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I too would like a hobby where face to face it isn't pulling teeth to suggest a game without people smashing their fists on the table and demanding 5e or Pathfinder, but I'm pretty sure if somehow D&D were to die out, a lot of people would just quit.Guilty Spork posted:Well, I think most tabletop game stores these days get more of their money from basically every other kind of tabletop game besides RPGs. CCGs and wargames both inspire regular purchases and draw people in via organized play, and the board game crowd just plain buys a lot of games. Especially given the large portion of the player base that apparently wants to settle into one D&D-ish game indefinitely, game stores carry RPGs basically because they're fans themselves and they want to and can do so without losing money. I spoke to a game owner once and while what he said basically amounted to this being true, RPGs are a benefit because providing play space and carrying the occasional book regularly draws people to the store, where they spend money on other products. So the sad half shelf of Pathfinder and 5e books is really an "RPGs played here!" ad, and while you're playing at the store, might as well pick up everything you need to finish up that Magic deck you're gonna play at the Regionals next week. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Jan 16, 2016 |
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Jan 16, 2016 07:24
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Lightning Lord posted:I too would like a hobby where face to face it isn't pulling teeth to suggest a game without people smashing their fists on the table and demanding 5e or Pathfinder, but I'm pretty sure if somehow D&D were to die out, a lot of people would just quit. A hometown friend of mine in Santa Fe has a store that does similar (or at least did last time I talked to her years ago). In the early '00s, when boardgames were beginning to see a revival, she had a toy store up front and a back shelf of Eurogames she could pitch to people who brought their kids in for a stuffed whatever.
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Jan 17, 2016 09:48
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One of my FLGS actually has a ton of board games that you can play. It's something like $5 per person per day, but when a game costs $50 and you aren't sure if you'll like it, getting a few friends to pay a little to try a few out is really neat. E: the store also has a ton of non-DnD RPGs, which is why I go there. As an example, there is a copy of Spirit of 77 on the shelf that taunts me to buy it every time I go in.
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Jan 18, 2016 05:38
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The model adopted by the "boardgame cafes" in my country is that you go in to buy food and drink, and you can play whatever boardgames they have on their shelves while you're there, effectively renting them. The traditional retail FLGS chain, on the other hand, is pretty much completely dominated by MTG and Warhammer.
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Jan 18, 2016 05:51
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Everblight posted:There is no doubt in my mind that PF, seeing their own game bloated and dessicated from years of Splat Abuse, will just make PF2.0 off the bones of 5E's OGL, because every grog who declared 5E the "one true edition" since it was designed by feel will jump ship. Of all the stuff I have read over the past few pages of discussion, this is the topic I find most confusing, for several reasons. I don't know how many Pathfinder customers actually jumped ship back to 5e and made it their primary game. My SWAG (situational wild rear end guess) is that most Pathfinder players LIKE that Pathfinder is the 3rdiest 3rd that ever 3rded a 3rd. Thus, they have little reason to switch back to 5e besides brand identity (and I expect a lot of them did buy the core books) and the Pathfinder designers have little reason to make a new edition based on a very loose,generic version of D&D.
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Jan 18, 2016 17:29
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It's also the case that Paizo has complete control over the licensing and publishing of material for Pathfinder, so they're missing that raison d'etre for PF's inception that was the 4th Edition GSL.
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Jan 18, 2016 17:35
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Halloween Jack posted:Of all the stuff I have read over the past few pages of discussion, this is the topic I find most confusing, for several reasons. I don't know how many Pathfinder customers actually jumped ship back to 5e and made it their primary game. My SWAG (situational wild rear end guess) is that most Pathfinder players LIKE that Pathfinder is the 3rdiest 3rd that ever 3rded a 3rd. Thus, they have little reason to switch back to 5e besides brand identity (and I expect a lot of them did buy the core books) and the Pathfinder designers have little reason to make a new edition based on a very loose,generic version of D&D. From the PF players I know, there are basically three types of PF player; 1.) The ones who like it because it's the "3rdiest 3rd that ever 3rded a 3rd". These people definitely exist and they just want as many obscure splash books as humanly possible, or they felt personally betrayed by Wizards putting out 4e for some reason. These people are probably never coming back. This is the group of people who shouted about how 4e wasn't "real D&D." 2.) The ones who just don't want to learn new rules, or are super used to ignoring most of the rules. I know a bunch of people who just weren't interested in learning 4e D&D because they thought it was too different, or they tried it once and didn't have a good time. These people love 5e because it's different enough from PF to justify buying new stuff, but not so different that they have to bother learning new rules. These are the people who love to tell you crazy stories about cool things their characters did that could have happened in any system because they had nothing to do with any of the rules anyway. 3.) The ones who are new to RPGs, and got told by someone from group 1 or 2 to play PF. I have actually seen a TON of these people embrace 5e because the books are gorgeous. Groups 2 and 3 are the bigger groups by far, but group 1 is the loudest.
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Jan 18, 2016 18:43
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QuantumNinja posted:One of my FLGS actually has a ton of board games that you can play. It's something like $5 per person per day, but when a game costs $50 and you aren't sure if you'll like it, getting a few friends to pay a little to try a few out is really neat. This is pretty much the future of the industry IMO. Board games are great but designer games cost a bundle and take up a huge amount of space for things which are played relatively infrequently by non-obsessed people. Having a place which basically acts like a rental library where you can get some food and drink and a table, and play whatever they have in store, and buy the things you like enough, is a great model. And it's one which can be elegantly subsided by cash cows like X-Wing, Netrunner, MTG etc. The big difficulty I guess is that it requires, one way or another, a fuckton of capital investment in buying games for the shelves, and runs a lot of risk of those games losing key components frequently. thespaceinvader fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jan 18, 2016 |
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Jan 18, 2016 18:49
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gradenko_2000 posted:It's also the case that Paizo has complete control over the licensing and publishing of material for Pathfinder, so they're missing that raison d'etre for PF's inception that was the 4th Edition GSL. Well, yes and no. You can make OGL material for use with Pathfinder like Sexcraft and nobody can stop you as long as the connection is just implicit. If you want to use the Pathfinder Compatibility License you have to abide by their guidelines and sufferance, but they don't scrutinize licensees too closely as far as I can tell.
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Jan 18, 2016 18:50
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Well, yes and no. You can make OGL material for use with Pathfinder like Sexcraft and nobody can stop you as long as the connection is just implicit. If you want to use the Pathfinder Compatibility License you have to abide by their guidelines and sufferance, but they don't scrutinize licensees too closely as far as I can tell. I meant in the sense that the owner of Pathfinder is never going to go "sorry Paizo, you can't produce material for Pathfinder anymore" like what happened with the owner of D&D.
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Jan 18, 2016 18:53
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Misandu posted:
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Jan 18, 2016 18:54
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Here are some more thoughts now that I'm not phoneposting: what are the reasons to use the DMG, or the 5e SRD, or the OGL? I understand that, for all the reasons inklesspen detailed, the DMG is mainly only useful for people who would be writing a zillion words of Forgotten Realms homebrew anyway. They're inviting you to use their IP and to bank on making more through their official store at 50% than you otherwise would at 60% or 75% through DTRPG. But when it comes to the SRD/OGL, I don't understand why you even need to put that official label on your product unless a) you want to take advantage of that brand identity, or b) you're making a core game, not an accessory or adventure module, and thus using the OGL saves you a lot of tedious work since you can literally copypaste rules or assume your audience already has access to them. There have been unaffiliated, unlicensed D&D-compatible products since the earliest Judge's Guild supplements (and a pile of forgotten fly-by-nights). For example, poster shades of eternity has been working on a heavily Rifts-inspired game based on D20, and asked in the Palladium megathread about moving across to the 5e SRD. I don't see a good reason to do that, and suggested that if the only reason they're using D20 is because they want a somewhat more rational d20-based engine, they don't actually need D20 at all--my understanding is that you can't trademark game mechanics, only text.
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Jan 18, 2016 19:28
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thespaceinvader posted:This is pretty much the future of the industry IMO. Board games are great but designer games cost a bundle and take up a huge amount of space for things which are played relatively infrequently by non-obsessed people. Having a place which basically acts like a rental library where you can get some food and drink and a table, and play whatever they have in store, and buy the things you like enough, is a great model. And it's one which can be elegantly subsided by cash cows like X-Wing, Netrunner, MTG etc. A local "nerd cafe" of this sort had to shut down after the land underneath their lease got purchased by a developer, so all the effort they put into remodeling and staffing was wasted, despite being a franchise of a successful business model. And on the nerdstore tip, I walked into a completely unorganized, still-in-the-unpacking stage nerdstore with a nursery in the corner and the smell of mold in a run down suburb. Apparently, they had been open for four months and still had yet to put all of their things onto the shelves and didn't have Netrunner. Boggles the mind.
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Jan 18, 2016 19:35
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Everblight posted:This is super-weird to me, because for all its impressive lists of faults, PF has some of the best art in all of RPGs and it isn't close. 5e looks 'ok,' but it isn't visually cool in the way PF is. That depends on your opinion of Wayne Reynolds. I'm with you and love the PF art. But there are lots of people who hate it.
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Jan 18, 2016 19:45
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Halloween Jack posted:Here are some more thoughts now that I'm not phoneposting: what are the reasons to use the DMG, or the 5e SRD, or the OGL? Basically you go with the D20 license, follow the rules as far as copyright attribution etc. and you get to put the D20 logo on the front of your product. A store owner will shelve it with the other D20 products, and customers looking for supplements for their D20 game will see the D20 logo and assume that your product will be fully compatible with their game world, without having to do a lot of research. The D20 license isn't only powerful because you get to use the D20 mechanics (which, for the umpteenth time, aren't even copyrightable); it's powerful because of the branding. Wizards is now going to offer that branding option to third parties who want to make and sell 5th-edition compatible supplements. If you're making a book full of feats etc. then yes, that logo and the presence of the product on a Wizards-controlled store does lend credence to your claims of full compatibility... but no, you don't need (and never needed) an official license to print a book of feats or monsters or prestige classes or whatever the gently caress you wanted to tack on to a D&D or any other RPG's core rules. The only point where you get in trouble is when you appropriate a trademark, but you could always say "compatible with XYZ game" and put a clear statement on the back that you're not the publisher of XYZ game, and are using the trademark without permission. Where Wizards got in trouble was that the D20 license allowed third parties to publish thousands of supplements that were visually indistinguishable from Wizards' own supplements, and the quality of both were, on balance, poor. Customers did not have an easy, obvious way to filter out the garbage. Wizards spent years bloating their own game in competition with dozens of publishers who were also going whole hog on bloating the game. Collectively they chopped up the market share to a point where each supplement was unlikely to earn enough to pay for its own production, and the arms race forced everyone making supplements to cut costs (and quality) in order to try to squeeze out some kind of tiny profit. The situation today may be a little different with 5th edition. At least from Wizards' perspective, if they have no intention of actually trying to compete with third parties - if they're just going to cede the entire supplement market to them anyway - then why not create the marketplace and suck an almost completely cost-free 50% commission from their sale? I have no idea if this model is going to create another supplement-proliferation nightmare and flood of garbage-quality content, but I do think customers have much better Internet-based review and grading technologies than we had back when the third edition flood was starting. Perhaps this time around it'll be easier for everyone to figure out which splatbooks are worthless and avoid them. Perhaps when publishers make supplements that are genuinely high-quality and worthwhile, they'll rise to the top due to the power of Amazon-like reviews? I don't really care, because I'm fully invested in 4th edition and don't really play much D&D anymore regardless, but it'll be interesting to watch.
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Jan 18, 2016 19:46
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Everblight posted:This is super-weird to me, because for all its impressive lists of faults, PF has some of the best art in all of RPGs and it isn't close. 5e looks 'ok,' but it isn't visually cool in the way PF is. Counterpoint - PF art is real goofy and not good   
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Jan 18, 2016 19:51
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Gerund posted:A local "nerd cafe" of this sort had to shut down after the land underneath their lease got purchased by a developer, so all the effort they put into remodeling and staffing was wasted, despite being a franchise of a successful business model. That stinks. I'm pretty worried about something similar happening to my FLGC, but they are at least apparently running successfully and generally at least reasonably full most nights. I'm hoping they'll expand at some point since it does get super cramped in there when it's busy and they don't have amazing kitchen facilities.
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Jan 18, 2016 19:52
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Piell posted:Counterpoint - PF art is real goofy and not good It's more "overabundant" than "bad".
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Jan 18, 2016 20:13
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Halloween Jack posted:Here are some more thoughts now that I'm not phoneposting: what are the reasons to use the DMG, or the 5e SRD, or the OGL? Well with the DMG you get direct access to the entirety of Wizard's carefully cultivated community. Just look at their forums... Oh, they shut down their forums. I'm beginning to think that they're just bad at this.
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Jan 18, 2016 20:34
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I don't think it's so much that they're bad, as much as they don't really need to be good. As long as they give the hardcore fanbase what they want (no major rules changes, fucktons of extra content) people'll eat it up no matter how badly they mungle things.
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Jan 18, 2016 20:37
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As usual, I mostly feel sorry for the many artists who are tasked to reproduce the dozens of fiddly bits on Reynolds' "icons".
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Jan 18, 2016 20:54
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Everblight posted:This is super-weird to me, because for all its impressive lists of faults, PF has some of the best art in all of RPGs and it isn't close. 5e looks 'ok,' but it isn't visually cool in the way PF is. As for PF, add me to the "not a fan of Wayne Reynolds" list too. It's at an awkward spot between realistic and cartoony, and leaves me cold.
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Jan 18, 2016 20:59
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The wierd thing to me was that for supposedly having gorgeous art a good 20% of the new monster manual's art was reused from late splats for 3.5 and 4th edition.
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Jan 18, 2016 22:51
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Misandu posted:From the PF players I know, there are basically three types of PF player;
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Jan 18, 2016 22:56
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dwarf74 posted:Keep in mind, too, that the folks who stuck with 3.x/PF may have been doing that, now, for 16 years or so. Many of those folks are getting older and/or fed up with the ever-growing complexity of the game and/or actually looking for something new. For those folks, 5e presents a real alternative that still 'feels' like their D&D (since it's basically the same d20 chassis) while also being - intentionally - substantially simpler. Even some of that first group is getting tired of excessive crunch, I'd say. Maybe my understanding of the Pathfinder community is wrong, but here's my understanding. People who like 5e were people who bitched about bloat and Pathfinder being more complicated since the Advanced Player's Guide came out. All of those extremely whiny people immediately jumped ship and represent a tiny portion of the overall population. Very few people playing Pathfinder actually care about the increasing number of books or actually like it. There is also another groups 4) People who want to get into RPGs and pick Pathfinder because it's one of only 4 total book lines carried by their nerd store. If you don't like Star Wars of 40k your choices of in person RPG shopping are basically D&D or PF in most of America.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:02
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Yep, and at my FLGS, on the D&D Meetup days, half the tables are running PF  And there's still one that runs 3.5 
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Jan 18, 2016 23:23
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Elfgames posted:bout a hundred miles or so. If where you live is anywhere like where I went to college (that is, rural bumfuck Ohio about an hour or so north of Columbus) then you have my sympathies.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:26
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Mewnie posted:Yep, and at my FLGS, on the D&D Meetup days, half the tables are running PF I'm the only one there not running D&D/Pathfinder.  fake edit: although I seem to have the only table where people regularly sound like they're having fun. You know, laughing and stuff. When I look at the other tables people just seem so...listless.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:26
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My understanding is that the 3e "dungeonpunk" style came about because when they were planning the art direction, they had a problem with how many of the memorable figures in the art of Elmore, Parkinson, Caldwell, etc. don't really resemble D&D player characters that much--that is, they're not loaded down with adventuring gear. So they went really hard in the other direction. And Pathfinder is all about 3rd editioning 3rd edition 2 Tha Xtreme! I don't dislike Reynolds' style, per se, but they could stop asking him to illustrate every class as the Junk Lady from Labyrinth. Leperflesh posted:Where Wizards got in trouble was that the D20 license allowed third parties to publish thousands of supplements that were visually indistinguishable from Wizards' own supplements, and the quality of both were, on balance, poor. Customers did not have an easy, obvious way to filter out the garbage. Wizards spent years bloating their own game in competition with dozens of publishers who were also going whole hog on bloating the game. Collectively they chopped up the market share to a point where each supplement was unlikely to earn enough to pay for its own production, and the arms race forced everyone making supplements to cut costs (and quality) in order to try to squeeze out some kind of tiny profit. I suspect that when Dancey said D20 would "reduce demand for other systems to zero," one of the things he was talking about was the group of Stat+Skill and/or dice pool systems that proliferated in the late 90s. In the end, those systems are no less compatible with each other than different iterations of D20. quote:I have no idea if this model is going to create another supplement-proliferation nightmare and flood of garbage-quality content, but I do think customers have much better Internet-based review and grading technologies than we had back when the third edition flood was starting.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:52
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gradenko_2000 posted:I meant in the sense that the owner of Pathfinder is never going to go "sorry Paizo, you can't produce material for Pathfinder anymore" like what happened with the owner of D&D. Oh, well, fair enough! Of course, their conundrum is that somebody, someday, could do the same thing to them if they ever change their tune, and their developers no doubt struggle with trying to buy gifts for the system that has everything. I know what I'd do for a Pathfinder 2 in their shoes (make a game with refined crunch elements that's still compatible with the original), but it'll be interesting to see if they ever grow out of their mechanical cradle.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:40
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PF art is a lot more than just Wayne Reynolds and includes a lot of highs and some pretty stark lows (specifically, this lady wearing chainmail bodypaint).
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Jan 19, 2016 05:01
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Payndz posted:The thing with 5e's art to me is how static it feels. 4e isn't my preferred edition, but the PHB still looks drat exciting! People fighting monsters, running around, blasting out spells; even the non-action pics generally have dynamic poses. 5e's PHB, by contrast, has a lot of people just kind of standing around, and tons of space-filling poo poo like gems and leaves and bowls of soup. It's not so much high adventure as Hobbiton before Gandalf turns up. Weirdly enough, this is exactly why I like 5e art so much more than 4e, despite liking 4e's design way more. 4e's art got super stale to me super quick--everything is in a super generic action pose in 4e, and it didn't really represent to me what D&D really feels like. D&D is a bunch of semi-sociopaths in a dungeon corridor trying to figure out how to scam a room full of sentient rats into giving up the treasure chest of diamonds they're guarding for a sack full of lard.
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Jan 19, 2016 05:25
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Harrow posted:If where you live is anywhere like where I went to college (that is, rural bumfuck Ohio about an hour or so north of Columbus) then you have my sympathies. bingo.
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Jan 19, 2016 06:28
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The Crotch posted:PF art is a lot more than just Wayne Reynolds and includes a lot of highs and some pretty stark lows (specifically, this lady wearing chainmail bodypaint).
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Jan 19, 2016 11:27
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Masterwork Spiked Chain Mail of Holy poo poo I Think I Think My Right Foot Is Backwards
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Jan 19, 2016 11:45
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I feel you could get a fun adventure out of the PCs finding a set of that stuff in a dungeon crawl and trying to sell it...
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Jan 19, 2016 12:06
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The Crotch posted:Masterwork Spiked Chain Mail of Holy poo poo I Think I Think My Right Foot Is Backwards 
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Jan 19, 2016 12:18
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"Armed only with her indomitable optimism and an appetite for pain..."
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Jan 19, 2016 12:32
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Asimo posted:I... I'm pretty sure spines don't bend that way. That's how she can use a spiked chain - if she slices herself, she just gloops back together.
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Jan 19, 2016 15:08
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She's apparently an important enough character in the Pathfinder universe that she's been drawn by other, more competent artists. I'm the giant Zladizlaw Beksinski skull-tower looming in the background.
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Jan 19, 2016 16:12
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