D&D General Mike Mearls' blog post about RPG generations

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm really puzzled by it. It makes little sense to me.

I think it makes sense from a pro's perspective. It doesn't necessarily reflect what any given group was doing at the table -- there are people who are still happily playing in the same 1E campaign from the 1980s, for whom all of this has passed them by.

I can see the game design ideas he's talking about and definitely understand the split between player-empowering and DM-empowering games.

It's been a topic of discussion at my table: Games like Shadowdark, Pirate Borg and Mothership (all of which I dig), are aimed at making the DM's life easier, with less crunch, lots of content emerging from random tables and super-light adventures (Mothership has a ton of pamphlet adventures, for instance).

But about half of my group only plays in the 5E games, because they want their bespoke characters that they can mechanically detail and, in some cases, plan out through 20 levels, which the games above just don't support. (Well, you can plan out your Mothership character, but there's a good chance they'll get eaten by something terrible before they get to the end of their skill tree.)

 

[AlViking]

"Actual Play" has been a thing since at least the late 70's, long before the "5th Generation".

You could argue the entirety of the OSR, with its focus on clearer, cleaner rules making the GM's job easier.

I'd argue that there was a time when there weren't multiple alternative games with different approaches out here. For a long time it was D&D, and then came games that had similar rules and similar gameplay objectives.

Also, Mearls wasn't writing about the "evolution" of games - I didn't even see the word used. He was theorizing on shifts in game design and gameplay, with each shift attracting or alienating a certain segment of gamers. I don't agree with his "generational timelines", but he's made a strong point that many of us in this hobby are currently looking for ttrpgs offering systems that are easier to run and play.

He didn't use the word evolution, but it was clearly implied in my opinion.

Just because D&D has been dominant, there have always been other games out there's

 

[Gradine]

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Maybe there's a seismic shift going on, maybe not. In general I don't really buy into these generation defining moments, either people enjoy playing a game or they don't.

Well, it does matter for the industry as a whole.

I am not scraping the data from Kickstarter, Backerkit and Gamefound, but it certainly feels like there's a lot more stuff being produced for Shadowdark and Mothership than there is for 5E. I don't know how I'd define "seismic," exactly, but that feels like a pretty big deal. If a lot of the design energy -- and customer dollars -- are starting to go into RPGs that are moving in a general direction away from 5E, that matters.

One could have poo-pooed the World of Darkness in the early 1990s -- "those Vampire players aren't at my table anyway" -- but it ended up helping reshape what even traditional D&D players were seeing (metaplot, anyone?) and what players/customers expected.

If Shadowdark and company continue outpacing the growth of more traditional RPGs, I think that will definitely influence what future games look like. That doesn't mean traditional games will necessarily go anywhere -- one can still buy Hero system games, for instance -- but most of the audience and market will move on over time.

If D&D is to remain relevant, at some point, Hasbro will want the game to reflect the tastes of contemporary gamers, if they continue to move away from where 5E is now.

No guarantees on what will happen either way, but I wouldn't bet against Gen Alpha and younger consumers (who will make up the bulk of the market sooner than we like to think) wanting something faster and simpler than what D&D looks like today.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Scribe, you cannot answer every question with Shadowdark

 

[Minigiant]

It's been a topic of discussion at my table: Games like Shadowdark, Pirate Borg and Mothership (all of which I dig), are aimed at making the DM's life easier, with less crunch, lots of content emerging from random tables and super-light adventures (Mothership has a ton of pamphlet adventures, for instance).

But about half of my group only plays in the 5E games, because they want their bespoke characters that they can mechanically detail and, in some cases, plan out through 20 levels, which the games above just don't support. (Well, you can plan out your Mothership character, but there's a good chance they'll get eaten by something terrible before they get to the end of their skill tree.)

I don't think it has to be one side or another. Must how the game have to completely lean on tactics, story, or simulation.

 

[dbolack]

I'd argue that there was a time when there weren't multiple alternative games with different approaches out here. For a long time it was D&D, and then came games that had similar rules and similar gameplay objectives.

Only a handful of years at best.

 

[Theory of Games]

Only a handful of years at best.

That's long enough to make my point

He didn't use the word evolution, but it was clearly implied in my opinion.

Just because D&D has been dominant, there have always been other games out there's

You can assume that, but it wasn't written that way. He was making an entirely different point you may have missed. And yes, there have always been other games, but there hasn't always been ttrpgs that played distinctly different than D&D.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't think it has to be one side or another. Must how the game have to completely lean on tactics, story, or simulation.

It's definitely not an all or nothing thing. But these kinds of big shifts can be influential, as all the stuff out of White Wolf was.

Mearls' article also puts all of the people trying to take the Shadowdark system and make their own games using it into a broader perspective for me. We've got multiple Shadowdark in Space games, post-apocalyptic Shadowdark, modern military Shadowdark, Western Shadowdark and, just today, I saw someone talking about Prohibition-era gangsters Shadowdark.

The games don't appeal to me, personally, but some of those are going to catch on -- some of them are already on their second successful Kickstarter campaigns -- and in turn continue spreading the design movement that Shadowdark itself is part of.

 

[Scribe]

It's definitely not an all or nothing thing. But these kinds of big shifts can be influential, as all the stuff out of White Wolf was.

Mearls' article also puts all of the people trying to take the Shadowdark system and make their own games using it into a broader perspective for me. We've got multiple Shadowdark in Space games, post-apocalyptic Shadowdark, modern military Shadowdark, Western Shadowdark and, just today, I saw someone talking about Prohibition-era gangsters Shadowdark.

The games don't appeal to me, personally, but some of those are going to catch on -- some of them are already on their second successful Kickstarter campaigns -- and in turn continue spreading the design movement that Shadowdark itself is part of.

Yeah, all I know is there are at least a handful of people now making money off of the Shadowdark base.