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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5012817" data-attributes="member: 80487">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.</blockquote>

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