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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Glyfair" data-source="post: 3485523" data-attributes="member: 53">I'd disagree with this, based on my observations and experiences over my 30 year roleplaying career (with the caveat that we restrict it to roleplaying and not general hobby gaming).Yes, there are many quality, polished RPGs out there right now.  If your are comfortable with the medium, the PDF market has added many inexpensive options.  However, finding a group that will use the game is much harder now that during what I consider the best time (mid-eighties).  There seems to be a general concensus that D&D is far and away the RPG of choice.  There is a dominant group of players who aren't interested in any other game, and the next group are only interested in closely related games to D&D (d20 modern, d20/OGL games).  Then you have a side group that is only interested in White Wolf games.  After that you often have to fight to get people to play a game you wish to try.In the mid-eighties, on the other hand, getting groups to try new games was often easy.  D&D was still the RPG of choice.  However, the fanatical group that wouldn't try anything else was much smaller.  New games came out regularly and often became classics.  Games like Runequest, Champions, GURPS, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller and Rolemaster thrived in the environment.  Genres often weren't tapped by RPGs and publishers got to be the first to explore them (or among the first) and players would try them just because they liked the genre.  Finding gaming groups was much easier for the uninitiated as well.  Gaming stores usually had some sort of gaming areas where roleplaying games were held (along with the occasional wargame). Colleges regularly had roleplaying clubs along with some high schools.  Even if you didn't have a gaming store, the stores that carried the RPGs usually had a bulletin board where you could contact other gamers.Now, I'm sure this varied from area to area and does today (and I'm not even going to begin to cover the rest of the world).  However, from discussions from other games, I get the impression that the vibe is different today.  The main thing I see is how many people have difficulty in getting regular groups for non-D&D games, let alone smaller games.  The big advantage I see today is the internet.  Finding a game on the internet for anything can be much easier, because you have a larger pool of people to draw from.  I'm sure I could even find a group to play Spawn of Fashan today.  Still, I think online gaming is a different experience from a tabletop game.  At least to me, the experience online is far inferior to sitting at a table for an evening and playing an RPG.  I miss the days when I could go to the gameclub attached to my gamestore almost any night and jump in an RPG.  Most of the time the RPG wasn't even D&D.</blockquote>

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