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Halloween Jack posted:Do you have a link to that? If you really want to go dumpster-diving, Sage's first post is 364 in this thread. It's not as vitriolic as one might expect, but it's kind of off-putting just how confounded a lot of these people are about how to handle a game that doesn't run exactly like the ones they like, and how angry that makes some of them. Sage ends up answering a bunch of really dumb questions. My favorite part is somewhere around page 10 Pundit declares such-and-such idiot thought about Dungeon World's Storygame-iness, then later near the end of the thread posts some giant pretentious wall-of-text about DW's pretentiousness, but that having finally read the game he must admit that it is indeed a Scotsman. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Nov 21, 2013 |
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Nov 21, 2013 15:40
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Plague of Hats posted:Nope! Oh, man, I didn't make that connection between Tianxia and his work on that. Well. Relieved I didn't back it, then. For those that don't play Exalted I don't think it can be emphasized how sloppy and just plain bad the rules design in those books were even compared to some the rules facefaults in other books. Scroll of Heroes was more badly written, but I think Scroll of the Monk's bad rules had a bigger impact. This was because:
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Nov 21, 2013 15:52
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Jack's great crime against Exalted were the Merits & Flaws and half-blood rules in Scroll of Heroes. These were in many ways worse than the excrescence in Monk!
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Whatever his past sins were, Tianxia is probably the best implementation of a FATE powered game yet, even in what is more or less a beta stage. There are a few rough spots and balance issues, but not many.
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Nov 21, 2013 15:59
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Just because I think it might be unclear, I want to reiterate that I'm pretty sure Jack didn't have anything to do with Scroll of the Monk. It's not that I think he worked on both and Heroes was the worse of the two (though I do think the latter). I would agree that since it was also early in the line Monk's horribleness had a bigger impact than it otherwise might have had.Alien Rope Burn posted:FATE is a lot harder to break, mind, but it isn't exactly design chops I'd put any faith in. On the one hand, I can sympathize a lot with his situation. They needed a warm body with typing appendages and he had prior experience with Exalted, apparently. On the other hand, what he wrote was so bad. Just, oh my god. I wouldn't say Tianxia is, well, bad, but I can't really say that your lack of faith is ill-considered. There are more than a few false choices and traps in the martial arts techniques, where one technique is just a loving better version of another technique. It wasn't enough to collapse the game or anything, but if I had gone through getting the game I probably would've taken a hammer to the martial arts. Which I guess actually is pretty terrible for a game about kung fu so whatever. On the other hand, he appeared to be taking feedback on the issue. So maybe it got better?
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Nov 21, 2013 16:07
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Plague of Hats posted:Just because I think it might be unclear, I want to reiterate that I'm pretty sure Jack didn't have anything to do with Scroll of the Monk. Then it's entirely possible I got those two "Scroll of" books confused. I knew he'd written for one of them and his work was considered rather poor quality. I think Stephen Lea Sheppard actually copped a probation on RPGnet for talking some smack about Jack over it out in the open where everyone could see. As far as Tianxia goes, he and his design partner already beat out several other RPG Kickstarters by having an actual game 99% ready to go and available to backers. I agree that it's got its rough spots but its also got plenty of potential, so at this point it's down to how well they refine the beta before the official release. I can't say I feel like my $15 is going to waste there.
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Nov 21, 2013 16:16
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Kai Tave posted:Then it's entirely possible I got those two "Scroll of" books confused. I knew he'd written for one of them and his work was considered rather poor quality. I think Stephen Lea Sheppard actually copped a probation on RPGnet for talking some smack about Jack over it out in the open where everyone could see. Lea and Rand Brittain both sniped at Jack over Heroes when he rolled into a thread to brag about being a dependable "oh poo poo our book isn't done we need a last-minute guy to fill in and make everything great." He specifically mentioned being able to quickly get a handle on the material. Lea and Rand got probated for a week, and Rand resigned as moderator. quote:As far as Tianxia goes, he and his design partner already beat out several other RPG Kickstarters by having an actual game 99% ready to go and available to backers. I agree that it's got its rough spots but its also got plenty of potential, so at this point it's down to how well they refine the beta before the official release. I can't say I feel like my $15 is going to waste there. Yeah. My only really significant complaint was Skarka, and, welp. For those who don't give as much of a poo poo about that, it's a pretty great Kickstarter through-and-through. EDIT: The art in particular looks really great. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Nov 21, 2013 |
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Nov 21, 2013 16:21
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Plague of Hats posted:Just because I think it might be unclear, I want to reiterate that I'm pretty sure Jack didn't have anything to do with Scroll of the Monk. It's not that I think he worked on both and Heroes was the worse of the two (though I do think the latter). I would agree that since it was also early in the line Monk's horribleness had a bigger impact than it otherwise might have had. Oh. Yeah, I should've done my homework on that. Just forget what I was saying forever then, please.  Kai Tave posted:As far as Tianxia goes, he and his design partner already beat out several other RPG Kickstarters by having an actual game 99% ready to go and available to backers. I agree that it's got its rough spots but its also got plenty of potential, so at this point it's down to how well they refine the beta before the official release. I can't say I feel like my $15 is going to waste there. Yeah, it looks like a really impressive book, I just expect it'll probably have some rough edges, but I'll have to judge for myself when I can.
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Nov 21, 2013 16:34
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Plague of Hats posted:Lea and Rand Brittain both sniped at Jack over Heroes when he rolled into a thread to brag about being a dependable "oh poo poo our book isn't done we need a last-minute guy to fill in and make everything great." He specifically mentioned being able to quickly get a handle on the material. Lea and Rand got probated for a week, and Rand resigned as moderator. Nah, Rand resigned after completely blowing his stack at some other dude over something else I don't remember but he was really angry for some reason. It wasn't at Jack though. But this is now veering away from industry chat into "other internet messageboards chat" so I'm not gonna go dig any further into that here. Plague of Hats posted:Yeah. My only really significant complaint was Skarka, and, welp. For those who don't give as much of a poo poo about that, it's a pretty great Kickstarter through-and-through. I think it's pretty telling that the only thing they brought Skarka on for was a contribution to a fiction anthology tacked on as a stretch goal. They aren't actually letting him anywhere near the game itself despite his self-professed "wuxia expertise." I was actually sort of disappointed that one of the stretch goals wasn't a Western genre mashup supplement. Maybe once Tianxia comes out somebody should write that.
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Nov 21, 2013 16:37
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Kai Tave posted:Nah, Rand resigned after completely blowing his stack at some other dude over something else I don't remember but he was really angry for some reason. It wasn't at Jack though. But this is now veering away from industry chat into "other internet messageboards chat" so I'm not gonna go dig any further into that here. It was after DillyGreenBean Games announced that in the wake of a preschool shooting tragedy games they would be publishing only family-friendly games so as not to contribute to the culture of violence, or something. I expressed my feelings on this moralizing with exactly the kind of frankness and vitriol that RPGnet prefers its moderators to not have.
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Nov 21, 2013 19:00
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I eventually wound up pledging to TianXia because the possibility of John Rogers getting money out of the deal balanced out the possibility of others getting some from it. (Speaking of industry professionals I've always had pleasant interactions with. Though RPGs are more of a side thing for him, I guess.)
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Nov 21, 2013 20:28
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I'm reminded of the time GMS sniped at Fred Hicks over the FATE Core KS, implying that transparency was a scam.
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Nov 21, 2013 20:53
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I disagree that Adamant hasn't ever done anything notable or good. Most people around these parts don't value d20 that much but there are a lot of things Adamant did right: * Mars is real dang solid, to the point where I don't even like it that much because I don't like Edgar Rice Burroughs that much. * In the Thrilling Tales line Adamant actually put in period serial movies that were adapted. The number of pulp RPGs that don't seem to notice tons of solid source material was now in the public domain and could be freely distributed and adapted is amazing. Adamant also used advice from period pulp writers to structure their GM advice. This is much better/more interesting/unique than most games which primarily reference neo-pulp nostalgia (Indiana Jones, The Mummy.) * Imperial Age was pretty decent but had a cool True20 adaptation, which was one of the first/best historical fantasy things going on into True20. Also the India sourcebook was very interesting. * The magazine format for Amazing Triple Action was pretty cool, I don't think anybody wanted to buy superhero RPG supplements that were more like comic length than "complete guide to the X-Men" length though. * Adamant tried "app pricing" for its supplements for a while, trying to see if it was viable to just sell virtually all supplements for $2.99 or under, and shared the results with others. (It didn't work that well.) * Adamant and Skarka were very involved in the production of ICONS, a FATE-based superhero game that's had great success. (It's now back with Steve Kenson at Ad Infinitum.) Not going to get into the dude personally, I don't really care that much, but saying "he hasn't done anything worth remembering" is off base. I'd be up for a revised Underworld - it's a cool game but the circumstances of its creation/publication made it unpolished/unfinished. If you think things are bad now you shoulda seen Usenet. The 1990s was the first sustained interaction between RPG designers and the people playing their games and the result was hilarious hatred - there was a time when I was in the killfile (primitive ignore list) of each and every White Wolf writer and developer that ever posted on Usenet. I was a fan but not their kind of fan.
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Nov 21, 2013 21:17
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Yeah, he seems pretty successful by RPG standards. He's just never been one of the guiding stars. I'm not sure if he resents how much more successful others have been, or if what looks like that is just typical sniping borne of being an rear end in a top hat (not that it makes much practical difference).
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Nov 21, 2013 22:31
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JDCorley posted:I disagree that Adamant hasn't ever done anything notable or good. Most people around these parts don't value d20 that much but there are a lot of things Adamant did right: Not gonna lie, if the qualification is that it has to be notable only ICONS fits the bill because I have never heard of any of these other things. And I have a tendency to pick up weird obscure foreign RPGs no one else has heard of.
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Nov 21, 2013 22:34
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Sure, some things on that list were more notable and some were more good. And you have to believe that d20 games can be good before you can believe most of that stuff could be good, which is a burden lots can't carry.
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Nov 22, 2013 00:48
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JDCorley posted:* Adamant tried "app pricing" for its supplements for a while, trying to see if it was viable to just sell virtually all supplements for $2.99 or under, and shared the results with others. (It didn't work that well.) Difficulty selling your supplements for $3 is probably indicative of bigger systemic problems.
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Nov 22, 2013 01:36
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moths posted:Difficulty selling your supplements for $3 is probably indicative of bigger systemic problems. From what I understand it was more an experiment than desperation. Mind, it runs into the issue that for the most part in gaming people associate price with value. If you're selling supplements for $3 and there's not an obvious angle (like a single-class supplement, a 100-thingy list, or Cheapass' whole marking strategy), people are going to wonder what's wrong with it that the price is so low. Like I just believe you did, see what I did there. 
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Nov 22, 2013 01:51
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I do think the "back catalog" of RPGs is underexamined in terms of the hobby's economics. Clearly some people really really care that their favored edition of their favorite game remains somehow available forever and will agitate and bring people to it and work on it feverishly until the last days of humanity. And plenty of people don't care at all about a game if it didn't come out after a particular date. (I had one fellow once tell me that before 2003 all RPGs were "identical non-games".) Me, I like a good game no matter when it came out, which makes it hard for me to browse online because browsing options are "what's new" or "what's everyone buying" and that's about it, there's few ways for me to apply my standards to a potential RPG purchase unless it's one of those two things. The Adamant app pricing theory was "hey, almost exactly nobody buys a supplement 2 years after it's out anyway, why not make it available cheap and see if people will pick up whole lines of less expensive stuff based on a big, normally-priced central book". Answer: Yes, there are such "line collectors" who spring up at a lower price point but they are pretty rare.
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Nov 22, 2013 02:07
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A lot of old stuff shows up on DTRPG and the like now--any idea as to it's market share? I mean, the book I'm F&Fing right now is up on DTRPG with newer and much better art, so they must have thought they'd make enough sales for it to be worth the time and expense.
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Nov 22, 2013 02:13
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Wasn't there also some sort of issue with something ICONS related where some supplement that GMS was working on was stuck in a similar limbo as Far West? I vaguely remember him getting angry over people asking him about something like that.
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Nov 22, 2013 02:19
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Yeah, ICONS Team-Up was incredibly delayed.
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Nov 22, 2013 02:54
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Like I just believe you did, see what I did there.  But if I wasn't buying D20 poo poo Nobody Cares About at $20, dropping the price to $3 doesn't change the underlying problem.
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Nov 22, 2013 02:59
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JDCorley posted:The Adamant app pricing theory was "hey, almost exactly nobody buys a supplement 2 years after it's out anyway, why not make it available cheap and see if people will pick up whole lines of less expensive stuff based on a big, normally-priced central book". Answer: Yes, there are such "line collectors" who spring up at a lower price point but they are pretty rare. Really? I seem to recall it was mostly him going "Oh, yeah? Well I happen to have a massive catalog of RPGs to sell  so we'll see what that's like" in the middle of a conversation about how much PDFs are worth.
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Nov 22, 2013 03:27
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JDCorley posted:Yeah, ICONS Team-Up was incredibly delayed. It was announced in July 2011 for an October 2011 release date. GMS said on the 31st of January 2012 that he intended to release it in the coming week (this was when people were already making jokes about it being delayed). He also said in late May 2012 that it would be out in June. Steve Kenson was getting publicly irritated at the end of August 2012 that the information he received had been changed or at least had remained about a week away. Skarka promised it in a week *again* at the end of November 2012. And mid December. And the end of December. (And several times in 2013 but he wasn't posting on RPG.net any more by then). Actual release date 5th August 2013.
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Nov 22, 2013 03:32
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neonchameleon posted:Actual release date 5th August 2013. And according to at least a couple comments in that RPGnet thread it's 28 pages short of the original advertised pagecount.
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Nov 22, 2013 03:47
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I'm not trying to be inflammatory when I say this, but the way GMS has been treading here reminds me rather sharply of a certain other infamous tradgames publisher. Notably, the inability to take criticism, and the ever-sliding release dates (on top of missing material), combined with - has to be said - an absolutely colossal ego and inflated sense of his own capabilities and importance.
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Nov 22, 2013 03:58
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GMS doesn't have a habit of loving over freelancers (that I know of) at least.
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Nov 22, 2013 04:08
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moths posted:But if I wasn't buying D20 poo poo Nobody Cares About at $20, dropping the price to $3 doesn't change the underlying problem. I think the main flaw is just thinking you can take iPhone pricing and transfer it to other markets, regardless of the material's quality.
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Nov 22, 2013 04:21
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Anyone can slip a release date, but I thought it was unconscionable that Adamant was still accepting pre-orders for Far West Adventure Game after its original release date had passed without putting ANY mention of the product's delay on the order page. At that point they must have known. In fact, if you go to the Far West website, the front page still says that pre-orders are open, and there's barely any acknowledgment of the delay. It's been more than a year.
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Nov 22, 2013 05:42
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He's stated Far West will be out tomorrow or this weekend, so we'll get to see if it misses another deadline.
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Nov 22, 2013 05:53
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Rulebook Heavily posted:I'm not trying to be inflammatory when I say this, but the way GMS has been treading here reminds me rather sharply of a certain other infamous tradgames publisher. Notably, the inability to take criticism, and the ever-sliding release dates (on top of missing material), combined with - has to be said - an absolutely colossal ego and inflated sense of his own capabilities and importance. I loved that saga for the RPG.NET peanut gallery. ''There's nothing wrong with Paladium! You're making stuff up!'' Yeah, that's why it's such a wildly successful company.
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Nov 22, 2013 08:55
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Oh man, they link to Bill Coffin explaining what it's like to work with Kevin Sembieda. Seriously, you should go read that. Coffin later apologized for posting it but frankly if even half the poo poo that circulates about Sembieda is true then that seems like it was long overdue.
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Nov 22, 2013 09:15
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Wasn't Buckaroo Banzai supposed to be out now? Or is one game every 2.5 years too much for this noted industry professional?
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Nov 22, 2013 09:28
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I remember hearing there was some hold-up with Buckaroo Banzai also, and it might have been due out by now, because I think they were taking pre-orders, but as I have seen mentioned online, it appears that there was no notice that it was running late and pre-order options were still up, as is the case with Far West. I haven't checked this for myself but there's been a fair amount of angry buzzing that it's so.
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Nov 22, 2013 10:55
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Buckaroo Banzai? Somebody's making a Buckaroo Banzai game? Tell me more, even if it's all smoke I must know.
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Nov 22, 2013 12:01
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Bucnasti posted:Buckaroo Banzai? Somebody's making a Buckaroo Banzai game? Tell me more, even if it's all smoke I must know. It was slated to be made by GMS, like Far West, and like Far West, it is very much overdue. I don't know a whole lot beyond that and what I wrote before.
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Nov 22, 2013 12:05
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I'm still pissed he's sitting on the Bas-Lag license.
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Nov 22, 2013 13:11
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Gasperkun posted:It was slated to be made by GMS, like Far West, and like Far West, it is very much overdue. I don't know a whole lot beyond that and what I wrote before. I think it's like three years overdue, apparently (or supposedly) there are issues with the license holder.
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Nov 22, 2013 13:21
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Kai Tave posted:GMS doesn't have a habit of loving over freelancers (that I know of) at least. That being said, Siembieda, conversely, is eternally apologetic for his lateness. He just doesn't apparently do anything to fix it.
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Nov 22, 2013 13:56
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Plague of Hats posted:If you really want to go dumpster-diving, Sage's first post is 364 in this thread. It's not as vitriolic as one might expect, but it's kind of off-putting just how confounded a lot of these people are about how to handle a game that doesn't run exactly like the ones they like, and how angry that makes some of them. Sage ends up answering a bunch of really dumb questions. My favorite part is somewhere around page 10 Pundit declares such-and-such idiot thought about Dungeon World's Storygame-iness, then later near the end of the thread posts some giant pretentious wall-of-text about DW's pretentiousness, but that having finally read the game he must admit that it is indeed a Scotsman.
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Nov 22, 2013 16:12
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