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Dr. Quarex posted:I ... I thought basically all of his books hit that list? I distinctly remember only picking up his books in the 1990s because they were listed as New York Times best-sellers and had COOL FANTASY STUFF on the front? Or are you saying non-Drizzt books? Pro Tip: If a book says "New York Times Bestseller" on the front it is more often than not referring to the author, not the book itself. Like, once you hit that list, even if it's at the very bottom, you are a New York Times Bestselling Author for the rest of your life.
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Jan 29, 2016 21:49
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There were a lot of factors that made the ending bad. The fact that one of Mass Effect's marketing taglines was "Mass Effect is your story" and the story went in a direction that most people didn't want any part of was certainly a factor. The fact that a new NPC dude that no one has ever met or heard of walks out 10 minutes from the ending and demotes the player to henchman status is pretty bad. But a lot of people (including, I must confess, myself) were really pissed that the setting that they had grown to enjoy over the last 60+ hours was blown to smithereens no matter what you chose. Anyway I really don't want to talk about THE ENDS ARE BAD, it's not interesting. I just brought it up because I really felt like a lot of people did care about the setting of one of Bioware's games. Of course, said game was outside of the fantasy milieu and a lot less generic than Dragon Age (don't get me wrong, it's still pretty much a pastiche of popular science fiction)
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Jan 29, 2016 21:49
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Pro Tip: If a book says "New York Times Bestseller" on the front it is more often than not referring to the author, not the book itself. Like, once you hit that list, even if it's at the very bottom, you are a New York Times Bestselling Author for the rest of your life. Publishers will often coordinate bulk purchases of a new author's book so as to kick them over the (very low) threshold for NYT Bestsellerdom. e: See the variety of lists for yourself: http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/ Essentially, if you have any audience or a publisher willing to put even a tiny bit of effort into promoting you, you can probably qualify to be a NYT bestseller FMguru fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jan 29, 2016 |
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Jan 29, 2016 21:56
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Halloween Jack posted:I haven't read Designers & Dragons; did it go into how Rob Kuntz and some of his colleagues thought basic was for dumb casual babies because, get this, it explains what the game is about and how to play it in plain English?
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Jan 29, 2016 21:59
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I notice that some of the top authors on Amazon.com right now are YA authors I've never heard of, and a couple are blowing past even Rowling and Patterson. Are there similar tricks involved there?
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Jan 29, 2016 22:00
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YA is a gigantic market that is also kinda ignored by people who aren't the target audience or who are catering to that market specifically. The thing to remember is that stuff like Harry Potter being the massive success outside of the YA market is something of a fluke. That said I imagine part of it is also how things are categorized.
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Jan 29, 2016 22:14
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Lightning Lord posted:The Big Hero 6 approach. "Fantasy Fury Road" might be all the elevator pitch you need to sell it to execs. "It's like Mad Max but with mutant elves and the wizards from Heavy Metal" is just what I was thinking for Dark Sun. Also, "it's like Indiana Jones, except the Nazis are vampires and instead of guns there's magic wands" for Eberron. Payndz posted:Just making the setup like Jumanji (or the old cartoon) is probably the best bet if the movie ever gets made. Embrace that D&D is a complete mish-mash of every mythical or fantasy world ever created, and have a bunch of players who get sucked into the game world by a magic d20 or whatever undergo the Last Action Hero/Galaxy Quest arc, turning from mocking unbelievers through panicking that the dangers are real and everyone they meet takes it deadly seriously to ultimately become genuine heroes. I'll take cash, not bitcoin, please. I could totally see the Jumanji/Goosebumps thing, with magic stuff escaping into the real world and the main characters have to fix everything. Drop in some of the weirder and more unique-to-D&D monsters like mind flayers and rust monsters and have it as a backdrop to a "divorced businessman father reconnects with his kids and also ends up beating up some monsters with old LARP props" plot or something.
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Jan 29, 2016 22:15
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ProfessorCirno posted:YA is a gigantic market that is also kinda ignored by people who aren't the target audience or who are catering to that market specifically. The thing to remember is that stuff like Harry Potter being the massive success outside of the YA market is something of a fluke. That said I imagine part of it is also how things are categorized. Yeah young people both have a lot of time to read for leisure, and often can use the same books they read for fun as something for class. Plus they're heavily marketed to with book fairs and poo poo.
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Jan 29, 2016 22:16
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Dark Sun was supposed to be even more distant from bog-standard standard than it already is, but marketing was afraid of making it too different. My guesstimate is that the authors' original vision would have been a bit closer to Gamma World and had a lot more Heavy Metal/Vaughn Bode influence.
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Jan 29, 2016 22:33
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Countblanc posted:Yeah young people both have a lot of time to read for leisure, and often can use the same books they read for fun as something for class. Plus they're heavily marketed to with book fairs and poo poo. Most language arts/lit teachers mandate independent reading, too, and will keep a hefty stock of novels for students to pick through. That means stocking up on popular new series for the students to keep them interested
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Jan 29, 2016 22:36
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Adults also read YA, more and more, since it uses simpler language and structure--there isn't so much trying to pry apart the delicate spun-sugar edifice of sentences someone has written. If you read a lot of SF paperback novels marketed to adults from the 60s and 70s, aside from being extremely nuts, they have a pretty similar language level. That simpler language also means you can blow through a YA novel in a few hours, which means buying more books. Basically, expect more YA to keep happening. I just wish that 'YA reading level' did not require 'being about a teenager and their dumb issues' every time. RPGs marketed towards kids would need a similarly clear language style, but I imagine adult players would also appreciate it. occamsnailfile fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Jan 29, 2016 |
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Jan 29, 2016 22:55
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homullus posted:I saw the preview for Warcraft before the new Star War. I doubt I'd go see it in the theater (since I hardly see anything in the theater), but yeah . . . looked acceptable, if that makes sense. World of Warcraft art direction is generally pretty neat. Nothing was cringe-worthy in the trailer I saw. I didn't realize people thought it looked terrible, actually. I'm the same with movie going and had the same impression. Though, I think I'm weary becauise video game movies in general suck, and trailers can be very decieving. That might where some of the negativity towards the movie is coming from. I might check it out on DVD rental/Netflix if I hear it's good. I can't think of any good/decent movies based on video games, except in a "so bad their good" way. I guess I hear the Silent Hill movie was good, but I know little about it, and I've only played very little of the games. And I mean based on a specific franchise. Wreck it Ralph (which is great) hardly counts , that has cameos from actual VG characters
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Jan 29, 2016 22:58
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Foolster41 posted:I'm the same with movie going and had the same impression. Though, I think I'm weary becauise video game movies in general suck, and trailers can be very decieving. That might where some of the negativity towards the movie is coming from. I'd argue that the Lego Movie is at least partially based on the Lego video games. It's certainly shot with that close-in camera of the video games and incorporates characters from its Lego games (LotR, Star Wars, DC).
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Jan 29, 2016 23:04
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Silent hill movie was not good. Postal and Mortal Kombat are appreciated, but they're not "good" movies.
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Jan 29, 2016 23:23
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If I ever win the lottery I am going to produce a TV show that is a straight filmed version of a play-through of The Tomb of Horrors, with a cast change whenever a PC dies.
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Jan 29, 2016 23:32
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Kai Tave posted:Going back a page but I've been watching this play out in real time with an acquaintance of mine. He's a regular at the Tuesday board game night at my FLGS and he's been trying to get started with Pathfinder Society stuff and the last two or three times I've been there he's been struggling to make a character, I think a Summoner, because, well, it's Pathfinder. I sat there and listened as he and the resident know-it-all went through the SRD section on feats one at a time down the list. He came up to me and was bemoaning how completely frustrated he was with the whole experience, how he had this idea in his head for a character and the system seemed to be fighting him every step of the way and I could tell he was very quickly souring on the whole experience and all I could think of was that this must be what happens with so many new players that decide they want to give that D&D thing a shot, a brief period of excitement followed by a frustrating exercise in wrangling a 16 year old mess of a system. And he's even got someone working with him, he's not just going it alone, but still. This is really sad to me, because I'm convinced that D&D really can be one of the best systems for new players--I've probably run a dozen or so games for totally-new-to-rpgs groups over the last few years and have gotten pretty good at going from nothing to playing in under half an hour. I think there's something to be said for a system with an extremely focused setting (you're in a dungeon), a strong default thing you can do (walk between rooms, talk to things, get in fights, poke stuff with sticks), and lots of room to grow and roll with whatever sort of path you think might be fun(decide you're going to help Random Encounter Goblin overthrow the current goblin king and usher in a new age of goblin democracy). Games like Fiasco can be really good for totally new players, too, but some people really struggle with being put on the spot creatively and D&D is extremely good at both letting you treat it like a roguelike and at turning it into something way more off the rails and freeform. The thing is, that assumes you're playing one of the extremely rules light editions. The only way I could imagine introducing 3.5e to someone new would be by aggressively ignoring 95% of the rules and just slowly introducing things like AoO and saves and skills and weapon stats and so on over the course of the first session or two. 4e would be tough, too, but at least it 100% nails the 'fun default activity' side of things.
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Jan 29, 2016 23:45
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OtspIII posted:This is really sad to me, because I'm convinced that D&D really can be one of the best systems for new players--I've probably run a dozen or so games for totally-new-to-rpgs groups over the last few years and have gotten pretty good at going from nothing to playing in under half an hour. I think there's something to be said for a system with an extremely focused setting (you're in a dungeon), a strong default thing you can do (walk between rooms, talk to things, get in fights, poke stuff with sticks), and lots of room to grow and roll with whatever sort of path you think might be fun(decide you're going to help Random Encounter Goblin overthrow the current goblin king and usher in a new age of goblin democracy). Games like Fiasco can be really good for totally new players, too, but some people really struggle with being put on the spot creatively and D&D is extremely good at both letting you treat it like a roguelike and at turning it into something way more off the rails and freeform. Yeah, the problem with Pathfinder/3E being this hobby's gateway game is that it's massively frontloaded with bloat and cruft. Yes, you can teach it, but you frequently have to go to lengths that I've never had to go to when teaching even complex board games just to keep prospective new players from accidentally glimpsing the list of 5,000 feats and checking right out. 4E as much as I enjoy it is in a similar state. All for a hobby that frequently likes to sell itself as being about the limitless freedom of imagination, but for now let's go over AoOs before we move on to the difference between spell SLOTS and spell LEVELS.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:06
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bongwizzard posted:If I ever win the lottery I am going to produce a TV show that is a straight filmed version of a play-through of The Tomb of Horrors, with a cast change whenever a PC dies. You are the person that Hasbro is holding onto D&D for.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:06
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homullus posted:You are the person that Hasbro is holding onto D&D for. Honestly if the actors played it straight but you made it a dark comedy I think it would work, at least for the handful of turbo nerds who would watch it.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:12
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bongwizzard posted:Honestly if the actors played it straight but you made it a dark comedy I think it would work, at least for the handful of turbo nerds who would watch it. Oh, no, I get it. My lottery-winning fantasy production is a full CGI animated literal reading of The Eye of Argon, complete with many-fauceted emeralds and dramatic voice-over narration. I'm saying that they are waiting around for somebody to throw licensing money at them, not that your idea was bad.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:15
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Halloween Jack posted:I notice that some of the top authors on Amazon.com right now are YA authors I've never heard of, and a couple are blowing past even Rowling and Patterson. Are there similar tricks involved there? YA is basically the only sector of the publishing industry making real money right now. Like, all those people you know that don't read books? They buy books for their kids.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:25
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My lottery movie is a historical comedy about Dumas and Napoleon in Egypt, starring Idris Elba and Danny DeVito.  e: To add actual content, it doesn't seem all that weird that the D&D brand never made the transition to mainstream entertainment. If you want to write a movie about dragons and adventurers, you just do it and make up your own IP. Nerds are capricious assholes - they're more likely to poo poo on you over a continuity error than to campaign for the success of your film. D&D is generic enough that licencing the IP is a liability. You just set your movie "in a long forgotten realm" instead of "The Forgotten Realms" and save big money and heartache. moths fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Jan 30, 2016 |
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Jan 30, 2016 00:29
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OtspIII posted:This is really sad to me, because I'm convinced that D&D really can be one of the best systems for new players--I've probably run a dozen or so games for totally-new-to-rpgs groups over the last few years and have gotten pretty good at going from nothing to playing in under half an hour. I think there's something to be said for a system with an extremely focused setting (you're in a dungeon), a strong default thing you can do (walk between rooms, talk to things, get in fights, poke stuff with sticks), and lots of room to grow and roll with whatever sort of path you think might be fun(decide you're going to help Random Encounter Goblin overthrow the current goblin king and usher in a new age of goblin democracy). Games like Fiasco can be really good for totally new players, too, but some people really struggle with being put on the spot creatively and D&D is extremely good at both letting you treat it like a roguelike and at turning it into something way more off the rails and freeform. I largely agree with this. I've used Basic D&D to introduce people to the hobby, and that works because Basic is so easy to use, doubly so if you follow the central and start the players in a dungeon from the very beginning. For all its flaws, one thing I will say about 5e's Lost Mine of Phandelver is that it starts off right: you're already together as a party, you've already accepted a quest, you've already started on that quest, and you're dropped into combat within the first 5 minutes. I find that the whole "well you need to roleplay why you've all decided to get together" and "well now you need to look for something to do" to be an odd pacing mechanism if you want people to be engaging with you and with each other and with the mechanics immediately.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:29
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Hell, just the sight of a 300+ page rulebook would be pretty offputting to most newcomers. "I have to read all that to play?" And it's not even the full game - there are another two books that go with it!
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Jan 30, 2016 00:52
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gradenko_2000 posted:I find that the whole "well you need to roleplay why you've all decided to get together" and "well now you need to look for something to do" to be an odd pacing mechanism if you want people to be engaging with you and with each other and with the mechanics immediately. Oh god yes. This really loving killed me when I discovered pbp games, like come on dudes, this thing is likely to die in like a month, lets get right to the fuckin action. I am thinking about running a one off DCC game for some friends who haven't gamed in like a decade and I want to find a module that starts up quick to get them engaged asap.
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Jan 30, 2016 03:13
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Kai Tave posted:DXHR was a one-and-done deal but Bioware cultivated a fanbase with Mass Effect that had years to get hype about the epic conclusion to the epic trilogy, and while you could maybe argue that there was no way that Bioware was ever going to meet the sort of expectations they'd generated by that point (which is probably true) what they actually delivered really was pretty loving stupid. Also the thing about DXHR is that it presents its ending in essentially the same way the original DX did. And you certainly can criticize that, but it's definitely true to its roots.
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Jan 30, 2016 04:01
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Halloween Jack posted:Tekumel is beautifully made, but I think that it's one of those things that's deliberately not for everyone, although it has compulsive D&Disms like dungeons and magic spells. But I suspect its biggest problem, in terms of acceptance and popularity, is that its publication history is a clusterfuck and is now in the hands of a boutique company charging high prices. Tekumel has huge barriers to wrap your head around playing, it's easy to appreciate intellectually as a work of art but as a functional game you actually play it's not very practical. Which isn't to say it can't be done, but you need a crew of folks that are really dedicated to the setting.
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Jan 30, 2016 04:18
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Mass Effect 3's ending probably would have been received better if one guy didn't write it all by his lonesome with no input from the rest of the team. It also would have been a good idea if they hadn't included a DLC patch that expands on the background of the main villains which also makes them look like complete morons.
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Jan 30, 2016 04:45
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Also the thing about DXHR is that it presents its ending in essentially the same way the original DX did. And you certainly can criticize that, but it's definitely true to its roots.
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Jan 30, 2016 05:01
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I'll also always wonder about an alternate reality where the D&D masters didn't botch things so drat terribly with Japan, how Sword World(still seems to be running their race as they do compared to all the troubles D&D continually gets into) rose up, giving up on/despite early high notes with video game/arcade licensing---the whole lot of it had to have left so much on the table it boggles the mind.
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Jan 30, 2016 15:30
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ExiledTinkerer posted:I'll also always wonder about an alternate reality where the D&D masters didn't botch things so drat terribly with Japan Oh man. How did they mess up with Japan?
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Jan 30, 2016 15:40
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paradoxGentleman posted:Oh man. How did they mess up with Japan? The short version: Record of Lodoss War is a series of replays (and later novels and anime and everything else) based on the creators' D&D game. They tried to make a deal with TSR, TSR refused because they didn't really care about their Japanese market at the time. This lead to the Lodoss people making the RPG that eventually became Sword World to use in their games instead. Sword World is one of the biggest Japanese tabletop RPGs, and D&D has never gotten any penetration in the Japanese market ever again.
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Jan 30, 2016 17:17
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I don't know about "no penetration" exactly, as I recall there have been Japanese translations of D&D...until Next came out and WotC terminated their agreement with the folks doing the translations, stating that they planned on bringing such matters in-house. Speaking of which, did anything ever come of that?
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Jan 30, 2016 17:34
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Kai Tave posted:I don't know about "no penetration" exactly, as I recall there have been Japanese translations of D&D...until Next came out and WotC terminated their agreement with the folks doing the translations, stating that they planned on bringing such matters in-house. Speaking of which, did anything ever come of that? Penetration of a market doesn't mean simply be present, it means some modicum of success. I don't know how successful they have been in the past before they stopped selling, but they were not top dogs there even though they could have easily been.
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Jan 30, 2016 17:44
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Lurks With Wolves posted:The short version: Record of Lodoss War is a series of replays (and later novels and anime and everything else) based on the creators' D&D game. They tried to make a deal with TSR, TSR refused because they didn't really care about their Japanese market at the time. This lead to the Lodoss people making the RPG that eventually became Sword World to use in their games instead. Sword World is one of the biggest Japanese tabletop RPGs, and D&D has never gotten any penetration in the Japanese market ever again. Kai Tave posted:I don't know about "no penetration" exactly, as I recall there have been Japanese translations of D&D...until Next came out and WotC terminated their agreement with the folks doing the translations, stating that they planned on bringing such matters in-house. Speaking of which, did anything ever come of that? There were D&D books on the shelf in Japan about 2 years ago, maybe 3.X and definitely 4th if I'm remembering correctly. RPGs are also a more niche market in Japan than the US so it's not like they were missing out on major money or anything. It's nowhere near the insanity of when Japanese video game publishers do the opposite to the American market. Sword World is also popular because it doesn't use a D20 system. Non-d6 dice are hard to come by in Japan for the above stated reason. EDIT: I think in order to be popular in Japan, TSR would have had to get into the market the same way WEG did with TORG and Chaosium with Call of Cthulhu. There was a period in the late 80's and early 90's that Japanese fans would have latched on to anything imported over, hence why TORG has such a cult following. By the time 4th came in, there were already domestic RPGs that knew the environment RPGs existed in and catered to Japanese sensibilities so such a thing is probably doomed now. The real untapped market is the Sinosphere but it runs into the problem that the Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong school systems rob people of their creativity so when they reach the age where they have the time to play, they're no longer inclined to engage in that level of improv. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Jan 30, 2016 |
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Jan 30, 2016 17:47
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Kai Tave posted:I don't know about "no penetration" exactly, as I recall there have been Japanese translations of D&D...until Next came out and WotC terminated their agreement with the folks doing the translations, stating that they planned on bringing such matters in-house. Speaking of which, did anything ever come of that? In your heart, you know the answer to that question. In fact, as I understand, 5e hasn't been translated into any other languages. Hobby Japan wasn't the only company they cut ties with, claiming they'd totally translate in-house instead. D&D is now an English Only game.
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Jan 30, 2016 21:28
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I read that Pelgrane had a deal with a Korean publisher to have them publish 13th Age, and awhile ago I looked up the publisher and they've had a bunch of successful kickstarter-like campaigns for various RPGs including Dungeon World and I guess some Monte Cooke stuff as well. So maybe we'll start to see stuff come out of Korea in a few years. Tumblebug (Korean Kickstarter?) link https://tumblbug.com/u/cympub Edit: Holy poo poo, there's a tumblebug for translating Dogs in The Vineyard, Prime Time Adventures, A Quiet Year and one other I can't recognise, into Korean: https://tumblbug.com/rpgbundle It definitely looks like the Korean market is much MORE progressive without the influence of DnD. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Jan 30, 2016 |
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Jan 30, 2016 21:37
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fez_machine posted:It definitely looks like the Korean market is much MORE progressive without the influence of DnD. It's really been sort of a thing. D&D might've bungled their Japanese market as hard as possible, but I'd argue the Japanese ttg market is better for it. I will say from my own experiences in the country that Korea has a lot of ttg nerd expats for whatever reason, and a lot of them were far more into indie markets; PbtA was pretty popular in the Daegu area. I could see a push from teachers for games they could try to use for clubs.
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Jan 30, 2016 21:53
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It might be an army thing, I've heard a lot of military people play D&D, and korea's got conscription and US bases.
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Jan 30, 2016 23:27
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I don't really know where else to ask this; Does anyone know how long it takes for something you list on DriveThruRPG for publication to actually show up? I just listed something for the first time and the fact that the button next to the item keeps saying "Make Public" no matter how many times I interact with it makes me nervous that I'm doing something wrong, but I don't want to keep pressing it in case it resets the timer each time.
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Jan 31, 2016 07:12
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