Quote from: mhensleyI used to love playing Russian Front, D-Day, PanzerBlitz, Ogre, etc. by myself.  But wargamers and designers kept pushing for games to be more realistic and complex.  This culminated in games like ASL.  Who the hell can play that by themselves?  Hell, I couldn't even understand the rules anymore.  I didn't want games that took hours to set up and weeks to play.  I didn't want to play a game that had a rulebook that makes physics textbooks seem simple in comparison.  So I, like many others, switched to rpg's and computer wargames.  No more PanzerBlitz.  I played Panzer General.  

RPG companies should take note and see that the road of ever increasing complexity in their games is not one that they should travel.

Funny you should mention ASL.  At my local con we have a room dedicated to ASL of similar size and energy as the Living Greyhawk area.  Both the network externalities machine and the dead old grognard chitfest manage to blow the regular rpg section out of the water.

Quote from: BalbinusFor a dead hobby, it sure looked healthier than ours does

Because it went through it's hell period and now enjoying a stable of small publishers dedicated to their needs and they are producing products. Plus there has been a mini-boom in wargaming like games in what Wizkids doing with their Mage Knight/Battletech/Axis & Allies products. Also coupled the fact in recent years there been a rise in playable WWII based games with Memoir 44 and Axis and Allies being two of them.

Plus many FLGS have put in gaming tables in last decade to survive and what other activity lends itself to group play? Minature Wargames.

Quote from: NicephorusI think that was the thought behind Never Winter Nights.  But it seemed to not pan out as great as expected.  My understanding is that you needed a decent amount of programming skill to set up your own stuff and it wasn't any quicker to set up than a paper game.

If done well, it would be cool.  I'd still like paper for the sharp turns in a game and the general bulshitting aspect.

I agree, NWN was a bit of a let down for me as far as the module builder and DM client goes.  When it came down to it, you still pretty much had to learn the scripting language to really get much out of making singleplayer mods.  

Running with the DM client helps with that, in that you can skip a lot of the scripting and manually trigger things as the DM, but creating good maps is still a tad too time consuming to want to do before every week's game, especially since the speed of play is going to be faster with all the rules elements automatically handled.

NWN 2, despite promises from Obsidian of a simpler creation tool and more tutorials, wound up offering neither, and is in fact more complicated than NWN was.

I think Ryzom Ring comes closer to what I would've liked from NWN.  It makes use of a lot more pre-built maps and things, and the over all event and interaction system is much more intuitive, and completely programming free, except in the abstract "putting this icon here will tell this icon to trigger at this time" sort of sense.

Quote from: SettembriniWargaming didn´t die because of Computers. The Wargaming Network (+Externalities) was destroyed  by TSR via the SPI desater-buyout and subscriber execution.

Wargamers didn´t move to computer wargames in large numbers. They dropped out, never to be seen again.

There´s an article by Greg Costykian which points it out very nicely.

I know that article, I hate TSR, and I'm not persuaded.

I'm still not persuaded by the WoW paradigm either. I don't believe distinct pastimes die because "better" or "more convenient" "versions" (in truth: different pastimes) "replace" them. That's just the usual softwarethink that's been bogging down the cultural analysis of games.

Why does a pastime go away? I have no idea. The reasons are probably both very complex and quite trivial. I don't have the time to get educated on the history of games in the past couple hundred years. But that is what one should be doing if one is going to answer the question adequately.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityI don't believe distinct pastimes die because "better" or "more convenient" "versions" (in truth: different pastimes) "replace" them. That's just the usual softwarethink that's been bogging down the cultural analysis of games.

My mind is foggy but there is a book that explores the effects of TV on hobbies (Bowling Alone perhaps?).  It mentions a study that was able to look at an area of Alaska before and after TV was available.  Participation in clubs/leagues/hobbies dropped dramatically.

I think pastimes do get supplanted.  But I'm not sure that WoW has a huge effect on rpgs.  I think a bigger issue is a relative lack of an influx of new players.  I don't see many junior high-high school age kids in game stores except on rare occasions to buy cards.

Quote from: NicephorusI don't play MMOs but I know people who do - based on them, that doesn't fit.  It's a shared social experience.  They logon at preset times to play with friends, bullshit, and kill things.  

If you only know a person through online communication, have never met them in person and never expect to, then they are not your friend, only an acquaintance.

If you only do one activity with a person, and removing that activity means you no longer have anything to say to each-other, then they are not your friend, only an acquaintance.

Those two things together mean that the "friends" you do MMOs with are distant acquaintances. Very distant. That such a person would be considered a "friend" shows a very alienated approach to life.

And so again: MMOs are designed for people without any friends, or any idea how to get friends. Their popularity, though exagerrated by people here, is an expression of the alienated society we have. That alienated society you (Nicephorus) alluded to when noting that the introduction of television dropped participation in social hobbies.

JimBobOz,

Yes, at the same time however I think your lumping in real friends that work and play mostly/only on line. I'm thinking of lots of open source folks who build friendships working together on projects and other such things. It is weird, it can be done, to an extent.

I do think that Dancy and Mearls opinions should be taken with a grain of salt but I also think that it generally matches what I'm seeing from way out here in the boonies.

Quote from: darJimBobOz,

Yes, at the same time however I think your lumping in real friends that work and play mostly/only on line. I'm thinking of lots of open source folks who build friendships working together on projects and other such things. It is weird, it can be done, to an extent.

I do think that Dancy and Mearls opinions should be taken with a grain of salt but I also think that it generally matches what I'm seeing from way out here in the boonies.

Never you mind Jimbob, it's the same sad, bitter refrain he repeats on rote at the slightest provocation.

He doesn't have the slightest goddamn clue what he's talking about, and has no experience whatsoever with the subject matter.  He's just projecting his own fucked up views on the world and human interaction on everyone else.

Ignorant rambling, and nothing more.

available time may be an issue here too.  as you get older, you have less free time to (PnP) game than you used to.  work and family take time.  friends move further away.  coordinating schedules is harder.  it's certainly easier for friends to just have a quick game meeting in WoW (frex) than to gather the group, sometimes.  so the existing "old-timers" still play, but less.  maybe some of them don't, once these other time constraints kick in.

just a thought.

I really don't think the demise of SPI killed wargaming. It seemed like a big deal at the time, but aside from Victory Games providing a refuge for the SPI designers, a number of other companies came into their own in the 80's. Among them: WEG, 3W, Mayfair, Decision Games.

I really think the hobby suffered from the increasing availability of other forms of entertainment that provided faster gratification: movies on VHS, computer and video games, later CCGs and German Games and probably just plain hanging out on the Internet. It's not that people substituted so much as that the original "hook" of wargames was more readily grabbed by those other forms of entertainment, so fewer and fewer people were getting into the hobby.

When I was a kid, model railroading, model rocketry, wargames, rpgs, plastic models, stamp collecting--almost all kids dabbled in at least a few of these. But they were labor-intensive compared to the attractions we have now.

Another thing that's changed since the heyday of wargaming is the variety and quality of TV, due in part to the arrival of cable. Back in the 70's, television in a typical area was three networks showing mostly corny dramas and near-slapstick comedies, PBS showing Sesame Street & stuffy BBC dramas, and maybe an independent station or two showing reruns of Hogan's Heroes and Maverick. There were a few standout shows, such as Mary Tyler Moore, but the "watercooler" phenomenon didn't exist yet. Along with the author of Everything Bad is Good for You I really think that modern TV is much more challenging than it was in that period. (Note how many shows nowadays call on the viewer to follow continuity across seasons.) It's just a lot easier to fill your time these days

As a "Fanboy" I expect that my opinion is tainted but, GWG/Pinnacle seems to be doing well.  Both Savage Worlds and Deadlands look to be selling acceptably.
Savage Worlds does make it easier for us older, time challenged people, to game.
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Quote from: JimBobOzIf you only know a person through online communication, have never met them in person and never expect to, then they are not your friend, only an acquaintance.

I'm referring to people who know each other in real life who go online at the same time.  Sometimes, it's easier to arrange than setting up a game.  Some times, they are former groups that now live all over the country.

It's a way of hanging out with old friends who you don't get to see much and do something more than talk on the phone or chat online.

Quote from: NicephorusI'm referring to people who know each other in real life who go online at the same time.  Sometimes, it's easier to arrange than setting up a game.  Some times, they are former groups that now live all over the country.

It's a way of hanging out with old friends who you don't get to see much and do something more than talk on the phone or chat online.

My WoW group consisted entirely of my former D&D group.  And we even lived in the same house.

My current guild in the game I only joined after much coercion, as did the rest of the group, because one of my friends had joined, and because I figured I'd give the whole raiding thing a shot.  Prior to that we ran our own guild that consisted entirely of friends and family.