The Quality of Gaming Products Today

[Yora]

I think there's a lot more crud on the market post-2000 than pre-2000. In general, as printing & publishing has got easier, the proportion of drek has tended to increase. OTOH, a lot of good stuff is distributed for free now.

Of course there is. There is a lot more stuff on the market now. With the ratio of good and bad publications remaining equal, the amount of crap grows at the same proportion as the amount of great stuff.

 

[Guest 85555]

I'm guessing from your example that by "back in the day" you mean a few years ago, rather than 20 years ago?

I haven't seen the product in question, but definitely during the "d20 glut" there were hundreds and hundreds of third-party products, and anyone with access to a copy of MS Word was releasing stuff. Some of that was very good, some of it was very bad.

These days it seems - at least to me - that quality has improved. Not just the writing itself, but also production values. Some of those small third party start-ups are now producing amazing stuff; and some (look at Paizo, Green Ronin) are producing top-tier quality games and have carved out their own direction.

I agree entirely. As a gamer I feel I have more real options than ever. The d20 boom was great in a way, but there were so few alternatives to d20 (and d20 didn't work well for a lot of styles of play). Reallly like where things are at the moment.

 

[Water Bob]

I'm guessing from your example that by "back in the day" you mean a few years ago, rather than 20 years ago?

I mean back in the 1980's.

When I compare more recent releases to older ones, quality seems to have dramatically improved.

Yes, maybe so. I don't have strong conviction about the things I said in the OP. I just wanted to discuss it and see what others thought.

I know I've recently purchased the Paizo Kingmaker AP. I've never purchased an AP before. I'm going to steal from it and use it in my wilderness based campaign.

I've barely read it, but from flipping through the six books, I'm pretty impressed with the production quality.

OTOH, even at half price, the set of six is expensive. I paid $10 bucks a book for a brand new crisp, clean set at my local Half Price Books. I can't imagine paying $120 for the set before it hit stores like Half Price. That's a lot of dough for an adventure.

Even at $60 bucks, it's expensive. But, I bought it because there's not much material out there "right" for conversion to my Conan game. When I saw Kingmaker, I knew I could convert a lot of the encounters to my semi-sandbox wilderness based game.

I think there's a lot more crud on the market post-2000 than pre-2000.

Yes.

My only real experience of quality decline was a campaign I ran a few years ago, I started with TSR Basic adventures from ca 1980-3 like Rahasia and Horror on the Hill, then went on to Goodman DCC adventures from ca 2003-5 at higher levels. I soon noticed that the TSR adventures had a huge amount of effort put into their 32 pages, whereas the Goodman ones seemed thrown together in an afternoon and often didn't bother with stuff as basic as room descriptions.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. You just said in a few sentences what I was trying to say in the OP.

I saw a book for Classic Traveller once, 5+ years ago, from Avenger Enterprises, a third party publisher. The book was supposed to be for dual systems (Classic Traveller and d20 Traveller I think was the other game system the book was supposed to be for.)

Well, I wrote the company asking them how close to Classic Traveller this book was made. I specifically asked them if all the stats for the CT game were included (because CT has a unique set of weapon stats not found in other games). "Yes," I was told.

Well, I bought the book. It was cheap--like $6 or $8 bucks. But, when I downloaded it....there wasn a single CT stat to be found.

I wrote them back, angry, and they gave me my money back--but what the heck? Why lie to me? Over $6 bucks?

The d20 boom was great in a way, but there were so few alternatives to d20 (and d20 didn't work well for a lot of styles of play). Reallly like where things are at the moment.

I skipped the entire d20 boom. My campaigns tend to be long, multi-year affairs. When the entire world was playing a d20 version of their favorite game, I played D6 Star Wars and Classic Traveller.

I'm just now learning the d20 system--over the last year.

It's a pretty good system. It's a monster to learn well. There are things I like about it and things I don't. But, all-in-all, I'm happy with it.

I'll never call it my favorite, though.

 

[Morrus]

I mean back in the 80s.

Ah. Your example of Mongoose had me confused; they are very much post-2000; one of the original d20 boom companies.

 

[Starman]

I skipped the entire d20 boom. My campaigns tend to be long, multi-year affairs. When the entire world was playing a d20 version of their favorite game, I played D6 Star Wars and Classic Traveller.

I'm just now learning the d20 system--over the last year.

It's a pretty good system. It's a monster to learn well. There are things I like about it and things I don't. But, all-in-all, I'm happy with it.

I'll never call it my favorite, though.

There are quite a few games that fall under the d20 umbrella. Many are quite similar, but others are quite different.

 

[Water Bob]

There are quite a few games that fall under the d20 umbrella. Many are quite similar, but others are quite different.

Yep, I'm playing one now: The Conan RPG.

 

[GSHamster]

I find there's also a little bit of survivor bias in questions like these. We tend to remember the very best or very worst of prior editions, and don't really recall the many average or below average products that came out.

To resolve this question in a "fair" manner, you'd probably have to do something like pull a gaming store's inventory from the 1980s and compare it to a modern inventory. I'd bet there would be a ton of bad products in the old inventory that you wouldn't recall until the list was in front of you.

 

[Spatula]

Back in the day, if a product game from the original publisher, you could probably bank on the quality being there.

I'm guessing you weren't around for a lot of AD&D 2e.

Hell, even the 1e UA was extensively re-written by errata (that was published in Dragon and that you taped over the original text). And even then it was still a pretty bad product. Not to mention the crappy binding on that one...

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Another thing to consider as you look back across decades of game publishing is that our standards have changed dramatically. If you go back to the 1e PHB, for example, and look at the art that's in it and compare it to the art in the 4e PHB, or even art in much smaller publisher's offerings (heck, EN World's own Zeitgeist and WOTBS art blows the PHB out of the water).

We expect very different things now. Back when I was learning to play in the 70s, the art in the original D&D editions, as simple as it was, was enough to get me excited (no, not that way, you pervs....mostly not, anyway).

-rg

 

[Water Bob]

I'm guessing you weren't around for a lot of AD&D 2e.

I was a seasoned gamer by the time 2E came out.

Hell, even the 1e UA was extensively re-written by errata (that was published in Dragon and that you taped over the original text). And even then it was still a pretty bad product. Not to mention the crappy binding on that one...

Maybe I was too naive to notice, but my group loved the heck out of the UA. Though...I don't remember using much from it except specialization.