Is the RPG hobby dying? [RPG Blog Carnival]

[Desdichado]

That's kind of a bait and switch thread title, since the RPG Carnival guy says right up front that he isn't talking about the RPG hobby dying and doesn't think that it is, and that's not even the topic anyway.

That said, I guess I don't really care about "the hobby." I don't feel any sense of responsibility to "the hobby" and I don't consider myself an ambassador of the hobby or anything like that either.

Gaming is something that I do with my friends, and then I also enjoy talking about it on the internet. That's it. Full stop.

The hobby doesn't owe me anything, and I don't owe it anything. I don't care about growing it, except in the sense that I want to have a personal group of my own that I enjoy gaming with (I already do, but in case I move or something. You never know.)

 

[Filcher]

I think that the internet has lowered the "survivability" bar for niche hobbies, so much so that our old perception of how many participants are necessary to sustain a hobby is skewed. Levels of interest that would previously render a hobby unsustainable are the new robust.

To wit, without a gaming group, I've spent an hour or more thinking about gaming by virtue of being on Enworld. Sometimes that causes me to spend money on the same. Whereas 20 years ago I'd only think about gaming if I was planning the next session or actually playing.

I have no doubt that wargamming (to say nothing of roleplaying) will survive well past my lifetime, simply by virtue of the ease in which geographically separated fans can easily hang out over the net. There might be only 500 people on earth interested in playing "pre-Alexandrian naval games set in the Crimean Sea", but these days they'll be able to find each other and sustain one another's interest. Some garage publisher will be able to sell 500 copies of a PDF to them every 2 months or so. And 500 PDF copies isn't so shabby (or so I am told).

 

[Hussar]

Higher production values, sure. But homogenization of gameplay and style seems to come with it.

Oh sure. I can see that. Mainstream being what it is. But, even with mainstream, you still get fringe. While everyone else might listen to Brittany Spears, you can still listen to Abney Park.

Personally, I think the biggest shot in the arm to the gaming population has to come from attracting female gamers. I have no idea how to do that, but, you could double the gaming population overnight if you could equalize the sexes.

 

[Umbran]

Oh sure. I can see that. Mainstream being what it is. But, even with mainstream, you still get fringe. While everyone else might listen to Brittany Spears, you can still listen to Abney Park.

But I'm already getting games I like. Growth for the sake of growth is not a virtue. Bigger is not necessarily better.

One of my favorite gaming conventions has historically been small. For several years it has been driven by "bigger is better", and the con has grown dramatically. We will have more games, more people...

But it also means we've outgrown our old hotel, and moved to a new venue. We have lost a fantastic lounge and con suite area, and the possibility of economically providing meals to the con-goers.

So, we are now bigger, but providing fewer amenities and cool space for out-of-game social interaction.

Morals of the story: Growth has consequences. Be careful what you wish for.

 

[Raven Crowking]

A lot of gamers don't want Joe Sixpack playing. Keep the hoi polloi out of my elite gaming club! It's only for people who can speak elvish.

Check out the thread about Lovecraft. That's elitism right there. You have to have read Lovecraft/Vance/Tolkien/Howard to properly appreciate D&D. Get out of here with your anime and your videogames.

Perhaps there's a fear that the game would be 'dumbed down' if it became more popular. Maybe you wouldn't have to read 1000 pages of rules and create your own secondary world in order to run it. That would be terrible.

That's a serious (and unfair) misreading IMHO.

JRRT uses a lot of Shakespeare in LotR; if you recognize the references you will get more out of LotR than if you do not.

Western literature uses a lot of allusions to Shakespeare and the Bible; if you understand these allusions, you will get more out of the works that use them.

D&D uses a lot of allusions to early Weird Fiction and S&S; if you understand these allusions, you will get more out of D&D.

If one makes the argument that a version of D&D makes use of anime tropes, it follows that a person understanding anime tropes will get more out of that version of D&D.

I would call this extremely obvious, and it has nothing to do with elitism.



RC

 

[Wicht]

Wait?

Back up a minute. What is this about Wargames and RPGs following the same route? Did something happen to wargames in the few weeks since I was at Origins? This is horrible. My twelve year old son spent good money on a wraith army for Song of Blades and Heroes at Origins and we were going to paint them here soon. I'm not quite sure how to break this news to him.

 

[Wicht]

My kids have been preparing themselves for a gnome adventure. My oldest daughter (age 11) has been prepping to run it, using Paizo's Into the Haunted Forest and the other three (14, 12, 10) have been excitedly making gnome characters using the Gnomes of Golarion as their inspiration. They were going to start last night but I twisted their arms and made them play our Legacy of Fire campaign instead (with a supper break that involved watching MST3K: Warrior of the Lost World) while their mother was away for a 'Mom's Night Out' with our homeschooling group.

So this morning when I got out of bed about 7:30 a.m., I notice they are all awake, in the living room, white board on the floor, dice scattered around character sheets, and they are playing through the first encounter. Warmed my heart to see them having fun.

Of course, when their mother saw them, she grounded them from playing for the rest of the morning because they hadn't done their chores first.

Anyway, just thought I would share that. It seemed apropos somehow.

 

[Umbran]

Wait?

Back up a minute. What is this about Wargames and RPGs following the same route? Did something happen to wargames in the few weeks since I was at Origins?

No. It happened since the 1970s and 1980s. There was a time when wargames were far more popular than they are today.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

No. It happened since the 1970s and 1980s. There was a time when wargames were far more popular than they are today.

Do you have numbers for this? and are you just talking about the board (hex) wargame or wargames in general (i.e. including minis)?
I have seen some analysis (possibly at BoardgameGeek or possibly Grognard.com that the board wargame market has recovered a good bit since they started concentrating on designs that can be played in 10 hours or less (mostly in the 3 to 5 hour bracket). I'm not a regular on those sites, the stuff was send on to me.
Also from what I can tell from friends in the minis scene that seems to have trundled on through the eighties largely unaffected by the collapse of SPI, Avalon Hill, GDW et. al.
If you include the Sci-Fi and fantasy minis that group may even have expanded since Games Workshop seems to have been pretty successful and have even expanded in to historical rulessets also.

 

[Umbran]

Do you have numbers for this?

Me? No. I'm going off what I've been told by my wargamer and shop-owner friends. Talking about wargames broadly - both chit-based and mini-based together.

If you prefer, change it to being about where wargames went, for a while - a land where there weren't too many options, and finding folks to play was difficult for many years.