these, really aren't.*For years, there where many game companies, beyond the one(s) that makes D&D, and these where all pretty close to "indie" operations, though they where able to get a good number of nice looking books in stores and sell there stuff under D&D's shadow;*This seemed to collapse in mid 2000s....*The OGL, which helped de-passe D&D for years and seemingly crush all its competition, may have fed this through the infamous "glut" (though this is a contentious issue) and by undermining non-d20 games;*The disappearance of local game stores (due to the internet) and WoW (also related to the internet) may have been a factor;*But in the last few years...*The OGL, PDF publishing, and more recently Kickstarter have seemingly revived the wider game scene;*As has revived hobby gaming more broadly, which also led to a return of some local game stores that also stock RPGs along with dozens and dozens of Eurogames;*And maybe online play of tabletop RPGs and use of online tools to find face to face games;*This points to a wider trend...*Due to enraged mothers, computer games, gross mismanagement, trading card games, MMORGs, kids these days, adults these days...RPGs are always on the verge of some big collapse;*Yet gaming continues to happen......................................................That should be enough for now. <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=";)" /></blockquote>

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