I've been following a few Livejournal PBJ ad groups, and it's been interesting to watch the genres go by. Now, I suppose (nay, hope) LJ isn't a representative sample, but there are definite patterns. Most roleplaying is what I call franchise-based - set in somebody else's property. Harry Potter roleplaying is huge. Japanese stuff is popular... anime, video games, etc. D&D is sparsely represented, but the only other conventional RPG that makes any significant appearance is World of Darkness. It sort of makes me think of our local game store; it apparently sells a vast amount of Rifts stuff, but up until recently we'd never heard of anyone locally who plays. It's like there's a whole separate culture of roleplayers that never overlaps. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
> I've been following a few Livejournal PBJ ad groups, and it's been > interesting to watch the genres go by. Now, I suppose (nay, hope) LJ > isn't a representative sample, but there are definite patterns. > > Most roleplaying is what I call franchise-based - set in somebody else's > property. Harry Potter roleplaying is huge. > > Japanese stuff is popular... anime, video games, etc. > > D&D is sparsely represented, but the only other conventional RPG that > makes any significant appearance is World of Darkness. > > It sort of makes me think of our local game store; it apparently sells a > vast amount of Rifts stuff, but up until recently we'd never heard of > anyone locally who plays. It's like there's a whole separate culture of > roleplayers that never overlaps. Yeah, pretty much. There are entire communities out there that have re-invented RPGs time and again, from Star Trek fandom to Harry Potter fandom and all the ones in between. I'm sure that there will soon be a new Narnia fandom doing the same thing. And really, since when to the D&D nerds talk to the WoD goths? -- Michael Feldhusen mike_f@io.com caulay@gmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, 3 Jan 2006, Michael Feldhusen wrote: MF>There are entire communities out there that have re-invented RPGs time and MF>again, from Star Trek fandom to Harry Potter fandom and all the ones in MF>between. I'm sure that there will soon be a new Narnia fandom doing the MF>same thing. Quite, which is why GAMERS' caption is "for roleplayers and sim gamers," or some such. I suppose that's confusing to the Forge people who think that's referring to a different definition of "sim," but then again I suppose they're used to discordant definitions by now... MF>And really, since when to the D&D nerds talk to the WoD goths? Around here they do. Or rather, it's a spectrum... somebody who plays in Bill's Saturday D&D game doubtless knows someone who plays in somebody else's game who plays in somebody else's WoD games. It's just that those degrees of separation *never* include Rifts gamers. Or didn't, until a Rifts player came to one of Carl's Wichita Roleplayers meetings. Though I'm not sure it's been confirmed that he's an actual Rifts player, or just a regular roleplayer who happens to have tried Rifts. So it may be the communities have not yet overlapped... -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, 3 Jan 2006, Karen J. Cravens wrote: > > MF>And really, since when to the D&D nerds talk to the WoD goths? > > Around here they do. Or rather, it's a spectrum... somebody who plays in > Bill's Saturday D&D game doubtless knows someone who plays in somebody > else's game who plays in somebody else's WoD games. It's just that those > degrees of separation *never* include Rifts gamers. Or didn't, until a > Rifts player came to one of Carl's Wichita Roleplayers meetings. Though > I'm not sure it's been confirmed that he's an actual Rifts player, or just > a regular roleplayer who happens to have tried Rifts. So it may be the > communities have not yet overlapped... I played Vampire once, long ago. Didn't care for it (I guess I prefer cheerful and happy mayhem and slaughter). A lot of the people I hung out with at K-State played though (the crowd I hung out with there was mostly an intersection of SCA and Goth). I own some Rifts books. I almost played in a game once, but it fell through at the last minute. I've considered trying to run the setting in Fudge, but if I were to run every game I've thought about, I'd be running games non-stop from now until the Sun burned out. -Bill Hamilton ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
> I played Vampire once, long ago. Didn't care for it (I guess I prefer > cheerful and happy mayhem and slaughter). A lot of the people I hung out > with at K-State played though (the crowd I hung out with there was mostly > an intersection of SCA and Goth). Actually, I have a number of friends who play D&D and other friends who have played WoD games. But there's very little cross over in those sets of friends, despite them having a lot of other interests in common. I guess I'm the connection point for them. > I own some Rifts books. I almost played in a game once, but it fell > through at the last minute. I've considered trying to run the setting in > Fudge, but if I were to run every game I've thought about, I'd be running > games non-stop from now until the Sun burned out. I don't have any Rifts books but I do have some Palladium FRP books. I sort-of liked that system, before some of the excesses of Rifts got grafted on to it. -- Michael Feldhusen mike_f@io.com caulay@gmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, 3 Jan 2006, Karen J. Cravens wrote:
> Though I'm not sure it's been confirmed that he's an actual Rifts
> player, or just a regular roleplayer who happens to have tried
> Rifts.
No, Rifts is what he's really into. And several of the regulars play
WoD and D&D on regular a basis. Our GURPS regular has stopped
coming... he hadn't heard of GURPS 4th edition months after it was
released.
Haven't found _anybody_ coming to the roleplaying meet-up who has even
heard the titles of the indie games I recently bought. Heck, most of
them hadn't even heard of Fudge. (Though _somebody_ had to buy _Now
Playing_ from Prairie Dog.)
I think being "well connected" on the Internet puts us in a very
different class of gamers than the casual Internet users and
non-Internet users. (Yeah, I've got two people who come to club
meetings that don't have computers... makes it kind of hard when we're
focused around a Yahoo Group.) It's really amazed me how little I can
assume about gamers who don't participate in forums and read only one
or two news sites about specific games. I thought it was just game
store owners who were clueless about what was coming out... but there
are hard-core gamers, who play in two or three games a week and come
to a bi-monthly club meeting, that don't know what's out there if they
haven't seen it on the game store shelf. And since so few games
actually make it to the shelf around here, there are a lot of games
they've never heard of, let alone had a chance to play.
--
Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) Gamers List Owner
[ General RP Discussion -- http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/ ]
I'm not lost, I'm "locationally challenged".
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GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 08:17:34PM -0600, Carl D Cravens wrote: >I think being "well connected" on the Internet puts us in a very >different class of gamers than the casual Internet users and >non-Internet users. I think that even some reasonably connected people don't find particular communities. I tend to think of Penny Arcade (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic) as pretty much a standard web-comic: anyone who isn't reading it doesn't like it, rather than not having heard of it. But there are people who read Ctrl-Alt-Del (http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php) and seem to be under the impression that that's _it_ as far as web-comics go. -- Roger, gaming grognard Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Roger Burton West wrote: RBW>I think that even some reasonably connected people don't find particular RBW>communities. I tend to think of Penny Arcade RBW>(http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic) as pretty much a standard web-comic: RBW>anyone who isn't reading it doesn't like it, rather than not having That'd be me. Doesn't help that most of the times I've been referred to PA it's been because they're slagging on something. Humorously, but still, one only gets so far with slagging. RBW>heard of it. But there are people who read Ctrl-Alt-Del RBW>(http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php) and seem to be under the RBW>impression that that's _it_ as far as web-comics go. I've been reading that one lately, though I'm not sure I'll continue with it. Frazz, Evil Inc., Get Fuzzy, Unshelved (I want a Book Club t-shirt), Irregular Webcomic... uh, I've probably left one or two out, but those are my favorites. I've got something like 30 to 40 between bookmarks and RSS feeds (mostly the latter, so if you track down my Bloglines profiles you can find most of them...) I've always been tempted to borrow our son's Playmobil and Lego and suchlike and do a Phoenyx webcomic. But I figure attention-deficit sorts shouldn't start webcomics. Five strips in, and I'd be "ooh, shiny!" and off on some other project. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Sat, Jan 07, 2006 at 09:01:16PM -0600, Karen J. Cravens wrote: >I've been reading that one lately, though I'm not sure I'll continue with >it. My point is that there may be an equivalent of these "C-A-D is the only webcomic" fans even in the connected gaming community - maybe they hang out on some particular discussion board and never go elsewhere. I don't know. >Frazz, Evil Inc., Get Fuzzy, Unshelved (I want a Book Club t-shirt), >Irregular Webcomic... uh, I've probably left one or two out, but those are >my favorites. I've got something like 30 to 40 between bookmarks and RSS >feeds (mostly the latter, so if you track down my Bloglines profiles you >can find most of them...) I currently track 188 webcomics, using software of my own design. :-) >I've always been tempted to borrow our son's Playmobil and Lego and >suchlike and do a Phoenyx webcomic. But I figure attention-deficit sorts >shouldn't start webcomics. Five strips in, and I'd be "ooh, shiny!" and >off on some other project. This is why I built up to a buffer of twenty strips before I went public with my own webcomic (http://laager.firedrake.org/). -- Roger, gaming grognard Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, 10 Jan 2006, Roger Burton West wrote: RBW>My point is that there may be an equivalent of these "C-A-D is the only RBW>webcomic" fans even in the connected gaming community - maybe they hang RBW>out on some particular discussion board and never go elsewhere. I don't RBW>know. I wonder if they play Rifts too. RBW>I currently track 188 webcomics, using software of my own design. :-) Either you're better at finding them, or you have lower standards than I do. RBW>This is why I built up to a buffer of twenty strips before I went public RBW>with my own webcomic (http://laager.firedrake.org/). Neat. And I can almost understand it, too. Apparently I hang around too many Londoners and near-Londoners. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 09:14:38AM -0600, Michael Feldhusen wrote:
>There are entire communities out there that have re-invented RPGs time and
>again, from Star Trek fandom to Harry Potter fandom and all the ones in
>between. I'm sure that there will soon be a new Narnia fandom doing the
>same thing.
When pbem.com was still live, it seemed to me to be about 60% "sim"
games (which nobody was prepared to explain, but as far as I can tell
they seem to be what I'd call channelled narrativist, in that you can do
whatever you like with your own character but it must be (a) within the
context of the story ("you are the crew of a starship", or whatever) and
(b) with the permission of any other players whose characters are
involved), 30% role-playing, and 10% dubious sex.
I tried to join a couple of mailing-list games there, but they seem to
have died. Not that I've been much better with my own games recently
(sorry Becky!).
--
Roger, gaming grognard
Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/
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On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Roger Burton West wrote: RBW>When pbem.com was still live, It's as live as it's ever been. That is, being maintained glacially... irony.com has managed to move, but pbem.com still points to Hurricane Electric. (Whenever I feel bad about the Phoenyx' benign semi-neglect in spots, I look at pbem.com and remind myself I could be doing at least slightly worse.) Eventually it'll probably make it, unless Brandon manages to pester Ed into selling the domain. (It's another case of cowboyism: "Give it to me, I could do it better" rather than "Hey, would you like me to help out?"[1]) http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.pbm is another source of interesting demographic data. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net 1: Yes. I need a CSS expert. Also a Perl someone to write the NNTP module. There's a _Perl Best Practices_ in it for you. ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 10:32:32AM -0600, Karen J. Cravens wrote: [pbem.com] >It's as live as it's ever been. I haven't had any response from the server for a couple of weeks, and I hadn't looked at it for a while before then. Right now it seems to be a routeing problem. >1: Yes. I need a CSS expert. Also a Perl someone to write the NNTP >module. There's a _Perl Best Practices_ in it for you. I'm not interested in CSS, but what are you doing NNTP-wise? (And perhaps we'd better take this to private mail.) -- Roger, gaming grognard Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Roger Burton West wrote: RBW>I haven't had any response from the server for a couple of weeks, and I RBW>hadn't looked at it for a while before then. Right now it seems to be a RBW>routeing problem. Right. You have to look at http://www.irony.com/, which is sort of the parent site, and the only one that's evidently gotten (mostly?) moved. Or so I gather. I haven't actually emailed Ed in a couple of years, at least. RBW>I'm not interested in CSS, but what are you doing NNTP-wise? (And RBW>perhaps we'd better take this to private mail.) Right now, I'm not doing anything NNTP-wise, which is the problem. I have a skeleton written, but it uses the old database schema, where now I'm using a modified Email::Store. And since most of the heavy lifting is between Net::NNTP (IIRC) and Email::Store, most of my original code is useless. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
> >I tried to join a couple of mailing-list games there, but they seem to >have died. Not that I've been much better with my own games recently >(sorry Becky!). > > > I'm not sure what's up with Vicki anyhow. I tried emailing and calling her for a while, but I think she's lost interest. I never got a reply from her about beta reading my last fic either. When you have time, we could get something going with Mike and Pete again, I'm sure, now that the holidays are over. Somebody would have to comp Vicki's character but I don't think that would be too much of stretch for any of us. Becky ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, 3 Jan 2006, Carl D Cravens wrote: CDC>No, Rifts is what he's really into. And several of the regulars play CDC>WoD and D&D on regular a basis. Our GURPS regular has stopped CDC>coming... he hadn't heard of GURPS 4th edition months after it was CDC>released. CDC>Haven't found _anybody_ coming to the roleplaying meet-up who has even CDC>heard the titles of the indie games I recently bought. Heck, most of CDC>them hadn't even heard of Fudge. (Though _somebody_ had to buy _Now CDC>Playing_ from Prairie Dog.) So this is like a remedial roleplaying group, huh? -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Karen J. Cravens wrote:
> So this is like a remedial roleplaying group, huh?
I _am_ hoping to put together some one-shots eventually... but I'm too
busy organizing the group and have to rely on others to run games
right now.
--
Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) Gamers List Owner
[ Fudge Factor Webzine -- http://www.fudgefactor.org/ ]
Hey! Lower your landing gear! !@#$*!?% NO HARRIER
----------------------------------------------------------------
GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, 3 Jan 2006, Bill Hamilton wrote: BH>I played Vampire once, long ago. Didn't care for it (I guess I prefer BH>cheerful and happy mayhem and slaughter). A lot of the people I hung out I wouldn't mind playing a werewolf game, though I'm not sure whether I want to play a Werewolf game. Especially since I have no idea what's changed since the 1st ed I have, other than "lots." BH>with at K-State played though (the crowd I hung out with there was mostly BH>an intersection of SCA and Goth). That's almost as scary as teddy bear making club last night, where we sat around and discussed tattoos and piercings... evidently one gal's daughter is dating a tattoo artist, and another's son runs a parlor. This was a bit of a switch, since usually I'm the source of weird cognitive dissonance. (And I suppose I would have been, if I'd brought the plush foxtaur.) -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
Karen J. Cravens wrote: > I've been following a few Livejournal PBJ ad groups, and it's been > interesting to watch the genres go by. Now, I suppose (nay, hope) LJ > isn't a representative sample, but there are definite patterns. > > Most roleplaying is what I call franchise-based - set in somebody else's > property. Harry Potter roleplaying is huge. > > Japanese stuff is popular... anime, video games, etc. Are these sim-type games? > D&D is sparsely represented, but the only other conventional RPG that > makes any significant appearance is World of Darkness. > > It sort of makes me think of our local game store; it apparently sells a > vast amount of Rifts stuff, but up until recently we'd never heard of > anyone locally who plays. It's like there's a whole separate culture of > roleplayers that never overlaps. A lot of people have said that about Rifts. Rifts was consistently the #3 or #4 selling game for several years, but it was all-but invisible to players of anything else. I think part of this was Palladium's refusal to allow magazines to publish any Rifts-related material, unlike just about every other game company. One thing we forget is just how small a subset of roleplayers the people who talk about gaming on mailing lists (or go to conventions) is. ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, 3 Jan 2006, Tim Hall wrote: TH>Are these sim-type games? I assume so, if by that you mean "no published conventional RPG rules." TH>A lot of people have said that about Rifts. Rifts was consistently the TH>#3 or #4 selling game for several years, but it was all-but invisible to TH>players of anything else. Exactly. TH>I think part of this was Palladium's refusal to allow magazines to TH>publish any Rifts-related material, unlike just about every other game TH>company. Maybe. But that doesn't explain why you never run into them in the game stores. TH>One thing we forget is just how small a subset of roleplayers the people TH>who talk about gaming on mailing lists (or go to conventions) is. I don't forget that. I keep running into Phoenyx members all over the Internet (not counting roleplaying venues). I've come to the conclusion if you put everything from Usenet to mailing lists to web forums together, you'd only come up with one, maybe two thousand people... the other billion or so Internet users are read-only. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
