I hope you'll forgive my efforts to try and catch up with all that's gone on in the TTRPG scene since 2010!
As I was drifting away from games (mainly because of family, work, moving around the country and stuff like that), there seemed to be - in the UK at least - a pretty vibrant home-grown games design and publishing scene. At the cons I went to (Dragonmeet in London, mainly), there seemed to be new people publishing and designing every year. A lot of games were really different in design - perhaps not for me, but cool nevertheless.
My real question here is kind of twofold:
1) What have been the main developments in games design over the last decade? I know that D&D5E came out since I knocked off gaming.
2) For those of you in the UK (or familiar with the games scene here), what are the main communities for playing and designing games these days?
Edit: So in essence, what are the "big" changes you've seen in the last decade?
Cheers,
Franko
Everything has gone to hell because SJWs took over the hobby.
I agree that the SJWs have taken over the main gaming companies and much of what is presented as "the mainstream", but the elephant in the room is the rise of the OSR as not just a nostalgic replaying of old games, but as a design philosophy and a journey of both rediscovery and innovation. One of the drivers is technological advancement, specifically digital download and print on demand.
D&D has gone "mainstream", and to a lesser extent Call of Cthulhu, similar to the overall trajectory of so called "geek" culture. I think we're seeing something similar to what's happened in visual entertainment, with the big brands acting like the big movie studios, and the direct sales marketplace acting more like Amazon, Netflix, etc. If you want big and flashy and endless popcorn with the masses you watch a Marvel film. If you want quality you go "small screen".
I suspect this divide will not go away but will continue to grow. Hasbro D&D will become more and more a corporate property or identity, and those of us that actually love the hobby will continue to play in our basements, dining rooms and pubs. It may occur, however, that people whose taste for the hobby have been whetted by the corporate product may seek out a more authentic experience playing with a group of dedicated hobbiests who make every game "their own". It could also go the other way, with "Gaming Nerd Culture" eating the "gaming hobby". The cons, I suspect, will continue to be the battleground for this.
There were a few broad things that went down in the 2010s in RPGing.
1. Quite a few "OSR" games were released and had decent success. By "OSR" in this case, I mean games based off or inspired pretty heavily by earlier D&D. A selection:
Dungeon Crawl Classics
B-X/Old School Essentials
Lamentations of the Flame Princess
Blueholme
Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea
... (the list goes on).
2010 saw the release of Stars Without Number, Kevin Crawford's 1st game, which is basically an OSR sci-fi game, but he would go on to release a lot of well regarded material over the decade, notable for a lot of his material being usable outside of his own games. His games are all based on the same chassis, covering genres such as Sci-Fi, Horror, African Fantasy, "Exalted"-like demi-god heroes, and more, all with a lot of tools for generating materials for "sandbox" style play.
2. Apocalypse World. A game by Vincent Baker, a Post-Apocalyptic game that had a delineated set of "Moves" that players and GMs could make out of "Playbooks", and a simple 2d6 die mechanic that includes a common "You succeed, but at a price" result. This game would go on to inspire a lot of people to make their own "Powered by the Apocalypse" games of varying quality covering all imaginable genres. It seems to form the center around which a lot of "Story Game" type activity grew up over the decade.
A bit later, there's a game called "Blades in the Dark", a kind of "you're a gang running heists in a dark fantasy city" game that took some inspiration from Apocalypse World that itself inspired a couple games off from it's branch.
3. Monte Cook had some success with what are now known as his "Cypher System" games, Numenera and The Strange. The books were everywhere with their high production for a while. The system never personally did it for me, but it was a thing for a while. It reached a peak with "Invisible Sun", which... I don't know much about except that it came in a giant couple hundred dollar black cube.
4. While I didn't really follow these games, there were these Star Wars games with funky dice on store shelves for a while. Somebody else can tell you about them.
5. Also, Modiphius produced a ton of licensed games using this house 2d20 system people have a mixed reaction towards.
6. This guy Daniel Fox made a more complicated clone of Warhammer called Zweihander, and due to his marketing abilities got it everywhere as well. He would show up everywhere pimping his game. It's my least favorite Warhammer, but I never played the 3rd one.
7. BRP games kept themselves alive. RuneQuest 6e (later renamed Mythras) strikes me as the core of that, but Magic World & another RuneQuest from Chaosium kept the flames alive as well.
Other stuff happened, but I guess the OSR games and Apocalypse World strike me as the 2 top areas that spun out the most material during the decade.
I forget the timeline, but there were a few other systems that saw action during the last decade as well that I overlooked.
1. The "Cortex Plus" system (2010) was used for some licensed material "Marvel Heroic Roleplaying", Smallville, Firefly, Leverage.
2. Further iterations of FATE resulted in a glut of material for it over the decade.
3. Savage Worlds continued to produce a lot of material and maintain its popularity with a lot of folks.
Quote from: Brendan;1128145I agree that the SJWs have taken over the main gaming companies and much of what is presented as "the mainstream", but the elephant in the room is the rise of the OSR as not just a nostalgic replaying of old games, but as a design philosophy and a journey of both rediscovery and innovation. One of the drivers is technological advancement, specifically digital download and print on demand.
D&D has gone "mainstream", and to a lesser extent Call of Cthulhu, similar to the overall trajectory of so called "geek" culture. I think we're seeing something similar to what's happened in visual entertainment, with the big brands acting like the big movie studios, and the direct sales marketplace acting more like Amazon, Netflix, etc. If you want big and flashy and endless popcorn with the masses you watch a Marvel film. If you want quality you go "small screen".
I suspect this divide will not go away but will continue to grow. Hasbro D&D will become more and more a corporate property or identity, and those of us that actually love the hobby will continue to play in our basements, dining rooms and pubs. It may occur, however, that people whose taste for the hobby have been whetted by the corporate product may seek out a more authentic experience playing with a group of dedicated hobbiests who make every game "their own". It could also go the other way, with "Gaming Nerd Culture" eating the "gaming hobby". The cons, I suspect, will continue to be the battleground for this.
Thanks all for such detailed and informative replies. I really appreciate you being willing to answer the vague questions of a newcomer.
I'm really curious about this SJW thing as it relates to gaming. While I'm fully aware of the connotations outside of games, what with being out of the 'scene' for a while means that I'm not sure I get how it relates to games and gaming, what effects it has had on games in general. It seems from what you say that the hobby has widened out to include a lot more people (bigger even than in the 1980s? That would be something!). From my POV, that would seem to be a good thing.
Cheers,
Franko
Quote from: Franko77;1128152Thanks all for such detailed and informative replies. I really appreciate you being willing to answer the vague questions of a newcomer.
I'm really curious about this SJW thing as it relates to gaming. While I'm fully aware of the connotations outside of games, what with being out of the 'scene' for a while means that I'm not sure I get how it relates to games and gaming, what effects it has had on games in general. It seems from what you say that the hobby has widened out to include a lot more people (bigger even than in the 1980s? That would be something!). From my POV, that would seem to be a good thing.
Cheers,
Franko
With D&D, the only changes are that certain adventures casually toss in one-sentence SJWisms like gay gnome kings that can be easily ignored. AFAIK, there aren't any adventures where prejudice actually plays a role in the plot. To the contrary, you're still killing orcs and goblins and other mainstays like they're going out of style. In the Ravenloft module, for instance, the Vistani are depicted as being so apathetic and moronic that they'll accept a beer keg after they ask you to find a lost child.
Chaosium did write adventures where they added new rules stating that all white people in the 1920s were pathological frothing racists who turned into lynch mobs at the drop of a hat, but it's so crudely tacked on and not actually integrated into the rest of the text that you can easily ignore it.
White people suffering white guilt is hilarious. It's like they've never talked to a woman, a person of color, or an alphabet person in their life.
Critical Role happened. Actors playing DnD online. Many new payers want to replicate CR with very thespy style and they buy CR game stuff.
A guy called Matt Colville is big on Youtube and gives solid GMing advice in a sandboxy style to the new generation.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128155With D&D, the only changes are that certain adventures casually toss in one-sentence SJWisms like gay gnome kings that can be easily ignored. AFAIK, there aren't any adventures where prejudice actually plays a role in the plot. To the contrary, you're still killing orcs and goblins and other mainstays like they're going out of style. In the Ravenloft module, for instance, the Vistani are depicted as being so apathetic and moronic that they'll accept a beer keg after they ask you to find a lost child.
Chaosium did write adventures where they added new rules stating that all white people in the 1920s were pathological frothing racists who turned into lynch mobs at the drop of a hat, but it's so crudely tacked on and not actually integrated into the rest of the text that you can easily ignore it.
White people suffering white guilt is hilarious. It's like they've never talked to a woman, a person of color, or an alphabet person in their life.
Hah, Ravenloft was the first ever D&D module I played way back when! I have very fond memories of that, even though I had no idea what was going on as I'd dropped into an ongoing campaign.
Cheers,
Franko
Quote from: Franko77;1128152I'm really curious about this SJW thing as it relates to gaming. While I'm fully aware of the connotations outside of games, what with being out of the 'scene' for a while means that I'm not sure I get how it relates to games and gaming, what effects it has had on games in general.
Right now, on this very forum, we've got a couple active threads dancing around various aspects of the assertion that "(inherently evil) fantasy orcs are a racist stand-in for black people", which is a long-time favorite of the SJW wing of RPGing.
Their other main darling at the moment is the "X-card" - basically, you put a card with a big "X" on it in the middle of the table and, if anyone starts to feel uncomfortable about the direction the game is going, they touch the card and, in theory, the game changes course away from whatever it was that made the person uncomfortable. However, the rules of the X-card state that it is absolutely forbidden to ask the person what made them uncomfortable, so everyone else has to guess what topic to avoid and may guess incorrectly.
I also see occasional complaints about various companies/products going out of their way to draw attention to a particular NPC's (non-straight, white, and/or cis) sexuality, race, or gender, but I don't buy enough products to have personally encountered that, so I can't say how widespread it actually is.
Virtual Tabletops are a thing and unlike CRPGs like Elder Scrolls or MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, they work seamlessly with RPGs which some groups flipping back and forth between a VTT and face to face.
Solo, co-op and GM-less playing is blowing up thanks to the IronSworn RPG.
Quote from: estar;1128225Virtual Tabletops are a thing and unlike CRPGs like Elder Scrolls or MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, they work seamlessly with RPGs which some groups flipping back and forth between a VTT and face to face.
That's certainly something that we'll need to get to grips with.
Quote from: TimothyWestwind;1128230Solo, co-op and GM-less playing is blowing up thanks to the IronSworn RPG.
Oh, that's really interesting. I recall playing a few GM-less games at cons back in the day and having a lot of fun. They seemed ideally suited to that kind of environment. I think Polaris was one of them (played as session of it at Dragonmeet sometime in the 2000s, I think).
Cheers,
Franko
Quote from: Franko77;1128152Thanks all for such detailed and informative replies. I really appreciate you being willing to answer the vague questions of a newcomer.
I'm really curious about this SJW thing as it relates to gaming. While I'm fully aware of the connotations outside of games, what with being out of the 'scene' for a while means that I'm not sure I get how it relates to games and gaming, what effects it has had on games in general. It seems from what you say that the hobby has widened out to include a lot more people (bigger even than in the 1980s? That would be something!). From my POV, that would seem to be a good thing.
Cheers,
Franko
My pleasure. IMO, there's good news and bad news. On the one hand, I love seeing the hobby grow. On the other hand, the larger cultural battles have no found their way into the tabletop space. Thankfully, there's nothing stopping you from picking up a copy of a cool new OSR game, finding some players, and just rolling dice. I find the political stuff interesting and fun to tease apart - as do many of us here, but if you just prefer shop talk to politics there's nothing wrong with that.
Quote from: S'mon;1128209Critical Role happened. Actors playing DnD online. Many new payers want to replicate CR with very thespy style and they buy CR game stuff.
What S'mon said. There's a cultural bifurcation between (usually) older hobbyists, whose early play experience was grounded in small, culturally unique, play networks and (usually) younger gamers whose expectations have been shaped almost entirely by TV shows ( including Critical Role and Acquisitions Incorporated), pop-culture tropes, and "nerd culture" as a whole. I don't know what the scene is like in England really. S'mon might be able to weigh in on that.
Quote from: TimothyWestwind;1128230Solo, co-op and GM-less playing is blowing up thanks to the IronSworn RPG.
Um, no. Solo play kicked off a resurgance of interest with Mythic and FU. Which inspired many imitators and new approaches. Solo modules have been plugging away at about an even keel since the get go with Flying Buffalo pretty much spearheading the idea.
Quote from: Brendan;1128244What S'mon said. There's a cultural bifurcation between (usually) older hobbyists, whose early play experience was grounded in small, culturally unique, play networks and (usually) younger gamers whose expectations have been shaped almost entirely by TV shows ( including Critical Role and Acquisitions Incorporated), pop-culture tropes, and "nerd culture" as a whole. I don't know what the scene is like in England really. S'mon might be able to weigh in on that.
It's much the same - us older players had different formative experiences from the US gamers (Fighting Fantasy, White Dwarf as an RPG mag); the young ones have a more homogenous experience.
Quote from: Franko77;1128143So in essence, what are the "big" changes you've seen in the last decade?
RPS have become better looking and produced coffee table art books.
Since 2010, there's been a megadump of free RPG stuff on DriveThruRPG.
Quote from: TimothyWestwind;1128230Solo, co-op and GM-less playing is blowing up thanks to the IronSworn RPG.
Please start a thread about IronSworn RPG!
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1128431RPS have become better looking and produced coffee table art books.
But the lack of quality, editing and playtesting continues unabated!
Quote from: Spinachcat;1128439Since 2010, there's been a megadump of free RPG stuff on DriveThruRPG.
Please start a thread about IronSworn RPG!
I'm not sure what there is to discuss about it in a new thread?
Quote from: Spinachcat;1128439Please start a thread about IronSworn RPG!
Ironsworn is a PBTA derivative (albeit with the dice mechanic changed from a simple "2d6 + modifiers" to "1d6 + modifiers vs. two separate 1d10 rolls") with a focus on solo play, including some bits added on for tracking progress on an extended task and then rolling vs. that progress to determine whether the task is complete or not. I don't know that there's really that much more to say about it, but I may have missed some subtler points because I haven't played it to any great extent. (I'm not a PBTA fan and couldn't get over that aspect of the game.)
I can pretty confidently say that its impact hasn't been nearly as great as TimothyWestwind claims, though. It definitely seems to have some very enthusiastic fans, but it still remains a niche within a niche.
I play IronSworn a lot in GM-less co-op mode. For my group it's ideal because we don't have time GM in the traditional way.
The innovation from my perspective is the use of story game mechanics plus progress tracks to simulate playing with a GM. It's as close to playing in a simulationist game as we can get. It's not just a matter of collective 'let's pretend' and whatever we say goes.
If you're playing a simulationist game you're relying on the DM to set up the world for you. If you play that type of game without a GM you need rules to procedurally generate the world but it's hard to surprise yourself in terms of a narrative.
I know many people don't play RPGs for a story but IronSworn strikes a nice balance in that the rules allow for twists and turns and not railroading along a predetermined story. It can happen that you think you've full-filled your goal only for a twist to happen at the last moment that sends your adventure off into a new direction. For example, say you've sworn a vow to clear out a dungeon, the rules can help you determine that it actually leads to a hidden cavern (something you didn't know would happen in advance) or that the King on who's behalf you were undertaking the quest actually has an ulterior motive. You have to fill in the blanks to an extent but the came will prompt you at the appropriate time which keeps you on your toes as a player.
With the supplement Delve rules are provided to procedurally generate (theatre of mind) adventure environments.
Personally I use a lot of tools to build and run the world as I play, such as random tables for generating NPCs, factions etc. including many from Kevin Crawford's games (Stars Without Number, Spears at the Dawn).
I think IronSworn on its own is very good but if you use those extra tools it really helps to create a feeling that world exists independent of your characters. It is possible to simply fail at achieving your goals and that's part of the game as well.
Quote from: nDervish;1128224Right now, on this very forum, we've got a couple active threads dancing around various aspects of the assertion that "(inherently evil) fantasy orcs are a racist stand-in for black people", which is a long-time favorite of the SJW wing of RPGing.
I haven't seen anyone literally arguing that to be the case. Only the antis have ever said that phrase. Rather, the actual argument is that depictions of humanoids draws heavily from historical racist propaganda that leaves a legacy to this day. This can make some players of minority status uncomfortable because they experience systemic racism in their daily life, and thus the depiction ruins their escapism at their particular tables. It's apparently quite common a problem but few of those affected are comfortable with talking about it (especially with players of majority status) and considering the #orcgate controversy I'm not surprised.
Of course this could all just be SJW gaslighting. It's not like we have any archives where players of minority status can share horror stories to verify this. I used to worry about this for a few hours every week like I do every social media fad because I'm a dirty gossip who craves online social interaction because I have no real life friends, but I recently realized that I don't really care.
Quote from: nDervish;1128224I also see occasional complaints about various companies/products going out of their way to draw attention to a particular NPC's (non-straight, white, and/or cis) sexuality, race, or gender, but I don't buy enough products to have personally encountered that, so I can't say how widespread it actually is.
An adventure had a couple of married gay gnome kings. People here didn't like that for some reason.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128649Rather, the actual argument is that depictions of humanoids draws heavily from historical racist propaganda that leaves a legacy to this day.
It doesn't.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128649This can make some players of minority status uncomfortable because they experience systemic racism in their daily life, and thus the depiction ruins their escapism at their particular tables.
It doesn't.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128649It's apparently quite common a problem but few of those affected are comfortable with talking about it (especially with players of majority status) and considering the #orcgate controversy I'm not surprised.
It isn't, and I already went through this at length at the 1984 Orc Edition (link to pertinent post (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41985-1984-Orc-Edition&p=1128414&viewfull=1#post1128414)).
STOP purporting to speak on our behalf with this moronic nonsense! If you want to make the idiotic claim that orcs are somehow "racist" OWN IT! STOP pretending to be our White Savior and that calling orcs "racist" somehow helps minorities in ANY conceivable way, shape, form or alternate reality.
We are
not your shield!
Quote from: VisionStorm;1128660It isn't, and I already went through this at length at the 1984 Orc Edition (link to pertinent post (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41985-1984-Orc-Edition&p=1128414&viewfull=1#post1128414)).
STOP purporting to speak on our behalf with this moronic nonsense! If you want to make the idiotic claim that orcs are somehow "racist" OWN IT! STOP pretending to be our White Savior and that calling orcs "racist" somehow helps minorities in ANY conceivable way, shape, form or alternate reality.
We are not your shield!
....
[ATTACH=CONFIG]4348[/ATTACH]
Quote from: VisionStorm;1128660It doesn't.
It doesn't.
It isn't, and I already went through this at length at the 1984 Orc Edition (link to pertinent post (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41985-1984-Orc-Edition&p=1128414&viewfull=1#post1128414)).
STOP purporting to speak on our behalf with this moronic nonsense! If you want to make the idiotic claim that orcs are somehow "racist" OWN IT! STOP pretending to be our White Savior and that calling orcs "racist" somehow helps minorities in ANY conceivable way, shape, form or alternate reality.
We are not your shield!
Greetings!
VisionStorm. I am pouring myself a glass of Irish Cream, on the rocks, and lighting up a fine cigar. Salut! Fucking hilarious and right the fuck on commentary, man.:D
BoxCrayonTales is your White Saviour! *Laughing*
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: VisionStorm;1128660It doesn't.
It doesn't.
It isn't, and I already went through this at length at the 1984 Orc Edition (link to pertinent post (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41985-1984-Orc-Edition&p=1128414&viewfull=1#post1128414)).
STOP purporting to speak on our behalf with this moronic nonsense! If you want to make the idiotic claim that orcs are somehow "racist" OWN IT! STOP pretending to be our White Savior and that calling orcs "racist" somehow helps minorities in ANY conceivable way, shape, form or alternate reality.
We are not your shield!
You do know that I'm a minority, right?
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128668You do know that I'm a minority, right?
So what?
Nobody but identity politics wackos gives a shit here if the person posting is minority or not. This bastion of free speech gives a fuck about what you post, not the "protected status" of who posted it.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128155With D&D, the only changes are that certain adventures casually toss in one-sentence SJWisms like gay gnome kings that can be easily ignored. AFAIK, there aren't any adventures where prejudice actually plays a role in the plot. To the contrary, you're still killing orcs and goblins and other mainstays like they're going out of style. In the Ravenloft module, for instance, the Vistani are depicted as being so apathetic and moronic that they'll accept a beer keg after they ask you to find a lost child.
I suppose it depends how tolerant you are of such nonsense. The 5E Player's Handbook had a couple of line about how their are other options besides male and female for your characters. At that point I decided I was done with 5E. I'm not sending money to people who promote such baloney.
Quote from: Mishihari;1128670I suppose it depends how tolerant you are of such nonsense. The 5E Player's Handbook had a couple of line about how their are other options besides male and female for your characters. At that point I decided I was done with 5E. I'm not sending money to people who promote such baloney.
Greetings!
The 5E Player's Handbook talks about "Other options besides male and female for your characters." WHAT? What "other options" would there be? Geesus, what fucking nonsense. If you can, perhaps you could quote it directly, with chapter and page number? I'm not being abrasive--it is like the statement is so absurd, I want to read it for myself, kind of like the desire to rubberneck and see horrible car accidents on the freeway with blood and fore everywhere.:D
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
The scifi genre has plenty of species with more than two sexes. So "other options" isn't as strange as it might seem.
Quote from: SHARK;1128663Greetings!
VisionStorm. I am pouring myself a glass of Irish Cream, on the rocks, and lighting up a fine cigar. Salut! Fucking hilarious and right the fuck on commentary, man.:D
BoxCrayonTales is your White Saviour! *Laughing*
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Cheers! Enjoy!
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128668You do know that I'm a minority, right?
I know that what you mean conveniently changes from post to post, making your claims hardly credible.
And I don't give a shit what you are. Stop projecting your cult into everyone in the world that happens to check your ideology's prescriptive boxes. Just because you choose to believe pseudo academic nonsense that has never been an issue in the entire history of modern fiction that doesn't make it commonplace.
NO "minority" in the entire face of this planet shook in their boots at their viewing of Lord of the Rings, staring at the orcs on the screen thinking "...that's us!" then shuddered as a single tear ran down their cheek.
NO ONE.
Not even the ones that buy into SJW shit. This is something that has literally been willed into existence by pseudo academic idiots mentally masturbating while basking in their race "theory" nonsense trying to find racism in whatever they subjectively declared it to be so. None this shit grew organically without going through some pseudo academic exercise to arrive at these conclusions. This is strictly a pseudo academic phenomenon. Normal people don't think this way.
Everyone I have ever talked to about this stuff or similar things like the "Not your costume" campaign and assorted nonsense has looked at me dumbfound, hoping that I'm kidding them, before muttering something about "gringos..." then laughing their ass off as the conversation turned about discussing the crazy stuff people do in the US for several minutes. It's an embarrassment.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128668You do know that I'm a minority, right?
You're white? We're 11.5% of the world, but fortunately, being an ethnic minority doesn't mean anything on free speech forum.
Quote from: VisionStorm;1128678Not even the ones that buy into SJW shit. This is something that has literally been willed into existence by pseudo academic idiots mentally masturbating while basking in their race "theory" nonsense trying to find racism in whatever they subjectively declared it to be so. None this shit grew organically without going through some pseudo academic exercise to arrive at these conclusions. This is strictly a pseudo academic phenomenon. Normal people don't think this way.
Well said.
Working in academia, I actually see them working up this SJW stuff. It can be quite eerie when eg Feminists who care about Women & hate men go from being on top the SJW totem pole to being Radical Feminists to being TERFS (Delenda Est TERFs!) within a relative blink of an eye. Or earlier when they decided Race Is A Social Construct (But the foundation of Identity), & so on.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128649An adventure had a couple of married gay gnome kings. People here didn't like that for some reason.
As usual you didnt even read the thread did you? No? No.
What happened was some people wayyyy over-reacted until it was pointed out just how meaningless the entry is. Just like all the others squirelled away in various WOTC modules. Its all of one sentence with zero impact on the adventure and nothing to back it up. And no one at WOTC so far has been going out of their way to draw attention to these things that I have ever seen. Or even mention them at all.
About the only thing that got even a little comment was the new race boon that allows elves to change gender every morning if they take it at chargen. Which also got noted in Adventurers League chargen. Thats been pretty much it aside from that throw-away comment in the PHB.
Quote from: Mishihari;1128670I suppose it depends how tolerant you are of such nonsense. The 5E Player's Handbook had a couple of line about how their are other options besides male and female for your characters. At that point I decided I was done with 5E. I'm not sending money to people who promote such baloney.
Quote from: SHARK;1128673Greetings!
The 5E Player's Handbook talks about "Other options besides male and female for your characters." WHAT? What "other options" would there be? Geesus, what fucking nonsense. If you can, perhaps you could quote it directly, with chapter and page number? I'm not being abrasive--it is like the statement is so absurd, I want to read it for myself, kind of like the desire to rubberneck and see horrible car accidents on the freeway with blood and fore everywhere.:D
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
M'thinks you two are over-reacting a bit.
From the Basic Rulebook
QuoteSex
You can play a male or female character without gaining
any special benefits or hindrances. Think about how
your character does or does not conform to the broader
culture's expectations of sex, gender, and sexual
behavior. For example, a male drow cleric defies the
traditional gender divisions of drow society, which could
be a reason for your character to leave that society and
come to the surface.
You don't need to be confined to binary notions of sex
and gender. The elf god Corellon Larethian is often seen
as androgynous, for example, and some elves in the
multiverse are made in Corellon's image. You could also
play a female character who presents herself as a man,
a man who feels trapped in a female body, or a bearded
female dwarf who hates being mistaken for a male.
Likewise, your character's sexual orientation is for you
to decide.
TLDR: You can play what you want.
As for what other options besides male and female? If referring to gender, there is also hermaphrodite. These actually occur to various degrees in humans. Apparently about 1 in 2000 have some form of mutation. But there are less than 1000 worldwide with the more extensive combination. Much like alot of other biological quirks. There are degrees of impact.
Well, thanks to everyone for al the advice and catching up with recent gaming history over the past couple of weeks, but I'm pretty sure now this forum isn't really for me. I now get the feeling that most of you would probably hate me and my politics. Best of luck to you all, and keep on enjoying gaming, whatever and however you choose to play.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128649I haven't seen anyone literally arguing that to be the case. Only the antis have ever said that phrase. Rather, the actual argument is that depictions of humanoids draws heavily from historical racist propaganda that leaves a legacy to this day. This can make some players of minority status uncomfortable because they experience systemic racism in their daily life, and thus the depiction ruins their escapism at their particular tables. It's apparently quite common a problem but few of those affected are comfortable with talking about it (especially with players of majority status) and considering the #orcgate controversy I'm not surprised.
Of course this could all just be SJW gaslighting. It's not like we have any archives where players of minority status can share horror stories to verify this. I used to worry about this for a few hours every week like I do every social media fad because I'm a dirty gossip who craves online social interaction because I have no real life friends, but I recently realized that I don't really care.
An adventure had a couple of married gay gnome kings. People here didn't like that for some reason.
Box CrayonTales: I don't know too much about what's gone on over the last decade, but I think I'd be with you on this one (and I'd think that class representations could be a big issue here - Warhammer orcs as illiterate football hooligans? Now that was a bit on the nose!). Best of luck. I feel like eventually I'll say something that will start a fight here and, TBH, I can't be doing with that.
Cheers,
Franko
Kickstarter has gone big since 2012, even if it did exist before. And that has led to even more games beeing created by small time writers, always a win in my book. I agree on SJW beeing a real pain these days, am happy it hasnt yet gone that far in my country but im afraid it probably will.
Quote from: Franko77;11281431) What have been the main developments in games design over the last decade? I know that D&D5E came out since I knocked off gaming.
Aside from D&D5:
- Apocalypse World kicked off a mold of games ( PbtA - Powered by the Apocalypse) characterized by highly thematic and pickup and play gaming. Playbooks being it's biggest contribution IMO: having everything for your character, including future advancement options, in a single sheet that's easy to fill and use.
- OSR gaming bringing back 70s/80s sensibilities in modern presentation. Again, easy to pickup and play and heavily thematic with lots of tables to generate cool stuff on the fly.
- Remakes and re-releases of old games of all sorts, eras and playsyles. From new Runequests to Travellers to old D&D boxes. Even A|State! :)
Really we're living a golden age of rpgs now.
Franko77, afraid of the fight? You can exist among us and still hold your perceived opposite opinion.
I promise.
It's diverse opinions like yours that maybe keeps this cast of characters honest.
Biggest changes since 2010? The "Permission Slip" culture, where D/GMs need player permission to "deprotaganize" their PCs. Serious harm and TPKs need to be cleared prior to execution. A PC killed by a random encounter? Unthinkable! Slapping the king with no deadly consequences? Sure!
Nothing can stand in the way of "The Story™". So much so that there are established "X-Cards" to allow players to cancel aspects of a GM's game that run counter to what players want.
.
Sure. It's a group game, but making the GM's adventure a slave to player whim is .... curious. So, tread lightly.
Also, the appearance of "Meta-Currency" allowing, chiefly, bad rolls a reroll. Failure cannot be tolerated. We get this from the Millennials who've been indoctrinated that "everyone can be a winner." Even when you lose.
SJW propaganda?
Quote from: Theory of Games;1128737Also, the appearance of "Meta-Currency" allowing, chiefly, bad rolls a reroll.
I don't mind the "free reroll" metapoints. They let you play a little harder without having to worry about accidentally killing off a PC and, really, they're not really anything more than a formalized, regulated system for fudging rolls. Fudging has been with us forever, and there are plenty today who argue in favor of unrestricted fudging whenever the GM feels it's "appropriate", so I have a hard time arguing against reroll metapoints while the unlimited fudgers are still around.
What I object to are the more extreme variations, in which the metapoints rise to a full-on currency (e.g., Fate, an entire system which revolves around its "Fate Point economy") which is bought or sold in every game-mechanical interaction, or those where, instead of simply affecting a die roll, they're used as narrative control tokens, allowing the player to declare "It's no big deal that we're out of lockpicks *pays a Fate Point* my uncle's brother's niece's thrice-removed cousin lives a block away, and his cat brings lockpicks home all the time. I'm sure he'll give us some!" and *poof!* it becomes true.
Quote from: nDervish;1128778I don't mind the "free reroll" metapoints. They let you play a little harder without having to worry about accidentally killing off a PC and, really, they're not really anything more than a formalized, regulated system for fudging rolls. Fudging has been with us forever, and there are plenty today who argue in favor of unrestricted fudging whenever the GM feels it's "appropriate", so I have a hard time arguing against reroll metapoints while the unlimited fudgers are still around.
What I object to are the more extreme variations, in which the metapoints rise to a full-on currency (e.g., Fate, an entire system which revolves around its "Fate Point economy") which is bought or sold in every game-mechanical interaction, or those where, instead of simply affecting a die roll, they're used as narrative control tokens, allowing the player to declare "It's no big deal that we're out of lockpicks *pays a Fate Point* my uncle's brother's niece's thrice-removed cousin lives a block away, and his cat brings lockpicks home all the time. I'm sure he'll give us some!" and *poof!* it becomes true.
That's my stance as well. If I'm going to have any reroll at all, I don't want it to be entirely GM fiat. There's a set amount. Everyone at the table knows what it is going in. You do repetitive stupid stuff and use it all up fast, then you are the mercy of the dice the next stupid thing you do. You do occasional reckless stuff that fits the theme of the game, you'll
probably get away with it. Unlimited fudge by the GM is a well that the players can go to until the GM has a mood swing. Hero points for a reroll is a limited thematic thing that's like a set amount of water in the canteen for the trip across the desert.
Quote from: Theory of Games;1128737Biggest changes since 2010? The "Permission Slip" culture, where D/GMs need player permission to "deprotaganize" their PCs. Serious harm and TPKs need to be cleared prior to execution. A PC killed by a random encounter? Unthinkable! Slapping the king with no deadly consequences? Sure!
What game does this?
QuoteNothing can stand in the way of "The Story™". So much so that there are established "X-Cards" to allow players to cancel aspects of a GM's game that run counter to what players want.
That's not how x-cards work. X-cards are meant to be used when play goes to a topic you're uncomfortable with and wouldn't like to thread.
QuoteAlso, the appearance of "Meta-Currency" allowing, chiefly, bad rolls a reroll. Failure cannot be tolerated. We get this from the Millennials who've been indoctrinated that "everyone can be a winner." Even when you lose.
Metacurrency used for rerolls exist since ever. Shadowrun is here since 1989 and it already had karma pool.
Quote from: Omega;1128694M'thinks you two are over-reacting a bit.
From the Basic Rulebook
TLDR: You can play what you want.
As for what other options besides make and female? If referring to gender, there is also hermaphrodite. These actually occur to various degrees in humans. Apparently about 1 in 2000 have some form of mutation. But there are less than 1000 worlwide with the more extensive combination. Much like alot of other biological quirks. There are degrees of impact.
Thanks for providing the quote. I worried that I had misremembered something, but that's exactly what I remembered.
I don't view it as saying "play what you want" (everybody already knows that anyway) but encouragement to play LBWhatever characters. And if the game authors are pushing a political agenda I object to, they don't get my money. No big deal, there are plenty of other good games out there and 5E didn't much appeal to me anyway. So no, I don't think it an overreaction at all.
Quote from: Theory of Games;1128737Serious harm and TPKs need to be cleared prior to execution.
Quote from: Itachi;1128822What game does this?
Tenra Bansho Zero, for one. Despite its heavy use of metapoints (the aiki/kiai/karma cycle), it actually still manages to play pretty trad in practice... except that PCs (and major NPCs) can't die without agreeing to it.
The way it works is that you have a certain amount of Stamina points, and you're KO'ed if they run out, but you can reduce Stamina damage received by checking off wound boxes. You have a few Light Wounds (reduce a little damage and you get +1 on all rolls while you have a Light Wound), a couple Serious Wounds (reduce more damage and give +2), and The Dead Box (completely negates all Stamina damage from one hit and gives +3 to all rolls). You actually die if you run out of Stamina
and your Dead Box is checked. If you don't check the Dead Box, you can't be killed in combat, period, no matter what. The idea is that, by using it, the player is saying "this fight is over something important enough to my character that he's willing to die for it", which both allows them to die and gives them the best power-up because they care that much about it. (TBZ is designed to emulate high-action anime, which is why they have the reverse death spiral.)
Quote from: Itachi;1128822Metacurrency used for rerolls exist since ever. Shadowrun is here since 1989 and it already had karma pool.
Ah, yes. Another classic metapoint blunder: Using the same pool of points both as XP and as a means to buy rerolls.
(In 1st edition Shadowrun, at least. 2nd edition split it up so that 90% of your karma went in the "this is XP" pool and 10% went into the "metapoints for dice manipulation" pool.)
Quote from: Warder;1128722Kickstarter has gone big since 2012, even if it did exist before. And that has led to even more games beeing created by small time writers, always a win in my book. I agree on SJW beeing a real pain these days, am happy it hasnt yet gone that far in my country but im afraid it probably will.
Kickstarter certainly threw wide the gates for indie publishing of all sorts.
Quote from: Theory of Games;1128737Biggest changes since 2010? The "Permission Slip" culture, where D/GMs need player permission to "deprotaganize" their PCs. Serious harm and TPKs need to be cleared prior to execution. A PC killed by a random encounter? Unthinkable! Slapping the king with no deadly consequences? Sure!
Nothing can stand in the way of "The Story™". So much so that there are established "X-Cards" to allow players to cancel aspects of a GM's game that run counter to what players want.
.
Sure. It's a group game, but making the GM's adventure a slave to player whim is .... curious. So, tread lightly.
Also, the appearance of "Meta-Currency" allowing, chiefly, bad rolls a reroll. Failure cannot be tolerated. We get this from the Millennials who've been indoctrinated that "everyone can be a winner." Even when you lose.
1: The shackaling of the DM and turning them into little more than a vend-bot. Or removing them totally is a storygamer push because "ALL DMs are the hated enemy trying to oppresseded muh fiction!". "Traps are BAD and only BAD DMs put traps in their sessions!"
Years ago we had plenty of nuts here spouting pretty much all of that and more as storygamers were on a spree trying to rewrite history. Ron Edwards cultists were freaking everywhere screeching incessantly "mother may I!" and "magic tea party!" and "Traps are a dick move by the DM!" and "everything is a storygame!" and so on ad nausium.
2: re-roll currency is nothing new. Its been around since at least the 80s and was introduced into AD&D with the Conan modules which had luck points. By the 90s a couple of games had some variation on a reroll point system. Not sure if any RPGs used it before that. And it was not used in mainstream D&D till much later.
Quote from: Mishihari;1128875Thanks for providing the quote. I worried that I had misremembered something, but that's exactly what I remembered.
I don't view it as saying "play what you want" (everybody already knows that anyway) but encouragement to play LBWhatever characters. And if the game authors are pushing a political agenda I object to, they don't get my money. No big deal, there are plenty of other good games out there and 5E didn't much appeal to me anyway. So no, I don't think it an overreaction at all.
It does not read like pushing LBwhatever. Just pushing that you can play whatever. Which while a little ham handed. Is pretty much the only entry in the book that has anything like that. Its another throw-away entry. Note that they dont say there you have the right to play these characters or that you must. Only that you can. Or at least potentially can.
Which is still the perplexing thing with 5e. The staff mouth off platitudes and declarations to fake divesity. But the books themselves do not. There is usually one or two representations. But 95% so far have been meaningless and easily missed.
Quote from: Omega;1128928Kickstarter certainly threw wide the gates for indie publishing of all sorts.
Crowdfunding is one of the most self-empowering and liberating elements of the information age. It has brought us from an era of being completely reliant on parasitic middlemen to an age where anyone with a computer can be their own publisher or pitch their own product, whatever that may be, and if they can get people interested they can sell it directly without some corporate overlord giving them their blessing and demanding a huge cut.
The biggest obstacle to crowdfunding is the mob of self-entitled lunatics who could potentially try to get your product taken down, which I've seen happen in crowdfunded comics. Not sure how pervasive it is in RPGs. Kickstarter, unfortunately, has also denied some people from their service based on politics alone (not even the content of their books, just wrong politics, like it happened to Richard Meyer with the Jawbreakers comic, IIRC). So while crowdfunding services are more flexible than traditional publishing there's still an element of having to rely on the whims of a middleman.
Quote from: Omega;1128932It does not read like pushing LBwhatever. Just pushing that you can play whatever. Which while a little ham handed. Is pretty much the only entry in the book that has anything like that. Its another throw-away entry. Note that they dont say there you have the right to play these characters or that you must. Only that you can. Or at least potentially can.
Which is still the perplexing thing with 5e. The staff mouth off platitudes and declarations to fake divesity. But the books themselves do not. There is usually one or two representations. But 95% so far have been meaningless and easily missed.
I tend to fall closer to this perspective when it comes to that particular entry, because it's kinda innocuous, the only one in the entire book as far as i can tell, and I've always been pro-LGBT anyways (my only issue with them being pushing puberty blockers and hormone treatment on children, but none of that appears in the book). But I can sorta see why people might take some issue with it, given the Culture War and how if you give them an inch they'll take the mile. I just don't think that that entry in the 5e PHB is a particularly egregious example.
Though, that part about some elves being made in Corellon's "image" (who is sometimes portrayed as androgynous) almost made my eyes roll out of their sockets. I never liked D&D gods, other than maybe (kinda) some of the dark elf stuff, but with passing editions I've only grown to like them less and less. I never even liked elves having a male god as a chief deity cuz they always seemed to me like the type to have a Mother Goddesses instead. But now it seems like the freaks have taken over the elves and started projecting their weird gender non-conforming nonsense onto them.
Quote from: Basic Rulebook for 5eSex
You can play a male or female character without gaining
any special benefits or hindrances. Think about how
your character does or does not conform to the broader
culture's expectations of sex, gender, and sexual
behavior. For example, a male drow cleric defies the
traditional gender divisions of drow society, which could
be a reason for your character to leave that society and
come to the surface.
You don't need to be confined to binary notions of sex
and gender. The elf god Corellon Larethian is often seen
as androgynous, for example, and some elves in the
multiverse are made in Corellon's image. You could also
play a female character who presents herself as a man,
a man who feels trapped in a female body, or a bearded
female dwarf who hates being mistaken for a male.
Likewise, your character's sexual orientation is for you
to decide.
Just an addendum to this.....
Some of us, myself included, found that the addition of something so obvious that we had been doing it since we started playing tabletop RPGs, to be a pretty ham-fisted way of saying that RPGs were rainbow friendly (which when it was introduced, was what it was lauded as). That implication has been taken to the extreme of "RPGs were bastions of xenophobia and homophobia and misogyny until D&D 5e came along", which is a lie. Tabletop RPGs have always been open and welcoming to Players regardless of minority status - people really only gave a shit if you are an asshole at the game table.
Quote from: Omega;11289292: re-roll currency is nothing new. Its been around since at least the 80s and was introduced into AD&D with the Conan modules which had luck points. By the 90s a couple of games had some variation on a reroll point system. Not sure if any RPGs used it before that. And it was not used in mainstream D&D till much later.
Well, from one point of view, re-roll currency like "luck" points are a foundation of the hobby. Generally, war games were designed so that units could avoid destruction from a successful attack by rolling to "save" the unit (hence a "saving throw" of the dice). Special units were awarded more capacity to handle damage by making you hit them more than once; i.e. hit points. So, hit points were already a mechanism to avoid the loss of a unit (and by extension, a player character) from a single poor roll.
To me, the bigger issue is the modification of this currency to change the direction of features other than your own character's survival. Now you have games where players can spend points to give themselves rolls towards the sequence of events (normally the sole province of the GM), along with their expenditure then opening up additional powers for the GM. The restriction of the GM's powers until a player spends metacurrency is something alien to older roleplaying games.
I play different games than many here, so I have a different perspective:
1. Ars Magica 5th edition ended around mid 2016. The game hasn't had any new supplements since then.
2. Exalted 3rd Edition game out in 2016. Release schedule has been slow, but books are high quality.
3. Shadowrun had 5E come out 2013, and 6E come out in 2019. Never played it, but some friends have.
4. D&D on TV and YouTube got huge. D&D with Pornstars, Critical Role, (Youtube) and on TV (Community, Stranger Things).
5. Fantasy Flight lost the Warhammer RPG license, so no more Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Only War, Deathwatch and Black Crusade RPG supplements.
6. An Xcrawl Pathfinder edition came out in 2015. Think WWF and Running Man meets D&D.
7. Kickstarter is now huge. A 5E 3rd party supplement made by Critical Role raised 2 million dollars.
8. Mutants and Masterminds 3E came out, they're releasing a supplement or two a year.
Also, I found some stats for the current game sales/activity.
https://www.enworld.org/threads/icv2-reports-23-growth-in-rpgs-in-2019.671113/
https://blog.roll20.net/post/188703613190/the-orr-group-industry-report-q3-2019-here
Neither are anywhere near perfect, but something to look at, if nothing else.