The World of Old-School RPG's is Entering Its Twilight

[Atgxtg]

Sounds like a typical stupid knee-jerk reaction. Where I live, a frew years ago it was discovered that this guy murdered his pregnant wife. So this movement sprang up to ammend the law so that killing a pregnant woman is now two counts of murder. One for the woman and another for the unborn baby.

Not that it actually makes a difference. Anyone who is willing to murder his wife isn't going to let the number of counts stop him. Nor does it make a difference when he gets sentenced. While you can be sentenced to serve multiple life sentences, no one has actually done so.

But somehow people felt like they had done something about the matter and somehow made the world a safer place for expecting mothers.

Violence existed long before we had games, but blaming the games gives people something that they can do to feel better about themselves, and is certainly much easier than looking at the situation, and possibly end up blaming themselves.

Like those cases when school kids go on a shooting spree. A teenager has an AK-47 and two UZi in his room and enough ammo to take down a herd of charging elephants, but somehow Mom and Dad never noticed any of it. Of course they hadn't talked to him or spent any time with him in two years, but it's much easier to find someone else to blame that to actually admit that they are, no were, lousy parents.

[frogspawner]

Originally Posted by rust

... many politicians (including some
important ones) demanded that all games where one plays to kill another human should be declared illegal, not only certain computer games.
This revived an older debate about "war toys" (plastic guns and the like)...

Would they also ban Lego? About the first thing kids (well, boys) make with the stuff is guns or swords...

[rust]

Well, after another killing spree by youngsters even Chess and Lego might
come under some suspicion ...

When the whole nonsense started, they were talking about "Counterstrike"
and "Doom", but then Germany's most influential tabloid added "Final Fanta-
sy" to the list, and the law officially proposed finally included all games whe-
re the player used "cruelty" on, or killed, "humans or human-like creatures"
- which would make for a very, very long list, I think.

The current government has promised to ban all "killer games", and although
the discussion currently has died down somewhat, this promise still stands,
and no one knows where they would draw the line after another bloody in-
cident with kids.

Most experts on child psychology etc. told the politicians that such a law
would be utterly stupid, but our politicians are not exactly famous for liste-
ning to experts ...

But see for yourself how it started:

German gov't considers jail time for gamers - Xbox 360 News at GameSpot

[soltakss]

RPGs have always come and gone. Only the players really care.

Look at RuneQuest - it was King in the early Eighties, then died a death, was kept alive on the internet and then rose again.

People can still support a game through discussion forums and websites, publishing scenarios and background settings. They won't make any money out of it, but that's not important to gamers/fans, only to game publishers.

[Faelan Niall]

Far from it. I think what you are seeing mostly is the demise of poor business models, rather than games. Two games I love disappeared for all intensive purposes for several years, however the online community and some dedicated fans kept it alive, and some actually decided they could do more. Redbrick Limited the publisher for Earthdawn and Fading Suns started as fans, and were motivated enough to push forward and not only reproduce old product, but introduce new high quality product. Their business plan from what I have been able to discern is conservative, realistic, and above all involves very low overhead. Now how does that relate to BRP?

Simply I always loved RQ (not big on Glorantha though), Chthulhu, Nephilim (wish I could have gotten a game going), Elric, and just about anything Chaosium put out. It pleases me to see that BRP is finally moving into the future. The fact is that the old way of doing business in the industry is in fact dead, or in its death throes because it is not profitable. It has moved towards an open system (or rather reasonable licensing), and access to making product for the game has expanded outside the "secret masters". This has also helped to spread risk, increase the number of enthusiasts (promoters who have taken some risk), and will ensure continued play and product.

I guess what I am trying to say is prepare to see more traditional publishers to suffer and fall, and expect those who adapt to this new marketplace to grow. In other words don't worry about your favorite game it won't disappear its just evolving.

[dracopticon]

Well, I've gotten a sad string of thoughts in my brain: is the main problem that paper prints are beginning to get so out of favour with the younger (and much younger) generations, that pen&paper RPGs seem like something out of the dark ages these days? Is everything that isn't an end product online getting jawns as a response? Maybe it's the schools of our western civ that's to blame for this?

Or is it just me and my inherent pessimism?


Erik Brickman.

[rust]

Over here we have several RPGs that started as fan-produced free PDFs on
one of the forums, gathered a small fan community around themselves, and
then appeared as semi-commercial products in print, too.

It seems that PDFs are often just a good way to "test the waters" and find
out whether it would be worth the trouble (and especially the money ...) to
publish an RPG in print. Besides, the feedback received for the PDF is a way
to get "free playtesting" for a potential future product.

[raymond_turney]

As a guy who remembers that he was not too happy in the late 1970's and early 1980's, it is hard for me to get into the frame of mind to appreciate this thread.

Yes, the old way of doing things is dying, but a more dispersed system based mostly on PDF's is not exactly a disaster. PDF's are cheaper. If a game becomes popular enough, low cost print on demand makes small print runs attractive as a sideline business, so someone will print copies on demand. From a strictly consumer viewpoint, it is hard to bemoan the replacement of TSR and Gary Gygax by a combination of WoW and a lot of internet based independent gaming outfits.

While we are nostalgic for the old days when we were first discovering RuneQuest, the reality is that there was a lot of ill considered divination to the Great God Gygax in the old days. RQ I was impressive for its day, but it is now apparent that it was not that good.

WoW is a pretty good substitute for hack and slash D&D or Runequest. The graphics are good, and if the social interaction is not impressive, that's not a big change from the old days. MMORG's may yet evolve to offer a richer experience.

Let's not kid ourselves. As the Buddha taught, everything is impermanent. It is easy to remember the old days as better than they were. We were in good physical shape, experiencing less back and foot pain than we do now. If we went to an all night game at a convention, we would recover by Monday. We were making exciting new mistakes {at least they were new to us} instead of boring old mistakes. But we've learned something, the games are better, and things are slowly getting better.

Soon enough, we will be dead, and some guy will be bemoaning how things were better in the good old days of World of Warcraft. Let's get on with life.

[Puck]

In my little corner of the world role-playing seems stronger than ever. For years I never heard my student talk about games. Suddenly after the LotR movies I started seeing role-playing book come out during their reading time. There are two game stores in the area and they each have games going, one almost every night of the week. The problem is that most of it is D+D or white wolf. It has proven harder than I thought it would be to switch them over to d100 type games. I ran a few Runequest adventures and they thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. A few months later they were back to D+D.

[CruelDespot]

In my little corner of the world role-playing seems stronger than ever

What corner of the world is that?