Gone and almost forgotten

[Lofgeornost]

It seems to me that essentially all of our suggestions for games, good as they are, don't fit the O.P.'s question because they are too old; he is looking for games like this that came out 'post-COVID'--so 2020+, I guess.

I personally can't think of any, since that puts things on a very tight timeline: released, made a big splash and now, within 4 years, forgotten. It would be easy to come with a very large number of games that were released and never really noticed, but I can't come up with one released in the 2020s that was popular and now is moribund. Can anybody else?

 

[RangerRupert]

Cortex Prime?

 

[EmperorNorton]

Cortex Prime?

Honestly wish it had took off a bit more. Probably one of the best written toolkit RPGs I've seen.

But, I think it changing hands (owners wise, Cam was still the designer the whole time through) multiple times didn't do it any favors from a publicity standpoint.

 

[sureshot]

Not to mention Margaret Weis productions rpg licenses then not being able to hold to them did not help matters in increasing Cortex Prime popularity.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

Yeah, I think there's a fair few recent RPGs which largely went away because of licensing issues. Judge Dredd is another one.

 

[sharps54]

Talisman RPG

 

[Kardinal Tabbe]

Godbound. So forgotten that it doesn't even get mentioned in the discussion about the forgotten Sine Nomine products.

Wrath and Glory, so forgotten that Cubicle 7 doesn't bother having the core book in print when they publish the quickstart rules.

 

[sharps54]

I guess Flames of Freedom would count as well

 

[robb]

Godbound

Ah I still see it come up. It is natural that his games from a few years ago get less mentions as there
is never much support/new releases for old lines. edit: Which is understandable.

 

[Eron the Relentless]

Godbound. So forgotten that it doesn't even get mentioned in the discussion about the forgotten Sine Nomine products.

No, that's Spears of the Dawn.

I'll hear Silent Legions mentioned before Spears of the Dawn.

 

[Brand55]

No, that's Spears of the Dawn.

I'll hear Silent Legions mentioned before Spears of the Dawn.

I'd put the Red Tide setting right up there with Spears. At least Other Dust is getting a new edition soon, so it's possible some of these older games will get updated, too. I'd love to see a full Red Tide book adapted to the WWN rules.

 

[sureshot]

Beyond Human and All Flesh must be eaten.

Beyond no new info for BH and AFMBE la klusget support your fanbase is not going to wait indefinitely for product support or news for a new rpg in the works.

 

[Eron the Relentless]

I'd put the Red Tide setting right up there with Spears. At least Other Dust is getting a new edition soon, so it's possible some of these older games will get updated, too. I'd love to see a full Red Tide book adapted to the WWN rules.

Other Dust would do well with a system closer to Cities Without Number. Silent Legions would too IMHO.

Red Tide is probably my favorite fantasy setting. I was a KC fan way before it was cool, back in the original edition of SWN and Red Tide days. I just ran into SWN while trolling through Lulu one day. Nobody had heard of it or him yet. I didn't love the original edition but thought it was alright. Red Tide is what kept him on my radar.

 

[Voros]

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.

Yeah that was caught my attention and I've heard good things. Ditto Frontier Scum which I believe is also Mork Borg based.

 

[Voros]

I think there is a level of appreciation for Sine Nomine / Kevin Crawford here but very little active discussion.

For me the best stuff in Crawford's game are the setting/GM tools. The ruleset is rather middle of the road imo and despite his best efforts I think D&D remains ill suited to a sf game. Still, lots to like and the aforementioned Spears of Dawn remains an excellent game.

 

[carpocratian]

I forgot that people are going around forcing people at gunpoint into PbtA and FitD games. Motherfuckers.

Reiterating what some others have said, I don't have an issue with the existence of the games, and don't really have any particular critiques of the mechanics (though they aren't ones I enjoy). It is more the slavish "you should use PbtA/FitD" response over and over again that you tend to get from players on "recommend a game system to run X" threads on Reddit and other places. You see that to a degree with all systems, but the PbtA, FitD, and Burning Wheel aficionados just get tiring after awhile. The same used to be true of FATE and Burning Wheel players.

 

[Acmegamer]

My issue with PbtA gamers isn't that they like it. I actually couldn't care less if they do. It's more like @DeadBob said regarding -borg games in that the issue is their incessant need to tell you about it, even when you preemptively go out of your way to ask them not to. That's what makes them so damned intolerable. This gets amplified a million fold online. They're like the Jehovah's Witnesses of the gaming community, driven by deeply ingrained brainwashing to proselytize the glorious gospel of the Apocalypse.

 

[AsenRG]

Do they proselytize any more than the “Mythras can do that” folks here? I guess maybe other forums are worse. That’s one reason I like it here. I know we have PBtA fans but they don’t drown out other conversation, nor do the Mythras fans.

We try to keep it relaxed, regardless of camp. That's what I like best about the Pub!

The only two people I have consistently seen on other forums with the, "Mythras can do that," message (unless the thread happens to be about Mythras) is Raleel and Bilharzia. And both of them are very tame / understated about that by comparison. Even on this forum, as you noted, it's not as prevalent as we like to joke about. So, if Mythras fans have gotten louder somewhere else, all I can say is they manage to leave a much smaller footprint than their PbtA brethren.

Yeah, I'm not on other fora. I mostly proselytize Mythras in Bulgarian groups, I almost feel like I'm neglecting you, guys...

Only "almost".

I've always thought that Mythras gets a free pass because it's the Pub's baby?

I always thought that it's because the Cult of Mythras is a joke and we tend to treat it as such...

And I say that as the self-proclaimed Eastern Patriarch of Mythras!

The difference I think is that the Mythras fans tend to present Mythras as a well designed game if you like that level of crunch. They don't sell Mythras as a game that will completely change how you think about roleplaying games or if that if you don't like it, you probably need to read the author's blog so that you can properly appreciate it and run the the right way.

I could do that, if you wish...but that would make the joke more obnoxious than I care!


I mean, sure Mythras can do Obnoxious, too! We just don't care to...

And I say this as someone with no interest in Mythras as all (Heretic! Heretic!).

It seems to me that essentially all of our suggestions for games, good as they are, don't fit the O.P.'s question because they are too old; he is looking for games like this that came out 'post-COVID'--so 2020+, I guess.

Well, 2020+ would make it harder, but didn't Exalted Essence come out post-Covid? So I think it still fits!

I personally can't think of any, since that puts things on a very tight timeline: released, made a big splash and now, within 4 years, forgotten. It would be easy to come with a very large number of games that were released and never really noticed, but I can't come up with one released in the 2020s that was popular and now is moribund. Can anybody else?

Exalted Essence, Avatar RPG, Shadowdark and possibly the Weird Wizard series. Though I'm not quite sure on the release years, I'm reasonably sure most of those are post-Covid.

 

[Kardinal Tabbe]

No, that's Spears of the Dawn.

I'll hear Silent Legions mentioned before Spears of the Dawn.

I'm not sure that any of Spears of Dawn, Red Tides or Silent legion can be considered gaming community "darlings".

But Godbound generated a lot of buzz when it came out. Especially at Big Purple.

 

[finarvyn]

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like a lot of the titles mentioned in this thread were never really that popular. I thought that the focus was really popular stuff which has faded away, not just short-splash games. There are always fad games which appear and vanish quietly all of the time, but not so many big sellers which suddenly go away.

Traveller was once the dominant scifi RPG in the business. Lots of rulebooks, adventures, magazines, and so on. Judges Guild produced entire Sector products, GM screens, and the like. There used to be Traveller novels. Now the game is mostly gone. Does the Citizens of the Imperium message board even exist any more?

GURPS is another huge one. At one point they had dozens of sourcebooks and all sorts of support products, yet I haven't seen a GURPS book in a game store for a long time. Steve Jackson's message boards were full of discussion and idea exchange. Now silence.

World of Darkness is another product line which used to dominate game store shelves, but now is virtually non-existent. (Seems like for a while half of the RPG section of my game store was d20, the other half WoD.) World of Darkness included product lines for Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling, and others. Most of these also had a series of novels to go along with the RPG line. I've seen a WoD core rulebook in the past couple of years, but White Wolf used to dominate and now is an afterthought.

 

[Lofgeornost]

Well, 2020+ would make it harder, but didn't Exalted Essence come out post-Covid? So I think it still fits!

Exalted Essence, Avatar RPG, Shadowdark and possibly the Weird Wizard series. Though I'm not quite sure on the release years, I'm reasonably sure most of those are post-Covid.

Well, of those four, Shadowdark seems to be going strong still and attracting a fair amount of attention. I'm not sure if Exalted Essence, Avatar, or Shadow of the Weird Wizard were ever darlings, as such. There was hype when each came out, but since they were produced by sizeable RPG companies, that's not surprising; of course they would advertise their games. And I think those three are still 'alive' in the sense that new stuff is coming out for them, or has fairly recently. Interestingly, the latest version of Shadow of the Weird Wizard was released less than two months ago and has numerous reviews at Drivethru.

The most interesting thing about the thread IMO is thinking about how we would know if a game fits the criteria. How can you tell how popular a game is? Sales figures are unavailable and may not tell you much, given that you can buy a game once and still be playing it a decade--or four--later. Internet chatter about the game could be a useful metric, but tedious to use in any but an impressionistic fashion, as I learned in an attempt to quantify the threads on TBP years ago. It also varies a lot by forum; there's more discussion of Mythras and GURPS (which is the Pub's unacknowledged darling) here than in some other venues, I suspect. Also, I think there is a natural boom-bust cycle for such discussions. When a game first appears, it's likely to get more talk, but after a year or two this will fade away. This need not mean people aren't playing it, just that they have stopped writing reviews of it or asking questions about it.

How many derivative products are created for a given game is another possibility, but depends a great deal on the licensing approach of the creators. I feel pretty safe in saying that the latest iterations of Runequest and Call of Cthulhu are popular based on the large number of fan supplements, adventures, etc. on sale for them; the same seems to be true for Shadowdark. And I think it's undeniable that between c. 2016-2020 there were a lot more adaptations of The Black Hack being made than recently. But this only works if the game-makers allow such derivative works, so games like Avatar, or Shadow of the Weird Wizard, aren't going to show that kind of sign.

 

[sharps54]

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like a lot of the titles mentioned in this thread were never really that popular. I thought that the focus was really popular stuff which has faded away, not just short-splash games. There are always fad games which appear and vanish quietly all of the time, but not so many big sellers which suddenly go away.

Traveller was once the dominant scifi RPG in the business. Lots of rulebooks, adventures, magazines, and so on. Judges Guild produced entire Sector products, GM screens, and the like. There used to be Traveller novels. Now the game is mostly gone. Does the Citizens of the Imperium message board even exist any more?

GURPS is another huge one. At one point they had dozens of sourcebooks and all sorts of support products, yet I haven't seen a GURPS book in a game store for a long time. Steve Jackson's message boards were full of discussion and idea exchange. Now silence.

World of Darkness is another product line which used to dominate game store shelves, but now is virtually non-existent. (Seems like for a while half of the RPG section of my game store was d20, the other half WoD.) World of Darkness included product lines for Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling, and others. Most of these also had a series of novels to go along with the RPG line. I've seen a WoD core rulebook in the past couple of years, but White Wolf used to dominate and now is an afterthought.

I think Traveller is still pretty popular but GURPS and WoD definitely fading.

 

[NinjaWeasel]

Not to mention Margaret Weis productions rpg licenses then not being able to hold to them did not help matters in increasing Cortex Prime popularity.

To be fair, Margaret Weis Productions hasn't had anything to do with Cortex in about a decade. Perhaps more. The Cortex Prime Kickstarter was back in 2017 and MWP had sold the system to Cam Banks a year or two before that I think. Before that, I don't think there had been any Cortex stuff from MWP since the Hackers Handbook circa 2012.

Traveller was once the dominant scifi RPG in the business. Lots of rulebooks, adventures, magazines, and so on. Judges Guild produced entire Sector products, GM screens, and the like. There used to be Traveller novels. Now the game is mostly gone. Does the Citizens of the Imperium message board even exist any more?

I think Traveller is still pretty popular but GURPS and WoD definitely fading.

Traveller is still pretty popular, yep. Mongoose is still putting out several adventures and a sourcebook or two each year. In the last 18 months they've been re-releasing all the core books with errata and minor updates based on player feedback. They also put out fairly big campaigns every so often and Pirates of Drinax is still in print and selling well I think. There seems to be an increasing amount of OGL stuff coming out of their community too. Then there's a wealth of material coming out for Cepheus Engine as well. Not only that, but it comes up in conversations on all the forums I visit pretty regularly. It seems to be thriving to me.

What I have noticed, in the last 5 years or so, is a tendency for there to be games that have a big Kickstarter, and generate lots of buzz, only for them to largely disappear from view within a year or two (sometimes before the KS has even completed delivery!). There's been plenty of games in this category but a lot seems to be 5e or PbtA based. I'm not sure what's driving this. It could be the collector market, Magpie Syndrome, or just that the players are younger and moving onto other things that bit quicker (which is definitely easier to do with 5e or PbtA).

I think part of the issue is purely visibility. A lot of games these days probably have avid fanbases who discuss them on newer channels like Discord. The thing with those channels is that you have to go searching for the discussion. You won't stumble across it like you would on a forum like this. So Urban Shadows 2e, Coyote & Crow, The Elephant & Macaw Banner, and other seemingly flashes-in-the-pan are probably getting discussed more than non-fans and older fans realise. To use the iceberg analogy, I think there's a lot more going on under the surface these days than there was even 5 years ago but it's hard to be certain of which games this is true of.

 

[stonetoflesh]

Traveller was once the dominant scifi RPG in the business. Lots of rulebooks, adventures, magazines, and so on. Judges Guild produced entire Sector products, GM screens, and the like. There used to be Traveller novels. Now the game is mostly gone. Does the Citizens of the Imperium message board even exist any more?

The CotI boards still look like they're going strong, but I spend little time there and have no idea to what extent new members join or are active.

A few years back, I thought that maybe Classic Traveller was on the verge of an OSR-like moment: "2d6 sci-fi" clones were being published, most notably Cepheus Engine, and there was a fair amount of discussion of "proto-Traveller," largely fueled by great writing at Tales to Astound (the fantastic "Traveller Out of the Box" series), Den of the Lizard King, and a handful of other places. Alas, that moment passed without leaving much of a trace. There's still a lot of great-looking material being published for Cepheus Engine by Stellagama, Zozer, and a few others, but I think awareness of it is limited to people already tuned in to CT/CE.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

I think Traveller is still pretty popular but GURPS and WoD definitely fading.

II'm pretty sure Vampire outsells both of those put together. Unfortunately the Orr report is no longer a thing and ICv2 has shifted the data to behind a paywall, but back when those were available Vampire was consistently one of the few non D&D adjacent games that was able to hit the top five. Traveller has a passionate and vocal fanbase which allows it more visibility than its sales figures would suggest. (Especially as a lot of that community aren't necessarily buying newer Traveller material).

 

[sureshot]

SJG like hero Games with their latest editions decided to just cater to their existing fanbase rather than try and get back old fans who left for less crunchy rule sets in favor of rules light. With imo no attempt to bring in new fans.

With SJG getting fans hopes up for an 4E version of Vehicles for more than a decade or more to suddenly axe the whole project. While deciding to focus instead on so more questionably less profitable products such as 4E Mars Attacks. Why would anyone working their fans wanted that over 4E Vehicles is beyond me.


Then their apparent marketing research convinced them beyond any shadow of an doubt and ignoring any fan feedback decided to stop being active in stores because again apparently at the start of early 2000s they were convinced their fanbase would not want or read print books. Hence why they disappeared from store shelves. Fast forward to now and we still have print books. The rpg fanbase imo is still prefers more rules light rpgs like Savage Worlds and they survive mostly due to Munchkin rather than anything else.

Hero Games for many of the reasons above catered only to their niche fanbase. Made one huge core book set into two big books for the latest edition. Has no equivalent of Munchkin and while not a dead company is mostly on life support.

I am not to sympathetic to the first because being in the forums with the whole “ PDFs and only PDFs are the way of the future, books are dead” era and being politely told their market research was infallible well who ended being correct. Why would any rpg designer objectively think books in print would simply disappear in a few years time. It will probably happen for sure and take a few decades but in a few years time really.

 

[Fenris-77]

Shadowdark is still fine IMO. Lots of community involvement and new stuff getting written. Heck, I wrote something for it about a month ago and I don't even play it that much.

 

[Bunch]

Of the Sine Nominie games I'd say the one about England was the most flash in the pan. Wolves of something? Came, went. So forgotten.

 

[Fenris-77]

Of the Sine Nominie games I'd say the one about England was the most flash in the pan. Wolves of something? Came, went. So forgotten.

It wasn't great compared to his other efforts (IMO anyway). I have better tools for running games in Saxon England.

 

[SJB]

II'm pretty sure Vampire outsells both of those put together. Unfortunately the Orr report is no longer a thing and ICv2 has shifted the data to behind a paywall, but back when those were available Vampire was consistently one of the few non D&D adjacent games that was able to hit the top five. Traveller has a passionate and vocal fanbase which allows it more visibility than its sales figures would suggest. (Especially as a lot of that community aren't necessarily buying newer Traveller material).

Top Hobby Channel TTRPGs (2023)

1. Dungeons & Dragons (WotC)
2. Pathfinder (Paizo)
3. Cyberpunk Red (R. Talsorian)
4. World of Darkness (Renegade Game Studios)
5. Starfinder (Paizo)
6. Warhammer 40K (Cubicle 7)
7. Marvel Multiverse Roleplaying (Marvel)
8. Kobold 5E Books (Kobold Press)
9. Call of Cthulhu (Chaosium)
10. Pirate Borg (Free League)

 

[sharps54]

Top Hobby Channel TTRPGs (2023)

1. Dungeons & Dragons (WotC)
2. Pathfinder (Paizo)
3. Cyberpunk Red (R. Talsorian)
4. World of Darkness (Renegade Game Studios)
5. Starfinder (Paizo)
6. Warhammer 40K (Cubicle 7)
7. Marvel Multiverse Roleplaying (Marvel)
8. Kobold 5E Books (Kobold Press)
9. Call of Cthulhu (Chaosium)
10. Pirate Borg (Free League)

So you are telling me there are more Marvel Multiverse games going on than CoC games? Color me skeptical.

 

[SJB]

SJG like hero Games with their latest editions decided to just cater to their existing fanbase rather than try and get back old fans who left for less crunchy rule sets in favor of rules light. With imo no attempt to bring in new fans.

With SJG getting fans hopes up for an 4E version of Vehicles for more than a decade or more to suddenly axe the whole project. While deciding to focus instead on so more questionably less profitable products such as 4E Mars Attacks. Why would anyone working their fans wanted that over 4E Vehicles is beyond me.


Then their apparent marketing research convinced them beyond any shadow of an doubt and ignoring any fan feedback decided to stop being active in stores because again apparently at the start of early 2000s they were convinced their fanbase would not want or read print books. Hence why they disappeared from store shelves. Fast forward to now and we still have print books. The rpg fanbase imo is still prefers more rules light rpgs like Savage Worlds and they survive mostly due to Munchkin rather than anything else.

Hero Games for many of the reasons above catered only to their niche fanbase. Made one huge core book set into two big books for the latest edition. Has no equivalent of Munchkin and while not a dead company is mostly on life support.

I am not to sympathetic to the first because being in the forums with the whole “ PDFs and only PDFs are the way of the future, books are dead” era and being politely told their market research was infallible well who ended being correct. Why would any rpg designer objectively think books in print would simply disappear in a few years time. It will probably happen for sure and take a few decades but in a few years time really.

About six months ago Dennis Detwiller (Arc Dream) posted on LinkedIn to say that Delta Green had a “few thousand” fans and he made “hundreds of thousands” of dollars per year with very low overhead costs.

It would appear that there is a viable business model for enduring boutique games.

 

[SJB]

So you are telling me there are more Marvel Multiverse games going on than CoC games? Color me skeptical.

No, I’m merely reproducing the most recent ICv2 figures as posted on ENWorld, where a about a zillion posters are parsing them.

“The hobby game sales channel is defined as specialist game and card stores--it doesn't include Amazon, direct sales, etc. It does include Kickstarter.”

 

[Lofgeornost]

GURPS is another huge one. At one point they had dozens of sourcebooks and all sorts of support products, yet I haven't seen a GURPS book in a game store for a long time. Steve Jackson's message boards were full of discussion and idea exchange. Now silence.

World of Darkness is another product line which used to dominate game store shelves, but now is virtually non-existent. (Seems like for a while half of the RPG section of my game store was d20, the other half WoD.) World of Darkness included product lines for Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling, and others. Most of these also had a series of novels to go along with the RPG line. I've seen a WoD core rulebook in the past couple of years, but White Wolf used to dominate and now is an afterthought.

I wouldn't dispute that about games-store shelves, and I think GURPS is fading, though with a loyal fanbase that will stick to it until death. But so much of RPG sales these days happens in electronic format through Drivethru (or other vendors) or via Kickstarters that I'm not sure how much actual store shelves matter in tracking a games' popularity. Any game that gets stocked a lot probably is popular (though there is also the phenomenon of copies of a game sitting on shelves for years, unbought) but there may be some very popular games that don't show up in physical stores at all.

 

[Dyrnwyn]

About six months ago Dennis Detwiller (Arc Dream) posted on LinkedIn to say that Delta Green had a “few thousand” fans and he made “hundreds of thousands” of dollars per year with very low overhead costs.

It would appear that there is a viable business model for enduring boutique games.

I can believe that and I've heard similar things from other companies. Honestly, I think low overhead is probably the largest factor in running a viable game company these days, even more so than a dedicated fanbase.

 

[sureshot]

I wouldn't dispute that about games-store shelves, and I think GURPS is fading, though with a loyal fanbase that will stick to it until death. But so much of RPG sales these days happens in electronic format through Drivethru (or other vendors) or via Kickstarters that I'm not sure how much actual store shelves matter in tracking a games' popularity. Any game that gets stocked a lot probably is popular (though there is also the phenomenon of copies of a game sitting on shelves for years, unbought) but there may be some very popular games that don't show up in physical stores at all.

Seconded though SJG did it do abruptly and quickly at a time that it was still fairly popular.

It’s one thing to not put one together when the popularity is low its another when it’s still at a decent level.

All because SJG decided PDFs and only PDFs were the way of the future. No warning just “ print is dead long line the PDF ” and remove all physical copies of books in stores.

Then to drag out the publication of 4E Gurps Vehicle almost over two decades only to cancel the project. It’s not going to make even the mist hardcore supporters happy.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

I'm pretty sure at this point SJG are essentially just the Munchkin company and anything else they put out is just a hobby from their perspective.

 

[sharps54]

I'm pretty sure at this point SJG are essentially just the Munchkin company and anything else they put out is just a hobby from their perspective.

They do the other things through Kickstarter so they don’t loose money on them

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

So you are telling me there are more Marvel Multiverse games going on than CoC games? Color me skeptical.

No, there's more copies of the Marvel RPG being bought than CoC. That makes sense to me; not all CoC players are going to have updated editions. Because of Roll20 discontinuing their report actual play data is much harder to come by. (The way to do it would probably be to look at r/lfg and r/lfgmisc but that would be incredibly time consuming).

 

[sharps54]

No, there's more copies of the Marvel RPG being bought than CoC. That makes sense to me; not all CoC players are going to have updated editions. Because of Roll20 discontinuing their report actual play data is much harder to come by. (The way to do it would probably be to look at r/lfg and r/lfgmisc but that would be incredibly time consuming).

I just know in the circles I move in the most popular games seem to be CoC, OSE, Pathfinder 2, and probably Shadowdark. I personally don’t play those but I see the games happening on discord and sessions being discussed.