This could be the golden age of gaming Part #1 Material

Gaming is not as big as it was in the 80's where a lot of kids in fairly small generation dabbled in the hobby. It will probably never be that big again.

However this is truly the golden age of gaming, material wise. Here's why..

#1 More games now are in print at an affordable price than ever before.

#2 Almost every game that is out of print is easily acquired either in PDF or print.

#3 Contrary to what some pundits think, there are tons of quality games to suit every interest. They range from board game like games (like 4e) to retro clones to esoteric Indy games I don't even understand. There is so much abundance and a lot of it is good and cheap.

#4 There is a ton a free stuff. The Free RPG blog, so many of the companies on my front page and dozens of us in the OSR. Its like having an endless game store and access to every GM's Notebook out there. You could game a lifetime on just the free/legal stuff alone.

#5 Miniatures and Dice are easy to get. I remember when this was not the case. Now even with the sad decline of the FLGS getting dice or miniatures is easy.

So materially we have abundance so whats next, the social aspects. Thats where we as a community have work to do which we will discuss this in a later post.