Mastodawn

@renegaderich Honestly, the game that taught me this was Rifts of all things.

A party could easily be made up of a semi-suicidal steroid user that can bench press cars, some dude who found a suit of power armor that can level cities, a literal actual dragon, and...some homeless dude.

RenegadeRich Oct 27

@blackcoat that’s cool! I’ve not come across it before - yet another one for my list of games to try one day!

@renegaderich Oh, it's TERRIBLE, I cannot in good conscience recommend it except as a historical artifact to study.

That being said, nearly all games can teach you something, even if just by being a horrible warning.

@renegaderich the biggest problem (IMO, and aside from Siembieda being...Siembieda) is that it was a game system made in the late 80s and then never once actually updated, but just added on to and kluged to tell wildly different genres from literal actual Robotech to super hero games to horror (lemme tell you, the boogyman is a lot less scary when you have a 90mm recoiless rifle)

This culminated in Rifts, a multiversal post apocolyptic earth that just jammed everything together.

@renegaderich and unlike other systems from the era, it never got a comprehensive second edition that would allow for mistakes to be fixed, or old ideas to be considered in the light of new ones and dealt with in a comprehensive fashion

@renegaderich @blackcoat You've never heard of Rifts? How can you… how is that…

Oh… oh ye gods, both old and new… I'm so fucking old…

@cocaine_owlbear @renegaderich One of the things that's interesting to me is that with the way that (very specifically) D&D is reaching it's modern audience, and how those folks are approaching the ttrpg hobby how much of it's history is just ignored because it's not relevant to them.

RenegadeRich Oct 27

@blackcoat @cocaine_owlbear I got into TTRPGs in around 2018. Initially DnD, but quickly found other systems.

Your point makes me realise that the other games I discovered at that time (and the games I'm discovering now) are the new hotnesses of the time, and I'm not exploring deeper into the history of the hobby.

I've since picked up red box DnD, but wouldn't know where to begin with older indie games.

This fact in itself could be an interesting topic for a video. Thanks!

@renegaderich @cocaine_owlbear I can recommend https://www.designers-and-dragons.com/books/ as at least a primer of what existed and who wrote it

The Books – Designers & Dragons

https://systemmasterypodcast.com/

@renegaderich @blackcoat I mean you've gotta keep in mind that in a very real sense, *all* #TTRPGs before #3eDnD (and even 3e to a certain extent) are effectively "indie games" and we understand the concept today.

#TSR was the biggest fish in the pond, but it was still a very small press. So games like Top Secret, Star Frontiers, and Amazing Engine are all effectively indie games.

#WorldOfDarkness? Indie. #GURPS? Indie. #Warhammer? Indie.

Almost all of those things that we look at as being huge monoliths today started out very very small.

It almost doesn't matter how deep you dig, you're gonna find more weirdness. Rifts was spawned from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and other Strangeness, the official licensed game for the Turtles brand at the time! There's a for-real Rocky and Bullwinkle TTRPG.

If you really want to see the expansive weirdness of the early days of the hobby, check out the #SystemMastery podcast:

System Mastery

Jef and Jon review roleplaying games, Star Wars novels and anything else that crosses their paths.

System Mastery

@cocaine_owlbear @renegaderich yeah, the corporatizing of the games space in the early 21st century, with Hasbro/WotC buying TSR, Topps/WizKids buying FASA and Paradox buying White Wolf really changed the landscape of how the games were distributed and marketed.
Opening mainstream distribution channels were, I think, a net positive for the hobby. You can buy D&D at target now!

@cocaine_owlbear @renegaderich this happening at the same time as the internet exploding and allowing for small groups of like minded folks to much more easily find each other and communicate lead to efforts like The Forge, allowing for an explosion of new indie games, and with a much better defined differentiator for what their "indiness" provided.

@blackcoat @renegaderich the only thing I have to add is that WotC bought TSR (1995) before WotC was bought by Hasbro 1999).

D&D 3e wasn't out yet, but was well underway when Hasbo stepped in. The late 90s are kinda foggy for me, but I think it was announced before Hasbro started acquisition.

Anyway, WotC had a lot of freedom early on. 3 and 3.5 are basically all them. Hasbro wanted to sell more minis, which may have influenced some of the decisions in 3 and 4, but WotC still has some independence, despite Hasbro owning the company.

5e less so, and things have steadily gone downhill as D&D has become a larger and larger share of Hasbro profits. The bigger it gets, the greedier the corpos get, because they can't create anything themselves, just exploit.

But that may be verging on projection of my personal politics.

@cocaine_owlbear @renegaderich I feel like D&D has a cultural weight all out of proportion to it's revenues. You're right that WotC produces a lot of Hasbro's income, and while they don't publically split out between D&D and MTG, they pretty consistently hype how well magic is doing each quarter, and never how well D&D is doing. (Note: This does not in any way counter your argument that big corps can't create anything. Just look at how great the magic product is these days)

@blackcoat @renegaderich oh agreed. Hasbro os basically just Wizards of the Cost without a soul now.