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Author Topic: Baordgames the new RPGs?  (Read 3011 times)

Mistwell

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Baordgames the new RPGs?
« Reply #15 on: August 19, 2012, 12:16:41 AM »
Quote from: RPGPundit;573103
Boardgames have been a big fad the last few years, the way CCGs were a few years before that.  It remains to be seen if the bulk of them will end up prevailing, or split up into smaller micro-fandoms/hobbies, or mostly just vanish.  I'll be curious to see if anyone will actually be playing Cataan, much less anyone new, in 20 years.

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Uh, not a fad, and not just the last few years.  They started in the 1970s in Germany.  The Spiel des Jahres game of the year awards go back to 1979 with Hare and Tortoise (a 1974 game), and Essen (the GenCon of Euro-games) started in 1983.

They reached the US 17 years ago, but were already big in Europe before then.  Really they've been around about as long as D&D.

You might be interested in this history of the Euro-games article, which is told from the North American perspective.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2012, 12:54:53 AM by Mistwell »

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Baordgames the new RPGs?
« Reply #16 on: August 19, 2012, 05:22:07 PM »
Quote from: Mistwell;573337
Uh, not a fad, and not just the last few years.  They started in the 1970s in Germany.  The Spiel des Jahres game of the year awards go back to 1979 with Hare and Tortoise (a 1974 game), and Essen (the GenCon of Euro-games) started in 1983.

They reached the US 17 years ago, but were already big in Europe before then.  Really they've been around about as long as D&D.

You might be interested in this history of the Euro-games article, which is told from the North American perspective.


Were they as mainstream-popular in Germany prior to the big boom in board games of the last decade?

The point is that the euro-game boom has relatively ordinary people playing a variety of weird board games, some of them quite good, others definitely not.  Sooner or later, I think that's going to burst as a bubble, and you'll be back to regular people playing monopoly and fringe geeks playing games like carcassonne.

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Mikko Leho

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Baordgames the new RPGs?
« Reply #17 on: August 20, 2012, 08:43:57 AM »
Quote from: RPGPundit;573727
The point is that the euro-game boom has relatively ordinary people playing a variety of weird board games, some of them quite good, others definitely not.  Sooner or later, I think that's going to burst as a bubble, and you'll be back to regular people playing monopoly and fringe geeks playing games like carcassonne.


I doubt that anyone who has tried something better than Monopoly (which is a horrible, horrible game) will ever want to go back. The classic games like Clue have brand recognition but that is pretty much all, when newer games can offer more consistent playtime, more engaging game mechanics and less reliance on luck. I have no doubt that certain publishers and games will eventually hit the wall (Steve Jackson Games & Munchkin I am looking at you), but there is no way of going back to the situation 20 years past.

daniel_ream

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Baordgames the new RPGs?
« Reply #18 on: August 20, 2012, 10:30:43 AM »
Pundit's just doing his Mike Myers "Scottish shop" routine.  Pay no mind.
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danskmacabre

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Baordgames the new RPGs?
« Reply #19 on: August 20, 2012, 11:40:17 AM »
Quote from: RPGPundit;573103
fandoms/hobbies, or mostly just vanish.  I'll be curious to see if anyone will actually be playing Cataan, much less anyone new, in 20 years.

RPGPundit


Talisman has been around since the 80s. It's probably as popular now as it ever was.

I expect there probably WILL be a retraction in the popularity of boardgames at some stage, but really the quality is very high atm and older boardgames are getting reworked as well.

mcbobbo

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Baordgames the new RPGs?
« Reply #20 on: August 20, 2012, 11:54:37 AM »
Quote from: danskmacabre;574058
I expect there probably WILL be a retraction in the popularity of boardgames at some stage, but really the quality is very high atm and older boardgames are getting reworked as well.


My ten year old loves them.  More than computer games and even more than his DS.  He's in it for the socialization aspect, and likes to test his mettle against the adults.

Will that change?  I rather doubt it.

Further I think the quality of the Catan set we just recently purchased is so high, I expect he'll be able to introduce it to his own kids.
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Skywalker

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Baordgames the new RPGs?
« Reply #21 on: August 20, 2012, 03:11:58 PM »
I started playing Axis and Allies, Diplomacy, Talisman, Dungeon etc when I started RPGs in the early 80s. Unlike RPGs, they seem to steadily get stronger over at least as many years. I am pretty sure board games are in no danger of just being a fad.

Justin Alexander
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Baordgames the new RPGs?
« Reply #22 on: August 20, 2012, 03:33:12 PM »
Quote from: danskmacabre;571922
Anyone else noticed this?

I went to Gencon this year for the first time in a decade. I noticed a couple of things:

(1) There was still plenty of young blood walking those convention hallways.

(2) The average age increased by at least 5 years (possibly 10) the instant you walked into the RPG rooms.

Right now, boardgames and CCGs are just flat-out better at attracting new blood than RPGs.

CCGs and boardgames are memetically viral in all the ways that RPGs used to be but no longer are: No long-term commitment, variable group composition, minimal learning curves*, and easy pick-up play. They are inherently open tables the way that RPGs were open tables in the '70s and early '80s.

(*Even a more complicated boardgame like Twilight Imperium still has a rulebook that's a fraction of the size of a typical RPG.)

Why did wargames die? Because they went from games that featured all the advantages of boardgames to a specialized entertainment that required long-term commitments, static group composition, steep learning curves, and a complicated set-up that prohibited pick-up play. They stopped being memetically viral.

RPGs have followed the same path: The industry is dominated by specialized games that are built around a long-term commitment to a multi-session campaign; a static group made up of the people playing in that campaign (and expected/required to attend every session); steep learning curves in which even creating a character can require reading a 300 page rulebook; and a requirement for complicated, time-consuming prep work.
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jhkim

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« Reply #23 on: August 20, 2012, 09:58:47 PM »
I just attended Gen Con Indy as well, with my son, nephew, and niece (12, 12, and 8) in tow.  I would agree that board and card games are continuing to grow in popularity, and they are pulling in younger players, couples, and families much moreso than RPGs.  


Regarding CCGs, Magic: The Gathering was still enormous at the con.  Collectible card games might not be growing like they once were, but they are established at a very popular level.  A MtG toolkit is at #12 in the Amazon bestselling games list, just behind Uno and way ahead of Monopoly.  

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/toys-and-games/166220011/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_t_1_2

I think that almost certainly most of the current explosion of board and card games are going to be passe, but I think there will be plenty that survive and thrive in future decades.

Tommy Brownell

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Baordgames the new RPGs?
« Reply #24 on: August 20, 2012, 10:14:31 PM »
One anecdotal difference in board game popularity is...I bought HeroQuest at Wal-Mart. That was my first "GM" experience. Much like how RPGs used to be found at Toys'R'Us, I haven't seen any of the cool "gateway" games outside of specialty shops.
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flyerfan1991

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Baordgames the new RPGs?
« Reply #25 on: August 20, 2012, 10:33:49 PM »
Well, Settlers of Catan is seventeen years old, so it's not just the past decade or so for the boardgame boom.

I look at it as cross fertilization, particularly in a game store environment.  You get some people who play boardgames who come in and decide to try an RPG based on a play session at the store, and you get an RPGer to play for a quick fix while waiting for everyone else in the game group to show up.

Looking at the dealer hall in GenCon, some people might flip out over the lack of RPG space, but I look at the overall size of the dealer hall and think that there's plenty of room for both groups.  What'd worry me more in GenCon is if you start getting far too many non-gamer related booths popping up, because those would be taking away from potential gamer vendors.  It'd also indicate that the faddishness of gaming is approaching bubble levels, because people not even associated with gaming were trying to cash in.  

(The last time I went to the Dayton Hamvention and roamed the flea market, there was a marked uptick in the number of non-electronics/amateur radio/shortwave radio booths out there, which disappointed me.  I didn't go to Dayton to buy jam, for fuck's sake; I was hunting for a Hammarlund HQ-180A.)

My own experience has been RPGs first, then RPGs go on the back burner (except for that long running 3.0 campaign), then RPGs ascendant again as the kids discover them.  I can see both RPGs and boardgames played in our house, and that's fine with me.

flyerfan1991

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« Reply #26 on: August 20, 2012, 10:39:18 PM »
Quote from: Justin Alexander;574240

Why did wargames die? Because they went from games that featured all the advantages of boardgames to a specialized entertainment that required long-term commitments, static group composition, steep learning curves, and a complicated set-up that prohibited pick-up play. They stopped being memetically viral.


That's why I think Colombia Games' wargame line is brilliant.  Their block system make their wargames easy for a pickup game.  Same thing with Richard Borg's Commands and Colors system.

daniel_ream

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Baordgames the new RPGs?
« Reply #27 on: August 20, 2012, 10:50:59 PM »
Quote from: Tommy Brownell;574404
One anecdotal difference in board game popularity is...I bought HeroQuest at Wal-Mart. That was my first "GM" experience. Much like how RPGs used to be found at Toys'R'Us, I haven't seen any of the cool "gateway" games outside of specialty shops.


You aren't going to find adult-oriented board games in toy stores/departments that are aimed entirely at children, which is what Toys 'R' Us and Wal-Mart's toy departments are.

Here in Canada, for instance, there's a hobby shop in every mall with a selection of these games, and during Christmas the kiosks in the mall concourse are filled with a larger selection.  Chapters/Indigo (a national brick and mortar book retailer) used to stock large quantities of Eurogames during the Christmas season; now the larger locations stock them year-round.

It's possible the retail chain is significantly different between the US and Canada, but I suggest you look in places that sell adult parlour games, rather than children's toy stores, and see what their selection is like.
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SJBenoist

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Baordgames the new RPGs?
« Reply #28 on: August 21, 2012, 03:40:37 AM »
Quote from: Justin Alexander;574240
Why did wargames die? Because they went from games that featured all the advantages of boardgames to a specialized entertainment that required long-term commitments, static group composition, steep learning curves, and a complicated set-up that prohibited pick-up play. They stopped being memetically viral.

Die?

Wargames are bigger now than they have ever been.  Even the halcyon days of Avalon Hill, SPI, et. al. of the 1970's couldn't match today for variety, quality, aesthetics, diversity, or sheer volume.  Wargames have been on a strong, steady upswing since about 2001 (even the hex based ones).
« Last Edit: August 21, 2012, 10:47:59 AM by SJBenoist »

Doom

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« Reply #29 on: August 21, 2012, 11:08:54 AM »
You also can't rule out that the big hex wargames didn't die, they just migrated to the computer.

Matrixgames has been cranking out massively complicated hex-style wargames for years, successfully.
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