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Halloween Jack posted:No, I keep trying to tell you, he's the Vince Russo. This checks out.
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Aug 9, 2017 22:17
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ProfessorCirno posted:
What did daddy do that enabled Ryan to do what he does? Halloween Jack posted:Ryan Dancey is now an Extremely Cool and Good Director at Alderac Entertainment Group. I would love to ask him if he'd fire me if I straight up believed, without a shred of doubt, that all men named Ryan Dancey are voracious pig-fuckers and that biologically they must gently caress pigs when they are at their dirtiest. Consequently, all men with names not Ryan Dancey are superior to Ryan Danceys in all realms, save pig-loving. Would he fire me for just voicing my opinion that people named Ryan Dancey and people not named Ryan Dancey are different?
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Aug 9, 2017 22:53
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They took him back? Nepotism strikes again. Glad to see he's a giant shitlord to boot.
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LuiCypher posted:What did daddy do that enabled Ryan to do what he does? It wasn't that his family did anything - it's that he became a "big name" for creation D&D 3e and has clung to it ever since. Every job he's gotten since then, he's done so by leveraging "you know I helped create d20 and 3e!" Ryan Dancey is basically your clear example of someone who manages to continuously be put into decision making jobs despite his every decision inevitably ruining the company he works for, but gosh, he's so well known! Or at least was. The zero responses to everything he says isn't surprising. He's been running out of places to grift. I had kinda hoped he had finally finished burning through his good will with the horrendous failure that was Pathfinder Online - which he staked his name on personally - but apparently there was still enough to get re-hired at Alderac, where he worked in the 90's. But then, Alderac isn't exactly the champion of good business decisions.
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Aug 9, 2017 23:22
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theironjef posted:Oh man that completely ruins my personal fantasy narrative. Nightlife really looks like they took at look at White Wolf and said "I can get all this into one book." That game was Steve Brown's "Everlasting", which he wrote after White Wolf got tired of him making GBS threads up Vampire with books like the infamous Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand. He decided to make his own World of Darkness, and it was trash that nobody cared about.
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Aug 10, 2017 04:10
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I was gonna mention Everlasting, but to be fair, he did actually spread it out over 4 or 5 books. However, the first book (Book of the Unliving) is chock full of references to monster PC types that wouldn't appear until later books, so it gives the impression that he felt obligated to put out a White Wolf imitation before moving on to the Grail Knights and Not Highlanders that he really cared about. Like, the intro fiction in Unliving is about three Not Highlanders, who do not appear as PC types in that book. Hell of a way to launch a game line.
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Aug 10, 2017 04:25
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ProfessorCirno posted:It wasn't that his family did anything - it's that he became a "big name" for creation D&D 3e and has clung to it ever since. Every job he's gotten since then, he's done so by leveraging "you know I helped create d20 and 3e!" Ryan Dancey is basically your clear example of someone who manages to continuously be put into decision making jobs despite his every decision inevitably ruining the company he works for, but gosh, he's so well known! I never understood who they thought the target audience for Pathfinder Online was. I mean, mechanically it's nothing new, and the Pathfinder setting is about as boring and generic a D&D setting as you can theoretically get.
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Aug 10, 2017 04:43
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Liquid Communism posted:I never understood who they thought the target audience for Pathfinder Online was. I mean, mechanically it's nothing new, and the Pathfinder setting is about as boring and generic a D&D setting as you can theoretically get. They also ended up not using the mechanics (OGL is a bitch to code for) and didn't use Golarion either. The only thing it had in common with PnP Pathfinder was that backers of the KS could get a bunch of PDFs cheap, which artificially inflated their backer numbers with people who couldn't care less about the product and just wanted discounted Pathfinder books.
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Aug 10, 2017 04:49
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I actually wrote up a series of effortposts on the history of Pathfinder Online and its trajectory from pie-in-the-sky promises to desultory wet fart. If you hate yourself and don't value your time at all you can read them starting here. The target audience for Pathfinder Online was largely comprised of three main groups: 1). Die-hard Paizo fanboys who believed that Ryan Dancey was the patron saint of Dungeons & Dragonsing for his 11-dimensonal chessmaster strategy of creating the OGL and thus allowing Paizo to rescue D&D from WotC for the good of all gamerkind. 2). The same sorts of people who gave money to Chris Roberts for Star Citizen, people with less than zero understanding of what creating an MMO entails but who are eager to be convinced that this one will be the truly immersive virtual world experience that allows them to plug into the holodeck and abandon their trivial meat-lives as they live out their fantasies of being digital innkeepers or stableboys or whatever. 3). As Kwyndig said, people who backed the PFO Kickstarter(s, plural) because for each one Dancey offered backers an absurd amount of swag including a huge collection of Pathfinder pdfs at a fairly substantial discount, so a lot of backers were largely in it for what amounted to a huge Pathfinder ebook sale. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 05:04
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Yeah, the only people I know who backed the kickstarters did it for the Pathfinder books and had no desire to play the MMO.
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Aug 10, 2017 06:24
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So apparently nuWhite Wolf's "Storyteller's Vault", the oWoD third-party community content clearinghouse in the vein of DM's Guild, will include actively encouraging a return to form: quote:"You just have to trust your own madness" It's the rebirth of the Black Dog imprint! Hooray! I wonder if a pre-gen child predator PC would require a Black Dog tag?
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Aug 10, 2017 07:48
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Halloween Jack posted:I was gonna mention Everlasting, but to be fair, he did actually spread it out over 4 or 5 books. I bought all four of these things at once at a Half-Price Books, and holy poo poo is it a delightful mess. I should F&F it, if it hasn't been done, but there are a lot of splats to get through.
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Aug 10, 2017 08:07
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Seeing the thumbnail version of this image made me think "Why would you get a glove specifically for your giant left hand that didn't fit properly? Also is that some sort of weird bio-mechanical backup arm growing out of his back?"
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Aug 10, 2017 08:26
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Fuego Fish posted:Seeing the thumbnail version of this image made me think "Why would you get a glove specifically for your giant left hand that didn't fit properly? Also is that some sort of weird bio-mechanical backup arm growing out of his back?"
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Aug 10, 2017 08:32
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I am absolutely the figure slumping exasperatedly in the chair to the left.
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Aug 10, 2017 09:14
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...is this happening in someone's kitchen?
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Aug 10, 2017 11:57
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I'm the... floodlight? Is this being filmed?
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Aug 10, 2017 12:12
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That Old Tree posted:So apparently nuWhite Wolf's "Storyteller's Vault", the oWoD third-party community content clearinghouse in the vein of DM's Guild, will include actively encouraging a return to form: I can't think of a worse idea this morning than to provide second-party sharing platform for sex-related WoD fan supplements
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Aug 10, 2017 12:48
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I wonder what happened to the Pathfinder Online guy who was holding out for a horse grooming system and wanted to be a stable-hand. Are they still holding out hope? Did they find another game? I hope so 
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Aug 10, 2017 12:54
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going back a bit...Kai Tave posted:Not only did they take him back, they did so just as they sold off their most famous and iconic property to Fantasy Flight. didn't Dancey leave AEG the first time right as his scheme for how to distribute L5R cards nearly drove the game into the ground?
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Aug 10, 2017 13:00
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I have to wonder if learning new systems is really ever the hand-wringing issue you hear it is from universal system proponents. I mean, sure, it's a barrier, but I think if you've got more a passing interest in a game then learning a new system just isn't that big a deal. But then, I personally find universal systems lead to stagnation more often than innovation (yes, even for modern darlings like FATE). When were the last big innovations in the d20 system, anyway? d20 Modern? Mutants & Masterminds? Spycraft 2.0? I can't think of anything since then. Pope Guilty posted:That game was Steve Brown's "Everlasting", which he wrote after White Wolf got tired of him making GBS threads up Vampire with books like the infamous Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand. He decided to make his own World of Darkness, and it was trash that nobody cared about. To be fair, Steve Brown is pretty much the father of the Sabbat as we know it. Whether not that's a good or bad thing is an exercise for the reader. There was a F&F review of Everlasting: Book of the Unliving but none of the others. Everlasting at least has the admirable intent of giving you a bunch of neat crap in each core book and not doling it out over supplements in the fashion of White Wolf, but the actual execution is a goddamned '90s-era hoot.
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Aug 10, 2017 13:21
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I have to wonder if learning new systems is really ever the hand-wringing issue you hear it is from universal system proponents. I mean, sure, it's a barrier, but I think if you've got more a passing interest in a game then learning a new system just isn't that big a deal. I have a helluva time getting anything to a table that isn't D&D because the friends I have who like RPGs and are willing to learn anything new is a venn diagram with no overlap. I just want to play not-3.5 I'm not asking them to buy anything or even learn the rules. Just show up tell me what you want to do and I'll make it happen. But nah, 3.5 or bust  And Canton is such a dead zone even the Meetup.com boardgame groups have almost no activity
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Aug 10, 2017 13:39
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Ettin posted:I wonder what happened to the Pathfinder Online guy who was holding out for a horse grooming system and wanted to be a stable-hand. Are they still holding out hope? Did they find another game? I hope so The dream is alive, they have but to find it.
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Aug 10, 2017 14:05
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Antivehicular posted:I bought all four of these things at once at a Half-Price Books, and holy poo poo is it a delightful mess. I should F&F it, if it hasn't been done, but there are a lot of splats to get through. (And you can always F&F a book that's been F&Fed, it's been done before) Nuns with Guns posted:I can't think of a worse idea this morning than to provide second-party sharing platform for sex-related WoD fan supplements
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Aug 10, 2017 14:06
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Halloween Jack posted:(And you can always F&F a book that's been F&Fed, it's been done before) Yeah, there's one in particular I've always considered doing even though it's been done before, just because the original reviewer opted to skip all the setting information where all the batshit resides.
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Aug 10, 2017 14:16
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Oh god, that Pathfinder Online thread reminded me of the same social honor system crap that plagued Castle Marrach back when... Wait, it couldn't... Oh god. Marrach is still up. Even with those "get Acrobat Reader" buttons from years ago on their site..
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Aug 10, 2017 14:32
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I have to wonder if learning new systems is really ever the hand-wringing issue you hear it is from universal system proponents. I mean, sure, it's a barrier, but I think if you've got more a passing interest in a game then learning a new system just isn't that big a deal.
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Aug 10, 2017 14:39
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'd imagine that to people who've only played 3.Path, "learning a new system" means "having to buy another stack of books", even though single-digit book counts (or even single book period) is becoming more and more of the norm. Plus d20 was billed as a universal system, and a lot of people bought the hype. So why can't you just make D&D work for your space opera character drama game?
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Aug 10, 2017 14:50
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Len posted:I have a helluva time getting anything to a table that isn't D&D because the friends I have who like RPGs and are willing to learn anything new is a venn diagram with no overlap. I just want to play not-3.5 I'm not asking them to buy anything or even learn the rules. Just show up tell me what you want to do and I'll make it happen. But nah, 3.5 or bust Ugh, sorry to hear. Some of the Akron boardgame groups are more active if you're willing to make a bit of a drive (they just have a tendency to meet up on days I can't attend), but I don't know how much of a run that'd be for you. If you ever want to meet up sometime after GenCon, though, just let me know, though I don't know exactly how far apart we are.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:05
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As a ruleset, D20's big ironic failure is that it was trying to turn D&D's system into a universal one, and it didn't do that. D20 games that are worth playing are not compatible with each other.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:05
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'd imagine that to people who've only played 3.Path, "learning a new system" means "having to buy another stack of books", even though single-digit book counts (or even single book period) is becoming more and more of the norm. In my experience, if 3.x/pathfinder is someone's only experience of RPGs and they're deeply involved in the game , even just "wade through a new stack of books looking for the don't-suck combo" is enough to put them off. Also, if you tell them that they're gonna pick a character type and you'll hand them one a4 page that's not just their character sheet but all the rules they need to know, then they're going to think you're joking.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:10
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This is a really good point - you're damned either way. If the new system is as complex as DnD/PF, it's too much trouble to learn. If it isn't, it must be a weak fudgey system.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:17
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hyphz posted:This is a really good point - you're damned either way. If the new system is as complex as DnD/PF, it's too much trouble to learn. If it isn't, it must be a weak fudgey system. I mean, the only thing wrong with their perspective is that 3.5/PF itself is not a very good system. FATE and PBTA and so on are barely even in the same genre as D&D. I'd sooner play 3.5 again (or learn PF) than anything FATE-based, because 3.5 at least is a crappy attempt at the kind of game I like, as opposed to a collaborative storytelling tool which, however good it may be for those who want to pursue that as a hobby, is of basically zero interest to me.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:21
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I can understand the appeal of having a lot of "moving parts" to engage with: there's a difference between saying "this happens because the rules say I can just say it does", and saying "this happens because I've tapped the various rules interactions and spend the requisite character investment costs to make it happen" ... I'm not sure where else I was going with this. I count myself rather lucky that the people here are open enough to have let me played all sorts of non-D&D games, although definitely a lot of my time is still playing D&D anyway.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:35
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One of my online friends told me once that the reason her group plays Pathfinder is because the gamer culture around her part of the country is "we want to see what all my abilities and options are by looking at our sheets". So if you were to do a PbtA-ish "what do you do?" thing, their first response would indeed be to look at their sheet instead of just saying what they want to do.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:51
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I have to wonder if learning new systems is really ever the hand-wringing issue you hear it is from universal system proponents. I mean, sure, it's a barrier, but I think if you've got more a passing interest in a game then learning a new system just isn't that big a deal. Everlasting is, incidentally, a good example of a unique system with a ton of subsystems designed in a vacuum, so that if you actually play the game with all the rules, it's incredibly bogged down. Immortal did that too. Alien Rope Burn posted:But then, I personally find universal systems lead to stagnation more often than innovation (yes, even for modern darlings like FATE). When were the last big innovations in the d20 system, anyway? d20 Modern? Mutants & Masterminds? Spycraft 2.0? I can't think of anything since then. There were some games that implemented D20 better than others, but didn't really innovate in terms of rules design. Conan and Game of Thrones, perhaps. And of course there were books like Urban Arcana that were good but not because of the system. That's also not counting any OSR games made possible by the OGL. I don't really consider Labyrinth Lord or Castles & Crusades D20 games. quote:To be fair, Steve Brown is pretty much the father of the Sabbat as we know it. Whether not that's a good or bad thing is an exercise for the reader.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:09
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Evil Mastermind posted:One of my online friends told me once that the reason her group plays Pathfinder is because the gamer culture around her part of the country is "we want to see what all my abilities and options are by looking at our sheets". So if you were to do a PbtA-ish "what do you do?" thing, their first response would indeed be to look at their sheet instead of just saying what they want to do. That attitude is, incidentally, why I tend to like Heroquest 2e better than FATE for narrative gaming. In my mind, it's just more satisfying to use something intrinsic to your character to overcome an obstacle, rather than working backwards from a generic skill.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:12
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Evil Mastermind posted:One of my online friends told me once that the reason her group plays Pathfinder is because the gamer culture around her part of the country is "we want to see what all my abilities and options are by looking at our sheets". So if you were to do a PbtA-ish "what do you do?" thing, their first response would indeed be to look at their sheet instead of just saying what they want to do. That's not even completely correct, because there's a ton of combat options that are part of the generic combat rules and thus don't show up on your character sheets. And yeah, okay, maybe you wouldn't ever Trip unless you had Improved Trip written on your sheet, so you'd spot it anyway, but Charges, or 5-foot-steps, or the rules for walking across difficult ground are just part of the general core rules.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:17
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Haystack posted:That attitude is, incidentally, why I tend to like Heroquest 2e better than FATE for narrative gaming. In my mind, it's just more satisfying to use something intrinsic to your character to overcome an obstacle, rather than working backwards from a generic skill. The power of puzzle-solving. It's that feeling you get at the end of Portal 2 when the ceiling breaks away and you see the moon.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:24
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gradenko_2000 posted:That's not even completely correct, because there's a ton of combat options that are part of the generic combat rules and thus don't show up on your character sheets. This is something I like about Fragged Empire: every character sheet comes with a quick-reference sheet that outlines every "basic" action you can take in combat, both for personal combat and spaceship combat. And while it uses some shorthand that you'll need to learn how to read, it also tells you what components that action has (move, attack, damage, etc.) and what to roll, which is pretty helpful. It also helps that the game just gives you two actions per turn--there are no move/minor/major action categories or anything, just two actions. Some attack actions let you move as part of them, too, so the only time you'll ever need to use one of your actions just to move is if you want to move extra distance. And really, most of the actions you can take in combat are in one way or another tied to the basic actions on the character sheet. Even your special abilities tend to either give you a new type of weapon you can do regular moves with (like a psionic trait that lets you use your mind as a natural weapon to shoot mind bullets) or give you a new Strong Hit option to use when you roll a 6 while doing something else.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:37
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Yeah, one thing that was a relief when I recently made a Fantasy Craft character was the fact they put all the basic combat actions summarized on page 2 of the sheet, which is nice because unlike vanilla d20, a lot of combat actions are keyed to different skills instead of mostly just being tied to Attack Bonus.Nuns with Guns posted:didn't Dancey leave AEG the first time right as his scheme for how to distribute L5R cards nearly drove the game into the ground? Rage, Dune, and Legend of the Burning Sands were three games that were practically DOA because of the Rolling Thunder program, and it could be argued that Doomtown's troubles started there. Legend of the Five Rings was pretty hurt but I don't think was ever in any real danger of cancellation. However, an important thing to mention is that this was still the time that Dancey was working for Five Rings Publishing Group (the original creators of Legend of the Five Rings, of course) and had been since its inception, more or less. However, FRPG was at the time being incorporated into Wizards of the Coast (around the same time they pulled in TSR). So at the time he was doing this, he wasn't working for AEG, he was effectively working for WotC. Which is why they were able to use Legend of the Five Rings for Oriental Adventures (ugh) at the time. AEG had a close relationship because they were publishing the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, but AEG wouldn't actually have the rights to the CCG until later. He didn't have to leave or anything because of Rolling Thunder, he just kept working at WotC until his eventual termination. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 17:02
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