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Worlds of Design: Making an Adventure “Believable”
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<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 8669544" data-attributes="member: 22779"><p>I think a lot of it has to do with a few factors.</p><p></p><p>1. Highly complex, tactical RPG's are hard to run. They are. They wouldn't be highly complex if they were easy to run. And, I think a lot of people just don't have the time necessary to play these kinds of games. I know, I've certainly played my share. Heck, I've played a lot of the games on that list of yours, although I've always been largely a D&D player. But, at the end of the day, it's a lot easier to dump all that complexity into a turn based computer game or go full on tabletop wargame. Trying to do both has largely become far too time consuming for a lot of people. </p><p></p><p>2. Fantasy especially has radically changed. The Golden Age stories have been replaced by these doorstopper fantasy books where you have fantastic people doing fantastic things. Imagine if your formative fantasy stories are Harry Potter, for example. Unlike us, growing up on Conan and Lord of the Rings, we have a setting and stories that are very much full on fantastical. Never minding growing up on things like Pokemon or Magic the Gathering or various other properties. For a lot of people, their go to baseline for fantasy isn't Howard or Tolkein, but, Rowlings or Pratchett. </p><p></p><p>3. The genre is just so much broader now. Think about it this way. Go back 20 years (or so) and Steampunk didn't exist. Certainly not when I was growing up in the 70's and 80's. Clockwork robots and steam cannons? WTF? Never minding all the Post-humanist science fiction of the last couple of decades. Again, it's a reflection of the genre in general. If you were a genre fan in the 80's, like us, your exposure to SF&F was limited to your local library, a bookstore or two and a couple of movies once every few years. Maybe a TV show or two? Now, you can watch SF&F, read nothing but SF&F and still not even make the slightest dent in the sheer volume of material coming out every year. Most of it is crap, sure, but, that's always been true. And, it has allowed for genre fans to become fans of specific parts of the genre. Which, in a knock on effect, has allowed RPG's to become more and more specialized to tastes. </p><p></p><p>Think of the five biggest fantasy movies before, say 1990 that you remember seeing. Now, compare those to the biggest fantasy movies of the past three years. Marvel, Harry Potter, Witcher, so on and so forth. Giant, bombastic, stories that place a giant F on Fantastic and a really, really small r on realism. RPG's are just reflecting that.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 8669544, member: 22779"] I think a lot of it has to do with a few factors. 1. Highly complex, tactical RPG's are hard to run. They are. They wouldn't be highly complex if they were easy to run. And, I think a lot of people just don't have the time necessary to play these kinds of games. I know, I've certainly played my share. Heck, I've played a lot of the games on that list of yours, although I've always been largely a D&D player. But, at the end of the day, it's a lot easier to dump all that complexity into a turn based computer game or go full on tabletop wargame. Trying to do both has largely become far too time consuming for a lot of people. 2. Fantasy especially has radically changed. The Golden Age stories have been replaced by these doorstopper fantasy books where you have fantastic people doing fantastic things. Imagine if your formative fantasy stories are Harry Potter, for example. Unlike us, growing up on Conan and Lord of the Rings, we have a setting and stories that are very much full on fantastical. Never minding growing up on things like Pokemon or Magic the Gathering or various other properties. For a lot of people, their go to baseline for fantasy isn't Howard or Tolkein, but, Rowlings or Pratchett. 3. The genre is just so much broader now. Think about it this way. Go back 20 years (or so) and Steampunk didn't exist. Certainly not when I was growing up in the 70's and 80's. Clockwork robots and steam cannons? WTF? Never minding all the Post-humanist science fiction of the last couple of decades. Again, it's a reflection of the genre in general. If you were a genre fan in the 80's, like us, your exposure to SF&F was limited to your local library, a bookstore or two and a couple of movies once every few years. Maybe a TV show or two? Now, you can watch SF&F, read nothing but SF&F and still not even make the slightest dent in the sheer volume of material coming out every year. Most of it is crap, sure, but, that's always been true. And, it has allowed for genre fans to become fans of specific parts of the genre. Which, in a knock on effect, has allowed RPG's to become more and more specialized to tastes. Think of the five biggest fantasy movies before, say 1990 that you remember seeing. Now, compare those to the biggest fantasy movies of the past three years. Marvel, Harry Potter, Witcher, so on and so forth. Giant, bombastic, stories that place a giant F on Fantastic and a really, really small r on realism. RPG's are just reflecting that. [/QUOTE]
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