What Genre Do You Wish Inaugurated TTRPGs?

[overgeeked]

So many good options. New Wave sci-fi. Science fantasy. Space opera. Pulp heroes. Superheroes. I prefer all those genres to fantasy.

 

[aramis erak]

Traveller and Sci-Fi was it for me. Id love if it sat in the D&D throne, but im still able to have great games and products out of it.

Star Trek, specifically, for me. Tho' if one knows their traveller, the my avvie is a colorized version of the MT starburst... which highlights that it's a map of the Rebellion in IY 1118 or so.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I can't think of an alternative genre that I'd obviously prefer to sword and sorcery fantasy as the original seed of TTRPGs[1]. I'd rate the comic-book superhero genre as maybe just as good but not obviously better. Science fiction or two-fisted pulp might have been almost as good, but only almost.

The "sorcery" part of sword & sorcery turned out (IMHO) to be a "CRITICAL, NEED TO HAVE FEATURE!" for RPGs. Genres without magic or some just-as-good equivalent seem to be a lot less popular. (At least among players; I've heard a lot more about GMs wishing that players were more interested in playing low/no magic settings than about players wishing that GMs were more interested in running them.)

[1] Insert "Get off my lawn" rant about having to specify "Table Top." They ought to be just "Roleplaying Games (RPGs)," the unmarked form, with computer, on-line, live action, etc. being the variants that require a distinguishing mark.

 

[Reynard]

[1] Insert "Get off my lawn" rant about having to specify "Table Top." They ought to be just "Roleplaying Games (RPGs)," the unmarked form, with computer, on-line, live action, etc. being the variants that require a distinguishing mark.

I only do it here out of habit for Google searches. If you don't specify on a search you end up down a video game rabbit hole.

 

[cranberry]

Pure sci-fi. (e.g. Star Frontiers)

I'm not a fan of mixing sci-fi and fantasy like Star Wars or Starfinder.

 

[TheSword]

D&D High Fantasy
Grim Dark Fantasy
Pulp Fantasy
Grim Dark Futuristic

Probably in that order. Heavily influenced by D&D and Warhammer. Film and TV

 

[Aldarc]

Science-Fantasy, the era before purists insisted on keeping science-fiction and fantasy as separate genres.

 

[payn]

Science-Fantasy, the era before purists insisted on keeping science-fiction and fantasy as separate genres.

 

[KYRON45]

Slipstream meta-fiction.

Did you just make that up?!?!?!

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

For my part, I think it would be a much better world if TTRPGs had emerged out comic book superheroes. 1970 is often considered the start of the Bronze age, so by the mid-70s the more "mature" themes compared to the Silver age had taken root. Especially at Marvel, scowling heroes were all the rage, but even DC was experimenting in that direction. So mid 70s comics had all the compneents necessary for compelling roleplaying aimed at adolescents and young adults. I think a start in superheroes would have endowed the early industry with a broader appetitie for genres and made coloring outside the lines more the rule than the exception.

I've said this before in some older thread I'm not going to hunt up now, but a "supers first" timeline where the actual publisher was Marvel or DC would have been a fascinating alt-universe. Imagine a scenario where someone in the bullpen came up with some simple rules as a creative writing tool, got his fellow creators in on the idea, and things reached the point where management decided to try printing the equivalent to OD&D in a comic book format and it took off. You could have almost endless room for single-issue rules supplements and one shot adventures, with longer story arcs as miniseries, and even campaigns as ongoing series with the odd crossovers between them - and of course there's room for other genres to get their own games as comic reading trends come and go (eg kung fu, horror, more pure scifi and fantasy, etc.). And you can pull comic readers into roleplaying (and roleplayers into comics) by doing books that are part comic, part game. Just the change in marketing and release format would have had a huge impact on the industry as it evolved, although at some point I'd expect a shift toward larger, sturdier printing formats like magazine and trade paperbacks collecting old "floppy" format rules. Boxed sets might be a very long time coming, and perhaps become a hallmark of "indie" publishers who aren't part of the comics industry at all.

Of course, you might also trigger another witch hunt like the one that Wertham shilled for, and you might have trouble dealing with the CCA (still meaningful in the 970s) unless you kept you games output segregated as "for adults" so that's a potential issue. Don't need the Satanic Panic happening a decade early, it was hard enough to survive already.