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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 09 2019, @07:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the would-you-play-differently-online? dept.

NY Times:

Wizards of the Coast, the parent company of Dungeons & Dragons, reported that 8.6 million people played the game in 2017, its biggest year of sales in two decades. That mark was eclipsed in 2018, when D&D sales reportedly grew 30 percent. All of those D&D consumers are snapping up the Fifth Edition, a new rule set released in 2014 that emphasizes a flexible approach to combat and decision-making. New players don’t need to learn as many arcane rules to get started, and sales of D&D starter kits skyrocketed.

Adding to the newfound popularity are thousands of D&D games broadcast on YouTube and the live-stream service Twitch. “Critical Role,” a popular livestream and podcast, features actors playing the game.

[...]What makes D & D[sic] different is that we can never forget about the human beings behind the avatars. When a member of my group makes a bad choice, I can’t look into his face and shout insults the way I would if we were playing online. He’s a person, and my friend, even if he also inexplicably decided to open an obviously booby-trapped trunk, get a faceful of poison and use up my last remaining healing spell.

My 50th-level Magic-User Ferrick the Magnificent scoffs at these neophytes...


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  • (Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday April 10 2019, @11:26AM (3 children)

    by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Wednesday April 10 2019, @11:26AM (#827394)

    In addition to Dungeons and Dragons, GURPS, Pathfinder, and Palladium (most famously known for Rifts RPG) there is also FATE (Dresden Files RPG among mothers), Mutants and Masterminds (superheroes), Atomic Highway (post-apocalyptic), Conan by Mophidius, Numenera, The One Ring (a Middle Earth RPG), Deadlands (horror old west), Dungeon World (thematically similar to DnD), Savage Worlds (generic system, simpler than GURPS), Shadowrun (magic + cyberpunk), Iron Kingdoms (thematically similar to DnD), and countless others.

    If anything, I'm annoyed DnD has such a giant hold on the market. I think many of the other games are flat out better in any way except being DnD-like. (And even then, depending upon what you want from DnD then GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Pathfinder, Dungeon World, Iron Kingdoms, and a few others might still scratch your itch better than DnD itself.)

    My own two favorites are relatively obscure games, D6xD6 RPG and Radiance RPG. Your mileage may vary.

    ...and I'm married with four kids, so as long as you don't tell people you meet about the time you had a +3 sword and rolled a 20 while fighting Bugbears, it's still possible to get dates.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 11 2019, @09:29PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 11 2019, @09:29PM (#828286)

    They had other game worlds based on the D6 'Hero' system, but this one by far had the most content and during the late 1980s through the late 1990s when their parent company folded (a shoe company that didn't spin them off independently causing them to collapse during the parent's bankruptcy proceedings, despite being profitable!) leading to D&D3E in Space (Star Wars D20 RPG was D&D classes with Spelljammer tacked on for the space components.)

    WEG's SW RPG had its own downsides, but the basic skill/stat system wasn't one of them. It allowed you to infinitely customize your character, and made it so no character would ever be complete. There was always another quest or storyline you could send characters on that their character lacked skills to dominate, leading them to having to coordinate with another player (maybe even a newbie who had that ONE skill, but was otherwise a naive newcomer) or up against a galaxy spanning criminal organization, the empire, the CSA, BoSS or a jedi/sith. Furthermore it tied together all the extended universe fiction of that era, provided stats for characters, equipment, and vessels, and generally tied everything together. It had some downsides, like the initial modification rules, and the later spaceship equipment stats weren't very well thought out (many ships were unbalanced, and replacing engines or other equipment didn't really take the relative size differences between ships in the same size category into account.) Having said all that, no RPG system since has both tied in so directly to the story world it was representing, nor produced as many diverse and varied races, equipment, or vehicles. D&D has it handily beaten on NPC creatures, but it also relies on the xp from killing creatures to level up, whereas WEG's system was always about inproving skills/stats as a result of experience gained during quests with increases based on finding innovative solutions or usually finding a non-violent path to an otherwise violent confrontation.

    For those curious who aren't respectful of copyrights on abandoned works, there are torrents available of almost all material from the 1980s to the final Far Orbit Project and Adventure Journal #14 before the company shut down.

    • (Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Sunday April 14 2019, @01:10PM

      by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Sunday April 14 2019, @01:10PM (#829353)

      The West End Games D6 system that underpinned their Star Wars game went to a separate gaming company. They lost the rights to use the Star Wars game, but it's not hard to take what they have now and rename a piece of gear to lightsaber and package a set of psionic abilities as "Jedi Powers". https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/20447/D6-Space [drivethrurpg.com] ($3 for the PDF).

      The D6 system, like Fate RPG, Savage Worlds, Deadlands, and many others doesn't really have a Dungeons and Dragons level system. So just as you said, characters could develop in any way. The marksman character can take up music, the musician can take up magic, the magician can take up pickpocketing. It's one of many reasons I like them all better than DnD.

  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 12 2019, @11:46AM

    Yeah, FATE/TDF is a blast. Very light on the mechanics that get in the way of storytelling.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.