And to me, one of the funny things about that is that all of those D&D books on display will be effectively obsolete in another seven months or so when D&D Fourth Edition comes out.
So what does this mean for those of us who like roleplaying, but aren't D&D fans? It means that it's going to be that much harder for the rest of us to find people to play with, if we don't have an existing group. We'll have to introduce people directly to roleplaying games we prefer ourselves, or try to recruit from among the D&D crowd, which isn't traditionally very interested in looking beyond D&D.
To me, this is another sign showing just how polarized the RPG world has become. You either play D&D or you play that funky indie stuff. There's not much room in that world for my old favorites GURPS or In Nomine. Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia seem to be considered old classics that nobody does much with anymore.
And maybe this is a further sign that it's time to take my creativity elsewhere. I used to write scripts and songs, when I had an outlet for each of those. I've done very little prose, but that doesn't mean I can't work on it. Sometimes you need a poke from the outside world to show you that it's time for a change, and maybe this is that poke for me.
4 comments:
When indie games are outlawed, only outlaws will play indie games.
Or..
You'll have to pry the Call of Cthulhu handbook from my cold dead hands.
Fitting, eh?
I wouldn't worry to much about it. At Dreamation this year I ran 5 seperate events (of which 3 actually happened) and only one of them was D&D. Yeah its one of the ones that ran but then again I did a sucsessful Gurps game (partly because I opted to run with only 3 people partly because I choose Doctor Who which people know and like even if they don't know gurps), and I ran a very old game called Shattered Dreams (well sort of I'm not sure running a game with out character sheets, a rule book or notes really qualifies as running the system (Left it all at home by mistake) but it worked and people had fun). THe younger generation to a degree is yes going to be very d&d or indie oriented but theirs enough of us old schoolers around to prevent it from going that way permenantly. I've managed to take a newbie group with little non d&d experience and get them playing (to date gurps, world of darkness, rifts, paranoia and currently Pendragon).
It may slack off to a degree but eventually a lot of D&D players come around. I eventually got bored with D&D (where I started like most gamers) and tried other things just because a title caught my eye. Of course your right about stores unfortunately. My FLGS has a big D&D section, an almost as big New WOD section, and a handful of gurps (which he mostly keeps around as a nod to me being a local mib), Rifts, cthulhu and one or two single books for different systems. Most of it doesn't sell and the D&D stuff is on sale to make room for 4th ed although honestly I can't really blaime him. Its mostly a comic book shop so he doesn't have that much space to devote to rpgs.
It'll be ok. When 4th ed comes out, you will have to pay a monthly subscription to get the rules (as per WoW). The smarter players will drop out then.
Besides have you seen the 3.5 players. I wouldn't want them in my game to begin with.
Re: Cthulhu and cold, dead hands. *Very* appropriate!
Re: GURPS Doctor Who. You've hit one of the best reasons to use GURPS, which is to use a popular and established property to draw the players and a solid system to make it run smoothly.
Re: Drawing the D&D players. I agree with Anonymous that I wouldn't want players with that approach at my table. The million dollar question is, where is the next generation of non-power gamers going to come from? If it's going to come from the ranks of disenchanted D&D players, much as it did in earlier generations, it's doomed to continue to be a subset of D&Ders, which I don't find encouraging. I think many more of them will simply give up than find their way to the cool indie games. If indie games are going to succeed, I think they're going to have to blaze their own path in some way.
Post a Comment