I really like my RPG Planets. I currently have two of them: Old School RPG Planet and Indie RPG Planet, and the all-in-one combo, RPG Planet. Recently, I was asked about other systems via email. What about the 5E? Cypher System, Savage Worlds, all the others?
Previously I said:
What’s independent and indie in this context? As all RPG companies are very small, one could argue that the term is meaningless. I can just say what I was thinking of: things like Powered by the Apocalypse, Mountain Witch, Mouse Guard, Fate, Lady Blackbird and the like. But really, where do we draw the line? I have no idea. Is D&D 5E already Old School? Is Shadowrun small enough to be indie? Is Pathfinder the only one that’s mainstream? I truly don’t know and hope that people will self-sort and as if by magic we will all be happy.
What are our alternatives: story games, narrative games? For me, indie is what started at The Forge, right at the time when print-on-demand via Lulubecame viable, when selling PDFs via RPG Now became viable, when more people started looking for alternatives to the d20 system.
Conversely, I like to think that starting with 6 abilities to define a character, saving throws to avoid mishaps, hit points, to-hit rolls using a d20, damage rolls using smaller dice, xp for gold and levels is 100% OSR. There are things that are close in execution, or close in spirit, or just define themselves to be close (thinking of Into the Odd). So that’s the OSR.
I’m still hoping that Savage Worlds and Cypher System are essentially Indie because what ties them to Shadowrun, Savage Worlds, World of Darkness, Pathfinder and the like? I have no clue.
So I’m falling back to the idea that they must be “Indie” and 5E players ... I don’t know. Are they really in a category of their own? Should I just add them to the “unlabelled” RPG Planet? Should I add a “mainstream” Planet?
How would you do it?
(I’ll post the results of that email conversation, should find a way!)
#RPG #Blogs #Blogosphere
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I try and look for cool ideas on blogs regardless of what the actual game is. So for me, I would love a “planet” with just everything thrown in. It is easy enough to skip over something that isn’t interesting to me.
– Froth 2019-03-12 16:09 UTC