Decline Why were the 2000s so bad for table-top RPGs?

[Alex]

Hey everyone.

I was reminiscing a bit about some older RPGs, and I began to realise just how bad things got near the beginning of the century. I had always resented that time as the time the games I liked the most died; but I hadn't realised how many games seemed to either have gone away or have been replaced with a worse version at around that same time. D&D 3e seems to have been the first of the lot. It didn't really set a trend for anything to follow, but perhaps because it was such a big piece of the industry it made life more difficult for the other games? I don't know, it just seems weird that shortly after D&D changed so much what it was about, so many other games would follow suit even if the particular changes were nothing alike.

In fact, while 3e was released near the end of 2000, most of these games came around 2004. The one that was most dear for me was GURPS, though I should be fair and point out that it is one of the games that changed the least mechanically. Rather, the more grating was the whole culture surrounding it that changed as well as SJGames seeming to shrink its GURPS arm which apparently was no more anywhere as profitable as before. This, of course, meant that rather than nice general books about a bunch of subjects like we got in 3e, most releases for 4e were smaller, more focused and, sadly, more concerned with the point system as well. We never got for 4e a book like, for instance, GURPS Vehicles. That spirit, which I guess you could call "simulationist", which saw GURPS as a game more concerned with the pretend world rather than "gamey" concerns, never went out completely. A few magazine articles from Pyramid certainly held that, for instance.

Shadowrun had a similar fate. That game line had an incredible support for making the gameworld seem "real". Everything was always considered not only as a game element (such and such cyberware is overpowered, or such concerns) but also as a setting element. In fact, it often seemed that in-setting concerns took precedence over game ones. Shadowrun 4e and later (though, to be fair, I have barely read 5e and didn't touch 6e) seemed to abandon this approach. One reason, I would wager, is simply that this approach is actually very hard. It takes a lot of work to make things still fit 12 splat books into the line, for instance. Another, I suspect, is that games like this seemed to go out of vogue at the end of the century, its likes still not yet seen again.

Another one that bothered me a lot at the time was the "new" world of darkness. With the game lines from the old world of darkness all ending in some sort of end of the world story line or other, White Wolf wanted to start doing business a little differently. Or rather, a lot differently. Unlike the other games I mentioned, I've seen several people comment on these changes, usually welcoming them because they would fix perceived flaws of the old game such as a static, evolving story line, a reliance on source books for "lore" and supposedly a broken game system. For all this talk, however, it seems to me the new world of darkness was never anywhere near as popular as the old one, so much so that eventually we began to get kickstarters for 20th anniversary editions of the old line that ended up resurrecting it... only for it to be killed by some weird 5th edition version with wokeness turned to 11.

Deadlands was one that passed me by when it happened. I wasn't aware of it when it was released, but its "reloaded" version, which trashed the custom system in favour of Savage Worlds. Like many of these games, Deadlands seemed to flourish at the end of the 90s. Other lines that also seem to have been affected at the time include Castle Falkenstein (and most of the R. Talsorian products).

So, what I want to ask is, do you know of any other games that either died or changed drastically at around this time? Do you have any idea what prompted all these changes all at the same time? That time in tabletop RPGs was for me perhaps the best one, where we got the best books and systems; so I am really curious about this.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

I was never a tabletop player, but I remember well that 'New World of Darkness' bollocks, because I liked the 'Old World of Darkness' lore, and used to read the RPG sourcebooks for WOD and D&D for fun. At that time a lot of entertainment was obsessed with the words "grounded" and "realistic". Something after 9/11 suddenly made everyone in America want to make entertainment dour, which I couldn't understand. 'New World of Darkness' seemed like an attempt toward this supposed "realism". What "realism" meant in fact was "materialism", "nihilism", and "moral relativism" rather than a higher "Platonic realism" that fiction is uniquely capable of portraying - heightened reality.

Everyone's imagination shrunk. Optimistic space opera like Star Trek left television in favour of drama grounded in everyday concerns. Maybe that's not on topic, but I just thought I would say it. Realism does not equate to materialism, as Platonism had famously argued that there migth be a hidden layer to reality beyond the apprent contingent world.

 

[Joggerino]

I hated most of the 3d sequels, for example settlers: heritage of kings (2004). As a big settlers 4 and 3 fan I found that game complete garbage. Another example HoMM 5 (2006). Hated it.

 

[Tweed]

2000s seemed like an excuse for pnp designers to change shit for the sake of changing it. New millennium means a fresh start and alienating grognards. I mean 3e turned into 3.5 because there were so many issues.

 

[catfood]

The 2000's were a million times better than The Current Year™.

 

[Alex]

By the way, I thought of mentioning the Fighting Fantasy books as well. Those games were pretty popular here in the early 90s at least. But checking publication history, they ceased on 95; way to early to be part of this same movement. Apparently, one common reason given for FF (and similar game-books) ending seems to be video-games. I guess that as computer games became more popular and CRPGs like the gold box game or Ultima became possible, each time with better graphics, sounds and whatnot, it is not unthinkable that they were indeed one of the major sources of game-book decline. That is a bit sad, however, because I think we never got anything on the CRPG genre that did something quite like the Fighting Fantasy books; though they certainly could!

And this brings me back on topic, if video-games were the reason game-books went out of fashion, if they provided a better alternative to what game-books were trying to accomplish... well the same can't be said about tabletop games. Playing with friends (or, at least, with other humans) is still the only way to play a real RPG (and, I would argue, that can't be changed either, but that is subject for an AI topic). I suppose the big popularity of video-games may have driven people who only played RPGs because there wasn't something closer to what they really wanted away from tabletop games. I suppose as well that these games may have made it harder for smaller companies that wanted to publish a tabletop game to be seen; magazines were going the way of the dodo as well; the last printed edition of Dragon seems to be 2007, and I expect less robust publications to have ceased much earlier. This probably made making a tabletop game somewhat harder as well; before you could make an ad on a magazine, and if your product was at least somewhat visible already, it would probably get a review somewhere.

Another factor, I suppose, is that many smaller companies started making "D20" products at the time rather than try to keep up with their own system. I don't know how much of an effect this might have had. On one hand, there were certainly many non D20 games as well, and none of the games I've mentioned in the first post became D20 exclusively (and, I suppose, the D20 version of WoD was done more as a joke than anything else). On the other hand, perhaps the changing culture around the game started by this had more of an effect than what can be seen directly? I don't know, but even if this was a major factor, I expect there were at least several others.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

The ttrpg market started crunching in the 90s due to competition from video games. The publishers tried to stay relevant by reinventing their games to appeal to larger audiences than the grognards, but this didn't halt the decline because it didn't address the actual problem. No surprise that a number of publishers either got bought by video game companies or have gone to great lengths to make video game adaptations. Over in Europe, the ttrpg market outright collapsed and most publishers went out of business. Mainstays of the European ttrpg scene died overnight and the spaces were colonized by adaptations of USA ttrpgs.

The edition wars are just full of shit on all sides. The grognards are full of shit: there's absolutely nothing wrong with publishers trying to do something new and creative. The publishers are full of shit: insulting grognards for not trying the new thing is pointless stupid tribalism. I absolutely hate how ttrpgs have been steadily less creative over time and more concerned with catering to the nostalgia of a continually shrinking base of grognards. Every genre is dominated by one game with a highly idiosyncratic setting and fandom that shun you as a heretic if you don't adhere to the religion. I actually liked New World of Darkness, and other 2000s editions of some games, for what they tried to do (and they weren't all failures like the haters like to claim: nWoD was financially successful given the circumstances, as shown by all the books made for it). But if I ever voice that then I get attacked and dismissed as a grognard... by grognards. I fucking hate it. Why can't different campaign settings and fandoms coexist? This religious fanaticism is stupid and just destroys creativity. I've been pretty much driven out of ttrpg circles entirely because I hate that attitude.

It's no surprise that ttrpgs are a stagnant dying mess. They refuse to update themselves for the times because it pisses off grognards, when grognards aren't a stable loyal market to begin with. Whenever they do try to update themselves, they do a piss poor job that fails to attract new audiences and pisses off their existing audience of grognards. Every IP has an expiry date and most of these IPs have long since passed that point, so they only ever appeal to grognards anyway. You can't grow that.

Publishers and fandoms need to actually open themselves up to new things and being genuinely creative. This doesn't mean they have to wholesale dump what came before, either. But there's a happy medium that nobody is pursuing because they'd rather treat games as religions with sacred texts and canon. These are fucking games!

 

[Alex]

The ttrpg market started crunching in the 90s due to competition from video games. The publishers tried to stay relevant by reinventing their games to appeal to larger audiences than the grognards, but this didn't halt the decline because it didn't address the actual problem. No surprise that a number of publishers either got bought by video game companies or have gone to great lengths to make video game adaptations. Over in Europe, the ttrpg market outright collapsed and most publishers went out of business. Mainstays of the European ttrpg scene died overnight and the spaces were colonized by adaptations of USA ttrpgs.

Did you guys have many RPGs over there? Here in Brazil we had a couple, but none were particularly big.

The edition wars are just full of shit on all sides. The grognards are full of shit: there's absolutely nothing wrong with publishers trying to do something new and creative.

Here is an idea for something new and creative: don't change what makes the game good! Given the edition story of most games, that one must be almost untried.

But sure, if publishers want to do something "new and creative", go ahead. But at least give it a different name instead of trying to fool people into sticking with your product.

The publishers are full of shit: insulting grognards for not trying the new thing is pointless stupid tribalism. I absolutely hate how ttrpgs have been steadily less creative over time and more concerned with catering to the nostalgia of a continually shrinking base of grognards. Every genre is dominated by one game with a highly idiosyncratic setting and fandom that shun you as a heretic if you don't adhere to the religion.

Is there even a "fandom" left alive out there nowadays? At any rate, when I go to a game table, I expect that whatever setting we will be playing will be the GM's version of it. I mean, sure, part of the premise of your game might be sticking close to some canon or whatnot, but I wouldn't expect that as the default assumption. Although, to be fair, it always pays to make sure you are on the same page with your players.

I actually liked New World of Darkness, and other 2000s editions of some games, for what they tried to do (and they weren't all failures like the haters like to claim: nWoD was financially successful given the circumstances, as shown by all the books made for it). But if I ever voice that then I get attacked and dismissed as a grognard... by grognards. I fucking hate it. Why can't different campaign settings and fandoms coexist? This religious fanaticism is stupid and just destroys creativity. I've been pretty much driven out of ttrpg circles entirely because I hate that attitude.

Personally, I think the worst thing about NWoD was ditching variable difficulties. But then again I never read much of it.

It's no surprise that ttrpgs are a stagnant dying mess. They refuse to update themselves for the times because it pisses off grognards, when grognards aren't a stable loyal market to begin with. Whenever they do try to update themselves, they do a piss poor job that fails to attract new audiences and pisses off their existing audience of grognards. Every IP has an expiry date and most of these IPs have long since passed that point, so they only ever appeal to grognards anyway. You can't grow that.

RPGs are smaller now. There just isn't a market for them nowadays like there was in the 90s. That said, for all your talk about "grognards", OSR is doing pretty well. It is a pity there isn't a similar movement for games like Shadowrun 3e or GURPS, though to be fair it probably wouldn't work very well; these are games where rather than depending just on adventures and DM advice, you need big books that are laborious to make.

Publishers and fandoms need to actually open themselves up to new things and being genuinely creative. This doesn't mean they have to wholesale dump what came before, either. But there's a happy medium that nobody is pursuing because they'd rather treat games as religions with sacred texts and canon. These are fucking games!

Opening themselves to new things was what all the "indies" (if you can really distinguish that way) were trying some idea from the forge or other. A lot of what they produced was bad, some was good. The whole thing seems to have died down after people stopped making "powered by apocalypse world" games.

 

[anvi]

90s was peak gaming. Talented individuals coming together in small-medium sized teams that make the best games they could. And in time their successes afforded them larger budgets from big corporations who wanted them to make more.

But that's where the problems start. The corporations ended up dominating everything and destroying everything. The corporations are to blame. But also the talented individuals were focused on gaming and tech. It sometimes paid off and made them millionaires, but often they were partying too much and not focusing on profit enough. So they were easy for big corporations to pick off. (Release one game that doesn't sell very well and they can't pay their rent. Evil Corporation offers to buy them out and they can't refuse.)

 

[RaggleFraggle]

RPGs are smaller now. There just isn't a market for them nowadays like there was in the 90s. That said, for all your talk about "grognards", OSR is doing pretty well. It is a pity there isn't a similar movement for games like Shadowrun 3e or GURPS, though to be fair it probably wouldn't work very well; these are games where rather than depending just on adventures and DM advice, you need big books that are laborious to make.

Yeah, the market is much smaller. I hear a lot of gamers being in denial about that, but it's true. The games that survived the crunch are nowhere near as big as they were in their heyday. A lot of that is definitely due to competition from video games, but I can't help but wonder when chat rpgs are still going strong. Could ttrpgs have done anything to adapt to the changing times?

OSR is about emulating particular gameplay, it's not obsessed with particular lore. It's the asinine lore obsessions that drove me out of tabletop gaming. The OSR is open to all sorts, it's not an exclusive club defined by asinine lore disputes.

I would love to see an OSR movement for all the genres, for all the underexplored concepts, for all the dead IPs from past decades, etc. I'm tired of these single idiosyncratic IPs dominating and strangling whole genres before spectacularly exploding. Kickstarter constantly pumps out new ttrpgs but their communities burn out within months of release. I can never find anyone interested in the sorts of games I'm interested in due to the lack of networking effect. There is no shortage of fascinating kickstarter ttrpgs that I'd love to play but never will because nobody wants to because they weren't made in the 80s and established a monopoly.

Personally, I think the worst thing about NWoD was ditching variable difficulties. But then again I never read much of it.

It did have variable difficulty. It just shifted it to die pool modifiers. This ran into the problem that you couldn't conceal modifiers from players because of how dice pools worked, but it still had circumstantial modifiers.

"Never read it"? When you're criticizing something, maybe it's a good idea to actually read it before criticizing? I get the impression none of the haters read it, as evidenced by them literally telling me so when I asked. Their hatred was/is based on rumors, hearsay, groupthink and entitlement issues. They took personal offense to the company ceasing to produce new books for the IP, even though there was absolutely nothing new to make books about. (Subsequent editions just repackaged old stuff, often doing stupid shit like reversing errata or failing to apply obvious errata.)

"NWOD sucks cause it doesn't have lore about my favorite globe-spanning ninja clan!" The reboot was done because marketing said so: they judged that the game was too intimidating to new players and grognards weren't buying enough to sustain them. So they later brought back the older continuity, to mixed results. I'm not gonna pretend I don't have my own problems with NWOD that made me lose interest years ago, but I didn't like the other continuity's lore and I don't like having that shit forced on me when I don't like it because there's no other options. It's not a real game, it's microfiction written by failed novelists pretending to be a game. A lot of these games are just failed microfiction and I hate it.

"NR (acronym for a French game that you've probably never heard of) sucks because it introduces new character options that were already present in the lore but had no prior support. Fuck you, I think they should be NPC-only and fuck all those who want to play them." They removed those character types in subsequent editions (funded by kickstarter, since they have no money) and the new writing team was very insulting and dismissive about the prior edition, even though it literally did nothing that previous editions didn't already do. I read the books: they just consolidated the prior decade of lore (they couldn't actually fit it all, so omissions are everywhere). The grognards said they didn't like the new edition for being too much like superheroes, when the magic system from prior editions literally let you become the Human Torch and always has. They were being hysterical fuckwits and interpreting the new edition as a personal attack when it clearly wasn't. Maybe the new edition wasn't perfect, but I liked the new options introduced. I read their beloved new grognard edition and it's a fucking disorganized mess by comparison that expects you to already be a grognard who read the 90s books (which aren't sold anymore, so new players are fucked). The controversial edition had the good sense to put important information in the rulebooks rather than scatter it across a dozen supplements. These new supplements even contradict each other because the writers can't make up their damn minds!

It's no wonder ttrpgs are dying when they're only focused on placating grognards with microfiction rather than making playable games and maintaining their community health.

But sure, if publishers want to do something "new and creative", go ahead. But at least give it a different name instead of trying to fool people into sticking with your product.

They did! Lots of times. The grognards took offense to the ceasing of support for the edition they personally liked, or to metaplot changes, or any other changes. There's literally no way to win with these fuckwits because their demands are unreasonable and based in nostalgia rather than logic.

Some teams make stupid decisions and insult their fans, but not every new edition was like that. Sometimes the grognards are just being toxic because of sheer autism rather than any good reason. It's not always the writers huffing their farts and thinking pointless changes are necessary.

Opening themselves to new things was what all the "indies" (if you can really distinguish that way) were trying some idea from the forge or other. A lot of what they produced was bad, some was good. The whole thing seems to have died down after people stopped making "powered by apocalypse world" games.

Good luck finding communities for those, or anyone willing to play.

I used to love reading about settings and mini-settings and all the creative stuff that ttrpgs supposedly allowed. Political space opera between warring nations with wildly different shticks, post-apocalyptic wastes full of psychic mutants organized into competing secret societies, space police marshals policing the frontier, biopunks trying to survive on an Earth devoid of an ozone layer, alternate histories where fairy-blooded Victorian detectives investigated crimes committed by Unseelie terrorists, yadda yadda. Boy did I become disillusioned when I learned that these communities are actually just a handful of religions dating to the 80s or so that hate creativity and don't want to play anything but the same games they've been playing since the 80s.

I would describe "conventional" ttrpg gaming as a kind of anti-OSR. It just alienates me. I don't have a strict preference for a single setting, but I really hate it when I'm insulted and demonized for wanting more campaign settings. With D&D there's a bazillion official and unofficial campaign settings. There's a campaign setting out there for almost every flavor of fantasy and you're fully encouraged to invent your own. Even in the OSR this remains the case. Everything else, except GURPS, is basically anti-freedom.

I believe that ttrpgs are unique in that they are only limited by the imagination of the people writing and running them. That's the only reason I like them at all, even though video games are vastly easier to just get into. So this purity culture is just anathema to me. I hate it. I am completely alienated from ttrpgs and I only linger around out of nostalgia and because I like reading old rpg books to get ideas for original video game or prose projects. Unlike the ttrpg religions that require unreasonable lifetime investment, people read more than one book and play more than one video game in their lives.

Like, seriously, fuck ttrpgs. Fuck the entire hobby. I'm glad it's dying. Hopefully something worthwhile will arise from the ashes, but I don't count on it.

 

[Alex]

It did have variable difficulty. It just shifted it to die pool modifiers. This ran into the problem that you couldn't conceal modifiers from players because of how dice pools worked, but it still had circumstantial modifiers.

Of course, but I am talking about "difficulty" as in the target number for the dice. The original system would have you set what kind of difficulty an action would have, such as an easy action being difficulty 6 and a hard one 8. The newer game had modifiers only adding to the number of dice, and changing the TN was something reserved for special powers or things like that.

"Never read it"? When you're criticizing something, maybe it's a good idea to actually read it before criticizing? I get the impression none of the haters read it, as evidenced by them literally telling me so when I asked. Their hatred was/is based on rumors, hearsay, groupthink and entitlement issues. They took personal offense to the company ceasing to produce new books for the IP, even though there was absolutely nothing new to make books about. (Subsequent editions just repackaged old stuff, often doing stupid shit like reversing errata or failing to apply obvious errata.)

I said I never read it much. I did, however, read enough. I had the first book, the one that had basic rules for human characters. Other stuff I mostly got from reading about the other books on the internet or from playing a Mage game with a couple of friends. The Mage game in particular felt weird because I never got a good feel for what I was supposed to play. It wasn't the "anything goes" as it was in Ascension but neither it seemed to have much of a personality either.

Either way, my point was never much about how much the new lore sucked but about them ditching the old lore and the old business model. If you liked the new game, great for you. But what I was really curious about is what factors led to what seems like a concerted change.

"NWOD sucks cause it doesn't have lore about my favorite globe-spanning ninja clan!" The reboot was done because marketing said so: they judged that the game was too intimidating to new players and grognards weren't buying enough to sustain them. So they later brought back the older continuity, to mixed results. I'm not gonna pretend I don't have my own problems with NWOD that made me lose interest years ago, but I didn't like the other continuity's lore and I don't like having that shit forced on me when I don't like it because there's no other options. It's not a real game, it's microfiction written by failed novelists pretending to be a game. A lot of these games are just failed microfiction and I hate it.

Yeah, I've read people complain about this before. As someone who never even bought a "clanbook", or a ready made adventure, it has always been an alien idea to me. Still, I am kinda curious why WoD tried to ditch it at that point. And why it then tried to go back.

"NR (acronym for a French game that you've probably never heard of) sucks because it introduces new character options that were already present in the lore but had no prior support. Fuck you, I think they should be NPC-only and fuck all those who want to play them." They removed those character types in subsequent editions (funded by kickstarter, since they have no money) and the new writing team was very insulting and dismissive about the prior edition, even though it literally did nothing that previous editions didn't already do. I read the books: they just consolidated the prior decade of lore (they couldn't actually fit it all, so omissions are everywhere). The grognards said they didn't like the new edition for being too much like superheroes, when the magic system from prior editions literally let you become the Human Torch and always has. They were being hysterical fuckwits and interpreting the new edition as a personal attack when it clearly wasn't. Maybe the new edition wasn't perfect, but I liked the new options introduced. I read their beloved new grognard edition and it's a fucking disorganized mess by comparison that expects you to already be a grognard who read the 90s books (which aren't sold anymore, so new players are fucked). The controversial edition had the good sense to put important information in the rulebooks rather than scatter it across a dozen supplements. These new supplements even contradict each other because the writers can't make up their damn minds!

Well, I have no idea what you are rambling about, sadly I don't speak French. I will say, however, that it reminds me a bit of the problem with Pendragon, which had an edition that tried to support non-knight characters such as mages. The fifth edition however didn't support such things, and frankly, I can see why clearly. The Pendragon campaign has a very specific format (and the campaign book in the 5th edition is probably one of the best campaign books made, though I do admit I haven't had the opportunity to actually try it out). Trying to make PCs as something other than knights would get in the way of this campaign kind.

It's no wonder ttrpgs are dying when they're only focused on placating grognards with microfiction rather than making playable games and maintaining their community health.

I really think it is pointless to complain about "community". If you like to play games a certain way and there are others like you, get together and form your own community. If not, well, that is a pity. I mean it, I know how annoying it is to like stuff that has no market.

But sure, if publishers want to do something "new and creative", go ahead. But at least give it a different name instead of trying to fool people into sticking with your product.

They did! Lots of times. The grognards took offense to the ceasing of support for the edition they personally liked, or to metaplot changes, or any other changes. There's literally no way to win with these fuckwits because their demands are unreasonable and based in nostalgia rather than logic.

Well, they didn't with D&D (unless you consider dropping the "Advanced" a new name), they didn't with Shadowrun. The didn't with Deadlands, they didn't even with Wod, which still focused on the same kinds of creatures but changed their background. Also, what is the problem of not supporting the edition you don't like? Am I supposed to buy 3e products because I liked 2e? Or even worse, 4e? I am not quite sure what is your beef with "grognards". but every time I've seen companies complaining about them, they were talking about how they didn't need that public that played the game in an old fashioned way that wasn't as accessible to newcomers. Then they realised there weren't enough people to support their new game but neither could get those they complained about to quite get back either. A big example of that was when WotC published D&D 4e and a whole lot of people jumped ship to Pathfinder.

Some teams make stupid decisions and insult their fans, but not every new edition was like that. Sometimes the grognards are just being toxic because of sheer autism rather than any good reason. It's not always the writers huffing their farts and thinking pointless changes are necessary.

Probably. I mean, there are all kinds of games and people out there, it would probably be better to point out specific cases, though.

Opening themselves to new things was what all the "indies" (if you can really distinguish that way) were trying some idea from the forge or other. A lot of what they produced was bad, some was good. The whole thing seems to have died down after people stopped making "powered by apocalypse world" games.

Good luck finding communities for those, or anyone willing to play.

I used to love reading about settings and mini-settings and all the creative stuff that ttrpgs supposedly allowed. Political space opera between warring nations with wildly different shticks, post-apocalyptic wastes full of psychic mutants organized into competing secret societies, space police marshals policing the frontier, biopunks trying to survive on an Earth devoid of an ozone layer, alternate histories where fairy-blooded Victorian detectives investigated crimes committed by Unseelie terrorists, yadda yadda. Boy did I become disillusioned when I learned that these communities are actually just a handful of religions dating to the 80s or so that hate creativity and don't want to play anything but the same games they've been playing since the 80s.

I would describe "conventional" ttrpg gaming as a kind of anti-OSR. It just alienates me. I don't have a strict preference for a single setting, but I really hate it when I'm insulted and demonized for wanting more campaign settings. With D&D there's a bazillion official and unofficial campaign settings. There's a campaign setting out there for almost every flavor of fantasy and you're fully encouraged to invent your own. Even in the OSR this remains the case. Everything else, except GURPS, is basically anti-freedom.

To be quite honest, I've never experienced this. And to make sure you don't take offence, I am not saying you are inventing stuff, I am saying I don't know what kind of systems and settings you are talking about. I get the impression that most settings nowadays are made for a pre-existing system rather than a custom game. A few exceptions that come to mind were that Lord of the Rings game and Warhammer stuff (though I think the 40k RPG has been dead for a while now; they tried a new version, but I think no one liked their ideas).

I believe that ttrpgs are unique in that they are only limited by the imagination of the people writing and running them. That's the only reason I like them at all, even though video games are vastly easier to just get into. So this purity culture is just anathema to me. I hate it. I am completely alienated from ttrpgs and I only linger around out of nostalgia and because I like reading old rpg books to get ideas for original video game or prose projects. Unlike the ttrpg religions that require unreasonable lifetime investment, people read more than one book and play more than one video game in their lives.

Like, seriously, fuck ttrpgs. Fuck the entire hobby. I'm glad it's dying. Hopefully something worthwhile will arise from the ashes, but I don't count on it.

Sorry, but I really have no idea why you are so annoyed at this. If people who like Forgotten Realms (for instance) want to play in FR following a strict canon about what FR is like, it is their choice. There are plenty of games out there with space for a GM to do his own stuff if he wants. Heck, there are many games and books out there that focus on helping the GM build his own stuff. I can sympathise with wanting to change a game, however. I have sometimes thought of changing a few games in ways I think might not be appreciated. For instance, while I rather like Shadowrun, there are various aspects of it that I am not a big fan of, the whole indians taking over half of the USA for instance. Or, for another instance, if I ever play Mage: the Ascension again, I would like to remove its gnostic aspect completely except to leave it as a farce; the whole idea about reality being malleable being ultimately a kind of superstition. I suspect that fans of these games would not like those changes; but then again, if I ever go through with any of these ideas, I would just be candid about what they are. If someone wants to try them out, great, if not, well, that is life.

 

[luj1]

The Internet really broke through circa 2005, right at the turnover point.

 

[Risewild]

One of the possible reasons for the decline was that in the "old" days, these games, rules and systems were made by passionate, creative and resourceful "players", the creators enjoyed their own games.
In the 2000s it all changed and these new systems were directed, guided and even forced to change by "suits" (that usually never played a game in their entire lives) to make as much money as possible.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Alex I’m not gonna do another point-by-point reply because I’m tired and think it’s mostly trivial anyway. I don’t even like dice pool systems.

In general, my beef is that toxic ttrpg fandoms operate on the logic “my way or the high way” and will attack you if you don’t fall in line. I like being able to consult communities for material and players and such. I can’t do that if the hobby is dominated by a handful of de facto monopolies with highly idiosyncratic demands that prevent anything else from finding a niche.

If you don’t like reigning monopolies like CP2020, Shadowrun, or Traveller, just to name a few, then you’re fucked. If you prefer dead IPs like Star Frontiers or Star*Drive or Conspiracy X? Prefer an original IP? You’re fucked. Nobody will want to play and you’ll have to make all the material yourself. You’ll be insulted for not falling in line.

If you haven’t experienced that, then great for you. I’ve experienced this in spades and it’s made me absolutely despise the hobby.

The 2000s weren’t a disaster. It was a swan song from a crunching hobby trying desperately to stay relevant. Grognards are just being autistic about it. I’ve been there, done that. Fuck this hobby.

 

[FritzedProcess]

The main reason for the decline of RPGs in the 2000s IMHO is the widespread adoption of the D&D d20 System, thanks to the OGL. The more I think about it, the more I realize how shitty D&D 3rd was compared to AD&D. All those shit M:TG ideas the WotC team crammed in there. All those settings with decent systems adapted to d20, and as a result, legions of younger players refusing to play anything non-d20.

Nowadays we live in a golden age, despite the tourists attempting to fuck it up. Countless properties have been abandoned by the roadside, but many more have emerged or been revived. It's easier than ever to publish (just don't quit your day job). We have a new Fading Suns edition featuring the original writer, FFS.

 

[Glop_dweller]

Does anyone remember Recon® ? It was an Army/warfare PnP game that used d10, and your PCs were expected to be replaced often by new recruits; they took minutes to roll new characters as needed.

 

[Mangoose]

Hell Interplay got fucked around this time too.

 

[Hag]

So, what I want to ask is, do you know of any other games that either died or changed drastically at around this time? Do you have any idea what prompted all these changes all at the same time? That time in tabletop RPGs was for me perhaps the best one, where we got the best books and systems; so I am really curious about this.

I remember the late 90s and early 00s as a wonderful time for everything RPG/miniatures.
I also remember that many companies went under back then. FASA was one of the fishes big enough to hold against WotC/GW and they ceased business in 2001. TSR was acquired by WotC in '97, itself bought by Hasbro (a public company) in '99.

Heard at the time half of companies went bankrupt within two years of their creation. While it did made for a wealth of choices and ideas at the time, in the end nobody remembers them (try finding info about Ronin:Duels or Void online) and stuck with the big ones. Maybe the arrival of Internet also rang the end of social gatherings at local game stores.

 

[Bruuce]

A mix of the same mindset that gave you dozens of creative but mechanically incompetent and/or unplayable RPGs from the 90's and The Horror that is the d20 system.

Nowadays we live in a golden age, despite the tourists attempting to fuck it up. Countless properties have been abandoned by the roadside, but many more have emerged or been revived. It's easier than ever to publish (just don't quit your day job).

Yeah, you can publish your book on a number of sites, you're just going to have trouble getting minimum wage for the time invested unless you have a ton of connections like BADDARK I mean DOUBLEHELL I mean SHADOWDARK had or are Hero Kids (youtube video shilling)


Another nice thing is that thanks to VTT automation you can play some crunchy systems far faster than if you were keeping track of things yourself, though this also relies on the system getting popular enough to attract code monkeys.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I actually liked d20 Modern. I found the mini-settings in the books and Polyhedron magazine really inspiring and I’m disappointed that WotC killed it in 2008.

Let’s be real about this. D&D has always dominated the hobby and the OGL allowed a ton of games that would otherwise be ignored to get attention by using it. Young gamers didn’t want to play other systems? That’s true for gamers of all ages and all systems. Ttrpgs require a ridiculous amount of investment that basically limits most players to one game for their entire time in the hobby.

I think it’s stupid. I can never find anyone interested in the games I like. There are so many dead games and communities that I’d love to revive. But it’s just impossible. So I’ve abandoned ttrpgs in favor of actual growth sectors like prose fiction and video games. The investment is so small that it’s easy for people to read multiple books or play multiple video games over the course of their lives. Hundreds, even.

Do I miss theater of the mind and big books full of worldbuilding and plot hooks? Yes, and I’m bitter. But I’m not the one who made ttrpgs a fucking chore to get into or made it illegal for fans to preserve books and take up the reigns of dead IPs. Take it up with the copyright office.

 

[Zeriel]

I was never a tabletop player, but I remember well that 'New World of Darkness' bollocks, because I liked the 'Old World of Darkness' lore, and used to read the RPG sourcebooks for WOD and D&D for fun. At that time a lot of entertainment was obsessed with the words "grounded" and "realistic". Something after 9/11 suddenly made everyone in America want to make entertainment dour, which I couldn't understand. 'New World of Darkness' seemed like an attempt toward this supposed "realism". What "realism" meant in fact was "materialism", "nihilism", and "moral relativism" rather than a higher "Platonic realism" that fiction is uniquely capable of portraying - heightened reality.

Everyone's imagination shrunk. Optimistic space opera like Star Trek left television in favour of drama grounded in everyday concerns. Maybe that's not on topic, but I just thought I would say it. Realism does not equate to materialism, as Platonism had famously argued that there migth be a hidden layer to reality beyond the apprent contingent world.

Another way of saying this is that culture has "moods". When everyone has a depressed view of the future, this carries over into artistic output. Another thing you'll note about modern culture (at least before it progressed to the present nihilistic madness) was that it was focused on the past often. When a society finds itself obsessed with the past, it is generally because the present and future are too dismal to contemplate. Easier to seek refuge in the past.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Another way of saying this is that culture has "moods". When everyone has a depressed view of the future, this carries over into artistic output.

I noticed a big tonal change around that time. Even visually, everything became darker.

Star Trek before, vs after:

Stargate before, vs after:

Battlestar before, vs after:

It was also low level in 'conceptual' terms. Not about conflicting visions of empires and rival societies. Now entertainment was about low-intensity conflicts, one-off attacks, etc, rogue extremists. Terrorism and CIA/FBI level obsession crept into everything after 9/11 (as if we wanted to see more of that everywhere). Aliens became more mundane. Humanoid Cylons, Suliban, Xindi, etc, etc, rather than "The Klingon Empire" or "The Cylon Empire". Vampires and monsters had to make way for drama about internet shenanigans and the 'surveillance state'.

America seemed to lose itself very rapidly, in a very self-inflicted way, which was apparently what Bin Laden wanted, as some sort of 'accelerationist'. Rather than double down on it's Christian-origin ideals, and take the hit, it accelerated into moral relativism, as I guess liberal dogmas quietly collapsed and society didn't talk about it's beliefs and the opposing beliefs honestly. At the time I just thought the issue was 'grimdark' or 'militarisation', but I now realise that was just a symptom. Rather the imagination shrank to the low level society started operating at.

 

[anvi]

 

[Falksi]

The more I delve back into that era, the more I'm convinced that the roots of decline started with the release of Chrono Trigger and then Final Fantasy 7. To me these shifted RPGs into the console stream to a degree which dragged both RPGs and games in general down to shitsville over time.

Before those were released gameplay was far more of a core focus in all genres, but those two games pushed presentation so much to the forefront and gameplay so far to the back that it opened up the door for all the normie cunts who pollute the hobby today. And I love console gaming and console RPGs too. But my bag was stuff like Phantasy Star, stuff which clearly took pride in it's PC/Blobber roots. Stuff which still required the player to be more than a moron.

And then in the early 00's, emulation of dross like Chrono Trigger continued to pull all these Emo, future LGBT cuntfaces into the hobby and poison everything along the way.

 

[Hobknobling]