Gone and almost forgotten

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arjunstc

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Inspired by the "Can someone please catch me up?" thread...

What are some of the darlings of recent years that no longer get a mention these days?

I'm talking about the "3:16 Carnage Among the Stars" and "Dogs in the Vineyard" of the 2020s, IYKWIM.
 
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"I don't remember them":tongue:!


Though I'd like to point out both Exalted and Fate::honkhonk:!
 
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Things I've kinda lost track of but enjoyed at the time.

DiTV as mentioned. It wasn't maybe for everyone but it was thought provoking in the method.
for a while it was hard to get a|state
cold city/hot war are still OOP.
Sorceror?
I've always enjoyed Jared Sorensons books: https://memento-mori.com/pdf

I kinda lost track of a lot of this (and lost my hard copies of Cold City/Hot War and A|State. So....)
 
lategamer said:
Sorceror?
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Sorcerer is certainly one of those. For a while I could find all sorts of chatter, but now nothing. Is the Forge site even active any more? I still have a stack of the books and no real clue how to play them. ;)

Also, Amber Diceless. I remember a decade or two ago there were ADRP sites everywhere, with a "Golden Circle" set of links to move from site to site. That stuff is mostly dead links nowadays. A couple of threads here, occasional stuff on the Pundit's site, otherwise almost nothing. I can't think of any game that spawned so much creativity, yet is virtually gone today.
 
Godfather Punk said:
Feng Shui
I didn't back the 2nd edition kickstarter, but did it get any follow-up after that?
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It's basically a complete game in the core book so it didn't need anything else. As it happens, there were a couple of books on running the game, and periodically Atlas publish an adventure or campaign book for it.
 
Also, Feng Shui 2 does pop up in forum chatter fairly regularly... but I have noticed a recent trend for that chatter to mostly include people recommending Broken Compass or Outgunned as a superior option. As Outgunned's physical roll out gathers pace, I can see FS2 being largely forgotten in the not-too-distant future.
 
I think most of the Forge darlings in general. When's the last time you heard My Life With Master mentioned? I think the energy from that community is now mostly centrered round PbtA (and to a lesser extent FitD) games.

We discussed this in another thread but while there's a number of us still keeping the ORE flame alive it's no longer a TBP darling. I think Stolze is no longer flavour of the month in general. Termination Shock and Duelling Fops of Vindamere are both great games but didn't get the hype they would have in past times. Even Unknown Armies 3e was greeted relatively quietly.

Eclipse Phase. Don't see that discussed much these days.

Witchcraft. Probably because CJ Carella lost interest in it before the line was finished.
 
So we're looking for things newer than 3:16 and DitV that have faded away, at least somewhat? I'm more a trad-system gamer, so I don't necessarily keep up with the latest stuff. But off the top of my head:
  • Lamentations of the Flame Princess is not dead by any means, but the output of adventures and supplements for it has really slowed down over the last few years. Ditto for Savage Worlds and Fate (as AsenRG AsenRG mentioned). Both of those are older than 3:16, but it seems to me they really had their heydey in the 2010s.
  • The White Hack and the Black Hack seem to attract less interest, and fewer spin-offs, than they did 5-10 years ago.
  • There was a time on TBP that any 'what system would you use for this' thread would get many recommendations of Unisystem, which is now moribund. Again, it may be too old for what the OP has in mind.
 
Lofgeornost said:
  • Lamentations of the Flame Princess is not dead by any means, but the output of adventures and supplements for it has really slowed down over the last few years. Ditto for Savage Worlds and Fate (as AsenRG AsenRG mentioned). Both of those are older than 3:16, but it seems to me they really had their heydey in the 2010s.
  • The White Hack and the Black Hack seem to attract less interest, and fewer spin-offs, than they did 5-10 years ago.
  • There was a time on TBP that any 'what system would you use for this' thread would get many recommendations of Unisystem, which is now moribund. Again, it may be too old for what the OP has in mind.
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Well Lamentations is getting a new incarnation with a kickstarter, isn't it?

Likewise SW just closed a successful preorder with their scifi companion.

The White Hack/Black Hack/Labyrinth Lord scrum seem to have settled with OSE being the top dog, although Dragonslayer is a new contender there.

But yea, I am looking for the "flashes in the pan" of the 2020s - most of those games mentioned are actually pre-covid...
 
sharps54 said:
Dungeonworld
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I still se it mentioned quite a lot on reddit. It has fractured a bit due to several oft mentioned post DW PbtA options for fantasy like Stonetop, Chasing Adventure, Fellowship etc, etc. World of Dungeons also seems to pop up a lot. One of the authors being de-personed is an issue, along with perhaps a gradual decline of PbtA and certainly DW is now widely seen as failing the purity test for PbtA design as it contains a lot of D&D jank (IMO to make it approachable for D&D people, but pragmatics and purity do not mix).
 
I mentioned Fate in the other thread. While I think it'd be hard to argue it's "almost forgotten," I think it's pretty irrefutable that it's fallen out of favor when even the publisher who invented it has moved on.

In the OSR space, I think Diogo Nogueira's work is at severe risk of falling into the "gone and forgotten" category. He actually wrote and completed a second edition of Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells years ago (literally), and for reasons, it still hasn't seen the light of day.

Two of my personal all time favorites have (mostly) fallen into this category as well. Those being Hollow Earth Expedition and anything for the PDQ system. In both cases, the authors that created them simply moved on from the gaming hobby and took their creations with them.

For that matter, everything ever written for the Unisystem also qualifies. And, I'd argue that my beloved D6 system teeters on that edge pretty much all the time.

Note that I actually still personally use all these games. But the discourse around any of them has all but dried up unless I and a rare few fans like me bring them into a given conversation.
 
Savage Schemer said:
I mentioned Fate in the other thread. While I think it'd be hard to argue it's "almost forgotten," I think it's pretty irrefutable that it's fallen out of favor when even the publisher who invented it has moved on.

In the OSR space, I think Diogo Nogueira's work is at severe risk of falling into the "gone and forgotten" category. He actually wrote and completed a second edition of Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells years ago (literally), and for reasons, it still hasn't seen the light of day.

Two of my personal all time favorites have (mostly) fallen into this category as well. Those being Hollow Earth Expedition and anything for the PDQ system. In both cases, the authors that created them simply moved on from the gaming hobby and took their creations with them.

For that matter, everything ever written for the Unisystem also qualifies. And, I'd argue that my beloved D6 system teeters on that edge pretty much all the time.

Note that I actually still personally use all these games. But the discourse around any of them has all but dried up unless I and a rare few fans like me bring them into a given conversation.
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It’s ok the new Planet of the Apes game will revitalize d6 :thumbsup:
 
I don't know that either were ever really popular, but I've always thought Corps/CORPS and EABA deserved more attention. Even I've moved on, but both were incredibly well designed games that got very little online discussion. I still preferred Corps to EABA, but not by a lot.
 
The Black Hack has certainly lost some shine. For a while there were tons of TBH-derived games and supplements coming out. Now it's hardly anything. At least I got Heroic Fantasy 2e before TBH completely fades away.

I don't hear a heck of a lot about Fantasy Age 2e these days. I kind of wonder how much support Green Ronin will give it.
 
Brander said:
I don't know that either were ever really popular, but I've always thought Corps/CORPS and EABA deserved more attention. Even I've moved on, but both were incredibly well designed games that got very little online discussion. I still preferred Corps to EABA, but not by a lot.
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Greg Porter did some pretty cool settings for EABA. I think the system is a bit of a hard sell, though. It's definitely a DIY gearhead kind of game and you have to be willing to put in the work to make it what you want.
 
Zimzerveran said:
I don't hear a heck of a lot about Fantasy Age 2e these days. I kind of wonder how much support Green Ronin will give it.
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We are promised a Bestiary, but otherwise there isn't a lot of material out there for FAGE2.

I wanted to make it my main system for fantasy, but the character options are so crunchy that it's one of those systems where every player needs a Player's Handbook... but there isn't one and the core rulebook is not cheap.
 
I've lived through lots of games that were veritable farts in the wind. The current ones that people would be like "Oh yeah that was a thing wasn't it?" is ShadowDark and EZD6. I feel like we get these popcorn RPG even more quickly now. Something shows up in the zeitgeist and is going to be the next D&D killer then 5 years later people are like "wait, there was a MCDM RPG?" And the response is "yes, it was just released 6 months ago"
 
Eron the Relentless said:
The current ones that people would be like "Oh yeah that was a thing wasn't it?" is ShadowDark and EZD6. I feel like we get these popcorn RPG even more quickly now.
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I feel like that has already happened to EZD6, although Shadowdark seems to be still going strong. I am myself still playing Five Torches Deep with Spells from Fantasy Age 2.
 
Voros said:
I forgot that people are going around forcing people at gunpoint into PbtA and FitD games. Motherfuckers.
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No, no-one is being forced into playing them but that’s not what was written either. But maybe that was a Move.


Hey, I’m looking for a game that’s medium crunch superheroes, maybe with a twist, but I’m not really a PBTA fan.

- you should try Masks
- you should try Monsterhearts
- you’ve been holding it wrong.
- are you adopted or something
- why are you such a loser
- I disagree with you so it’s your problem
- GURPS!
 
I think I still have to play a "proper" PbtA game. We played Avatar for months but my impression is that it's not very representative. The sort of things I'd reading about fiction first and so on don't really apply as it is very much a tactical game and think very much in terms of mechanical effects of your different Moves.

I got caught up in a one-to-one duel in one session. After 5 rounds inconclusive rounds I told the GM my character would surrender because OOC I was too bored of the whole thing and could face another 5 rounds like this.

I suspect somone with a more tactical brain would have made those 5 rounds count more, found a weakness to exploit or something. And maybe that is good genre emulation, but it's not what I expected from a PbtA game.
 
PolarBlues said:
I think I still have to play a "proper" PbtA game. We played Avatar for months but my impression is that it's not very representative. The sort of things I'd reading about fiction first and so on don't really apply as it is very much a tactical game and think very much in terms of mechanical effects of your different Moves.
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This is why I bounced hard off PBTA.

The narrative / fiction first is literally that. The narrative is first. What you want to do is second. The moves (and rewards) are there to incentivise behaviour that fits the narrative.

No bad thing. Just not my cup of tea.
 
Voros said:
I forgot that people are going around forcing people at gunpoint into PbtA and FitD games. Motherfuckers.
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Maybe not. But while there have been several games over the years where its fans have had a certain sort of annoying enthusiasm (Fate, Savage Worlds, etc), PbtA fans have been uniquely and unwaveringly intolerable. I hate PbtA games as much for the people who play it as for the shit rules & game play.
 
I dislike some game designers and the mechanics of some games but I recognize other people enjoy them so I have no desire to take that away from them. If I can still play good games, like Palladium, and ignore the haters I can be big enough not to wish other people’s favorite games go away.
 
Heh, I like PbtA stuff, but I have that same, weird, gut level negative reaction to all things -Borg these days, for similar reasons.

Ofc, I recognize I'm being unfair. I haven't even looked at the game properly. I'm just entirely sick of hearing about it.
 
sharps54 said:
I dislike some game designers and the mechanics of some games but I recognize other people enjoy them so I have no desire to take that away from them. If I can still play good games, like Palladium, and ignore the haters I can be big enough not to wish other people’s favorite games go away.
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I dislike most games, and recognize that many gamers also dislike the games I like (well, those that have heard of them). I try not to use my dislike of a game system to inform my opinion on people that like that system. I hope others show me the same courtesy.

I've been around the internet long enough that I've seen all the reactions to butting preferences.
lategamer said:
No, no-one is being forced into playing them but that’s not what was written either. But maybe that was a Move.


Hey, I’m looking for a game that’s medium crunch superheroes, maybe with a twist, but I’m not really a PBTA fan.

- you should try Masks
- you should try Monsterhearts
- you’ve been holding it wrong.
- are you adopted or something
- why are you such a loser
- I disagree with you so it’s your problem
- GURPS!
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But seriously, have you given GURPS a shot? :tongue:

The one I think you missed, or at least the glaring one, is "Well you obviously just don't understand the glory and brilliance of PBTA. Let me answer a bunch of questions about the system you didn't ask..."
 
I'm a bit sad about a few different games that don't seem to get mention much any more.

Black Hack is one. I really like most variations I've seen on it. It combines my love of B/X with some innovations from other old games, along with a couple new twists (or at least ones I wasn't familiar with). I assume some of it is just burnout of the Too Much of A Good Thing variety.

Similarly, I don't hear much about either Crypts & Things nor Beyond the Wall much anymore. I felt both of those did a pretty decent job of covering two fairly different fantasy vibes that I enjoy. :sad:
 
I have little to no interest in PBtA but I don’t care if others like it. There’s plenty of gamers around. PBtA players aren’t ruining my day. The bit of conversation about it here doesn’t damage my gaming. So if it lives forever like d100 I can live with that.
 
DeadBob said:
Heh, I like PbtA stuff, but I have that same, weird, gut level negative reaction to all things -Borg these days, for similar reasons.

Ofc, I recognize I'm being unfair. I haven't even looked at the game properly. I'm just entirely sick of hearing about it.
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The only Borg thing that caughty eye is OrcBorg. I can play crazy orcs on a flying derelict ship which has things smash into it. That works for me.
 
Bunch said:
The only Borg thing that caughty eye is OrcBorg. I can play crazy orcs on a flying derelict ship which has things smash into it. That works for me.
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Pirate Borg is decent but it is the only one that appeals to me, even than I would change the tone from playing evil, selfish characters to a more heroic one.
 
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