The Ages of RPG’s: The Silver Age Part II

 I have received some feed back on my estimation of when the Silver Age occurred. There are those who feel the 1990′s were not the Silver Age and if not a dark age, then definitely a time of shadows. The 1990′s were marked most heavily by the decline of Dungeons & Dragons and TSR generally being in self destruct mode. While there were other RPG’s that were popular, by in large the 1990′s were bereft of innovation and nothing of significance occurred. While I see this point of view, I am not certain I agree with it. There a lot of action going on in the RPG hobby, with TSR and D&D on the decline, it opened the market to other possibilities and allowed Vampire: The Masquerade to out sell D&D for a short time. The idea the 1990′s were completely without merit is only valid if you make the assumption that RPG’s and D&D are hard linked together and I am not convinced this is the truth. You may be able to convince me the Silver Age did not start until 2000 when D&D3E was released, I refuse to acknowledge that the 1990′s were a cultural wasteland for our hobby.

I am actually hoping the decline of D&D in the last couple of years sparks a new era similar to the 1990′s where D&D isn’t dominate and other game systems are allowed their time in spot light. As I have said in previous posts, I can easily see a future where D&D is nothing more than a gateway game published as some sort of evergreen game similar to Monopoly. In this future, D&D still extremely popular and is the game most people start with, but is not the best selling game or even the most popular game. In this near future we may see Pathfinder become the front runner, but replaced within a few years by GURPS 5th edition or something entirely new. This would not be a bad thing at all.