How many people came from PnP RPGs?

Thrasher said:

At the outset, it wasn't really so stigmatized or widely known, like it became after some killings were tied to DnD roleplaying back in the 80's, was it?

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The only stigma that really mattered was the nerd stigma, I think. The D&D club replaced the chess club in junior high, so I think that stigma was there right at the start. I doubt the stigma coming from the fundamentalists was hurting much at all. (That was also the time of the whole "backwards masking in rock lyrics" idiocy.)

I played both, but started with cRPGs. My first cRPGs were Might & Magic VI and Baldur's Gate. The latter got me interested in pnp games, particularly D&D. My first there was D&D 3.0. I still had been playing Star Wars RPG and D&D 3.5 quite regularly with friends last year. Nothing this year though.

I played DnD first edition back in the 80s a bit. Sadly mostly by myself, but once computers came it made it a whole lot easier. Since 90s or so that experience has eroded more and more though. Now most people have a whole other conception of what an RPG is supposed to be which I don't like much, and I think that applies in the PnP world as well.

ManWhoJaped said:

I played DnD first edition back in the 80s a bit. Sadly mostly by myself, but once computers came it made it a whole lot easier. Since 90s or so that experience has eroded more and more though. Now most people have a whole other conception of what an RPG is supposed to be which I don't like much, and I think that applies in the PnP world as well.

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D&D 4th ed. definitely turned away from its roots, changing from a Fantasy World Simulator to a Fantasy Game Simulator. While, before, the rules described how to live and fight in a fantasy world, now they described how to play a computer fantasy game without a computer.

wolfing said:

D&D 4th ed. definitely turned away from its roots, changing from a Fantasy World Simulator to a Fantasy Game Simulator. While before the rules described how to live and fight in a fantasy world, now it described how to play a computer fantasy game without a computer.

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That's pretty much exactly how I felt about it.

Yup, 4th Edition was basically D&D without soul turned into a paper MMO.

I'm an old fart, so it was PnP or nothing before the PC came along. Yeah, I did the PnP gaming for many years, starting with DnD then eventually migrating to GURPS and HERO. Eventually I got tired of the long commute needed to reach a mature gaming group.

I play weekly still, my living room bookshelf has my collection of all my classic D&D 1st edition books. Well, really it has everything thru 4th edition, and a few other systems as well. Primarily the retro-clones like Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and the new Old School Flavored New Game Du jour - Dungeon Crawl Classics. That way, any new woman here has to pass the shelf and be confronted w/ my nerd-dom head on. I'm all about full RPG disclosure. If she makes it past the shelf, and my explanation in layman's terms, things may work out yet.

Youd be surprised how many women D&D is a death knell for, i actually considered hiding it for a while. Then I figured it's best to be upfront, and if she's not hip to it that's too bad.

Last 5 or so sessions we have been playing the Dragon Age RPG at the behest of one of our newest initiates who volunteered to run it and promised we'd like it. It's not bad, relatively simple and fun system. Some of you would be proud, we actually have a couple members that boycotted the game and arent playing because of EA (rolls eyes). In their defense, they work for Sony tho, so it doesnt annoy me as much.

I will occasionally DM, but I like to be a player more and since it's usually my place and my beer, someone else provides the DM service.

There's some excitement around 5th edition, and a couple members of our cabal have actually done a little playing of it. I'm anxious to get my hands on it personally. WOTC has to be sitting up and taking notice of all the latest OSR style games that are taking over a good part of the market. Players more and more are wanting less rules, less feats, less abilities, less crap thrown at them - they just want to play, and not dread leveling-up because it's time to hit the books and figure out all their new modifiers and pick out another 5 abilities they will seldom ever use

I started - like most other Gen Y people - with NES, then PC, then SNES. I blame Realms of Arkania for sharpening my need for more depth in my games. I didn't discover AD&D until I was about thirteen, and you can imagine the nonliterary parents of a thirteen year old girl making fun of her for the nerdy books she read.

I'm convinced that sarcasm is born from having to put up with parents that are less intelligent than you are. Yes, I said it, and I am not ashamed. xD

Well I grew up with an old Atari system from the 80's, and moved on to the Nintendo system after that myself. It was my brother who got me interested in D&D gaming.

He also bought my first PC back when they cost more then today. My first major RPG game I played on the PC started with Fallout followed by Baldur's Gate.

Before that I played just JRPG's on the consoles. So you see I'm not as old as some of you it seems. I rarely played any gold-box, or other SSI games.

DArtagnan said:

Yup, 4th Edition was basically D&D without soul turned into a paper MMO.

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That was done by Hasbo & TSR to make it fit MMO's. While the older fans may not like it, it allowed them to make money off of online games.

Check out Dhruin's news-bit from 2012 that confirms why it was.

Link -http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15937

Hasbro, envious of the success of Marvel's superhero properties into a lucrative transmedia juggernaut, gave each of its brands the goal of $100 million annual sales. The problem was that each of Wizards of the Coast's brands were viewed in isolation, which left Dungeons & Dragons, "a $25-30 million business" according to Dancey, in dires traits. The Dungeons & Dragons team hit on the idea of using the online Dungeons & Dragons Insider (DDI) to grow the brand to $50 million and potentially beyond:

"The Wizards team produced figures showing that there were millions of people playing D&D and that if they could move a moderate fraction of those people to DDI, they would achieve their revenue goals. Then DDI could be expanded over time and if/when Hasbro recovered the video gaming rights, it could be used as a platform to launch a true D&D MMO, which could take them over $100 million/year."

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It also explains why no one has made another SP D&D RPG. Hasbro is just not interested in letting other developers make them anymore.

Couchpotato said:

It also explains why no one has made another SP D&D RPG. Hasbro is just not interested in letting other developers make them anymore.

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I fear that - right now - no-one really wants to do SP RPGs anymore - simply because a) MMOs cannot be pirated, b) they can produce so much more revenue over time, in contrast to SP RPGs, which are rather like "hit & run".

SP RPGs are going to die out, I predict, apart from the Indie Scene. It's like having to turn into the Undergroiund to get a living cultural world again, full of creativity and Indie bands (actually, a tiny stage-house iused for independent bands in Cologne is called "Underground" ... I've seen David Rhodes there in 2010. He often playes guitar for Peter Gabriel. The other group of that evening was called Paintbox).

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I fear that - right now - no-one really wants to do SP RPGs anymore - simply because a) MMOs cannot be pirated, b) they can produce so much more revenue over time, in contrast to SP RPGs, which are rather like "hit & run".

SP RPGs are going to die out, I predict, apart from the Indie Scene.

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Unfortunately, I think you're right. We might see something every few years from Bethesda, along with the usual bland, mass-market Bioware offering, but that's probably going to be it for big budget gaming. Sadly, I'm not sure the indie market's going to be much better, since it seems to be mostly roguelikes or action RPGs, which are ok for what they are, but don't really scratch the "traditional" RPG itch. It's not so bad here, but in other places I've seen a drift towards RPG = JRPG recently, which is further diluting the already dwindling market.

This week I've really been in the mood for a deep, immersive RPG and I've had a really hard time finding anything that I've not already played to death. There's not a lot out there where you can make your own character and take them out to explore a believable world on your own terms.

I have been playing Gothic 3 with the latest community patch for the last month. Not sure if you have played that yet Menigal but it is truly a great game. Great for role playing and doing what you want.

I've tried it, but none of the Gothic (or Gothic-ish) games really grab me.

The only advice I could give is to go into the Adventure Games genre. It doesn't have character dvelopment, but there are lots of good stories to be found …

On Steam I found a game called "Heroine's Quest : The Herald Of Ragnarök" a few days ago - I haven't played it yet, though.

Or try something very different and play "Medieval SIMs" …

I dunno, you guys. Maybe I'm blind, but I'm just not seeing a complete decline in single player RPG's. It's true that a lot of AAA developers love either the MMO or always-online model, but every year I see tons of single-player RPG's coming out, and they usually get a whole lot more fanfare than the free-to-play MMO trash you occasionally see. There's a whole lot of people that prefer to play their RPG's by themselves (this forum is filled with them), and I don't see us going away. It's wired too deeply in the RPG psyche.

Sadly, I don't think "social gaming" is going away, either, and unfortunately I think that's something we'll be forced to contend with as well. But numbers speak louder than words, and games like Divinity: Original Sin sold better than anyone imagined. And if Bioware does DA:I right, the numbers will be even more in favor of sp-rpg's.

I've heard pc gaming is going away since I was playing Wizardry 3 in 1983, it hasn't happened yet. I have no idea what social gaming is, unless it's online gaming, and I'm pretty sure that's here to stay as well. What does surprise me every year is how consoles seem to cling on to life. It's like driving a Yugo when you could get behind a Jaguar instead!

Even as a jaded and opinionated "veteran" - I see countless reasons to be optimistic about the future of PC gaming. I think I'm more optimistic about it than I've ever been, and I'm not the kind of person who goes around feeling optimistic.

That said, I'm also suffering from a SEVERE case of overexposure, and my primary problem is not that I can't find a great game to play. It's being able to focus on just one of the seemingly endless great games that are out, right fucking now.

DArtagnan said:

That said, I'm also suffering from a SEVERE case of overexposure, and my primary problem is not that I can't find a great game to play. It's being able to focus on just one of the seemingly endless great games that are out, right fucking now.

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Please forgive me for praising you, Dart, but I don't think I could have said that any better myself. xD

Aubrielle said:

Please forgive me for praising you, Dart, but I don't think I could have said that any better myself. xD

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I'll forgive you, just this once