What does it take for an RPG to die?

[Thomas Shey]

Honestly, I wouldn't be particularly hesitant to run Aftermath if I had a campaign appropriate for it; the only thing I'd find annoying is the remaining bits of randomness in character generation.

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah, I picked that up and was underwhelmed. I mean, its fishing in a design zone not likely to suit me, but I've even seen other games in that zone that seemed better.

The 1e is a better game, and still up.
Ship rules are largely the same, but 1e is an 8-att, roll under the relevant att, class determines how XP are earned, not what you can do.

 

[Autumnal]

Honestly, I wouldn't be particularly hesitant to run Aftermath if I had a campaign appropriate for it; the only thing I'd find annoying is the remaining bits of randomness in character generation.

A desperate across the planet to retrieve the frozen head of Loren MacGregor before the villains can get it for their sinister doomsday-redux plan.

 

[darjr]

AI art or content.

 

[rhythmsoundmotion]

AI art or content.

Morbid curiosity tempts me to read a tabletop RPG with ai writing in it. But honestly any tabletop with AI hallucinations in it would be really bad.

 

[Greg K]

a roleplaying game dies when it has no more active players.

I came to say this.

 

[Kichwas]

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

• 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.

I'd say things like:
The typical:
- Publishers goes out of business and takes the IP with them. Before the Internet era this usually meant 'game over' but some of these can now be found as PDFs on DriveThruRPG. The old company 'Fantasy Games Unlimited' had games like Villains and Vigilantes or Other Suns, and I at least saw Other Suns on DriveThru.

To the insanely bizarre:
- Author is posthumously revealed to have used a pen name to sit on the board of a real world terrorist organization and write 'Nazi' literature, as well as be the son of a '5th columnist' operating for Nazi Germany during the years before WWII. (Empire of the Petal Throne)

(As an aside an elder step-in-law of mine is the daughter of an SS-officer, but was herself a lifelong civil right's activist married to a Mexican Jewish attorney and activist - being descended from a 'villain' can just as often be motivation to become a hero. But for the above example it sadly wasn't.)

To be 'dead' you've either got to take your IP out of play and have no one carrying the torch for you, or you or your game become 'Chernobyl level' toxic.

Outside of the extremes, 'dead game' is subjective. But if there's no notable community, we can at least call something 'mostly dead'.

 

[Nightfly]

- Author is posthumously revealed to have used a pen name to sit on the board of a real world terrorist organization and write 'Nazi' literature, as well as be the son of a '5th columnist' operating for Nazi Germany during the years before WWII. (Empire of the Petal Throne)

Good lord. I Googled this, and...wow, that is truly horrifying. I guess it's the author's bad luck that he didn't live long enough to be part of nu-TSR.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'd say things like:
The typical:
- Publishers goes out of business and takes the IP with them. Before the Internet era this usually meant 'game over' but some of these can now be found as PDFs on DriveThruRPG. The old company 'Fantasy Games Unlimited' had games like Villains and Vigilantes or Other Suns, and I at least saw Other Suns on DriveThru.

FGU exists as a PDF-only publishing concern these days. I don't know if they do anything new, but they still publish most games that didn't return the the creators for one reason or another.

You do get games where the original creator will not sell the thing for anything. There was an interesting game called "Nexus: the Infinite City" that the author would not sell for anything. If you want it these days you can search for decades-old physical copies or pirate scans.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Hard to say. A lot of games never really establish much of a base; there's a vast difference, as we all know, between buying and playing (the two are almost separate hobbies).

Petal Throne has been mentioned, and I know of several online and FtF groups still playing it. I know of groups still using the 1e D&D rules.

I think a dual rating needs to be applied: is a game still available for sale? And, Is it still being played?