New Non-WoTC Games?

[TerraDave]

If you pick up an old catalog from the early 90's you can confirm that yes, there use to be a bunch of different full-blown RPGs with boxed sets, multiple source books, etc. (along with what would now be called ameritheme board and war games). And may corectly remember FLGS carrying all this stuff. (and people you knew in (a) college playing all these totally different games).

It was my understanding that this started to go away before 2000. That by 2000 the industry, with exceptions like WW, was teetering. The OGL was supposed to be a response to this. Though, if the reason was Magic...well, there is a certain irony.

Since then:

*record stores, book stores, and game stores have all started to disapear.

*MMORGs have become the new competition for mainstream RPGs.

*There has also been a euro/board game revival that picked up steam early this decade and continues.

*People still play all those old games, maybe play them more, and new games compete with those games

I guess my point is, there is a lot of stuff going on besides the OGL, and for all we know, things might be worse without the OGL.

 

[darjr]

GURPS is still in print.

 

[Hussar]

I'd say the difference between now and 20 years is not the number of new games coming out (there are plenty), it's that few of them actually make it into stores anymore. There are tons of small press games that release PDF/POD and sell mostly direct. The RPG sections of many game stores are vanishingly small these days.

And I'd take that a step further and say that the number of game stores is becoming vanishingly small as well. Unfortunately.

I was listening to a Fear the Boot podcast interview with jim pinto a couple of weeks ago. In the interview he talked about how we have gone from the RPG Renaissance to the RPG Post Modern age.

The gist of his point was that up to about the mid 90's, you could bang out an RPG, stick it in a box and it would sell some. You could likely get a distributor to carry it and get it on the shelves, despite a number of factors.

Then, after the mid-90's, the rules changed. You can't get a black and white, line art boxed set onto the shelves anymore, the distributors won't bother with it and the gaming stores don't want them. You can't pump out half-assed mechanics anymore because the average gamer has access to the Internet and can dissect your game within days of release and judge the mechanics in a pretty well informed way.

No longer do you have the "talented amateur" banging something out and chucking it into the wild to see if it sells. Now, you have companies, professional game designers, accountants and various other hangers on, all with their finger in the creative pie.

((Note, he was talking about dead tree games, and not pdf only releases))

Because the initial buy in for a dead tree game is so high, it's mostly out of reach for most people. d20 did one thing and allowed guys in the basement to publish - and a lot of it was really, really bad.

I'm losing track of my point....

Anyway, sure, you had a lot of different games on the market - all with unique mechanics (or at least somewhat different mechanics) but, a lot of them were really, really bad. They were games that would now be pdf only. The production values alone would keep them off the shelves.

 

[ggroy]

Because the initial buy in for a dead tree game is so high, it's mostly out of reach for most people. d20 did one thing and allowed guys in the basement to publish - and a lot of it was really, really bad.

It wasn't just the small basement/garage guys producing tons of crap. A lot stuff produced by the "big guys" was really really bad too, during the d20 glut era. Both WotC and the bigger 3PPs (ie. Mongoose, Alderac, Fantasy Flight, Fast Forward, etc ...).

 

[Aus_Snow]

Heh. What (half-)killed RPGs? Why, RPGs!

I'm not sure to what extent that is true, Hussar, but I do believe you have made a valid point. And what I make of all that, is that it's basically 'natural selection' at work, to so speak. And that, accordingly, there's really nothing to worry about. And, even if there was, there'd be no benefit to worrying anyhow.

Back to the original topic per se, I've seen (well, heard of) *heaps* of new RPGs, most of them non-d20, since 2000. Just look at each of the ENnies lists (of nominations) for starters. Check out recent (as in, 9 or fewer years old) TTRPG reviews at, say, RPGnet. And so on. And yes, many (most, I suspect) of these are or were in print. Others might become so at some stage. PoD in some cases, sure, but by no means all.

I've even seen photos of various FLGSs carrying 'indie games', non-'indie' but also non-'mainstream' games (and supps, and mags), etc. And this was *very* recently. I've no idea how well they sell, but they're out there. . . somewhere. . .