What does it take for an RPG to die?

[Thomas Shey]

licensed games come to mind.

I was thinking of The Black Company setting from Green Ronin, not a whole game, alas. Out of print, out of license, and can’t get any legit PDFs. If you know it’s publication history it had an unfortunate troubled beginning and was probably already dying through no fault of the game itself.

But I thought of other licensed games like the 007 game or the Ghostbusters game. The old Star Wars d6 game had a bit of a revival, at least in availability.

Do games based upon an IP that has gone on to live in other systems count? Like Star Wars?

This lead me to look up Stormbringer and now I need to take a look at Mournboade.

There's also the question of licensed games that have had their systems revived or retrocloned (I believe that applies respectively to your first two examples).

 

[Thomas Shey]

To be a licensed game after the license has ended or been revoked. And even that doesn't kill the game, what with 3pp, homebrew, secondary market, and "creative" downloading.

The latter is also an interesting question; I know the WEG Star Wars game existed in, essentially, black market form well after it stopped any legal publication.

 

[Micah Sweet]

licensed games come to mind.

I was thinking of The Black Company setting from Green Ronin, not a whole game, alas. Out of print, out of license, and can’t get any legit PDFs. If you know it’s publication history it had an unfortunate troubled beginning and was probably already dying through no fault of the game itself.

But I thought of other licensed games like the 007 game or the Ghostbusters game. The old Star Wars d6 game had a bit of a revival, at least in availability.

Do games based upon an IP that has gone on to live in other systems count? Like Star Wars?

This lead me to look up Stormbringer and now I need to take a look at Mournboade.

If it's a different system, I consider it a different game, even with the same IP.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The latter is also an interesting question; I know the WEG Star Wars game existed in, essentially, black market form well after it stopped any legal publication.

To me that certainly still counts.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The moves driven by political correctness? Yes, but not because they're unpopular with the majority of the fanbase — but because a few wealthy fans are pissed by it and considering buying HasBro or just WotC to stop it.

Mod Note:

What made you think this was OK?

Everyone: drop this line of discussion.

 

[Autumnal]

It’s possible that “dead” is just plain a wrong word, because games aren’t organisms. They’re communities. Extinction can happen, but it’s rare. What happens more often is isolation, where the existing population of fans seldom if ever interacts with anyone else and almost nobody stumbles into the communities from outside.

So there’s a progression from being an active part of larger ecosystems of people playing and talking about games to being increasingly withdrawn to being primarily murmurs of folklore to being unseen and unheard-from except when some makes a deliberate effort to find it. I doubt that in the wake of the work by folks like Jon Peterson there are very many truly disappeared game communities, but near-total isolation is definitely a thing.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

This lead me to look up Stormbringer and now I need to take a look at Mournboade.

You probably should, yes.

It's a pipe dream, but the sudden return of Elfquest has me vaguely hopeful that Chaosium will randomly decide to talk Larry Niven into a license again and release an updated and expanded Ringworld that doesn't end - what, two books into the series? Or better yet, a Known Space RPG that covers the whole of his work's main setting. Not likely that there are enough Niven readers at this point to begin to justify it, but one can dream.

 

[MGibster]

It’s possible that “dead” is just plain a wrong word, because games aren’t organisms. They’re communities. Extinction can happen, but it’s rare. What happens more often is isolation, where the existing population of fans seldom if ever interacts with anyone else and almost nobody stumbles into the communities from outside.

You guys are familiar with idioms, right? Dead air isn't literally air that's dead, it's when a radio station's signal is working but nothing is being broadcast. A language that's dead didn't literally die, because as you point out, it's not an organism, but it has a meaning other than the literal interpretation of the words. I'm not an expert on languages, but I'm pretty sure virtually all of them have idioms.

 

[Sacrosanct]

These conversations always remind me of the Anointment Trial episodes of the original Thundercats, where Lion-O meets Maftet. A dying god because no one worships him any longer. RPGs are kinda like that. It's dead when no one plays them anymore.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You guys are familiar with idioms, right?

This is the internet, so no.