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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord_Blacksteel" data-source="post: 7705772" data-attributes="member: 53082">There are some assumptions in this article that I just cannot agree with. I can't tell if it's just a different perspective or lack of research or what but I'll point out a few things:"Rebirth of Science Fantasy" - A wave of science fantasy games? You mean like with Numenera & Shadowrun 5th edition starting in 2013? Hell on Earth Reloaded in 2014? Masters of Umdarr for FATE and Mutant Chronicles in 2015? Savage Rifts in 2016? Additionally there's the entire 40K RPG line from 2008 - 2016 and the FFG Star Wars line from 2012 onward. There was also a 4E-style edition of Gamma World in 2010 that made some noise before disappearing if we want to look back that far. While I agree that Starfinder will get some attention, it's far more "continuing a trend" than kicking off some big new thing. I think it's in a weird place as it's a new SF type title backed by one of the big players in RPGs but it's also not tied to a "name" property from outside of RPG's. I think there will be a ton of initial buy-in from existing Pathfinder fans but a chunk of that will be to see what Paizo does with the mechanics and with an eye towards what they might do in a future Pathfinder update. I think that will help sell the big book but I wonder how many Star Finder campaigns will be running a year after launch? There will be a bunch of chatter leading up to Gen Con and Paizo Con next year but how big will it be at Gen Con 2018?MCC is cool and I backed the KS too but it's a niche game, a small niche even in this hobby. It's already a riff on Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha and I suspect any new game there would be inspired by those as much as this one. I personally am really looking forward to it but I don't expect it to change major industry trends. If it kicked off some kind of mini-post-apocalyptic revival within the OSR I'd be happy enough with that.Genre nitpick: Lumping in Star Wars, Mad Max, Gamma World/MCC, and Starfinder as "science fantasy". Within RPG's, that term has been used since the 80's at least, to refer to games like Gamma World - tech and mutants and fantastic technology. With movies, people have been calling Star Wars that in an attempt to distant it from "serious" science fiction movies without the overt mystical elements but it's also been called "space opera" and that's a much better term for it, within the RPG arena at least. Shadowrun has been described in a lot of different ways but the best ones tend to invoke cyberpunk + magic. You can label all of those things "Science fantasy" if you like and not be technically incorrect but it's not a very helpful label when the games are all completely different in actual play. I don't mean mechanics here - I mean tone, theme, campaign focus, and the types of adventures that are played. Plus there aren't many popular games that don't have some element of the fantastic in them. Vampire presents a modern technological world + magical creatures! Deadlands presents a high-tech 1870's America - with magic! Even Traveller, often labelled "Hard Sci-Fi", has had a Psionics chapter from the very beginning - a chapter with powers including mind reading, telekinesis, and even teleportation!  Horror: Are we in a recession right now? I thought we were out of that several years back according to Economists. Circa 2007-08-09 sure, but now? I think what you're seeing is the 20-30 year pop culture revisit. In the 70's, the 50's were popular (Happy Days, Sha Na Na). In the 80's, the 60's were a thing again. In the 90's it was the 70's all over again. Recently the 80's were a thing and we're seeing the 90's start up again too (Power Rangers, Independence Day, and Jurassic Park at the movies, various bands & music, ) - for some reason, as we hit 20-25 year anniversary dates, things tend to pop back up. That seems to be what's driving the X-Files and some of the RPG material too. Vampire, Delta Green, Kult, Chill, L5R, even 5E D&D being more like 2E D&D might be tied into this kind of thing.Fantasy will continue to be popular - yeah, that's not exactly news since it's been the dominant RPG genre from literally the day the hobby was created, but "a rise in fantasy games from other publishers"? Because of 7th Sea? We've had a ton of new fantasy RPG's and settings every year - are you saying there will be more in 2017 than in 2014-15-16? Remember 13th Age? Remember Shadow of a Demon Lord? Remember Primeval Thule? Scarlet Heroes? Beasts and Barbarians? Two versions of Lankhmar? Conan? Titansgrave? One Ring? Exalted 3E?  Middle Earth for 5E Throw in the kickstarter for the reprint of RQ2 and the print on demand option for all of the old TSR D&D material and I think you may see less new fantasy from other publishers and more supplemental material for older and existing games. Bonus Take: Star Wars has had an RPG in print almost continuously for 30 years as of 2017. Even with completely different mechanics over the years the setting has kept the game at some minimum level of popularity. Star Trek has been unable to sustain anything close to that in RPG's. Those first five years or so in the 80's it was very popular and that's when all we had was original series re-runs and the original cast movies every other year. Once TNG got going and FASA left it's just never been the same. I liked Last Unicorn's effort, I liked Decipher's effort, but neither of them lasted more than 2 years. No one has done anything with the license for over ten years until now and I wish Modiphius a lot of luck with this run. That said I predict FFG's Star Wars continues its dominance with the RPG, board games, card games, and X-Wing and Armada miniatures games. Star Trek will take off this year and be a small hit - I can see it quickly becoming Modiphius' biggest game. Heck it's been forever since we had new Trek RPG anything. The test though, will be how it does in 2018 and beyond once the initial "Awesome!" wears off. Anyway, I like that you took the time to make some predictions for next year - I just think it could be better.</blockquote>

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