how were the old days of ttrpgs? I mean pre-2000, was it more common to encounter a wide variety of games or was it also dominated by 1 or 2 products?

>>95975803 (OP)
Hate to break it to you OP but I don't think there has been a single moment in ttrpg history where it wasn't totally dominated by Dungeons & Dragons. The phases of D&D 'unpopularity' are more a question of whether the Cthulhu, Vampire and cyberpunk wing of the hobby all together made up 10% of tables or 40% of tables.

>>95975827
>there has been a single moment in ttrpg history where it wasn't totally dominated by Dungeons & Dragons
ewwww, so non-d&d have always been weirdos among weirdos?

It was just D&D until the 90s, then it was D&D and Vampire the Masquerade, then it was just D&D again when Vampire the Masquerade imploded in the early 2000s, then it was D&D and Pathfinder in the early 2010s, and then it was just D&D again.

>>95975827
No, the 90s nadir had Vampire: the Masquerade be a pretty serious competitor on literally every metric. WotC pulling the D&D brand out of that mess was no small miracle, cursing storygamers with crunch autists forevermore.

>>95975803 (OP)
I liked all the magazines that were made to support the games industry. Dragon, Imagine, White Dwarf (before GW) TAS, Judges Guild, etc, as well as the hundreds of fan made magazines, leaflets and booklets. Most were not tied to a particular IP and did articles of almost anything in their chosen areas - articles, adverts, cartoons, stories, houserules, discussions, etc. It was a good time before the internet and the brutal IP attack lawyers.

>>95975803 (OP)
Pre-2000's D&D was still the big dog. However, smaller games were a thing. You had games like Traveller, Vampire the Masquerade, and more however they basically the local soda of a shop and all. Also since it wasn't mainstream the people who play TTRPGs were often making their own homebrews and all and it wasn't like everyone was playing just the rules as written.

>>95975803 (OP)
You had more local systems.
I remember in Germany D&D used to be laughed at, until influencer marketing hit.

>>95976560
>You had more local systems
Feels like region still makes a big difference. I only graduated from uni in Aus 6 years ago and 5e made up well below 50% of the games people were running in the uni club.

>>95975803 (OP)
In the 70s it was only really D&D
In the 80s you finally started to get truly different RPGs but they could never pull D&D numbers
In the 90s D&D was still ruling the roost but a few systems were starting to shake things up just a bit (mostly Vampire the Masquerade and Call of Cthulhu)
In the 00s D&D truly, 100% cemented it's grasp on the TTRPG community. Even when 4e was only very very very briefly overtaken by Pathfinder (and due to WotC cutting all support for it) D&D still was the elephant in the room
It's just always been a D&D world, anon, but there have always been plenty of systems out there to try out, the only difficulty being if you ever hear of them and/or getting your group to play them
For all the hate online play gets, it's the only way I feel most systems even get played anymore. Like, I live in a pretty decent sized city and 90% of the games are D&D, then it's Pathfinder, then it's Vampire the Masquerade LARP, and only maybe 1% is any other system. Online, though, I get to play Pendragon, Battle Century G, Star Trek Adventures, The One Ring, Call of Cthulhu, Prowlers & Paragons, and more

>>95975830
Pretty much. There have always been other games since D&D, but none came close to touching it.
When D&D stopped being kinda popular among nerds they didn't even collectively jump ship to something else and the hobby just festered.
The closest something came to being popular was World of Darkness with the Storyteller system being viewed as revolutionary. The biggest downside to that was the fan base. Holy shit, the fan base for WoD back in the day was something you had to witness for yourself to believe.

It wasn't until Pathfinder that any other game got big enough to be considered a viable option (as in enough people played it you could reliably find a group).

What was nerd culture like before D&D and table top roleplaying games as we know them came along? Was it just war gamers and fantasy and science fiction book clubs talking about Conan, Lord of the Rings, and H,P Lovecraft all the time?

>>95977009
A big focus on history and mythology.

>>95977157
Some did that.
Some focused on horror, sci-fi, comic books, etc.
Nerds have been nerds about the same shit just spiced different forever.

>>95976560
>I remember in Germany D&D used to be laughed at
What were the mainstays in Germany at the time? I know of DSA, but what else?

>>95977009
The pulp fiction writing scene in the mid-20th century was livelier and better than it is now. Publishing houses are run by tasteless hags who only publish their friends and light smut for women, and no-one has the attention span to read anything better anyway. A few decades back, you still had beautiful covers on cheap brown paperbacks with surprisingly gripping fantasy guts inside. There would have been plenty of fresh new fantasy for nerds to discuss, and they had the time and headspace to actually read it, and write letters about it to one another. Magazines and comics...

I neve used to see people raving about d&d until some 7-8 years ago when people started importing culture wholesale from the us because of social media...it was always a game but only recently became the only game some people played

>>95977354
DSA, Shadowrun and Midgard to some degree.
The indi scene was also alot more lively.
Honorable mention: traveller