dbm
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I have been thinking about what seem to be current trends in the TTRPG market, and since I like analogies it occurred to me that perhaps it’s a bit like the trends you see in computer software.
When I started out with RPGs (I was in what I think of as the second wave - I started in 1983-4 so I wasn’t there at the beginning but was pulled in by the boom of satanic panic, Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and BECMI D&D) there was only a few available. There may have been quite a number in existence but finding them and buying them was next to impossible. This is pre-web and most people didn’t even have dial-up internet, at least in the UK. In the provinces I considered myself lucky to have one hobby shop within ten miles that sold RPGs, and there were no shops that sold, for example, a significant range of fantasy figures. I only started using figures for roleplaying another six or seven years down the line.
So, RPGs were few in number, quite complex to play (for a relative value of ‘complex’) and you had to work at them as there were few resources available to make it easy for you. Because of this, you had to wring more value out of the games available to you. If D&D didn’t have exactly the thing you needed you had to flex the game or make something wholly new to meet that need. You couldn’t simply and easily pick up a game to address a specific niche.
Spin forwards to today. There are hundred (possibly tens of thousands) of RPGs available at low cost, easy to find with a few clicks via DriveThru or the other on-line markets.
As someone with tastes that tend to the slightly more crunchy and simulationist, combined with an ageing brain that finds it less enjoyable to absorb new rule sets, I find the tendency for super-niche games counter to my predilections. People will post to this or other RPG forums looking for an existing game that combines exactly ‘X’ genre or world, ‘Y’ rules focus and ‘Z’ magic / technology assumptions. My instinctive answer is always ‘make it in GURPS / Fate / your generic system of choice’ but clearly this is not the prevailing assumption.
Which led to wonder why, and come up with my analogy that I thought I would offer up for musing / chewing / mauling: It seems to me that the evolution of RPG systems is similar to the evolution of computer software.
Computer software started off as occult and complex things. You needed to know exactly the command codes to make something happen, but the applications were often powerful and flexible once you did understand them. Think of things like the Vi editor in Unix. Complex, opaque but very capable.
As we moved into GUI based applications as the norm, the level of complexity dropped down for most users. You could see icons that (if well designed) intuitively told you what they did and so it was much easier for a non-expert to get value out of them. These applications still had ‘power user’ capabilities built into them, and so people with more experience with the systems and the desire to play around could still do some pretty impressive things. Many real companies still basically run their back-office with Excel, though that is starting to tail off a bit...
Most recently, we have moved into the world of apps, be those mobile apps or web apps. Smaller applications designed to deliver a more focussed set of capabilities in an easy to use way. This started due to the lack of underlying resources on these platforms (and we are seeing some move back from simple apps into more feature rich applications as they become more powerful) but they have had a big impact on consumer computing already and you can see the trend picking up in commercial software, too.
I wonder if the shift from ‘occult’ RPGs to ‘slick’ RPGs to ‘focussed‘ RPGs is similar. I also wonder if the change in expectation from the ‘user community’ is partly driving this?
What is the potential benefit from this analogy? Helping to see other people’s perspectives, helping to understand their taste preferences? Helping to find other people who might share you preferences and persuade them to try a game you like and think they might too? Interesting thought exercise or pointless navel gazing? You decide...
For me, it is wondering how come my tastes seem to be so far out of the mainstream* and wondering how to encourage people to like my flavour of gaming so players don’t dwindle away.
* I accept that most gamers just play and never second guess their own choices or games, I’m talking about the ‘mainstream’ of forum discussion.
When I started out with RPGs (I was in what I think of as the second wave - I started in 1983-4 so I wasn’t there at the beginning but was pulled in by the boom of satanic panic, Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and BECMI D&D) there was only a few available. There may have been quite a number in existence but finding them and buying them was next to impossible. This is pre-web and most people didn’t even have dial-up internet, at least in the UK. In the provinces I considered myself lucky to have one hobby shop within ten miles that sold RPGs, and there were no shops that sold, for example, a significant range of fantasy figures. I only started using figures for roleplaying another six or seven years down the line.
So, RPGs were few in number, quite complex to play (for a relative value of ‘complex’) and you had to work at them as there were few resources available to make it easy for you. Because of this, you had to wring more value out of the games available to you. If D&D didn’t have exactly the thing you needed you had to flex the game or make something wholly new to meet that need. You couldn’t simply and easily pick up a game to address a specific niche.
Spin forwards to today. There are hundred (possibly tens of thousands) of RPGs available at low cost, easy to find with a few clicks via DriveThru or the other on-line markets.
As someone with tastes that tend to the slightly more crunchy and simulationist, combined with an ageing brain that finds it less enjoyable to absorb new rule sets, I find the tendency for super-niche games counter to my predilections. People will post to this or other RPG forums looking for an existing game that combines exactly ‘X’ genre or world, ‘Y’ rules focus and ‘Z’ magic / technology assumptions. My instinctive answer is always ‘make it in GURPS / Fate / your generic system of choice’ but clearly this is not the prevailing assumption.
Which led to wonder why, and come up with my analogy that I thought I would offer up for musing / chewing / mauling: It seems to me that the evolution of RPG systems is similar to the evolution of computer software.
Computer software started off as occult and complex things. You needed to know exactly the command codes to make something happen, but the applications were often powerful and flexible once you did understand them. Think of things like the Vi editor in Unix. Complex, opaque but very capable.
As we moved into GUI based applications as the norm, the level of complexity dropped down for most users. You could see icons that (if well designed) intuitively told you what they did and so it was much easier for a non-expert to get value out of them. These applications still had ‘power user’ capabilities built into them, and so people with more experience with the systems and the desire to play around could still do some pretty impressive things. Many real companies still basically run their back-office with Excel, though that is starting to tail off a bit...
Most recently, we have moved into the world of apps, be those mobile apps or web apps. Smaller applications designed to deliver a more focussed set of capabilities in an easy to use way. This started due to the lack of underlying resources on these platforms (and we are seeing some move back from simple apps into more feature rich applications as they become more powerful) but they have had a big impact on consumer computing already and you can see the trend picking up in commercial software, too.
I wonder if the shift from ‘occult’ RPGs to ‘slick’ RPGs to ‘focussed‘ RPGs is similar. I also wonder if the change in expectation from the ‘user community’ is partly driving this?
What is the potential benefit from this analogy? Helping to see other people’s perspectives, helping to understand their taste preferences? Helping to find other people who might share you preferences and persuade them to try a game you like and think they might too? Interesting thought exercise or pointless navel gazing? You decide...
For me, it is wondering how come my tastes seem to be so far out of the mainstream* and wondering how to encourage people to like my flavour of gaming so players don’t dwindle away.
* I accept that most gamers just play and never second guess their own choices or games, I’m talking about the ‘mainstream’ of forum discussion.