Do you think the way tabletop games have become more popular and become more open to the general public a good thing?

I got a group together at school from various walks of life, nearly twenty years ago. It was like the Breakfast Club Plays D&D. I'm happy to see more people get into it so we didn't have to be just a weird outlier.

Because the gays got to us.

Also /r9k/ somehow turned into a cultural touchstone thanks to reddit discovering it.

>Do you think the way tabletop games have become more popular and become more open to the general public a good thing?
Not in the context of post-modern Western society, no. The more mainstream it becomes, the more subject it becomes to toxic intersectionalism. We've seen this happen to comics and to a more limited extent vidya (and in both instances the Nips and their inability to give a fuck have saved the day).

In general a hobby getting more popular/socially acceptable is a nice thing as it means no longer having to hide my power level, but it does casualize the hobby to a great and annoying degree. But from my perspective that's not so much about having a good group or a bad group, but more about having a bad group or no group.

A nice mix of /r9k/ and /pol/.

>more about having a bad group or no group
If all your groups are bad, and the one common denominator between all those groups are you, then you're more than likely the issue.

>If all your groups are bad
Try obtaining basic reading comprehension.

I can almost sympathize with your argument if your a friendless loser who somehow never runs with the same group every time you switch to a new campaign or system.
But roleplaying games are an astoundingly kitchen table level game, the existence of more casual games or games you don't like existing literally does not impact you if you don't want to. Futhermore, the market is not a zero sum system and you are either outrageously ignorant or more likely stubborn/curmudgeonly if you believe the market is at a dearth of options for literally any playstyle or genre.

>Do you think the way tabletop games have become more popular and become more open to the general public a good thing?
No, but then again it's not exactly a crisis. Veeky Forums is uniquely suited to avoid the worst of casuals occupying its hobby, since you can always ignore twitter and houserule any dumb decisions that are made in attempts to water down the games or make them more appealing to progressive hipsters, or you can just use older versions. Nothing of value will be lost, because there simply are no set-in-stone products like comics or video games. It might be hard to find good groups if you yourself are relatively new as well, but once you find that good group, you're basically set for the foreseeable future, barring acts of god and natural disasters. Plus, you can always just get your friends into it. If you have friends. And maybe some of the casuals don't want to stay casuals. Everyone was new at some point.

I suppose the MtG community might be more affected, because of the event scene and how WotC is apparently cocking it up. But lots of people in Magic threads say that the best way to play Magic is around a kitchen table, and I believe them.

tl;dr It's not really a big deal. Hipsters and casuals will move on to the next thing in a few years, tops. Plus pic related.

It was watered down by an influx of normalfags to make it safer to say on facebook and twitter

>Do you think the way tabletop games have become more popular and become more open to the general public a good thing?
It is. If you don't think it is, you're a fucking moron.

The end.

The problem with the Japanese way of doing things is that the DO give a fuck; just in the opposite direction. Their hyperfocus towards niche audiences results in them being forced to jack prices up to compensate for the smaller audience pool, lest they risk not turning a profit.
Yes, Japan puts out some fuckin' stellar media, but don't forget that those gems are floating in a sea of samey, otaku-pandering bullshit.
The Elevens both giveth and taketh away.

It hurts

Name a single hobby that got better as a result of appealing the the lowest common denominator.

Protip I said got better not made more money.

You will always have some level of control of who is a member of your playgroup and what system(s) and/or houserules are in use.

The conceivable downsides of greater popularity are easily mitigated, while the upsides remain beneficial.

Thanks for the pic of the sexy anime girl, nerd.

I mean, all of them?

The mass market media is only one side of a medium, user. Are you too stupid to realise that? It's the bullshit that gets eaten up which sustains and grows an industry, and lets good, independent stuff continue and thrive within it. The good stuff is always niche, that's just how media works, but the garbage that makes more money is actively supporting the things you like, however indirectly, along with diversification to cater to as many different niches as possible. If you look at the broad scope, sure, you can argue there's more stuff out there that you don't like. But why the hell is that relevant, if your particular niche is still being supported and benefiting from being part of that larger ecosystem as a whole?

Video games got a lot more fun when they went from appealing to hopeless dorks to people with jobs and incomes.

I mean, being fair, AAA videogames have gotten real shitty recently. But, happily, there are also more fantastic indie games than ever, and there are still AAA companies like CD Projekt making good shit.

>implying it wasn't shit to begin with.

To put this in more palatable terms, the fact Blue Rose and FATAL exists should not ruin your Pathfinder campaign with friends.

Nope. look at thief 1 and 2 vs thief 4. Thief 1 and 2 is so much better.

youtube.com/watch?v=jPqwDGXxLhU

What upsides are there, though? I mean I guess it's nice that more money is coming in, even though it's not exactly proportionate to the influx since not every would-be player buys and reads material, but on the other hand it's not like the hobby was on life support. I suppose you have a better chance of meeting more decent people who want to play, just by the simple fact that not all of the newcomers can be terrible, or incorrigible, but then again if you have a group already this is a negligible benefit, and I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to fish in a sea of shit in the hopes that they pull out a diamond in the rough.

Then isn't me making an argument that there are no upsides, I just can't really think of any.

AAA games have gotten shitty due to aggressive transactions* and bloated budgets*, the only denominator they're trying to appeal towards are Whales.

>Video games got a lot more fun when they went from appealing to hopeless dorks to people with jobs and incomes.
The games you're talking about are games like EA, who deliberately target people with more money than sense with their microtransactions and insidious marketing ploys. I don't think video games have ever targeted NEETs. You can be a hopeless dork with 60 bucks to blow on a game.

>I just can't really think of any.

More money means more people are going to get involved in the business, which can (and does) produce a lot of hot garbage but can also produce real gems.

>I don't think video games have ever targeted NEETs

>What is Senran Kagura, The Guy Game and early MMOs

>The games you're talking about are games like EA, who deliberately target people with more money than sense with their microtransactions and insidious marketing ploys.

That's not who I was talking about at all, I was talking about the early market shifts for video games that made home consoles commercially available.

a AAA industry existing means greater exposure of the industry in general and greater influence/development of the tools that can used by content creators.
I mean, I remember when mods weren't a thing in videogames, now they get their own section on Steam.

Oh yeah, I completely agree with you. The mass market trash is basically necessary for an industry to exist and thrive, which is something normalfag hating gatekeepers never seem to realise. You need those people, even if you don't like them.

A market flush with money means people with talent can become successful without appealing to nepotic game companies like EA or Activision. It's because of gaming's popularity that Kickstarter could become a thing. Games like Darkest Dungeon, Subnautica and Stardew Valley would have never been possible in those early transitional years between "gaming is for nerds" and "gaming is for everyone."

more often than not the kinda of people I see who complain about casualization of the an industry played the media a decade ago and don't play it anymore (or if they do they just play the same shit they were playing when they were kids) but still feel justified in claiming the industry has turned to garbage.

I think it's great. Among other things it means roleplaying no longer makes me a weirdo. And it means a wider base of players.

Also it means there's more money going into the hobby. That supports more games, which means competition and innovation. D&D still hs a stranglehold on the market, but even that franchise is innovating and we're getting better choices.

Also, the hobby needs continued pressure to make game rules more accessible and better-edited. That drives efficiencies; realizing what matters most and promoting that, discarding parts of RPGs which get in the way, and generally finding better ways to structure and maintain rulesets. When the pressure is toward making things normie-accesible, we can get games which are fun, faster, and more usable without as much dead weight dragging the experience down.

>says this while posting on Veeky Forums
LOL

... huh. I never even realized. I never say it anyway because it enforcers shitty us versus them type mindsets but that makes so much sense.

There's certainly been an increase of dipshits posting unrelated anime girls, so I consider it a problem.

whose first game wasn't an awkward mess ?

>Hipsters and casuals will move on to the next thing in a few years
Amen, and for the time being i will enjoy being the game master for qt. girls.

>You're just personally at the point where you can act elitist to newcomers, and that's a shitty attitude.

Now you know why so many people take offense to Mike Mearls calling shitty gatekeepers out on being terrible people.

honest question, seriously who gives a shit?
I literally have never seen a twitter/tumblr screencap that motivated me or made me feel happier. Not only is it exclusively used to deliver sick burns by and to celebrities on the internet but people go to pages for people they hate to find things they disagree with and repost them here.
why

Because anger and self-righteousness are addictive and the internet is the safest and easiest way of experiencing them humanity has ever developed. Outrage junkies go out of their way to get their fix, riding that chemical high. It's why so many bullshit outrages flare up over nothing, because it's not about advocating a cause, it's about satisfying their addiction.

If your complaint isn't the medium changing, just that it's attracting a less desirable crowd, then I don't really get the problem. The number of people you want to play with didn't shrink, they just require a more focused vetting process.

it's just...psychotic. I remember when I was a shitty teenager and I got my kicks by making flagrantly retarded posts while laughing at the angry replies. This shit is just on another, like, isn't there some psychology thing where insane people need to constantly reinforce their broken worldview by gathering and wallowing in biased evidence because reality doesn't conform in their daily lives?

If it reaches people who have a genuine interest in the hobby then I'm ok with Veeky Forums games getting more popular.

The insincere, ironic fucks can swallow a million dicks and fuck off though.

There is, and the internet is exacerbating it beyond what we might have ever dreamed was possible. What once might have been muted is now being intensified, and social media is to blame.

It's not some grand conspiracy, it's just extremely smart people being very stupid. Algorithms to only show you things you're interested in start to create self-reinforcing bubbles where your views aren't challenged, the attention economy that only displays the most like posted encourages extreme partisan opinions, because the moderates get ignored while people angrily argue over the most extreme opinions, making it seem like everyone on the other side is the most intense flavour of asshole while forcing you towards the extremists on your side.

It's a system created without understanding of its implications, and it's creating a divided, partisan world where we're less and less able to talk to and understand each other because we are in a very real sense living in separate, segregated worlds where all we see of the other 'side' are the worst examples.

In the future, we'll look back on this as a social fucking disaster.

>wheredoyouthinkyouare.png

I'm pretty sure that as long as you have to paint and assemble miniatures, tabletop wargames will always be ignored by the general public.

>Games now seem more to be people drinking beers, cracking jokes, and wanting to see a simple game of dungeon crawl and smashing the face of the boss.
What do you mean "now"? That's the basic roots of the game, it's always been there.

...

...

>Games now seem more to be people drinking beers, cracking jokes, and wanting to see a simple game of dungeon crawl and smashing the face of the boss.

Are you seriously suggesting this is new? The only time D&D was seriously challenged was by prime oWOD in the 90s, and that had a certain goth, punk zeitgeist that it rode on.

Frankly, I think the game designers are holding back on us. The reason we buy something new is because we run out of things to discover in something old. So they always build that something old in a restricted way so that we'll buy new. Even when we try to homebrew, we rely on the same hardcoded widgets to make it work, and then we call it a "fantasy heartbreaker" and wonder why it sucks. If anyone had the time to fix this, it would be the people paid to create games. But it would put them all out of a job, so it doesn't get done. The result is nobody playing the system or game you want to, and half the threads on this board saying how System X is a steaming pile of garbage.

The lack of seriousness is the biggest issue for me. RPGs can be a great way to make actual lasting friendships with people. You learn a lot about someone by going on adventures with them, fantasy or no. How they role play, how they react to different situations. When people really care about the game these reactions can be very real and bring a certain closeness between players and gms at the table.

In most games I've been in these days, instead of role playing uncertainty and fear at the hell hounds charging at them, the players trample each other to say the funniest out of character one liner or movie reference.

To play a roleplaying game to it's fullest extent, people need to do it to do more than just be a cool adventure who kills stuff and gets loot.

>In most games I've been in these days, instead of role playing uncertainty and fear at the hell hounds charging at them, the players trample each other to say the funniest out of character one liner or movie reference.

I mean, it's been like that since when I started in the 90s. That's not really a new thing, new players are just like that.

As other anons have stated, usually a broader audience means worse overall quality. But i for once welcome the new attempts to get people interested.
That said i don't think this thing will last much longer. It's just a flux until the next fad kicks in

I wouldn't know I haven't played in 14 years now.

More people are buying more stuff, which means the things I like are getting more content, and more people are trying to make new systems that are out there and different, allowing for more options and innovations.

Worst-case, sure, there'll probably be casualization and there could be periods where bigger companies aren't putting out anything I'm interested in, but old books still exist and there'll always be people dedicated to a system they like and homebrewing shit for it.

>This is what panel 3+ latecomers actually believe

I remember my first game pretty well. It was right after 3.0 came out and my GM didn't want to convert completely, so it was a hybrid ADnD/3.0 game. I didn't have any idea for how to make a character, so he brought out a box of... character cards? I ended up making a weretiger dual wielding a fire sickle and ice sickle. It was a dragonlance-ish campaign setting, and my character was only in 2 fights. the first was against a bunch of draconians and my fire sickle got stuck inside of one of them when their death effects went off, losing it permanently. The second fight was against a black dragon - a fight we never finished.

t. stupid underage latecomer

Yea, if you look at the data, it's fucking terrifying how separated we've become.

It's started to bleed into real life as well, since so much centers on the internet anymore. People only really go to places that reinforce their beliefs anymore, and rarely experience challenges to their world view.

An unwillingness to discuss things like politics and the like with strangers has made this even worse too, because you are never simply exposed to people who don't agree with you anymore.

It's not even that you only see the worst of the other side. You just so rarely see anyone on the other side as an actual person anymore, they're just a set of opinions you disagree with.

And the concept that both sides often have good points is disappearing at an alarming rate. Anymore, people just figure they're right, and the other side is stupid/has some sort of terrible motive for being wrong. And thus the political actions of concession and agreement become analogous to turning traitor, because letting the other side pursue their objectives is just letting them win(and letting your side lose)

It's insane how in a world so full of knowledge at our fingertips, so much of our world is becoming extremists because of a lack of information.

i sure enjoy having my games lecture me about transgirders

>more fantastic indie games than ever
Indie games are just as AAA games. People just have a hard on for them for being underground or some stupid shit like that.

Oh no, they acknowledge trannies as being a thing. Japs have been doing that shit for years.

Yes, more people in the hobby means more money going to the creators, indie creators being more likley to be founded and more potential people to play with. The only downside is that
a. Systems will probobly be simpler and more casual. This dose not hurt me because i allredy mostly play older editions of systems because i dont really have the money to keep up
b. more casual players, dose not hurt me because i allredy have a team
c. more sperg out on Veeky Forums.

>It's insane how in a world so full of knowledge at our fingertips, so much of our world is becoming extremists because of a lack of information.

It's not to do with lack of knowledge, it's because we are spamed with too much information and we have no real way to tell which is true and which is not. It's something i saw among my political circles, the moment where every single thing that is posted has to be fact checked and the fact have to be cross checked you just give up at a certain point and let the bullshit consume you. I was once talking with a guy about the validity of GMOs and their threat to the denouement (im pro GMO), and even though im from a biological field, more over specialize in a ecological field after some time i had trouble with telling which of his arguments are scientifically backed up and which was bullshit, because i was spamed by links and youtube videos and "scientific articles" that i couldn't even find on google scholar. The end result was that even though i knew he had no valid data, i had no way to prove it because there was just so much of it with a whole system created to "back it up"

Against facts, there are no arguments

This isn't rocket science, it's simply gentrification. But when you apply it to hobbies, we have a surprise twist ending. Can you guess what it is?

t. faggot without facts or brains

>has an unironic REEE NORMIES mentality
>posts anime
I wish this wasn't like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You're obviously a video game transplant, or something similar. You didn't get into tabletop because you love the intricacies of the hobby vice another; you came here because it was vaguely related to other things you had an interest in. You quickly adopted the lifestyle, because you probably thought something like, "Man, this is really great!" when you experienced your first few handful of games or narratives that were carefully led by experienced people, or you're looking back on your first experiences with friends with fondness and nostalgia.

Let me give you a history lesson; before the year 2000, table top gaming was something that completely NORMAL people did. We had friends, spouses, and children; we worked jobs all across the spectrum from service industry to STEM fields to being actors and CEO's. We played at home on our hand-crafted gaming tables, at local game shops and libraries, and even in bars. We invented the entire idea of table top gaming because we loved escaping into our dreams, and then slapped simulationist rules on top of it because we appreciated reality. We were perfectly normal people, back when society still recognized that being a bit of a nerd meant you could still be a normal human being.

It wasn't until the late 2000's and the adoption of this victim complex by internet subculture that table top became some haven for anti-social NEET other-thans. It wasn't until being a nerd became a fashion trend associated with vapid children that suddenly we had to have this boundary between "us" and "them" that couldn't be crossed, or we were the wrong kind of "nerd".

I cannot stress to you enough that the people like you who insist that this hobby is somehow reduced by more people enjoying it are exactly everything that is wrong with what you cocksuckers have degraded it into.

That's probably not it, considering normalfag is a 4chanism that was transformed from "normals" as used by Japanese otaku. If anything, "normies" is a bit more honest to the entire idea. Also, there was that meme video with a guy literally screeching, "GET OUT FUCKING NORMIEEES REEEEEEE," that kind of started the whole thing.

It's a meme on a meme on a meme. I'm pretty sure if we managed to abstract it another level deeper into abstraction, we'll find Satan.

>c. more sperg out on Veeky Forums.

Which is like sperging in a sea of sperg.

yes but it's like a small amount of shit in a pool of very clean water. You dont need a lot of it to make it a shitty pool

Because it sounds better, put the tinfoil away boys.

You guys can't be for real.

Videogames are complete garbage with no flavour at all.

Stop just playing AAA shit, user. There are good games out there no matter what niche you enjoy, you just need to accept that your tastes are a niche market and that isn't a bad thing.

My first game of DnD was a little bit overpowered in scope, really more about mythical heroes than the normal adventuring heroes. It had some silly things, but it was no more silly than the usual fantasy things like Owlbears. The campaign was on a whole serious, and while I can't help but cringe when I look back at all the special snowflake characters and very clear wish-fulfillment adventures, I still remember it as a positive experience.

And at no point did we ever spout fucking memes for an entire session and claim people were no fun for wanting to have a serious game.

Not really. I still play with the same people I've played with for years and years. We sometimes add new people, but those people are always experienced role-players good enough to make free-form not shit. I've never noticed a huge difference between the younger players (we're talking late teens here, not kids) and the older ones (Who run the gamut from 30 to 50). All of them have one thing in common: They've been role-playing for a huge amount of time before coming into tabletop games, so I can only surmise that the problem isn't normies, it's people who are new to role-playing in general.

It's sorta like holding it in when you have to take a piss. You've been waiting so god damn long that when you do, it comes out like you just turned on a hose. All that built up and stifled creativity gets vomited out your chimney stack like a truck at a four-alarm fire. It comes out at random, and the sheer fun of it is what gets the new guys to constantly be shit, because they're only in it to just empty the bladder of imagination. As they come more into contact with less stupid, cringy shit, have time to adjust and realize how dumb all that was, the stream trickles off and they learn how to role-play like someone who isn't retarded.

TL;DR: I don't blame normies, I blame people who got handed what looks like an imagination oasis in the middle of a desert, and they think it's a good idea to try and drink the whole thing.

>trying to please too many people at once makes for a shallow game
>I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU HATE NORMIES

user, are you having a stroke?

Current, mulitplayer focused mainstream games are like that. PUBG inspired battle royals with cheese will be the next plague on the medium just like the DayZ clones that inspired them.
However, there are still amazing games that come out from time to time, and more over, just because some new games are trash doesn't invalidate the old ones you like.

>OP literally states it isn't a problem and only feels some charm has been lost
>REEE NORMIES, VIDEO GAMEFAG, STRAWMANS, BLOG

Are you okay user? Did you let it all out? I think you're sperging out on the wrong person.

I like how most of the people raging and sperging out in this thread are the people ironically screaming at other people for using an anime pic in a message forum that was designed for weebs in the first place, and telling people to stop being elitist about normies when most replies have been "It kinda sucks yeah but I have my own group."

Seriously how triggered and ironic can you guys get? Grow up.

Even the AAA stuff has had quite a few good options recently. It's got it's usual delude of shit but that's nothing new.

Emphasis on old. Every good game is either
A) Fucking old
B) Emulating something that's fucking old
What has the modern video game world given us? Mother fucking walking simulators. Face the music, in the CURRENT YEARS popularization is akin to death. Movies? After china entered the picture (You can see the exact movie it happened, it was Terminator) movies slowly went to the absolute dredge we have today.
Music, genres began turning from just "different from one another" to "actually worse". I think I'd actually rather listen to polish industrial noise.
Comics, no comment, only pic related.
Games, good games either don't sell, depend entirely on the japanese market, or on the PC market. Madden 242 sells like hotcakes.
TV, Star Trek? More like, Star TRASH, put My Dwarf Mistress on or whatever the fuck TLC puts out these days.
Do try to snake your way around this. Time and time again, it's happened, and you lot refuse to accept it, pretend it didn't happen, or laughably, pretend it's a good thing.

...

Also this

Games will die due to overcasualization, at least in my eyes. But TT is thankfully a complex enough medium that the LCD can't fully seep their way into ruin other games. D&D is lost so who cares, but ultimately it comes down to my group which isn't a batch of normies.

If it makes nerds salty I'm good for it, grow up you grubby cunts.

mine actually. I was very lucky. Everyone was into it and they did a great job setting the roleplaying tone and made me feel welcome and unembarrassed, but then our usual DM died and the group never got back together.

Mechanics for a lot of video games became significantly simpler to appeal to the lowest common denominator. We've gotten to a point where a game that is marginally difficult is seen as an unnecessary burden that keeps players from seeing all the content it has to offer, see Cuphead and non-troversy it caused because an idiot decided his lack of compentency at games is the games fault.

Now we've got EA's Battlefront 2, but with significantly less depth to it's gameplay than a game from 2005 had with a smaller budget and simpler graphics.

I think that ultimately, more people playing game is a good thing. Means more people are invested, spending money on it and fueling gamestores. Duh there’s going to be an influx of normies, but we were all new to tabletop at some point. We should welcome people who really want to play with open arms because we can share something we really love with them and make it grow and that’s awesome. Additionally you can help by training out certain behaviors and bringing up the next generation.

The only thing I haves real concern about it
, intersectionalism is a cancer and will break down the hobby over time, like it does with everything else. I’ve run five relatively long campaigns in the last two years and have had to remove three people for that reason, not just the progressive stereotypes but /pol/ rejects too. Had one of each in a game of Degenesis at one point, despite the first page of the book telling them that it’s not a race war game, they both thought it was with different kinds of enthusiasm.

Mike Mearls' definition of "gatekeeping" was having lore and crunch, which apparently disadvantages women. I personally find that a lot worse than whatever he's complaining about

If tabletop games don't get more popular, and find newer, younger, audiences, then the industry will slowly but surely die out.

It is good for the continued survival of the niche that it becomes more popular.