What does it take for an RPG to die?

[Thomas Shey]

I am interested in how many TTRPGs (whole games or even supplements) are lost media. A recent study found that 87% of all video games created before 2010 are no longer legally available, and I imagine the ratio for TTRPGs isn't much better. I also know that because legal archiving is difficult at the best of times, the best actual archivists are so there's a lot fewer individual games that are actually fully lost. But I also imagine that that number isn't zero. I wonder what games or supplements we know used to exist, but nobody bothered to scan it and nobody knows where to find a physical copy anymore.

There's certainly some I've tried to locate digital copies of from the early days of the hobby with no luck (Space Quest and Droids), and a couple of others of later periods that took a long, long time. Part of it is, of course, that physical copies of those had to survive long enough in the hands of people who had access to scanners and willing to do the work.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah. A fair number of gamers dislike PDFs. Many of them will pay substantially more for print over PDF. (Insert 400 pages of argument over format here.) But the fraction who outright refuse to ever use PDFs even when they’re the only alternative for a product is pretty small.

And it doesn't map age or much else in any obvious fashion. I've talked to gamers in their 20's who really want physical books, and there's people like me who don't do much but PDFs any more.

 

[Autumnal]

Yup. I find that phenomenon fascinating. But then I would.

 

[MNblockhead]

This thread led to me googling Fudge last night. Is this thread a secret Game Necromancer's plot?

 

[chuckdee]

And this thought has left me pondering when the last game of KABAL was played.

This? Or something else?

 

[Autumnal]

This thread led to me googling Fudge last night. Is this thread a secret Game Necromancer's plot?

Well, duh. What else?

 

[Sketchpad]

This thread led to me googling Fudge last night. Is this thread a secret Game Necromancer's plot?

It's a secret. You'll need Beta-Gamma-Green clearance for an answer.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

It's a secret. You'll need Beta-Gamma-Green clearance for an answer.

That clearance level does not exist, Citizen. Who disclosed its existence to you?

 

[eyeheartawk]

No game can ever truly die given that words on a page (especially ones that have been digitized) can never truly die.

Hell, at a local convention the single most popular living campaign is for DragonQuest and that game is so abandoned the WotC abandoned the trademark.

 

[numtini]

This? Or something else?

Nope, Knights And Berserkers And Legerdemain. A game with absolutely nothing to recommend it that's been out of print for 40 years. I am not sure if that or the two Islandia scenarios by The Companions are the rarest things I own.