They do. You can feel it. I’m not talking about your personal island of gaming, which you’ll complain in comments is all you need, but the broad cultural enterprise of tabletop RPGs. Gamers flail around to and fro, looking for scapegoats, but The Other Guy, The Industry, and Those Guys Playing Games That Are Bad For Society aren’t at fault.
You bitch a lot. (I bitch a lot, too!) I don’t think it’s the for reason you believe it to be, but at least there is a reason. Let’s chat, shall we?
Steve Long recently blogged about The Licensing Trap and identified one perspective on the basic failures of tabletop RPG designers and the broader culture. The top games are now either D&D variants or media licenses. That can’t be seen as anything other than a collective fuckup. It’s my fault. It’s your fault. It’s especially the fault of game designers, editor-developers and brand/IP managers working at all scales of the industry, hobby, or whatever you want to call it. I’m sorry. You should be sorry, too!
I’m gonna lay it out in big, bold, simple statements:
The tabletop RPG hobby is suffering from creative failure. The reason your interest is either waning or oscillating more rapidly according to convention or forum trends is because few people are producing anything worth your attention. They’re giving you retreads (clones), destroying the powerful contexts in which their prior creations exist (toolkits) or providing empty, easily discarded novelty (story games).
This is a failure to refine the strengths of the form: social-matrix play within a progressive story world. The tabletop RPG form is good at a particular thing: the ability to move through a story world composed of place (sites where interesting things are), society (fictional people with coherent relationships) and time (events caused by the interaction of the first two elements, with and without main-character intervention). At its best, the form requires complex aspirations.
Note the relative unimportance of game systems in this formulation. That’s why Amber Diceless Roleplaying works, for instance. Yes, that does mean that the epic arguments of crunchy game design are pretty much orthogonal to how tabletop RPGs engage people over the long term. It’s also why livejournal-y fandom RPs have essentially claimed the grassroots interest in roleplaying in a way that every attempt from inside the rotting TRPG hobby has failed to do.
Most new game designs take it as axiomatic that tabletop RPGs and their players kind of suck, and the hobby is shameful. The last decade and a bit of RPG design has suffered from an internalized inferiority complex that rejects what tabletop RPGs are good at in favour of either aping other media or, in an expression of disdain for self and audience, simplifying its creative objectives to shallow, pithy mission statements: shit like “hexcrawls” or “Actor Stance Narrativist.” It’s all the same symptom, and it’s all failure.
This state of failure is over a decade old. Gamers recognize the hobby’s problems now, but I think the basic patterns were established by 1998. D&D 3e and the “back to the dungeon” ethos was an expression of this failure. Shallow aspirations produce new editions faster.
This creative failure is systemic, and makes even talented people create shitty stuff. The insidious thing about the state of game design now is that it ruins the talents of smart people. Pathfinder’s fantasy setting, Golarion, is an example of how smart, talented guys can be coaxed into producing mediocre content under poor creative leadership. This is inherited from WotC doctrine, which blends the ideas of a bunch of cool people with the concerns of a bunch of boring people to produce a grey slurry of the utterly expected — like OMG Eberron is magic steampunk! And has dinosaurs! And racist pseudo-Africa! And other leftovers! Fuck!
This failure is a collapse of leadership in favour of networking. With the release of D&D3e, Ryan Dancey put forth the reasonable argument that you ought to carefully investigate what your customers want and give it to them. Unfortunately, this is wrong, though seductive — with online feedback, it doesn’t feel wrong. You can toss Lovecraftian homages and TVtropes bullshit all day long, and they’ll eat it up — and then they won’t, and you’re left holding the bag — well actually, a deep discounter is, isn’t he?
The reason this happens is that when you keep making things people could have made for themselves, the people eventually notice. Blather about going Back to the Dungeon for long enough, and somebody’s bound to figure out that they can go all the way back to 1979 and not care about you any more.
Designers and companies are complacent, and let this failure compensate for and amplify their weaknesses. Giving people what they want is easy and lazy. Relying on our subculture’s motifs is easy and lazy, and made more compelling by the self-hatred the infuses the hobby, and makes it reluctant to explore its true distinctiveness. This complacence has become an infection, and led to laziness in areas beside conception. For instance, a great many games and supplements are obviously influenced by the designer’s poor writing stamina, non-budget, or inability to get a functional gaming group together. There hasn’t really been a revolution in the efficiency and focus in game writing/design. There are people who don’t have the mix of time, money and talent to make longer games — and when they get the time and money, notice how those games grow (example: the Dresden Files RPG).
The Fix: The hobby needs creative leadership again. It needs communities that are fundamentally interested in something more than defending bullshit minutiae about some sub-scene that nobody who doesn’t play RPGs cares about.
At the same time, that creative leadership needs to own its heritage and the hobby’s natural strengths — the power to create histories in our imaginations and more — and celebrate the eccentric things that grow from it.
Celebration is not a set of weak callbacks. It isn’t “retro.” You don’t go back to the dungeon. You ask why anyone would want to go to the dungeon for the first time, and how that’s different from a generic Hero’s Journey.
Creative leadership isn’t about tools or thematic foci, either. Those things are ways to appease people who are already on the inside, and they already know how to make everything you made for them unless you apply serious sweat and complexity.
Look at Amber again, for example. Amber has everything that’s supposed to be terrible in modern, Fail Era gaming, with important antagonistic jerkwad NPCs. If somebody designed it now they’d probably fall over themselves apologizing about how Gerard can kick your ass, and post on RPGNet about how It’s All About You and elsewise rip their own dicks off to appease the fans about a million times.
That’s why they wouldn’t design it. That person (who in this thought experiment is not Erik Wujcik) would design some lame system for building societies because a rules framework would look more fair. But they people who would really want it would have been able to tweak the Amberites to their liking anyway. The whole endeavour is a stunt that manages to alienate novice gamers (who want actual NPCs instead of tinkertoys) while having little value to the experienced grognard.
Creative leadership is about making things that are unexpected, that require more effort an ingenuity than the average hobbyist has time, energy or talent to muster. It’s about concrete contributions to story worlds and relationships, and it’s bold — sometimes it says things some people don’t want to hear. That’s okay; it;s better to make things that people want to respond to for longer than the 90 day sales n’ buzz cycle.
My earnest wish for 2011 is for the hobby to demonstrate some of this — to stop its self-hating pixelbitching trip, to end the Fail Era of the last decade, step up, be proud of itself, and unflinchingly ask how it can do more of what it does best, instead of apologizing for, yet repeating the stupid shit it does the worst.
Do better.
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I’m not going to say I completely agree with everything you’ve said, or at least my interpretation of what you said, but you do make some very good points. We do see a lot of the same ideas regurgitated over and over, and the DIY attitude (especially the OSR gang) does seem to make a lot of the things publishers do irrelevant. Although I think that many of those recurring themes/ideas are quite good and they keep coming up for a reason.
Using your example of Golarion, I love that setting. In the Golarion nearly every D&D setting that I could want to play in is represented. With little or no problem I can run a Ravenloft-type game and the very next night run Greyhawk-type game. All in one setting, using the same characters in the same campaign with the same continuity. Personally that type of setting is something I’ve had to homebrew for years. Now I have access to a professionally done book that does it for me.
In my case this provides what I want from a setting, just as 3e/Pathfinder’s rules provide the type of fantasy game I want to play. Is it for eveyrone? Of course not. No game can provide be everything to everyone. But the game and setting provides what many people want, while still allowing the designers to inject some amount of their creative vision.
From what I took from your post, I don’t think you are giving the designers enough credit. Innovation doesn’t always happen in leaps and bounds, sometimes it is made up of a lot of baby steps. There may be only one or two revised or original ideas in a D&D clone like Pathfinder/Labyrinth Lord/Runequest/Dragon Age etc, but someone will see those one or two ideas and like them. Then they’ll take them and revise them further or they may inspire 2 new ideas that that person will use in a new game or edition. After the initial explosive birth of the hobby it has been about evolving the hobby. Keep the traits that work or are well liked, discard those that don’t work and then introduce a new idea that alters the original work.
One area I do believe we likely agree is that we are seeing a period of stagnation in the industry/hobby, but that is likely part the natural order. I think this stagnant period will be followed by a culling of the herd and then a new period of exponential growth and innovation. Or maybe even a complete collapse that may then lead to a re-imagining of the entire industry.
As for Licensed games, I think they can and do have a very positive effect in may ways. If I want to play Star Wars or in the DC universe, then that is what I want to play. I don’t want a game that is “like” either of them, no matter how brilliant it is. I want a game that “is” them. Licensed products sell, it is just that simple. With a few exceptions they seem to be strong short term sellers, but they definitely move. For some RPG companies to stay viable they kind of need these products to draw attention to their own creative works. I bought Cortex, because I was a fan of Serenity. Then I went on to buy more cortex products. I bought M&M3e/DC Adventures because I am a DC fan and I now pay more attention to Green Ronin’s other products. So I think they have some positive influence on helping to support the designer’s non-licensed creative works.
I do think that giving fans/gamers what they actually want is a good thing, to a degree. However, I think the problem is that they/we often don’t really know what they/we want. Part of the problem seems to be that we want everything.
We are constantly searching for that perfect game/system/setting that will serve all of our gaming needs and still make us feel that sense of awe we had when we first started gaming. That game can and will likely never exist.
We want a game that is perfectly balanced while still allowing for over the top, unbalanced games. We want a game that uses minis, but doesn’t actually need minis. We want a very simple, easy to learn set of rules that requires almost no prep-time but provides all desired levels of complexity. We want a game that incorporates every houserule we could possibly ever think of but that leaves out the ones we wouldn’t like. We want a system that provides the perfect pulp, sci-fi, space opera, superhero, modern, fantasy, high powered, low powered, dungeon crawling, free-style tactical, strategic, mass combat game. Plus we want this perfect game to be released in our favorite setting(s) so we can relive the feel of the book/movie/TV show.
I think designers try their best to not only give the consumers what they want, but to also design the kind of games/supplement that they would want to play themselves. Personally I think many do a good job, but no matter how great a game is, someone will always declare it broken/crap. Then 10 other people will realize they dislike the game, “group think” takes hold and it grows from there.
Sure designers have to sacrifice some of their creative vision, but whether they like it or not they are in a business. They are not there to just make gamers happy or to express their creativity. They have to also make money and games that meet their own creative vision may not equate to big sellers and may be hated by gamers, regardless of how brilliant the game is. If they can’t make money off of a game and the consumer isn’t happy with the product, then all of that vision and work was for naught.
I both agree and disagree with your statement about the hobby having an inferiority complex. I think that the incredible surge in the acceptance of so many geeky hobbies (comics/fantasy/sci-fi/tech) by the mainstream has made the hobby/industry and many fans want to go mainstream. At the same time they seem scared of losing the geeky-outsider identity that goes with the hobby. The hobby enjoyed a nice little period as a sort of secret club and I think many are reluctant to let that go.
This is where I definitely agree that there needs to be competent leadership. Someone, somewhere needs to step up and take the hobby in a new direction or to inspire the hobby.
I hope I didn’t misinterpret anything you said too badly, it was a very interesting post.
This is the same problem that crops up whenever there is a creative monopology, financially or socially, or in this case – both. One company general controls the nature of Tabletop RPGs, and even the reaction to that monopoly offers simply a better version of the same thing. Pathfinder does what it does very well, but should not be mistaken for a comprehensive TRPG experience. There is a lot more ground to cover in TRPGs, and very little creative output – because financially (see monopoly) and socially (“that’s not a *real* RPG”) after 10 years of “Fail Era”, players expect, and so get, less.
We require at this point a cultural renaissance in Table Top RPGs, a “New Wave” of radical ideas, alternative approaches, and – as Malcolm put it, leadership.
In the Golarion nearly every D&D setting that I could want to play in is represented. With little or no problem I can run a Ravenloft-type game and the very next night run Greyhawk-type game.
Yeah, but you can’t run a Golarion game because the setting has no substance of its own. It’s a grab bag of Greatest Hits. That’s creative failure.
That, right there, is the kind of shit you read RPG blogs for a year in order to find. Bravo.
Note, however, that your article appears (on first read) to be mostly incoherent axe-grinding. That comment is solid though. You do ‘pompous snark’ quite well.
I have to agree. Particularly since virtually every complaint made could apply to events now going on thirty years, but written clearly from the perspective of someone who is too young to really know it.
The end is nigh is a very dull cliche.
Your comments are impossible to parse because you do not refer to the contents of the article in any way.
An interesting post. I’m not sure that I agree with all of your points, but rather than perform the expected online practice of fannishly refuting the minutia of each of your statements, I will instead ask this: You are somewhat specific in stating just what you don’t like, even if you describe it mostly in terms of the creators more so than their creations, however you are a bit vague when it comes to describing what you feel is the solution. I think that I would understand you better if you were to elaborate more upon the specifics of what you feel should be done to improve RPGs. The ‘stop apologising for RPGs’ message I get and can agree with, but it’s the rest of your points that I’m not as clear on. Could you further detail your desired solutions please? I am interested to read what you will say.
That’s a future post.
And since you keep saying this, it keeps being true!
These things take time, Jim. I know people want me to come up with some signature article that encapsulates everything. I have no intention of doing this. It’s a progressive process — one that will feature lots of recursion loops as it comes back. Toy Dogma is going to continue, and some further thoughts on this are coming, but you will never get This Is The Thing. It’s never coming. The territory of foundational single essays about game design is thoroughly colonized, and it relied on a media style that doesn’t exist any more.
I’m not entirely sure what your argument is. The RPG market is full of great and innovative products, it is just that these are being produced by indie publishers.
If you are arguing against the the products of the big companies in the RPG market, I agree with you. Licensing is not a the way to move the hobby forward. Nor is regurgitating the same product every three – five years.
RPGs are about imagination. Those RPGs that stimulate players imaginations at every turn are the ones that grow the market.
The problem is that the RPG market is not a good business opportunity. Players can buy one set of rules and play them for years without spending another penny. Its like paying a small one-off fee to get the movie channels free forever.
This fundamental problem is why companies have to find ways to make the customer spend more money – splat books with more powerful feats, online subscription services, fate cards, minis and so on. There is nothing inherently wrong with these ideas but all are designed by ‘suits’ to make money, not to stimulate the imagination.
There are lots of great games and publishers out there but you won’t find in most stores, or read about them on most blogs.
Now if you’ll excuse me whilst I hawk my wares, you may want to have a look at what 6d6 is trying to do.
Our online tools are about building community and stimulating imagination. With our http://6d6fireball.com/rpg/pay-what-you-want-at-6d6rpg-com/pay-what-you-want PDF experiment we are trying new ways to reach the market. With our Mince Pies & Murder adventure we are trying to explore non-traditional RPG games ( Yes, this is an “easily discarded novelty (story games)” but it is also an introduction to a much larger system).
None of this may be to your taste but 6d6 is just one many small press companies trying to change the market place. If you, as a blogger really think RPGs need to change, stop complain and pick one indie game / publisher you like and promote them. Really promote. Spend as much time talking about them as you do complaining about the state of the RPG world.
There are creative leaders out their in the RPG world but we need bloggers and forum users and all the rest to help spread the word.
That is how you change an industry.
Plenty of “suits” are creative. What fails people is the process, not the talent. When you get someone exercising bad management and poor control of the workflow, you get mediocre stuff or complete shit. In individuals and smaller outfits, you might suffer a lack of time, talent or resources to produce anything really interesting. In both cased, the temptation is to take the easy way and just make a book called Dragon Magic or Interesting Buzzward or make half a game but shore it up with mechanical novelty. All of these are shortcuts that bypass some scarcity in creative “mana.”
Please note that I am not talking about just the commercial RPG industry, but the entire continuum of the hobby here. If you make things to sell you have a particular responsibility to add something other than empty novelty, but the observations apply at all levels, because we all create.
Spiral – that is the problem I think.
We need some creative and inspired people to come along and give us these things.
For myself, I’ve been, well, not exactly unhappy, but dissatisfied with my games. My solution has been to run around getting lots of people interested in Gaming and RPGs, and holding lots of gaming nights – a night of “lets try out this game and see what its like”. We get better idea of what we like and dont like – specifically because we have tried it out in play.
I see a big block for tabletop RPGs being that they are hard to get into – Personally the best game is one that you actually PLAY, rather than just talk about, or prepare for etc etc.
Interesting post!
I wonder, though… is not the only way to get where you wish to go, the overall reduction of what is out there? Over time, have we not been seeing the dilution of talent, when we hope for its distillation?
Imagine if more of the greats worked together on far fewer games, aiming to achieve more together, than to achieve merely something alone.
That’s an interesting thought. I don’t think there need to be less games, necessarily, but that problem is a marketing problem, and not the focus of this stuff.
I don’t know why liking a bunch of games means my interest is waning or oscillating? Isn’t it just more likely that I have ridiculously low standards? I ASK YOU SIR
In all seriousness, I don’t get what you mean by designs that “assume gamers suck”, can you give an example? Like, what in 4th Edition D&D or True20 assumes gamers suck?
I think an effort to identify the “top games” is not going to help us much, the overwhelming supermajority of gamers have always played The Current Edition Of D&D and that hasn’t changed in 30 years.
4e retains the tradition of believing the players need protection from the players, but for the most part this is something not neatly situated as blatant text in individual games, but a bigger guiding principle.
As for your interest, it looks to me like your output is split between fruitless attempts to telling Story Games how awesome play styles that the community’s basis of unity requires it to hate are, or basically signalling your lack of interest. This is spinning your wheels, man.
That is a weird critique of a self-deprecating joke, it makes no sense, is completely wrong in every possible way and isn’t even talking about the same thing. “Ha ha, yeah, it’s not like I miss a lot of meals, as you can see.” “Well, as far as you being fat, all I can say is that you seem to be stupid and you drive an ugly car.” WTF?
I don’t see the assumption that players must be protected from other players in the rules of 4e, or really in almost any rules that I read these days? I think the last time I saw anything like that was in a horror game in which it was suggested that people discuss beforehand what they are and aren’t okay with being portrayed. Hardly an assumption that people suck, just a recognition that some people laugh at Texas Chainsaw Massacre and others say “ugh” and leave the room?
It’s not an insult. It’s more of a “Why man, why?”
I see two of the following things from you:
“Hey forum that embraces a body of work designed by Ron Edwards to rationalize his hatred of Vampire, have I told you how awesome Vampire is lately?”
and
“Hey arbitrary consensus-enforcing community, enforcing consensus is dumb!”
My advice would be to unpack these somewhere where it isn’t so Sisyphian. I have a lot of sympathy for radical deconstruction/criticism, but you’ll always be running through the same routine doing it the way you do it.
Well, on all forums, there is no memory and everyone new who comes in wants to have the same conversation over and over – they’re new, after all! Eventually you end up with the lotus-eaters and claques of rpg.net, maybe that’s the inevitable endpoint of all forums. I don’t know what you’re talking about anyway, I don’t post anywhere Edwards does? Lots of people like Vampire on story-games.
Here is my response. It isn’t on my WordPress blog, so I couldn’t send a trackback.
http://errantgame.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-do-rpgs-suck.html
Thanks Malcolm
Thanks for your reply!
This article is a nice thought-provoking post, even if I do not agree with all the points. A number of thoughts have run through my head. (I’ll be posting this reply on my blog as well.)
It has been said that there is nothing new under the sun and I think this applies to RPGs also.
Genres have been done to death. Fantasy, sci-fi, modern day, super-hero, western, talking animals, etc. If there is a genre you want, it is already out there. From the initial set of genres designers began to explore sub-genres; samurai (fantasy), horror (modern), etc. For awhile the “new” hot thing was genre mash-ups, but at its core it is still nothing but the same genre done again.
The same applies to game systems. Roll a die and beat a number, roll a bunch of dice and beat a number, pick a card and beat a number, compare your stat to the target and beat a number. The ability to accomplish things is based on your character’s statistics (Con, Str, Int, etc), on the skills based off your statistics, on your powers based off your statistics, etc. Use a Break-the-System Point to raise a statistic, to reroll a die, use a power again, take less damage, etc. Again, there are only so many variations and if you like a particular one there is system out there for you already.
Part of the problem here is not a desire to create something new but with such a crowded field there is not a lot of room left for truly new innovation. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it is hard to do so and then stand out from the crowd.
I know this is not a popular sentiment amongst the grognards, but 4E has introduced some truly innovative stuff—wait, hear me out before you bash. I am not talking about their power systems or their system for making the job of the DM easier. Those are nothing but dressed up versions of things that have come before.
The clearly innovative thing they have brought to the RPG table is the ability for a player to be engaged in the ongoing combat even when it is not their turn. If there is one thing RPG designers take away from 4E it should be that; find a way to keep everyone active and a part of the combat at all times-heck, extend this into non-combat as well if you can find a way to do it. I have never seen an RPG do this as well before and I believe this concept can move RPGs forward.
A second innovation is the ability to dynamically change the playing field during combat. In the past everything was about new and exciting ways to lower the hit points (and the variations on the hit point concept, which in the end are all the same thing) of your obstacle. “I move to the left to get a bonus to the damage I do”, “I swing from the chandelier to get a bonus to the damage I do”, “I use power X instead of power Y to get a bonus to the damage I do” are the old ways of altering the field, which in the end did not change the field; nothing changed except for the amount of damage done. With 4E the players have to react to the changes as they occur; it forces them to alter their reactions to the combat keeping the combat dynamic and engaging. This is a two-way street as the players also alter the GMs reactions in ways never done before.
You’ll notice both of these innovations are based around the combat. 4E has brought nothing new to the other aspects of RPGs (and some would say have diminished already established well-done innovations to role-play), but I would say they have indeed brought new exciting innovation to RPGs. A smart designer would use these concepts in his next game, only better.
There are of course other new concepts being pushed to the fore. The concept of players having an active and large voice in what happens during a plot/campaign/adventure is relatively new. Never before has the lines between player and GM become so blurred. Personally, I do not proscribe to this method of play (‘I’m the DM you will all fear my wrath’, is my way of running things) but it is out there and being used by some of the better games running. There are other new and exciting things hitting the RPG market.
I think part of the problem is that there is no clear game at the forefront of our little niche market. There is nothing that has swept up the imagination and passion of role-players like in the past. Shadowrun and Vampire grabbed people by the throat and shook them. While there is still innovation it is spread out amongst a large number of games, some with high profiles and some without. There is not a distillation of new concepts into one game to lead us all forward.
Part of this is the nature of the world at large. It is sooo easy to put up a game for people to view that the really good get lost in the masses. It also means you do not have to release a game that fires on all cylinders; it only has to get one thing right to reach people. In the past, a new game came out and by just being released it got attention. In our new modern internet world this is no longer the case.
Innovation and forward thinking is still out there, you just have to look for it a bit harder.
I like 4e — I’ve played it continuously since just after it came out. But I can’t like it for providing an original evocative experience beyond what I can wring out of it.
Certainly, I didn’t mean to say creativity was a totally dry spigot — but it still doesn’t look good to me.
then do it. seriously. do it. if you’re gonna spend time telling people how everyone fucked up, do something about it. show, don’t tell.
Okay. But I have other interests, too.
“The top games are now either D&D variants or media licenses. That cannot be seen as anything other than a collective fuckup. “
I reject this premise. I have enjoyed large numbers of D&D variants from the Midnight Campaign Setting, Advanced Bestiary, Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved, to Pathfinder’s Kingmaker adventure path.
Truly, the most recent example, which harkens back to the elder days of RPG design, is the Dresden Files Rpg, which I find to be one of the best settings and a very fun game to play, which reminds me of Amber Diceless Role-Playing, which was a great piece of game design that was a licensed product.
“The tabletop RPG hobby is suffering from creative failure.”
I reject this premise, I look at games like Eclipse Phase, Cthulhutech, Burning Wheel, along with less mainstream products like Happy Birthday Robot and Powerchords mixed in with a vast potential of kickstarter and other patronage models, allows for extremely creative people to create and publish products of extreme creativity with high production values.
“This is a failure to refine the strengths of the form: social-matrix play within a progressive story world.”
This is a false premise based on your style of play, some people don’t want to be social they want escapism, this is why there is a market for organized player where you rarely if ever play with the same group of people , and progressive story is secondary to simply having fun.
“Most new game designs take it as axiomatic that tabletop RPGs and their players kind of suck, and the hobby is shameful. “
Pathfinder RPG certainly does not take that stance if anything it embraces that their players are awesome, the same can be said of any OSR movement that often rejects anything that is co-opted from most forms of alternative media. People seem to forget that TRPG are a new media that co-opted most of its classical formats from novels and wargames the same way that MMORPGS have co-opted ideas from TRPG,.
This state of failure is over a decade old.
I reject this as well; 10 years ago, the most prominent Dnd game was going bankrupt because of Buck Rodgers and mismanagement. It was saved by a buyout from a group of gamers who create a popular card game. Then the industry got an infusion of life, which saw a boom in the financial status of nearly every RPG company. Yet you also so the rise of products that broke away from the Hegemony of d20 again I point to products like Burning Wheel and Spirit of the Century.
This creative failure is systemic, and makes even talented people create shitty stuff.
Even If I except this premise, which again I don’t since both those settings were financial successes which is more important to the industry than critical success, these talented people create other products for the mass of smaller companies, Keith Baker’s Crime and Punishment which he created for Atlas Games, and you get pathfinder products like City of Strangers. I also go on to look at the amazing products Wolfgang Baur’s Open Design creatures using the Patronage model where he creates amazing products like six Arabian Nights, Wrath of the River King or Tales of Zobeck.
This failure is a collapse of leadership in favor of networking.
This sounds more like a rant against the homogeny of d20 and yet I can point to innovative designs that showed leadership from the hegemony, from Mutants and Masterminds to Spirit of the Century which found its way from OGL to Fudge and then finally to FATE. You can make the most innovative buggy whip you like, but if you do not change and adapt to the changing market your company will die.
“Designers and companies are complacent, and let this failure compensate for and amplify their weaknesses.”
This sentence confuses me as I am not sure how a failure compensates for a weakness but let us go with what was said in the text.
“For instance, a great many games and supplements are obviously influenced by the designer’s poor writing stamina, non-budget, or inability to get a functional gaming group together. “
On point, you miss which is a greater cause than all of the issues you have listed is the bleeding of the best talent away to other industries so that it is the rare talent that does this full time. Which will pay them more than 4 cents a word. Erick Wujcik’s of Amber Diceless Roleplaying which you praised (and is a licensed game, which you hypocritically claim, is anathema to creativity) worked for UbiSoft. Jeff Grubb works on Guild Wars, Wolfgang Baur’s day job is Pokémon.
I also reject the writing stamina and non-budget argument, as there is a different culprit. It is not a matter that these people do not have the talent, it is that there is not enough money in the industry for the real talent in the industry to be full time designers. How much of Fred Hick’s day is spent on administration vs. actual design vs. an MMORPG where you actually have people on staff who do nothing but write quests and never have to get on Facebook or a Blog to get you to buy their product because they have a full time staff of marketing and advertising personnel. Trust me as you become successful in the industry you get less time to work on design not more.
Which brings us to
“Creative leadership is about making things that are unexpected, that require more effort an ingenuity than the average hobbyist has time, energy or talent to muster. “
Again, the designer who has the talent to do this does not have the time because there is not enough money in the industry to pay for his time. He lacks the energy because he would be better off spending his time in an industry that would appreciate his efforts more or at the very least pay him more for efforts. Yet for all this, these talented designers come back and do work below their paygrade simply for the love of Tabletop RPGs.
Steve Russell
Rite Publishing
What makes you an ideal candidate to pass such judgement? This is your opinion. So keep it to yourself. If you have such a problem with rpgs then do something creative and bring something new to the table, instead of sitting back and passing judgement. Stop whining. Stop assuming that your opinion is fact. I’m pretty sure that there are lots of gamers having lots of fun and have no inkling of this creativity “crisis” you see in the industry. Just go game and let everyone have fun in their own way. Stop being a navel-gazer. The point is to have fun. If you are not, maybe RPGs are no longer for you.
I think I’ll just keep writing whatever the fuck I feel like, Tony.
If only I could use my tachyon-stream powers to create a perfect example of crankily not getting the internet to appear in the past of my personal timestream . . .
Oh hey!
“Most new game designs take it as axiomatic that tabletop RPGs and their players kind of suck, and the hobby is shameful.”
Prove it. Show me examples. If you are going to make sweeping generalisations, then back them up.
Every story game. Every OSR game.
Also, most other games.
The man responsible for these titles:
http://www.pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=showcreator&creatorid=3431
Is criticizing Eberron and Golarion…
And then,
“Giving people what they want is easy and lazy.”
Well, go ahead sir, and answer your high calling of creating things people don’t want. My hat is off to you.
PnP.net is out of date — I have somewhere north of 30 publishing credits now. Make no mistake, I’ve produced some real shit in my time. No part of this criticism is not self-criticism.
I keep trying to resolve the dissonance between:
“The tabletop RPG form is good at a particular thing: the ability to move through a story world composed of place (sites where interesting things are), society (fictional people with coherent relationships) and time (events caused by the interaction of the first two elements, with and without main-character intervention). ”
… and your apparent disdain for hexcrawls. A properly designed hexcrawl is an elegant, effective, and (most importantly) gameable structure for exploring place, society, and time.
Am I interested in just regurgitating JG’s Wilderlands setting? Not particularly. But I am interested in seeing how the hexcrawl structure can be used and improved, because even in the rudimentary form it was abandoned in 30 years ago, it’s still more effective than most modern games at focusing on the strengths of the RPG form and making the RPG form immediately playable.
(Of course, it’s not the only way to achieve that, either.)
Abandoning sandboxes for pre-designed story arcs, IMO, was a mistake. We’ve reached the point were tabletop games simply cannot compete with computer games in the arena of moderately interactive pre-designed story arcs: We don’t have the graphics. We don’t have the soundtracks. We don’t have the voice actors. We don’t have the ease of play.
The RPG industry also desperately needs to get back to game forms which are as immediately and easily playable as a boardgame. We’ve gotten away from that. It was a mistake.
1) Nobody cares about that gameability except for people already playing RPGs. That’s why ew movements in non-MMO gaming are largely freeform. Most of us don’t even see that, however, because we’re on the other side of a cultural divide.
This is the top Google result for the term “rpg forum.”
Hexcrawls are weak because they don’t have the in-world social and historical aspects except as levers pulled by entering a space. Actually, I have a feeling most hexcrawl boosters don’t run “pure” hexcrawls anyway.
2) There are already games that have the play features of board games. These are called “board games.” While I agree that there is a big hurdle to setting up a typical RPG, this is not solved by eliminating what makes the form notable. Same thing for games that want to “tell a story,” with a set theme and arc (try creative writing — it works better!)
3) I’m not really talking about metaplot as most people understand it.
So, to sum up, you want a roleplaying game that isn’t:
(1) A game
(2) Convenient or easy to start playing
Well… good luck with that.
There’s nothing wrong with freeform forum roleplaying, of course. But it ain’t going to be the salvation of RPGs because it ain’t the same medium.
You can also remove the word “boardgame” from my original post and replace it with “play a video game”, “read a novel”, or “watch a movie”. Some of these breakdown because they’re not inherently social activities, but the point is basic: As long as RPGs define themselves with a play form which exclusively require (a) a dedicated group of players to schedule their free time together for a period and months and years and (b) therefore expects new players to make that commitment in order to “join the game”…
Well, RPGs are going to continue to fail.
D&D’s dungeons and hexcrawls (combined with quick chargen systems) were play forms that allowed people to say, “You wanna play D&D?” And then start playing D&D 5-10 minutes later. That doesn’t mean dungeons and hexcrawls are the be-all and end-all of what RPGs can offer; but we should be looking for ways to realize that quick-to-play, open table play form in new and interesting ways.
Which isn’t to say casual-friendly is the only thing RPGs can offer. But if “playing catch” doesn’t exist and the only way you can ever play baseball is to join, at the very least, an amateur league requiring a few hundred hours of commitment… well, there’d be a lot less baseball in the world.
The idea that RPGs need to involve less commitment is basically wrong, but it’s not wrong to say that they should include a progression taking people to the degree of commitment they enjoy. There are plenty of hobbies that require similar time commitments and even larger financial commitments. Even film and television include this progression nowadays, ranging from throwing your money down to full-on fandom.
As for being “game-like.” Yes, I do in fact think RPGs don’t have to resemble games that much. In fact, I think they often lose something for doing so.
If I were going to pick a problem with this line of argument, it’s that what people in the TTRPG hobby think of as a TTRPG-distilled-down-to-the-scope-of-a-boardgame has little to do with what’s rewarding about higher-demand play and therefore is basically lousy as an intro to the hobby.
Your linked comment is fascinating because you’ve reinvented a social tool from another medium that exists to (imperfectly) solve the same issue: pick-up-group dungeon runs as a recruitment tool for dedicated, scheduled raiding in MMOs.
Malcolm’s position, if you get all reductionist on it, can boil down to something like “what RPGs do well is letting people explore rich-setting IPs from an in-character perspective,” which I certainly agree with, but there’s certainly a big logistical issue embedded in the fact that there used to be very few commercial rich-setting IPs and this paucity (along with a paucity in other types of entertainment that tabletop RP fits well with) made it relatively easy to make money creating and selling such IPs to people in the form of game books, whereas now there’s a surfeit of such IPs that have way more money or creative talent or both behind them than an RPG can really provide.
Of course you will keep typing your opinions over and over. The Internet has given countless loud mouthed killjoys the ability to spout their rhetoric. But will all your grandstanding to any change? I would like to think not. Maybe if you tried to be a positive voice instead of trying to be “edgy” (oooh, you used the word suck!) you might get more people to listen to your ideas. Instead, you make yourself irrelevant because you are spouting vitriol, the easiest think to do. Contests on being a jerk. Very original. And that was a brilliant rebuttal you made above,and such a clever use of the word fuck. Bravo, sir. You’re the comic book guy from the Simpsons.
I even have a beard now!
And yes, please make fun of me for letting autofill make my post look and sound idiotic. I’m sure that’s all you’ll be able to come up with by way of a response.
It’s okay, I don’t need to add anything.
Love life!
I like the article. I think you have many good points. In this day and age of fantasy, horror, comic books, and sci-fi being possibly bigger and more mainstream than they’ve ever been (Avatar, Twilight, Iron Man, Lord of the Rings, etc.), the fact that the rpg industry is in a creative and financial crisis is tragic.
As for the whole DIY trend, I don’t find it noble. I find it depressing. It’s like if instead of getting Mass Effect 2, Uncharted, and WoW, we have some guy sitting alone at home in front of his PC cobbling together a shareware PC 2D rpg based on Ultima and saying “WELL at least I’m TRYING despite LOSING money!!!!111″. It’s not a good trade, it really isn’t.
My RPG wishlist is short:
I want a game book I can lend to people that have never gamed, be they girls or guys, that makes them say “fucking cool, I want to try this.” To put it bluntly, I want an rpg that a jock can play without losing cred. I want the Mass Effect 2 of the gaming world, rather than ****ing Ultima 19 starring Lord British(!).
More examples, please. I got a hint of what you were getting at when you cited Amber as an example. But your prescription for an improvement to the process is completely lost to me. (I’ll fully admit this may be my ignorance, as I try to stay out of arguments between game designers and as such may be missing some essential jargon)
Howdy Mal — been some time.
Questions three, because you’ve piqued my curiousness.
Was there ever a halcyon period when there was more good than bad out there?
If so, when was the last time that RPGs, taken on the whole, did NOT SUCK?
And if there was a division between SUCK and NOT SUCK, what do you think was the turning point?
1) Of course not, but bad stuff has not always dominated the scene.
2) Around 2002, maybe?
3) It’s not that simple.
well, if the difference between suck and not suck isn’t that simple, what was different before 2002 that made that the year the bad started to predominate?
2002 is the year before the Time of Judgment and 3.5, and close to the point of maximum overinvestment in D20.
okay, I can see those points as a basis for change.
Arguably, Exalted was the last tabletop RPG release that created a strong, meaningful standalone IP and produced a dynamic fan community, and it was released in 2001.
Interestingly Exalted’s initial stance is what drew me (strongly) to the game.
But by the time Exalted got to actually being its own IP with its own really defined world it also got to being a game with which I could have nothing else to do.
I think I hate IP.
Shorter Sheppard:
We need to get away from the creative bankruptcy of licensed games and embrace the sort of innovation we see in Amber and Dresden Files.
(Really – how about some other examples?)
I’d agree that the greatest strength of the RPG genre is its ability to create a world in which we can play characters that interact with it and each other in meaningful ways. Nonetheless, I’ve seen in my own games that the best such worlds usually come about through the interaction between good GMs and players, collaborating to find their own interests, motivations, and intentions. (And good GMs and players are usually made that way by long experience.)
The work of an RPG designer is always going to be hit and miss – my vision of Tekumel or the Forgotten Realms or Arkham might not be that of the person who picks up the product, and there’s no way to find that out in advance. The best a designer can do, in many cases, is to put out something that they like and are enthusiastic about, or that they’d want to buy themselves. That’s not to excuse shoddy writing or production, but even good writing that doesn’t need with a person’s needs or desires isn’t worth much in that context.
Shorter Dan:
The goal described here has a large number of prerequisites, many of which have nothing to do with RPG designers or companies, and there’s not much we can do about it.
There’s more to it than that, but thanks for giving it a shot!
Anyone else think the little reply above reeks of pomposity?
Oh, definitely.
“Hexcrawls are weak because they don’t have the in-world social and historical aspects except as levers pulled by entering a space.”
?? Please provide examples…all of the hexcrawls I am familiar with provide social and historical contexts for the content…are they the wrong social and historical aspects?
Pay attention to the second part of what you quoted. Beyond that, we’ll juet get into a definition of hexcrawl that makes it so vague as to be meaningless.
Pulled from a comment above:
“Hexcrawls are weak because they don’t have the in-world social and historical aspects except as levers pulled by entering a space.”
I think you have things reversed here. In a game run in this model – and I include dungeon delves here – the setting and campaign’s history, background, and connections are what drive the players to a hex, dungeon level, or whatever in the first place.
On my map I might note that the Frobozz Forest hides the Tree of Broken Wishes. In the campaign, though, the characters could go there because:
* The paladin’s missing sister was last seen there.
* An oracle foretells that the characters’ hated rival can break the curse that reins in his power at the tree.
* The characters seek the wood they need to craft a demon slaying arrow, and their research points them there.
A crawl of any sort can be run lazily, with players moving from fight to fight and stumbling across stuff at random. On the other hand, it is perhaps the most rewarding model for players who immerse themselves in the setting and take an active role in charting the campaign’s course. It precisely highlights the sort of beautiful chaos that comes out of an RPG session.
I think this formulation of the background as a thing that simply stocks regions and scenes is insufficient. I think we’ve overdone the idea that the setting only lives in relationship with the game and characters. Going that route leads to unnecessary shallowness.
If we port your example to the Realms, the paladin’s sister is missing because of a Zhentarim plot that has aspects above and beyond the characters’ immediate participation. When the characters get involved, they can either take hold of the immediate objective or explore the social milieu — they might ask the Harpers for help, or drive a wedge between two Zhent factions — it’s all stuff for characters to do that goes beyond a rationale for being in Hex F-89.
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“Love life!”
Ah, slipping into non sequitur. The standard, good old fallback of the person who tries to pass off his opinion as fact and someone steps up to call bullshit on them. Well done again. Bit of advice: spend some quality time with the family and really be happy, truly “love life” as you say. Then maybe you’ll come back to what’s really important in life, and stop getting all know-it-all about a GAME. Maybe you’ll realize that the entire RPG industry could be utterly wiped from the face of the earth by some supernatural force, but people would still, somehow, be able to roleplay! They wouldn’t need all the stuff that’s ever been published to do so. Miracle of miracles! More advice: if gaming (playing and design) is your passion, why not do it a positive service by being, well, positive! Stop being negative, stop finger wagging, and be a force for the change that you seek, instead of whining. Then we could not waste time trading nerdy barbs in an imaginary place (the Internet) about a hobby that is based in the imagination (roleplaying).
And if you stop being so damned serious, maybe you will avoid the ire of this guy:
http://yourdungeonissuck.wordpress.com/
Have you considered starting your own blog where you can write about how I’m a terrible person? I hear it’s the Thing To Do.
Now that’s just silly. I know nothing about you, so how could I know that you are a terrible person? And I think most people are not terrible, in general. I just think it’s funny when someone uses the Internet as a forum to throw “controvery bombs” out into the world to attract attention to themselves/their topic. Come on, admit it. You titled your post “Why Do RPGs Suck?” in order to get a visceral reaction out of your readers. The title immediately polarizes things. It’s sensationalism!
Nope.
It’s funny. Over this whole process the recurring thing is the degree to which people crave some kind of control or explanatory power over what I write. You think this is some kind of attention-getting stunt. The OSR guys think it’s because I’m The Man, Maaaaan, which is hilarious on many levels. One guy thinks I’m shilling a company; another, myself.
But it’s none of those things — nothing you can reduce to a comfortable place. And that’s why you can’t leave it alone.
I didn’t do it for me. I did it for you.
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[disclaimer] I’m a one trick pony with a one track mind – Free RPGs[/disclaimer]
You mention that creative failure is hobby wide. Do you feel that includes free RPGs?
For example, Metropole Luxury Coffin is a narrow game indeed but packed with flavour. The Victorian Doom and Cookies is another imaginative take on orphans. Perhaps the gritty 70s gangster themed Dog Town might have a little too much crunch for you. There are plenty of setting-less free systems and D&D clones but amongst them are some delightful appliances of imagination.
In this case I think there’s often time, money and talent problems. Let’s say the talent is there — then you have limits on what people can do with the time and money at their disposal, and this changes what kind of games they design. Not everybody has it in them to make an Icar.
Let me make it clear that when I say the problem is systemic, I mean it — there’s no shortage of talented *people,* but we don’t have the best frameworks to allow them to do their thing.
“but we don’t have the best frameworks to allow them to do their thing.”
I think that has been the most meaningful thing you’ve said so far. Other than that I haven’t seen any meaningful statements other than you really like Amber Diceless.
Sure you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come in for another taste.
I understand the point your making and the vicious circle of company producing what the customers want and the customers having narrow vision because its set by companies. I also understand that free RPGs are constrained by talent, money and time. I’d remove money out of the equation (I’ve spent very little on Icar in 20 years) and as you say there is plenty of talent. Time is a problem but free RPGs tend to evolve over time. Free RPGs aren’t putting food on the table, so we can spend as long as we feel we need to.
I’d say the problem with free RPGs is volume – there are so many of them that it can be difficult to isolate the really good ones. I hope free RPGs are immune from the death-knell you’ve predicted.
I think having a framework is both part of the problem and solution. Some of the coolest free games have been created as part of a competition (24 Hour, Game Chef, The Ronnies, Cyberpunk Revival Project, etc) that provide common purpose in a community, impetus and reward. Formalise the framework too much and you constrain. I imagine this is one root of the problem you’ve identified.
This isn’t the failure of the RPG industry it’s the failure of RPG companies, it is also the failure of many tech companies. Once a company gets to a certain size it stops innovating. When the larger company tries to innovate they often move in the wrong direction. If you find the solution for this, go to the tech industry first, make billions and then come back to the RPG industry.
The problem is there are quite a few indie game developers out there that are being very creative but as you’ve stated, they don’t have the budget to really bring their ideas to completion. That’s because there is very little money to be made in the RPG industry and the money that is out there is spread out very widely.
There’s a good reason why things are like this. Playing in a story world requires a world and those worlds require a lot of explanation. Every major RPG has been based on a well developed story world that existed as a book, TV show or movie (thus the media licenses) or more rarely a mashup of established worlds (Shadowrun). Why? Because the book, tv show or movie explains the world in an easily digestible format that is now accessible to the average media consumer.
Try and break that rule. I’d really applaud you if you can. Amber is a close one but never had a large following (as in market share).
People play RPGs in worlds that they already understand. They rarely want to learn an entirely new world and so really unique really creative worlds go unplayed and unnoticed.
As Jason Durral mentioned, Amber sold over 30,000 copies and had its own dedicated convention scene — but raw sales is not my interest as much as keeping RPGs meaningful, distinct in their contributions to culture, and accessible.
I’m sorry – but both of you are aware that Amber was invented in a successful series of fantasy books by Roger Zelazny, right?
As Malcolm is unable to come up with any successful shared worlds that aren’t based on the licensed properties he despises, I am inclined to conclude that his goals might not be achievable. Perhaps we should accept that RPGs have too high a threshold of commitment in terms of supplies and hours – let’s say $35+ dollars for the rulebook and several hours to fully understand it – to draw people in in the manner he desires. Even the World of Darkness depended heavily upon vampire literature and folklore to get off the ground…
1) I know where Amber comes from.
2) No, this post isn’t a diatribe against licensed RPGs. Steve Long doesn’t hate them either — it’s a matter of relative influence.
3) I mention Exalted in a more recent post as a positive example.
4) The fact that art is influenced by prior art and culture is a given.
I will be quick about this one and ask you the real important question on this topic: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?
I just can’t bear to pay douchebag rates, Lou.
Clear as mud right there.
I’d say, “Grownups are talking,” but to be fair, I’m talking to LPJ.
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I’m rather confused here with what you propose the industry should do. You claim an RPG being “gamelike” is undesirable, and highlight freeform online forum roleplaying as something praiseworthy. But… what do you propose could be sold to these people? The industry cannot be saved unless there’s a profit somewhere, and you cannot package and sell freeform. The way I see it, the parts of RPGs that are sellable are specifically the gamey parts – rules, stats, modules, settings. Everything else people can, and will, just make up by themselves or lift from whatever is the popular fiction of the moment.
What is it that you propose would bring in the profit if those were discarded?
This is not all about “the industry.”
The complete opposite of your observations about what parts of games are saleable is true. The spontaneous rise of freeform communities demonstrates that game systems are the least necessary things, and story worlds that bring people together are the most.
“The spontaneous rise of freeform communities demonstrates that game systems are the least necessary things, and story worlds that bring people together are the most.”
Horseshit. System matters to a lot of people. I play rpgs to portray a role, not with the story being the main aspect and the rest following behind.
None of the gamers I game with game that way
System matters to people who increasingly . . . don’t. Sorry. System obsessions are pretty much the head-in-ass final mutations of a closed community, and not something that is especially attractive to newcomers. That’s why the kids reinventing roleplaying are interested in the exact opposite of what the Greybeards are.
I do think an engaging system can keep them around, but engaging and good by the yardstick gamers use are two different things.
Stop writing crap and go play a game.
I have AD&D1 tonight, actually. There’s a whole bunch of stuff about that game kicking around this blog.
Hey, thanks for mentioning Amber Diceless! What a great game. Beyond that, I guess I see where you are coming from and what you are trying to accomplish with this, but I have to agree with others here that you probably should have steered clear of clearly inflammatory word choice. You sort of set yourself up for people to react negatively.
I have plenty of positive stuff on this blog, and lots of relaxed discussion about my experiences with various games (like my AD&D game). Take a look around!
BTW, I noticed your “kill someone else’s darlings” tagline. William Faulkner is rolling in his grave. Why do you need to put forth such a confrontational front? Did Gary Gygax not give you his autograph at a Con once?
Oh contraire, he actually signed the DMG1 I’m currently using!
“A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.”
“Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.” -William Somerset Maugham
You realize I’m providing a literal answer, don’t you? When I met Gary Gygax he was very pleasant despite being tired from his trip and obviously still burdened by illness. I thanked him for inventing so much of my professional life. He was nice enough to sign the DMG and a spare first printing of Deities and Demigods, which I gave to convention organizer Justin Mohareb because he’s always been a great friend to me.
This is the DMG I use now. I’m just stating the facts.
I think I’ll cross-post this to the 1km1kt forums here:
http://www.1km1kt.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3234
I think that I agree broadly with the comments and criticisms here, but perhaps I’m less vehement about whether or not it’s a vast and insurmountable problem.
Just to explain where I’m coming from, I write SFF and have been paid pro-rates for my work, which I suppose sort of makes me a semi-pro fiction writer, but I write RPGs strictly as a hobby and give them away as pdfs. I don’t advertise, and I don’t promote my RPG stuff, and I’ve never had much acclaim. This suits me. I don’t want my hobby to turn into a job.
Now, having said all of that, if I think honestly, I put vastly more creative effort into fiction than into RPGs. I sweat blood to turn out a good story (and sometimes the stories *still* suck). I sing-song my way through writing a game. The couple games I have floating around out there (with the possible exception of Mythos of the Maori–I’ll come back to that one) are all pretty much stuff that anyone could write, given time and determination. They’re nothing special.
And, if I look around at the RPG landscape, free, commercial and everything in-between, there’s some truth to thinking that most of the material is also nothing special. There are variations on themes, self-referential works and rehashes. I differ, in that I think there are some wonderfully original and interesting free RPGs if you go out digging for them*, though (to flip back again) I agree that they tend to be truncated, presumably due to lack of time and money.
(*For example, I like Paul Elliott’s Totem, which was designed with education in mind. It’s doing a different sort of thing, with a different purpose, coming from a different place. And it’s a neat little game.)
However, is this actually a problem? All art forms go through periods of rebirth followed by fallow eras of increasingly self-referential rubbish. There is always some incremental change going on–consumers of art and entertainment tend to feel that they want ‘the same but different’ most of the time. This means that a lot of work that is produced will be a variation on a theme, and it will potentially even be popular and much loved.
Occasionally, some genius or some like-minded geniuses come along and either the whole of a field or part of a field is revitalized. Splitting into sub-categories will often occur at these sorts of points. Think of the transition caused by the impressionists or the surrealists. Think of the transition period sparked by The Beetles or Miles Davis.
Ask some folks in 1975 whether they wanted to go see a space opera sort of film with guys waving glowing swords and some awkward robots and stuff, and a lot of public (except perhaps teenage boys) would likely have told you that the film sounds a bit dumb. People don’t know that they want the next big thing, because they have no idea what it is, what makes it cool or interesting or wonderful.
This is the inherent problem with product testing. All it can tell you is that people sort of like the stuff they sort of like already.
Here, I suppose is where the crux of the argument lies. Is the current RPG hobby geared in such a way that the next big revolutionary thing cannot possibly break through (or perhaps even be created)? I’m unsure. My gut reaction is that free RPGs are where it’s likely to happen, because they are low risk and can afford to be experimental. But, most players don’t take free RPGs seriously. I suspect that a huge proportion of regular players have probably never even heard of Fudge.
If the big companies are too afraid of financial failure to try risky new things (and I guess they probably are, I don’t know because I have no contact with the big companies), then I suppose that where innovation will occur must be either in free or small press publications. Small for the love of it start-ups still pepper the industry, and sure, most of them churn out trite rehash…
But, truth be told, I can’t see any inherent reasons why a small start up with a great idea and a great team and real drive couldn’t storm the industry over the course of a year or two or three. I don’t know the industry well enough to be sure, but I can’t see any obvious barriers. The thing is, geniuses don’t come along every day. It can be decades between rebirths.
I guess I’m saying that I do think there’s still an twilight zone between big pros and freebee games where creativity can thrive in a commercial setting and could even do well.
And, yes, it sucks to be stuck in a period of rehash and slow or non-existent change. But extrapolating periods of creative bankruptcy forever isn’t valid either. Times will change. They always do. Someone smarter, clever and more creative than you or me will do it, and then we’ll all be delighted for a while, then the creative rot will set in. Hell, the truth is that fantasy literature is *still* getting out of Tolkien’s shadow.
Chris
Ah, and I meant to come back to Mythos of the Maori. I just wanted to mention it, because it was a game where I tried to rethink a number of game elements and work them into a fantasy setting that was different from Fantasy Europe. I sort of succeeded and sort of didn’t (some elements are pretty pedestrian, others I think worked well). But you know what? I get about a hundred times more interest in Wayfarer’s Song and Danse Macabre than I’ve ever had in Mythos. All we ever did with Wayfarer and Danse was try to make something fun. Mythos is a well researched game (I spent many many long hours in rare books collections reading original folktales) with a slightly unusual layout (for example ‘monsters’ aren’t described, instead there’s a short folk story about each one) with some original mechanics (I needed to work in mechanics to cover abstract concepts like Tapu and Noa that don’t exist in English) in a setting most people don’t know very well. My feeling is that it’s actually all *too* different to grab most players, yet the game is not enough of a genius-level work to actually force people to want to play it *despite* the differences. Therein is the rub. There’s a big gap between a thing being merely different/original/creative and a thing being *good*. It’s a common error that new fiction writers make. They obsess over originality and don’t realize that the word is not synonymous with ‘good’.
Anyway, my two cents.
P.S. I want to reinforce that I’m not claiming that anything I’ve done personally is particularly wonderful–I’d rather not get into some sort of to and fro attack. I’ve just thrown some games about as examples and (naturally) they’re examples that are close to my own experience.
Can I just reiterate this point: when someone has the OPINION that either a big corporate monster and/or a little self-publisher (and anything in between) lacks “creativity” in their RPG offerings, then that person with that opinion should remember that they can be creative FOR THEMSELVES. If someone depends on the creativity of others to give them a roleplaying experience that is unique and original and brand-spanking-new, then I would argue that that someone needs to get a new hobby. Because part of the genesis of roleplaying stems from collective storytelling. And when you get a group of people together to tell stories, more often than not something unique happens.
I would also argue that there is a majority of players and gamemasters out there that would say “what the fuck are you talking about?” or “who the fuck cares?” or “no shit!” if someone came to them saying “dude, the big corporate monster/little self-publisher guy lacks creativity and is putting out rehashed stuff! BEWARE!” Because this majority does not depend on the creative (or non-creative) whims of some distant producer of products. Most gamers are a resourceful lot, if you haven’t noticed. They are if nothing else some of the most creative people you may ever chance to meet. They play a game that is for the most part based solely in the imagination, for crying out loud!
Given all of this, this post that states that “RPGs suck” is beyond irrelevant. It’s vapid self-aggrandizement and a blatant attempt to stir up a false “controversy.” It is a bald-faced, ham-fisted cry of “Look at me! I’ve said something controversial! Come and pay attention to me!” And it is ultimately doing the reverse of what I assume the author intended: rather than be a force for making RPGs suck less, it just wags a finger and points out a bunch of stuff that the author thinks is “bad” about RPGs. There should have been more solutions offered. And maybe a more positive attitude would have helped, rather than starting off on the wrong foot and instantly making the reader choose a “side” in what should really be a “sideless” topic. The author eliminated much of the chance that a reader might take him seriously right from the start.
Or at least, that’s my opinion.
You certainly can reiterate a point!
It is true that an increasing proportion of roleplayers do not rely on anybody else’s RPG design efforts at all.
You are not one of those people. Those people are playing Harry Potter fanfic games on Livejournal. You’re just hanging around, kind of sucking. Yes, even compared to people doing weird underage slash HP fanfic play, you are sucking.
A weak riposte. You know nothing about me, and yet you stoop to ad hominem (look it up). Lame. I never attacked YOU, but rather your words.
Brush up on your basic rhetoric skills, friend, and we’ll talk when you have more of a grasp on argument.
However, I do applaud you for this concession you wrote:
“It is true that an increasing proportion of roleplayers do not rely on anybody else’s RPG design efforts at all.”
Let me ask you: don’t you think that this very trend, that you yourself say exists and is increasing, is a direct response to lazy mainstream RPG design? Doesn’t it make sense that there’s this “grass roots” effort to keep the flame alive where it should be: in the “trenches,” in actual play sessions all over the country/world? It’s so funny when Chicken Littles go running around claiming that some impending “collapse” of the RPG industry will also somehow magically make all roleplaying cease. Let’s use some common sense, eh?
And let me ask you another question: when was the last time YOU were in the trenches, actually being a player/gamemaster? Has it been a long time? Is that why it seems you have lost touch with what actual gamers want/need/worry about? We’ve all been tempted to lock ourselves in ivory towers now and again, sir. It’s so easy to be a critic, especially when you no longer have direct experience in what you are critiquing. Do you have real gamers coming to you to tell you that certain RPG materials “suck?” If so, that might give some credence to your argument. But if you’re just writing and designing, how do you know what gamers want?
Here’s where you slip into your poor rhetoric again:
“You are not one of those people. Those people are playing Harry Potter fanfic games on Livejournal. You’re just hanging around, kind of sucking. Yes, even compared to people doing weird underage slash HP fanfic play, you are sucking.”
Ah yes, it’s 1995 and I’m sitting permanently at a sluggish desktop computer all day and night, waiting breathlessly for you to reply so that I can continue our verbal fencing. Yes, the ubiquitous nature of smart phones and other portable web-enabled devices has NOTHING to do with the frequency with which someone can communicate over the ‘net. So your comment that I’m just “hanging around” is SO valid and doesn’t make you sound silly at all.
Come on, man! As you say in your post, “Do better.”
You also said this to me: “You certainly can reiterate a point!” Speaking of reiterating something, I see you also have a firm grasp of that talent, as evidenced by your continued repetition of the word “suck.” You’re riding that one all the way to glory, I can tell. Oh, and let’s not forget the work “fuck,” which you like to use often as well, probably because it’s neat to rhyme.
And also with regard to the merits of repetition, I suppose I believe in repetition as a tool for teaching, for driving home a point. You know what else is good to repeat: actual roleplaying sessions. Repeat them a lot, get back in touch with actual gaming, and then come back with that experience under your belt, and let us know if things still suck.
Speaking of gamers, let’s talk about NEW gamers, people who are just coming to the hobby. Maybe they’re the ones that could actually benefit from “rehashing.” Maybe they’re the ones to which all the same old stuff is being marketed toward, since to THEM it’s not “the same old stuff.” It’s new stuff! Have you taken them into consideration? Have you thought about how they might benefit from being exposed to the good old classic dungeon crawl where there’s just a dragon waiting below, crouching greedily over its treasure hoard. Boring to you and me since we’re veterans. But to someone like, for instance, the child of a gamer who is being introduced to gaming by their parent, they’re experiencing that for the first time. And the parent may take some joy in seeing a child experience that wonder at something so simple and classic.
In summation, I suggest you learn how to defend your opinions with a more calm and concrete method before you decide to purposely incite people’s ire again. Or, if you can’t take a bit of criticism and *gasp* people reacting negatively to your purposely outrageous statements, then posting your thoughts on the Internet is probably not for you.
Anthony:
1) You came into my webspace to flame me. This entire conversation happens at my sufferance. I’m basically doing you a favour by allowing your posts to appear at all, and in one case I did you a favour by getting rid of a post that made you look vaguely bigoted.
With these facts in mind, your argument that I don’t want to hear criticism is . . . goofy.
2) No, it isn’t a response. Most roleplayers in the media I’m thinking of have never played tabletop RPGs at all, and many probably don’t even know what they are.
3) I’ve been running games continuously since 1997. I was sporadic with my GMing in the mid 90s because I really enjoyed clubbing. Before that I ran games regularly from, I don’t know, 1986 or thereabouts, until the early 90s. The longest running member of my current group has been around since 1998.
You would have an inkling of this if you perused the rest of this blog, where I talk about my games frequently.
I’ve been playing characters RPGs throughout this period as well.
4) Yes, grownups sometimes use off-colour language.
5) I’m only going by the fact that you have posted regularly to this article since it went up. You realize this post is about a week old, don’t you? That three other posts have gone up since then?
grognard.txt is having a field day with your article. And for good reason.
My reply would cost you $10.
I’m agree in that the design must work more in the inside instead in the outside.
Problem is most of people has become very lazy at their spare time and (although some of them hardly believe it) RPG gamers are people…
Ed Greenwood once told me that he thought games conformed to the type of attention people give other tasks, and that this has changed by generation. He said that when he was growing up he didn’t have the patience for the wargames played by his elders, and that RPGs may be changing for a similar reason. So a decline in general interest in the hobby may be inevitable. At the same time, there are many hobbies that people put a great deal of time into now. The difference seems to be that the preparatory phase is shorter and there are more asynchronous opportunities, where all participants are not live at the same time. Forum and journal RPs work like this.
This is a Holy Grail to me, the game with more asynchronous possibilities but with a greater focus and dedicated attention than most of the forum games I’ve ever tried.
Alas, I’m not Galahad or even Percival. More like Gawain, doomed to see a light through the forest but never even know what it actually looks like.
Whaaaaa?
Malcolm:
You said: “You came into my webspace to flame me. This entire conversation happens at my sufferance. I’m basically doing you a favour by allowing your posts to appear at all, and in one case I did you a favour by getting rid of a post that made you look vaguely bigoted.
I say: No flame intended, I’m sorry you got that impression. Just giving a rebuttal, and expected some intelligent discourse. Instead, you simply replied with strange quips that made me think you really didn’t have any idea how to support your thesis.
And no kidding conversations here happen at your “sufferance.” You moderate comments. Which many might consider to be lame. Why so worried about comments that you need to moderate them? Shouldn’t you be fearless when it comes to people rebutting your ideas? I applaud you for not deleting the majority of my comments no matter how critical they were of your thesis, but saying that comments happen at your “sufferance” makes you sound like you are “lording” over your little scrap of the Internet. Wow, that’s great. Why not just be more bold and not moderate comments? And please, your use of the word “bigoted” is frankly…goofy. We’re talking about games here. Any thought that I might be bigoted says more about your view of the world, not mine.
You said: “No, it isn’t a response. Most roleplayers in the media I’m thinking of have never played tabletop RPGs at all, and many probably don’t even know what they are.”
I say: …whaaaa? Then…whaaaaa? What “media” are you thinking of? Whaaa? Your target audience has never played tabletop RPGs at all, and may not know what they are?! …then what the hell is the point of your “suck” thesis? Is it geared toward, what, people who play MMORPGs? Who is your audience? In this post you are clearly talking about tabletop RPGs. So…please explain to me what is going on here, then?
You said: “I’ve been running games continuously since 1997. I was sporadic with my GMing in the mid 90s because I really enjoyed clubbing. Before that I ran games regularly from, I don’t know, 1986 or thereabouts, until the early 90s. The longest running member of my current group has been around since 1998.
I say: Ok, that’s great. I stand informed. I haven’t delved too deeply into your site, and that’s my failing. Apologies. But still, I wonder if the people in your own gaming group may disagree strongly with you…
You said: “Yes, grownups sometimes use off-colour language.”
I say: Yes they do. Great. But when appropriate. Just using the work fuck to say to someone “ha ha, you can’t stop me from blogging” seems, well, less-than-grown up.
You said: “I’m only going by the fact that you have posted regularly to this article since it went up. You realize this post is about a week old, don’t you? That three other posts have gone up since then?”
I say: So, since a topic is getting old we should abandon it? We should have really short attention spans? Isn’t your “suck” thesis important enough to keep talking about even after a week? Or are you yourself feeling so over the whole thing that you don’t really care about it anymore, and you don’t care that other people may be upset at what you wrote? Was it just another throw-away post for you? If so, then that makes it all the more obvious that you were just trying to make inflammatory remarks, and you didn’t really feel strongly about what you were writing. You were just trying to rile people up to get comments and be outrageous and edgy and controversial with regard to your chosen profession…at least, that’s what it seems like to me, based on your telling me that the post is getting old. But stuff that is important never really gets old, right?
Oh wait, healthcare reform is getting old as a topic. We as a nation should stop talking about it. I KNOW that RPGs as a topic is much less important than healthcare reform, but you get my meaning…
Look, let’s agree to disagree then, and call it quits. I was just trying to strongly disagree with you because I feel strongly opposed to your claims. I’ve understood this whole time that what I’ve been saying is MY OPINION. But I believe that YOU think your “suck” thesis is FACT, rather than your OPINION.
There’s no winner in this discussion we’ve been having, but I’m guessing that you think differently. Because you believe you are RIGHT, and that your thoughts are dead-on fact. I don’t care if you met Gary Gygax, exchange emails regularly with Monte Cook, and see Ed Greenwood every week for Saturday afternoon tea. You are not stating fact here, just your opinion, and it’s just strange when a “grown up” can’t tell the difference. Stop trying to tell us that you know what we’re thinking. The opening sentence of Why Do RPGs Suck?:
“They do. You can feel it.”
That’s just the first instance in which you basically are telling us what we are/should be thinking/feeling. Come on, man. Tell me you don’t know that this is just plain prideful.
I’m just hoping that I’ve represented that segment of gamers that don’t care about the industry being on the bleeding edge of creativity. All I wanted to do was call bullshit, because many gamers really don’t need the publishers once they get a core rulebook!
I’ve done enough now, I suppose. Hey, let’s call the whole thing off. Thanks again for not deleting my comments. Good luck with all future endeavors, I truly mean that. And I really do look forward to following your blog. Happy gaming!
What hasn’t been talked about yet is the fact that you’re becoming essentially unrecognizable from Gareth-Michael Skarka, yet with 18% less vitriol, and 13% more cleverness.
Leaving aside the reading comprehension problems implicit in your claim, Gareth-Michael Skarka is a pretty smart guy, and this isn’t much of a diss.
It wasn’t a diss, it was a joke based upon a partial truth (as perceived by moi).
Nice column, btw.
Oh wait, bigcheez, you’re commenting on a topic that’s over a week old, and that’s past the statute of limitations on this blog, apparently
Maybe you should get with it and comment on the more recent articles regarding suckage.
I find myself agreeing with the gist of your argument, Mr Sheppard, although I feel that the question of the lack of creative juices in the RPG industry to be an open-ended one; in other words, I’m not quite ready to answer it, even with something as vague as “lack of creative leadership.”
I would say that the RPG community is in desperate need of the Next Big Thing; it has been quite awhile since we had a Next Big Thing – as you say, maybe since Exalted came out (if we don’t consider Exalted merely as Part Two of the White Wolf Era). When I say “Next Big Thing” I mean something that isn’t just popular but is also innovative and new, even representing a quantum leap artistically. I don’t think we can include licensed games like Dresden Files or heartbreaker-clones like Pathfinder. What we need is an innovation in the field, like Exalted was and like Vampire/Mage were before them. And like D&D was in the 70s.
Even then, though, well…I tend to be a pessimist these days and feel that RPGs are probably in their Kali Yuga phase. Hey, there could be a quantum leap to a new order of RPGs, perhaps a kind of RPG that truly inspires the imagination on a primal level and leads to a collective creative breakthrough whereby thousands of RPGers are actually creating and not just fabricating and simulating. It could happen but it probably won’t.
But you never know what will emerge. I just read an article in The Economist about 3D printers that can manufacturers objects on demand. Yes, this does exist, and yes we may be sayng “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” within the next decade or two, or at least “Tea Cup.”
The problem is that the direction of technology and culture is for more instant gratification, easy-fix solutions – which require less creativity and imagination from the average consumer. This is why Wizards of the Coast is focusing on D&D Insider and the virtual tabletop, stuff that is in danger of killing off D&D as we know it, or at least as a TRPG. To put it another way, and more pessimistically, TRPGs may be an artifact of the past, of the 1970-2015 era. Sure, some of us old greybeards (or greying beards) will be playing TRPGs on our porches in 2040, waving our canes and the young ‘uns as they zoom by on their home-manufactured zoomers, but I’m afraid the Golden Era is over. Hey, it probably ended in the 90s somewhere and only briefly resurfaced in the early 00s. We might even see another small wave or two, but they will be just little eddies in the wake of the tsunami that passed us long ago.
I don’t think it’s a technological problem. People talk about short attention spans, but I think the *style* of attention and commitment has changed. Even then, I think there are plenty of opportunities out there for new types of gaming. I think at some point we’re going to drop the pseudo-boldiless aspect of online culture and have real/online mashups that extend the social tabletop in ways we don’t do as well even through videoconferencing.
TRPGs have not been keeping up with the possibilities as well as I would like, but this isn’t about that as much as problems with the entire creative direction of the hobby, which has reduced itself to bitching over the smallest structural issues while its demonstrated virtues (good play in a way that is not satisfied by other media) rots. Part of the problem is that we have an online intellectual culture dominated by demonstrably terrible gamers, and part of it is that we have closed feedback loop between designers and hardcore gamers that is increasingly irrelevant to a world where the youth population has never known a lack of instant messaging, anime, or multifaceted entertainment IPs.
Sounds like the “glass half-full” version – rather than saying that Kids These Days have lousy attention spans, you’re saying they have different attention spans. I can go with this, at least for the time being. I’m a high school teacher and I certainly see the potential for new capacities in young people, but I also see a lot of negative pathology that I would directly tie to over-use of technology, and the kind of quick-fix instant gratification that it habituates.
What I see is young people wanting something more, a deeper, more vital experience from their education – more than just having someone pour information into their brains. But what happens is that when they get a chance to be truly creative, they often don’t know what to do and resort back to filling their heads with lowest common denominator stuff, or any kind of stimulation they can find.
So in the same sense that I feel that the next educational step would be to find ways to inspire deeper creativity, more immersive imaginative experience and participation (and not just simulation or passive engagement), so too do I feel that the next wave of RPGs could at least theoretically follow the same lines. Maybe more participatory world building and campaign creation, sort of like the Dawn of Worlds game, but even more so.
I think back to one “failed” RPG experiment of the 90s, the Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth RPG. The concept was terrific but the game itself was clunky and it never took off. But that is the direction that I’d like to see “someone” take RPGs: collaborative, participatory, and creating from within, not just interacting with a pre-given simulation (i.e. video games).
Now the degree to which our technologies can help facilitate this, I’m on board. But if they replace it, well, that’s the problem.
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I think it started well before third edition. The game needs to be about the game and the events in the world, it’s not about the feel of the world, and it’s definately not supposed to cater to the wishes of the players.
Powergaming and political correctness are the culprits I think, an insideous level of powergaming that is so ingrained into the system you don’t notice it. Compare Amber to Vampire. In Amber one plays what is basically a god, this is balanced by 2 things: The elder amberites can kick your ass without breaking a sweat and the system and setting pit you against your fellows. In Vampire you play a Superhero who can’t go out during the day; this is balanced by gamemaster fiat. Amber is about the world Vampire is about the characters.
Vampire is a fine game but the idiom of ego-centric play has infected every other game, sessions are little more than masturbation and sourcebooks are catalogs of crap for characters. If your character is a special and unique snowflake, then the game is gonna eventually suck. It’s like the episode of the twilight zone where the criminal dies and goes to heaven where he can’t loose at the casino and has everything he ever wanted; only to find out he’s in hell.
The game systems are written this way, because it’s easy to write new powers, easy to fill sourcebooks with them, basically applying the paradigms that have arisen around the non-interactive, ego centric and linear world of computer games.
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