Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf 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 Nest
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, OSR, & D&D Variants
*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!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
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, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
So what exactly is the root cause of the D&D rules' staying power?
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="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7343407" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>In the late 90's, D&D probably slipped to third. My impression of the RPG scene at the time was not only was Storyteller system far and away the more popular game bringing the most players into gaming, but Deadlands also had more tables going than D&D during that period.</p><p></p><p>As for the success of VtM, I think it's best to tell a story to explain that. So, sometime during my college career I went to the book store and made a b line to the RPG books (as usual). To my surprise, someone was already there. There were two high school girls, cute ones, sitting on the floor in front of the RPG books. This wasn't anything I'd ever seen before. So I pulled some book off the shelf to browse and eaves dropped from a little ways away. They didn't notice me. They had in front of them on the floor 'LA by Night', and they had it open to a page on one of the NPCs, and the conversation I overheard went something like this:</p><p></p><p>Girl #1: "He sleeps on top of elevators at night."</p><p>Girl #2: "OMG He's so sexy"</p><p>Girl #1: "Yeah, I know. When I get in an elevator I imagine he's sleeping over my head."</p><p>Girl #2: "So hot."</p><p>Girl #1: "Every time I think about him, I think some going to swoon."</p><p>Girl #2: "tee hee hee"</p><p>Girl #1: "tee hee hee"</p><p></p><p>And so it went. For me, that was a completely new experience of what it meant to be a gamer and what might attract someone into gaming. So was VtM bigger than D&D during most of the 90's? I'd say, "Yes, absolutely." Certainly it was tapping into markets that D&D had never really touched.</p><p></p><p>Story teller is an absolutely cruddy system in retrospect, and VtM was the first game I encountered that played nothing like it was described (though it would be years before I actually played it). The game it described was about desperately clinging on to your humanity and fighting back the darkness before you succumbed completely. But because of the rewards structure and the fact that that introspective game in the examples of play could really only be played as a 1 on 1, the game as it was really played was half black wearing caped super-heroes, and half high school clique politics.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes, and no. The timing definitely had something to do with it, but it also was definitely the first RPG that deliberately set out to be sexy and edgy and actually tapped into a market significantly larger than the nerd crowd. I found the book horrifying at some level because it felt like it was glorifying monsters, but in actual play it was usually more silly than monstrous (there were a few exceptions). Ultimately it killed itself because there is only so much you can sell yourself on shock value before you end up as schlock. It kept trying to one up itself, and it didn't help that half the production staff was stoned more than half the time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7343407, member: 4937"] In the late 90's, D&D probably slipped to third. My impression of the RPG scene at the time was not only was Storyteller system far and away the more popular game bringing the most players into gaming, but Deadlands also had more tables going than D&D during that period. As for the success of VtM, I think it's best to tell a story to explain that. So, sometime during my college career I went to the book store and made a b line to the RPG books (as usual). To my surprise, someone was already there. There were two high school girls, cute ones, sitting on the floor in front of the RPG books. This wasn't anything I'd ever seen before. So I pulled some book off the shelf to browse and eaves dropped from a little ways away. They didn't notice me. They had in front of them on the floor 'LA by Night', and they had it open to a page on one of the NPCs, and the conversation I overheard went something like this: Girl #1: "He sleeps on top of elevators at night." Girl #2: "OMG He's so sexy" Girl #1: "Yeah, I know. When I get in an elevator I imagine he's sleeping over my head." Girl #2: "So hot." Girl #1: "Every time I think about him, I think some going to swoon." Girl #2: "tee hee hee" Girl #1: "tee hee hee" And so it went. For me, that was a completely new experience of what it meant to be a gamer and what might attract someone into gaming. So was VtM bigger than D&D during most of the 90's? I'd say, "Yes, absolutely." Certainly it was tapping into markets that D&D had never really touched. Story teller is an absolutely cruddy system in retrospect, and VtM was the first game I encountered that played nothing like it was described (though it would be years before I actually played it). The game it described was about desperately clinging on to your humanity and fighting back the darkness before you succumbed completely. But because of the rewards structure and the fact that that introspective game in the examples of play could really only be played as a 1 on 1, the game as it was really played was half black wearing caped super-heroes, and half high school clique politics. Yes, and no. The timing definitely had something to do with it, but it also was definitely the first RPG that deliberately set out to be sexy and edgy and actually tapped into a market significantly larger than the nerd crowd. I found the book horrifying at some level because it felt like it was glorifying monsters, but in actual play it was usually more silly than monstrous (there were a few exceptions). Ultimately it killed itself because there is only so much you can sell yourself on shock value before you end up as schlock. It kept trying to one up itself, and it didn't help that half the production staff was stoned more than half the time. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
So what exactly is the root cause of the D&D rules' staying power?
Top