Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5012055" data-attributes="member: 59082">Now that's interesting (does some quick research). Wikipedia has the comic ages as follows:COMIC BOOK AGES<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Golden Age: Late 30s to late 40s. "...the arrival of the comic book as a mainstream art form, and the defining of the medium's artistic vocabulary and creative conventions by its first generation of writers, artists, and editors." Think Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, etc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Atomic Age: Mid-40s to mid-50s. Not a proper age as much as an interregnum, a lull in popularity following WWII.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Silver Age: Mid-50s to c. 1970. "A period of artistic advancement and commercial success." Wikipedia cites the arrival of the Flash in 1956 as the first new popular superhero since the Golden Age. This time also saw the debut of Marvel Comics, incl the X-Men, Avengers, Spiderman, etc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Bronze Age: Early 70s to mid-80s. "...retained many of the conventions of the Silver Age...However darker plot elements and more mature storylines featuring real-world issues." Think the Phoenix Saga.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Modern Age: Mid-80s to present. "...characters generally became darker and more psychologically complex, creators became better-known and active in changing the industry, independent comics flourished, and larger publishing houses became more commercialized."</li> </ul>Can we apply the same basic criteria to RPG History? Maybe. You did it quite well, but I'll add a bit:RPG AGES<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Golden Age: 1970s. Do we begin with Braunstein, Chainmail, or OD&D? Hard to say, but the Golden Age would span most of the 70s and would be the only era that was truly dominated by one figure: E. Gary Gygax, the Babe Ruth of RPGs.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Silver Age: c. 1977 to late-80s. This would be the 1ed AD&D era, peaking in the early 80s and beginning to shift to a more "humanistic" element with Dragonlance in 1983 at the midpoint, which would in turn foreshadow 2ed AD&D. This also saw the development of other RPG systems, notably Runequest, Pendragon, Traveler, Rolemaster, MERP, etc, and the first glimmerings of the Indie RPG movement.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Bronze Age:  c. 1990-2000. Three major trends united into a general period feel: the focus of AD&D on settings and the further focus on non-combat elements; the arrival of the World of Darkness with its story-based games; and the explosion of the Indie RPG market, not as an attempt to compete financially with D&D (and WoD) but with the craft of design and "RPGs as art" as central.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Iron Age: 2000+. The OGL, baby. Or rather, the OGL coupled with the proliferation of DIY publishing and PDFs.</li> </ul>I call the most reason age that of "iron" because the word "modern" doesn't really seem to suit; actually, postmodern would be more appropriate, even post-postmodern as the 90s were more postmodern in vibe, especially with the very pomo WoD games.</blockquote>

Verification