Wasn't White Wolf bought by CDP games the makers of the SCI-FI mmorpg Eve Online?
I think they said something about making a Vampire: The Masquerade MMORPG a while back.
... and there will be an Eve RPG released by White Wolf.
I've been role-playing off and on since 1983. Played lots and lots and lots and lots of the red-box D&D from that time, AD&D 1st and 2nd, but when 3rd came out, I gave up because I hated it.
I don't do the MMORPG thing either, defeats the purpose for me. REAL PEOPLE please! Social Contact! heh. And anything that makes a real RPG more like a MMORPG (like online play) kills the "real" hobby for me.
Stuff I enjoy (treating this thread as a role-playing thread and not a D&D 4th thread...
):
Castles and Crusades... somebody took the 3.5 SRD and made a modern game that looks and plays a lot like AD&D 1st edition. Basically it takes out all of the custom-building character ideas (no feats) and tactical options (no minis, no goddamn AoO!) streamlines everything for faster play. Gary Gygax works with these people these days.
People have taken the SRD and made a system that looks and feels just like the old D&D Basic set, the most simple D&D experience out there:
Basic Fantasy. People have also created a publisher's resource called
OSRIC, which basically allows you to publish, for profit, AD&D 1E material using the OGL. Brilliant. I have a much-delayed but definitely happening project coming out because of this. Someone even made a fake lost old RPG called
Mazes & Minotaurs that's both amusing and extremely playable.
Right now I'm playing a superhero game with the
HERO System. That's been around since 1982 so it's hardly new and cutting edge.
I'm also a fan of the more experimental and creator-owned RPGs. Some of them get pretty out-there but many are cool.
Sorcerer- The indie RPG movement pretty much starts here. There's so much baggage in the community about this one and its author but it really changed roleplaying for a lot of people. Not me, but all of the material is simply fascinating and will be a shock to the system. The supplements are awesome too.
Dogs in the Vineyard- "roleplaying God's Watchdogs in a West that never quite was." Absolutely brilliant stuff.
If you haven't been paying attention to the hobby (or not any closer than what's available at the local game store), you won't
believe where people have taken RPGs... take a few minutes and go through things at the
Indie Press Revolution (although a lot of their stuff is sold by
Noble Knight Games, which is run by a ProgPower attendee - even in Finland I order my RPG materials from there whenever possible). It has games ranging from
Primetime Adventures' storytelling game of TV drama to
Panty Explosion: "Take the role of a Psychic Japanese schoolgirl!" High-concept stuff like
Polaris:Chivalric Tragedy at Utmost North and kid-friendly stuff like
InSpectres. Plus more traditional RPG fare like
Spirit of the Century. And if you're into games with a heavy Tolkien flavor, you must must must must investigate
Burning Wheel (the current site setup is advertising the feudal Japan expansion, not an indication of the flavor of the core game).
Basically, people have been making RPGs for very, very, very specific things. And there are a shitload of them. Investigate before getting involved with the next edition of the big corporate product.
(I approach the RPG hobby the same way I do metal... D&D 4th is completely irrelevant to me, heh.)
To people that think they can't find a group: BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT. You're just not trying. Last year I decided I wanted to play AD&D 1st edition - a game that had been out of print for 17 years at that point, never that popular in Finland to begin with, and I was running the game in a non-native language. All I did was hang flyers around town advertising my game and I had 5 players within a month, and 9 people coming over every week soon after. Half of them had never played RPGs before, and only one of them had ever played any sort of D&D. I did the same thing this year for setting up my HERO game. If you have a problem with a freak showing up - SCREEN THE PLAYERS and tell losers "you are not coming to my house, sorry." But if you want to play, get your ass out there and make an effort to do it.
