Back to table-top roleplaying games after a quarter century: four things that are different

This blog is about table-top role-playing games today from the perspective of someone who played (mostly GMed) constantly for about fifteen youthful years, then stopped playing for almost twenty-five years, and recently returned well into middle age. Now, with my kids’ fresh interest in role-playing games, I’m looking around and finding that the role-playing game industry and the gamer community are quite different. It’s been nearly a quarter century! As I have nobody to talk with about the strange, jarring, and exciting experience of returning after many years to a hobby that had once absorbed me completely, but that is now changed, I am going to use this blog to put my thoughts together.

From my perspective, four changes in the role-playing game hobby stand out among all the rest. I will be writing about these in later entries.

First, I see what I expected: there are new game systems that continue the evolution of role-playing game mechanics in the direction they had been moving when I left off. The development of rule systems designed for very specific genres and even scenarios, on the one hand, does not surprise me, because that’s what my friends and I were already experimenting with and there were already games like that, with rules custom designed for highly specialized settings. Today’s “indie games” are a natural development of that trend. On the other hand, also as expected, there are some pretty good new universal (non-genre-specific) systems. Out of all of them, two newer game systems seem to have attracted a lot of attention. One is the Fate Core and the other is Powered by the Apocalypse. The Fate Core rules look familiar to me because they are based on FUDGE, a system I remember and had admired but never used, because my group was invested in other systems. It has obvious roots in earlier games to those who know and remember them. The PbtA system is also a blend of things that were there before, but with a structure aimed at teaching and even guaranteeing a certain kind of play. I may have things to say related to these rule systems in later entries.

Second, despite the evolution in those directions, it seems that most players are now playing D&D. This is not at all a development that I would have expected in the mid-‘90s, when I moved away from gaming. The D&D game system then seemed hopelessly retrograde despite its early status and the charm of its early amateur flavor. The resurgence of D&D is clearly due to many factors, but ultimately it represents the power of a large corporation with sound financial management to develop high-quality physical products that appeal to a mass audience with a major brand name to reach newcomers (like my son). Also, D&D’s mechanics have changed by its fifth edition to include elements derived from its competitors in the evolving hobby, and this has cast the net of appeal wider within the community of veteran gamers. I may be writing about this, too.

The third big change seems to be one of several conditions for the resurgence of D&D: the appearance and recent fracturing over the last decade and a half of the new school of gaming that calls itself “Old School,” as in “Old School Revival” or “Renaissance.” The vision of gaming expressed by OSR proponents represents, to me, an exciting and distinct style of play. I’m using it with my kids—with some major qualifications, to be discussed another time—and they love it. But what OSR proponents claim as “original,” pure and authentic, is often different from what I remember from my experience of the glory days of the early ‘80s, when I was saving up allowance to buy new modules from TSR and issues of Dragon Magazine, now “classics.” From my perspective, there is a substantial degree of myth-making behind OSR. As someone who went away from the hobby after deep involvement when role-playing games were in their first big bloom, and who participated fully in playing new role-playing games well into the ‘90s, I find that my memories do not match what some OSR proponents claim about the history of gaming and “what it was like back then.” There are several things I will say, as a returning old-timer, about the OSR, but they are for other occasions.

The last big change is the role of the internet in role-playing games and the culture it has fostered. Here I reveal what a Van Winkle old-timer I am. Message boards and lists and social media are not just a part of gaming, of course, but they have clearly become central to role-playing games in ways I did not expect. Partly that is because I avoid internet entanglements almost entirely in my life generally (my wife laughed incredulously when I mentioned I was making this blog), and partly because I haven't thought much about the role-playing game hobby for a long time. It is nice to be able to learn all about games new and old through the internet now. At the same time, I am dismayed by the number of gaming bloggers and message board contributors who use bullying and vicious language to shame each other in a pathetic effort to claim in-hobby superiority. When gaming was only ever face-to-face, nobody would dare use the kinds of words that role-players use toward each other now on the internet. It’s as if some gamers have jumped into the shoes of the old-school jock bullies back in the day who stigmatized and mistreated gamers for their hobby.

In this blog, I intend to give my perspective on these and other subjects pertaining to role-playing games. I’m not here to tell anybody how to play, though I will share and discuss my preferences, and I will have remarks on those today who are telling people how to play. When I run out of things to say, I’m going to stop. If you don’t like what I have to say, please just don’t read it!

Happy day!