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Alex

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Hello everyone!

I was considering how design trends changed RPGs through the years, especially because I miss the most those more detailed RPGs from the 90s, where having the game represent an imaginary gameworld was, by many systems, seems as the ideal. I tried to assemble a timeline of how I see these things changed, and I would be very interested in hearing what you think, where you disagree and what I may have missed in this summary. Right now, here is how I see history:

Late 70s:
First games made. These games had a stronger focus on bringing cool ideas to the table, and the GM was expected to somehow deal or adjudicate them. Dungeoncrawls and eventually hexcrawls were the most popular campaign type; although some of the more serious campaigns would eventually incorporate back elements of wargames as the PCs became prominent in the game world. Nevertheless, games of this time frequently had a rather wild range of themes; like the Bunnies and Burrows RPG that would cast the players as rabbits.

Early 80s:
Stronger focus on rules begins to appear at this time. Many games from the 70s had very abstract combat systems, many having inherited that from D&D. In the early 80s, some attempt was given in making rules more "simulationist", from games like The Fantasy Trip. Other games didn't necessarily focus on combat, but they still tried to make rules more "sane", by having self-similar systems for different aspects of the game, rather than having every single sub-system use its own logic.

Late 80s and 90s:
The rise of the simulationist games. Games from this time period had begun to focus on the internal logic of the game itself. GURPS, released on 86, was particularly representative of this approach. As was the game Phoenix Command. While other games were more popular, they too were affected by this trend. AD&D 2e, for example, had entries for society and ecology for each creature in the monster book. While Shadowrun from 89 tried to account for things such as explosions rebounding against walls, shotgun shot dispersion, etc.

90s:
The previous trend continued. However, the basic kind of campaign began to change. Many groups no longer played the more sandboxy kind of games of yore. Rather, an "adventure of the week" format became ever more popular, with the GM determining where the adventure would go next. The theme of the games also changed slightly to represent popular culture. Edgy games became rather popular, with World of Darkness being one of the most prominent examples. These games too had an important focus on the internal logic of the gameworld, but rather than focusing on rules to represent and simulate this, they focused more on "fluff", leaving it up to the GM how these things would matter in game.

2000s:
With the new milenium, RPGs again sought a new focus. With most games now focusing on the episodic campaign style, the heavy simulationist focus of the games of yore came under heavy attack. Instead, the games began to focus more on rules simpler and more balanced. Whereas in the past decade it wasn't uncommon to see rules based on how the designer wanted the gameworld to be, on the 2000s "gameplay" had to come first. And, in most cases, "gameplay" meant combat.

On the forefront of this decade, is the third edition of D&D, coupled with the SRD and the D20 things, which dragged with it many other RPGs, both new and old. It is interesting to note here that many of the games from the 80s and 90s renounced their simulationist aspects, at least in part. The 4th edition of GURPS, for instance, tried to clean up the character point system and made its philosophy not all that unlike the 6th edition of the HERO system. Shadowrun, from the 4th edition onwards, had a bigger focus on simplifying the game (compared to the early editions, at least).

Late 2000s:
In the background of the early 2000s, you had the forge, a website that tried to answer the age old question: what is an RPG. while their theoretical framework was actually rather interesting, they brought some practical aspects to the table that were rather opposed to the previous decade, such as decoupling the game rules from the fiction, making them represent genre and "agenda" aspects first, and inner logic second... if ever. As the decade moved on, these ideas began to catch on some games. Two important titles that incorporated some of this design philosophy were Fate and Savage Worlds.

Also important, while the episodic adventure was still the most common type of campaign here, in many games the "challenge rating" of monsters became an important aspect of the adventure design. This mostly affected D&D (I think there were other games that had similar rules, but I don't know for sure), and even then some DMs didn't bother with these rules at all, but this nevertheless changed how some games were designed later on.

Early 2010s:
Early 2010s saw an attempted shift in the industry as Wizards tried the culmination of the new design in D&D 4e. Fourth edition had tried to do away with many of the rules that represented in-game ideas. Rather, the rules were much simpler and abstract, and at least supposedly much more balanced.

This, of course, ended up in failure. Wizards saw its sales overtaken by Pathfinder, which was itself just a slightly more crunchy interaction of D&D 3e. Meanwhile, one game from the forge legacy (it was by now defunct) that became particularly prominent was Apocalypse World. Different from many games of that legacy, AW was very concerned in accounting for the in game fiction in rules, but not only that. While elements of its rules were rather abstract, with PCs having attributes such as "cool", "hot" and "weird", which were meant to represent more their role in the game than anything about the character itself; the rules were careful to account for what happened in the fiction. For instance, the "hardholder", one of the game's archetypes, could improve his hold by accumulating experience to build better defences, hire more people, etc. However, the rules went two ways, if the hardholder had managed to build better defences in-game, then he got the upgrade; experience wasn't a barrier to what could happen in-game.

Perhaps more important than that, though, was the Old School Renaissance movement, which had started towards the end of the third edition. While they were mostly focused on D&D, the movement helped bring back to the forefront the design philosophy of the 70s and early 80s.

Late 2010s:
Well, this is perhaps the one I am most confused about. OSR took over an important chunk of the market. With the failure of 4e, 5e tried to incorporate part of the OSR design philosophy, even inviting some people of that movement to help them design the new system. The result actually didn't satisfy a lot of people who consider themselves old school, but the game seems to have drawn in many people into the hobby. Some even make bold statements about the health of tabletop RPGs, saying there are more people playing now than ever.

Still, it seems that not much is going on outside of D&D land. Older titles like GURPS and even World of Darkness (which was resurrected) seem to have rather limited sales. Newer games rarely go for big books, and even more rarely have long product lines prepared for them. The new edition of Pathfinder tried to do away with much of the game's complexity, but wasn't well received.

Finally, a rather annoying trend is that SJW crap has been encroaching more and more into the hobby, with ridiculous news such as removing attribute penalties from races in D&D in order to avoid being racist, or having magic wheelchairs for disabled adventurers as a (3rd party) mini-supplement.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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I was considering how design trends changed RPGs through the years, especially because I miss the most those more detailed RPGs from the 90s, where having the game represent an imaginary gameworld was, by many systems, seems as the ideal.
Within Dungeons & Dragons, TSR shifted in 1987 to a focus on campaign settings, publishing the first D&D Known World Gazetteers, the Forgotten Realms box set, and the Dragonlance Adventures hardcover. This was followed by many more major campaign settings: a new Greyhawk hardcover in 1988, a Spelljammer box set in 1989, Ravenloft in 1990, Dark Sun in 1990, Planescape in 1994, and Birthright in 1995. Not to mention the minor settings of Kara-Tur in 1989, The Horde in 1990, Maztica in 1991, Al-Qadim in 1992, and Council of Wyrms in 1994. Each of the major campaign settings had a number of products published describing various locations and aspects of the setting, plus setting-specific adventure modules. This lasted until TSR's demise in 1997, but the tendency was rather reversed in AD&D's post-TSR afterlife, where attention concentrated on the most generic setting.

Following the publication of AD&D 2nd edition in 1989, TSR began publishing a series of optional rulebooks regarding character classes (also demi-human races and monsters), 15 in total not counting setting-specific ones, with many of the new rules aimed at increasing the complexity of character creation and progression, and some aimed at increasing complexity of gameplay in regard to combat or other elements. This trend was extended in 1995 by the publication of four optional rulebooks aimed at increasing complexity in specific aspects of the game ("Combat & Tactics", "Skills & Powers", "High-Level Campaigns", and "Skills & Magic"). After TSR's demise, the ensuing revision of AD&D incorporated many of these optional rules and trends to make them an official and core part of the game.
 

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