22nd Anniversary

[finarvyn]

WotC made a big deal about D&D (and the RPG industry as we know it) turning 30 in 2005.

Everyone knows that T&T, Traveller, and other RPGs were created shortly thereafter. That over the past 30+ years hundreds of professional RPGs (and who knows how many homebrew systems) have been created, often to die a fast and quiet death. Having a RPG stay around for a decade or more with fans still interested in playing seems like a rare feat indeed. So why is it that nobody seems to ever bring up that ADRP was created in the summer of 1986 (which means that it's coming up on its 22nd Anniversary)?

Is it because ADRP lends itself so well to houserule-ing? Is it due to a lack of product support (although technically with 1 true supplement and 12 Amberzines, there has been a decent amount of support over the years)? Is it because of the new supplements, editions and/or revisions that were talked about but never arrived?

To me, 22 years is a long time. Why is it that people still treat ADRP like some strange creation which will never last.

Just some thoughts pounding in my head.... :cool:

[Otha]

Do they, really?

Or is it just ignored outside the circle of fans?

[RPGPundit]

I think at this point Amber gets its due respect; the problem is when they seriously compare flash-in-the-pan games like Nobilis to it. I mean, if you compared copies sold of one versus the other; or number of conventions exclusively dedicated to one vs the other per year, number of players, etc etc. There'd be no question which was more popular. And yet because Nobilis is more pretentious there's a whole gang out there that insist it must be the better game, and would even try to destroy Amber by replacing it with Nobilis-inspired rules. Fuck them.

RPGPundit

[The Yann Waters]

I think at this point Amber gets its due respect; the problem is when they seriously compare flash-in-the-pan games like Nobilis to it.

A flash in the pan that's already eight years old itself, that is...

[finarvyn]

Hey, it wasn't my intention to bash another game, just to lament the fact that ADRP isn't given its due! (Although it would be interesting to see data which would tell us how many people actually play which games, as opposed to basing popularity on sales since OOP games clearly suffer in those rankings.)

To me, 22 years is a long time. Why is it that people still treat ADRP like some strange creation which will never last.

Do they, really? Or is it just ignored outside the circle of fans?

I guess I don't really see that this distinction is important, and if they do ignore ADRP it still proves my initial premise that ADRP doesn't get any respect. I think that most RPG players tend to group ADRP along with LARP gaming and other styles which they classify as bizarre.

I've heard a lot of conversations and read a lot of message board posts about why diceless games just won't work. Won't work? But a lot of people have been playing it for a long time and it seems to work just fine. So, if ADRP is ignored I would suppose that the reason is because too many potential players don't think that it is a system which can be played.

Maybe I'm just rambling?

[Otha]

I think ADRP is ignored for the same reasons that any other game is ignored... there just aren't that many people playing it.

ADRP may be quite unusual in that hundreds of people are still playing it many years after its last product hit the stores, but that doesn't make much of an impression on the gaming world at large.