|
ProfessorCirno posted:and invents the action RPG genre while it's at it. Okay, but that's not remotely true. The ARPG genre dates back to 1985. 
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 13:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 06:30 |
|
|
Lemon-Lime posted:Okay, but that's not remotely true. The ARPG genre dates back to 1985. Jesus Christ that Wikipedia page is clearly gushing fanboy work. It's full of opinions and seriously biased language. That said, yeah the Japanese invented the action RPG.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 14:17
|
|
|
Apparently Paradox is sending C&Ds to oWoD/CofD Fansites. http://rp.thesubnet.com/
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 15:04
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:Apparently Paradox is sending C&Ds to oWoD/CofD Fansites. That is incredibly stupid.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 15:20
|
|
|
It's probably whatever copyright troll contractors Paradox pay to handle C&D on their video games stuff operating on their own, because somehow the games industry has yet to figure out those just lead to repeat embarrassment.
Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Jun 6, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 15:26
|
|
|
thesubnet literally copy-pasted entire chapters, verbatim, onto the Internet. I think they had the entirely of V20 and M20, sans pictures, up for a long, long time, as well as other books. Perhaps Paradox' lawyers are trigger-happy, but thesubnet getting a C&D isn't evidence of that. Even the most lenient of copyright lawyers would probably find fault with thesubnet. This is less a case of someone's fansite being taken down and more a case of action against 
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 15:40
|
|
|
Yeah I'd wait and see who else gets a C&D first.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 15:47
|
|
|
Their site is still up on archive.org and they've got full clan/discipline lists so it looks like they might be dog-whistling paradox.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 16:32
|
|
|
Don't worry. As soon as they Google "B.J. Zanzibar" their heads will literally explode and we'll be free of this tyranny.Harrow posted:Has there ever been an explanation for why 3e ended up that way? What culture shift happened that made everyone want to play a game where magic-users could do everything and martials could do jack poo poo? In addition to what Kai and Cirno already discussed, D&D 3 didn't just need to be a new and improved edition of D&D--the designers were tasked with making a version of D&D that would also serve as a universal system with, preferably, little or no tweaking. And when you're making a detailed universal system (in the style of Rolemaster or GURPS rather than, say, PDQ), the design comes with a boatload of assumptions. A skill system, a difficulty number system, character abilities not bound to classes (feats), prerequisites for said abilities, and perhaps most importantly, all creatures being statted up like characters. (You can't just assign a dragon "hit dice" and have half its stats based arbitrarily on that; what if I want a playable dragon? Or to test how well the dragon can swim?) Many of the trenchant flaws in the rules cascaded from these basic assumptions. A skill system where you never have enough skill points, some skills are clearly better than others, having clear difficulty charts for some skills but not others, etc. Skyrocketing spell save DCs, so casters always have a weak stat to target. Monsters having ballooning HP, but hilarious weaknesses (all dragons have Dex 10, so a spell that drains Dex will instantly cripple an ancient red dragon). Fighting characters see their class abilities parceled out into feats that give small incremental bonuses, and they have to put points in dump stats to get them. D&D 3/D20 was the first universal game a lot of people played, and I think it cemented, in their minds, the idea that a tabletop RPG ruleset is not just a set of rules for a game, it's a physics engine that needs to be able to measure, in strict physical and mathematical terms, everything in a fictional universe. A lot of vague, unquestioned notions of "realism" going on here. This is totally alien to prior editions of D&D. And when D&D 4 went back to statting up monsters as, y'know, enemies in a game, it blew people's minds. One little thing I wanted to add: you didn't have to powergame to break D&D 3. You could easily do it by accident. A guy says "Cool, I can be a necromancer and summon skeletons!" And after playing a wizard for a few levels, he has an army of skeletons and spells that instantly kill or cripple. Another guy says "Cool, I can be a tiger man and summon tigers!" And after playing a druid for a few levels, he is the general of an army of tigers. Clerics were boosted to encourage people to play the healbot, and it was quickly apparent that healing is just your side-job when you're not buffing yourself to become a superior fighter.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 16:34
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Then out of loving nowhere comes Diablo to remind everyone that computers can have RPGs too, and goes ahead and invents the action RPG genre while it's at it. Fantasy is suddenly kinda cool again! You can even play it online, with other people! So that's rad, and also really new, at least for it's scope. This essentially opens things up for Interplay to make it's own big step in with Fallout and, a year later, Baldur's Gate. I legitimately do not think it would've been the big hit it was if you didn't have a lot of outside stuff coming into play, and the revival of cRPGs and similar played a massive part in this. Third edition was released in August 2000. Baldur's Gate 2 was one month later. Diablo 2 was one month before (technically June, but the very end of June). Again: fantasy was cool again. And more then just that, nerds had poo poo to care about again. Man, I remember 12-year-old me using our state-of-the-art 128 Kbps DSL connection to download the 3rd Edition character creator overnight. I had zero idea of how to play D&D, but that poo poo looked cool with all the numbers and bells and whistles. Also, my dad played the poo poo out of Neverwinter Nights. It was a dual-wielding Fighter that of course didn't do anything except auto-attack and quaff potions, but man, he loved all the numbers that flew out of his character, especially when they were magical swords that sometimes triggered extra fire damage numbers. I mean, that's like super-boring to play in a tabletop setting, not to mention really un-CharOp, but we didn't know better, and it certainly looked cool, so.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 17:04
|
|
|
I remember my first NWN Game, I played a druid, cast flamestrike on everything (including chests, who needs lockpicks) and then rested when I ran out.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 17:22
|
|
|
Me and some others from TG played NWN multiplayer a few years back as a retro-nostalgia thing. I was a dwarf and I would pay any amount of gold or items for booze from the others in the party, then immediately drink it. I was the most inebriated meatshield you could hope for. Ah, memories.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 17:33
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:D&D 3/D20 was the first universal game a lot of people played, and I think it cemented, in their minds, the idea that a tabletop RPG ruleset is not just a set of rules for a game, it's a physics engine that needs to be able to measure, in strict physical and mathematical terms, everything in a fictional universe. A lot of vague, unquestioned notions of "realism" going on here. This is totally alien to prior editions of D&D. And when D&D 4 went back to statting up monsters as, y'know, enemies in a game, it blew people's minds. That's part of what captured my imagination as a 14-year-old nerd when 3e first came out. I'd mostly grown up on JRPGs and Korean MMOs like Nexus: Kingdom of the Winds, so when it came to my understanding of RPGs, D&D's approach just glowed with "realism." I remember trying to explain to one of my friends how "realistic" D&D was (having to clarify, when pressed, that "yes, if we assume magic is real, but then everything else is so realistic!"). For a long, long time I never actually got to play tabletop RPGs, but D&D 3e, and d20 by extension, seemed like the right way to do it. I actually credit Savage Worlds for breaking me of that. I ran D&D 4e as my first tabletop RPG experience, then eventually switched to Pathfinder, and finally we transitioned that Pathfinder campaign to Savage Worlds when I started to get annoyed at a lot of the balance decisions and rules. Savage Worlds isn't exactly the most narrative system, but its assumption of pulpy, fast-paced adventure, and the whole bennies thing, changed how I think about RPGs. Then I ran Dungeon World and now I can't imagine running "real" D&D again, except maybe 4e (even then, I'd probably suggest 13th Age or Strike before settling on 4e, as much as I dig 4e). I'd happily play AD&D but I don't think I'd run it. Harrow fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Jun 6, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 17:45
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:I remember my first NWN Game, I played a druid, cast flamestrike on everything (including chests, who needs lockpicks) and then rested when I ran out. Dwarven Cleric. By end of the game I had 3 quickbars worth of spells and knew it was ridiculous. (All I needed were some self buffs and Summon Monster IX.) Online, someone made an excitingly balanced level 6-8 "Capture the Flag" mode. But NWN was more balanced than base 3E by a longshot.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 18:31
|
|
|
My early college years had a lot of nights and weekends as one of the lead builders for an awesome persistent world, and playing on another two or so. Man those were good times 
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 20:11
|
|
|
Evidently EOS-SAMA is closed. How often in the games industry do freelancers like layout editors or writers not get paid by the company?
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 23:07
|
|
|
Helical Nightmares posted:Evidently EOS-SAMA is closed. You're not going to get hard answers on that except in cases where the company has gone under.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 23:26
|
|
|
^^^A buddy of mine in Portland used to do freelance layout work for TRPG study and he would routinely get told repeatedly that his payments would be delayed the whole "the check is in the mail/we'll pay you once we make enough in sales" song and dance. Freelancers are frequently treated like poo poo in a lot of corners of this hobby, you probably don't hear much about it because they don't feel like making a big fuss.Helical Nightmares posted:Evidently EOS-SAMA is closed. Like all the time. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Jun 6, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 23:28
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:^^^A buddy of mine in Portland used to do freelance layout work for TRPG study and he would routinely get told repeatedly that his payments would be delayed the whole "the check is in the mail/we'll pay you once we make enough in sales" song and dance. Freelancers are frequently treated like poo poo in a lot of corners of this hobby, you probably don't hear much about it because they don't feel like making a big fuss. Less "don't feel like it" and more "know that if they make a fuss no one will hire them."
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 23:38
|
|
|
Yeah, there's a rather unfortunate idea that complaining about a company screwing you over is "unprofessional". You don't see it that often anymore, but it's one of those things like "getting paid in exposure" that still lingers on and just fucks over freelance creators.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2016 23:43
|
|
|
senrath posted:Less "don't feel like it" and more "know that if they make a fuss no one will hire them." Oh no, that's definitely a huge part of it too...this is what happened with the Catalyst situation where the freelancers knew they were going to be hosed but nobody wanted to wind up blacklisted for being a whistleblower...but even if you've reached the point of giving no fucks what are you gonna do? Sue someone over $500-1000? Start a social media campaign over what's probably an obscure project from an obscure company where half the people who even bother to respond will take the company's side? A lot of folks in that situation just chalk it up as a lovely life lesson learned and move on rather than take on an extremely thankless task.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 00:05
|
|
|
Another issue is that you have an incentive not to blow the whistle on a company that's not paying you - because if you go public with new about how XYZ Games is in financial trouble and is 9 months late in paying you, then distributors will stop carrying their products and retailers will stop buying them and gamers will hear it's a dead game and buy something else, and now you've turned a slim chance that they might pay you into a sure chance that they'll go under and not pay you. Also, you get a rep for whistleblowing that makes other companies wary about hiring you. Which all leads to certain companies being known to be in trouble by those "in the know" but to an outsider look healthy. A freelancer who is not plugged into the gossip network can end up working for companies that are infamous for not paying people, and they don't find out until it's too late that oh yeah, didn't you know, XYZ Games hasn't paid anyone in two years. Our hobby's version of the "missing stair" situation.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 00:21
|
|
|
FMguru posted:Which all leads to certain companies being known to be in trouble by those "in the know" but to an outsider look healthy. A freelancer who is not plugged into the gossip network can end up working for companies that are infamous for not paying people, and they don't find out until it's too late that oh yeah, didn't you know, XYZ Games hasn't paid anyone in two years. Our hobby's version of the "missing stair" situation.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 00:49
|
|
|
Palladium is also infamous for loving freelancers over so, y'know, don't work for Kevin Sembieda.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 01:18
|
|
|
I'd say that Palladium's stupidity is better know since it's been a presence of one sort or another for decades. Adamant pretty much faded from view with Far West.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 01:45
|
|
|
As Malcolm Sheppard put it, Palladium's hiring conditions at this point essentially filter out competence. They really only want fan writers who would consider themselves lucky to get their work published anywhere. Not that that makes their practices acceptable or that their writers deserve the now-infamous Siembieda treatment.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 03:10
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:^^^A buddy of mine in Portland used to do freelance layout work for TRPG study and he would routinely get told repeatedly that his payments would be delayed the whole "the check is in the mail/we'll pay you once we make enough in sales" song and dance. Freelancers are frequently treated like poo poo in a lot of corners of this hobby, you probably don't hear much about it because they don't feel like making a big fuss. Yeah it's not unique to tabletop games at all. Pretty much every industry that has an appreciable freelancer presence also has a pretty solidly ingrained problem with employers trying to get work out of those freelancers without actually putting money in. Illustration, animation, programming...you name it, if some schmuck on the street can be convinced it's someone's dream job, some schmuck with a paycheck will decide that doing the job is compensation enough. "I could do that, but you should instead, but I'm still not going to pay you for something I could have done myself." Many of these people will love to parrot "if you're good at something, never do it for free," or assert that they earned everything they ever got and so should everyone else, or some other bilious hypocrisy. Harrow posted:That's part of what captured my imagination as a 14-year-old nerd when 3e first came out. I'd mostly grown up on JRPGs and Korean MMOs like Nexus: Kingdom of the Winds, so when it came to my understanding of RPGs, D&D's approach just glowed with "realism." I remember trying to explain to one of my friends how "realistic" D&D was (having to clarify, when pressed, that "yes, if we assume magic is real, but then everything else is so realistic!"). For a long, long time I never actually got to play tabletop RPGs, but D&D 3e, and d20 by extension, seemed like the right way to do it. I've always found this sort of a weird phenomenon among nerds, of all walks (I apologize, by the way, for associating you with nerds). I was talking about it earlier regarding the Tolkien's Nutsack problem. They find a set of rules that they like; these rules are arbtrarily designated "realistic." Thereafter, "realistic" is the "right" way to do everything, and quality is a direct function of how closely that thing hews to "realistic" (hence how Gamergaters can demand "objective" reviews with a straight face). I'm pretty certain this is the source of the creativity problem among nerds; they're basically treating fiction, fantasy, escapism, imagination the way you might treat assembling a toaster, since everything has to be done the "right way" there's only one kind of story they can tell. It's not just fantasy either, it's everything. If they try to do cartoon characters ala Who Framed Roger Rabbit they'll try to put consistent laws of physics on hammerspace and interacting with scenery drawn on walls (which is missing the point entirely, just to be clear). If they do a Western it'll probably be the most racist thing you've seen since your aunt Stacy invited the Crow family down the street over for Thanksgiving dinner. If they want to date a real life woman they'll say "hello" to her every day and give her gifts at an arbitrary interval until she suddenly announces her intent to gently caress him (this will never happen). There's clearly some kind of common ground among them that they all have this tendency to latch onto tropes-as-physics but I'll be damned if I can put my finger on what. Times like this I wish I was an anthropologist so I could understand the information I'm observing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 04:26
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:As Malcolm Sheppard put it, Palladium's hiring conditions at this point essentially filter out competence. They really only want fan writers who would consider themselves lucky to get their work published anywhere. Not that that makes their practices acceptable or that their writers deserve the now-infamous Siembieda treatment. ISTR reading about this happening with regards to the new Exalted or some such- freelance applicants had to answer a big questionnaire about their favorite parts of Exalted lore because they only wanted existing super fans to work on it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 15:48
|
|
|
Dr. Buttass posted:Times like this I wish I was an anthropologist so I could understand the information I'm observing. Has there been an "anthropology of nerds" book? I'd love to read one. The best thing I can find when it comes to dissecting nerd culture is that classic Five Geek Social Fallacies article.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 16:02
|
|
|
Harrow posted:Has there been an "anthropology of nerds" book? I'd love to read one. The best thing I can find when it comes to dissecting nerd culture is that classic Five Geek Social Fallacies article. Not sure if she ever published it as a book, but I know when I was in grad school, there was another anthro grad doing her diss on fandom communities. So there are people studying it, at least.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 16:08
|
|
|
Ettin posted:If I see a thread I'll sticky it for Origins But if I did not even have time to make a new Gen-Con thread, I would be a positive villain for making an Origins thread. unseenlibrarian posted:Origins is apparently a big enough deal that Evil Hat has said not going would be a financial loss for them in the Fate More kickstarter stuff, so I'm guessing some people go, anyway. Oh but, like, I have only ever gone for one day before this year, but it impressed me how much more focused they seemed on gaming rather than, you know, whimsical fun happy nerd times in general. Somebody was complaining on the Gen-Con Facebook page about how much more focus is on cosplay these days than ten years ago, and someone else said "go to Origins, it's the only place you're safe from fake gamer girls" and I guess that says a lot. I do kind of hope that is exaggerated though since I would much prefer hanging out with a "fake gamer girl" compared to the average hardcore gamer. Lemon-Lime posted:Okay, but that's not remotely true. The ARPG genre dates back to 1985.  Granted I seem to recall something even earlier having a claim to it but ... well, the article mentions Phantom Slayer, but that ... oh whatever who cares
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 20:51
|
|
|
I go to Origins every year and its some of the nicest people I have played with. It's also mostly focused on games, I don't see a lot of cosplay at it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 20:54
|
|
|
Yeah even non freelancers get boned on getting paid in this industry due to company fuckups. Decipher went belly up due to corruption and couldn't pay staff much less the licensing deals which were the only reason they were making money.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 22:21
|
|
|
Lemon-Lime posted:The ARPG genre dates back to 1985.  Warrior needs food, badly!
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 22:45
|
|
|
Dr. Quarex posted:Oh but, like, I have only ever gone for one day before this year, but it impressed me how much more focused they seemed on gaming rather than, you know, whimsical fun happy nerd times in general. Somebody was complaining on the Gen-Con Facebook page about how much more focus is on cosplay these days than ten years ago, and someone else said "go to Origins, it's the only place you're safe from fake gamer girls" and I guess that says a lot. I do kind of hope that is exaggerated though since I would much prefer hanging out with a "fake gamer girl" compared to the average hardcore gamer. Well, there's no way to explain this but bluntly. Origins has been run like total poo poo for ages now and has only just started to recover, and it may be hard to even credit them for that. There's a reason why the exhibitor's hall is missing a lot of the big company names since around the turn of the century - why it wasn't even close to full last year. I remember when Origins tried to effectively ban open play of games and restricted to a room you had to pay an extra fee to enter or leave. You would have wargamers that would occupy an otherwise empty room for the con to play their favorite game and suddenly were told - no, you can't do that. You have to rent that room. And so they just stopped showing up instead. Or scheduling the same time as a big anime con because, well, there's no crossover between anime fans and gaming fans, is there? (Seriously, that was the justification.) I know people locally who have been convention organizers - I know a guy who once helped run Origins itself - and their jaws have been on the floor for over a decade now. Most of the name Origins had is due to legacy, back when they were the #2 gaming convention in the world, back when they were comparable to Gen Con, and now Gen Con Indy has been rocketing into the stratosphere for attendance while Origins' numbers have barely been growing at all. And meanwhile, Origins' organizers pat themselves on the back as I understand it that their numbers are going up, and that's good - but it's nowhere where they should be given the exploding nerd demographic. Now, I'm not saying "don't go" or "don't have fun", because you can do both those things there, don't get me wrong. But knowing when the convention was a huge deal... well. I go for the Smithees. The Smithees are great. The con is a side effect of me going to the Smithees.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 23:45
|
|
|
Also PAX has probably been eating into Origins' lunch as well, even though it's ostensibly a video game convention.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 23:48
|
|
|
Back in the 80s-90s, GenCon was the big national gaming con for RPGers and Origins was the big national gaming con for boardgamers/wargamers. And ARB is right, they've pretty much driven it into the ground, which is amazing given the way that boardgaming has exploded over the last two decades.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2016 23:51
|
|
|
Also this year's Origins website looks only one step removed from the days of free website adholes and their mascot is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2016 00:12
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Also PAX has probably been eating into Origins' lunch as well, even though it's ostensibly a video game convention. Well, PAX does happen more than once a year, but it also does something Origins doesn't: get more people into the tabletop side of the hobby. The tabletop area is mostly board games, but there's always pick-up games and Games on Demand and tabletop seminars and stuff that's very entry-friendly for people who've never played an RPG before. Plus stuff like the Acquisitions Incorporated podcasts/events bring in new blood as well.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2016 00:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 06:30 |
|
|
According to BGG, Greg Bilsland is leaving WOTC? https://rpggeek.com/blogpost/54880/greg-bilsland-announces-departure-wizards-coast Is it just Mike and the "Brand Manager" left?
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2016 00:34
|
|
