Is this the Golden Age of Roleplaying?

[coyote6]

I was at work and caught the Jeopardy rerun. Part of it, anyways. But I must have missed the Golden Age. Dang it! First the Greek Golden Age, then the Golden Age of comics, then the Golden Age of cinema (or is that the other way around?) -- I always miss the Golden Ages!

I did, however, see the Golden Years.

Besides, with the next scheduled End of the World due in a bit more than 3 years, shouldn't we be in the End of Days? I'm not sure where that fits in the gold-silver-bronze-iron-aluminum-vanadium age scheme.

 

[kitsune9]

I was at work and caught the Jeopardy rerun. Part of it, anyways. But I must have missed the Golden Age. Dang it! First the Greek Golden Age, then the Golden Age of comics, then the Golden Age of cinema (or is that the other way around?) -- I always miss the Golden Ages!

I did, however, see the Golden Years.

Besides, with the next scheduled End of the World due in a bit more than 3 years, shouldn't we be in the End of Days? I'm not sure where that fits in the gold-silver-bronze-iron-aluminum-vanadium age scheme.

Well, 12/12/12 is on a Wednesday for me, so I'll probably will be at work when our Golden Age ends along with the rest of Humanity, Life, the Universe, and Everything. Wish it was on a Saturday, that's gaming day.

 

[Storm Raven]

Product quality of all games and books published across the board. That's what I judge it on.

Well, then by that standard, pretty much any year since about 2001 would qualify and the 1980s are right out.

 

[Crothian]

Well, then by that standard, pretty much any year since about 2001 would qualify and the 1980s are right out.

Not every year. For the past 8 years I've been involved with the ENnies and seen hundreds of books published each year. Sure, there are some high quality books being made but there has been a drop off I've seen of over all quality.

 

[Dausuul]

Well, getting back on topic, it seems a lot of people here point to the 80's as a Golden Age. Is it because that's when a lot of you got into rpgs or D&D in general?

I admit that may be the case, since that is when I got into RPGs... but still, I think it's telling that so many of the major commercial RPGs today date back to that era (GURPS, World of Darkness, etc.).

As far as I know (and I admit to not being as well-informed as some), the only big commercial RPGs to have come into existence since the late '90s have been either OGL-based or else new editions of older titles. While there's been some good OGL stuff, it's all fundamentally 3E D&D; ability scores, classes, levels, feats, skills, et cetera, et cetera. The '80s saw a huge amount of mechanical experimentation and innovation which is mostly absent from the commercial scene today.

Of course, if you remove the "commercial" qualifier, things change. Indie RPGs are doing lots of innovative stuff. But the indie RPG community is a small fraction of the tabletop gaming community, which is itself pretty darn small.

 

[billd91]

Well, getting back on topic, it seems a lot of people here point to the 80's as a Golden Age. Is it because that's when a lot of you got into rpgs or D&D in general?

I compare it to the golden age of comics. There's this period when things were new, not very polished, genre conventions were just being established, and there was a sense that anything was possible, the sky was the limit. A number of well-loved characters made their first appearances, sometimes in primative form.

That's what the 1980s are for role-playing games, as I see it.

Comics go through a silver age in the 1960s-70s. After quite a few consolidations and suffering through a dark age of government committee investigations, major publishers flood the market in a new outpouring of creativity - often going beyond the limits and conceptions of the golden age - relaunching characters and titles that will have a vibrant life for the next 20-40 years. The comics are or rapidly become more polished, the publishers more business-like.

I think the early 2000s is the start of the silver age of role playing games.

Obviously, the comparisons aren't perfect. In the golden age of comics, there were very few superstars among the artists and writers. Bullpen systems abused the incredible talents who would remain largely unrecognized for their efforts. That contrasts with the super-star status of early era RPG designers. But no comparison is going to be perfect.

 

[coyote6]

I admit that may be the case, since that is when I got into RPGs... but still, I think it's telling that so many of the major commercial RPGs today date back to that era (GURPS, World of Darkness, etc.).

Nitpick: The World of Darkness doesn't date back to the '80s, at least not as a published game; Vampire the Masquerade came out in '91, AFAIK. I don't think 1981 and 1991 quite qualify as the same "era", unless the eras are "today" and "everything before today".

As far as I know (and I admit to not being as well-informed as some), the only big commercial RPGs to have come into existence since the late '90s have been either OGL-based or else new editions of older titles. While there's been some good OGL stuff, it's all fundamentally 3E D&D; ability scores, classes, levels, feats, skills, et cetera, et cetera. The '80s saw a huge amount of mechanical experimentation and innovation which is mostly absent from the commercial scene today.

Savage Worlds seems to do okay, and isn't OGL-based; it's a 21st century game.

(OTOH, it may be an evolution of the system in Deadlands (I've never played original flavor Deadlands, so I'm not sure), but Deadlands itself was a product of the '90s, not the '80s.)

FATE is a product of the 21st century, even though it's sort-of based on FUDGE (which was itself of the '90s, AFAIK); the fact that they put it out under the OGL is pretty irrelevant, as it has nothing in common with D&D 3e (the standard version doesn't even use any of the same dice!).

Also, Legend of the Five Rings is definitely not the '80s, though I don't know how big it is nowadays. There were a number of games released in the '90s that seemed to have been popular for a while, but died off -- Deadlands, L5R, their various relatives, Faded Suns, Heavy Gear, etc. Then again, there are more games from the '80s that didn't really make it out of that decade than there are ones still being published today.

M&M seems to do well, and while it is OGL, it doesn't have classes or levels (not the kind of levels D&D has, anyways).

I get the impression that there are fewer people making a living solely at making tabletop RPGs nowadays than there were in the past, but not being such a person, I can't say for sure. Under that standard, this definitely wouldn't be a golden age -- just not enough gold around.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

I compare it to the golden age of comics. There's this period when things were new, not very polished, genre conventions were just being established, and there was a sense that anything was possible, the sky was the limit. A number of well-loved characters made their first appearances, sometimes in primative form.

That's what the 1980s are for role-playing games, as I see it.

Comics go through a silver age in the 1960s-70s. After quite a few consolidations and suffering through a dark age of government committee investigations, major publishers flood the market in a new outpouring of creativity - often going beyond the limits and conceptions of the golden age - relaunching characters and titles that will have a vibrant life for the next 20-40 years. The comics are or rapidly become more polished, the publishers more business-like.

I think the early 2000s is the start of the silver age of role playing games.

Obviously, the comparisons aren't perfect. In the golden age of comics, there were very few superstars among the artists and writers. Bullpen systems abused the incredible talents who would remain largely unrecognized for their efforts. That contrasts with the super-star status of early era RPG designers. But no comparison is going to be perfect.

I think this is a pretty good analogy, actually.

 

[Dausuul]

Nitpick: The World of Darkness doesn't date back to the '80s, at least not as a published game; Vampire the Masquerade came out in '91, AFAIK. I don't think 1981 and 1991 quite qualify as the same "era", unless the eras are "today" and "everything before today".

As I mentioned earlier, I include the '80s and the early '90s in my "Golden Age." The current age - "Silver Age" is a fair designation, I guess - I regard as having begun in roughly 2000.

If you want specific dates, I'll say 1980 to 1995 for the Golden Age, then a five-year interregnum marked by the collapse of TSR and a general overall decline, and 2000 to present for the Silver Age.

In many respects, actually, the early '90s were the height of the Golden Age. TSR spent the '80s building up a (relatively) huge customer base, and then spent the '90s in a death spiral, thus creating a space in which other RPGs could flourish, even if only temporarily. At the same time, TSR in its desperation was generating all kinds of new properties. Most of these were crap, but there were several diamonds in the rough.

FATE is a product of the 21st century, even though it's sort-of based on FUDGE (which was itself of the '90s, AFAIK); the fact that they put it out under the OGL is pretty irrelevant, as it has nothing in common with D&D 3e (the standard version doesn't even use any of the same dice!).

Is FATE commercially successful then? I thought it was more in the indie line, but I may be wrong.

 

[coyote6]

As I mentioned earlier, I include the '80s and the early '90s in my "Golden Age." The current age - "Silver Age" is a fair designation, I guess - I regard as having begun in roughly 2000. The late '90s are a sort of interregnum.

In many respects, actually, the early '90s were the height of the Golden Age. TSR spent the '80s building up a (relatively) huge customer base, and then spent the '90s in a death spiral, thus creating a space in which other RPGs could flourish... for a while.

For me, it seems like the games of the early '90s have less in common with most of the games of, say, 1983, than they do with the games of the rest of the '90s. The '90s, in my memory, had dice pools galore, hardbacks, not a lot of class-and-level D&D clones (AD&D, Palladium games, and I don't know what else -- compared to GURPS, GDW's house system, Shadowrun, Earthdawn, the various WoD games, Hero, etc.), splatbooks (Clanbook X, SR's Grimoire/Matrix/Street Samurai Catalog) & supplements (hello, GURPS 3e's many many historicals & genre books), metaplots (stacked on metaplots, sometimes) -- none of which were very big deals in the early-to-mid '80s.

So, for me, I think I'd lump the late '80s in with the early-to-mid '90s; call it post AD&D 2e, maybe. Is that the Silver Age or the Golden Age? Chronologically, it would have to be the Silver Age, I suppose, but I think I'd call it the Golden Age, myself.

The "Interregnum" would be from the demise of TSR -- which perhaps coincides with the rise of CCGs, the beginning of the end of the backlist in RPGs, and the boom of consoles like Sony Playstation, multiplayer FPSs, and other computer games -- to maybe 2000 and the OGL boom. Maybe? I don't know.

If so, that would make now the Bronze Age, I guess.

Meaning we still have the Iron Age to look forward to -- pouches and big guns and blades, woo!

Is FATE commercially successful then? I thought it was more in the indie line, but I may be wrong.

Heck, I don't know -- FATE, not so much, since I don't know that you can buy a FATE rulebook, per se. But you can download FATE; you can buy SotC; you can buy Starblazer Adventures.

We could ask Fred Hicks how it's gone (or check his blog -- I think he posts sales totals there.) You'd probably have to define by what standards you measure success, anyways -- it isn't a WotC or WW primary game line of success, I'm sure. But Evil Hat seems to have done okay by it -- they've put out more games since SotC, so it didn't bankrupt 'em at least.