PDA

View Full Version : What reasons exist for the proliferation of tabletop RPG systems?



Endarire
2014-10-07, 12:12 PM
Greetings, all!

I've seen many, many tabletop RPG systems that generally try to convey the same broad topics: Swashbuckling or fantasy dungeon crawling or sci-fi with mecha or sci-fi with spaceships or sci-fi with diplomacy. Each subgenre (sci-fi with spaceships versus sci-fi with giant mecha) has its own emphasis or emphases. Even within the same emphasis, since tabletop games are abstractions, different authors model things differently. Level of detail in the rules and speed of play are two major factors often at odds with one another.

In addition, I understand the notion of branding. No one does D&D like D&D, even if people (including D&D's designers) disagree on what D&D (in whole, in part, or/and in edition) is meant to be.

Third, tabletop RPGs are one of the easiest types of games to tweak. Unlike a computer game which may require extensive programming knowledge to create an editor for or to even use said editor, if you can imagine a rule being different and declare it different, it is different: No programming required. Even Monopoly had house rules.

Fourth, selling game products is a business. Money and the prospect of money attracts certain people.

What other reasons exist for the proliferation of tabletop RPG systems?

Knaight
2014-10-07, 02:49 PM
Publishing them, particularly online is stupidly easy. Just about everyone has the writing skills required to make an RPG (though doing it well is another story), so that's a low barrier to entry. Putting one up online takes fairly minimal effort as well, as actual publishers can be completely bypassed.

Jay R
2014-10-09, 10:16 PM
Fourth, selling game products is a business. Money and the prospect of money attracts certain people.

This is the only reason. Nobody pays the money for a first print run unless they expect to make it back in sales.

Dire Moose
2014-10-09, 10:38 PM
I've generally held that there is one major reason why tabletop games are still around when more advanced technology is available.

Simply put, a computer cannot improvise, which means anything you do in a video game is inherently limited by what the computer is programmed to do. On the other hand, a tabletop game is controlled by a human GM, who can react to you doing something completely unexpected, even allowing it to work and change the entire plot. In fact, we tend to complain quite a bit whenever a GM acts too much like the computer in a video game; we refer to this as "railroading."

It's this ability to take things in nearly any possible direction that has kept tabletop gaming alive in my opinion.

veti
2014-10-09, 10:51 PM
Everyone thinks they can do it better.

At a very, very low level, that's true. Show me a game system, and I guarantee I'll be able to improve on it, even if it's just correcting a few typos or changing the font size. But it's a surprisingly slippery slope from there to "spinning off a whole new system". You redefine a skill here, add a class there, then next thing you know you're thinking "actually, this would all work so much better if I divided DEX into three different attributes", and you're away.

Of course, the new system you come up with will probably have (at least) as many weaknesses as what you started with. But for the specific use-case you had in mind when you did it, it might - just might - work better.

Scots Dragon
2014-10-10, 02:39 AM
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png

Cazero
2014-10-10, 03:56 AM
So true, as always with XKCD.

Vitruviansquid
2014-10-10, 04:35 AM
See, RPG's...

RPG's are like sexual fetishes.

All sorts of people want all sorts of different kinds, and some people can only enjoy an RPG with very very very specific criteria.

Segev
2014-10-10, 08:59 AM
So true, as always with XKCD.

Not always. XKCD is very much an author tract. While in areas of his expertise and in certain areas of his interest, he's often very right, there are others where he doesn't know what he's talking about but has very firm beliefs and turns his rapier wit towards illustrating them as if they were hard fact.

He is generally very witty, though, which at least keeps it entertaining.

and this is a case where he's both pithy (which translates here to witty, as well) and correct.

Knaight
2014-10-10, 10:14 AM
This is the only reason. Nobody pays the money for a first print run unless they expect to make it back in sales.

A huge amount of the proliferation is in free .pdf files. Clearly money isn't the only reason. Then there's vanity press items where people don't expect to make it back in sales.

Jay R
2014-10-10, 10:22 AM
A huge amount of the proliferation is in free .pdf files. Clearly money isn't the only reason. Then there's vanity press items where people don't expect to make it back in sales.

True. I stand corrected. I didn't think of that as the proliferation; I was thinking of the ever-growing section in game stores.

So why do people write them? I suspect for the same reason we write house rules - simply because we aren't clones. We each have some idea slightly different from the published ones we've read.

Knaight
2014-10-10, 10:35 AM
So why do people write them? I suspect for the same reason we write house rules - simply because we aren't clones. We each have some idea slightly different from the published ones we've read.
There's also the whole "fulfillment of creative urges" angle, but it's probably best not to get too deep into that one unless we want to derail the discussion to psychology.

Storm_Of_Snow
2014-10-10, 10:47 AM
Everyone thinks they can do it better.

At a very, very low level, that's true. Show me a game system, and I guarantee I'll be able to improve on it, even if it's just correcting a few typos or changing the font size.
You say improve, others will almost certainly disagree. :smallwink:

And that's not intended as a slight against you - I could change an existing system, or come up with my own, and a lot of people would hate it. Hopefully some would love it. :smallamused:

Anyway, in some cases, people want to play in a specific fictional universe, and none of the existing systems allow them to play in the exact way they want to, or feel represent that exact universe (I can think of past and present systems for Star Wars, Star Trek, Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos, Moorcock's Melenibonians, Middle Earth, Warhammer and 40k, Farscape, Conan, Indiana Jones, Buck Rodgers in the 25th century (and the death of TSR), Judge Dredd, Buffy, Serenity, DC and Marvel, Dr Who, TMNT, Ghostbusters and James Bond - and if there's not others out there that I've missed, I'll be amazed).

Then you get different generic universes - standard pseudo-medieval fantasy (D&D and it's branches, Chivalry and Sorcery, Runequest, T&T), near-history/modern day/near-future (Boot Hill, Gumshoe, Merc 2000, Cyberpunk), alternate/modified universe (Vampire, Space:1889, Golden Heroes, Gamma World, Twilight 2000, Price of Freedom), sci-fi (Rifts, Traveller 2300, Traveller), multi-genre ones like GURPS and Fate, and the beer-and-pretzels systems that aren't really designed to be taken that seriously - Toon and Paranoia are probably the gold standards, but there's also things like Tales from the Floating Vagabond.

And finally, the way the system itself plays - some prefer stat heavy and tightly controlled, others want loose, make it up as you go type games.

Endarire
2014-10-13, 01:20 PM
Thanks, everyone!

I was thinking of that XKCD comic around the time I made this post.

veti: You explained things quite well.

Dire Moose: The video RPG feel is one of my biggest gripes with D&D 5e - it feels like a tabletop version of World of Xeen (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZBORylr4exTi_x_xLSRVF-NxdssI9jy5).

Storm_of_Snow: That's a lot of systems. And, yes, I've encountered the situation of "I want to play in a fantasy world, but..." and I don't know of any system that accounts for the lore and the mechanics I'm lookin' for, which is why in part I made The Metaphysical Revolution (http://campbellgrege.com/work-listing/the-metaphysical-revolution-dd-3-5-module/).

Milodiah
2014-10-13, 05:11 PM
Every little thing changes the way a game handles.

In D&D, being shot in the neck with a longbow is just a momentary inconvenience for anyone who isn't level 2. In Call of Cthulhu, an arrow through the neck will probably mortally wound any human character. D20 and White Wolf skills focus on modifiers and movable goalposts, while, again, Call of Cthulhu is more or less always roll under your skill percentage with less emphasis on modifiers. D&D is literally designed around level advancement, whereas CoC you're who you are, and White Wolf is somewhere in the middle depending on the particular game. Even the numbers involved in dice rolls matter; In White Wolf and Traveler, a single skill point is a valuable investment that will pretty much always increase your ability by at least 20%, whereas in Call of Cthulhu one point is literally just one more percentage point of success probability among the ~300 you started out with.

Invader
2014-10-13, 07:18 PM
Everyone thinks they can do it better.

At a very, very low level, that's true. Show me a game system, and I guarantee I'll be able to improve on it, even if it's just correcting a few typos or changing the font size. But it's a surprisingly slippery slope from there to "spinning off a whole new system". You redefine a skill here, add a class there, then next thing you know you're thinking "actually, this would all work so much better if I divided DEX into three different attributes", and you're away.

Of course, the new system you come up with will probably have (at least) as many weaknesses as what you started with. But for the specific use-case you had in mind when you did it, it might - just might - work better.

I would argue that making minor fixes or improvements isn't really doing it better :smallamused:

JustPlayItLoud
2014-10-13, 08:52 PM
In addition to all the reasons mentioned, some people might write a system to codify existing house rules and rule variations. Many games aren't ground up builds, but based on some another rule set. For example: I'm writing an Asian fantasy setting to run games in with my local gaming group. I like the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, but it's pretty firmly married to the setting and some of the group don't want to learn a whole new game. So I decided to go with 3.5. I don't like the high powered rocket tag feel of 3.5 at higher levels for this game, so I'm running it as E6. For that I've written all new classes intended for balanced gameplay at those levels. Then I decided I didn't like the skill system from 3.5. I don't much like the Pathfinder one either. So I decided to incorporate the Star Wars Saga Edition skill system, and then I rewrote the skill list and redid skills to fit the world better. I've incorporated bits and pieces of other 3.5 subsystems into entirely different contexts than before.

Really all I'm doing is a bit of 3.5 homebrew, some house rules, and borrowing some things from other d20 systems. But once all at is accounted for in one place, I'll pretty much have enough to write an entire book worth of material.

Jay R
2014-10-14, 09:40 AM
Look at the number of car makes and models. Then look at the number of restaurants. How many different movies are being made? Card games? Board games? Computer games?

Why in the world wouldn't there be a proliferation of tabletop RPG systems?

Grinner
2014-10-14, 08:34 PM
I asked a similar question a while ago, and one respondent (Terrablivion, I think) observed that while the technology for pen and paper games has existed as long as literacy itself, only in relatively recent years has a significant portion of humanity enjoyed increased literacy and leisure time.

While that response is largely tangential to your question specifically, I think when combined with the development of the Internet and a number of answers provided by others it sufficiently explains this phenomenon.