I don't have a complete view of like, The History of Tabletop, but it feels like the last three years or so feels like a synthesis of the last 20. For the longest time, tactical, grid based, crunchy games were the dominating force, and then around... 2010? 2012? more narrative-first games, less concerned with tactics, started making major inroads (yes, I know the market is still dominated by the big companies), and now we're starting to see a merging of the two more completely/holistically.
- He/Him + They/Them
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in reply to @Jama's post:
I don't have anything to point to, but if I was to hazard a guess, a few things happened:
- Social media facilitated connections among people, allowing non-Traditional gamers to start talking a lot more readily. Thinking stuff like Google+, Discord, Twitter, etc.
- Itch.io and Drive Thru RPG lowered the barrier of entry for publishing content.
- Itch.io bundles made it easier to share games that would otherwise be missed, too.
- Overseas Printing made it much easier to afford limited print-runs for games.
- Crowdfunding on Kickstarter took-off and saw a boom period for tabletop games, to the point it got institutional support from KS with stuff like Zine Quest.
That kind of created a storm of conditions that led folks to experiment and publish. And that helped facilitate the synthesis you describe.
Also:
- A LOT of people were stuck inside in 2020 for a very long time and a lot came out of that.
What games do you feel represent this holistic merging? Not saying you're wrong or anything, more want to sit back and think of all the Lancers of the world pondering how much of a trend they are.
Personally I feel the indie are still mostly stuck in the 'shit out endless hacks of the flavor-of-the-year tentpole' stage, with perhaps one notable development being Mothership and Mork Borg presenting themselves as cool enough to spill out of the OSR ghetto to that crowd.
Ones I've glanced at recently, so it could just be a selection bias.
- Blades of Ether
- LANCER/ICON
- APOCALYPSE FRAME/Valiant Horizons
- MCDM's upcoming game sounds like it's aiming for that spot
- Planet FIST
- Eros System (Just going off synopsis, I haven't given this a real read yet).
It's not like, The TOTAL shift in things, I'm just interested in seeing how there's been a step back from the straight PBTA/Forged in the Dark/GMless/Diceless things there were super popular around like, 2017-2020. It's not a total shift, but more of a diversifying.
I think of Lancer/Icon as kinda the opposite from a wholistic synthesis; they have two mostly non-intersecting rule sets each (fighting, everything else)
Though, my entire thesis could be wrong, because like... it's all vibes based. Shadowrun uses the same rules for out of combat stuff as in combat, but it feels like a mess, but can I really say that they're not in sync? The biggest offender of my post is D&D, but I don't have as many issues with it's social rules as other people do.
And I'm probably giving too much like, grace to games that don't use that D20 system for their non-combat stuff and giving them way more benefit of the doubt.