actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Everybody had nose rings?
Dark Conspiracy Developers Diary
- Thread starter MongooseMatt
- Start date
Everybody had nose rings?
That 90's problem was bs and killed a company that easily could have owned modern RPGs from Western to SCI FI. Just think, Twilight 45, High Noon, Twilight: The great war. Twilight: The cold war spy game. They really could have introduced just Occupations and guns through the years and maybe a few supplements on spying, magic etc and we could have built out our own unique settings.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
You jest, but that was a different WW problem: 1st edition VtM's adventures were all aggressively railroaded. They called their game masters "Storytellers" unironically, it seems.
That was *also* a different 90s problem: The juggernaut of MtG caused extreme behavioral changes in games distribution companies which led a number of publishers to look at mainstream book distributors, GDW included. That led to GDW's demise and contributed to the mighty TSR's passing.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Thanks for clarifying that. That was particularly bad, especially in VtM and other White Wolf publications. WW had everything all neatly divided into factions and meta-stories in which the setting was going to be all wrapped up in the fairly near future. IMO that made the adventures and stories of the player-characters pointless, since no matter what they did their world was going to end in a fairly short time.
IMO it was the beginning of the shift away from the harder math based game mechanics of the 80's which were meant to provide impartial resolution of character actions, which determined what happened during an adventure, and toward softer story-focused rules intended to provide a feeling of "well that was a good story". Consider the difference between GDW's Twilight 2000 and Free League's Twilight 2000. Consider the difference between Leading Edge Games' Aliens Adventure Game and Free League's Aliens RPG. Consider the difference between FGU titles like Space Opera, Bushido, Freedom Fighters, and Aftermath, games like Harnmaster, MERP, GURPS, Runequest, Hero System, FASA Star Trek, and Traveller, and the low-math low-emotional-resilience characters-only-die-if-the-player-agrees x-card pap that we get today. Albedo The Roleplaying Game was harder core that what we get today. A funny thing: it seems like the decline in ttrpg game mechanics coincided with the decay of the education system. There simply weren't the players or designers willing or able to create or even play such game mechanics like those in the 80's.
Yes, I mentioned Free League twice. That's because it has two titles which are direct analogs to 80's ttrpgs. And while Free League games are by no means the worst offenders, Free League's Aliens rpg has instructive examples for this comparison. You get rigid character classes, like "Scrappy Kid". You no longer have a choice as to whether or not your kid character is scrappy. If your character is not scrappy, scrappy will be provided for you. You get game mechanics which force the story in particular directions to build tension or whatever, rather than game mechanics which determine events based on task resolution and character decisions, which allows tension to build organically. Example: When your character is in a space suit in Free League Aliens, it's up to story event generation rolls (or whatever the mechanic was) to determine whether or not your character starts running low on air. Whether or not your character made an intelligent plan, or brought extra air tanks, or did anything to prepare for this contingency, none of that matters. The GM rolled dice and the table says that your character is running out of air. Compare this to Traveller, in which a vacc suit skill roll determines whether or not something goes wrong, and then the Ref decides what happens, depending on what makes sense. I know a lot of people like Free League games and may argue, but the particularities of Free League's rules are not the point, and I'm not going to look them up.
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Also the rise of home computers. There are mathematical aspects to games that computers just do so much better so RPGs started to lean into the aspects that computers could not take over.
Which is why tabletop RPGs still survive to this day
Miniatures games also 'suffered' from this, leading to the curtailment of things like Harpoon. Which... I get the attraction... but it is probably better played on computer
(GDW's Air Superiority was my thing back in the day...).
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
It's why you keep karma points in reserve, just in case you have to burn them, to make that last minute death defying escape.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
That is so cool. Harpoon, Avalon Hill games, GDW's games, Star Fleet Battles...
I'll share my thoughts on the issue in case they're informative or interesting. Everything in this post is IMO.
Regarding home computers: Computers were a poor replacement for players knowing the rules and doing arithmetic / using a calculator. In the 1990's monitors were still big CRT's, setting everything up was a chore, getting everything to work was a chore, and using them during gameplay could slow the session significantly. Their strength was in GM prep.
What home computers and game consoles did was provide potential ttrpg players with something else to do, something individual, easy, and still relatively cheap. They didn't do the same thing better, they provided a different activity which acted on the dopamine cycle. Console games and PC games constricted players' "roleplaying" into narrow channels scripted by the game developers. No one had to think of adventures or campaigns, no one had to GM, no one had to know any rules, pay much attention, or (gasp!) read books. It was a lot easier to get some friends together to socialize and play console games than it was to get some friends together to play a ttrpg or even an uncomplicated boardgame.
In time, the gaming of many older ttrpg players succumbed to adult responsibilities
and the school system mauled the younger generations to the point where reading and understanding something like Traveller or Pathfinder became significantly more difficult, due to the poor foundational education and socialization they received.
Console games and PC games filled the space that used to be filled by reading, and, to a lesser extent, ttrpgs, because they were easy, not because they were better. Without the mental exercise that comes with reading books of the difficulty of The Lord of the Rings, the Wheel of Time series, the Sword of Truth series, or even Robert E. Howard's relatively short Conan stories, the interest and the ability to do so wanes. First go the reading-plus-math ttrpgs, like FGU's titles, GURPS, Palladium, and Hero System, then the reading-heavy ttrpgs, like Chaosium's D100 BRP system games, and then even White Wolf's titles, and then even the lighter rules systems. Pathfinder, D&D 5th Edition, Chaosium's D100 system, and, thanks to Mongoose, Traveller, still survive, Pathfinder because of its size, D&D because of its size and name, Chaosium because Call of Cthulhu filled its niche particularly well, and Traveller because it has been the best scifi ttrpg since 1977.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Talon Greyfeather
Banded Mongoose
Not to mention the Airstrike supplement ... both still get regular play at my table (along with Flight Leader from AH)Also the rise of home computers. There are mathematical aspects to games that computers just do so much better so RPGs started to lean into the aspects that computers could not take over.
Which is why tabletop RPGs still survive to this day
Miniatures games also 'suffered' from this, leading to the curtailment of things like Harpoon. Which... I get the attraction... but it is probably better played on computer
(GDW's Air Superiority was my thing back in the day...).
I like a declension narrative as much as the next man but I have my doubts on this one. After all, the number of people playing RPGs now is higher than at any time since the start of the hobby.
There were a lot of problems with the tabletop gaming industry for 20 years, but the customers were not the ones to blame*.
*Except for the dumbos and degenerate gamblers that went and played/collected M:tG. Screw those guys!
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Except I'm not talking about ttrpgs as a hobby losing players, I'm talking about the crunchy complex rules systems of the 1980's dying out as new generations weren't educated well enough to understand, enjoy, or design them, so simpler systems began to predominate.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
And I might have a small quibble here. We've all encountered the unhygienic snack grazers at some point during our gaming careers. And many other strange beings. They went a long way toward giving the hobby a bad name. Something I've noticed when I listen to youtube gaming horror story videos is that there are no Traveller stories. There are no Runequest or Mythras stories. I don't recall any Pathfinder stories. Maybe I saw one or two Call of Cthulhu stories. Why? Because the great majority of people who cause problems are doing so in one particular ttrpg.
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