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Kwyndig posted:I'm trying to decide if I should even try PbP or irc again considering my last few attempts bombed or just kind of slowly petered out.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:35
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My name is actually Ivo Ettman, this is my RPGnet modding background music.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:36
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Kai Tave posted:It's Brett, isn't it? It's Bruce, like everyone else in Australia.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:36
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Plague of Hats posted:I shouldn't have, yet I went looking at that RPGSite thread. It wasn't very funny, but it was amazing to see Zak consistently making posts that don't read like he was hosed up on I'm pretty sure Zak's lovely posting style is largely a result of him just passive-aggressively declaring that he isn't actually interested in engaging with the people he's posting to, so in a community willing to kiss his rear end it's not surprising that he drops the act and just posts more like a normal dude.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:40
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when he wrote them. I think like 75% of his infamy would just disappear if he had always posted like that. I wonder what could possibly have motivated him to try to look more respectable lately? 
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zachol posted:Seriously? I've always assumed it was just apathy and a feeling that the RPG market is too small to seriously consider in terms of licensing, not that there was an actual pushback against it. I recall reading at least one paper that basically stated that most companies that actually know about this industry avoid it, because every time they've tried to tap into it, it's backfired due to the grogs immediately swarming them. quote:Eclipse Phase EP falls into the same problem Shadowrun sometimes - a really hilarious assumption of competence. This is more a Shadowrun problem, I think, where GMs assume that of course every building is going to have maximum security on at all times with no coffee breaks and the most vigilant employees money can buy, when in reality, be it Eclipse Phase or Shadowrun, corporations exist to make profits, and if they can cut corners, by god they're going to do it as much as possible and then some. It's actually worse in Eclipse Phase, when chances are the actual security stuff is being monitored by literal digital slaves trying to distract themselves as much as possible from their actual tasks. To it's credit EP actually does talk about this a bit in Panopticon, basically stating that there's so much overlapping security footage that the problem isn't catching someone, it's finding that specific footage. Beyond that, because everything in most Core space is done through systems of neverending contractors and business agreements, even if you find that footage, you have to get access to it, because everyone is competing and they won't want to share out of the goodness of their heart. Really the key is to remember the first rule: Human beings are really good at not giving a poo poo and being super incompetent. The rest kinda falls in line from there.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:41
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Ettin posted:I posted there once and I don't care about proxies Speaking of someone trying to doxx someone, I'm half convinced someone tried to doxx my ask.fm (yes, I'm a loser) after I spoke out against Zak S. and RPGpundit. I got a question that linked me to gnome7's google+ page attached with the question "who is this little spaghetti?" Fairly sure they thought I was him and was trying to scare me or something.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:41
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Covok posted:Speaking of someone trying to doxx someone, I'm half convinced someone tried to doxx my ask.fm (yes, I'm a loser) after I spoke out against Zak S. and RPGpundit. I got a question that linked me to gnome7's google+ page attached with the question "who is this little spaghetti?" Fairly sure they thought I was him and was trying to scare me or something. A lot of us got that, that was probably another goon goofing around. As usual I suspect FactsAreUseless.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:44
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Ettin posted:A lot of us got that, that was probably another goon goofing around. Ah, I see. Since it came after I answered that question, I thought it was related.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:45
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We are all little spaghetti.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:46
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Evil Mastermind posted:So does that mean I can't say how this turned out? You can finish the anecdote about a game store, which is perfectly relevant. It is the extended argument about the inadequacy of the criminal justice system to deal with sex offenders or whatever that I am outlawing.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:53
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Covok posted:Besthada makes video games, not trpgs. The skills, when it comes to math and mechanics, might not be transferable so they'd either license it or hire people. Bethesda is actually a funny example since Ken Rolston was actually a tabletop RPG guy from way back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Rolston There's a little more crossover between TRPGs and video games than you might think. Forgotten Realms guru Jeff Grubb worked on Guild Wars at some point (maybe GW2?), and Dakan & Emmert from City of Heroes and Champions Online got their start in the '90s on Pinnacle's (terrible) Brave New World. Some Call of Cthulhu/Pagan Publishing guys I forget offhand work(ed) at Valve and Radical, I believe. ' 90s White Wolf guys like Rich Dansky and Lucien Soulban are over at Ubisoft (not to mention whatever WW peeps CCP didn't fire). And doesn't Rafael Chandler have some computer-game day job that's been preventing him from finishing the new version of Scorn, the game formerly known as the game called Dread that doesn't use Jenga blocks?
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Jul 10, 2014 03:55
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Winson_Paine posted:You can finish the anecdote about a game store, which is perfectly relevant. It is the extended argument about the inadequacy of the criminal justice system to deal with sex offenders or whatever that I am outlawing. Okay, cool. I did bring the guy aside when I got to the store and had the following two-sentence conversation: Me: "I was informed about your registration." Him: "I'm out." When he left, I informed the rest of the group what happened. Unsurprisingly everyone was okay with him being gone. The guy did contact me after the fact to say that it "wasn't cool" that I told everyone; I'm guessing that's because someone else in the group told the store owner but gently caress if I'm going to feel guilty over this.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:04
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zachol posted:Seriously? I've always assumed it was just apathy and a feeling that the RPG market is too small to seriously consider in terms of licensing, not that there was an actual pushback against it. ProfessorCirno posted:I recall reading at least one paper that basically stated that most companies that actually know about this industry avoid it, because every time they've tried to tap into it, it's backfired due to the grogs immediately swarming them. Malcolm Sheppard posted:A couple of years ago I had this client — great guy, worked with him a few times. He’s a former tabletop RPG player and was really interested in bringing some of the ideas he loved from that into a new arena in the form of some cool online tools. We looked at the market at the time and determined that the service was pretty much tailor-made for roleplayers and that they were the most natural early adopters. Ettin posted:I've been trawling old RPGSite threads so I can put together my Big Dumb Email To Mearls, and I just woke up to find out they literally track which IPs view their forum so they can freak out about me reading their public posts. Error 404 posted:We are all little spaghetti. Kai Tave posted:I'm pretty sure Zak's lovely posting style is largely a result of him just passive-aggressively declaring that he isn't actually interested in engaging with the people he's posting to, so in a community willing to kiss his rear end it's not surprising that he drops the act and just posts more like a normal dude.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:08
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Halloween Jack posted:It's weird that he can produce really useful and insightful content and also be totally obnoxious, but not really a mystery. Zak needs every conversation he's in to be The Zak Show, where everybody gathers to listen to Zak tell cool stories about famous cool guy, Zak. Any pushback against The Zak S Show leads to him being obnoxious, and calling him out apparently leads to things getting very, very ugly. Plus it's not like I don't have enough stuff of my own to work on. I'm getting the artist who did the cover of Inverse World to do art for Faerie Skies, which I am ridiculously happy about, I'm getting sorely tempted to add a new playbook/class to Dragon World (an MMO character being inexplicably projected into the fantasy world), and I have a Magical Burst playtest on Sunday to get ready for.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:24
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Ettin posted:A lot of us got that, that was probably another goon goofing around. Yeaaahhh, that was me. Sorry about that covok, no malicious intent here. I just liked the text below gnome7's avatar and thought it was funny and figured that a lot of Goons would get the joke. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 04:24
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fatherdog posted:Public urination and soliciting a prostitute (of any age) can get you on the registry iirc Funny story someone convicted of the later went to my friend's game shop and he went through a similar moral dilemma about letting him stay to play in one of the gaming groups, AKA he had no personal problem with it but some parents might not like the fact a guy who pays for sex (even with adults) should be kids and he wanted to respect their opinions, but then the guy got arrested for drugs or something, so he no longer had to worry about it.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:28
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I'd love to hear more about this project that Malcolm Sheppard's client worked on and his tracking of how tabletop gamers interacted with it, it sounds fascinating.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:30
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Kai Tave posted:I'd love to hear more about this project that Malcolm Sheppard's client worked on and his tracking of how tabletop gamers interacted with it, it sounds fascinating. I'm kinda amazed tabetop gamers where even worse then regular gamers. That's really saying something.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:35
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Haha, even little old me got doxxed over at theRPGsite a few years back. The dude did something like look up my old amazon reviews - literally from 1997 - to discredit me. Actually other folks told him that was pretty hosed up, so...
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Jul 10, 2014 04:35
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dwarf74 posted:Haha, even little old me got doxxed over at theRPGsite a few years back. The dude did something like look up my old amazon reviews - literally from 1997 - to discredit me. Not too long ago I was arguing about Next regarding the whole Zak S / RPG Pundit thing on a Facebook page for ttgs in Korea. I had someone try to doxx me, found that I playtested some Dreamscarred stuff back when I was into Pathfinder, and deduced that I was making up everything about Zak S and RPG Pundit as part of a Paizo Fan Conspiracy to discredit Next.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:42
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Halloween Jack posted:It's kinda like what I was saying upthread: to keep flogging the same metaphor, the problem is not just that toxic gamers are the loudest people at the party, they also have a knack for positioning themselves near the front door. So there have actually been studies to show that Gamers are, in fact, The Worst? Like, it isn't just perception based on the internet?
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Jul 10, 2014 04:45
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ProfessorCirno posted:Not too long ago I was arguing about Next regarding the whole Zak S / RPG Pundit thing on a Facebook page for ttgs in Korea. I had someone try to doxx me, found that I playtested some Dreamscarred stuff back when I was into Pathfinder, and deduced that I was making up everything about Zak S and RPG Pundit as part of a Paizo Fan Conspiracy to discredit Next. 4E was a Paizo inside job.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:46
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Occam's Razor is a Forge conspiracy.
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Jul 10, 2014 05:10
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ProfessorCirno posted:EP falls into the same problem Shadowrun sometimes - a really hilarious assumption of competence. This is more a Shadowrun problem, I think, where GMs assume that of course every building is going to have maximum security on at all times with no coffee breaks and the most vigilant employees money can buy, when in reality, be it Eclipse Phase or Shadowrun, corporations exist to make profits, and if they can cut corners, by god they're going to do it as much as possible and then some. This is how you can tell whether a Shadowrun GM has ever worked for a large corporation. It is a litmus test that is nearly 100% effective.
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Jul 10, 2014 05:10
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Licensed RPGs are generally a losing proposition unless you already have a full time licensed product team (like say, Lucasarts does). Unlike action figures, apparel or even a board game, reviewing RPG material takes a lot of time, the the people at most entertainment companies qualified to do that are busy doing things that actually make the company money. The money made is minuscule, and the potential to damage your brand/confuse your fans is very high. Add to that what other people have mentioned about the fans, and the fact that most RPG publishers are notoriously unprofessional so unless somebody at the company really wants to do it as a passion project licensed RPGs are more trouble than they're worth.
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Jul 10, 2014 05:19
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NutritiousSnack posted:I'm kinda amazed tabetop gamers where even worse then regular gamers. That's really saying something. The thing is that outside of the big games like D&D, the tabletop industry is small enough that what you see is what you get. With regular gamers, if some asshat has a vendetta against anything remotely popular and posts extended screeds about it on Gamefaqs, the amount of gently caress given by the developer could not be measured with an electron microscope. They have a million more potential customers who will never read the rant. The asshat is ultimately just a drop in the bucket and not worth any time. With tabletop gamers, if some asshat has a vendetta against your game and posts extended screeds about it on RPG.net, a significant fraction of your customer base could read that rant. The number of copies you're probably going to sell is measured in three or four digits and a single person could do a lot of damage. They're not particularly more toxic than the former rear end in a top hat, but the well they're poisoning is a lot smaller.
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Jul 10, 2014 05:42
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Libertad! posted:Yeaaahhh, that was me. No worries. It's just me being an idiot and misinterpreting.
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Jul 10, 2014 05:49
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Halloween Jack posted:but my biggest problem with EC is that I can't fully absorb how you're supposed to go on adventures and stuff in a world with really ubiquitous surveillance. They literally have an entire supplement (well, about two thirds, there's other stuff in there) called Panopticon which is dedicated to talking about surveillance tech in EP and how you can get around it/what it means for the players, so it's definitely a problem they know about and have taken steps to resolve (pretty well, to boot). zachol posted:CHIM is the understanding that grants you the ability to transcend and control the laws underlying the world, codifying it explicitly into the system misses the point. CHIM is literally metagaming - it doesn't need codifying to exist (other than as a rule saying "hey, you can metagame"). On PC, metagaming is opening the console or using the map editor; in RPGs, metagaming is using out of character knowledge in-game. They line up pretty well! Ettin posted:Occam's Razor is a Forge conspiracy.  "Balance" is an invention by Something Awful to vilify Gygax and prevent his return.Oh no, wait, that's one that people actually believe. 
Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 09:38
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CHIM is opening up the console and inputting commands
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Jul 10, 2014 11:38
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Parkreiner posted:Bethesda is actually a funny example since Ken Rolston was actually a tabletop RPG guy from way back. As for RPGs being more trouble than they're worth for IP licensors, that makes perfect sense when you consider how small the RPG market is and how little evidence there is of RPGs pulling people into your IP and promoting it. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there were some crossover sales for licensed games but those have largely petered out because publishers realized they could publish their own, more broadly appealing, reference and fan material, and now you can buy shelves of Star Trek and Buffy and Dr. Who and Spider-Man guidebooks and references and encyclopedias without pages of game stats. If JK Rowling wanted to release a big guide to the Harry Potter universe, pretty much the last thing she'd do is partner with an RPG company to do it. Plus, in the 2010s, there are plenty of freely-available fan sites and wikis where people obsessively track all the details and continuity of any given IP, so who really needs a $40 RPG book about the various aliens races in Star Wars when you can google Wookiepedia from your pocket phone? So RPG licenses sell only to RPG players, and require a lot of approval and hassle compared to, say, signing off on an action figure line or lunchbox or t-shirt design. Who needs it?
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Jul 10, 2014 13:09
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Lemon Curdistan posted:
No it's not! I saw it on the 3.5 skill list!
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Jul 10, 2014 13:23
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Parkreiner posted:There's a little more crossover between TRPGs and video games than you might think. Forgotten Realms guru Jeff Grubb worked on Guild Wars at some point (maybe GW2?), and Dakan & Emmert from City of Heroes and Champions Online got their start in the '90s on Pinnacle's (terrible) Brave New World. Some Call of Cthulhu/Pagan Publishing guys I forget offhand work(ed) at Valve and Radical, I believe. ' 90s White Wolf guys like Rich Dansky and Lucien Soulban are over at Ubisoft (not to mention whatever WW peeps CCP didn't fire). And doesn't Rafael Chandler have some computer-game day job that's been preventing him from finishing the new version of Scorn, the game formerly known as the game called Dread that doesn't use Jenga blocks? Jack Emmert - creative lead at Cryptic Studios, responsible for City of Heroes and the spectacularly poorly-received 'enhancement diversification' - also got his start in TTRPGs writing for Conspiracy-X.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:05
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Zeb Cook who did a lot of post Gygax AD&D 1E worked on City of Villains a bit, as did Shane Hensley from Pinnacle, IIRC.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:39
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neonchameleon posted:I can't even tell what the genre of Monster of the Week is. It's some sort of horror - but Action!Horror, Depressing Adventure!Horror, and Psychological Horror are very different. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 14:54
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It was mentioned before that some of the CoC/Pagan Publishing guys went into games; for specifics, I think both John Tynes and Dennis Detwiller did. Detwiller has mentioned working on .. Prototype, I think? Some fairly big name stuff. Justin Achilli also works with a game company, though I don't know which one. It seems fairly common for people to make the table top games -> video games jump. The reverse seems to be less common, though I'm certainly less familiar with the names on the video game side of things. Tulul posted:
This is really true and I think WotC in particular underestimated how powerful it could be - and we saw how that turned out. Since then, I've noticed some smaller publishers checking forums and working hard to counter-act that kind of incorrect or emotionally loaded narrative. (I'm thinking of Pelgrane Press, but I'm sure there are other examples.) Edit: the other thing is that the experience of play in RPGs is more subjective than video games, too. You can come to a video game with a negative impression and be won over by pretty graphics or solid mechanics. Given the amount of buy-in to learn an RPG and the need for good-faith participation to see how things click, I think poisoned preconceptions can do even more damage. Sionak fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 14:57
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MadScientistWorking posted:None of those are the right genres though. Its supposed to be some sort of horror procedural but your right about the horror aspect being vague. Which is fine! Sometimes you want to do something about the slow slide into madness that is dealing with the supernatural on a daily basis, and other times you just want to stomp monsters.
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Jul 10, 2014 15:17
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Sionak posted:Detwiller has mentioned working on .. Prototype, I think? Yeah, he was one of the main designers and writers on Prototype, and it has a real Delta Green feeling in places. Greg Stolze also did some dialogue for that game, and John Tynes and Shane Ivey also show up in game, albeit only so you can eat their faces off. Parkreiner posted:Lucien Soulban I still can't believe there was actually a White Wolf writer named Lucien Soulban. If I saw that name on a Vampire character sheet, I would throw it in the trash on reflex.
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Jul 10, 2014 15:25
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There's also Ryan Dancey, beloved of both D20 and EVE fans, but he may not be the best example.
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Jul 10, 2014 15:37
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Tulul posted:Yeah, he was one of the main designers and writers on Prototype, and it has a real Delta Green feeling in places. Greg Stolze also did some dialogue for that game, and John Tynes and Shane Ivey also show up in game, albeit only so you can eat their faces off.
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Jul 10, 2014 15:53
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Warren Spector wrote Top Secret SI, the best thing TSR ever did.
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Jul 10, 2014 16:03
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