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

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by raymond_turney

.....
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.

As usual, lots of wisdom in Ray's post. I'm only going to comment on the end, but I agree with most of what Ray typed. About the only disagreement I have is that PDF's are cheap. They are cheap to buy, but end up costing more once you factor in the cost to print. But otherwise I agree with you.

I recall something I saw on TV awhile back, where they showed letters written by people from the 1950s. Most of it was the older people complaining about how the youth had no respect, how morals were disappearing, how violence had escalated, how costs had gone up and so forth. Letters from younger people had comments about how they old folks were stuck in their ways, and wouldn't accept change or progress.


Then they showed letters from 1900., 1850s and so forth,, and they were all remarkably similar. They even pulled out stuff from ancient Rome that read about the same.


So a lot of this is "thing were better in my younger days".

I remember back in the 80s how a good 75% of the stuff on the shelves was by TSR, and of no use to me since I played the other RPGs. I see more support for other games now, either on the shelves or on the net, then there was back in the "good old days". I remember being one of the lucky two who managed to pick up a copy of Timelords and Ars Magica-back in the days when if you didn't see it on the shelf, you would never know it existed.

Now, we can search catalogs and check the internet, even go to company websites and get errata, freebies, and fan produced stuff.

Just look at this site. We've got over 20 files available for download to support an RPG than hasn't even come out yet. We couldn't do that 20 years ago. It wasn't around when I was surfing the net on Compuserve paying by the hour for internet access.

So we really haven't had it so good. Especially in the light of how many "dead" RPGs seem to be making a comeback in one form or another, and the ability to find old games online.

[Puck]

What corner of the world is that?

The western middle coast of Michigan. There seems to be little covens of gaming groups hidden all over. Some of my students have learned about gaming from their fathers. Perhaps one of the big reasons it has taken off here is that there are several gaming stores that offer role-playing right in the store during weeknights (weekends are for magic and warhammer which makes the stores much more money). As I stated earlier these games are usually d+d though. There are a lot of small communities around here and nothing much to do for the kids so these stores offer a lot. The problem is the stores are always really struggling to survive. They cannot make much money on role-playing as they always have to compete with Amazon and other internet companies that have bigger markets and no overhead. They generally cannot carry many other games other than d+d because they tend to sit on the shelves or gather in the sale bins.

On another note I wish someone would set up a role-player retirement home somewhere. It would be nice to know that we could spend our twilight years sitting around and role-playing rather than playing bridge or shuffleboard. That kind of thing would cause me to buy some years and retire early.

[Ars Mysteriorum]

Originally Posted by 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.

Allow me to elucidate with my perspective.

I never saw the 70's, I was born in 1982. I started playing RPG's in the 90's in the age of White Wolf's birth and AD&D 2E. I only was exposed to the newest of games (The new White Wolf games, D&D 3E, Exalted, etc) until a few years ago. In 2006 I started buying older games. I was tired of D&D 3E limited expression. I disliked the new White Wolf, not for its nice core (which is simple, very playable, and rather clever... save for the morality system), but for its supplement games (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, etc.), which required every player to own and know the books in order to reduce the amount of time spent passing around a book for reference. Mage especially, the spell system and list, while very evocative of the setting, is terribly cumbersome.

Exalted. I refuse to even begin to talk about Exalted, lest I be placed on blood pressure medicine by the age of 26.

My friends that I grew up gaming with love MMORPG's and are in their mid-twenties. They think they're cool. I don't. I saw one and was perplexed as to how it was a game (which are fun). Most of the people I noticed speaking via the in-game voice-chat were unkind and criticized each other harshly. It sounded more like a childish pissing contest (forgive my language, but it simply did) than a game. I grew tired of attempting to play traditional RPG's with these friends due to their sheerly tactical perspective of gaming (which included reference to their characters as "toons"). This was no longer roleplaying at all, but rather a waste of time. I have no idea why I worried about planning a story any longer, simply giving them masses of inexplicably present monsters followed by powerful weapons, armor, and gold seemed all they cared about. It was sad for me, because I had had my best and most imaginative games with these same friends in my youth.

I think today's gamers no longer care about stories. My experiences have only shown me that the gaming trend is best served by thinking in terms of raw, blunt, clumsy power. Get more powerful to fight bigger monsters to get more powerful to fight bigger monsters to get more powerful, etc. Ugh. It's a capitalist game with capitalism as its main gameplay feature. I find that disgusting.

I want more than that. I want a story that's immersive and helps me care more about what's going on in my character's environment. Games from yesteryear have given me that with their simpler systems and deep settings. You can see the passion the writers felt, and luckily, their writing ability was of a caliber capable of expressing the idea eloquently (for the most part).

World of Warcraft, according to what I would perceive as the average demographic, is the game I am supposed to look back upon and reminisce about. It's simply not. I find it to be a trite game with no depth and no personality. This upsets me because I love this hobby and am now feeling a bit abandoned by it. In my opinion, the hobby is now pandering to a new kind of player that wants more control over their power gaining than their MMORPG of choice allows, which has led to new games that concentrate more on powers, feats, magic, psionics, Basic Hitstuffery, Focused Killdeathery, and Improved Advanced Grandmaster Swordyclangsmashery.

Strangely, I find this does not impair my ability to get on with life.

[rust]

Originally Posted by Ars Mysteriorum

World of Warcraft ... I find it to be a trite game with no depth and no personality.

Good to know that I am not alone. I find WoW about as fascinating and en-
tertaining as watching paint drying or reading phone books.

It was very interesting to read your posting, because over here I usually hear
the opposite complaint: Modern RPGs have too much setting and not enough
"action", young players love "narrativism" instead of going out and killing mon-
sters, the good old days of "powergaming" are gone, and so on.

Perhaps you had just a streak of extremely bad luck with the players you met ?

[Ars Mysteriorum]

Originally Posted by rust

Good to know that I am not alone. I find WoW about as fascinating and en-
tertaining as watching paint drying or reading phone books.

It was very interesting to read your posting, because over here I usually hear
the opposite complaint: Modern RPGs have too much setting and not enough
"action", young players love "narrativism" instead of going out and killing mon-
sters, the good old days of "powergaming" are gone, and so on.

Perhaps you had just a streak of extremely bad luck with the players you met ?

I'm moving to Germany now.

And yes. Very, very bad luck. South Dakota is not known for its hardcore RPG gamers. It's known for it's hardcore weird-stuff-happening in the middle of nowhere.

[Atgxtg]

I'm with rust,

There are a lot more story-based RPGs not than there were before. Not would I have put Warhammer in the "story driven" section of RPGs.

About 8-0-90% of gamers roll dice and beat stuff up. It's been that way since the beginning.

[Ars Mysteriorum]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

Not would I have put Warhammer in the "story driven" section of RPGs.

*Gasp of shock, horror, disbelief and other extreme and dramatic descriptors!*

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Ars Mysteriorum

*Gasp of shock, horror, disbelief and other extreme and dramatic descriptors!*

If you really want to go into sick. read the part in italics, if sot skip over it.


The overall reaction to Warhammer when it came out 20 something years ago was that it was just an attempt to push lead, and spelled the end of Games Workshop as a RPG company. White Dwarf went from being a great independent RPG magazine to GW's "house organ" in the worst senses of the word.

This was before you time, but Warhammer came out just when GW started doubling the price of lead and coming out with punk elves and dwarves. Every three months they would raise their prices for miniatures in the US and blame the exchange rate. When the rate of exchange went up, GW raised their prices; When the rate of exchange went down, GW raised their prices; when GW switched to plastic bases to cut costs, GM raised prices.

When tons of lead fanatics bought into Warhammer, and didn't mind character getting killed off left and right, since it let them use more minis, many wondered if it spelled "the end of old school gaming".

So it really does come around.

GW used to be a good RPG company prior to the punk minis and Warhammer. You could find all sorts of RPGs supported in White Dwarf.


But that said, I can appreciate how it feels to loose a RPG that you are fond of. But among many of us "old-schoolers" (and we'd use a different term, Old skool is too "new") Warhammer is not considered an old school RPG. So a lot of this is cyclic.

[rust]

In fact, I have never seen Warhammer as a "real" roleplaying game, from my
point of view it was always more a tabletop game with some roleplaying ele-
ments. Over the years the roleplaying elements became more and more, but
at the core it remained a tabletop wargame - at least that is how I saw it.

[Ars Mysteriorum]

Rust, we're talking about Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. The system is reminiscent of BRP, and while it is most certainly relatively new, I would argue that the fashion of play is more in line with "old-school" style gaming than any other game that has come out recently. I don't count Mongoose games because... well... I just don't like them :P