The dilligent John Kim has a site called An Encyclopedia of Role-Playing Games, which tries to list every roleplaying game ever. A nice feature is that he’s got them organized by years. I once gave a talk on the history of roleplaying games, and noticed that both Champions and Call of Cthulhu came out in 1981, and both Amber Diceless and Vampire: The Masquerade came out in 1991. I think it’s really not a stretch to claim that eacvh of these pairs of games had a gigantic influence on roleplaying in the decade that followed it. I could (and probably should) elaborate.
Champions had one of the most influential mechanical engines in RPG history (aka The HERO System), in particular as far as character creation went: the idea of point-allocation design instead of random rolls; the concept of disadvantages as allowing and encouraging the players to involve their characters in the background story of the world, with relationships, allies, enemies, etc; the idea of effects-based design, and a broad base for player creativity in defining special abilities and powers.
Call of Cthulhu gave us cosmic horror and the sanity mechanic, investigative scenarios, detailed historical backgrounds, tension and, well, tentacles.
Amber and Vampire both bear the influence of these two earlier games, I think, although these have already been very strongly integrated into the DNA of the hobby that you might miss them. But they also cast a huge web of influence.
Amber gave us absurdly powerful characters, diceless roleplaying – i.e, shifting to the GM (and group consensus) as the principal resolution mechanic, a focus on obsessive character development (not that this is really new), and player homework to make your character more powerful.
Vampire really encouraged social interaction as the main point of adventures, extending the investigative scenario of CoC to the social scene. It also gave us the Splat model. And managed to somehow make gaming almost sexy. Which is a far more valuable contribution than tentacles and point-based character generation. But I digress.
A few words about how I gauge influence: each of these games had a strong fan following, each of them presented in well-developed form some very strong ideas, which influenced both other game designers and the roleplaying community. Each of them provoked, in its way, a critical dialogue, which engaged and inspired further creations. Just like countless “fantasy heartbreakers” are responses to D&D, so many games are responses to these four; whether it is because of the genre the game claimed – you can’t do superheroes without addressing Champions somehow, or horror without addressing Call of Cthulhu, and we wouldn’t be running conventions that are 90% freeform diceless if not for Amber.
So. To get to a point. I looked at the games from 2001. And unlike the other two examples, I can’t see any two games that are dominating this decade. Maybe the hobby has just morphed into something too fuzzy for me to make that observation, or maybe I’ve drifted too far from the excited core of gamers that are grokking this stuff. I see Dying Earth and Rune, two very innovative game designs from Robin Laws, but I think neither of them managed to spark real passion or form a community. I see, how ironic, Ron Edwards’ Sorcerer, which is a good example of a game that is reacting in it’s own way to both Vampire (dark urban fantasy, the Humanity mechanic – and the whole idea that’s tied into it of internal horror as the character grows more and more unhuman), and Amber (system does matter!). But the community formed by Edwards isn’t focused on this game, and the actual printed book isn’t really the best source text for any of his interesting ideas.
Maybe the big game is actually Exalted, which repackages fantasy roleplaying for a generation that grew up on anime rather than Tolkien, and which did provoke a big community reaction and extended interest. I admit that I haven’t read it, but I think it’s more a snapshot of the current state of the art than a real innovative game.
Maybe the whole idea of the games of the decade is silly, that 1981 and 1991 are just flukes. I can’t say I have enough data. The earliest game Kim lists is 1st edition Chainmail, the prototype of Dungeons and Dragons (1973). It came out in 1971.
PS: review of Cranium Rats coming up. Soon.