Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for the 6th of January, and the episode title is “Is it really the end of the TTRPG golden age?”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #225]
[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple]
Bloat Games is in the Spotlight thanks to votes from Geek Native’s fantastic patrons, but they don’t know, as I’ve not yet told them.
Why not? It’s been the distraction of the New Year and the dreaded return to work. Happy New Year.
You might think that in a few days, you will be able to stop saying ‘Happy New Year’ to pretty much everyone you talk to, but the lunar New Year is February 10th.
Which animal is that on the Chinese Horoscope? If you haven’t already predicted this, let me tell you that 2024 is the year of the dragon.
But let’s get back to the dragon in the room in a bit and go through the Publisher Spotlight options for February.
The candidates are:
Voting happens on Patron, and it’s usually pretty tight, so your vote will likely make a difference.
Time also makes a difference. The new year brings a new slew of works that become public domain. You’ll surely have heard about Steamboat Willie now being public, which was the first generation Micky, and how Disney are grumpy about it. That we’ve had horrors based on the mouse straight out of the gate won’t calm things at all and Bronwen was quick to track down trailers for you.
Bronwen also noticed that The Man Who Laughs is also now public domain.
The 1928 silent film by Paul Leni is based on the Victor Hugo novel and, to put it mildly, is clearly the inspiration for The Joker from Batman.
You can watch it on Amazon Prime. I really might!
Ahead of the curve, I think, was the RPG publisher Lightspress. They do lo-fi RPGs and have an incredible output. Both their DoubleZero and Lightspress Classic Systems, two RPG engines, are available as Creative Commons licenses.
Furthermore, there is a bundle deal on the following games from them;
- The Great Gatsby
- The Scarlet Letter
- Great Expectations
- Pride and Prejudice
- Frankenstein
I think an RPG set around Frankenstein could get pretty dark, mind you, so could Pride and Prejudice.
And, if you want, Pride and Prejudice can be the link to the predictions piece written by the D&D and RPG historian Ben Riggs. Ben sets out a compelling argument that The Golden Age of TTRPGs is Dead.
To summarise, 5e had an OGL and a huge community that was nurtured by the likes of MCDM-Matt Coville, Critical Role and Kobold Press.
Now, thanks to the OGL drama, these once supporters have their own games, and the fractured community will buy fewer books as a result, becoming bored of the hobby.
D&D 6, which is what Ben thinks will replace D&D 5e this spring, won’t be as successful and Wizards of the Coast won’t cope well.
Is it he right?
Ben doesn’t define what makes the scene we’ve had for the last few years a golden one, but it seems to be a combination of sales and community.
Fair enough, but I can find you gamers who think the same era is a dark age with a once proud-to-be indie and almost subversive hobby dominated by 5e.
I think Ben is probably right in that there won’t be such a homogeneous community of 5e newbies in 2024 and 2025, but I think that would be the case even if there hadn’t been an OGL drama and a new set of D&D books this year.
However, I think we might find a new age of TTRPGs. I think friends will continue to meet and play. I think charismatic people will still build successful streaming shows.
I hope, I don’t know, but I hope the community can build itself around something other than a system and new people finding the system.
What do you think?
I see two wildcards, by the way, and one is Wizards of the Coast’s marketing. Ben predicts they’ll do badly and I concede the lack of tabletop gaming promotions done for Honour Among Thieves, the D&D movie, was mind boggling, but I’m not so sure.
Hasbro has been recruiting more experienced marketing teams. For example, there’s a D&D LEGO set coming out and it’s rumoured to cost nearly $400.
It just takes one big brand to want to do something with a particular D&D setting, Ravenloft, for example, if we’re returning to dark and brooding cinema and TV, and there’s an interest in a thing.
Just as Critical Role helped make D&D 5e a success, Wizards of the Coast has many irons in the fire of new TV series. It just takes one hit.
The one success to keep tabletop RPGs in fashion might come from Paradox/White Wolf, Free League Publishing, or Marvel, but it might also come from a D&D ally or corporate partner.
The other wildcard is digital. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a hit, but what about the next game? What about the heated battle that are virtual tabletops? We might, I suspect not, but we might see something impressive from Wizards of the Coast this year.
We might see Roll20 do something clever, and they’ve already been nudging into board games. This sector is spikey. Sigil Services, a company that specialises in helping publishers convert their PDFs into VTT content, rebranded as Metamorphic Digital at the end of the year. They’re specialists in the technology, which means that companies like this will allow worldbuilders to build worlds to attract gamers, maybe media companies or streamers, and third parties can make sure the game is accessible on the latest fashionable tech.
Do I think 2024 will be the year we all LARP D&D in the Metaverse? No.
Do I think such a year might happen before I die? Yes.
But, what do I know?
All this reminds me of the Genre Police piece this week, in which Ben has tackled the question Who’s in Charge? and it reminds that while some gamers, like me, might be introverts, we are still social animals. Who’s in Charge is about dealing with two players butting heads over who gets to be the group leader.
That can be awkward.
There should be no awkwardness in the outro. I’ve bundles and freebies to mention.
The first bundle is of Pelgrane’s Dying Earth RPG. That’s not the current Goodman Games DCC version, but the original, and still based on Jack Vance’s classic.
The second, not based on a classic book, but the part of the UK known as the Midlands, is the setting – and look, Ben, no system attached – dark fantasy of The Midderlands from MonkeyBlood Games.
There are two freebies as well. The first is from a company called Murkdice and comes in advance of a ZineQuest Kickstarter. It’s a free quickstart for Void Above. That’s a hard sci-fi where characters have tough problems to solve in a future without faster-than-light travel, with limited resources, and all sorts of problems.
Let’s finish up with the end of the world. The newly minted British publisher Typhon Games has a free alpha test play kit for When We Die.
That’s a zombie game and an ecological game in one. You must try to keep the food chain alive while dealing with zombies. Sounds easy, right?
No, it sounds like doom.
On that note, let’s find out whether 2024 is the year of the dragon in due course, and I’ll see you next week.
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