Roleplaying 2028 - a look a quarter century forward.

[Law Dog]

Okay amateur futurists, time to put on your Caps of Thinking.

1st Question: It's 2028, do you still see yourself roleplaying (God willing, you're still alive at this time)? If I'm here, I'll be 60/61

2nd Question: Which of the following games are still being produced? D&D, HERO, GURPS, World of Darkness, d20 (listed separately because maybe D&D & d20 could split off from each other. Any others you forsee still around? Or will the whole hobby bite it?

3rd Question: Gaming is still basically the same as when I started in 1977, will the gaming of 2028 be recognizable to us today?

[allen]

Originally posted by Law Dog
Okay amateur futurists, time to put on your Caps of Thinking.

1st Question: It's 2028, do you still see yourself roleplaying (God willing, you're still alive at this time)? If I'm here, I'll be 60/61

Funny... this is kind of a recent joke in ye ol' gaming group... gamers hitting the retirement homes in 30 or so years...

It's going to be great. No work, no kids to disrupt the gaming schedule. None of this once a month gaming hogwash... gaming every day; four, six, heck maybe even eight hours a day... epic campaigns with a scope only dreamed about now... It's going to be like summer vacation back before we all had licenses and could drive, except it's not just three months -- it's for the rest of our lives. Cannot freakin' wait.

[MarkusDark]

I believe that in 2028, the table top game will probably be replaced by more interactive online items. I am not sure what or how, but the old paper and pen will probably go by the wayside.

Then again, if we suddenly to a reversal and actually become a social society again, I could be wrong.

[TheEmerged]

Originally posted by Law Dog
1st Question: It's 2028, do you still see yourself roleplaying (God willing, you're still alive at this time)? If I'm here, I'll be 60/61

I'll be 58. Frankly, RPGing comes almost as naturally to me as breathing; the only way I won't be gaming in 2028 is if I'm dead or elsewhere.

2nd Question: Which of the following games are still being produced? D&D, HERO, GURPS, World of Darkness, d20 (listed separately because maybe D&D & d20 could split off from each other. Any others you forsee still around? Or will the whole hobby bite it?

D&D will probably still be around, but probably in a very different form. It's the "name" property, which means it's the most vulnerable to being snatched up by an outside agency and changed to become "more hip" to the point of becoming unrecognizeable. Take a look at all the various permutations of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers since their creation to see what I mean.

GURPS is almost certainly going to be a trivia question by then. Maybe my local area colors my opinion, but I know a lot of people that bought it and almost nobody that played it in more than a campaign or two.

WoD is a coin toss. You already see a lot of "that's so... last decade" happening with this system/world; it has not aged well and that's being nice. I personally suspect the Goths are going to be looked at in hindsight the way people look at hippies now -- "You're not so bad, in a what-the-bleep-is-wrong-with-you kind of way..." Having said that, nostalgia has been known to follow 20-30 year cycles -- it's just possible WoD will be the Brady Bunch of the future

d20? That's an interesting question. My money says no; the system is too prone to wild fluctuations when you actually play it. Not to insult the company behind it (as I play d20 almost as much as I play HERO these days -- a 3 HERO to 2 DnD session ratio), but sometimes I can't help but wonder just how much this game actually got tested by actual players with an actual GM in an actual campaign, and what the testing parameters were.

Having said that, there are an awful lot of people on the bandwagon right now -- but I live in Cincinnati, I know all about bandwagons. A lot can happen in fewer years than you might expect. My own personal experience is that the more people try to shoehorn d20 into other genres the weaker it looks.

HERO? That depends. DOJ is doing a good job with the system, and most of the people that use it are borderline rabid about it. A disturbing comparison I can't get out of my mind, though, is Star Trek. Not as well known or as popular/mainstream as other products, with a reputation for a lot of schlok that nonetheless works a lot better than the "trendy" stuff and often ends up being a lot more timeless (TOS has aged a lot better than TNG). The problem starts when it starts getting popular, and gets shoehorned into "mainstream" sensibilities instead of being itself. In the end it has its moment in the sun, but slowly kills itself with its own fame.

*shivers* Not the fate I'd wish for it, to be sure.

3rd Question: Gaming is still basically the same as when I started in 1977, will the gaming of 2028 be recognizable to us today?

As long as children play house and solider, Gaming won't change that much. Online RPG's haven't worked nearly as well as some people expected, and it hasn't been the technical side that has caused the problems. Any MMORPG veteran/refugee will tell you it's the other people that are screwing them up. I'm not going to say the problems are insurmountable, but they'll require far more resources (especially on the service side of the equation) than companies are currently willing to dish out.

[Uncle Shecky]

Originally posted by allen
Funny... this is kind of a recent joke in ye ol' gaming group... gamers hitting the retirement homes in 30 or so years...

It's going to be great. No work, no kids to disrupt the gaming schedule. None of this once a month gaming hogwash... gaming every day; four, six, heck maybe even eight hours a day... epic campaigns with a scope only dreamed about now... It's going to be like summer vacation back before we all had licenses and could drive, except it's not just three months -- it's for the rest of our lives. Cannot freakin' wait.

Amen to that. They have retirement communities built around golf courses now. Not my cup of tea, but a good idea to steal. I can see the brochure now: "The DOJ Home for Old Heroes, in lovely North Carolina ..."

In 2028, I suspect gamers will be using small, cheap, and instantly networkable computers to game face-to-face and online. I'd guess you'll see completely paperless gaming that has the feel of traditional RPGs, not video games. Imagine Herosphere in 25 years: you'll never roll dice again (except out of nostalgia).

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised to see all that in less than 10 years. By 2028 I want a little holographic combat simulator like the one Chewie and R2D2 played in Star Wars.

That and a jet pack.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Law Dog
1st Question: It's 2028, do you still see yourself roleplaying (God willing, you're still alive at this time)? If I'm here, I'll be 60/61

Yes, gaming is a big part of my life. By 2028, my second hobby, jogging, will probably not be part of my life. I'll be into my 60s and will probably have arthritis in my knees from all the running on hard roads over the years.

2nd Question: Which of the following games are still being produced? D&D, HERO, GURPS, World of Darkness, d20 (listed separately because maybe D&D & d20 could split off from each other. Any others you forsee still around? Or will the whole hobby bite it?

D&D is owned by a corporation. Unless Hasbro folds shop, D&D will always be around in one form or another.

Hero has a come and go history. My guess is that as Steve and Darren's lives become more complicated with spouses and children they will want to remove themselves from the rat-race, and as such will sell Hero Games to one of us, who will inturn completely screw it up, and thus it will be gone.

GURPS will fall by the wayside as Steve Jackson gets out of the industry. Like Gary Gygax, Steve Jackson will eventually lose everything due to poor accounting.

White Wolf will be the major gaming company of the future. Goth material will become more popular over time, and White Wolf already seems to have the corner on the market.

3rd Question: Gaming is still basically the same as when I started in 1977, will the gaming of 2028 be recognizable to us today?

I think gaming will be more computerized. We will all have "gaming tables" like those we saw in Star Wars, where we see the hologram characters moving around the battlefield and doing the actions we dictate. We will not have to be together to do the gaming, each person can stay at home and look at everyone else around the "gaming table," without having to actually be in the same room with them. Thus Play-By-Cyber games rather than table top games will be the norm.

[Peregrine]

Originally posted by Monolith
GURPS will fall by the wayside as Steve Jackson gets out of the industry. Like Gary Gygax, Steve Jackson will eventually lose everything due to poor accounting.

This almost happened - the 'failing due to bad accounting' part. SJG had a bit of a rough run here within the last 18 months due to their previous CFO basically not doing their job properly. They didn't know how much money they were or were not making. The effort required to reconcile the books and get things back under control caused them to slow their release schedule. Some observers might say that they still haven't completely recovered, as they continue to have uncharacteristic (for them) schedule slippage.

[Thirdbase]

Originally posted by Uncle Shecky
Amen to that. They have retirement communities built around golf courses now. Not my cup of tea, but a good idea to steal. I can see the brochure now: "The DOJ Home for Old Heroes, in lovely North Carolina ..."

In 2028, I suspect gamers will be using small, cheap, and instantly networkable computers to game face-to-face and online. I'd guess you'll see completely paperless gaming that has the feel of traditional RPGs, not video games. Imagine Herosphere in 25 years: you'll never roll dice again (except out of nostalgia).

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised to see all that in less than 10 years. By 2028 I want a little holographic combat simulator like the one Chewie and R2D2 played in Star Wars.

That and a jet pack.

Where's my flying car, we were promised flying cars.

Imagine networked computers with excellent real time video and audio feeds, plus super high res graphics of what your character is doing. Then there will be us sitting around a table still using dice and paper.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Thirdbase
Where's my flying car, we were promised flying cars.

People can barely seem to drive in a two-dimensional enviroment without having constant accidents. I would not even want to think about how many accidents there would be if people had to think in a three-dimensional enviroment.

[Mark Taylor]

1. I'll be 56, and I'll still be playing

2. GURPS has a huge user base already and HERO looks like taking off big time; neither of them have to rely an any particular genre or background, so they have the potential 'roll with the punches' as long as they keep releasing supplements that keep ahead of what's popular at the time.

World of Darkness could survive as long as it continues to develop and move with the times. I think if it stagnates it will die.

The survival of d20 and D&D may depend on the survival of WotC. Hasbro don't care about roleplaying one way or the other. If WotC go down, they may hang onto those properties, license them, sell them, forget about them and leave them to rot... who can tell?

Having said that, the appeal of dungeons and monster-bashing is timeless, so there will always be something around to fill that niche.

3. I agree that small handheld computers will probably revolutionise table-top gaming. After all we could basically do all that now, with the current crop of PDAs, if the technology was just a little cheaper, and the software available. It's only a matter of time before it'll be not only feasible, but profitable to do this. I like rolling dice though - little electronic 'dice mats' that we roll our dice on, networked to our PDAs so they can automatically log our dice rolls would be extremely cool.

[Mutant for Hire]

As with so many others, I think that computers are going to play an important part, though in two different areas. There are going to be the descendants of Neverwinter Nights (NWN), where GMs create virtual worlds for their players, accepting various limitations in return for a more visual experience. The main limitation is that most GMs aren't great artists and there's a lot of work in creating specific areas. Even so, I expect this is going to be the dominant form of RPGs for a lot of people.

And then there's going to be the minority crowd that prefers to use words and imagination instead. Even so, I see computers taking over much of the bookkeeping and handling of number crunching for the GM. The first tools are strictly going to be GM tools only, but in time there will be client programs that allow players to access the GM 'server'. To prevent cheating, odds are that all numbers will be stored and modified on the GM's server and players will just feed requests for information and action to it. This software will have two modes. Face to face, with players optionally getting to roll dice, and chatroom style.

There's going to be a longer term impact on game mechanics as well, that's really going to benefit the more complex systems such as HERO. Things like defining players in terms of what they can do and then letting programs grind out the numbers on the back-end. Players can simply say what their character can be like and the programs will work out a play-balanced member, even start analyzing characters for strengths and weaknesses. That's going to be a godsend for GMs grinding out NPCs.

In the beginning, these programs will be proprietary, but I see open source making its inroads here. Sooner or later someone is going to come up with an open source program where the characteristics and game mechanics are encoded in some high level scripting langauge, allowing for easy modification of the house rules, not to mention allowing just about any system to be enscripted and so automated.

That's going to have a huge impact on the RPG industry. In the end, selling rulebooks is going to become impossible due to the copies of mechanics floating around the Net. Gaming companies will adapt and survive by a "give away the razors, sell the blades" sort of deal. The basic mechanics will be given away free and ala Digial Hero, sourcebooks are going to be sold over the Net based on those mechanics.

Gaming companies will survive because a lot of players would rather let someone else create source material for them to tweak, and do things like historical research. They can also sell documentation on how to create characters and run games, things that the more "freeware" mechanics systems won't tend to do. Subscriptions to Net-based zines may form a significant chunk of revenue.

[Captain Obvious]

Originally posted by Uncle Shecky
"The DOJ Home for Old Heroes, in lovely North Carolina ..."
.

Sign me up!

Personally, I think pen and paper games will be around for a long long time. It's just a lot easier to scratch little notes in the margin of your character sheet than it is to maintain a notes.txt file. People seem to like shuffling pages around too. And don't forget the sheer number of complaints on the old boards about the ebook format...

[Cosmic Man]

Somehow, no matter how good the online game, and no matter how fast people can type, nothing will ever beat sitting around a table, bouncing dice, and keeping track on papers covered with pencil-marks.

At least, that's my opinion.

Sign me up for the old gamers home!

You say to your grandchild, "If that home is d20 instead of Hero, I'm going to have a fit!"
Your grandchild says to you, "Don't worry Grandpa, it's Hero. Steve Long himself is there."

[Jhamin]

Originally posted by Cosmic Man
Somehow, no matter how good the online game, and no matter how fast people can type, nothing will ever beat sitting around a table, bouncing dice, and keeping track on papers covered with pencil-marks.

At least, that's my opinion.

And Mine.

Computers will become more convenient and easier, but they will still be computers. Remember the paperless office? Or the end of books?

At the end of the day, the screen in front of us does not substitue for actual human experience. If it did nobody would ever want to meet their online friends in person.

Computers will play a roll, but in 2028 people will still gather and roll dice with their friends.

[jtelson]

I've been playing for 23 years and I expect to be playign for the next 25 so in 2028 I still expect to be at it.

As to game systems - GURPS and WoD have remained the least changed from a systmes point of view since their creation - both systems are playable and have their own appeal and so I think they will be the least changed in 25 years.
D&D will still be around but not likely in the d20 format.
The d20 system itself when divorced from D&D has a lot going for it - When designing D&D there were a lot of design decisions made intentionally to appease older players at the expence of creatign the best system they could. You can see the improvements in d20 Modern. Assuming they continue to refine the system I can see it still around in 25 years.
The Hero system has changed considerably since it's initial release - Each change for the better (IMO) and closer to the potential that I think we all saw when we first picked up a copy of Champions way back when. The system has also become more cumbersome with every iteration. The learning curve for play is steep and that's putting it mildly - Computerization will be Hero's best friend - we already see it with character design software - It has he ability to turn one of Hero's biggest flaws into an asset. It's complicated but there's software to make it easy and it ties to this software for combat and so on and so forth. So assuming that pencil and paper gaming trends towards keyboard and monitor gaming or maybe pda to pda gaming, I can easily see Hero around in 25 years. Failing that I think we might find ourselves saying to our children -"When I was a Kid I only had paper and a calculator and it took me 5 hours to build a character - and about 6 monthes for a fight sequence"