Thursday, October 22, 2015

Are Tabletop RPGs Dying?

My experience lately is that it is becoming more and more difficult to find people who want to tabletop roleplay, especially young people, aka teenagers. All the teens I know, and most twenty-somethings, want to be anti-social and sit in front of video games all day. Now, I'm not knocking video games, I enjoy a few, but to me they were always something to do when you didn't have anything else to do.
I used to have no problem finding players, but now I can't seem to find a handful who are willing to play a campaign for longer than a month, or two. The local gaming store is of no help, as they are only interested in people playing the most recent edition of games, or card floppers (aka magic ccg players). I understand why game stores don't want people playing an older edition of a game they do not currently sell, but I can't afford to buy new books for all my rpgs every few years. Even so, if I see a tabletop game being run at a game store, it doesn't last long anyway.
All the players I find are older men and women, in their thirties or later. When that final generation purchases their last book, will that be it for tabletop rpgs? Or are attention spans so short that people cannot play a game a few times a month, for longer than two months?