What would a modern day list of rpg related news groups look like? I
think it would be fair to simply stick with frp as a general
hierarchy, but there are some groups I think would make sense to add
in 2023. How about:
rec.games.frp.indie
rec.games.frp.osr
rec.games.frp.storygames
rec.games.frp.diy
rec.games.frp.sci-fi
Given the overall low traffic on usenet, these topics could of course
all go into rec.games.frp.misc for now. But who knows ...
3. The general term for the genre seems to have been "fantasy
role-playing", thus frp. I sort of like the expression, since it
hints at the theatre of the mind aspect of the game. Even if you
play a cyberpunk game it all happens in our fantasy, after all.
If those hierarchies would be created today, they would of course
be called re.games.rpg.*
On 24 Jun 2023 at 18:01:35 AEST, "Laurens Kils-Huetten" <lkh@sdf-eu.org> wrote:
3. The general term for the genre seems to have been "fantasy
role-playing", thus frp. I sort of like the expression, since it
hints at the theatre of the mind aspect of the game. Even if you play
a cyberpunk game it all happens in our fantasy, after all. If those
hierarchies would be created today, they would of course be called
re.games.rpg.*
Thanks, I was wondering why it was frp. I couldn't work out why those initials.
All good points on missing modern groups. I wonder if osr would take off
as it probably contains a lot of grognards that know the old ways.
The other groups developed from Usenet voting, at one point GURPS was very popular and generating a lot of very specific traffic about point-builds, minmax, etc. so a vote was held and creating a new group in the hierarchy
was approved. Similarly, most of the other groups grew out of the .misc group via audience voting.
With the rise of the web, and the segregation of topics out to commercial hosts, traffic fell over time (quicker than many of us expected).
True that. I'd love to know about any pockets of discussion still
happening on Usenet - RPG-related especially.
Back in the heyday, the D&D topic was threatening to shutdown the whole newsgroup, the single rec.games.FRP newsgroup was in jeopardy of getting
cut everywhere just due to sheer volume, often more than 50% of the whole
of Usenet including binaries.
I've started posting here cause F(&^^*#K reddit and their garbage.
On 7/18/2023 9:15 AM, Alex Schroeder wrote:
cwatters <coyt.watters@gmail.com> writes:
Sometimes I feel that role-playing games really drive a lot of the
newer
text media out there. My impression at the end of Google+ was that it
was mostly role-playing games, too. What an interesting niche. :)
A lot of stuff seemed to gain traction mostly with roleplayers. The
whole Cthulhu thing was mostly a roleplaying thing for the longest
time, then all of a sudden it went mainstream (to the point that
there's an anime that references Call of Cthulhu rules in it's theme
song).
I think for a long time a lot of creators have been rpg geeks, and now
it slowly seepsinto the mainstream.
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