Head down memory lane until you come to the forest of doom...
For the past few weeks I've been digging back into the strange and wonderful world of roleplaying games where I spent so much of my youth. I've been back for visits now and then over the years, seeking out books and boxed sets at my mum's house or browsing the cover scans on labour-of-love sites like The Museum of Roleplaying Games. But never stopping for much more than an hour or two.
I'm not exactly sure what's triggered my deeper excursions of late. Maybe it was a spate of recent roleplaying posts on MetaFilter, or the Penny Arcade / WotC D&D 4E podcasts, or Wil Wheaton's photo of his "time machine". But I'd imagine it's mostly to do with my new found addiction to "not just for kids anymore" boardgames (more of which in another post). It's a slippery slope, you know?
That and the realisation that there are thousands of photos of happy gaming action on Flickr, readily available downloads of my old favourite rulebooks & supplements on BitTorrent, and a smorgasbord of well written roleplaying blogs scattered around the internet.
Back in the day I remember playing D&D, AD&D, Marvel Super Heroes, Call of Cthulhu, TMNT, Heroes Unlimited, Palladium FRPG, Rolemaster, MERP, Star Wars, WFRP, Chill, Advanced Recon, Shadowrun and probably more besides. My group of friends owned and read plenty of others that I never found time to play, Tales from the Floating Vagabond, Cyberpunk, Rifts, Paranoia, Judge Dredd, and Robotech (all on RPG.net). We played board games and miniature games on the side like Car Wars, Battletech, Bloodbowl, Warhammer 40K, Warhammer Epic 40k, Space Hulk and Advanced HeroQuest (all on BoardGameGeek). And in my spare time I read magazines like Dragon, Dungeon, White Dwarf and Imagine. Poring over each article, advert and review for inklings of further adventures to be had.
Good times.
There's no question that roleplaying is a dwindling hobby, and there's many, many contributing factors caught up in that, so it brings on mixed emotions to look back with nostalgia at this sickly ailing beast. But there are still signs of life and positive trends here and there.
So, what went wrong?:
- Roleplaying is hard. There are too many rules. Open-endedness leads to a lack of focus. Improv-style aspects can be embarassing. Refereeing is hard work.
- Developers lost site of what brought people to the hobby. Whither the entry-level boxed set? Instead we were shovel-fed weighty tomes filled with 3rd rate fantasy fiction and ever growing rulesets.
- Other trends ate roleplaying's lunch. Computer gaming and the internet distracted us, while collectible card games and miniature-based gaming made companies like WotC & Games Workshop slaves to their profit margins.
- Shrinking profits saw RPGs being bought up or licensed off to companies who either didn't care enough or didn't have the talent to do the job properly.
- Versionitis. Presumably due to small target audiences, RPGs are constantly updated in an effort to encourage repeat purchases. That inevitably leads to "fixing" things which weren't broken. Book publishers don't do this, boardgame publishers don't do this. RPG publishers shouldn't either.
And the good news?:
- A greying market. Teen roleplayers from the 80s (like me) are now old enough to stop cringing at the nerdiness and start looking at our old hobby with fresh eyes. Others have kids who're just old enough to show an interest themselves.
- D&D's 4th Edition. Love it or hate it, Wizards of the Coast's MMORPG-ization of D&D may be doing exactly what they hoped it would, which is to attract the attentions of WoW players who'd only ever tried a computer RPG. You only need follow PA's Mike Krahulik on his first steps into DMing to see that at work.
- Experimental & Lite RPGs. Dogs In The Vineyard, My Life With Master, Nobilis, Savage Worlds and Spirit of the Century all take roleplaying into new and uncharted territory.
- Old school revivalism. Spurred on by disenfranchisement with D&D's current direction, several parties have released faithful "clones" of 70s-era D&D rules under names like Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC. These are published with open licenses as free or cheap PDFs and via print-on-demand services like Lulu.
It's this last that I was most pleased to see. At it's heart, roleplaying is about imagination, no purchase necessary. So a grassroots, DIY movement of free, and freely modifiable, gaming seems like a natural fit to me. If the industry is troubled it seems healthy to reduce dependencies and make the hobby self-sufficient.
That and reading the thoughtful debate about what made original D&D great. Wizened old greybeards from tabletop mountain passing around adjectives like Grognardian and Gygaxian make for happy reading to someone like me who has trouble convincing others of just what was so enthralling about those early books.
So raise a goblet to those still in the fight, and heartily opine "Fight On!"