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Alien Rope Burn posted:I find the anger shown by any D&D game fans over support ending for any of their editions to be bizarre, particularly 2e and 3e. Nearly any version of D&D has more material than anybody could ever conceivably use up in a lifetime; I think people are more attached to the abstract notion of their game being "relevant" (whatever the gently caress that means) than actually giving a poo poo about the material released for a game. You can see something like this happening in Pathfinder where the Occult classes are really starting the scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of novel mechanics that haven't been done before.
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Oct 1, 2015 07:24
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Terrible Opinions posted:A large revision of the underlying math/balance like 2nd edition Dark Heresy, or the new versions of World of Darkness would be worthwhile. This is basically what 4e was! the only real changes from 3.5 to 4e were ballance math and format so really people are mad that the books are readable.
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Oct 1, 2015 07:30
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gradenko_2000 posted:You can see something like this happening in Pathfinder where the Occult classes are really starting the scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of novel mechanics that haven't been done before. One might argue that Pathfinder started out with scraping the bottom of the barrel and has been mining into the floorboards ever since. But seriously, have they ever come up with anything more innovative and cool than the Book of Nine Swords was for 3.5?
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Oct 1, 2015 07:31
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Error 404 posted:Funny thing in my experience with wod edition wars: I never really see it online or irl. I've seen my share of people making GBS threads all over the nWoD for not just being the oWoD 2.0 all over again, but in general it doesn't seem to have caught fire the way the true battle for D&D's soul has. Conversely I've seen plenty of arguments over Mage in particular, between various oWoD editions, between Ascension and Awakening, between Awakening and some other part of Awakening, and they never fail to somehow be even more insufferable than the worst D&D edition warring.
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Oct 1, 2015 07:43
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Nearly any version of D&D has more material than anybody could ever conceivably use up in a lifetime; I think people are more attached to the abstract notion of their game being "relevant" (whatever the gently caress that means) than actually giving a poo poo about the material released for a game. Going back to this a bit, I was going over my collection of MERP stuff and it's mind-boggling just how much of it there actually was. Who had time to ever play through all of these? Never mind every playing group with a GM good enough to make homebrew campaigns all by themselves. Alien Rope Burn posted:One might argue that Pathfinder started out with scraping the bottom of the barrel and has been mining into the floorboards ever since. But seriously, have they ever come up with anything more innovative and cool than the Book of Nine Swords was for 3.5? Paizo themselves I would say no, the most "out there" thing I've seen would be Pathfinder Unchained which is maybe half rules taken from 3.5's Unearthed Arcana (the other half being dribbled out in earlier corebooks). The material from the Advanced Players/Race/Class Guide is somewhat innovative, but still nothing on the scale of BO9S and a cynical view would be that it's just more progressively fine-grained hybrids of the core classes. It's Dreamscarred Press as a third-party publisher that's redone BO9S in their own style for Pathfinder through Path of War, and also having cleaned up and improved Psionics by a lot. Elfgames posted:This is basically what 4e was! the only real changes from 3.5 to 4e were ballance math and format so really people are mad that the books are readable. Seriously. They even published numerous articles and books detailing what it was in 3.5 that they were trying to address in 4e.
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Oct 1, 2015 08:06
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gradenko_2000 posted:Going back to this a bit, I was going over my collection of MERP stuff and it's mind-boggling just how much of it there actually was. Who had time to ever play through all of these? Yeah. As somebody who's been doing F&Fs for Rifts along with occamsnailfile, it's a little humbling that we're on book... 16, I think, which means we're only about 20% through the whole game line, and that's not including the extended family of "compatible" (using the term loosely) Palladium games and their quarterly magazine. Kai Tave posted:Conversely I've seen plenty of arguments over Mage in particular, between various oWoD editions, between Ascension and Awakening, between Awakening and some other part of Awakening, and they never fail to somehow be even more insufferable than the worst D&D edition warring. The usual argument I see is that nWoD makes too many concessions to the oWoD, which is the opposite argument you get from most edition wars.
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Oct 1, 2015 10:08
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I would not mind reading a MERP F&F. Hint, hint.
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Oct 1, 2015 10:48
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Error 404 posted:Funny thing in my experience with wod edition wars: I never really see it online or irl. I've met some folks who are just absolutely vehement about it, usually OWOD fans who are mad at NWOD for existing, but on the whole the tone tends to be "yeah, I don't really like [edition] but it's cool if you do."
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Oct 1, 2015 10:53
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Most of the OWOD vs. NWOD wars I've seen online have been focused around Mage, which is probably just because Mage inspires people to argue.
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Oct 1, 2015 10:57
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unseenlibrarian posted:Most of the OWOD vs. NWOD wars I've seen online have been focused around Mage, which is probably just because Mage inspires people to argue. Hell, even before nWoD was a thing Mage inspired Edition Wars between second edition and the Revised edition.
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Oct 1, 2015 11:32
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unseenlibrarian posted:which is probably just because Mage inspires people to argue. I don't think I've looked at the book since the 90s, but isn't the core conflict of Mage various groups trying to impose their version of reality on everyone else?
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Oct 1, 2015 11:56
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My experience with nWoD seems to be: if someone played the old edition they don't like the new one. If they didn't play the old one, then they will like the new one. But yeah most edition wars are spirited debates and D&D ones are like western front trench warfare.
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Oct 1, 2015 12:26
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Looking back, I remember feeling a real sense of derision for 2E during the lead-up to 3E. It wasn't the rules, which I objected to as a nerdy knee-jerk at first, but the way the end-of-edition materials were being presented. They were big, expensive adventure modules explicitly advertised to kill campaigns dead, with clumsily photoshopped images of 2E rulebooks passing through it like a pepper mill. The intent was (hopefully) to offer a big send-off for ongoing games, because of the mechanical incompatibilities between editions, but the tone read more like an ad for pest control.
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Oct 1, 2015 12:28
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Bieeardo posted:Looking back, I remember feeling a real sense of derision for 2E during the lead-up to 3E. It wasn't the rules, which I objected to as a nerdy knee-jerk at first, but the way the end-of-edition materials were being presented. They were big, expensive adventure modules explicitly advertised to kill campaigns dead, with clumsily photoshopped images of 2E rulebooks passing through it like a pepper mill. The intent was (hopefully) to offer a big send-off for ongoing games, because of the mechanical incompatibilities between editions, but the tone read more like an ad for pest control. That seems to have been a running theme for WotC. I'm a big fan of 4th but some of their marketing for 'your old game is dead, level up to your new game' stuff rubbed some people the wrong way, and was then capitalised on by Paizo. Likewise the switch from 4th to 5th and the 'it was terrible, the new game is so much better' is entirely disengenuous. Well probably apart from Mearls who didn't seem to get what made 4th good given his work on Essentials.
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Oct 1, 2015 12:39
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I have a friend who got angry about the New World of Darkness but I now cannot remember whether he hated the new clan structure or hated people who preferred the old clan structure. As someone whose favorite thing about Vampire was probably learning about new bloodlines and disciplines rather than playing, I can understand how streamlining the new clan structure could have been offputting. But then again I literally never even read the new books.
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Oct 1, 2015 14:30
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gradenko_2000 posted:You can see something like this happening in Pathfinder where the Occult classes are really starting the scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of novel mechanics that haven't been done before. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 14:43
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nWOD is great. The Werewolf one anyway.
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Oct 1, 2015 14:53
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I find the anger shown by any D&D game fans over support ending for any of their editions to be bizarre, particularly 2e and 3e. Nearly any version of D&D has more material than anybody could ever conceivably use up in a lifetime; I think people are more attached to the abstract notion of their game being "relevant" (whatever the gently caress that means) than actually giving a poo poo about the material released for a game. e: There were something like 80 official books for 3.x, not counting adventures, and 9,285 products listed as "D&D/d20" on DriveThru. 9,285. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 14:56
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Quarex posted:I have a friend who got angry about the New World of Darkness but I now cannot remember whether he hated the new clan structure or hated people who preferred the old clan structure. It's weird. I could argue about why new Vampire's clan system is better for a ton of different reasons, but something about it just fails to capture my imagination even half as well as oWoD did. I'm sure this is in part because I wasn't a wide-eyed teenager when I read nWoD, but that's not all of it. Ephemeral 'what gets you pumped' stuff is super important to good design. It's also basically impossible to discuss meaningfully on an internet forum.
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Oct 1, 2015 15:02
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The main problem I personally had with the nWoD stuff was less about the mechanics as much as it felt like all the cool cosmic high-stakes inherent conflicts in Werewolf and Mage were thrown out and replaced them with "I guess you're all infighting or something?"
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Oct 1, 2015 16:03
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Evil Mastermind posted:The main problem I personally had with the nWoD stuff was less about the mechanics as much as it felt like all the cool cosmic high-stakes inherent conflicts in Werewolf and Mage were thrown out and replaced them with "I guess you're all infighting or something?" I have seen this particular bit of design both praised and cursed. I could take it or leave it, but it really does create a deeply different experience.
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Oct 1, 2015 16:05
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Mention the techcracy in public forum at your own peril.
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Oct 1, 2015 16:09
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paradoxGentleman posted:I have seen this particular bit of design both praised and cursed. I could take it or leave it, but it really does create a deeply different experience.
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Oct 1, 2015 16:12
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Evil Mastermind posted:It's something that came up in F&F a little while ago; when you have a "high concept" game you kinda want to mention what the PCs are supposed to be doing. I never got the feeling that any of the "updated" nWoD games explained what campaigns were supposed to be about because none of them (except for Hunter) seemed to have an inherent conflict. They general don't have an inherent conflict, but usually a couple of them but nothing is front and center the way the Technocracy or the Wyrm were. It took a while (and I would argue it's still ongoing) for everyone to adapt to the toolbox approach; note that each of the new editions features some sort of prominent antagonist right in the title (Strix, Idigam, Fallen World, Huntsmen). It's worth noting that the 20th anniversary editions are demonstrating that there is a lot of pent-up demand for the oWoD stuff even a decade after the transition - now imagine if someone had been able to publish something that somehow reused both the mechanics and setting (I don't think there is a significant group of people out there who are that attached to the old Storyteller mechanics) while White Wolf was trying to get the nWoD booted up. The D&D 3-to-4 transition was really a unique case in that regard.
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Oct 1, 2015 16:35
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Evil Mastermind posted:The main problem I personally had with the nWoD stuff was less about the mechanics as much as it felt like all the cool cosmic high-stakes inherent conflicts in Werewolf and Mage were thrown out and replaced them with "I guess you're all infighting or something?" I really love the millennial terror of Vampire, the Final Nights, the sense that yes, thinking in terms of centuries has been the best move in the previous thousands of years but it's a popular and prevalent opinion that the end is really loving nigh. Requiem feels kind of sedate by comparison since it lacks that crazy tension, and indeed a lot of the internal conflicts (the Camarilla mass-murdering thin bloods, the existence of the Sabbat) don't make sense absent it.
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Oct 1, 2015 16:47
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Werewolf really suffered in the change of scope. Apocalypse had an inherent story that was easy to grasp, while Forsaken took place in this weird post werewolf civil war where you were spirit police. I've played both, but Forsaken never offered anything that spoke to me. The o/nWoD divide basically came down to how many of the same themes and elements were remixed. It probably could have been better received if they'd made the division clearer, branded nWoD as a different line entirely. It just invited direct comparisons that showcased the weaknesses in each line. VtR was strong enough to coexist with VtM, but WtF? Instead of stepping on WtA's toes, use WtF's spirit conflict to give Geists something to do.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:03
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I find myself mildly gobstopped that people really miss the Wyrm, aka "the Captain Planet villains with way more rape", but different strokes, I suppose. I mean, it's not like Forsaken doesn't have a central villain in the Pure.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:12
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Pure kind of came across as star-bellied sneetches that we were meant to hate because there were no stars upon ours. At least to me, it seemed like there were bigger ideological differences between some tribes in WtA, and they could work together.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:15
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Siivola posted:I would not mind reading a MERP F&F. Hint, hint.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:48
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moths posted:Pure kind of came across as star-bellied sneetches that we were meant to hate because there were no stars upon ours. At least to me, it seemed like there were bigger ideological differences between some tribes in WtA, and they could work together. I thought part of the whole conceit behind Werewolf was that the Wyrm had become dominant because the tribes were fractious and didn't work together until it was too late? And even then, they still struggled with internal conflict? You're right in that the Pure weren't as immediately arresting as foes, but at the same time, given how terrifying werewolves are in either WoD setting as engines of violence, making them their own worst foes makes sense to me.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:04
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dwarf74 posted:"The maps are badass and are arguably the prettiest RPG cartography ever. Also it plays nothing like Lord of the Rings reads. The end." *deletes merpf&fdraft.txt, sighs*
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Oct 1, 2015 18:06
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Werewolves were initially part of the all-star were-things system of balances that were meant to keep the Wyrm in check. But being imperfect and full of hubris, they waged war with their "allies" to near extinction - realizing too late that actually, yes, they were an important part of the cosmic ecosystem. There were huge ideological differences between the tribes: Red Talons were basically "kill all humans" as Glass Walkers we're buying stock in Google. But collectively the threat of the Wyrm was enough to get all your players on the same page. I didn't really get into the Pure, but it seemed like the biggest difference was between their spirit outlook and something they did a long time ago either for or against Father Wolf. It wasn't part of the ongoing setting, which was the important thing.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:18
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moths posted:I didn't really get into the Pure, but it seemed like the biggest difference was between their spirit outlook and something they did a long time ago either for or against Father Wolf. It wasn't part of the ongoing setting, which was the important thing. There are actually three tribes of Pures: some are mad at the Forsaken for killing Father Wolf and are best buds with spirits, some are mad at them because in killing Father Wolf they broke Pangea and now they can't just hunt however they please anymore and some are really into bloodlines and racial supremacy.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:24
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moths posted:The o/nWoD divide basically came down to how many of the same themes and elements were remixed. It probably could have been better received if they'd made the division clearer, branded nWoD as a different line entirely. It just invited direct comparisons that showcased the weaknesses in each line. In retrospect, it really looks like this could have worked (in terms of fan base) but I strongly doubt that White Wolf had the bandwidth to basically double (realistically one at full speed one at half speed) their game lines. I got the impression that they were creatively spent in terms of where to take the World of Darkness, particularly in light of the whole End Times stuff. The reboot allowed for the murder of a great number of sacred cows and just go back to principles in terms of "what are the core vampire archetypes?", "what is the most playable and accessible way to structure vampire politics?", etc. Spirit cops might have worked better if they had moved some of the emphasis from being spirits to being cops. Draw more from those cultural touchstones (I was basically copying The Shield at every opportunity) but then you're straying farther from the primal rAAAAGGHHH KILL stuff.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:48
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Depends on which cops.
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Oct 1, 2015 19:23
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The usual argument I see is that nWoD makes too many concessions to the oWoD, which is the opposite argument you get from most edition wars. Pope Guilty posted:I've met some folks who are just absolutely vehement about it, usually OWOD fans who are mad at NWOD for existing, but on the whole the tone tends to be "yeah, I don't really like [edition] but it's cool if you do." Evil Mastermind posted:The main problem I personally had with the nWoD stuff was less about the mechanics as much as it felt like all the cool cosmic high-stakes inherent conflicts in Werewolf and Mage were thrown out and replaced them with "I guess you're all infighting or something?" Evil Mastermind posted:It's something that came up in F&F a little while ago; when you have a "high concept" game you kinda want to mention what the PCs are supposed to be doing. I never got the feeling that any of the "updated" nWoD games explained what campaigns were supposed to be about because none of them (except for Hunter) seemed to have an inherent conflict. When the nWoD first came out, I believe the biggest complaint was that it (specifically Vampire) didn't have a grand metaplot, centuries of secret history, and epic-scale conflict. A common criticism of late-era WoD books was that they were meant more for toilet reading than actually playing, but a lot of fans did miss that stuff when it was gone. And Vampire was really upfront about actively eschewing the whole "secret history of the world literally going back to Adam and Eve" thing, and really hammered home the theme of fighting over a city, not a world-spanning secret empire or an ancient conspiracy. Every game fit into the WoD differently and was impacted differently by the changeover, so I'll just talk about Vampire, the one with which I have the most experience. So about that whole "you fight, I guess" concept...Vampire has a fair bit of Anne Rice influence. "Personal horror" was a big theme for the game, but in practice, Louis and Lestat pining for each other doesn't translate so well to an adventure game for 4-6 players. (Sure, there are games designed to do that today, and you could argue that there were at that time, too. But consider the general state of the medium and the audience's expectations in 1993.) But Vampire was also highly political, and as players experimented and the product line developed, the game evolved into a playstyle that was essentially Vampire Organized Crime. This makes a lot of sense for vampires because they need to establish a supply of human blood and a well-defended place to sleep during the day, not to mention other illicit resources in order to enjoy some semblance of a normal life. What Vampire: the Requiem did was to start from the assumption that the playstyle is Vampire Organized Crime, and it was quite deliberate about minimizing the burden of metaplot, the presence of super-powerful elder vampires, and anything else that the PCs are hard-pressed to have any direct effect on. It also squashed the criticism that Vampire was a game about "superheroes with fangs" by hammering on the theme of "Where do you get your loving blood?" over and over. But yeah, people miss reading about thousand-year vampire conspiracies. They miss being the guy in your group who knows all that stuff and can deliver an impromptu seminar on vampire lore. Dr. Tough posted:My experience with nWoD seems to be: if someone played the old edition they don't like the new one. If they didn't play the old one, then they will like the new one. But yeah most edition wars are spirited debates and D&D ones are like western front trench warfare. Pope Guilty posted:I really love the snake person terror of Vampire, the Final Nights,
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Oct 1, 2015 21:26
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This is an odd question, but I'm wondering how people treat kickstarter proceeds on their tax returns. It's clearly taxable income as income tax is a tax on income "from any source derived" in the United States. It is also a business expense so it can be deducted. That said, some proceeds from a kickstarter tend to cover the creator's living expenses which would void that portion's validity as a business deduction, in my inexperienced mind. If nothing else, there is a limit on what you deduct for meals and travel. I feel this portion of the KS funds would also be subject to self-employment tax section of Social Security. Anyone who knows better want to weigh-in?
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Oct 1, 2015 21:33
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Evil Mastermind posted:From what I've seen from my old g.txt days, what matters more is that content is coming out, regardless of the quality of said content. It doesn't matter that books are coming out with stuff that they'll never use; what matters is that books are being produced. Because that means the game line is still being supported. Like...I get it to some degree. Having books coming out regularly means there's new poo poo. And new poo poo is always gonna be exciting. New options and mechanics to tool and toy with. New ideas for storylines, settings, characters, etc. New monsters to throw at PCs, and the PCs have new abilities or classes or what have you to fight the monsters off with. If you were to bug me about it, I could probably come up with a few things 4e could've totally done with having before it was finished. That's the whole point of a crunchy system, you know? That there's crunch to it. There's definitely a happiness to seeing a new book come out then rushing online to join a conversation about it. Getting new materials and picking them apart and putting them back together or combining them with other poo poo to make new things. That said, there's definitely a line where there's just...not much else you can do with an engine. D&D, despite what d20 tried to do, has always been made of specialist engines. There's benefits to it, but the downside is, sooner or later, you've pushed that engine to it's limit, or at least to the realm of vastly diminishing returns. 3e just didn't really have anywhere else to go. It's made real apparent when you look at Pathfinder - they simply haven't broken any new ground there. They've had to just remake old 3e ideas because there isn't really any space for new ones. There's also the argument of finding groups. People usually want to play the "newest _______," of whatever it is. If you're really into AD&D 2e, for example, it's probably a lot harder to find new groups or players or what have you then it was in 1990. Where the actual idiocy and hypocrisy steps in is when those same people who demand 3e be supported forever now vacantly toe the party line and talk up how 5e is perfect and never needs supplements and it's lack of support is just proof of how good it is. Or when those people who scream about being FIRED AS CUSTOMERS end up talking up with pride how they never bought any 3e splats. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 21:40
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ProfessorCirno posted:That said, there's definitely a line where there's just...not much else you can do with an engine. D&D, despite what d20 tried to do, has always been made of specialist engines. There's benefits to it, but the downside is, sooner or later, you've pushed that engine to it's limit, or at least to the realm of vastly diminishing returns. 3e just didn't really have anywhere else to go. It's made real apparent when you look at Pathfinder - they simply haven't broken any new ground there. They've had to just remake old 3e ideas because there isn't really any space for new ones. The interesting thing about 3.5/Pathfinder is that the best thing you could do to the crunch would be to release anti-content - strip out all the thousands of terrible feats and publish a new feat list that is slimmer and more focused. You can't really fix QWLF without a new edition, but feat bloat isn't a mechanical change so much as a content one. The framework is sounds, it's just been very poorly managed over the years.
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Oct 1, 2015 21:46
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Covok posted:This is an odd question, but I'm wondering how people treat kickstarter proceeds on their tax returns. It's clearly taxable income as income tax is a tax on income "from any source derived" in the United States. It is also a business expense so it can be deducted. That said, some proceeds from a kickstarter tend to cover the creator's living expenses which would void that portion's validity as a business deduction, in my inexperienced mind. If nothing else, there is a limit on what you deduct for meals and travel. I feel this portion of the KS funds would also be subject to self-employment tax section of Social Security. I haven't run the numbers, but my first guess would be to run it through a company, and treat the portion which you pay yourself for your effort as personal income.
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