What does it take for an RPG to die?

[SlyFlourish]

We've seen various clickbait titles that "D&D 5e is dead!" or "is the OSR dying?" which, I know, is just there to get a reaction. But the question is interesting to me because of how different this hobby is from many other electronic gaming hobbies where a core company controls the fate of a game.

So what does it take for an RPG to die in this hobby?

I think its actually a spectrum. Here's my indicators ordered by the least impactful to the true death of an RPG to the most impactful.

• A game's popularity (sales, search popularity, games played, or other metric) goes from a steep incline to leveling off.
• A game's main publisher no longer publishes material for it.
• Third party publishers no longer publish material for it.
• It's hard to find groups playing it at conventions.
• It's hard to find a group to join as a player anywhere.
• It's hard to put together a group and run it as a GM.
• It's hard to find the core material for the game at all.

For you, what determines when a game is "dying" or even "dead"? What are some examples of games you consider dead.

I think about some truly resilient games like Ironsworn. It's playable solo so you don't even need a group. The material is in PDF and freely available to download. I think it takes an awful lot for this game to truly "die". As long as a person who wants it has it and plays it -- it lives.

I think there's value in thinking about this because it helps us scope our own reactions when we see a beloved RPG fall off the radar or consider whether the game we love is on the decline and therefore "dying" when it's really not. By my own definitions, I think there's only one version of D&D I would say is "dead" and that's 3.0. I can't seem to find legal digital copies anywhere and I don't know that I've seen anyone running 3.0 instead of 3.5. That feels pretty dead to me, but just about every other version of D&D is still available and still played.

What do you think?

 

[darjr]

Do you have a few candidates?

I think when you talk about Iron Sworn as a "not dead" game it means no game could ever truly be dead.

 

[payn]

I think the DIY nature of RPG makes them particularly difficult to kill. If you look at video games outside of modding, they are kind of done after release and end of DLC support. Folks just have to wait for a franchise to be revived after years. With RPGs you can just pick up and go and do your own thing. A lot of folks do.

Now, some folks see support as being key to the life of an RPG. If there are not new products and/or organized play to keep the game "alive" its going to die even if it has a smallish community that continues to play it. I think its a matter of how you consume and use the product ultimately.

 

[Scribe]

If you have online discussion, it's not dead.

 

[darjr]

Back when OSRIC was new I really thought the AD&D player base must have been extremely small to non-existant. I quickly learned that to not be the case. I even had friends that were actively playing it.

 

[TheSword]

In the same way a God dies and moves to the Astral plane when it has no more followers, a roleplaying game dies when it has no more active players.

Whether the rules for that game are available for a reasonable price will have a big impact on this but I don’t think it has to be the current edition or even in physical print.

I don’t think a game has to be ubiquitous for it to be alive. It just has to be actively played somewhere.

 

[Bae'zel]

I can see RPGs "dying" in the eyes of the hobby (eg, forgotten games with no community groups).

For example, much to my sadness, I can no longer find anyone talking about Unhallowed Metropolis or Carbon Grey. Poking at their subreddits only got me silence. I consider those games "dead" in the online community/hobby.

On the other hand, I gush about those games to my family and friends, keeping them "alive" within our little social circles.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

• A game's popularity (sales, search popularity, games played, or other metric) goes from a steep incline to leveling off.
• A game's main publisher no longer publishes material for it.
• Third party publishers no longer publish material for it.
• It's hard to find groups playing it at conventions.
• It's hard to find a group to join as a player anywhere.
• It's hard to put together a group and run it as a GM.
• It's hard to find the core material for the game at all.

Between legit pdfs and outright piracy, that's extremely rare these days, so very few games would truly qualify as dead. The principle exceptions will be licensed games where no one is ever likely to get the license back, and even those might survive with the IP forcibly removed (eg WEG's d6 system survives, but WEG Star Wars is almost certainly never coming back). Even with licensed stuff we see the odd surprise now and then - who expected Chaosium's Elfquest or Mayfair's DC Comics making a return? - so it's risky to sign any death certificates.

There's a few games out there (mostly very old, pre-desktop publishing) that can't be found online in any form, and a few other games may become nigh-unplayable due to the need for fancy physical components (who wants to try to kitbash their own Black Box for Invisible Sun?). Those are arguably dead as well - or will be, eventually.

 

[The Soloist]

Games can cease to be officially published but they do not die. The community of fans keeps playing it. It's even easier to do that today because of online play. PDFs, legal and illegal, prevents games from disappearing all together.

 

[payn]

Games can cease to be officially published but they do not die. The community of fans keeps playing it. It's even easier to do that today because of online play. PDFs, legal and illegal, prevents games from disappearing all together.

So, is the question then at what point to games become zombies?