Quote from: Zachary The First on February 05, 2021, 11:47:20 AM
Hey all,

So, I haven't posted here since about the tail end of 2014. I haven't run a campaign or played in one in over five years. A lot took place in that time, but suffice it to say there was a lot of other stuff that happened; sold off my game books, put my dice and dice tower in a drawer, and didn't give any time to gaming that entire time. There was a time where I had a gaming blog, did tons of gaming reviews, was in on all the trends and new games, and I find coming back it's like I've been in a tomb the last few years. Hard to explain everything that has happened, but there it is.

So, what have I missed? I've heard rumblings of the uber-PC trends in everything, but have no idea what the big games (or little games of note) that have come out in that time.

-What are the best games of the past 5-6 years?

-What is the state of D&D and Pathfinder?

-What's the OSR been up to?

-What are the best trends in tabletop gaming?

-What are the worst trends in tabletop gaming?

-What cool accessories or dice should I be aware of?

-Where are we buying our PDFs and books these days?

Woah, how is everything going? Good to see you here! Haven't been keeping track of what's going in gaming, especially the politics, because I have been too busy gaming the last three or four years.

Currently running three online campaigns, two bi-monthly 0D&D campaigns and a similar Original Edition Traveller campaign, all online using Roll20 and Discord. I'm a volunteer at GaryCon and get badged to help run the show up in Lake Geneva, Let me know if you'd like to join us for some Old school gaming where it all started as I have to drive through Indy on my way up. Should also be helping with GenCon when they are up and running again as well, and of course am running virtual games for both, as well as for virtual GameHoleCon. And also been running games at CincyCon three out of the last five years in 2019 they held their Con the same weekend as GaryCon and they cancelled their annual March show this year already.

The State of Gaming as viewed from my Imgur Page...
https://gamedaddy7175.imgur.com/all

Crom! Glad you escaped the Crypt!




 

A lot has happened in the last 5 years of gaming. As a publisher, I'm approaching this from an industry perspective, at least the slice of industry I deal with.

1. D&D: Paizo released a second edition of Pathfinder but failed to find an audience, even against their own first edition, which did more to cement Hasbro's market dominance of D&D than anything else.

2. The Darling: Powered by the Apocolypse is undeniably the go-to indie title, but moreso in a beguiling number of off-shoots. It, and Forged in the Dark, are filling the role that Fate did 10 years ago. It's a "darling" at the moment.

3. Power of the Platform: Kickstarter has continued to gain power in its role as a pre-order model for every major publisher less than Hasbro and Paizo.

4. Movie-Book-RPG: Modiphius has risen to dominate the lisenced market, acquiring just about everything from your childhood bookshelf, including Dune, John Carter, Conan, and more. They are part of a fashion-forward movement (as in, put all money into the art budget, the system is incidental.) Licenced games in general, including those from Free League, are more of a thing now than they were 5 years ago, with games released about Alien, the Expanse, the Witcher, and even a sweedish artist's robot pictures called Tales from the Loop. (When was the last repurposing lisence bubble? Mid-90s?)

5. Indie Rise: Usually when there's a lisence bubble it diminishes grassroots games, but this has not been the case. There has been a rise in "zine" like RPGs, like Trokia!, Mork Borg, and others that are considerably shorter (only upwards of 100 pages), their focus seems to also be on art and "style over substance".

6. Print Format Shift: As an extension of that, the 6x9" trade paperback format is now more welcomed by distributors, where once the 8.5x11" was a requirement for national distribution through companies like Alliance, now the market is opening up to stranger sizes. I have yet to see any data indicating that the sales are following, however. Consumer resistence to anything less than letter-sized has always been the distributor's concern over smaller sized RPG books, but since the fiction market (and the presses) have long been pushing a trade paperback or digest size (in part because the printers are all set for it already, and in part for the better marketup) the RPG publishing industry seems to be catching up. We'll have to see if sales follow.

7. Rules Repurpose: Like in the D&D 3e days, it seems every indie publisher wants to rerelease their system as 5e, just as a side market on their own game.

8. Boom & Bust: Over the last 5 years all the publishers were reporting better and better margins year after year. In 2019 you had to call that the industry was in a boom, both in terms of mainstream D&D, and in terms of a successful grassroots publishing industry. (There's some debate about how much the influence of youtube series' played a role in the rise in popularity, but what's most important is that it did translate into increased sales.) Then COVID hit. Now distributors are falling, FLGS sales have flatlined, and people's reliance on online marketplaces is even greater. Things still look kind of okay in terms of how many people are suspected to be playing, but sales are bad and many smaller publishers are dropping, and continue to drop.

9. Going Solo: During COVID, as can be expected, there is a huge rise in solo-RPGs, and a huge rise in subscription-based online gaming platforms. Honestly if you don't want to make any money with a RPG and all you want to do is a trumped-up Choose Your Own Adventure, this is the golden time.

10. Obituary: Perhaps you'll find it relevant, perhaps not, but it was an important point to me: Greg Stafford, author of King Arthur Pendragon, died. A new edition of Pendragon is supposed to be coming at some point.

That's a slice of the pie, anyway.

//Panjumanju

Since 2015 I've produced 108 RPG products.