1KM1KT Free RPG Community

I prowl the white wolf forums form time to time...being a fan of theirs. There seem to be some belief that gaming is dieing out. While yes sales maybe low, at least here we have the dep..er economic issues to blame. DO you find that there just is no interest in game, that MMORPG's have eaten our fan base?

maybe my near 30ness is to blame, but I don't see anything more the money issues, not interest issues...


thoughts?

I saw this type of too some time ago, but as someone stated: "Let's not forget that gaming happens out in the world, not on these boards."
I don't believe lack of game reports means lack of interest, though I understand how it may seem like that. And whether a game is dying differs greatly if you see it from the publishers' point of view (sales) or the people who plays (of course, free games are probably affected in other ways).

I don't know, maybe it's the folköl that's talking... I'm playing WoW with my girlfriend, and GM:ing a Swords & Wizardry-game with my best friend over Google Docs, and having a blast doing both. Maybe we need more game/session reports (blogs, Obsidian Portal, etc) to show others that those games are still alive?

Well, in true Retro-Style (The 30 year cycle, where culture recycles every 30 years), we are coming into the eighties. If you remember, during the 70's-80's transition, gaming was still underground. This current resurgence of retro-gaming should be the hint. Labyrinth Lord and others like it look like old school D&D. Near the end of this decade, I'd say by 2016 it will pick up again in order to have its Peak in the early 90's. This is when White Wolf was SO POPULAR!

I think it may be a matter of time far more than money or desire.

Take a look at the current slate of council systems, and not the best selling of all is ... the Game Boy. Yes, its evolved from having a monochrome screen to rivaling/surpassing the N64 (Still 2-3 generations behind current mind you) but overall the least advanced of the gaming systems available.

Its two main advantages are price and more importantly - its built for on the go playing. You can play with a hand held for five or ten min on a bus, 20 during a lunch break. Most other systems won't let you make any meaningful progression in that span of time - some Metal Gear cut-scenes are longer than half an hour, other games take five min just to load, and most require you to be at home. You can play on a whim without waiting for others or much in the way of peripherals.

RPGs are essentially the antithesis of the Game Boy ethic. You need a solid block of time in the two to four hour range, mutually shared by three to eight people, and reoccurring multiple times, and not including the prep-time for the GM. Once you have established when everyone is available - how often can you repeat that - RPGs don't really lend themselves to playing a few min here and there, or short sessions in general. Aside from say a one off game of paranoia or AFMBE, most games drag themselves out. So far as I can recall, the only game that made a recommendation for campaign length, was Mekton Zeta - calling to pace you sessions like seasons of an anime. However at 13-26 half hour episodes, that is still 6.5-13 hours of just the game - not allowing for pauses, character creation, or GM preparation.

One of the interesting trends of technological development is that supposed time-savers - don't. Most people chose to get more work done in the same amount of time, rather than the same amount of work in less time. In turn, business expect more from them, and portable computers/phones make it harder to full escape one's occupation.

So we have the motive to kill table top games, and a good list of suspects. The question is do we have the body to say its a murder?

That I'm not so sure of.

This one of the cheaper hobbies to get into if you're not out to buy every book possible. Each of the core D&D books is between 25 and 35 dollars (US), and there are other games where you only need one $25-35 book, plus five or ten dollars worth of dice, and for less than the price of a new video game your set for months. An upturn in interest mite be unlikely, but not unreasonable.

More importantly, these games don't call attention to themselves the way computer gaming does. I don't recall ever seeing a commercial on TV for D&D, or a news cast about people camping out in front of the comic shop like they did for Star Wars prequels. Getting together for gaming is just a bunch of friends meeting, nothing unusual.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the surge of retro-clones is not just about nostalgia, but also because a traditional dungeon crawl is easier to play in short increments than a character drive intrigue? Have a full map and planned encounters, leave a mark where they left off, and so long as the game doesn't end with the room half cleared - you can just unlock the next door at the beginning of the next session.

I'd say the hobby is is still out there. Waiting. Watching. Plotting your downfall. Just the right moment, it will leap from the shadows catching you mid sentence and

so far you just confirming my beliefs, gamers are still there ready for more books....its just money thats the issue

I'm giving a purely UK POV here I admit, but we did a LARP faire last month and we managed to get 300 people from the 5 local cities into one room. This is quite impressive as LARP's in the UK are remarkably factionable and cliquey..

If we did this with Tabletop, our NE England Facebook group has nearly 3000 members. Not bad for a population of about 5 Million (Top end estimate)

A

Well there are certainly attempts out there.... the Twilight RPG is just around the corner (or so I here) and this could lead into other spin off RPG's. Once people get the bug through a prefered setting, then setting can melt away as people expand their horizons.

Lets be honnest, we should be selling RPG like crack dealers do. We know that those who try it will quite probably like it, and then we've got em hooked. So in the words of one dealer of my professional aquaint.....get em young, get em hard, get em hooked.

EL

A similar conversation was taking place in a too.

I don't think videogames will replace tabletop rpgs, as movies will never replace books. Until today, videogames don't give you the freedom that tabletop rpgs give.

Today we see far more rpg titles than ten years ago (in RPGNow there are more than 14 500 products!)

I see the future of rpgs in hands of the independent autors. Now is easier to publish your own books thanks to the distribution of PDFs and the POD technology. The big publishers, like Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf, will see their sales reduced thanks to the independent autors. And with excelent free games like ICAR and now Talislanta (and also thanks to piracy) sales will be reduced even more!

Flattery will get you everywhere, maledictus. Thank you. Now, where do I send the cheque?

The stretch of products for sale is only a technological reflection of what gamers used to do anyway. I am sure that there have been thousands of excellent campaign settings, play resources and homebrews constructed by gamers over the years - all falling to the wayside because they had nowhere to do. Now, with free software and a lot of spare time, you can throw a game of reasonable quality up online and get some dollars in return.

I still think the majority of roleplayers go to a FLGS or Amazon and buy there. What goes on online is still a niche of a niche. For example, most of the people in my player group don't get involved on forums and those that do are pretty much entirely here (Byrn, I am looking at you). It's browsing the FLGS that causes new games to be bought - or word of mouth. I don't think, for example, our player group would go for a game that was bought as a PDF. Except Icar but then I scream unintelligibly and thud a meat cleaver into the table until they sodding well agree to play.