Sunday, January 30, 2011

The Future of Tabletop RPGs ?



Before, I leave for today’s weekly gaming session;
It is obvious from reading other peoples’ blogs
that finding an old school game is not easy.
I know, I game with dedicated 3-tards.

Many retroclones will have a hard time drawing in youth or newbies because they require patience, determination, literacy and/or are counter-intuitive;
descending armor class (WTF?)
Roll high to save and hit,
But roll low for thief skills, find secret doors, etc..

Teaching your own children to game, doesn’t count –
they will most likely abandon’s dad’s (and/or mom’s) hobby
when they discover cars or
their own sexuality.

I believe retro cones will have a hard time converting 3-tards and 4-ons.
IMHO the future of our dwindling hobby belongs to game systems with the CLASSIC feel
AND 3.x or Pathfinder compatibility.
Primarily, because those systems have SO MANY modules, splat books and GM materials available for FREE
(or darn near free on Amazon or Ebay)!

See http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/



From Cyclopeatron   ,  26 April 2013


Relative Popularities of OSR Games

If G+ community size is any indicator...

634 - Swords & Wizardry
551 - Original D&D
549 - Dungeon Crawl Classics
512 - Advanced D&D
329 - Lamentations of the Flame Princes
236 - Adventurer Conqueror King
222 - Labyrinth Lord
209 - Castles and Crusades
208 - Basic Fantasy
143 - Talislanta
124 - Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea
119 - Adventures Dark and Deep
115 - Holmes Basic
110 - Basic / Expert D&D
97 - AD&D 2e
70 - Delving Deeper

For Reference
2142 - Pathfinder   ( which is more  than S&W, DCC, LotFP, ACK and LL combined)
1465 - OSR Group
1430 - Dungeon World
1195 - Savage Worlds
733 - D&D Next
653 - D&D (4e)
 

2 comments:

  1. In sheer volume there are indeed way more free material for Pathfinder/d20 than the retro-clones/OSR market. But...

    In terms of what a Gamemaster can use both have grown beyond the point where a individual referee has the time to make use of it all.

    So the difference is much of one at the level of the individual referee.


    Based on my experience it really boils down to being a good referee running an interesting game. Sure the choice of rule system is an important preference but the referee is key. I am responsible for several sales of different retro clones after the games I ran at local Cons and Game Stores.

    If you want more old school gamers then it has to be start by somebody creating old school gamers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the link to that generator. I'm sure I can get some use out of it for my olden style rpgs.

    ReplyDelete