His mechanical design impact is narrow, but I think the feeling his games evoke has been more influential. Palladium pioneered the genre of games that feel like they should have an action figure line. Of the top of my head, Torg and Savage Worlds come to mind.
This raises the question - if one can influence in a 'good' way (ie 'x's ideas really influenced my rpg design for years) or bad way (whatever you do don't be like 'x', their rpg is roasted by people 30 years after it was released) do both influences count equally?
We have seen Rifts converted to Savage Worlds. Rifts comes after my time playing Palladium, so I can't say much about that.
I wouldn't call Palladium Fantasy a retro-clone, and it's hardly the first D&D knock-off to be published.
I was joking a bit with the way I worded that. Yes, I don't really think PF meets the definition of a retroclone, and it's not the first game to riff off of D&D. However, I can't think of a more successful system in the '80s in that category.
I'll be disappointed if this ever isn't the case.
If I were to single out one thing, he popularized cyberpunk in gaming. When Cyberpunk 2013 came out, it was still an obscure genre, even among gamers. After that, it just exploded. It fit perfectly with an RPG model of going on missions, acquiring loot, then spending the loot on cool powers for the next mission. Not only did you get more cyberpunk games, you even had games like Traveller: 2300 retconning it in.
I'd grant both of those points.
I'm leaning pretty heavily towards Tweet.
Not to make this too pointed, but you really aren't the audience to answer that particular question (no offense). I own something close to a hundred PbtA games and a particular variant or two of PbtA has made up some significant bulk of my RPG writing for the last two or three years. So I suppose the answer is maybe more influence than you think.
I get that there are a lot of PbtA game, but how many OSR games are there?
Pretty much every single narrative RPG that I can think of that was released after Apocalypse World has something that can be tied directly back to Apocalypse World or PbtA design in general.
I'm not a 'personal' fan of him. I don't care for Apocalypse World, but the number of games I like that spawned from it is notable. (Impulse Drive, Monster of the Week, Farflung, and others.) I'm not the guy who chose him because "he's cool." I named him because I can feel his presence in the volume of the many, many, many PbtA games.
That makes a case for him being the most influential on YOU, but not so much for the vast realm of people who aren't YOU.
I really wasnt talking about me. We all have our own personal RPG rabbit holes and sometimes it's difficult to see out. For example, I wouldn't want to comment on the design legacy of BRP games because I don't know nearly as much about it. I do however, have significant experience with the wide and sometimes wacky world of the PbtA design sandbox. The fact that the largest ever RPG Kickstarter was for a game built using the PbtA engine at least gestures strongly toward the influence I'm talking about.
+1, especially if you're talking about influence on designers rather than players. You can also make a case for Stolze.
He [Mike Pondsmith] was always very ahead-of-trends. He also wrote and published a steampunk rpg (Castle Falkenstein) before that genre became popular, and a comedy anime rpg (Teenagers From Outer Space) so far before that genre became popular that the first edition (from 1987!) doesn’t actually mention its inspirations and unless you were already in the know comes off as a total wtf oddity.
Or, more likely, the popularity of the IP it was built around.
, even though I'd never actually play it.
Sure, but the IP was already that popular and with that much on the line PbtA was the engine they decided to use to build the game. Influence. I guess you can ignore that if you like, but it speaks pretty strongly to what I was saying above. As does the massive whack of game designers who work in the PbtA and related spaces. I'm not sure why this idea is even vaguely controversial. *shrug*Or, more likely, the popularity of the IP it was built around.
There are a few IPs that if a game came out for them (very unlikely), even for a game/system I despise, I'd feel compelled to purchase. Something like a well-done Thomas Ligotti collectible card game
At this point you seem to be arguing about the POPULARITY of the system, not the influence of its designer. Or are you thinking those are one and the same thing?
Well, at this point I'm finding you willfully obtuse, so we may both be struggling to get our message across. If you don't think that the influence of a RPG designer indexes the number of people playing, writing and hacking their games, I'm not sure what you do think it means.
Thanks for adding Meg in. Even though I know they are a team I often forget.
No longer with us, but I think Stafford probably qualifies. (And if I recall correctly has been cited as an influence by the Bakers).
I am probably not fully aware of how popular PBtA stuff is. I mean, I see a LOT of folks talking about the games online, but in real life I have had near zero interaction with the system or people who have played it (though the guys I game with play a fairly wide variety of games).
Yeah, so we see this in pretty much the same way. I do think that PbtA has that thing that goes past just popularity. Frankly popularity is, for me, more about how many people play a game. PbtA has been aces at encouraging people to design games, to hack games, to really make it their own and for many of those people, the design principles of PbtA (which are shockingly well laid out in a series of blog posts) have fed back into my general game design and game play. Anyway, I'm glad we've gotten past our mutual boggle.
Not just a bunch of the games, but the system is his (as I found out when I was trying to license it) and ORE is his also.
If you look at the sheer number of dollars that PbtA has generated on Kickstarter, by it and it's ilk (Forged in the Dark), you'd have a number that far exceeds what Avatar is by magnitudes.Or, more likely, the popularity of the IP it was built around.
There are a few IPs that if a game came out for them (very unlikely), even for a game/system I despise, I'd feel compelled to purchase. Something like a well-done Thomas Ligotti collectible card game
I hadn't even gotten to Blades in the Dark and FitD designs yet.
