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MadScientistWorking posted:Basically you are throwing a grognard fit over the suggestion of making a game that panders to other people especially when you have no clue what the hell you are talking about. That and just burn this industry to the ground. For as much talk about gatekeepers in the previous thread you'll never get rid of them and I'd probably actively drive people away from it nowadays. What the gently caress are you even on about? First, I don't care who makes games catering to what market, go ahead and knock yourself out. I haven't the remotest interest in teen supernatural romance/sex drama but I enjoy the fact that someone made Monsterhearts and it exists. My point of contention is you asserting as some kind of unassailable fact that there's this big correlation with people in non-related hobbies and potential TRPGers just waiting to be shown the light through some undiscovered alchemical elfgame formula. I notice, for instance, that the existence of Monsterhearts didn't herald a great influx of Twilight-style freeform LJ/Tumblr roleplayers. I suppose you could argue that this is a marketing issue, but I feel confident that the crux of the issue is that those Twilight fans or fans of whatever the current hot supernatural romance is simply don't want or need a codified game to enable them to do what they enjoy doing, whether it's a Champions-esque tome or the Apocalypse World system. When someone goes ahead and proves otherwise I'll happily reassess my position and admit I was wrong. Second, I have no interest in "burning this hobby to the ground." I can enjoy participating in a niche, obscure hobby while maintaining a realistic assessment of its broader appeal. It's not self-deprecation or nihilism to say that no, there probably aren't a ton of people secretly interested in TRPGs but they just don't know it yet.
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Jun 24, 2015 05:15
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Kai Tave posted:Like a lot of your posts, I have no idea what this has to do with what's actually being discussed. I believe MSG is saying that there's no way in hell an RPG will ever capture the Improv Theatre Group audience. Improv already has rules, just different ones than RPGs do. The amount of overlap, while theoretically considerable, still doesn't get over the fact that what they're doing is fundamentally different: short scenes with disposable characters for the entertainment of an uninvolved audience vs. sustained narrative with regular character breaking and randomized conflict resolution mechanics. And, further, the sort of game that would appeal to an improv person isn't necessarily the sort of game that will appeal to the guy running a Tumblr blog as asexual Bucky Barnes, nor the lady who likes wearing a monocle and tophat while playing Monopoly, nor the dude who loves playing exquisite corpse over beers. That's a ton of different demographics with different needs and play styles. I'm not necessarily convinced it can be done on their terms, or even at all, to be honest. The investment time is so high compared to other games that TRPGs are going to remain a niche thing, as far as I can see. I certainly haven't figured out the selling solution, because if I had, I'd be doing it and exploiting this multimillion dollar untapped market. I'm not sure if this means I agree with you or not.
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Jun 24, 2015 05:18
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BrainParasite posted:The quickest way to bring in new blood to RPGs is to build a young adult party game. Some weird bastard of CaH and Fiasco. A little "edgy". Takes about an hour. Rules you could learn even if you're a little buzzed. You joke, but CF really was ahead of its time. Absolutely fantastic game.
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Jun 24, 2015 05:21
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Toph Bei Fong posted:I believe MSG is saying that there's no way in hell an RPG will ever capture the Improv Theatre Group audience. Improv already has rules, just different ones than RPGs do. If your explanation is what MSG was actually trying to say then I actually 100% agree with both him and you, that's been my point this entire time. The people with hobbies that are often touted as potential TRPG audiences already have hobbies that enable their desires to act, create stories, roleplay, whatever. Traditional tabletop roleplaying games have very little to offer them that they don't already have...they have communities and "network externalities" of their own, they have their own rules, they have their own social networks. "The desire to play pretend" may be widespread, but that doesn't actually correlate with "the desire to play a game like Dungeons & Dragons or WoD."
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Jun 24, 2015 05:25
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:You joke, but CF really was ahead of its time. Absolutely fantastic game.
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Jun 24, 2015 06:18
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Asimo posted:I've said it before, but Pondsmith was a genius designer and it's a goddamn shame he's basically left the industry. On the other hand, Cyberpunk v3. Pondsmith works for Microsoft now, doesn't he? Well used to, quick Google check says he worked for Microsoft then Monolith on The Matrix Online of all things. I mean it looks like the guy's done about as well for himself as anyone in the TRPG hobby/industry can aspire to, and there's always that new tabletop Cyberpunk he's talking about making to coincide with the 2077 computer game. e; speaking of RPG designers who left to go do video games, what's John Tynes been up to these days?
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Jun 24, 2015 06:32
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Kai Tave posted:If your explanation is what MSG was actually trying to say then I actually 100% agree with both him and you, that's been my point this entire time. The people with hobbies that are often touted as potential TRPG audiences already have hobbies that enable their desires to act, create stories, roleplay, whatever. Traditional tabletop roleplaying games have very little to offer them that they don't already have...they have communities and "network externalities" of their own, they have their own rules, they have their own social networks. "The desire to play pretend" may be widespread, but that doesn't actually correlate with "the desire to play a game like Dungeons & Dragons or WoD." The thing is, every year there's a new crop of young people who want to make believe and haven't committed to one of the many different forms. Those are potential table-top roleplayers, but there are not a lot of games that cater to them and the types of make-believe they want to participate in. Monsterhearts is going in that direction, but it doesn't seem directed at a "new to roleplaying" audience. Where are the all-in-one-box teen-wizard RPGs? or the kitchen sink-high-fantasy-anime style rules-light RPGs? Of course even if one of those games existed nobody would hear about it because D&D is the only voice to the outside world. You would need a company like WotC/Hasbro to commit to bringing such a thing about and to market the hell out of it. EDIT: Actually, that reminds me, back during the 3.0 days, WotC had the license to, and made a full D20 Harry Potter RPG, it was aimed at young people as an introductory game, they were all set until they presented it to Rowling who shut it down because she didn't like the idea of anyone else creating stories in her world. Asimo posted:I've said it before, but Pondsmith was a genius designer and it's a goddamn shame he's basically left the industry. Like a lot of good designers, he went off to make video games because that's where you can make a living. Bucnasti fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Jun 24, 2015 |
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Jun 24, 2015 06:43
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Kai Tave posted:On the other hand, Cyberpunk v3.  Although it's easy to forget that RTG was pretty much just him working part time by that point, so it was probably inevitable that it'd never live up to expectations. He's definitely one of those RPG sorts who left mostly because the money in other industries was so much better, but the failure of Fuzion and its derivatives probably made the offer a lot more tempting.
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Jun 24, 2015 06:46
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Kai Tave posted:Probably not. Unless you count bronies, there've been like two dozen lovely attempts at a My Little Pony RPG. Semi-related, but Ponyfinder is a Pathfinder version of Friendship if Magic with the serial numbers filed off. Many of its products are of the most popular 3rd party Pathfinder supplements on Drive-Thru RPG. More than a few bronies saw it and got into Pathfinder because of it. And by 3rd party standards, it's actually pretty good. It might not be a new game system, but it did draw in interest from another subculture.
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Jun 24, 2015 06:49
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Terrible Opinions posted:4th edition wasn't a commercial failure, but Essentials very well might have been. This is an important note that doesn't get mentioned nearly enough, though Asimo kinda mentioned it. 4e was outright stabbed in the back. A lot of office politics were happening throughout 4e's go (remember the interview where Heinsoo stated that people in the D&D team were trying to sneak in wizard buffs to make it more powerful rather then actually talk to the team about it?), and once Mearls got himself in command, he immediately killed the poo poo out of 4e. Even with how notoriously semi-meaningless ICv2 is, 4e wasn't losing ground to Paizo until Mike Mearls Presents: Essentials happened. Essentials itself is filled with dozens of really childish and snide digs at 4e. It was confusing as hell too; was it meant to be an evergreen product? Was it a replacement? Was it supposed to be the new core book? I don't think anyone actually knew what Essentials was supposed to be other then Mearls trying to reset 4e, which, of course, failed miserably. Of course, there was also... grassy gnoll posted:Not to dogpile you, nor is this part of the sales argument, but I have literally seen such a scenario play out before me more than once. Internet nerds have a real-life presence too. This was also happening a lot. I can't say if gatekeepers were a significant roadblock to 4e or not, but they were one that absolutely existed. The problem is that people weren't saying "play this game instead," they were saying "your game is and and YOU are bad for wanting to play it." They weren't trying to grow the hobby in an opposite direction - they were trying to outright shrink it. This is the age of the internet, and the internet was more or less just plain hostile for trying to get into D&D at all. You'd look up D&D, see the batshit drama unfolding literally everywhere, and back the gently caress away. And to be blunt this hasn't really changed. Everywhere is real cozy to 5e fans so long as you never criticize it. There's a twenty-something page on ENWorld that was simply "what's something in 5e you dislike?" and at least half those pages are dedicated to attacking the person who posted it for being some kind of evil sinister 5e hating troll. I mean, Mearls went out of his way to bring in Pundit to the fold. You think he gave a drat about trying to combat the toxicity in the hobby? Pundit made some giant dumb diatribe against Monte Cook and screamed as loud as he could that Cook needed to be murdered or whatever, and Cook was the one who left the D&D team. That's who 5e thinks should be championing the hobby. Now picture a new player looking into D&D and ending up on RPGSite. Real inviting. I dunno if there can be a big product that will revive the hobby - not because such a product couldn't exist, but because this hobby would strangle it in the cradle. For gently caress's sake, 5e prides itself on being obtuse and lovely to deal with. It's a feature that DMs won't have any goddamn clue how half the rules work. How are you supposed to make a product for newcomers when the big dog in the field hates that newcomers could ever even exist? What product is gonna bring in new players when the community itself is going to bellow about how much they hate those baby SJW millenials who play their video games and bring computers to the table?
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Jun 24, 2015 06:59
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Bucnasti posted:The thing is, every year there's a new crop of young people who want to make believe and haven't committed to one of the many different forms. Those are potential table-top roleplayers, but there are not a lot of games that cater to them and the types of make-believe they want to participate in. Monsterhearts is going in that direction, but it doesn't seem directed at a "new to roleplaying" audience. Where are the all-in-one-box teen-wizard RPGs? or the kitchen sink-high-fantasy-anime style rules-light RPGs? Sure, and nothing says you can't have more than one hobby while you're at it, but what you run into then is the fact that RPGs have virtually all the negatives that other games and hobbies that have sprung up in the intervening decades have gone to great lengths to excise and avoid. RPGs in the tradgames D&D/WoD sense aren't quick and casual pickup games, they aren't party games you bust out for 20 people while drinking, they aren't very good at delivering immediate gratification, they frequently come with an enormous overhead simply learning how to play, etc. So now you have to sell this hobby, whose own adherents often admit is the quintessence of "four hours of work for 20 minutes of fun," which requires a more significant commitment of time and scheduling than most other hobbies do, all to get a similar experience to things they could get elsewhere cheaper, easier, and more tailored to their tastes. To compound this, there's very little actual understanding even in what passes for the upper levels of the TRPG hobby of what new-to-roleplaying gamers want in a game. Rules light or crunch? Licenses? Of what? Genre? Themes? Subcultures? All-in-one games or a supplement treadmill? And then as you point out you'd need to market the hell out of it which, to be truly effective, would probably cost a significant amount of time, effort, and money for very little return. Libertad! posted:Semi-related, but Ponyfinder is a Pathfinder version of Friendship if Magic with the serial numbers filed off. Many of its products are of the most popular 3rd party Pathfinder supplements on Drive-Thru RPG. More than a few bronies saw it and got into Pathfinder because of it. Well there you go then, there's the answer everyone's looking for; court Bronies.
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Jun 24, 2015 07:05
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Bucnasti posted:The thing is, every year there's a new crop of young people who want to make believe and haven't committed to one of the many different forms. Those are potential table-top roleplayers, but there are not a lot of games that cater to them and the types of make-believe they want to participate in. Monsterhearts is going in that direction, but it doesn't seem directed at a "new to roleplaying" audience. Where are the all-in-one-box teen-wizard RPGs? or the kitchen sink-high-fantasy-anime style rules-light RPGs? While I don't agree you'd need a company necessarily the size of Hasbro, the base idea here is really sound. There needs to be a big enough advertising push that would take either lots of money or lots of free working hours to figure out a plan to break through the D&D=RPG wall. Serious question, outside of gaming stores and gaming forums, where do people advertise their games? Because those two are the only places I've seen ads for RPGs.
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Jun 24, 2015 07:16
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Kai Tave posted:Well there you go then, there's the answer everyone's looking for; court Bronies. You sound flippant, but I unironically don't think you're wrong. I think it's an untapped space in the hobby for games are contemporary fantasy, rather than the fantasy subgenre that D&D and the likes have spun off into. Any new player you're trying to get into the hobby isn't going to give a poo poo about Fritz Leiber or Jack Vance, but MLP or Adventure Time or GOT is going to be much more relatable.
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Jun 24, 2015 07:38
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The Fate Accelerated book was really explicit about saying "You can play Avatar or Clone Wars with this game" in the play examples, I don't know if it got them anywhere though.
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Jun 24, 2015 07:49
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gradenko_2000 posted:Adventure Time I would play the poo poo out of an Adventure Time game. I might actually get some local people to try FATE like this.
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Jun 24, 2015 07:52
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gradenko_2000 posted:You sound flippant, but I unironically don't think you're wrong. I think it's an untapped space in the hobby for games are contemporary fantasy, rather than the fantasy subgenre that D&D and the likes have spun off into. Any new player you're trying to get into the hobby isn't going to give a poo poo about Fritz Leiber or Jack Vance, but MLP or Adventure Time or GOT is going to be much more relatable. Well there's a vast, vast gulf of difference between "contemporary fantasy" and "bronies," and if you think the extant RPG hobby base/subculture has some issues I am pretty sure that bronies would not, on the whole, be much of an improvement. I agree with you in the abstract that obviously games that cater to current tastes are more likely to resonate with current audiences but I don't think that licenses or an updated appendix N is really even that big a factor necessarily. Like, take Star Wars. Star Wars is something that has way, way, way more cultural and brand penetration than D&D ever had or ever will and it's relevant even today...there are animated Star Wars shows, Star Wars video games, and a whole new line of movies coming out starting this December. As much as people bitch about the prequels and the EU stuff, it remains an enduring and popular franchise. And yet I don't think there's ever been a point in the history of the tabletop roleplaying hobby when any Star Wars RPG has ever ousted D&D from its position as the default name in RPGs, and for a while there it was even WotC themselves who were making it. Now I'm not saying that the Star Wars RPGs were massive horrible failures, obviously they weren't, but neither did being wrapped up in an extremely popular and culturally relevant license propel them into some kind of huge breakaway hit either. I would love to see more RPGs take their cues from sources other than trying to reinvent D&D over and over, but that's speaking solely for myself and not because I believe it's the key to attracting an influx of fresh blood for the hobby.
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Jun 24, 2015 08:05
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Kai Tave posted:On the other hand, Cyberpunk v3. He was one of the main writers of the first ARG too and worked on I Love Bees for Bungie.
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Jun 24, 2015 08:09
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One thing I've noticed right now is that there really isn't a product that is 'Buy this game and it will teach you how to play well.' The beginner's boxes of Pathfinder and D&D aren't really designed to be educational; they're designed to be a sample so you can decide if THIS particular ruleset resonates with you. But there's nothing like the old Holmes D&D boxed set that walked you through the entire process. Here's a choose-your-own-adventure to give you an idea what playing is like, now I'll hold your hand through character creation. Now the DM can look at their packet, which starts with a premade dungeon to show what it's like, then provides a fill-in-the-blanks section, then finally graduates to mapping and planning everything. People come in to my store a lot and they want to play D&D because they heard about it at school, or they remember it from when they were a kid, or whatever. They don't have a gaming group, they don't know how to play, and they want to know what to buy. What can I tell them? The best I can say about the D&D beginner box is that they're not out all that much money. I would love to help people start with 4e, but first I have to get past the 'I heard that was awful!' nonsense, and then what? If you want to play with the good stuff, you need this random assortment of books of varying availability, oh and a subscription to a service that could end at any moment. Every rpg has just kind of accepted that the only source of new players is 'someone who knows someone that plays and will teach them.' That's just limited as hell. Even Mouse Guard, which is specifically designed to train players to be better roleplayers, still pretty much assumes that the gamemaster will be someone familiar with and comfortable with the idea of RPGs. I don't know if there's a niche for actually making an RPG designed to get new blood, but I know that no one actually in a position to make such a game gives a poo poo. As it is, new blood comes into the store, they're asking for the product, and it just doesn't exist.
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Jun 24, 2015 09:17
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Both 4E and Pathfinder have an entire book dedicated to teaching people how to make characters, which is a starting point at least.
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Jun 24, 2015 09:19
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Both 4E and Pathfinder have an entire book dedicated to teaching people how to make characters, which is a starting point at least. That says more about how much cruft has built up and how many trap options exist than anything else.
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Jun 24, 2015 09:24
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Tabletop roleplaying games offer a different experience than improv, than online freeform, than CRPGs and MMORPGs. A lot of this experience is poorly understood by people who make and play these games. For example, people assume that rules-light would sell better and get more people playing, but when you look at the (two) games that brought lots of people in, proportionately, they were far from rules-light, and when you look at the perennial also-rans, the kinds of games that come up in conversations outside the RPG online circle, very few rules-light games are among them. This is entirely understandable. Rules-light games are terrible at providing a sense of accomplishment from playing. If slaying a dragon comes down to a single roll, or can just be declared by the player, it's not memorable. If character development is nonexistent, or minimal, there's no sense of advancement. If there's no rules to learn and understand, there's no sense of mastery. Not to say that crunchier means better, because what tends to drive people out of the hobby is the clunkiness of games. A lot of that comes down to problems with design. Another commonality is that they have settings with plenty of depth and plenty of things to do. A lot of modern games, rules-light or not, either reject settings, feature thin implied settings, or use very generic settings. (4e's setting was really good, but buried deeply and without much development.) Setting, however, provides context and understanding to play. This is also why licensed games are unlikely to get really popular, because the one that did- SWD6- had 90% of the setting invented or heavily elaborated by West End Games. The ones that merely established a fanbased (Palladium's licensed games, etc.) did similarly. This didn't happen for pretty much all of the Guardians of Order licensed settings, for the TSR Indiana Jones RPG, etc., because they couldn't or didn't expand the settings to the level of making them explorable or playable. In the modern day, the first is likely to be more important.
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Jun 24, 2015 13:01
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How big were 80's assassin games like SJG's Killer? I mean the ones where you get a friend's name and someone else gets yours, then you tried to shoot them with a toy gun before someone shot you. Judging by terrible horror movies, I'd guess they were played on every college campus... but I feel like they're over-represented there. And then real gun violence probably made that game a lot less practical.
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Jun 24, 2015 13:23
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I think people went for versions that require way less in the way of cost and can be done via word of mouth and some armbands. I remember on my campus it was Zombie, whoever in a dorm got green armbands were humans and the zombies would approach them and try to steal their armbands, and if you lost it you became a zombie, too. No rulebooks, no cost, just the RAs providing cheap flimsy paper armbands.
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Jun 24, 2015 13:33
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moths posted:How big were 80's assassin games like SJG's Killer? I mean the ones where you get a friend's name and someone else gets yours, then you tried to shoot them with a toy gun before someone shot you. Those were really popular! Especially in college, where it was more attractive to actually set up some "clever" ambush using campus features and known routes and such. It was possible in HS, but less interesting.
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Jun 24, 2015 14:31
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moths posted:How big were 80's assassin games like SJG's Killer? I mean the ones where you get a friend's name and someone else gets yours, then you tried to shoot them with a toy gun before someone shot you. They are still about in the UK at least, if only because every year University's have to remind students that they are banned, since it inevitably ends up with lectures and study getting disrupted by paranoid players not turning up to lessons and assholes bursting into lectures to 'kill' people.
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Jun 24, 2015 14:31
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Hasbro just needs to cut a deal with the Marvel-Disney movie guys to do a big budget D&D-Thor crossover film. They already do toys for Marvel movies, so it should be posible. Boom, tradgaming saved. Of course the second step is re-releasing Dungeon World as D&D 6th ed, because what normal people would like to play D&D.
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Jun 24, 2015 14:34
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Tendales posted:One thing I've noticed right now is that there really isn't a product that is 'Buy this game and it will teach you how to play well.' This is absolutely true. A lot of RPGs are absolutely terrible as teaching aids. They're simply intended as reference materials with the expectation that someone will eventually bash their way through the rules enough times to pick it up and teach other people. I know the new Delta Green (which is based on the fairly simple Call of Cthulhu system) is going to have a series of linked scenarios. The first one will teach skill rolls and sanity; the next will walk through combat, and so on with increasing complexity. They're designed to do that. The new edition of CoC has youtube videos that walk people through similar concepts. Those are good ideas, but they are pretty rare. Most RPG books eschew advice on breaking the game into manageable chunks for your players in favor of cramming in more magic items, feats, or background text. And when people have a bad experience learning something (see: I hate math, I never got biology, etc.) it really stays with them.
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Jun 24, 2015 14:40
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MikeCrotch posted:They are still about in the UK at least, if only because every year University's have to remind students that they are banned, since it inevitably ends up with lectures and study getting disrupted by paranoid players not turning up to lessons and assholes bursting into lectures to 'kill' people. Ha, what? Did no one seriously think to make a "You can't kill/zombify/whatever during class" rule? That rule's standard in every assassin-type game on a college campus I've seen. It's also hilarious that the college is banning stuff because it makes people skip class. Sex, video games, and comfy beds are up next on the chopping block.
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Jun 24, 2015 14:46
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Achmed Jones posted:Ha, what? Did no one seriously think to make a "You can't kill/zombify/whatever during class" rule? That rule's standard in every assassin-type game on a college campus I've seen. And also in the games of Killer I played in the UK - no disruptive play was allowed. There were ways around it - for instance, it wasn't considered disruptive to kill someone in the library if you did it silently - but there was an absolute prohibition on attacking in class. You were also immune to attack if you were sleeping. Most people in our games used booby traps or poison anyway.
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Jun 24, 2015 15:08
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That rule wouldn't stop you getting jumped the moment you get out of class, which'd be pretty much the same result.
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Jun 24, 2015 15:09
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Sionak posted:This is absolutely true. A lot of RPGs are absolutely terrible as teaching aids. They're simply intended as reference materials with the expectation that someone will eventually bash their way through the rules enough times to pick it up and teach other people. BRP stuff's honestly been pretty good about that for years; The original kinda divorced from Glorantha BRP box set had this little 'walkthrough' solo scenario that slowly introduced skillchecks and then fighting and then magic, and the Griffin Island box set for Runequest 3 did something similar if you did the 'start as primitive Zaring natives' suggested campaign.
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Jun 24, 2015 15:16
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Mors Rattus posted:That rule wouldn't stop you getting jumped the moment you get out of class, which'd be pretty much the same result. What? That makes no sense - the "result" in question is the disruption of class and non-players' coursework. Class isn't disrupted by things happening after class. That's because those things happen after class, not during it. If somebody wants to skip class because of that, that's dumb and all but college students skip class all the time for little to no reason, so I can't imagine that some dumbass game is going to be a bigger problem than (as mentioned previously) sex, games, and literally every other thing college students could be doing rather than going to class.
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Jun 24, 2015 16:05
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gradenko_2000 posted:You sound flippant, but I unironically don't think you're wrong. I think it's an untapped space in the hobby for games are contemporary fantasy, rather than the fantasy subgenre that D&D and the likes have spun off into. Any new player you're trying to get into the hobby isn't going to give a poo poo about Fritz Leiber or Jack Vance, but MLP or Adventure Time or GOT is going to be much more relatable. Alright, I'ma take a crack at this. Ground rules: 1) Newbie friendly - sections on how roleplaying works, breaking down roles, interactions between PCs and NPCs, how to GM for folks who have never done it before. Entire book should be less than 96 pages, of which the players should have to read ~10 to get started if no one is helping them. 2) Simple resolution mechanic with very little rolling - easy to tell odds of success, completely transparent method of calculation. Modern folks don't need much dice, only call for rolls when there is disagreement, be it social or combat. Auto-successes built into skills (i.e. "If you have one rank, you automatically know...; if you have five ranks, you know pretty much everything about X and will only roll to recall...") 3) Easy character creation - Should take 10-20 minutes, should let you know who you are, where you stand with other players, what you can do and how well, and what you want to do. As little option paralysis as possible. One or two completely optional random tables for rolling up character traits for folks who don't feel creative, and to sneakily provide a list for inspiration. Should result in a short paragraph the lets you know who you are and what you do, as well as some stats for resolution of conflict with dice. 4) World building - modular world creation, the GM should be able to slot in the bits they like and don't like to craft the world according to the style of world and tone of game they want 5) Scalable - system should play just as well with two people as it does with five. Build in options for small games and large, with advice for handling small and large tables in GM section. 6) Extreme clarity and light tone - rules sections should be easy to read and very clear, with tables and sidebars for popouts of major rules and principles; examples should be fun and funny so they stick in your head. Design stuff: 1) Mobile friendly - should read well on a tablet or phone - two different versions so that sidebars and art don't clutter the small screens. Indexed and searchable pdfs are a no brainer. 2) Clarity clarity clarity - no muddy backgrounds or icky color interactions 3) Online tools - dice stuff should translate to VTT easily - complex formulas would be bad here, simple expressions. Genre Stuff: 1) It's been 8 1/2 years since the last Harry Potter novel came out, but the series is still pretty firmly in the zeitgeist. Rowling still makes the news semi-regularly with HP details. The TV version of Grossman's The Magicians is coming out soon. 2) Magical schools have and continue to be a fixture of fantasy literature -- even weird permutations of the idea like Naruto still use the same basic idea (It's just a "ninja" magic school). The theme of education allows for a natural progression of the characters, a built in story arc, and plenty of antagonists (teachers, rival schools, etc.). 3) The most recent game to come out with rules for such a setting, Witch Girl Adventures, was, to put it charitably, not very good. More to come; will probably move this to Game Writing Thread as/if it goes further.
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Jun 24, 2015 17:05
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What about Will Wheaton's Titansgrave series? Do you think that is going to help expand the consumer base for the hobby?
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Jun 24, 2015 17:10
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Design stuff: You're right on with most of this post, why assume you want to make PDFs a priority? Skip PDFs and go straight to an app/mobile web site. Rules should be digitally native and interlinked. Build the game with phone-assisted play in mind from square one, so any updates you make are pushed out to everyone, and they only have to see rules relevant for their character. Your first-play experience could look at lot more like Spaceteam, where someone suggests everyone download an app and then you just follow the on-screen instructions to select a GM, make characters, and play an intro adventure.
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Jun 24, 2015 17:49
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Last I read, most teenagers and college-age people now still prefer print books to digital, and tablets/ebooks are more popular with the 20-35 set (which coincides with them being the demographic that makes "YA" fiction such a strong market). Just throwing that out there.
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Jun 24, 2015 18:08
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Dr. Tough posted:[D&D 4e] lasted six years and was outsold by Paizo's product. It was a commercial failure in that WotC went bankrupt or anything, but they did lose their dominate spot. Pathfinder beat it at the exact moment that Essentials came out, the book schedule got all hosed up and they canceled DMG 3, and Mearls & co. started bleating about bringing back that old D&D feel. That's not a coincidence. That's when I, and a whole bunch of people I know, jumped ship.
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Jun 24, 2015 18:18
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Alright, I'ma take a crack at this. About half of what you've described here is the game Munchkin. Modifying Munchkin with a quest deck and dungeon construction system (maybe like betrayal at house on the hill) would probably grab a lot of people. It wouldn't even really need a GM, probably. E: I've actually met a ton of people who have played Munchkin but never played a TTRPG. I bet it would be a good bridge! Also, Halloween Jack posted:Last I read, most teenagers and college-age people now still prefer print books to digital, and tablets/ebooks are more popular with the 20-35 set (which coincides with them being the demographic that makes "YA" fiction such a strong market). Just throwing that out there. I thought YA fiction was like ages 12 - 15? (Wikipedia says 12 - 18.) QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Jun 24, 2015 |
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Jun 24, 2015 18:21
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QuantumNinja posted:Also,
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Jun 24, 2015 18:38
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moths posted:How big were 80's assassin games like SJG's Killer? I mean the ones where you get a friend's name and someone else gets yours, then you tried to shoot them with a toy gun before someone shot you. It's not just an 80s thing. I ran a game of Humans vs Zombies after the creators posted about it in GBS back in 2007. We had around 500 players from a huge variety of campus subcultures and scenes- plenty of nerds, sure, but also a lot of athletes and frat dudes, and even a group of ROTC folks. Watching a bunch of people who would have otherwise probably not really associated working together and socializing was immensely rewarding.
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Jun 24, 2015 18:41
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