Role-playing *is* alive and strong

[JSDiamond]

I'm going to tell you something, on occasion I feel like I'm wasting my time writing and drawing.  A "pearls before swine" epiphany emerges every now and again.  You know why? It's because every once in a while a little voice whispers stuff like, 'people *like* Green Day',  'remember when Shakespere In Love got an Oscar', 'd20 is gonna' take over, man!'  Proving the bell-curve theory, there are also the extremely well crafted products out there, not least of which come from Bioware, Blizzard, Looking Glass and others.  I'm talking about PC role-play games. (collective 'gasp!')  Also popular, also consumed by millions of people.

This fuels the oft-repeated concerns to bring new players into the fold, our industry is a paper tiger that's burning, etc.

This is the root of my occasional awful epiphany about making games.  But lately something of a turnabout has occurred in my view.

I visit game shops.  I like to play AD&D2 on occasion. I play at the local store.  I'm not a 'regular' of any group because I'm too damn busy.  But...

I've noticed something in the last couple of months.  More and more gamers of decidedly non-geekish manner playing regular campaigns etc. at my local shop.  Junior college and university guys who would look more at home on MTV Xtreme Snowboarding or a Mountain Dew commercial are a third of the new faces around the tables.  These guys weren't quiet newbies, fearful of speaking in character either.  They were loud and cracking jokes about 'that little skirmish at Myth Drannor' and so on.  Aside from the fact that they were a decade behind me in age, they sounded exactly like me as a gamer.

And you know what it is?  I figured it out: These gamers have had nothing *but* PC games their entire lives.  Each has (I theorize) discovered that the ultimate game platform and 3d accelerator is their own mind.

So, fear not.

Role-play gaming is alive and going strong.
The next generation is smart.

We're not wasting our time.

And Green Day sucks.

Jeff Diamond

http://www.geocities.com/allianceprime">6-0 Games




















[ This Message was edited by: JSDiamond on 2001-05-14 18:17 ]

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Role-play gaming is alive and going strong.
The next generation is smart.

We're not wasting our time.

And Green Day sucks.

I smell a t-shirt here. :smile:  Nicely said, Jeff.

[GreatWolf]

And you know what it is? I figured it out: These gamers have had nothing *but* PC games their entire lives. Each has (I theorize) discovered that the ultimate game platform and 3d accelerator is their own mind.

Funny you should say that.  For the longest time I wrote (text-based) games for my own Apple II.  (AH, AppleBasic!  Where have you gone?)  But after a while I grew tired of the machine's limitations and my own programming limitations.  From there, I decided to teach people how to play games, instead of teaching a computer.  The rest is history.

It may not be good history, but it's history nonetheless.  :smile:

[Ron Edwards]

Alive and strong, eh? Let's see.

Thursday the 3rd: Orkworld
Saturday the 5th: Hero Wars & Soap
Tuesday the 8th: Unknown Armies
Thursday the 10th: aborted Orkworld; Soap instead
Saturday the 12th: Hero Wars
Thursday the 16 (upcoming): Orkworld
Tuesday the 22nd (upcoming): Talislanta

Sales by Adept Press in the last two weeks:
$140.00 (14 units across both Sorcerer and Elfs)

... damn! You're right.

Best,
Ron

P.S. All the editing was just getting the stupid dates right.

[ This Message was edited by: Ron Edwards on 2001-05-15 11:37 ]

[ This Message was edited by: Ron Edwards on 2001-05-15 11:38 ]

[joshua neff]

geez, how do you DO that? i'm lucky if i can't my group together once a week every week...

[Ron Edwards]

Josh,

I have my "own" group which may be regarded as the Hero Wars fanatics (I take my life in my hands by even mentioning other game systems these days in their presence). This game is their first intro to Glorantha, by the way; they're NOT RuneQuest veterans.

Then there's "our" group with me and Dav and others, which began mainly so I could review Obsidian but became a system-by-system, GM-tradeoff group like my old one used to be. We did a hell of a lot of Sorcerer this year, but right now it's me running Orkworld.

And also, as it turns out, I'm the faculty advisor for the gaming/roleplaying club at my university, which means a one-shot run by someone in the group on alternate Tuesdays, hence my recent fun with Unknown Armies and the upcoming Talislanta session.

It IS pretty nuts, I admit. I used to be the guy who swore never to role-play more than once every two weeks ...

Best,
Ron

[Clay]

Criminey, I'm the guy who's lucky if he -can- role-play once every two weeks.  Once a month is more like lately.

If I games more than once a week, I'm sure I'd find the locks changed somewhere, unless I somehow managed to make money off the deal.

Maybe I can find a way to get the kids in on the deal....

Clay