Wednesday, July 20, 2016

From Renaissance to Resurgence


I'm sure you've seen them...

Articles like this talking about celebrities playing fantasy roleplaying games, watching people play on youtube, listening to gamers talk about multi-classing or whatever on podcasts, the popularity of D&D's 5th edition, a new D&D movie in the works, $200,000+ Kickstarter for Mutant Crawl Classics, how nerd/geek/dork stuff is actually cool (again), and there's even a Trump D&D twitter account.

[Update] I just learned about something called HarmonQuest.  Check it out!

Ever so slowly, RPG content like Maze of the Blue Medusa * is (hopefully) breaking through the cultural barriers so that random people who might pick up Entertainment Weekly or Juxtapose might actually read about the RPG hobby and be tempted to try it out, and those watching Community, Silicon Valley, House of Lies, or Stranger Things can be exposed to tabletop gaming.

Lots of activity.  Things are happening.  But this is not the time to sit back and let people trickle down to our hobby.  Shouldn't we bring our beloved "elf games" to a future audience, grass-roots style - people who enjoy fantasy, science-fiction, and horror?  I say, strike while the iron is hot!

The renaissance worked, floodgates opened and everyone and their brother's wizard got into the indie spirit and did it themselves.  Now it's time to bask in the old school resurgence we find ourselves in, while simultaneously pushing that agenda forward until we achieve a third golden age!

How we bring roleplaying games to the masses is the question.  How do we make all of this awesomeness easier to find?  How do we make it so conspicuous that you can't help but be aware of roleplaying games?  For myself, I'm thinking of creating an outreach program of introductory seminars using Crimson Dragon Slayer 1.11.

Have an idea?  I'm open to suggestions and encourage all those reading this post to go ahead and suggest some things.

VS

*  In the past, I've insulted, ridiculed, and attacked +Zak Sabbath for a variety of petty reasons.  I privately apologized to him months ago, but not sure if I said anything publicly, so here goes.  Sorry for being a dick to you last year, Zak.  Congratulations on all your success!


No comments:

Post a Comment