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Weren't the ENnies once a juried award, and the awards tended to go to the companies that sent the jurors the biggest bundles of comp copies (suitable for flipping on the used market)?
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Mar 23, 2016 15:19
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Halloween Jack posted:Oh, I thought they took a public vote under advisement but that the actual awards were up to a panel. FMguru posted:Weren't the ENnies once a juried award, and the awards tended to go to the companies that sent the jurors the biggest bundles of comp copies (suitable for flipping on the used market)? According to Fred, if it's a physical product, you have to send the judge a physical copy, even if a digital version is available.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:29
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There was a semi-scandal when a judge took hundreds of dollars worth of "evaluation" material and then didn't want to judge anymore. What you can't have it back, I was a judge when you gave it to me! It's also got a naked bias for PF / 3.x product. A few years ago, I went back through the posted categories and there's only a handful of times PF or 3e doesn't medal in its category. Usually it's ridiculous poo poo: a mediocre PF product beating out a master-crafted FFG presentation for "Best Production Values" or "Best Art." I think a DM screen actually beat out a $100+ WMH figure for "Best Gaming Accessory." Nobody should take the ENnies seriously ever.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:30
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Evil Mastermind posted:There's also the fact that the ENies are awarded based on public ballot, so they don't go to the best games, they go to the ones with the biggest fanbase. I believe A Red And Pleasant Land got about twice as many votes as there were copies sold
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Mar 23, 2016 15:31
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My favorite part of the ENnies site:quote:At this point, each judge reviews products in their own way. It is left up to them to determine how exactly to do that. 
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Mar 23, 2016 15:40
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Falstaff posted:For all the hype it received (well... hype by the industry's standards), I remember being very underwhelmed by Red and Pleasant land. It's a take on Caroll's work that leaves behind the original work's surrealism, child-like logic, and sense of play. Yeah I looked through it recently and it was very very drab. Zak's a shitlord who's good at making tables, basically. It was just "oh this is Alice in Wonderland....and all the interesting parts are stripped out and nailed to LotFP." Having a chapter named "Character Class: The Alice" is about all you need to know.
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Mar 23, 2016 16:22
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moths posted:There was a semi-scandal when a judge took hundreds of dollars worth of "evaluation" material and then didn't want to judge anymore. What you can't have it back, I was a judge when you gave it to me! Evil Mastermind posted:It wouldn't surprise me. One of the judges quit a few weeks ago, and Fred Hicks posted about how much it costs to send stuff to judges. $175 of product, $80 for shipping, then the judge quits and doesn't have to give the stuff back. The praise for Numenara relative to its thorough mediocrity is stunning. It seems exactly like a game from the 90s that would get torn apart by the System Mastery guys along with Darkurthe and other forgotten heartbreakers. Evil Mastermind posted:If that's the case, that makes less sense. Why have a public vote that may or may not mean anything?
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Mar 23, 2016 16:27
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America has a lot of stuff like that where the judge(ing body) is an arbitrator not obligated to honor the findings of voters / jurors. I expect this to be a more widely understood problem soon.
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Mar 23, 2016 16:44
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moths posted:America has a lot of stuff like that where the judge(ing body) is an arbitrator not obligated to honor the findings of voters / jurors. A government of the mistrust of other people, by the mistrust of other people, and for the mistrust of other people.
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Mar 23, 2016 16:47
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Halloween Jack posted:The praise for Numenara relative to its thorough mediocrity is stunning. It seems exactly like a game from the 90s that would get torn apart by the System Mastery guys along with Darkurthe and other forgotten heartbreakers. Last year, I met a guy who told me with complete sincerity that Numenera's "character connections" are better that Fate's aspects, because the connections give you a backstory tie to another character. The connections have zero mechanical weight or purpose. They are pure fluff.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:07
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'm guessing it's because the praise seems to come mostly from people who don't play a lot of narrative games, or who don't understand what makes said games work. Not all of them! Some of them are used to be a deliberate rear end in a top hat to another character, like "All my missed attacks target them"
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Mar 23, 2016 17:19
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It really seems like anything OSR that bills itself as weird or gonzo fantasy gets an easy ride. Just throw in X amount of weird or extreme elements and tick the boxes and you're gold. It's a problem with any subculture in a medium, they're hostile to anything not-sufficiently-punk/metal/OSR but once you pass the purity test nobody cares if you're, you know, good.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:26
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Maxwell Lord posted:It really seems like anything OSR that bills itself as weird or gonzo fantasy gets an easy ride. Just throw in X amount of weird or extreme elements and tick the boxes and you're gold. Honestly I really like a lot of OSR stuff, and I really like a lot of LotFP. The whole gonzo metal from Cannibal Corpse showing zombie oral sex thing is exactly my kind of beer and pretzels D&D, it just sucks that Raggi (and Zak S, and so on) are such terrible people. Actually in some ways I guess it matches. In the OSR, like extreme metal, you really need to interrogate and think critically about who is producing what you're consuming and why, and if you're willing to support someone who's a literal Nazi. Funnily enough, clicking through the Alpha Blue stuff I found out that the RPGPundit was decrying a megadungeon for being too weird, too gonzo, too grim, and ultimately too player-destructive for no point. He called it a negadungeon. I guess someone's tired of some of the OSR's excesses.
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Mar 23, 2016 18:44
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Maxwell Lord posted:It really seems like anything OSR that bills itself as weird or gonzo fantasy gets an easy ride. Just throw in X amount of weird or extreme elements and tick the boxes and you're gold. I find the OSR - like a LOT of restrictive subcultures - is very much obsessed with trappings and not at all concerned with actual content. In a way though that's just a window into a lot of D&D's fandom in general (see: people glorifying Numenera). It just ends up being extremely shallow. People don't want to look beyond the surface and just sorta take the game at it's word - or, far more often, are outright hostile to people who DO try to critically examine things, because they might be expected to do the same.
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Mar 23, 2016 19:49
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The thing about OSR stuff that bugs me the most is that it's trying to replicate a playstyle and design philosophy that never existed. Like, I played D&D in the early Basic days. I got my first boxed set back in 1983. We didn't have any real "playstyle" because that wasn't a thing yet. It was ages before we (the hobby) started thinking critically about things. The game wasn't super-lethal because it was designed to be super-lethal, it was super-lethal because we didn't know what we were doing yet, and the mechanics weren't balanced because we didn't know balance was a thing yet. There wasn't a "universal playstyle" because we didn't have any way of communicating playstyle throughout the hobby outside of Dragon magazine's mail column. It's bizarre because they're cargo culting something that doesn't exist. It's like people who design video games that are as punishing as NES games, without realizing that they were punishing because we didn't know what good design was yet.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:11
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FMguru posted:Weren't the ENnies once a juried award, and the awards tended to go to the companies that sent the jurors the biggest bundles of comp copies (suitable for flipping on the used market)?
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Mar 23, 2016 20:26
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Ennie award nominations are determined by the panel of judges. Then the awards are determined by a popular online vote by fans. This is why Pathfinder always wins. It has the largest active online fanbase. However, being nominated for an Ennie does mean something because the judges are usually industry people that try to pick the best products for a given category. They are pretty transparent about the judges - they all have bios so you can see their backgrounds. It is a common joke in the industry that the only way to win an Ennie is to compete in a category that does not have a Pathfinder product in it. This is speaking as an Ennie award winning podcaster and Ennie-nominated writer.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:27
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Evil Mastermind posted:The thing about OSR stuff that bugs me the most is that it's trying to replicate a playstyle and design philosophy that never existed. I get what you're saying, though it only bugs me when they try to deny what it is they're doing. I've got no problems with people basing their design approach off the way they think things should have been as long as they're honest about it.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:43
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There's a certain irony of designing towards a certain type of game when one of the biggest "names" in your "community" is someone who actively rejects the concept of game design in the first place.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:50
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Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. And it's a pretty solid foundation for multiple billion-dollar industries.ProfessorCirno posted:People don't want to look beyond the surface and just sorta take the game at it's word - or, far more often, are outright hostile to people who DO try to critically examine things, because they might be expected to do the same. I don't think it's because of a sense that they'd have to make an effort to be critical themselves. I think the hostility is entirely based on simple tribalism. This is our thing and we won't tolerate perceived attacks. Criticism, even constructive criticism, is seen as an attack when the "defenders" already feel very insecure about their position. Sometimes that insecurity is justified, but usually it isn't. More generally, I think most of us could agree that nerds tend to be insecure.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:52
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Evil Mastermind posted:The thing about OSR stuff that bugs me the most is that it's trying to replicate a playstyle and design philosophy that never existed.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:55
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And that was always hilarious in part because a ton of the early published adventures were grossly monty-haul. Those that weren't stupidly deadly, that is. Quite a few were both (if you survive this level 1 adventure, which you probably won't, you'll be as rich as kings).
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Mar 23, 2016 20:57
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Evil Mastermind posted:It's bizarre because they're cargo culting something that doesn't exist. It's like people who design video games that are as punishing as NES games, without realizing that they were punishing because we didn't know what good design was yet. To be fair, that isn't entirely true, but the comparison still holds up well - a lot of NES games were super punishing for a reason, but it's a reason that largely no longer exists. NES games were super punishing because longevity and replayability were major concerns, and...well, they didn't really have much else. You couldn't really tell a story with NES capabilities. Most of the time you just stuck the story in the manual and hoped people read it. So games were super - and stupid - hard, both to ensure the player would spend a long-rear end time playing it (which, it was believed, would lead to the game being better received) and because you wanted players to feel accomplished when they won. And of course, lastly, this was back when arcades were huge, and of course those games are going to be designed to siphon away as many quarters as possible, so video game designers kinda just stuck with that. But again, those limitations don't really exist anymore. You still have the drive to make a really hard game that gives a feeling of accomplishment when you win, but now game designers are way better at knowing HOW to make a really hard game without it being bullshit. Video games have never been cheaper - because they never changed their prices in the wake of inflation - so the fear of needing an extremely long game to make up for the price isn't really there anymore. Arcades in Europe and NA have largely died, and frankly, even if they hadn't, many arcade games don't use obtuse difficulty as their primary means of snaring players. Lastly, and kinda obviously, video games can tell actual stories now, so you can give players feelings of accomplishment beyond just "I beat the hard game." So it IS sort of a version of cargo cult design, but it's more that those game decisions were made in light of circumstances that no longer exist. And it runs rampant in this industry, because, again, obsession with trappings. Most of both the game designers and the fans in the D&D partition of the hobby are getting up in their years. Pathfinder and D&D are both run by people in their 40's. Monte Cook is getting near 50. Their fans aren't too far behind, unlike the video game industry which is structured primarily around teens and 20-somethings. So they fill their games with all the things they were like when they were 14, while never actually examining why it was made that way - because that might kill the magic (that's already dead).
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Mar 23, 2016 21:00
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Leperflesh posted:I don't think it's because of a sense that they'd have to make an effort to be critical themselves. I think the hostility is entirely based on simple tribalism. This is our thing and we won't tolerate perceived attacks. Criticism, even constructive criticism, is seen as an attack when the "defenders" already feel very insecure about their position. Sometimes that insecurity is justified, but usually it isn't. I made the mistake of saying that old D&D was a design space I'm pretty much sick of, and another person felt the need to post a five-paragraph defense of it instead of just accepting that not everyone likes the thing he likes.
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Mar 23, 2016 21:01
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ProfessorCirno posted:Pathfinder and D&D are both run by people in their 40's. Monte Cook is getting near 50. 
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Mar 23, 2016 21:04
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Evil Mastermind posted:I made the mistake of saying that old D&D was a design space I'm pretty much sick of, and another person felt the need to post a five-paragraph defense of it instead of just accepting that not everyone likes the thing he likes. Not that SA is immune. Sometimes I mention in threads in TG that I'm sick of vampires. Invariably, six people come out to recommend to me the vampire things that I really should check out, because they're different and good compared to the rest of the vampire stuff. That's super-innocuous and not especially annoying, but it's revealing of the basic psychology: if you like Thing, and someone else declares they don't like Thing, you typically feel an instant reflexive need to defend Thing. Someone else enjoying the Thing you enjoy actually makes you enjoy that Thing more. Because we're psychologically conditioned by several million years of evolution to live in social groups, and reinforcing shared values is part of how individuals maintain the security of their positions within the group.
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Mar 23, 2016 21:07
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I try not to do the "jump on the grenade" thing myself, but it's oddly difficult. Like, I love Fate. And I know that not everyone likes it. But when I see someone badmouthing the system, I actually have a split-second reflexive reaction to leap in and defend the system.
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Mar 23, 2016 21:08
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Evil Mastermind posted:It's bizarre because they're cargo culting something that doesn't exist. It's like people who design video games that are as punishing as NES games, without realizing that they were punishing because we didn't know what good design was yet. Yeah, old NES games aren't so much hard as just really inconsistent with their difficulty. While there are some that are genuinely brutal, a lot just have one hard section that dominates people's memories because dying at that point meant starting over and over. People forget that Metal Man was a lovely pushover, but sure as hell remember Air Man. And the OSR is much the same. You don't remember those goblins you cleft deftly, but you'll remember the rot grub that tunneled it's way to your heart.
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Mar 23, 2016 21:09
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ProfessorCirno posted:To be fair, that isn't entirely true, but the comparison still holds up well - a lot of NES games were super punishing for a reason, but it's a reason that largely no longer exists. NES games were super punishing because longevity and replayability were major concerns, and...well, they didn't really have much else. (...) Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, old NES games aren't so much hard as just really inconsistent with their difficulty. While there are some that are genuinely brutal, a lot just have one hard section that dominates people's memories because dying at that point meant starting over and over. People forget that Metal Man was a lovely pushover, but sure as hell remember Air Man.  It was kind of an open secret at the time, but several publishers have gone on record later on to admit that was the explicit single goal of game difficulty in the US
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Mar 23, 2016 21:15
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Leperflesh posted:Not that SA is immune. Sometimes I mention in threads in TG that I'm sick of vampires. Invariably, six people come out to recommend to me the vampire things that I really should check out, because they're different and good compared to the rest of the vampire stuff. That's super-innocuous and not especially annoying, but it's revealing of the basic psychology: if you like Thing, and someone else declares they don't like Thing, you typically feel an instant reflexive need to defend Thing. I think part of that defensiveness when posting in a public place (like Twitter or the SA Forums) comes less from trying to say "oh you should try these vampire things, person who said they are tired of vampire things" and more "oh this person says vampire things are tiresome, I hope they don't convince other people that vampires are tiresome, here's a bunch of cool vampire things for everyone else to see so they know vampires are cool actually." It isn't even you specifically they're trying to convince, even if their spiel is directed at you. It's everyone reading your conversation they're trying to convince, because you want more people to like the things you like, right? You don't want them to also think the things you like are dull, so you need to talk about how cool they are wherever someone talks about how dull they are. I've had to teach myself to respond with just "that's fair" when someone says they don't like Thing I Like. It can be rough, especially if it actually Thing I Love, but sometimes you just have to let go. People don't have to like everything I like and that's okay, because I know that some people do like that Thing I Like.
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Mar 23, 2016 21:33
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There's also a lot of overlap in the community and its games. Like, one of the first posts I'm seeing in the OSR G+ right now is someone that's made a Druid class for Delving Deeper. Delving Deeper is an OD&D retroclone. Swords & Wizardry is also an OD&D retroclone. Iron Falcon is also an OD&D retroclone. Swords & Wizardry itself has three (?) different ... editions (?) that capture different levels of OD&D plus its supplements. This is on top of OD&D already having been officially re-released on PDF in DTRPG. That's a lot of redundancy over the exact same material over and over again. The Druid class has been a thing for more than four decades now. What was the point of rewriting it again specifically for your one retroclone, especially when one of the purported advantages of keeping everything "compatible" is so you wouldn't have to do it across every little clone each and every time?
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Mar 23, 2016 21:34
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ProfessorCirno posted:But again, those limitations don't really exist anymore. You still have the drive to make a really hard game that gives a feeling of accomplishment when you win, but now game designers are way better at knowing HOW to make a really hard game without it being bullshit. Video games have never been cheaper - because they never changed their prices in the wake of inflation - so the fear of needing an extremely long game to make up for the price isn't really there anymore. Arcades in Europe and NA have largely died, and frankly, even if they hadn't, many arcade games don't use obtuse difficulty as their primary means of snaring players. Lastly, and kinda obviously, video games can tell actual stories now, so you can give players feelings of accomplishment beyond just "I beat the hard game." Well, no. Golden Axe is still good. As are the other handful of games across history that have a difficulty such that you can get more than two minutes of playtime out of them for a quarter. But yeah, hard for hard's sake is useless and I hate it. That said, who would like to Kickstart my game that is based entirely around the party being fabulously wealthy and powerful and having no obstacles in their path Also thank you Alien Rope Burn for the Air Man song, it is very nice and I like it
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Mar 23, 2016 21:35
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gnome7 posted:I think part of that defensiveness when posting in a public place (like Twitter or the SA Forums) comes less from trying to say "oh you should try these vampire things, person who said they are tired of vampire things" and more "oh this person says vampire things are tiresome, I hope they don't convince other people that vampires are tiresome, here's a bunch of cool vampire things for everyone else to see so they know vampires are cool actually." It isn't even you specifically they're trying to convince, even if their spiel is directed at you. It's everyone reading your conversation they're trying to convince, because you want more people to like the things you like, right? You don't want them to also think the things you like are dull, so you need to talk about how cool they are wherever someone talks about how dull they are. The frustrating thing is when Thing I Don't Like comes from a place of misinformation since then you have to weigh letting them spread said misinformation or coming across as the person who just can't let people have their own Opinions, maaaan
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Mar 23, 2016 21:38
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Asimo posted:It was kind of an open secret at the time, but several publishers have gone on record later on to admit that was the explicit single goal of game difficulty in the US Well, I was just trying to make the point briefly. The reasons behind bullshit nostalgia are usually myriad and forgotten, it's true.
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Mar 23, 2016 21:40
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A lot of times "I don't like vampires" is actually asking for a lovely ongoing derail over whether or not vampires are cool, with pictures of vampires that some people like and others don't. Except read "anime" instead of "vampires."
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Mar 23, 2016 21:54
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moths posted:Except read "anime" instead of "vampires." Ding! Is there an internet term (like Godwin or Rule 34) that goes "every thread is eventually derailed to be about anime"? If so, what's it called? Maybe it's actually "anime fans eventually attempt to redirect every thread they're posting in, to be about anime"? Something like that. But I wanted someone else to bring it up this time. I don't want to seem, like, obsessed about this.
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Mar 23, 2016 22:16
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Leperflesh posted:Is there an internet term (like Godwin or Rule 34) that goes "every thread is eventually derailed to be about anime"? If so, what's it called?
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Mar 23, 2016 22:19
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Leperflesh posted:Ding! 
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Mar 23, 2016 22:50
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DigitalRaven posted:On a whim, I looked at bestsellers on DTRPG. Turns out that the multi-Ennie-winning Red & Pleasant Land, the one that shows that the anti-skeleton bits of the OSR are a real force of nature taking over the RPG space, is an electrum bestseller on DTRPG.
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Mar 23, 2016 22:55
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Looking at the "Hottest Titles" on the RPGNow page is usually a source of puzzlement for me, since it's relatively rare I recognize anything on it. "DRAGONLOCK MINIATURES: Lizardfolk Set 1" is #2 as an Electrum Seller. Must be a lot more 3D printing miniature gamers there than I would have guessed, or the bar is pretty low, or both.Ewen Cluney posted:On the one hand it means that the RPG market is depressingly small, but OTOH I have no idea how to feel about the fact that Maid RPG is still one of the best-selling things I've ever done. I'm not sure where I was going with this. Well, it's also been around for a good long while now, so it's had the time to build up those sales numbers, plus controversy. I also wouldn't be surprised with stuff like Golden Sky Stories that the kickstarted copies bring those numbers down a lot, unless gratis copies count towards the sales marker.
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Mar 24, 2016 00:07
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