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wdarkk posted:The only RPG I've seen that really feels similar to the tactical focus of 4E is the Iron Kingdoms RPG, based on Warmahordes. I've never played it so I can't say for certain how similar it is in practice. It's supposedly got some balance issues (although I'd bet most of them would go away if the GM enforced either all Warcasters/Warlocks or none) and it's not presented as a generic system. Gamma World was a good 4e lite and I think in a better world would have served more as the framework for the broader audience/lighter system replacement for 4th. For example, they got rid of perks (with an expansion adding something kinda taking that place/a mix of perks and 4e's later backgrounds) weapons/equipment was just "1h or 2h/ranged or melee/heavy or light" and from there could be anything you wanted. I only played Iron Kingdoms twice (core book without anything else splatwise) and it seemed decently balanced. It had many of the things that turned SA off to D&D (racial stat caps and bonuses/class restrictions) but seemed to decently solve the wizard problem by actually having a magic stat only good for magic, so a character focusing on magic has to legit lose out on other things. The bigger complaint people had in my group (who were more familiar with the mini game than me) was that you didn't really feel like an awesome warcaster from Warmachine and had to use both of your character classes to even start getting their trademark stuff. Of course, that could be like saying at level 2 the wizard problem hasn't fully manifested in d&d so there is no problem, or since then additional supplements might have given perks that let a magic user sub their magic stat for all rolls or other stuff that made focusing pure magic less of a liability. Coolness Averted fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Nov 23, 2016 |
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Nov 23, 2016 04:58
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IK's issue is mainly encounter design. You really have to do a lot of encounter building with that game because every class is a different flavor of murderhobo and they are all really good at it, so if you have a bunch of combat dudes you have to focus on making scenarios that will use all of their abilities and require party synergy and tactics to beat. You can't really just throw mooks at the party and hope for the best because 9/10 times they're going to loving slay the poo poo out of everything by turn two. Also the stuff like stat capping doesn't really make much of a difference, and we've played a bunch and ignored basically all the race/class restrictions and had almost no issues with any of it.
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Nov 23, 2016 05:29
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Ojetor posted:It seems like pretty much every set is announced to be the new best selling set ever nowadays. Magic is absolutely massive and D&D is a vanity side project WotC seems to only keep around because the prestige of the brand. One need only compare release schedules for MTG vs D&D 5e to realize which game Wizards actually cares about. To be a bit more precise, what Wizards may or may not care about re: D&D is kind of beside the point. Hasbro cares about D&D as a brand in the sense that nobody was predicting that Michael Bay would turn a movie based on a kids toyline into a multi-billion dollar mega blockbuster franchise, but that happened. The GI Joe movies may not have been as successful but I mean they still squeezed a couple of movies out of it, and hell, they even made a Battleship movie. It's no surprise that there's yet another D&D movie in the works because that's the approach Hasbro is willing to take towards its brands...D&D the game can linger on life support indefinitely because one day, it might be tomorrow, it might be 20 years from now, D&D the brand could result in another Bayformers and they have no intention of letting that possibility slip through their fingers. Not that this contradicts what you're saying insofar as Magic is clearly the favorite son and also singlehandedly keeping Wizards of the Coast a solvent division of Hasbro, but these days I'd say the purpose of D&D is less as a vanity project and more a holding pattern while they wait to see if this new movie makes bank. quote:Also, regarding DDI: Like Leperflesh said, it was ridiculously good value. For a 6 bucks a month you had full access to every single D&D 4e book, organized in an online searchable database, a fully fledged character builder, every issue of Dungeon and Dragon magazines, the Monster Builder and the Virtual Tabletop (which sadly never even got to leave beta status, but was promising when we used it). It's a huge shame that a literal murder-suicide destroyed DDI, the idea was loving solid. Look at how successful online RPG gaming and platforms like Roll20 have become in the last 2-3 years. WotC was trying to realize those things ten goddamn years ago. It actually goes even further than that. When the DDI character builder was first released the way it worked was it was a program that you would download onto your own computer. Periodically they'd update it with material from newer books but here's the thing, you could cancel your subscription at any time but you still kept the character builder. You wouldn't be able to use the searchable DDI database but the CB and monster builder were local programs on your own computer. So what a lot of people did was they'd pay for a single month's subscription for $10, they'd get every update that was current to the date they paid for the subscription, let it lapse, then wait like six months and get another one-time $10 subscription, get all the updates up to that point, rinse repeat. So you effectively had all the player facing information for 4E, every class, power, feat, ritual, item, whatever, all of it, for yours to use in perpetuity, regularly updated, and you pretty much only had to pay like $20 a year or so. This is, I'm firmly convinced, the primary reason behind their attempt to redo the character builder as an always-online application, in order to prevent people from essentially giving themselves a lifetime digital subscription to all the meaty parts of the supplementary material they were publishing at a fraction of the cost.
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Nov 23, 2016 05:30
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Can't really find an appropriate thread for this and this one tends to cover all sorts of things, does anyone have experience with 'The Dark Eyes'? The German rpg system a bunch of pc games from the 90s were based off of? I just found out the English version is finally out. I'm guessing since it's an 80s it's pretty much just a DnD clone? I remember a German poster (My Lovely Horse?) posting his experiences with The Dark Eye (Das Schwarze Auge, or DSA for short) aaaages ago in the D&D thread, but I can't find a link anymore. My impression of it through cultural osmosis here in Germany is that it's super grognardy. It was classically the biggest RPG in Germany in terms of market share, but I get the feeling that is no longer necessarily the case... Pathfinder is pretty huge here though.
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Nov 23, 2016 09:52
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NTRabbit posted:They just put up a first beta of the GCPS faction for Deadzone on the mantic blog, to get an initial round of public playtesting. This is now my biggest reason to buy in for deadzone. The other factions were sort of okay, but the way those look in the blog is absolutely my sort of thing for that sort of game. Forget rebs, or the totally-not-space-marines. These guys are the way forward.
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Nov 23, 2016 10:24
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mcjomar posted:This is now my biggest reason to buy in for deadzone. It's also the faction which has the biggest overlap with a GW army, which means it's really easy for someone with
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Nov 23, 2016 11:17
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mcjomar posted:This is now my biggest reason to buy in for deadzone. I actually feel like "not squats" are more like space marines than the Enforcers are. Enforcers are sort of their own deal.
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Nov 23, 2016 11:27
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Kai Tave posted:Strike! is as close to a 4E retroclone as you're gonna find on offer currently. Was just about to chime in that Strike! is a Good Game. And a successful Goon project to boot!
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Nov 23, 2016 13:53
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I found some Age of Sigmar fan art!
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Nov 23, 2016 14:20
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Someone posted in the AoS thread this link: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?st...452117934985005 Seems GW is already working on the second edition of the generals handbook because why the gently caress not GET PAID!
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Nov 23, 2016 16:35
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Hey look what popped up on FB https://www.facebook.com/GWWarhammerAgeofSigmar/posts/546993285497469:0 
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Nov 23, 2016 16:49
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Atlas Hugged posted:I found some Age of Sigmar fan art!  more effort and cohesion than Warhammer's genre fiction.
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Nov 23, 2016 16:51
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Chill la Chill posted:Hey look what popped up on FB Wait, how long has this game been out?
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Nov 23, 2016 17:01
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Chill la Chill posted:Hey look what popped up on FB Please everyone respond to this with nothing but a picture of the 8th edition rulebook/pictures of Bretonnians and Tomb Kings.
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Nov 23, 2016 17:02
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w00tmonger posted:Wait, how long has this game been out? About five months.
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Nov 23, 2016 17:04
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Ashcans posted:Please everyone respond to this with nothing but a picture of the 8th edition rulebook/pictures of Bretonnians and Tomb Kings.
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Nov 23, 2016 17:06
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Ashcans posted:Please everyone respond to this with nothing but a picture of the
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Nov 23, 2016 17:08
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There was some information that came out about the DND 4e pitch to Hasbro a while back, but drat if I can find it now. The huge pile of stupid it referenced was that the development team claimed that 4e and related stuff could grow the DND brand to become one of Hasbro's core properties. Which is batshit insane; even if they managed to exceed the 3e/d20 explosion somehow, they were never going to even get within a 100 miles of the sales volume of Hasbro's big properties. If its true it might go a long way to explain why Hasbro hasn't bothered to do much with the property. They gave the experts their shot, and even if it was successful by RPG standards it was still a big pile of nothing by giant corporate metrics.
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Nov 23, 2016 17:36
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Well, it does seem that most rpg devs don't really grasp how numbers scale.
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Nov 23, 2016 18:31
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Haha, yeah. Just in case anyone isn't aware: http://www.hasbro.com/en-us/brands I wouldn't be surprised if Yatzee! outsells Dungeons and Dragons, today. Jenga might be smaller? Probably Furby Connect is smaller. I mean, D&D and Magic aren't on there, because they're not listing the brands owned by subsidiares like Wizards. I'm sure D&D is a bigger brand, even today, than a handful of those listed. But it's tiny compared to Magic, and probably like at least half a dozen of those brands are multiple times bigger than Magic. Marvel, Transformers, probably Monopoly, loving STAR WARS come the gently caress on. On this corporate page: http://corporate.hasbro.com/en-us In the Our Brands tab, they do mention Magic in the same sentence as Monopoly, Nerf, Play-Doh, Transformers, My Little Pony, and Littlest Pet Shop. It's an important brand to the company. D&D gets a mention on the Wizards tab, after Magic and before Kaijudo. But this is a company that has gobs of experience in brand management. They are not going to casually toss D&D as a brand, because they fully recognize that brand popularity can wax and wane. My Little Pony was huge, and then all but forgotten, and now it's huge again. Same with Transformers, as Kai Tave mentioned. Hasbro is not going to throw money away, but they're also clearly willing to maintain their brands at some baseline level and then let their mid-level management find and exploit opportunities to grow them. e. Q3 financial report from Hasbro: http://investor.hasbro.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=993775 quote:Third quarter 2016 revenues grew 14% over 2015 to $1.68 billion Hasbro breaks down revenues into the categories BOYS, GAMES, GIRLS, and PRESCHOOL. Magic is included in the games category. Games made $365.5M in revenue in Q3 2015, and grew to $409.5M revenue for Q3 2016. quote:Games category revenues for the third quarter increased 13% to $409.5 million, behind growth in multiple gaming formats including face-to-face gaming, off-the-board gaming and digital gaming. Franchise Brand MAGIC: THE GATHERING revenues increased in the quarter, along with growth in PIE FACE, DUEL MASTERS and a number of other brands. Hasbro's balance sheet lists $830M in cash and cash equivalents on Sept 25th, 2016, on total assets of just under five billion dollars. Shareholder equity - what you might consider to be the cash liquidation value of the company that could be returned to shareholders if the company simply folded up, settled all its debts, and stopped business - was about $1.7B. In the third quarter, Hasbro spent $154M on advertising. But what would Hasbro know about advertising games and toys? Games Workshop's market capitalization right now is about 180 million pounds, or about $224M. If Hasbro wanted to buy Games Workshop today, they would likely need to offer shareholders a significant premium, so the actual purchase price of the company (assuming they wanted to buy 100% of the shares) would probably be around $300M to $350M, ish, give or take. Or in other words, less than six months of Hasbro's advertising budget would outright purchase Games Workshop. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Nov 23, 2016 |
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Nov 23, 2016 19:12
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Kinda surprised they didn't drop the background of Magic and roll DnD into the "plot".
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Nov 23, 2016 20:46
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The other thread reminded me of some loving goober I argued with about how AOS improved realism by removing block formations, because everyone knows people are too smart to stand around in big squares where they can't react to stuff coming at them from the side 
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Nov 23, 2016 20:54
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Leperflesh posted:Haha, yeah. This is honestly the closest we get to actually having real numbers for the gaming market as a whole. Wotc, GW, and any other company that is publicly traded and thus has to tell us how poo poo is doing. Every Podunk RPG publisher on DriveThruRPG not so much. And would anyone believe anything out of Kevin Seimbeida's mouth at this point? Outside of what we see and hear we generally can only guess and estimate. And if Hasbro barely acknowledges DND well.. Yeah sorry but RPGs are not exactly huge then. And DnD is one of the few RPGs with an organized play program which is honestly all but the LIFEBLOOD of modern gaming. Show up on Day X, play for a few hours with whoever is there, done till next week. It also sells product and gets more people. Even Call of Cthulhu is doing that heat now. (There is Pathfinder as well but their weekly game rules are loving dogshit. Nobody liked it and quickly everyone locally went to 5e DnD organized.) I'm not pulling stuff out of my rear end as one poster rudely said. I am merely going by what little data we have to go on. And that data is mostly from the BIG GUNS of their sub genre. Ccgs and RPGs from Wotc/Hasbro. Minis from GW. If Asmodee is public traded I guess we have board games covered? We just have to eyeball and guess from there. See what is being bought and played. * The sizes of various games and lines at stores. That is really all we have to go on. Plus regional evidence. If there is a big crowd playing X at a store on the reg it will probably mean more people will get into it as well! But in that area. Go a 100 miles in any direction and maybe nobody at all plays it. * There is a dirty secret about all games even electronic. LOTS IF NOT MOST OF THEM BARELY IF EVER ACTUALLY GET PLAYED. Yeah Monopoly sells fuckhuge. Most are given as gifts and then thrown in a closet. The amount of un punched hex and chit games is absurd. Even like the best selling one of all time with like 200k sales (Squad Leader) can be found easily with everything still on the card. Steam backlogs are bad yes. Trad Games are even worse since they like require other people and much more time. It's why my heart sings whenever I buy any old game and it's got stuff like notes or hi lighter marks or some game component wear and tear. It means it was actually used to some degree. 
Captain Rufus fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Nov 23, 2016 |
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Nov 23, 2016 21:15
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Actual post in the AoS thread. "Bloodbound are all about the buffs and synergy your heroes give your rank and file. You wanna jam in as many Bloodsecrators, Bloodstokers, Bloodpriests and Bloodgrinders in as possible." Blood.
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Nov 23, 2016 22:24
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Also a reminder that the Slaughterbrute (LOL) is an eighty five dollar model that apparently has "not that good stats." Given its price. Of eighty five dollars.
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Nov 23, 2016 23:29
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Genuine Age of Sigmar tactics discussion is kind of magical when you actually read it aloud.
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Nov 23, 2016 23:33
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Leperflesh posted:Also a reminder that the Slaughterbrute (LOL) is an eighty five dollar model that apparently has "not that good stats." Given its price. Of eighty five dollars. Let's be entirely fair, that's not a GW only flaw. I'm rock hard for this big guy but he isn't that good. 
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Nov 23, 2016 23:47
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I don't understand how the hell people get these models to games.
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Nov 23, 2016 23:48
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I've heard that thing specifically is next to impossible to transport without making the wings detachable.
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Nov 24, 2016 00:03
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spectralent posted:I don't understand how the hell people get these models to games. What, you don't just paint up your models at your studio and then play games at that studio??? Weird, that's what everyone at GW HQ does, and it totally works fine for them!
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Nov 24, 2016 00:04
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spectralent posted:I don't understand how the hell people get these models to games. Captain Rufus posted:* There is a dirty secret about all games even electronic. LOTS IF NOT MOST OF THEM BARELY IF EVER ACTUALLY GET PLAYED. Now let's be honest, who here hasn't bought enough models for a playable faction and then never actually used them in a game? Better, how many of us have done that and never even finished assembling them?
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Nov 24, 2016 01:00
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Don't Oathshame TIA. I have a few mounted infi minis, a fair few amount of Legion and Mercenary, plus a circle box. Iceclaw fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Nov 24, 2016 |
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Nov 24, 2016 01:08
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i bought the rule book to Frostgrave then never played it
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Nov 24, 2016 01:09
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I have the Frostgrave rulebook and kickstarted the cultist miniatures. I've played one game. That one inspired my friend to make his own skirmish game (because my war dog ate half his gang), which everyone is now playing instead of Frostgrave. 
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Nov 24, 2016 01:20
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I believe Magic is actually considered to be at "core brand" levels, which is why it still gets a sizable development team instead of like 4 or 5 people.
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Nov 24, 2016 01:24
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I own almost every 4E DnD book aside from campaign settings. I played three games.
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Nov 24, 2016 02:43
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I own I think everything you can buy, or close to it, for Warhammer RPG 3rd edition and have played it maybe three or four times. However I only bought one core set and the rest is stuff that other people left at my house then didn't want back after we all realized the game was terrible and they didn't even want it back to sell off. I kickstart lots of RPGs I know I will never play since organizing my friends to do anything is next to impossible but I still dream.
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Nov 24, 2016 02:56
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Bad Moon posted:I own almost every 4E DnD book aside from campaign settings. I played three games. DnD 4e is the edition I played more than any other and I don't own a thing for it. My friend had boxes full of tiles, shelves full of miniatures, and a book case with all the guides. Then I moved.
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Nov 24, 2016 03:19
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Atlas Hugged posted:DnD 4e is the edition I played more than any other and I don't own a thing for it. My friend had boxes full of tiles, shelves full of miniatures, and a book case with all the guides. Then I moved. This is a big issue with RPGs and board games from a BUY OUR poo poo standpoint. As long as one person owns it they can generally support multiple people. Some games and their business plans are designed around it smartly. Most aren't. Still others do the WHFRPG method which is another ball of ungood wax. I was a weird outlier in the DnD 4 and then Pathfinder organized play programs locally. I wasn't buying RPG poo poo every week but I was showing up and buying comics and other things. Lots of folks apparently weren't buying ANYTHING. Maybe not even a soda, much less even the cheap and portable Essentials books. (They never had many of the Pathfinder mini splats. And PFS worked like a more Derpy Camarilla in not only were you required to OWN any book your character poo poo was from, but some things were either banned or you had to earn the right to use it. MY RIGHT IS THAT I BOUGHT THE BOOK COCKSUCKERS.  PFS didn't last long for some reason. Wonder why.)But the Organized Play stuff probably sold more books than anything else even with the above issues. And for 4e probably lots of subscriptions because character creation even in Essentials was a pain in the dick. Though the odd iOS or Android or Windows Laptop program could take the edge off. 4e Fight Club is good poo poo! Ccgs and minis games end up requiring people to buy poo poo and learn it. (One thing many RPG folks use as an excuse to never play a new game. Though some will then refuse to play a new setting in the same game rules. IDGI. To be fair even with the free version of 5e I didn't bother getting back into the organized play but it's more I don't have as much free time as I used to and am either not available every Wednesday evening or I have other things to do besides drive 30 mins to one comic shop and burn 2-3 extra hours there. The whole 50 bucks a core book for a game I have every other major edition of that I am generally ok with for what they are just seals the deal really. BECMI Basic is my jam and some of the Retroclones like Castles n Crusades fix my major issues with Gary DnD already. The gently caress do I need to buy and learn it again for? ). Then there are all those support products like hobby tools, deck/mini cases, splat books, templates... RPGs don't have nearly as much each player needs if they need anything at all. You would think this lack of buying requirements would get more people trying different RPGs but it actually seems like RPG players are even more tribal and brand bound than games with way more buying needs.  Edit: VVVV There is truth to that indeed. But campaigns ebb and flow and inevitably die horribly. Yet when this happens people STILL don't wanna try a new game. For many their requirements begin and end with: Current edition of Dungeons and Dragons They want their bog standard rear end Fantasy DnD regardless of any other concerns. Not even the same system for a new game is acceptable to many of them. This has always confused me given how as the above endless prattle of mine shows you really don't gotta buy poo poo to play in most RPGs and many of them are loving simple as poo poo to learn. VVVVV Captain Rufus fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Nov 24, 2016 |
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Nov 24, 2016 03:51
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TTRPGs promise an ongoing time investment, even if one never transpires, to a see a storyline to the end which is a possibly infinite time commitment to a single thing. A game of a CCG or strategy game is just that, a complete and discrete experience so the psychological cost of investment is way lower even if in the case of something like Warhammer the monetary and time cost to get set up the first time is much higher.
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