Do We Need New Games?

I get the feeling all the games I will ever play have already been written.

I have skipped the last few Kickstarter launches I was interested in and focused on what I already have.

I am happier for it.

I gave up on 5E, and it turned into the "junk videogame console" at its end of life. Crowdfunding projects were coming one after the other, promising to make an admittedly narrowly focused "power fantasy" game do things it could not handle. Books tried to turn it into gothic horror, pulp fantasy, science fiction, low fantasy, and so many other genres - and almost all of them succeeded for 3-4 levels or failed entirely.

The best thing that came out of 5E was Shadowdark. This is a game I dismissed as too simple for my time, but every time I pick it up, I play with others instantly. I don't need to "sell" people on a thousand-page investment, Wizards' website, understanding dozens of class options, endlessly sifting through books to get started, dealing with errata, or anything else.

We can just play right now, instantly.

One book and done.

My only other fantasy game is Dungeon Crawl Classics, but that is more for ideas and inspiration. Like Shadowdark, it is a self-contained, 10-level, one-and-done book experience. This is a harder sell for people in my gaming groups, but it is still imaginative and fun, and when I play it, I feel my mind expanding with all the adventures and possibilities.

Again, one book and done.

And 5E is dead for me since it got too fat and bloated to survive. Am I realistically going to be able to sell a dozen people I barely know on an alternate version of 5E, such as ToV or Level Up, complete with that getting started investment and "trust they will stick around," or am I going to be happier with a one-book game that players can just download a free starter set for, and be able to play with that to the highest level if one person has the complete book?

While Shadowdark doesn't have "all the options," give me five minutes, and I can modify the game to have whatever I want. There are excellent mods for this game, "like Skyrim" or "like Dark Sun," and more, including one-book games, are coming.

As long as the game does not contain AI content, I am done with the "Shadowdark plus AI" category for good and don't even bother releasing the game. AI is corporate censorship, the loss of real-world skills, the dumbing down of society, and the control of creative works by a few billionaires and their companies' terms of service. If you use AI art, you put artists out of jobs, hurting the entire hobby with a loss of talent. If AI were around in the 1970s, I doubt D&D would have been written or illustrated how it was.

Pre-AI games are treasures and reflect real human imagination and the human spirit.

These are my keeper games. If I want anything more complicated, I have GURPS for that. GURPS is a putty that can "fill the urge" for many genres, and I don't need to be out shopping for games that do a narrow genre that GURPS can honestly already do efficiently.

The last Kickstarter campaign I participated in was Tales of Argosa since this is Low Fantasy Gaming's 2.0 release, a game I liked. The game is random and table-heavy, so as a gaming resource, this looks interesting. However, my interest in other Kickstarter campaigns, especially 5E ones, has fallen. this one has the potential to be on the level of a Dragonbane for me, but we shall see.

Science fiction gaming is challenging because companies try to sell you on "their ideas" of what science fiction is rather than empower your ideas. The only game I have seen that breaks this mold is Stars Without Number. This is the game that replaces Traveller, at least for me. The game is whatever you want it to be, from Star Wars to Star Trek to Star Frontiers. This can do Battlestar Galactica, Flash Gordon, or Buck Rogers. It could be Starfinder, Battletech, or even Traveller. It could be a little of everything, and it captures that classic Space Opera style of not telling you what the galaxy is but showing you how you could do it and giving you a toolbox to build with.

One book and done.

Stars Without Number is sort of the "Shadowdark for sci-fi," but since the genre is so vast, what a game needs to do also needs that width of genre coverage. The rules are a single page, and everything else is an option.

To be a game I am interested in, it has a far higher bar to cross today.

Everything else is being boxed and put in the garage to sell.