Does anyone else agree RPGs should move into the modern era?

[Bloodstain]

I'd love to see Bethesda move the Elder Scrolls to a circa 2020 setting one day, using their experience with Fallout 3 to give us guns, cars AND magic.

Wait...The Elder Scrolls? Set in modern day? What is this heresy?!
Regarding what you said about the music: Umm...I will only speak for TES now, and both Morrowind and Oblivion had music that was more classical than anything else, with string instruments and a choir, everything composed by Jeremy Soule.

I really would enjoy a modern day RPG...but I wouldn't try to enforce a rule about that, especially since there are absolutely great RPGs with a medieval setting.
Besides, there already are several RPGs set in modern time, you just have to look out for them.

 

[kael013]

Mass Effect, also, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
You are WAY behind the times.

Technically, Star Wars was set "In a time long, long ago" so that would hardly be modern.

OT: I don't think so. I prefer it to be either in the distant past or the distant future. I've kind of gotten used to the present just by living in it. Besides, there already are a few modern RPGs that you seem to be forgetting...

Yeah, I know, but to me it sounded like the OP just wanted a non-medieval RPG so I thought I'd mention all the ones I knew.

 

[Darkhill]

I never said half the stuff you guys have put in my mouth. Also, Mass Effect, Fallout, etc- great games, but they're sci-fi, not contempary. I knew there were some games out there that match my description, I just haven't found them yet. I was just having a gripe that there's too many Tolkeinian games being made, and the formula should be mixed up.

 

[Poopster]

Killing humongous dragons or puny imps in a forest is more fun than killing some musclebound grunt with guns in a skyscraper!

 

[Darkhill]

To RAK, thanks but I've never heard of GURPS. To poopster, you're thinking about all too common unimaginative tropes in current games. We have still have forests and villages and catacombs today, and I never said you couldn't have dragons and imps (I'm not here to lay out rules). You can have dragons and imps, and a rocket launcher to open them up with like meaty pinatas.

Also, ever read any survivalist books by Ragnar Benson? The man is certainly crazy, but his books illuminate just how muich fun you can have raising hell in your own backyard. He said an interesting thing when he wrote "On a modern battlefield, sniper targets don't neccisarily have to be human." He was talking about destroying munitions dumps, blinding tanks by taking out sighting devices, detonating claymores, etc. Then there's those pesky Hellfire missle wielding UAVs and all manner of 21st century warfare to evade...

 

[Daedalus1942]

It's my humble assertion that modern RPGs would benefit in much the same way as Call of Duty did by going over to more contempary settings. JRPGs really started doing this after FFVII, mixing sci-fi elements in alongside the fantasy, though I'm yet to see something truly contempary besides Earthbound (though that game wasn't exactly realistic). I'd like to see the western mature RPGs ditch the middle ages in favour of the modern mega societies of today, edgy stories more inspired by films like Pulp Fiction (or anything Tarantino really) or No Country for Old Men.

I'd love to see Bethesda move the Elder Scrolls to a circa 2020 setting one day, using their experience with Fallout 3 to give us guns, cars AND magic. My main problem with the middle ages is the godawful flute and string music. And basically all the arts and aesthetics sucked before the renaissance revitalized European societies. Really, I'd be happy with a simple 'renaissance onward only' rule.

Secret of Evermore was set in present day, as was Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines. there are a few, but there's not many.
-Tabs<3-

 

[Daedalus1942]

I'd love to see something like Hellgate London (but you know...good) where a contemporary setting is twisted. I was watching that Torchwood episode with the fairies and honestly I can see that being a killer setting. Milton Keynes shopping centre or the middle of Oxford overrun with demons would be incredible.

If you want something like Hellgate London with decent online multiplayer, try Global Agenda. It's no longer pay to play and it's pretty awesome. PvP is CRAZY fun.
-Tabs<3-

 

[Withall]

I'd actually also like a contemporary RPG, with emphasis on keeping the peace. Alpha Protocol -did- try, but fell short. I'm a bit tired of most RPGs (keyword -most-) are based on the notion "the is in danger- you (and almost always, in the end only you) need to make something about it!".

To make a wish-list for any RPG developers out there who might be listening:

- Mundane-ish setting (contemporary . Gotta work with what you know, after all)

- Realistic movement and limitation (less infinite le parkour ability and actually bodily needs, to mention two things)

- Believable characters (can't give any examples)

As I'm writing this, I realize that Bioware have repeatedly proven themselves able to break the moulds and tropes of most RPGs, but we need move a bit further.

I'd actually be content with a game about actual police-work or the like in a Bioware-RPG. Not that it'd sell, but it'd be interesting to see how they'd make that game.

 

[Netrigan]

I think an RPG needs a great or iconic visual hook and an excuse to why everyone seems to have super powers.

Fantasy envirnments are easy fodder because of magic, but no reason why we haven't seen steampunk with Or without a mystical bent. Victorian fiction and Western folklore are both iconic setting. Something like Wild Wild West could make a great RPG. Fallout has proved retro-futurism works marrying iconic 50s imagry with radioactive mutants. Deus Ex took a more Blade Runner approach with nanobots taking the place of magic. Something like The Matrix would work perfectly, as would super-hero fiction.

But the whole D&D/Arthurian/Tolkein setting is the most familar and has an established fanbase, so there's never going to be a shortage of that.

 

[CharrHearted]

I hope they don't move into the modern era. I like my rpgs to have a mix of mythical races like dragons and beast races, not to mention the roles you could play. If an rpg was set into the modern era what kind of classes could there be apart from using a GUN? I'm not saying they shouldn't abandon the idea all together but A mix of both would be joyful.

 

[Pyroguekenesis]

2 words - Persona Series.

 

[Zhukov]

It could cerainly work.

Depends on exactly what you mean by RPG.

 

[Thedayrecker]

I think so. I am getting tired of elves and knights.

Bioware makes some pretty good future RPGs, but they also have dragon age, and while it's still fun, it's like Tolkien's wet dream.

 

[Spectrum_Prez]

Can't we see some Victorian era? Some Industrial Age? Some Modern Era 1900s style?

You know what I would really really really love? An RPG or a GTA-style exploring/adventure game set in Vienna in the year 1900. It's really a chunk of history that high school classes usually overlook and nobody ever remembers, but I think it would be really cool. It was the center of a multi-cultural empire constantly on the brink of implosion. The potential for awesome factional intrigues is all there already, and I'm sure someone could come up with a suitably sinister main plot. An attempt to start off WW1 a decade and a half early? Instead of being a member of a persecuted Elven minority, you could be Serbian, lol.

 

[meowchef]

Alpha Protocol was awesome. More spy RPGs.

 

[DanielBrown]

Bioshock is somewhat modern?
As for myself, I love the medieval setting while I care very little for sci-fi. I wish they'd make more RPGs that take place during the dark ages!

 

[Netrigan]

Bioshock is somewhat modern?
As for myself, I love the medieval setting while I care very little for sci-fi. I wish they'd make more RPGs that take place during the dark ages!

Retro-futurism. We'll probably be seeing a lot more of it given the success of Bioshock and Fallout. The hat era has a great iconic look (be it Indiana Jones or Mad Men) and all you need to do is figure out a "scientific" reason for monsters and magic.

 

[Jake the Snake]

Dude, get your FPS loving dumb ass out of here. I happen to love Fantasy, it happens to be one of my favorite genres of fiction. And you want all of them just to disappear for what? This stupid, boring modern world? I'm sorry, but if I wanted to play a game about real life, I'd just go out and do something. You know. In the real world. You think the final fantasy games are good? I think they've gotten less interesting as they've incorporated more technology, as the characters become less and less memorable. And there are modern RPGs, there's this thing called Mass Effect. It's pretty damn good.

Ugh, sorry for the wall of text, it's just, how can you be so ignorant and naive? Fantasy is what makes the RPG genre the RPG genre. Stop whining. Get over it. Go reserve Dragon Age 2.

 

[GamemasterAnthony]

Actually, if you want a scientific reason behind the existance of magic, we might benefit from a plotline similar to what they are doing for the upcoming Thor movie...where they basically treat magic and technology as if they are one and the same. Or, instead of magic, how about psionics...but NOT in the goofy sense of Earthbound? When I was working with my fanfiction, I basically treated psionics as if they were a way to use the bioelectric energy already in the human body in a new way using the brain as a transmitter of sorts.

Whatever the case, even if we do venture into a more modern era RPG, it does have to feel like an RPG...as if we are actually playing a role not our own. Also...it will have to have more emphasis on the story rather than grinding. Even in D&D, we do NOT focus on faffing about fighting random monsters for experience and loot...that would have bored the phrack out of us. If an RPG can stand on it's own focusing on the story with the occasional fight peppering it WITHOUT the need to grind in order to succeed in said fights, it will succeed tremendously.

 

[Adamc-mh]

We use RPG's to escape your life and I doubt many people want to "escape" to modern times, much rather be a knight or a mage in medieval times fighting off goblins and dragons.