A good summary - I think the only other thing that you could add is the transition from actual game system to icon status correlates to the lack of interest from the publisher.
Were the 80s really the Golden Age of D&D?
- Thread starter Mercurius
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A good summary - I think the only other thing that you could add is the transition from actual game system to icon status correlates to the lack of interest from the publisher.
Traveller essentially was (and remains) "the D&D of SF games" (as D&D is "the Traveller of S&S games").
RuneQuest? Yes, I was part of the market share Chaosium took away!
Maybe "CoC or D&D" was a live question for some people, but for others (as in the case of Traveller) one was not really a fit substitute for the other game.
Liking both games, one might yet not have cash enough to buy all one would like. (So, in that sense, yes, there is a loss of market share.) However, it does not follow that everyone who buys Game A would have bought Game B instead in the absence of Game A.
I also knew people who switched their fantasy campaigns from D&D rules to GURPS.
RuneQuest? Yes, I was part of the market share Chaosium took away!
Maybe "CoC or D&D" was a live question for some people, but for others (as in the case of Traveller) one was not really a fit substitute for the other game.
Liking both games, one might yet not have cash enough to buy all one would like. (So, in that sense, yes, there is a loss of market share.) However, it does not follow that everyone who buys Game A would have bought Game B instead in the absence of Game A.
I also knew people who switched their fantasy campaigns from D&D rules to GURPS.
That particular bit (Which killers?) is a new one on me. Perhaps my memory is tricking me, but I recall the game getting more press -- bad as well as good -- before the end of the 1980s.
(In the 1990s, the witch hunters seem to have figured out that alleged Satanists sitting around rolling dice was not as, well, sexy as illegal sexual activities. Then, from the moment he hit the US in 1998, Harry Potter was the Colossus overshadowing the realm of fantasy.)
Such as? Apart from loading down rule books with fiction -- something shared (IIRC) with R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk, and differing mainly in quantity and placement from the use of narratives in Chaosium's Cults of Prax (1979) and Cults of Terror (1981) -- I'm not sure what "influx of new ideas" Vampire: the Masquerade inaugurated.
Somehow, you seem to know something this player of earlier games assuredly does not. What is your source for this assessment of what was "typical"?
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Mercurius
Legend
See post #18 in this thread where I call the 70s up until about 1977 the Golden Age; that was the year the 1st edition Player's Handbook was published and thus ushered in D&D as (relatively) big business. From 1977 to about 1990 is the Silver Age when the potential of the Golden Age was brought into form and commodified. Dragonlance, which appeared in 1983--the exact middle of my Silver Age--represents the turning towards more story-based games, and was a foreshadowing of the World of Darkness in the 90s. The Bronze Age, which took up most of the 90s, could also be called the Postmodern Age of Gaming, with its emphasis on darker and more humanistic aspects. 2000 ushered in the Iron Age, with the advent of the OGL and, coupled with self-publishing technologies, a kind of opening of the flood-gates, an "anything goes", if you will.
An interesting question then, is what is next? There are three configurations of the age cycles that I have seen:
- Linear Progression - We move from Golden to Silver to Bronze to Iron to...Ragnarok? Even the Iron Age must come to an end and it invariably is a time of chaos and disruption, which could lead to an eventual new beginning, but only after a Dark Age or interregnum. Albeit after a much longer time period, this model eventually turns into...
- Cycles - after the Iron Age and some possible interim period, we find ourselves back in a new Golden Age, albeit one that is very different than the prior Golden Age and born from the ashes of the Iron Age. Or another variant of this is...
- Fluctuations - After the Iron Age comes a new Bronze Age as we begin to (re) ascend; then a Silver Age, then a new and more mature Golden Age. But eventually we "Fall" back down to the Silver Age, etc.
- Prepare to be Assimilated! Will RPGs be thoroughly assimilated by the Borg-like MMO world? If so, then this truly is the End Times of RPGs, at least as we know it and on a large level (us Gen-Xers will probably continue to play, but our numbers will dwindle, which brings us to...
- A Gradual Death. In this variation RPGs continue in a kind of steady state, basically unchanging and providing a creative escape for a decreasing number of adherents. If so, the Iron Age represents a kind of settling into the "real world", the adult phase of RPGs into old age; we're not expanding anymore, there is no new major growth (only "outward," like a middle-aged paunch), only subtle but ultimately minor changes and a gradual dwindling process. This could lead to...
- Rebirth. Will a major new innovation occur? This could include technology but not as an assimilation into computer games; rather, an innovation in "soft" RPGs, that is, imagination-based games, not virtual-based games.
I don't follow. What do you mean?
As the publishers lose interest, the RP communities in general seem to make the conversion from players to "diehards that will keep the system alive" for each system as part of the sub-culture from that peer group. I submit that is the likely cause for the birth of "Golden Age" mentality among gamers - the first stages of that status at any rate. The highly popular systems could thrive in theory after the loss of their primary publishers. So, it would be possible to see systems that are "living" through the "golden age".
*Keep in mind, the birth of the golden age mindset does not indicate the actual "date" of the start for the Golden Age - only the mentality. The actual "date" can start at any point that peer review dictates. The actual evolution of the mindset is independent of the real time game life.
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I really think that RPGs are a mature industry/hobby.
Charles S. Roberts founded Avalon Hill in 1958, kicking off the rise to prominence of wargames played with cardboard counters on boards rather than with figurines on model terrain. James F. Dunnigan's Simulations Publications, Inc. started in 1969 to take over publication of financially floundering Strategy & Tactics magazine, but soon became another -- and more prolific -- major publisher of games (included with S&T and packaged separately).
Board wargames thus flourished in the 1970s, figuring prominently in the lines of such other firms -- leaders of the RPG revolution -- as GDW, TSR and The Chaosium. SPI went bankrupt in 1982, though, and AH folded in 1998 (although Hasbro now owns the trademark). GDW and TSR are gone, and Chaosium has (as far as I know) not published a wargame since the early '80s.
There are still publishers in the field, but one can no longer find so commonly the shelves upon shelves of hex-and-counter (or other serious historical) simulations. My personal "golden age of gaming" was the late 1980s, when so many classics were still on offer and each month still brought new releases -- but the business by then had been dying for a while. Maybe we should have realized that "as SPI goes, so goes the industry", but the hollow giant of AH still stood.
In the meantime, even GDW's splendid System Seven Napoleonics had not made historical miniatures "mainstream". It did not even survive long in its own, board-game-ish right. In his 1973 foreword to Dungeons & Dragons, E. Gary Gygax had written, "Tactical Studies Rules believes that of all forms of wargaming, fantasy will soon become the major contender for first place." The role-playing game actually emerged as a distinct form, but even in that light the prophecy was certainly pounded home with Games Workshop's Warhammer.
Historical wargamer dudes abide. Half a century ago, they didn't have much besides a tiny but growing hobby. Now, they have a hobby and industry of apparently sustainable size, like the model railroaders and others before them.
If D&D is on a roughly 40-year arc like that of board wargames, then we're in the final decade before final shakeout to stability. I am inclined to think that the RPG hobby as a whole has already settled into its long-term state -- except that we might expect to see more transferred from paper and pencil to electronics.
I do not expect the existing computer-games industry to turn much more in the direction of role-playing than it has already.
Charles S. Roberts founded Avalon Hill in 1958, kicking off the rise to prominence of wargames played with cardboard counters on boards rather than with figurines on model terrain. James F. Dunnigan's Simulations Publications, Inc. started in 1969 to take over publication of financially floundering Strategy & Tactics magazine, but soon became another -- and more prolific -- major publisher of games (included with S&T and packaged separately).
Board wargames thus flourished in the 1970s, figuring prominently in the lines of such other firms -- leaders of the RPG revolution -- as GDW, TSR and The Chaosium. SPI went bankrupt in 1982, though, and AH folded in 1998 (although Hasbro now owns the trademark). GDW and TSR are gone, and Chaosium has (as far as I know) not published a wargame since the early '80s.
There are still publishers in the field, but one can no longer find so commonly the shelves upon shelves of hex-and-counter (or other serious historical) simulations. My personal "golden age of gaming" was the late 1980s, when so many classics were still on offer and each month still brought new releases -- but the business by then had been dying for a while. Maybe we should have realized that "as SPI goes, so goes the industry", but the hollow giant of AH still stood.
In the meantime, even GDW's splendid System Seven Napoleonics had not made historical miniatures "mainstream". It did not even survive long in its own, board-game-ish right. In his 1973 foreword to Dungeons & Dragons, E. Gary Gygax had written, "Tactical Studies Rules believes that of all forms of wargaming, fantasy will soon become the major contender for first place." The role-playing game actually emerged as a distinct form, but even in that light the prophecy was certainly pounded home with Games Workshop's Warhammer.
Historical wargamer dudes abide. Half a century ago, they didn't have much besides a tiny but growing hobby. Now, they have a hobby and industry of apparently sustainable size, like the model railroaders and others before them.
If D&D is on a roughly 40-year arc like that of board wargames, then we're in the final decade before final shakeout to stability. I am inclined to think that the RPG hobby as a whole has already settled into its long-term state -- except that we might expect to see more transferred from paper and pencil to electronics.
I do not expect the existing computer-games industry to turn much more in the direction of role-playing than it has already.
My apologies- the "killer" I was thinking of mainly was actually in this decade- a multiple murderer in New Jersey in 2005 named John Eichinger- and the assertion was made by the DA (and a few others) that the killings were linked to D&D.
In the late 1980s/early 1990s, it was parents blaming D&D (and Metal) for suicides.
WoD games greatly de-emphasized the math and mechanics typical of earlier games. Amber (1991) even brought us diceless gaming.
These games were less about the combat and more about "storytelling"...or so it was claimed by their players.
Thus, the advent of these stripped-down games also started or greatly inflamed the whole "roll-play"/"role-play" discussion.
In addition, WoD and a few other games turned the tables on what could be played as a "heroic" archetype in an RPG- Vampires as PCs was virtually unheard of before V:tM, ditto Werewolves.
I base this on having owned, played or playtested over 100 different RPGs in the past 30+ years. Not scientific, of course, but its not exactly a shallow basis for my assertion.
The baseline assumption of most (but not all) games released before 1990 was that the PCs were non-evil, and their foes were at least in some meaningful way non-good.
Even games that didn't have an alignment system tended to handicap "evil" PCs with fewer options, more "legal" barriers in the campaign worlds.
In the late 1980s, the anti-heroic character became more popular and acceptable in various forms of literature than ever before, and that popularity got translated into RPGs in the 1990s.
All of that doesn't mean that it wasn't possible to play evil PCs and anti-heroes before 1/1/91, but merely that the games themselves did not favor playing such PCs.
Hmmm .... 5 more years until the complete "sunset" of D&D type tabletop rpg games. (Assuming a 40 year arc, starting from the release of OD&D in 1974).
jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
Specifically the quote was about 4e outselling 3e. Years ago (back when 3e was released) it was frequently claimed that 3e outsold earlier editions. Thus, by inference, 4e outsold earlier editions. As for giving you a link, sorry, but I don't have a CS account, so I can't search for one (And, honestly? I'm not invested enough in the discussion to waste my time doing so, even if I did have a CS account).
Glyfair
Explorer
Sounds a lot like Greg Stafford's Prince Valiant game. Hardly any math (2 stats that range from 1-6) or mechanics. It is even called a storytelling game. To my knowledge, it is the first RPG to have a section on players taking over the game.
Of course, Prince Valiant wasn't popular, and the WoD titles were. Perhaps that is largely because of the anti-hero nature of the game, and it's ties to the preexisting community into vampires and such.
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