Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Looking Forward At The Year To Come In Tabletop RPGs
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Christopher Helton" data-source="post: 7705699" data-attributes="member: 6804772"><p style="text-align: center">[ATTACH]79444[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>I'm not one for looking back, so retrospectives of the year that was, or looks back at the best of the year, aren't for me. A lot of good and interesting games came out, and more than a few sad or bad things happened as well. It was a year that we will likely remember for a long time, in and out of our tabletop gaming worlds. Instead, let's take a little time and baselessly speculate about the year to come.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]</p><p></p><p>What trends might we expect in gaming over the next year or so?</p><p></p><p><strong>The Rebirth Of Science Fantasy</strong></p><p>We all know that <strong><a href="https://paizo.com/starfinder/" target="_blank">Starfinder</a></strong> is coming from <strong>Paizo Publishing</strong>. I think that, along with the upcoming <strong><a href="http://goodman-games.com/store/product/mutant-crawl-classics-role-playing-game/" target="_blank">Mutant Crawl Classics</a></strong> game from <strong>Goodman Games</strong>, we will see a wave of popularity of the science fantasy genre in role-playing games. Combine what will likely be two popular games with the fact that we are now going to see a new <strong>Star Wars</strong> movie every year (along with the new material coming for <strong>Fantasy Flight Games'</strong> lines of <strong>Star Wars</strong> role-playing games), and that means that a lot of people will be thinking about wanting to play science fantasy games.</p><p></p><p>I lead with this because I think that it might end up being the biggest trend in RPGs for the coming year. We know, from past cycles, that game designers and publishers tend to think alike. They read a lot of the same books and watch a lot of the same movies, which means that they tend to get a lot of the same ideas around the same time as each other. We've seen a couple of versions of the Metamorphosis Alpha game come out over the last couple of years, which could have been the start of this trend. A new edition of <strong>Paranoia</strong> has been simmering in the cauldrons for a bit, after a Kickstarter project successfully funded, but it has been plagued with delays.</p><p></p><p>I think that 2017 is going to be the year that we see a lot of designers and publishers putting the chocolate of science fiction tropes into the peanut butter of fantasy. Whether it is star-faring science fantasy, or post-apocalyptic science fantasy, we are going to see a lot of different flavors of these two tasty genres over the next year.</p><p></p><p>I am looking forward to this trend. <strong>Goodman Games'</strong> <strong>Mutant Crawl Classics</strong> was one of the few Kickstarters that I backed this year. I enjoyed <strong>Gamma World</strong> as a kid, and when I got older works like the <strong>Max Max</strong> movies and Jack Kirby's psychedelic <strong>Kamandi</strong> comic were things that I eagerly consumed. I think that it is a psychological thing that post-apocalyptic media becomes popular when the world turns grim. We like to think that we can right the world when heroes stand up to the darkness, and that is one of the cornerstones of RPGs.</p><p></p><p>I think that I am looking forward to <strong>Starfinder</strong> more than I was looking forward to <strong>Pathfinder</strong>. I was at the <strong>Gen Con</strong> when <strong>Pathfinder</strong> debuted. It was a madhouse. People were buying books as quickly as the <strong>Paizo Publishing</strong> people could stock their booth. Will <strong>Starfinder</strong> be as dramatic at its <strong>Gen Con</strong> as <strong>Pathfinder</strong> was? I don't know, but I think that it has the capacity to do so. Even if it isn't the top seller, it will be in the top two.</p><p></p><p>But either way, we're going to see a rise in popularity for the genre among RPG publishers, and gamers. I hope that this will mean that we see a lot of new, weird gaming material over the next few years that isn't afraid to mashup two, or more, genres.</p><p></p><p><strong>The Upswing Of Horror</strong></p><p>It is a pretty well-documented fact that <a href="http://www.aol.com/article/2009/10/30/zombies-versus-vampires-battle-of-the-recession-monsters/19147298/" target="_blank">horror movies (and other forms of horror media) have an upswing during times of economic recession</a>. Think back to the horror booms of the 70s and of the 90s. In fact it was the horror boom of the 90s that brought role-playing games the game changing <strong>Vampire: The Masquerade</strong>, as well as the Gnostic horror of <strong>Kult</strong>. <strong>Steve Jackson Games</strong> brought us the English language version of the French role-playing game <strong><a href="http://www.sjgames.com/innomine/" target="_blank">In Nomine</a></strong>. <strong>Steve Jackson Games</strong> also brought out <strong>GURPS: Voodoo The Shadow War</strong>, by C.J. Carella (who has brought us a number of horror games and settings over the years), one of my favorite <strong>GURPS</strong> books of the Third Edition era.</p><p></p><p>This was just the tip of the iceberg for horror gaming, as well. Old favorites like <strong>Chaosium's</strong> seminal horror game <strong>Call of Cthulhu</strong> saw new life breathed into it by third party publishers <strong>Pagan Publishing</strong> with <strong>Delta Green</strong>. The <strong>Delta Green</strong> setting tapped into a millennial zeitgeist not unlike that of the television show <strong>X-Files</strong>. It isn't coincidence that while <strong><a href="http://www.delta-green.com/" target="_blank">Delta Green</a></strong> is currently in a new edition, the <strong>X-Files</strong> has also come back on the air.</p><p></p><p>It isn't a surprise that <strong><a href="http://kultdivinitylost.com/" target="_blank">Kult</a></strong> is coming back, with its blend of Clive Barker inspired body horror and a dark look at religion and the secrets of the universe. The new edition is <strong>Powered By The Apocalypse</strong>, instead of using its own system, but it still promises to be as unflinching and extreme as the game has ever been. There's a quickstart that has been released to backers of the successful Kickstarter, and I am looking forward to seeing where the new edition of the game takes us.</p><p></p><p><strong>Vampire: The Masquerade</strong> is on an upswing too. When <a href="http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/10/31/paradox-interactive-acquires-white-wolf-publishing-2/" target="_blank">video game developer <strong>Paradox Interactive</strong> announced in 2015 that they had acquired <strong>White Wolf Games</strong></a>, most of the talk of the acquisition revolved around bringing back the <strong>Vampire</strong> game. When Martin Ericsson was named the Lead Storyteller for <strong>White Wolf</strong>, there was plenty of <strong>Vampire</strong> talk. In fact he has shown some pictures of groups playing early playtests of the new edition on his <strong>Facebook</strong>. Will the new <strong>Vampire: The Masquerade</strong> come out this year? Maybe not, but it will definitely lead gaming news as more information comes out over the course of the new year. Let's hope that a new year brings us a new <strong>Vampire</strong>, but we'll see what happens.</p><p></p><p><strong>Fantasy And The DIY Groundswell</strong></p><p>Between retroclones like <strong>Swords & Wizardry</strong> having a very successful Kickstarter for a new printing, and the fantasy RPG DIY movement seeing the achievements of adventures and settings like Mike Evan's visceral <strong>Hubris</strong> for the <strong>Dungeon Crawl Classics</strong> game or Zak Smith's <strong>Maze of The Blue Medusa</strong>, there has been a groundswell of creativity in the fantasy gaming small press over the last year. Admittedly, this is the culmination of years of work before this year, however I think that not only was this the year that the DIY movement really broke but also when it showed that there could be more to what was once known just as an old school revival than rehashing the games that we all played as children. The old games could be used as the basis for new forms of creativity, and doing more than just what was being done 30 or 40 years ago.</p><p></p><p>I think that this will be a trend that we will see more of in the new year as well, with creators like Jason Sholtis and <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/183439/Misty-Isles-of-the-Eld?" target="_blank">Chris Kutalik</a> lead small press publishing houses like <strong>The Hydra Collective</strong> in bold new directions for fantasy role-playing.</p><p></p><p>What about <strong>D&D</strong>, the father of role-playing games? I think that it will keep on keeping on. <strong>Wizards of the Coast</strong> plays things pretty close to the vest when it comes to what is on the horizon for the game, but I think that we will see some interesting new adventures for <strong>Dungeons & Dragons</strong>, and maybe we'll get to see some published character options, outside of the material that they put out on their website. Much like comic book sales have been on an upswing because of industry starter <strong>DC Comics</strong> seeing sales increases, so does the RPG industry get better when <strong>D&D</strong> does better.</p><p></p><p>Fantasy is always one of the most active segments of tabletop role-playing games, so with games like <strong>D&D</strong> and <strong>Pathfinder</strong> doing well in the market, that means that we will see a rise in fantasy games from other publishers as well. John Wick's <strong>7th Sea</strong>, which had the most successful tabletop RPG Kickstarter ever, will roll out more material funded by the project in the new year. We will likely see the newest take on <strong>Runequest</strong> coming this year from the revitalized <strong>Chaosium</strong> this year, as well, or at least more information about its launch (most possibly through a Kickstarter).</p><p></p><p>A popular saying in business is that "a rising tide lifts all ships." As fantasy is the leader in tabletop RPGs, as we see more fantasy games, and supplements, coming out, that will lead to us seeing even more fantasy games and supplements coming out.</p><p></p><p><strong>The Rise And Fall Of Kickstarter</strong></p><p>Pundits and prognosticators like to show that they know what they are talking about, that they are the foremost experts. Each year we see more people say that each year will be when the bubble bursts for RPG Kickstarters. I admit it, I have said it as well. Everything is cyclic, and sooner or later the wheel has to turn back around to the bottom of the cycle again. Will this year be the year for RPG Kickstarters to burst?</p><p></p><p>I don't think that is going to be the case. I think that we still have the space for a role-playing game to outperform even the records set by <strong>7th Sea</strong>. I think that it will be a perfect storm of timing and property that will make a staggering amount of money for someone on Kickstarter. If I was a gambling man, I would put my money on the RPG property that could do this to be <strong>Vampire: The Masquerade's</strong> new edition. I don't know that the game is going to be launched via a Kickstarter project, after all <strong>Paradox Interactive</strong> has pretty deep pockets by tabletop gaming standards, but if there would be any game that could be capable of making <em>millions</em> on Kickstarter, I would say that it would be <strong>Vampire</strong>. Will it happen? Time will tell.</p><p></p><p>Regardless, I think that it is going to be a busy year in tabletop RPGs, regardless of what happens in the world outside of gaming. I think that the highs are going to be high, and the lows are going to be pretty low. 2017 probably won't always be a pretty year, but it will be another one to remember when we get to this point in another year.<p style="text-align: center"><span style="color: #FFFFFF"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'"><strong>Save</strong></span></span><span style="color: #FFFFFF"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'"><strong>Save</strong></span></span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Christopher Helton, post: 7705699, member: 6804772"] [CENTER][ATTACH=CONFIG]79444[/ATTACH][/CENTER] I'm not one for looking back, so retrospectives of the year that was, or looks back at the best of the year, aren't for me. A lot of good and interesting games came out, and more than a few sad or bad things happened as well. It was a year that we will likely remember for a long time, in and out of our tabletop gaming worlds. Instead, let's take a little time and baselessly speculate about the year to come.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] What trends might we expect in gaming over the next year or so? [B]The Rebirth Of Science Fantasy[/B] We all know that [B][URL="https://paizo.com/starfinder/"]Starfinder[/URL][/B] is coming from [B]Paizo Publishing[/B]. I think that, along with the upcoming [B][URL="http://goodman-games.com/store/product/mutant-crawl-classics-role-playing-game/"]Mutant Crawl Classics[/URL][/B] game from [B]Goodman Games[/B], we will see a wave of popularity of the science fantasy genre in role-playing games. Combine what will likely be two popular games with the fact that we are now going to see a new [B]Star Wars[/B] movie every year (along with the new material coming for [B]Fantasy Flight Games'[/B] lines of [B]Star Wars[/B] role-playing games), and that means that a lot of people will be thinking about wanting to play science fantasy games. I lead with this because I think that it might end up being the biggest trend in RPGs for the coming year. We know, from past cycles, that game designers and publishers tend to think alike. They read a lot of the same books and watch a lot of the same movies, which means that they tend to get a lot of the same ideas around the same time as each other. We've seen a couple of versions of the Metamorphosis Alpha game come out over the last couple of years, which could have been the start of this trend. A new edition of [B]Paranoia[/B] has been simmering in the cauldrons for a bit, after a Kickstarter project successfully funded, but it has been plagued with delays. I think that 2017 is going to be the year that we see a lot of designers and publishers putting the chocolate of science fiction tropes into the peanut butter of fantasy. Whether it is star-faring science fantasy, or post-apocalyptic science fantasy, we are going to see a lot of different flavors of these two tasty genres over the next year. I am looking forward to this trend. [B]Goodman Games'[/B] [B]Mutant Crawl Classics[/B] was one of the few Kickstarters that I backed this year. I enjoyed [B]Gamma World[/B] as a kid, and when I got older works like the [B]Max Max[/B] movies and Jack Kirby's psychedelic [B]Kamandi[/B] comic were things that I eagerly consumed. I think that it is a psychological thing that post-apocalyptic media becomes popular when the world turns grim. We like to think that we can right the world when heroes stand up to the darkness, and that is one of the cornerstones of RPGs. I think that I am looking forward to [B]Starfinder[/B] more than I was looking forward to [B]Pathfinder[/B]. I was at the [B]Gen Con[/B] when [B]Pathfinder[/B] debuted. It was a madhouse. People were buying books as quickly as the [B]Paizo Publishing[/B] people could stock their booth. Will [B]Starfinder[/B] be as dramatic at its [B]Gen Con[/B] as [B]Pathfinder[/B] was? I don't know, but I think that it has the capacity to do so. Even if it isn't the top seller, it will be in the top two. But either way, we're going to see a rise in popularity for the genre among RPG publishers, and gamers. I hope that this will mean that we see a lot of new, weird gaming material over the next few years that isn't afraid to mashup two, or more, genres. [B]The Upswing Of Horror[/B] It is a pretty well-documented fact that [URL="http://www.aol.com/article/2009/10/30/zombies-versus-vampires-battle-of-the-recession-monsters/19147298/"]horror movies (and other forms of horror media) have an upswing during times of economic recession[/URL]. Think back to the horror booms of the 70s and of the 90s. In fact it was the horror boom of the 90s that brought role-playing games the game changing [B]Vampire: The Masquerade[/B], as well as the Gnostic horror of [B]Kult[/B]. [B]Steve Jackson Games[/B] brought us the English language version of the French role-playing game [B][URL="http://www.sjgames.com/innomine/"]In Nomine[/URL][/B]. [B]Steve Jackson Games[/B] also brought out [B]GURPS: Voodoo The Shadow War[/B], by C.J. Carella (who has brought us a number of horror games and settings over the years), one of my favorite [B]GURPS[/B] books of the Third Edition era. This was just the tip of the iceberg for horror gaming, as well. Old favorites like [B]Chaosium's[/B] seminal horror game [B]Call of Cthulhu[/B] saw new life breathed into it by third party publishers [B]Pagan Publishing[/B] with [B]Delta Green[/B]. The [B]Delta Green[/B] setting tapped into a millennial zeitgeist not unlike that of the television show [B]X-Files[/B]. It isn't coincidence that while [B][URL="http://www.delta-green.com/"]Delta Green[/URL][/B] is currently in a new edition, the [B]X-Files[/B] has also come back on the air. It isn't a surprise that [B][URL="http://kultdivinitylost.com/"]Kult[/URL][/B] is coming back, with its blend of Clive Barker inspired body horror and a dark look at religion and the secrets of the universe. The new edition is [B]Powered By The Apocalypse[/B], instead of using its own system, but it still promises to be as unflinching and extreme as the game has ever been. There's a quickstart that has been released to backers of the successful Kickstarter, and I am looking forward to seeing where the new edition of the game takes us. [B]Vampire: The Masquerade[/B] is on an upswing too. When [URL="http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/10/31/paradox-interactive-acquires-white-wolf-publishing-2/"]video game developer [B]Paradox Interactive[/B] announced in 2015 that they had acquired [B]White Wolf Games[/B][/URL], most of the talk of the acquisition revolved around bringing back the [B]Vampire[/B] game. When Martin Ericsson was named the Lead Storyteller for [B]White Wolf[/B], there was plenty of [B]Vampire[/B] talk. In fact he has shown some pictures of groups playing early playtests of the new edition on his [B]Facebook[/B]. Will the new [B]Vampire: The Masquerade[/B] come out this year? Maybe not, but it will definitely lead gaming news as more information comes out over the course of the new year. Let's hope that a new year brings us a new [B]Vampire[/B], but we'll see what happens. [B]Fantasy And The DIY Groundswell[/B] Between retroclones like [B]Swords & Wizardry[/B] having a very successful Kickstarter for a new printing, and the fantasy RPG DIY movement seeing the achievements of adventures and settings like Mike Evan's visceral [B]Hubris[/B] for the [B]Dungeon Crawl Classics[/B] game or Zak Smith's [B]Maze of The Blue Medusa[/B], there has been a groundswell of creativity in the fantasy gaming small press over the last year. Admittedly, this is the culmination of years of work before this year, however I think that not only was this the year that the DIY movement really broke but also when it showed that there could be more to what was once known just as an old school revival than rehashing the games that we all played as children. The old games could be used as the basis for new forms of creativity, and doing more than just what was being done 30 or 40 years ago. I think that this will be a trend that we will see more of in the new year as well, with creators like Jason Sholtis and [URL="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/183439/Misty-Isles-of-the-Eld?"]Chris Kutalik[/URL] lead small press publishing houses like [B]The Hydra Collective[/B] in bold new directions for fantasy role-playing. What about [B]D&D[/B], the father of role-playing games? I think that it will keep on keeping on. [B]Wizards of the Coast[/B] plays things pretty close to the vest when it comes to what is on the horizon for the game, but I think that we will see some interesting new adventures for [B]Dungeons & Dragons[/B], and maybe we'll get to see some published character options, outside of the material that they put out on their website. Much like comic book sales have been on an upswing because of industry starter [B]DC Comics[/B] seeing sales increases, so does the RPG industry get better when [B]D&D[/B] does better. Fantasy is always one of the most active segments of tabletop role-playing games, so with games like [B]D&D[/B] and [B]Pathfinder[/B] doing well in the market, that means that we will see a rise in fantasy games from other publishers as well. John Wick's [B]7th Sea[/B], which had the most successful tabletop RPG Kickstarter ever, will roll out more material funded by the project in the new year. We will likely see the newest take on [B]Runequest[/B] coming this year from the revitalized [B]Chaosium[/B] this year, as well, or at least more information about its launch (most possibly through a Kickstarter). A popular saying in business is that "a rising tide lifts all ships." As fantasy is the leader in tabletop RPGs, as we see more fantasy games, and supplements, coming out, that will lead to us seeing even more fantasy games and supplements coming out. [B]The Rise And Fall Of Kickstarter[/B] Pundits and prognosticators like to show that they know what they are talking about, that they are the foremost experts. Each year we see more people say that each year will be when the bubble bursts for RPG Kickstarters. I admit it, I have said it as well. Everything is cyclic, and sooner or later the wheel has to turn back around to the bottom of the cycle again. Will this year be the year for RPG Kickstarters to burst? I don't think that is going to be the case. I think that we still have the space for a role-playing game to outperform even the records set by [B]7th Sea[/B]. I think that it will be a perfect storm of timing and property that will make a staggering amount of money for someone on Kickstarter. If I was a gambling man, I would put my money on the RPG property that could do this to be [B]Vampire: The Masquerade's[/B] new edition. I don't know that the game is going to be launched via a Kickstarter project, after all [B]Paradox Interactive[/B] has pretty deep pockets by tabletop gaming standards, but if there would be any game that could be capable of making [I]millions[/I] on Kickstarter, I would say that it would be [B]Vampire[/B]. Will it happen? Time will tell. Regardless, I think that it is going to be a busy year in tabletop RPGs, regardless of what happens in the world outside of gaming. I think that the highs are going to be high, and the lows are going to be pretty low. 2017 probably won't always be a pretty year, but it will be another one to remember when we get to this point in another year.[CENTER][COLOR=#FFFFFF][FONT=Helvetica Neue][B]Save[/B][/FONT][/COLOR][COLOR=#FFFFFF][FONT=Helvetica Neue][B]Save[/B][/FONT][/COLOR][/CENTER] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Looking Forward At The Year To Come In Tabletop RPGs
Top