The Post RPG Era

One of the concepts that Steve Jobs came up with is the "Post PC era." What he meant was the era of every household needing a huge desktop tower, monitor, desk, or even a laptop setup was over. People could get by with most all their computing needs with just a smartphone, and possibly a tablet. It's a great marketing concept and design theory, and bad if you sell desktop computers. There is always a need for desktop towers, and Steve likened them to trucks. We will never need to get rid of trucks, but not everyone needs one. Apparently, Steve Jobs never went to a Costco parking lot, but that is beside the point.

Stop, pivot, and let's consider the "Post RPG Era." In this era, most gamers don't need huge bookshelves filled with pen-and-paper roleplaying games. Most of their roleplaying needs are fulfilled by easier-to-use online games, such as World of Warcraft or Everquest 2. For the most part, you build your character, fight the monsters, and get the treasures online, with little need for a group and a ton of books. If you need to roleplay, there are roleplaying MMO servers catering to those needs, or online forums where people from around the world can play in forum games.

Granted, it's a thin analogy, but there is a truth here. Hardcore gamers need their tower computers with SLI video card setups, and hard core RPG fans need their pen-and-paper games with multiclass character builds. For the most part, the market has moved on, and people who never would roleplay with traditional games, are now roleplaying online with millions of others around the world. Many of them only see a tenuous connection to the old pen-and-paper games, and some see none at all.

What is the future then? If we look at Apple's success and interpolate, the pen-and-paper world needs a "Tablet RPG" with a sister "Smartphone RPG". Now I m not talking about an RPG programmed for a smartphone or a tablet, but pen-and-paper game light enough that everyone can understand and operate it without too much hassle. Now there are thousands of pen-and-paper games like that, but none that have hit that magic level of design and utility that most Apple products reach. I am not a mindless Apple fan, but I am a super fan of their engineering and design.

What would a Post RPG Era game look like? Play like? How would it do most of what we need from PnP RPGs, yet be simple enough for anyone to grasp and understand? Like the iPad, why would I need one? It is a challenge to think about, and to elevate the art of RPGs to the next level. As with smartphones, there were thousands of different styles before the iPhone came out, and now you only see one style. This isn't an argument against heterogeneity, this is a search for that next big thing.

More on these thoughts later....