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

[badcat]

Bite your tongue about the depression stuff, it's depressing.

But...

You have a point. The basis of a lot of rpgs, pulp fiction, had it's heyday during the great depression, for the very reasons you cite. Cheap entertainment. And of course, that is how stuff like Conan and Tarzan became known as pulp fiction, the cheap paper the magazines were printed on. Silver linings, huh?

[Trifletraxor]

I totally disagree with this thread. I started playing RuneQuest around 1994, and while we had plenty of supplements in the start, it soon ran dry. We've had to generate scenarios for about 10 years now, and suddenly the market fills up with BRP stuff. As I said in one of the other threads, this is a new golden age, not the twilight of BRP.

SGL.

[badcat]

Sorry, but I sincerely doubt it.

I think it's going to fall flat on its face.

[Trifletraxor]

Originally Posted by badcat

Sorry, but I sincerely doubt it.

I think it's going to fall flat on its face.

We'll see, we'll see. I still have more scenarios now than I ever had before. Before, BRP was pretty much a dead system unless you liked to play CoC characters about to be killed. Now, I have lots of stuff to work from.

SGL.

[seneschal]

One of the major differences I see between older and newer gamers is that older gamers are readers. The early D&D and Traveller players could handle rulebooks hundreds of pages long because they'd enjoyed the works of Tolkien, Lewis, Moorcock, Asimov, Anderson, Wells, Verne, etc. Most early games were based on favorite literary genres: fantasy, sci fi, westerns, espionage. Younger gamers prefer TV and iPods to books and tend to gravitate toward card, miniatures, and electronic games that require much less reading, preparation and (dare I say it?) imagination. When they do play pen and paper RPGs, they tend to prefer games based on movies, comics and other pop cultural influences rather than on lengthy traditional novels. And they tend to be drawn towards rules-light systems rather than old-school systems that require either 1,001 charts or a Cray computer to calculate stats (can't say that I blame 'em).

So to make an admittedly unforgivable series of generalizations ... older gamers play Runequest (bulky manuals, 50 kinds of dice); younger gamers play Runescape (Internet connection and credit card). Younger gamers play Resident Evil (DVD or Xbox required); older gamers play Call of Cthulhu (vocabulary required). Older gamers play Boot Hill; younger gamers blink and say, "Sam Houston who? Was he named after that city in Texas?" Older gamers play Champions; younger gamers play Hero Clix.

I agree with previous posters who insist we must attract younger players for the hobby to survive. And we must attract younger people to reading in general. Hmmm, maybe those rolling electric blackouts aren't completely a bad thing.

[badcat]

Hope you are right, Trifletraxor.

I don't have any idea how to attract kids to ANYTHING that isn't the easiest, latest thing most of their friends are into. Besides, traditional rpgs require a little skull sweat. I-pods and such don't. It's what they have grown up with.

Too bad, really.

[pdboddy]

I don't think the "old-school" rpgs are entering their twilight. The whole industry is currently 30ish years old, closing in on 40. The death of the hobby and industry has been forecast before, yet it's still alive after the trading card phase, the "rpg games are evil" phase (okay, that was aimed mostly at D&D, but still...), and the clix phase.

I do think that the industry has to evolve and change in order to accommodate the new, younger people interested in trying it out. Some will be perfectly happy with the "new-school" rpgs, while others will venture on and try out the older ones that have been around for a while. This will force any company who wishes to stay afloat to adapt. Those that can adapt will survive, those that don't, will die off.

[Shiba Homer]

Originally Posted by pdboddy

I don't think the "old-school" rpgs are entering their twilight. The whole industry is currently 30ish years old, closing in on 40. The death of the hobby and industry has been forecast before, yet it's still alive after the trading card phase, the "rpg games are evil" phase (okay, that was aimed mostly at D&D, but still...), and the clix phase.

I do think that the industry has to evolve and change in order to accommodate the new, younger people interested in trying it out. Some will be perfectly happy with the "new-school" rpgs, while others will venture on and try out the older ones that have been around for a while. This will force any company who wishes to stay afloat to adapt. Those that can adapt will survive, those that don't, will die off.

Adapt and survive or duck and roll?

[frogspawner]

With any luck, the major changes in the upcoming 4th Edition will divide loyalty for D&D, and players will look for a system that's more consistent... BRP.

[rust]

Yep, and the more I read about D&D 4.0, the less I see it as a direct compe-
tition for BRP.
To me it seems that D&D 4.0 is going in the direction of a tabletop-like "roll-
playing" game with some RPG elements, but without much role-playing capa-
bility.