"Do we need professionally made war games and rpgs anymore?" Topic

I don't think we do, however, I will reserve my reasoning until later (I'm late to a meeting). For now, I'd like to read others ideas. Then, when I'm done working, I'll chime in.

I guess my first question to start the discussion is what do you consider professionally made?

-Will

Yes, of course we do. I don't have the time to go through and come up with a system that reasonably reflects combat for a given period in it's many facets all by myself. I'll take something nice that other people have done and mod it a little bit, sure, but if there is a product out there that works well that saves me a lot of time, time better spent either gaming or painting figures for gaming.

With rpgs the situation is arguably worse. Although I've never been one to buy modules to play, I have no interest in coming up with a gaming system that deals with all of the aspects of life, combat and so on that goes into an rpg.

As the two most successful gaming companies produce figure in packaging that are designed for the games they have designed, and it is almost redundant to say that those games are vastly more popular than anything else out there, it seems that the industry itself would find professionally made wargames a significant boost to it's sales.

Huh? Why WOULDN'T we "need" them?

We never did. Just read Donald Featherstone's article in the special "No Charge" issue of "Battlegames" to appreciate why:

battlegames.co.uk

Allen

[We never did.]

Of course that's the answer – writ large – to any question about whether we "need" anything hobby related.

Back in my day, our D&D GMs took the white booklets and constructed their own universes, which they tied together.
We had a lot of fun playing, and isn't that what it was all about?

IMNSHO, the professionally designed and printed games and scenario books ruined RPGs.

With the advent of the internet, there are enough qualified people developing and posting superior amateur efforts to make professionally-published games unnecessary for homeplay. But there are huge amounts of people who want that tournament-style approved play at conventions, so there will always be a place for GW, Battlefront, WRG, etc.

I think what Inquisitor Thaken is getting at is : Do we need the BIG companies (GW, White Wolf, WotC, Perry's, etc…) for rules and minis, or just stick to the littler companies (Black Scorpion, Flagship Games, Paradigm Press, Two Fat Lardies, THW, etc…) for all of our gaming needs?

I say yes. We do need both the Goliaths and the Davids.
The Goliaths get the general audiences into gaming (its where I got my start! -- Thanks to Space Hulk).
The Davids show that there is a bigger world of other gaming out there that you can expand into… Both Historical and everything else…

I mean that most gamers start out with either D&D or some sort of GW product. Then they start seeing what else is out there, and then expand their game repertoire. Most players even stop playing what originally got them into gaming…

That's a great article Allen. Thanks for the link.

I'm another "we never did" person.

When I was kid we carved our own minis out of sticks and worte numbers on rocks…

Some people will need them, some will not. Some will want to have/buy them, some will not. Some will think they're a great idea, some won't. And some will continue to make/produce them professionally and do a good job, and some won't.

We "need" next to nothing in this hobby, but we want many things.

Considering some of the impressive work offered for free on the internet, versus some of the poorly conceived and executed crap published recently, I'm not sure that "professional" and "amateur" are a very useful distinction any longer.

Regards,

Jeff

Another vote for Allen's point, although I enjoy reading other peoples rules for inspiration.

Professional companies pave the way; amateur efforts are somewhat symbiotic to the bigger companies. Or were all of us amateurs planning on sculpting and casting our own figures?

Both are necessary to the hobby. In the bigger picture of things, as a hobby, none of this is necessary :)

Believe me,I want well made figures,because my own,well… lets just say I'd go back to board gaming first.

You had the luxury of dirt?

And our dice were carved from the bones of the wooly mammoth…

All we had to play with was primordial ooze. Oh, the hours we'd while away carefully marshaling our ooze for one last assault on a patch of slightly greener ooze – then someone just HAD to introduce rules for coelentrates. It's been nothing but power gaming and slick production since!

Don't even get me started on the mesozoa crowd! Those guys are lower than worms, really just parasites compared to True Old School Gamers!!

I don't think the OP meant for miniatures and dice to be under consideration.

Having all the 'professional' stuff available is nice but it's kinda led to a lot of homogenization…
most of the RPGs groups I know of are running some sort of 'official' setting… umbilicaled to an 'official' line of full-color glossy hardback supplements. I don't know many folks running homebrewed settings anymore.
Most of the 'big name' fantasy/sci-fi wargames lack rules for designing your own units and push 'official' paint schemes.
It mostly seems like commercial concerns to keep people focused on a single product line but has a side-effect of draining a lot of the 'hobby' elements out of gaming.

We never did.

Nobody needs anything. Then again, a re-edition of Stargrunt II, edited for clarity, set in legible font and with full color illustrations, complete with prepainted 28mm line and preassembled vehicles, would probably enable me to play it more often than I do now…

For a related argument on RPGs, google "D&D network externalities"

I see the "big" names doing two things: getting people into the hobby and opportunity to play outside of your normal group.

This first is self explanatory. To address the second, if you go to a con are you more likely to find somebody who wants to play a pick up game of your latest home-brew rules or a game of 40k, Warmachine, or DBx.

As far as RPGs, me, I never had the inclination to design my own setting when I used to play them. I always figured why re-invent the wheel when there are several others already created that are better than what I would come up with.

I don't want to rant, but…

Here we are in a Golden Age, and we've probably been saying that every year for the past twenty or more.

But do we appreciate GW and its core systems? Hell no: we bitch about how much it costs, or how it churns rule editions and supplements, or how it instills a certain mindset. Never mind that everything you want to play the damn games--including glue and sand!--are at a one-stop shop.

Same with Flames of War: does Battlefront get credit for making WWII accessible? No! We bitch at them for their rules, and their tournaments, and not being restrictive enough in their lists.

You want 28mm elves? You can get them from a multitude of sources--and only one being GW. You want 15mm Shermans? Same, and only one is Battlefront.

We are well and truly spoiled, and we're still Not Happy. I think we simply have Too Many Toys. I have great regard for those who have gone back to their roots to play "Charge" or "The War Game" or something similar with basic "toy soldiers" (or very well painted, lovely models, if that's their choice). Many of us started there, andthere's still a great deal of attraction from a simple rule book and simple toys.

With the thousands of choices we have for historical, fantasy, SF rules and figures, we're not content. What is wrong with us? What perfect game, what perfect toys, are we looking for? Couldn't we be happy with a set of home-brew, "back of a postcard" rules and a couple of bags of "army men"?

Regarding RPGs, I gav up on them almost thirty years ago. My ideal was to use one's imagination, stay away from published materials, and have a game in which the interaction of characters was paramount. A GM would be trusted to let everything spring from his fertile mind. That wasn't the way *that* hobby went…

The best games I've ever experienced were the equivalent of what Wargames Developments defines as "muggergames", or variations on Chris Engle's matrix game arument system applied to miniatures. These are games that rely on players to use their minds and help "tell the story"; rules are minimalist if they exist at all.

We don't need no stinking rules!!!

Allen

I-T have you not asked this question before? It seems that I remember a similar post months if not a year or so ago.

Allen,

I'm happy! Now that the Perry's have released their BAL lancers there is nothing left in the world for me to want.

Except those WoR figs, that is.

I think we simply have Too Many Toys.

Indeed- the only thing I'm unhappy about is that there is more cool stuff then I have money to spend!

-Will

You can't separate rules, RPGs and miniatures. Each one drives the other these days.

Sure we do. If I'd never played D&D I wouldn't be posting this right now. I'd have never picked up a mini. You need widely popular, accessible games to help people find the little stuff.

Disclaimer: I love D&D, all editions, including 4th, love pretty glossy rules supplements and published adventures and campaigns. I've got no time to come up with all that when someone smarter and a better writer than me has done the work already. The goal is to have fun with our friends, it doesn't matter if we get there with homebrew or mass produced rules.

I also write my own rules for games I can't find. I can't find minis rules I can play with a six year old without telling her what to do all the time, so I'm writing easy rules that don't require reading for her to understand.

I am perfectly happy to pay good money for the works of respected game designers who's work I trust -- people like Frank Chadwick or Pete Jones to name the authors of my last two purchases.

I also play home-brew.

And I don't need any of it. But I like it.

My friends who make beer assure me that we do not need the big breweries either. And their beer is pretty good. But sometime I just want a cold one.

And Allen is right. Sadly, it is also the golden age of wining about all the choices that are out there.

Arguably, we need *more* professional designers, who have the time to perfect the skill in design, and do the research to break new ground, and to balance the demands of the marketplace.

If you are going to buy your groceries from game design, you have to be good at it. No field can do without people who are good at whatever its foundation is.

I totlaly regard the RPG players as a different sub-group and many do not even use miniatures at all.

Those who talk about complexity in miniature rules may not have tried to read the original Traveler RPG system. Complexity may not even be the right word when talking about that detail. i am sure that there are other RPGs which get just as detailed in their world creating.

John the OFM

IMNSHO, the professionally designed and printed games and scenario books ruined RPGs

he speaks very wisely on this matter. We had great times in the home developed universes and (city state of the invicible overlord aside) just about every bought add-on adventure was, on reflection, a crock.

I'm also slightly of the opinion that older basic miniatures were more fun for wargaming, and when everything started to slide towards "moving dioramas" and ultra detailed modelling standard miniatures something big was lost. Mostly, I admit, for us can't paint/won't paint gamers.

This discussion seems to skirt the issue of those of us in the middle ground between amateur and professional: The small game publisher. We do not make our livings off of Gutshot, but it does make money.

Are Murphy and I "professional game designers" because we make money doing this, even if it's not our only source of income? And when you consider the quality of our work, you've got to consider the fact that I have written and designed professionally (meaning that I've made 100% of my income doing those, and now I even teach those skills in college). So where does that leave us, or others like us?

To answer the question directly, though: Yes, we still "need" the big guys. They generate the product that keeps most of the brick & mortar stores alive. Without the big guys, there would be no stores around on which to put our small-guy products.

Dang@!

This is like saying we don't need name brand food products.

Based on the above, seems some are always going to buy the name brand in preference to brand X no matter what the price differential or quality.

Looks like we need these -- for many reasons.

mjc

IMNSHO, the professionally designed and printed games and scenario books ruined RPGs.

As someone who played D&D (not "A" D&D, or version x.x, but just plain D&D) in the 70s, I could not agree more.

There was a lot of effort involved, though, with making one's own universes – I did mine "on the go" as my friends' PCs grew in levels and riches.

What about the effect of professionally designed and printed games and scenario books on wargaming?

Perhaps the point nazism I hear so much about here (we never play with points, unless some of my WH friends put togther something adn then I have no idea, myself, how many points of this and that I have) may have come with this? Not so much did professionally designed and printed games and scenario books "ruin" wargaming as it has RPGs perhaps, but maybe has introduced an unpleasant side effect?
--
Tim

"Those who talk about complexity in miniature rules may not have tried to read the original Traveler RPG system. Complexity may not even be the right word when talking about that detail."

And then came the "Striker" miniatures rules for "Traveller", and my brain simply refused to try to follow it! (That was 1981, and "Empire" looked like a doddle by comparison…)

Allen

Guys, original Traveller, as in the three LBBs, was simplicity itself. At least in actual play. One simply ignored that formula for planet travel times. Like AD&D, where no one used weapon speed.

Striker OTOH is what prevented me from getting into miniature gaming for years. I was an RPGer before I became a wargamer, and I thought all minis games were like Striker. I tried reading it again last year. Still couldn't make sense of it.

Pierce Inverarity – I had a similar experience with the first edition of HORDES OF THE THINGS. Never was able to translate it into English.

Yes, they do have a place, even if it's only to inspire other folks to do it differently.

Yes of course we do for the reasons mentioned above by Sergeant Crunch and RicharDMB.

What strikes me is how poor the modern companies are run large or small. Most companies make GM only books and not books for players except WOTC's D&D line. You have only one GM per game but several to many players.

Players are where the sales are…

Pictors Studio "Yes, of course we do. I don't have the time to go through and come up with a system that reasonably reflects combat for a given period in it's many facets all by myself."

You may not, but somebody else probably has.

These days, six of the seven games I play on a regular basis are all available for free on the web, and I have written several sets of rules myself.

Is there any need for anything else? I realize that this topic is a feather ruffler, but we live in an age in which, quite frankly, you can do all your research on the web, pull free clip art off the web, create pdf documents, and put them up on free web sites and yahoo groups, and then advertise the results on TMP, Frothers, and similar sites.

Given all of that, it is pretty hard for me to justify an outlay of thirty to fifty bucks, and that without supplements, when, with a little searching, I can probably find something that was done as a labor of love, and is just as good as anything published professionally.

BTW, if anybody thinks that statement is hyperbole, here are the games I regularly play:

STAR BLADES (I wrote this one, shameless plug)
Void Trek 3007 AD
Age of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Labyrinth Lord
Swords and Wizardry
Full Thrust (1e)
OPUS
Forgotten Futures
World War II Plastic Skirmish

Okay, make that 9 of 10. All of the above are available for free download. The only game I presently play that is not available for free is Dark Heresy, and, even with that GW product, I have purchased only the core rules, as there is more free stuff online than I will ever need.

Speaking for the ones I've read…

Labyrinth Lord and Swords and Wizardry are just rehashed 1st ed D&D and so the product wouldn't even exist except that what it's ripped off from was professionally made.

Full Thrust 1st ed was also professionally made.

I can't speak for the others, but as someone who has combed through freewargamesrules.co.uk many times looking for diamonds in the rough, most free stuff is total crap. Taking someone else's rules and tweaking them, like the old-school D&D clones and all the d20 system games do is not that hard. Writing a decent system from the ground up is very hard.

Well Pierce traveller was too much detail to retain my interest. And you are right the Space travel time was a big turn off. But I did get a lot of experience in world /region/area terrain development for scenario systems by practicing the Traveler world building system.

Need? Maybe not, but I'm darn glad to have General Quarters 3, Martian Empires, Grande Armee, Check Your Six, Flames of War and Impetus. I haven't found a naval set that comes close to giving me the enjoyment I get out of GQ3 and the cost of any of the rules I play and enjoy is less than a pittance comapred to the time it saves me by being right there, right now, at my fingertips at need.

Now that I've said free rules usually suck, if you like 1st person shooter video games, check out my free rules, Frag-o-rama!

Endorsed by Broadsword and four people in Pittsburgh!

link

Hexxenhammer "Labyrinth Lord and Swords and Wizardry are just rehashed 1st ed D&D and so the product wouldn't even exist except that what it's ripped off from was professionally made. Full Thrust 1st ed was also professionally made."

Granted, but most war games and rpgs, professionally made or not, do build off prior stuff. Even original D&D was largely just Chainmail, revamped, which in turn owed, as I understand it, most of its mechanics to earlier games.

Also, in fairness to LL and S&W, they grew up to fill old time gamer's desire to play original D&D, and not be hampered by what (in the opinion of some) are the complexities of later editions. So, a few people took advantage of OGL and "recreated" the original system. It still took work.

Also, in the case of OD&D, many have taken the system in very different directions. My STAR BLADES game is really just OD&D for Dune style sci fi. Hoodlums & Hideouts is OD&D superheroes. Age of Extraordinary Gentlemen is OD&D Victoriana, etc. All of these were derivative works, but all of them had something to add to the original game, and they would not be here without the work of amateur authors who wrote them simply because they enjoyed so doing, and wanted to share their work with others.

Just my thoughts.

Sure, but someone got paid to make the original rules. There are hundreds of free expansions for the d20 system, some pretty good. Those wouldn't be here unless Wizards had laid out a lot of cash to develop d20 in the first place.

Even GW, for all the hate they get, gives away Mordheim, Necromunda, Inquisitor, and a bunch of other stuff away for free now that they are off the shelves. But those are professionally made too.

So it seems the answer is, yes, professionally made war games and rpg's do have a place because they give they give you the whole package if that's what you want, and give the homebrewer a jumping off point.

You should add the d20srd.org to your list of free professionally made games.

Hexxenhammer "Sure, but someone got paid to make the original rules. There are hundreds of free expansions for the d20 system, some pretty good. Those wouldn't be here unless Wizards had laid out a lot of cash to develop d20 in the first place."

That really isn't what happened. D&D was created by Gygax, Arneson, et al., a long time before most of the WOTC folks were even born, and was done as a set of homebrew rules that these guys just happened to market. Nobody paid them anything to design the rules. Much of the really good wargaming stuff has followed this same pattern.

In fact, if Gygax has gone to Hasbro in the late 70s and said, "Hey, buy this from me.", he'd probably have been laughed to scorn and shown the door.

But it wasn't free to buy. That's what I'm getting at and explaining it badly. If it had stayed a little homebrewed ruleset, there would be 6 retired guys in Wisconsin that played RPG's and the world would be a poorer place.

They started a company and got people to buy it. With money. This created an industry.

I'm not much of a capitalist, but development and improvement doesn't happen unless people shell out some cash.