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Did somebody ask for some cynicism? No? Well, I'll get started.  Halloween Jack posted:Fyxt really amazes me because it is essentially a Fantasy Heartbreaker created in an era where the concept of the Fantasy Heartbreaker is supposed to be defunct. As long as D&D and its bastard offspring are at the tops of the industry, heartbreakers will never- - ever - - stop being generated. I mean, most gamers aren't part of the online forums culture and don't necessarily get exposed to a wide range of nerdly opinion. For a long while now and for a long while in the future there will be a chance for people to discover D&D or Pathfinder or whatever, get sick of it before bothering to learn much in the way of other games (maybe they have some Dark Heresy under their belt, whatever), and break out with their new and brilliant ideas that all date back to 1981. At the latest. PJOmega posted:I will still never understand the refusal for a company the size of WotC to fund a rudimentary Character Generator app for iOS or Android. Have it save and store 2 characters, additional slots for pennies (or GPs or Crystals or whatever you want to call your freemium currency). Try and convince a game company that it's somehow hot giving its game system to pirates (it already is, but nevermind scanners), then face the fact that something like WotC, if it can get over that hurdle, then has to convince Hasbro of the same thing. Especially when software costs a lot more than actually putting out the books. Yes, D&D Insider made a lot of money, but it also cost a lot of money, and not just in the obvious ways. Of course, the number of games that really, really benefit from this functionality are A) games that are overtly complex or B) games that overtly supplemented. Of course, any game with this kind of software has to be successful enough to support ongoing development, too. Where you can just put a book out and then maybe some errata and call it a day, that's one thing, but with software you have to continually maintain it on some level, and that's a very different cost outlay. Similar issues face doing complicated interfaces for game material. Not only will it cost you, but you have to have a game worth doing it for, which means you're doing for a game that's already successful (which probably doesn't need it to turn a profit), or as a gimmick for a newer game, which is a big risk (see also Fyxt) that relies on the game catching on. That's not to say it's impossible, but it'd probably need some known quantity behind it, like a previously successful property or a big name in RPGs, both of which have their own costs... That's just my take, though, I'm sure somebody out there is smarter than me and can puzzle out a way to make it work. For now, though, it's probably a notion better suited to higher-profit items like board or miniatures games, which are already doing quite well with the notion.
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Oct 28, 2015 04:26
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think this circles us back to how anyone / any team with the technical and creative chops to pull this off will be using it to develop full fledged video games instead. Developing video games pays loving peanuts and the games industry treats its developers like poo poo. Anyone with the technical know-how to program .net apps or javascript is working in software, where they're treated like human beings and paid a decent wage. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Oct 28, 2015 |
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Oct 28, 2015 09:41
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thespaceinvader posted:The original developers promised a lot more but there were... personal problems... to put it mildly This keeps being mentioned. What happened internally to cripple 4e's online content? Some kind of personality catfight?
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Oct 28, 2015 12:15
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Loxbourne posted:This keeps being mentioned. What happened internally to cripple 4e's online content? Some kind of personality catfight? IIRC their main developer committed murder-suicide.
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Oct 28, 2015 12:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:IIRC their main developer committed murder-suicide. Yup.
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Oct 28, 2015 12:38
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Agreed that taking a GOG-like stance is probably the wisest move, especially drawing the parallels in trading with nostalgia to an equal or greater degree than current works. The effort spent on DRM nonsense or contracting out for such has to have better outlets. Alternatively: They reap what they've sown with this quagmire of .PDF's---if only they'd latched onto what the Diskmag scene could've given them years in advance and progressed it all the while with even mild investment!...
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Oct 28, 2015 14:33
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If you want to know why WOTC isn't funding D&D app development, just look at the mess that is Magic Online.
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Oct 28, 2015 15:02
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ExiledTinkerer posted:Agreed that taking a GOG-like stance is probably the wisest move, especially drawing the parallels in trading with nostalgia to an equal or greater degree than current works. The effort spent on DRM nonsense or contracting out for such has to have better outlets. Essentially, there's next to no benefit in protecting yourself from piracy in the current market if you're an indie publisher. Most of your money is going to come from people wanting to show you goodwill or because they liked your pitch, and the risk of alienating those people is much worse than the risk of somebody getting your work for free. Even when people get something for free, if they like it it'll increase the chance they'll buy something of yours in the future.
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Oct 28, 2015 15:33
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think this circles us back to how anyone / any team with the technical and creative chops to pull this off will be using it to develop full fledged video games instead. Which circles me back to 'make an online database (which is a shitton easier and requires a lot less developmental chops), make an API for it, paygate it, watch someone else develop your tools for you'.
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Oct 28, 2015 18:13
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thespaceinvader posted:Which circles me back to 'make an online database (which is a shitton easier and requires a lot less developmental chops), make an API for it, paygate it, watch someone else develop your tools for you'. If only APIs were "one and done" projects I might agree with this.
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Oct 28, 2015 18:20
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Now I want to see Underground as a legit hypertext series. Halloween Jack posted:But everything looks the way it should be! These coconut shells on my ears look just like the ones Gygax was wearing when the giant magic bird landed. Leperflesh posted:Hell, the 3.0 handbook had a CD-ROM in the front cover with a functional character builder. But the fact that they never released a "full" version of that character generator that debuted WITH THE GAME ITSELF still hurts my feelings.
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Oct 28, 2015 18:50
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Quarex posted:I wish on a regular basis that someone would re-do Underground with a game system that was not utter garbage since so much about the concept and gameworld is amazing. I always get Underground confused with Brave New World, which has a similar concept.
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Oct 28, 2015 19:11
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Halloween Jack posted:Ray Winninger's Underground? Why that game specifically? Granted I think I only read about 20 pages of the Brave New World fluff before putting it alongside the other games I will never play ever (which at this point I assume is "all my tabletop games").
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Oct 28, 2015 19:32
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:If only APIs were "one and done" projects I might agree with this. Admittedly I know poo poo-all about API development, but aren't they more so than making the whole programme yourself?
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Oct 28, 2015 19:34
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thespaceinvader posted:Which circles me back to 'make an online database (which is a shitton easier and requires a lot less developmental chops), make an API for it, paygate it, watch someone else develop your tools for you'. Regardless, one of my friends figured out how to capture the XML data from one of the builders. I think he wanted to make some kind of item database. But if you've ever seen the big chunks of XML they work on in the CB thread, you'll know they're ugly as sin. So I don't think he got very far. Alternately, people have been scraping the compendium basically forever. But that's just as clunky and error prone. I think masterplan and a few of the character sheet apps went this route. Anyway, my basic point is that this has been done before. But you still are going to have a hard time monetizing it because once someone pulls enough data to make a reasonable copy of your database you're pretty much toast. The only thing preventing it in 4e is that the actual tools, while really clunky, are still going to be way better than something someone is going to put together in their spare time.
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Oct 28, 2015 19:57
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Halloween Jack posted:Ray Winninger's Underground? Why that game specifically? If I remember correctly, Underground had "hyperlinks" in the text that pointed to sidebars and such.
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Oct 28, 2015 20:05
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Halloween Jack posted:Ray Winninger's Underground? Why that game specifically? Underground was basically Marshal Law the RPG. The Underground universe was extremely detailed including one supplement detailing the Lunar Colony and its specific brand of hosed-upness (Steel Deep). Some really clever and well written stuff wrapped around the poo poo show of the DC Heroes system. Evil Mastermind posted:If I remember correctly, Underground had "hyperlinks" in the text that pointed to sidebars and such. Correct! Brave New World was written by Matt Forbeck and used a variation on the original Deadlands ruleset. It was a much less nihilistic setting than Underground and used a much better system of rules, but they still had issues with the swinginess of exploding dice (just ask Mlleneza about that). Humbug Scoolbus fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Oct 28, 2015 |
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Oct 28, 2015 20:24
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Setting-wise, Underground was way before its time. The idea of soldiers coming back from war and being treated like poo poo, only this time they've got corporate-grown superpowers and PTSD and have been sort of implanted with a black-and-white comic book mentality, is a pretty brilliant idea.
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Oct 28, 2015 20:33
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thespaceinvader posted:Admittedly I know poo poo-all about API development, but aren't they more so than making the whole programme yourself? Could be. Users of the API will always be asking for additional/extended functionality and bug fixes. It's a constant maintenance game.
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Oct 28, 2015 21:09
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It's worth mentioning that WotC has always been complete garbage in their online materials; their score on Glass Door is a bit higher then it used to be, but still not doing great. They recently shut down their whole forums and wiped the slate clean because pretty much nobody in the Magic community used it.
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Oct 28, 2015 21:18
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The D&D community, notably, was using it, but no one in the D&D Team actually devoted any time to managing it. Whereas the Magic Community team spends most of their time interacting with the community on Reddit and twitter, so the forums were ancillary.
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Oct 28, 2015 21:31
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thespaceinvader posted:Admittedly I know poo poo-all about API development, but aren't they more so than making the whole programme yourself? Not necessarily. Think of it this way: APIs are just easy building blocks for other people to make things with your data. They are like Legos. Does buying one bag of Legos let you make everything you want? What do you do if one of your Legos was subtly defective but is now embedded deeply in an already-made Lego diorama? Etc. etc. etc. In other words, APIs are basically a whole program in themselves. If you're writing a living program then you're most likely going to need a living API.
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Oct 28, 2015 22:02
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Underground was basically Marshal Law the RPG. The Underground universe was extremely detailed including one supplement detailing the Lunar Colony and its specific brand of hosed-upness (Steel Deep). Some really clever and well written stuff wrapped around the poo poo show of the DC Heroes system.
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Oct 28, 2015 22:06
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Yeah I felt like underground was a bit much. That art of the guy trying with the flag "a soldier and the friend that abandoned him" is super good though.
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Oct 28, 2015 22:11
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Underground came out of Reagan and Bush (the First) years, and that early 90s vibe was not subtle in real life either.
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Oct 28, 2015 23:05
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For people who don't follow video game news, White Wolf has once again changed hands, and are now owned by Paradox Interactive: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/10/29/paradox-white-wolf/ (Not to be confused with Paradox Entertainment, who are Paradox Interactive's ex-parent-company.)
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Oct 29, 2015 14:30
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ProfessorCirno posted:It's worth mentioning that WotC has always been complete garbage in their online materials; their score on Glass Door is a bit higher then it used to be, but still not doing great. To illustrate how incredibly poo poo WotC is at computer stuff, just look at MTGO. When it came out 15 years ago it had more features and was arguably more stable than it is today. Every iteration they've done on the client since has removed features.
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Oct 29, 2015 14:44
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Lemon Curdistan posted:For people who don't follow video game news, White Wolf has once again changed hands, and are now owned by Paradox Interactive: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/10/29/paradox-white-wolf/ Which raises the possibility of a political sandbox game set in the World of Darkness. I can't wait... to mock people who play it. (Seriously, though, it might be interesting - especially if you can run it from the Middle Ages or earlier through to the present day.)
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Oct 29, 2015 14:44
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Crusader Kings: The RPG Alternatively, Knights of Pen and Paper: The Actual Tabletop RPG
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Oct 29, 2015 14:48
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Jedit posted:Which raises the possibility of a political sandbox game set in the World of Darkness. I can't wait... to mock people who play it. Crusader Kings 3 DLC: Vampire Clans.
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Oct 29, 2015 14:51
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Lemon Curdistan posted:For people who don't follow video game news, White Wolf has once again changed hands, and are now owned by Paradox Interactive: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/10/29/paradox-white-wolf/ Oh hey the chances of some sort of new WoD video game actually existing just increased by 100%. Jedit posted:Which raises the possibility of a political sandbox game set in the World of Darkness. I can't wait... to mock people who play it. Dark Ages WoD Crusader Kings DLC.
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Oct 29, 2015 14:56
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Obsidian's Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2
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Oct 29, 2015 15:02
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Obsidian's Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 Don't you dare get my hopes up
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Oct 29, 2015 15:12
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That's another shot at reprinting V:tES?
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Oct 29, 2015 15:22
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Lightning Lord posted:Oh hey the chances of some sort of new WoD video game actually existing just increased by 100%. 200% of 0 is still 0, though.
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Oct 29, 2015 15:24
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Obsidian's Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 A true sequel to Bloodlines, complete with buginess!
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Oct 29, 2015 15:30
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Lemon Curdistan posted:200% of 0 is still 0, though. This is an RPG forum, accurate math is clearly not a concern.
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Oct 29, 2015 15:30
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Troika Games reforms, sequel to Bloodlines. Somewhere, in a distant alternate universe that is too beautiful for us, we're playing Bloodlines 3 right now and it is good.
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Oct 29, 2015 15:56
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Speaking of Bloodlines, how is BLOODLUST SHADOWHUNTER, aside from sounding like a 90s superhero?
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Oct 29, 2015 15:59
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Serf posted:Troika Games reforms, sequel to Bloodlines.
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Oct 29, 2015 16:02
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