What does it take for an RPG to die?

[chuckdee]

Rolemaster 2 100%. Accept no substitutes. RMSS adds a heap more complexity for little reason, and all subsequent editions appear to have been poisoned by the need to somehow merge the different threads together. RM2 is also the closest to MERP itself, you could very easily just take MERP and add the additional spells from Spell Law and the additional attack and crit tables from Arms Law as you saw fit.

I'm with you on it, but not that RMSS doesn't add anything for a reason. Training and character creation is easier to grasp in RM2 for non-RM players in my experience.

 

[MichaelSomething]

4E is dead.

 

[Distracted DM]

That's really too bad. I've never seen art as all that important.

I think it's important to inspiration, and selling/translating the fantasy/fiction/narrative that the game is trying to embody. This CAN be done through other modes, like through writing passages or scenes from in the world of the game like World of Darkness or MCDM's supplement books, buuut "a picture is worth a thousand words" really does translate here.

 

[Autumnal]

4E is dead.

It is not. What’s happened is that edition haters have convinced most people still playing it to never discuss it anywhere but 4e-specific venues, because the folks who like it are nearly all long since exhausted and discouraged by the same damn edition wars over and over and over and over and over and OVER again. But they’re not discouraged about the game, just the incredibly boring perpetual argument. So they claim up where others can see it and go on having a good time with it.

Heck, some of the edition’s hardier fans even talk about it here. But

 

[soviet]

4E will never die. Even after the last books have been purged and the last fans have been cowed into silence, it will continue to live rent-free in the heads of its detractors.

 

[Autumnal]

Go home, Tzeench, you’re drunk.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I think it's important to inspiration, and selling/translating the fantasy/fiction/narrative that the game is trying to embody. This CAN be done through other modes, like through writing passages or scenes from in the world of the game like World of Darkness or MCDM's supplement books, buuut "a picture is worth a thousand words" really does translate here.

The only thing less important than interior art is in-setting fiction.

 

[dragoner]

In stranger eons, even death may die.

 

[Distracted DM]

The only thing less important than interior art is in-setting fiction.

I'm sorry that you don't find the art worthwhile.

 

[GrimCo]

Skimmed trough topic, so some points might already be said. This is all from perspective of someone who doesn't do online play with complete strangers.

I don't think that games can truly die since it's high probability that from 8 bilion people on Earth, there are few people still playing any given rpg, no matter how obscure. So, there is alive in very technical sense.

In practical sense, how alive game is relates to how hard it is to find people wiling to play it. While some game might have very vibrant online community, if i can't find group to play it in my town, it same as being dead. But if one can't even find online game, then it's truly dead, for all intents and purposes.

Other criteria is that it's near impossible to find material for game, even scans on high seas of internet.

Game i would call dead by my standards, is Window 1st edition. Most people never heard of it, even less people i know tried it, rules are hard to find online.