Worlds of Design: What the Future Holds for RPGs - Part 1

This is approximately the 100th “Worlds of Design” column, so a good time to consider the future of role-playing games. In this column I’ll talk about the connection with computers, and in Part 2 I’ll talk about actual play and about the economics of the hobby.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“Study the past if you would define the future.” - Confucius

Even self-proclaimed “Futurists” and science fiction authors have weak track records in forecasting the future, and I’m neither! I have no crystal ball other than a strong understanding of history. But I thought a discussion of the future of tabletop RPGs might interest readers.

The Rise of Technology​

The obvious way to “forecast” the future is to extrapolate current trends, and that’s what I’ll try to do. The biggest predictor, in my experience, is what’s happening in video/computer RPGs. Technology in general can be a predictor. And now we have the long-term effects of the pandemic.

RPGs will be played as long as the real world holds itself together, though I think gradually computers will overtake tabletop RPGs, not because they're better but because they're easier and more convenient. Being a good GM of a tabletop RPG is difficult, and for most people it's a form of work, work they accept in order to entertain their friends, or perhaps for other personal reasons. As computers become more powerful and computer programming improves, a computer can take on more and more of the work required of a really good RPG GM.

Perhaps computer assistance is the wave of the future, but I suspect in most cases it will be "let's play this cooperative RPG or this MMO" on computers, rather than "let's use computer assistance for tabletop games."

Computer/electronic assistance is already around today. I watched a few minutes of an in-person RPG session earlier this year, and saw that most of the players were referring to their smartphones. That can be a problem in general in face-to-face play, but in this case they had their character sheets on their phones, none of them had a paper character sheet.

At the other extreme, online rather than face-to-face play, many programs exist to help make playing a tabletop RPG online more practical.

A Matter of Convenience​

Convenience will continue to be a strong incentive. Check out GoDice (GoDice | Incredibly Smart Connected Dice For Any Game!), for example, which (among other things) transmit the results of your rolls to a smartphone.

The visual side (aids to the imagination) will continue to improve, as well. There are already lots of 3D printed character and monster figures for sale online, even 3D printed dice towers.

I’ve suggested that imagination is atrophying in the population at large, a trend we can expect to continue. This makes visual aids all the more important for tabletop games, as the alternative is the photo-realism of AAA list video games.

Keep in mind, computer RPGs themselves are immensely more popular than tabletops, even with the rise of D&D 5th edition. To pick out just one CRPG, Skyrim had made $1.4 billion (with a “b”) worldwide and counting several years after its 2011 release ($450 million in its first week). This is far more revenue than all tabletop RPGs for the past decade and more. Tabletop RPGs are a minnow in the game industry in dollar terms (as Morrus explains periodically from ICV2 USA statistics), $80 million (2019) for tabletop RPGs (US only), but not so long ago (before D&D 5e) it was just $15m for a year.

Moreover, playing tabletop RPGs via online connection was a growing thing even before the pandemic; as the connections grow faster and more common, both visual as well as audible, surely this will continue to grow, especially because of the effects of the pandemic.

Co-op games are a big thing in board and card games, and to a lesser extent in video games. RPGs are the ultimate form of co-op, a game with human-controlled opposition. (See my column “Tabletop RPGs are the most naturally cooperative games”).

Tabletop RPGs have the social aspect in their favor that you can't get with computer RPGs, even MMOs. Many of my friends have been D&D players. I met my wife through D&D in 1977, and in that group of five, two others (who were not in a relationship when we started playing D&D) married one another, and the last one married my wife's best friend! And we're all still married to one another. You can't beat that!

But online/computer RPGs are improving communication among players just as the players are more and more accustomed to playing a game when they’re the only person actually present. And many are more accustomed to doing things online as the pandemic has forced them to work from home.

Your Turn: How much do you play video games?

 

[Blue]

I wonder about how the lines will blur in the future. With smart phones being ubiquitous, I already see character sheets in apps and dice rollers. What about for games that actually relied on those?

Would you play an RPG that had a complicated resolution mechanic (say, a step or two up from Edge of the Empire with it's four types of custom dice), but had a free app that could do all the randomization resolution for you? (And potentially also was a SRD-type handy reference as well, or character builder, or whatever.)

How about the next step - where phone in proximity actually are interacting with the app on the DM's phone allowing for quick resolution of things that sometimes are more time consuming. Say a complex Initiative system, or more likely something we don't think about because it's not easy to do manually.

 

[R_Chance]

I am not playing a lot of anything right now. My classes have all gone virtual and teaching takes far more time as a result. Everything in the classes has to be converted / changed/ redone to fit the virtual format. It's Christmas break and I just finished replying to e-mails from three students. I have a grading stack and it just goes on... the only thing missing is the Zoom sessions.

I am not playing computer games, because when I sit in front of the computer work crops up. I'm on EN World between work stuff, on vacation, and I feel like I'm playing hooky. I am spending more time prepping for TTRPGs, but again, that happens on the PC and work sneaks in. And, of course, face to face play is out right now. VTTs just don't seem that attractive. Although that may change...

I suspect it will be summer before I get in any serious amount of game playing time on either computer or face to face fronts. One up side of being old (other than it beating the dirt nap alternative) is retirement is coming and I plan on doing a significant amount of gaming

 

[schneeland]

I basically stopped playing video games a few years back, not because I don't like them, but at least the ones I like require some longer stretches of uninterrupted time, and that's hard to find these days. Once in a while, I will launch up an indie game or maybe buy the newest Uncharted title, but other than that, my GPU mostly sits idle.

I do play TTRPGs regularly, both as a GM in a PbM campaign and as a player in a semi-regular online game (Discord audio + Owlbear Rodeo). However, in a similar way, I have parted with the rules-heavy and even rules-medium games, and now pretty much exclusively play more light-weight stuff (Powered by the Apocalypse, Year Zero, OSR). I will start playing 5e again next spring, but that is mostly because of the people and because I don't have to run the game. If I were to run a D&D game these days, it would most probably be B/X D&D (in the form of Old-School Essentials).

 

[aramis erak]

Even self-proclaimed “Futurists” and science fiction authors have weak track records in forecasting the future, and I’m neither! I have no crystal ball other than a strong understanding of history. But I thought a discussion of the future of tabletop RPGs might interest readers.

The Rise of Technology​

The obvious way to “forecast” the future is to extrapolate current trends, and that’s what I’ll try to do. The biggest predictor, in my experience, is what’s happening in video/computer RPGs. Technology in general can be a predictor. And now we have the long-term effects of the pandemic.

RPGs will be played as long as the real world holds itself together, though I think gradually computers will overtake tabletop RPGs, not because they're better but because they're easier and more convenient. Being a good GM of a tabletop RPG is difficult, and for most people it's a form of work, work they accept in order to entertain their friends, or perhaps for other personal reasons.

Nay-sayers were saying TTRPGs were doomed in the 1990's. They were not only wrong, but dead wrong; the hobby is larger than ever. (More copies of D&D 5E cores than any prior edition, and supposedly, all prior editions combined. If that wasn't a WotC exaggeration, then it means at least 2 million units sold. 5E PHB was on Amazon's top-100 books selling list (not games, but of all books) for multiple years.

People have been saying computer aided gaming is going to displace analogue-only. So far, that's in error too.

If you think computer moderated games (games where the computer is the GM) will takeover before true AI arrives, I think you're wrong. Sure, some pretty sophisticated stuff has been done in interactive fiction, but it's not even close to a suitable GM replacement. Automated tables have been a thing for literally decades, but they aren't nearly as widely used as they could be; many, including the teens and 20-somethings I've been GMing for seem to prefer me not having tech at the table except for maps. And I prefer they don't have their phones out during game, too.

Many of the kids new to it love the LACK of automation; it's a selling point, not a drawback.

To quote my eldest (now adult) child, "Calculators, yes. Computers at the table? F*** No!"

 

[Campbell]

So this is the year where I decided I hated Virtual Tabletops. I like seeing the people I play with and having a conversation about what's happening in the game. I can stomach battle maps in person, but in online play it's too much for me.

- Millennial Software Engineer

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

We have to remember one thing about online videogames. You can't use pause to stop the game because the doorbell or the phone rings.

I imagine tabletop games where the paper character sheets are replaced with tablets. Theses will be an added tool like the dices. I guess we will see solo miniature boardgames where an app in the tablet will be the AI what controlls the nPCs and the interaction with the enviroiment (for example the hidden doors and traps). But this app only will show, the player will controll all, allowing to use your own house rules. These app also will allow to add "modules", for example for skimishes combats, mass battles, or managing a stonghold, but not being too slow.

The youngest generations are getting used with the tablets, and then the tablet videogames will replace the mobile ones, because these are too small screens.

Other theory is the future ultrathin and flexible A3(double page size) screens will change the literalry market, and the comics. Reading PDFs with these flexible tablets will be more confortable what with those heavy corebooks. Then buying PDFs will be as easy as getting new skins in Fortnite. This will help 3PPs to make money selling their PDFs.

In the past I though the future of videogames would be with the NFC figures, but this ended, and now I can't safe it. One hypotesis is the merchandice would be to buy physical objects, for example figures, and these will gifts PDFs, or skins for videogame characters.

 

[practicalm]

Playing a lot of strategy games like Stellaris, Crusader Kings 3 and CIV (5&6) and a few mobile games.
And a lot of virtual tabletop games (Acquire, Root, Here I Stand, and Pax Pamir and more)

Enjoying my RPG games but I like a nice mix.

 

[Hussar]

Given the explosion of games like 7 Days to Die and Minecraft, I'm staggered to think that co-operative gaming is seen as a sideline in computer games. Never minding games like Fortnight and other battle royale games where team play is paramount. What we're seeing in computer games is strong move away from solo play.

Heck, look at our most recent explosion "Among Us". There's a game that's impossible to play without a group of living players.

 

[aramis erak]

Given the explosion of games like 7 Days to Die and Minecraft, I'm staggered to think that co-operative gaming is seen as a sideline in computer games. Never minding games like Fortnight and other battle royale games where team play is paramount. What we're seeing in computer games is strong move away from solo play.

Heck, look at our most recent explosion "Among Us". There's a game that's impossible to play without a group of living players.

Hyrule Warriors plays much better with 2 than 1, too.
But it's still not RPG-ish.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

RPGs are the ultimate form of co-op, a game with human-controlled opposition.

Worth noting that this can be done in videogames as well - i.e. co-op and PvP at the same time, and has been done a few times, with variable levels of success. The most successful approach so far is a videogame which I think hits a number of your points - Left 4 Dead.

Left 4 Dead is a first-person zombie-survival game, where four players play survivors, and attempt to get through a zombie-infested level to some kind of escape point. One interesting this is that it uses an "AI Director". This is the equivalent of a DM/GM/Storyteller in RPGs. The AI Director basically moderates what zombies are spawned, how many, and where, intentionally creating lulls and creepy periods and also really wild and overwhelming rushes and so on, and pays attention to the resources the players have and so on. And it's very good at it. It makes the game vastly more exciting and involving than similar games with "standard" or just "randomized" enemies.

That came out in 2008, too, so could no doubt be done better now.

But that's not all, on top of all that you can have some of the zombies played by other players too, who are cooperating with each other to fight the people playing the survivors (I believe the AI director will determine what zombies are available to them to play, and when). So you have a combination of co-op and PvP, with an AI Director (AI DM) up in the mix as well.

Few games have done similar, but the potential remains (indeed, a spiritual sequel is being developed right now), and I'd be very unsurprised to see something like this in the further future.

I'd also note that few computer games displace TT RPGs, because they're such a different experience, but Left 4 Dead, was, for us, one of the the few that, for a while, did, because it fit into such a similar space. In the same time as an RPG session, you could cooperatively play a few levels of L4D, and you got a similar thrill to some RPGs - that of flowing cooperation against a hostile environment (which is very different to MMORPGs, for example). Mass Effect 3's Multiplayer was somewhat similar (though not as clever) and similarly potentially displaced TT RPGs. It's not a full replacement - without NPCs to argue with, without chances to actually roleplay, without problems to solve with your mind that don't involve shooting zombies or the like, y'know, there's a limit. But I could see a much broader, physics-heavy, fantasy-set L4D-type game potentially displacing some TT RPGs for a lot of people. Only some though - the more mechanics/combat-focused ones like D&D would be the most vulnerable, and stuff like PtbA would be far less vulnerable.