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I think part of the problem too is the whole idea of "a good GM can fix rules/adjust the adventure as needed" that's pretty prevalent throughout the hobby. The whole idea that if something doesn't work it can be fixed at the table. It's also why we don't really have decent RPG reviews because for 99% of the games out there someone will defend with either "well my friends and I enjoy it" or one of the above two things.
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Aug 22, 2017 21:30
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I dunno. Modern software development isn't much older than D&D, and certainly postdates when people started designing and documenting games with numerical mechanics. Virtually no academic programs in software teach code review. But the industry has accepted that it gets better results, so it's near-universal and people learn to be grownups about it the first year on the job. Code review is both systematic and about clarity of intent. It's not rocket science, though.
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Aug 22, 2017 22:09
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Yeah, I've worked on designing more than a few games mechanics-wise (enough to know it's not my strong suit), and there are definitely experienced game designers whose feedback really helped make my work better, and I've been receptive to it in exactly the same way I am about writing feedback. 
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Aug 22, 2017 22:52
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One huge difference between coding and writing game rules is that the human element will accommodate or even defend garbage rules that they like. In a videogame, a system is obviously broken when a rope swing across a chasm is consistently fatal but wizarding across is always successful. But in a tabletop RPG, players will defend to the death the inherent reliability of magic against progressively harder rolls of jump check, dex check (to catch rope,) jump check to land. Because it's more "realistic."
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Aug 23, 2017 01:40
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moths posted:In a videogame, a system is obviously broken when a rope swing across a chasm is consistently fatal but wizarding across is always successful. At the same time video games have the potential for "accidental features" in a way human-adjudicated games can't even dream of.
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Aug 23, 2017 02:18
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moths posted:But in a tabletop RPG, players will defend to the death the inherent reliability of magic against progressively harder rolls of jump check, dex check (to catch rope,) jump check to land. Because it's more "realistic."
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Aug 23, 2017 02:41
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LogicNinja posted:Breaking one action up into multiple rolls without realizing that that increases the chance to fail is my Least Favorite lovely Game Design Thing. 1) Using unspent do-cool-things points as experience points 2) Broken action economy, especially a failure to understand how powerful extra actions (or worse, stacked extra actions) can be 3) Dexterity as god-stat
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Aug 23, 2017 03:08
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LogicNinja posted:Breaking one action up into multiple rolls without realizing that that increases the chance to fail is my Least Favorite lovely Game Design Thing. This. In general, the granular mindset seems to have infected way too many goddamn people, and made them incapable of dealing with situations in broad strokes even if the system allows for it. I just recently played in a Heroquest Glorantha one-shot wherein a player somehow managed to require five separate checks just to leap at an emperor during an audience and hold a sword to his imperial neck. One to try and create a distraction, one to close the distance, one to summon the sword, one to strike, and one to resist his magical mask's compulsion to just behead the emperor then and there. It was a cool moment, but it got kind of spoiled by getting stretched out way too frigging long. The system could have handled it in one or two rolls, easy, with just as much detail and a good deal more dramatic momentum. Now, I've got nothing against that player – it was his first time playing the system after all – but it's still lovely that granular, interrupted gameplay like seems to be the default mindset.
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Aug 23, 2017 04:20
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FMguru posted:Mine are (in order): I kind of want to design a game for one player and one GM that deliberately disregards all the rules re: action economy, since the problem with bad action economy 99% of the time is that one players exploits it to hog screen time relative to the others. Like, make it about a ninja or a speedster or something, where the idea is you have to meet certain difficult criteria in order to obtain extra actions and the idea is to stack as many of them as you can before running dry. #1 is absolutely loathsome in any context, though.
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Aug 23, 2017 04:31
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Granular checks work if you do two things. 1) Involve everyone so one person isn't making all the rolls and it becomes a cool group thing. 2) Pick one roll - probably the last - to be the Important One, and the other rolls modify it. If you gently caress up an earlier roll, you don't fail the whole thing, it just becomes a bit harder. And if you succeed an earlier roll, have it give a BONUS to the last one, so you're actually rewarding players for succeeding.
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Aug 23, 2017 05:24
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Also 3) take into account what would happen on bad rolls/various roll combinations.
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Aug 23, 2017 05:36
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FMguru posted:Mine are (in order): Oh my loving god, I forgot about 7th Sea 1E.  FMguru posted:2) Broken action economy, especially a failure to understand how powerful extra actions (or worse, stacked extra actions) can be LogicNinja fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Aug 23, 2017 |
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Aug 23, 2017 19:16
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A big part of RPGs is the buy-in they require is often far higher than anything short of videogames, so when you say "actually this game is really flawed" often you're saying it to somebody with hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours sunk into it. The strengths and weaknesses don't matter with that level fo buy-in. I was standing in line at GenCon about a week ago and talking to somebody who described his walls of Pathfinder / d20 product. Not, like, one bookcase, one, wall. Many bookcases, multiple walls. And here I am, with my Palladium collection being my biggest at two shelves, and most of that is at the bargain prices you can find those books at. It hurts my head to even think about, and I sold off over $1000 in d20 product several years ago. Trying to argue the merits of Pathfinder is like trying to tell my friend's parents that, y'know, ten cats was enough. They just don't care about the smell anymore. There's no critical argument to be had. This GenCon had me thinking a lot about how Paizo kind of fell backwards into the brilliance of making their game lines into subscriptions. I mean, that's brilliant. It comes off of cancelling their magazines and shifting that over to their adventure line, but it's worked amazingly to the point where it's a primary part of their business model. Everything has a number even if they aren't connected at all, reminding people of what they're missing. That's genius!... from a marketing standpoint. I got to listen to a guy bemoan that he can't avoid his $300+ a case Pathfinder Battles subscription anymore. I looked it up and it's actually $370.68. And how there's another subscription stream, Starfinger! System? Who cares about systems? I hear people talk about the collectability of Pathfinder modules and I just mentally fall over backwards. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Aug 23, 2017 |
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Aug 23, 2017 22:05
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Starfinger Perfect.
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Aug 23, 2017 22:11
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Alien Rope Burn posted:A big part of RPGs is the buy-in they require is often far higher than anything short of tabletop games, so when you say "actually this game is really flawed" often you're saying it to somebody with hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours sunk into it. The strengths and weaknesses don't matter with that level fo buy-in. I was standing in line at GenCon about a week ago and talking to somebody who described his walls of Pathfinder / d20 product. Not, like, one bookcase, one, wall. Many bookcases, multiple walls. And here I am, with my Palladium collection being my biggest at two shelves, and most of that is at the bargain prices you can find those books at. It hurts my head to even think about, and I sold off over $1000 in d20 product several years ago. Trying to argue the merits of Pathfinder is like trying to tell my friend's parents that, y'know, ten cats was enough. They just don't care about the smell anymore. There's no critical argument to be had. Dang I hate this. Good post but I hate this.
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Aug 23, 2017 22:29
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Alien Rope Burn posted:A big part of RPGs is the buy-in they require is often far higher than anything short of videogames, so when you say "actually this game is really flawed" often you're saying it to somebody with hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours sunk into it. The strengths and weaknesses don't matter with that level fo buy-in. I was standing in line at GenCon about a week ago and talking to somebody who described his walls of Pathfinder / d20 product. Not, like, one bookcase, one, wall. Many bookcases, multiple walls. And here I am, with my Palladium collection being my biggest at two shelves, and most of that is at the bargain prices you can find those books at. It hurts my head to even think about, and I sold off over $1000 in d20 product several years ago. Trying to argue the merits of Pathfinder is like trying to tell my friend's parents that, y'know, ten cats was enough. They just don't care about the smell anymore. There's no critical argument to be had. Paizo, despite the poo poo they get for being uninspired and having terrible mechanics for terrible reasons, knows how to market and monetize this hobby in a way few companies even scratched at before. They also come out with enough stuff and market themselves in just the right way that they get the hook in.
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Aug 24, 2017 00:06
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We need more Paizos -- more companies that understand the economics of building a viable RPG business -- and fewer indie at-cost indiegogo darlings. There needs to be enough money in the system that people who are great can make a great living, and people who are just ok can make a decent living being directed by the great people. My day job is investing in early-stage companies and the things I see in the RPG space make me mournful.
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Aug 24, 2017 00:10
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Subjunctive posted:We need more Paizos -- more companies that understand the economics of building a viable RPG business -- and fewer indie at-cost indiegogo darlings. There needs to be enough money in the system that people who are great can make a great living, and people who are just ok can make a decent living being directed by the great people. The depressing thing is that I've had more fun with Kickstarter darlings than I ever have with Pathfinder. Part of the reason indie at cost darlings do well is that you don't actually need much in the way of rules to make an RPG. That said I've had thoughts of the idea of a 4e clone on android and apple mobile using microtransactions - $2 for a class beyond the core, and $1 for a monster pack with half a dozen linked monsters to a theme. Thoughts?
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Aug 24, 2017 00:23
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Kickstarter and its clones are the best thing that ever happened to gaming, video or tabletop, precisely because they helped break the stranglehold of marketing giants making bland, triangulated products aimed at pleasing everyone and helped shoulder the risk of making a creatively driven indie darling for a niche audience. Like, yeah, people getting paid is great, but gently caress Paizo, and gently caress the model they represent.
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Aug 24, 2017 00:41
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Subjunctive posted:My day job is investing in early-stage companies and the things I see in the RPG space make me mournful. Agreed. There's a reason I refuse to ever work for a game company again. You have your Green Ronins and your Posthumans that do good work and make a handful of people enough money to live on, but they're few and far between and it's hard to convert from Kickstarter darling to actual business (Gamelyn Games is about the only example I can think of that's managed it, and that dude went after it aggressively and probably lived off ramen for the first few years). We need more GRs and Posthumans, and the path to get there from Kickstarter needs to be easier.
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Aug 24, 2017 00:46
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Subjunctive posted:We need more Paizos -- more companies that understand the economics of building a viable RPG business -- and fewer indie at-cost indiegogo darlings. There needs to be enough money in the system that people who are great can make a great living, and people who are just ok can make a decent living being directed by the great people. Ah yes, we definitely need more companies that rip their entire system off of someone else with no creativity or ability to balance at all.
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Aug 24, 2017 00:55
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Piell posted:Ah yes, we definitely need more companies that rip their entire system off of someone else with no creativity or ability to balance at all. I mean, there is a point to be made there, but it's not "ripping off" when it's both legal and ethical. Even if you don't like Pathfinder, there wasn't anything underhanded or questionable going on in its creation.
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Aug 24, 2017 01:09
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Piell posted:Ah yes, we definitely need more companies that rip their entire system off of someone else with no creativity or ability to balance at all. People who bought Pathfinder stuff got exactly what it said on the label. The consumers of that product are virtually all pleased with their purchases, because you know what you get when you buy a Paizo product. You certainly know what you get the second time you buy one. You might or might not think their game design is enjoyable, but they get to keep doing their game design because they also understand that there are economics and not just design involved in building a sustainable line of products. Nothing about their business model precludes doing storygames or whatever, they just have history in 3.5 that locks them down. The same thing could have been done with AW, but that group didn't aim to build a business. The sad truth is that in 2017 you need both economic and critical success to be a sustained entity and force on the industry. Schwalb also seems to have figured it out, if that analogy makes you happier.
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Aug 24, 2017 01:15
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Idran posted:I mean, there is a point to be made there, but it's not "ripping off" when it's both legal and ethical. Even if you don't like Pathfinder, there wasn't anything underhanded or questionable going on in its creation. Legal, definitely, ethical... not really? Most of the leadup to Pathfinder was really, really blatant bashing of their competitor and self-congratulation (and inflating their playtest numbers to make themselves seem much more popular), and they've continue to milk nostalgia via products like Pathfinder Online. Paizo is very successful, and came about their success legally, but like many successful companies ethics is not what got them there and isn't what keeps them there. edit: hell, even if it's ethical in a business ethics sort of sense, I'm not sure your common person would call it ethical if you described Paizo's origins without mentioning that it's a TTRPG Darwinism fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Aug 24, 2017 |
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Aug 24, 2017 01:33
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Yikes, marketing!
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Aug 24, 2017 01:34
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Paizo's business model isn't game design though, it's the RPG equivalent of Funko Pops. Like yeah sure, props to them for figuring it out, but other designers aren't going to be able to emulate what made Paizo specifically able to monetize their RPG-supplement-as-magazine-subscription model for a number of reasons, first and foremost being that other designers don't have a built-in edition war to lean into hard and make buying their products as much a matter of tying your identity to The Brand as it is anything to do with games or game design.
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Aug 24, 2017 01:34
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Is your point that Paizo's is the only sustainable business model in the RPG industry? That would be depressing indeed.
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Aug 24, 2017 01:36
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Subjunctive posted:Yikes, marketing! This unironically.
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Aug 24, 2017 01:41
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Subjunctive posted:The same thing could have been done with AW, but that group didn't aim to build a business. No, not really. Games like Apocalypse World don't lend themselves to an ongoing subscription based/splatbook model like d20 does. PbtA games are limited in their scope and they're intentionally vague enough that adding too much extra fluff and rules would undermine their appeal. Vincent Baker himself has a very nice patreon program going that lets him produce new games and the occasional small expansion but you couldn't build Paizo 2.0 out of Apocalypse World. Evil Hat has done some interesting expansions and new settings with Fate, though.
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Aug 24, 2017 01:46
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ProfessorCirno posted:Granular checks work if you do two things. If the penalty for failing and the reward for succeeding on the Non-Important Rolls have the same magnitude, #2 is pretty similar to just making one roll against the average of the difficulties of all the rolls. Exactly how much difference there is between making all the rolls and making just one roll depends on a lot factors, but on the whole all those lots-of-rolls can probably be modelled as a single 3d6 or dice-pool roll. Making it into one roll can sometimes feel a bit too abstract, but it basically absolves the need for #1.
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Aug 24, 2017 01:46
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The lesson you can take away from Paizo and Pathfinder is that the economics of building a viable RPG business involve everything but actual good game design because Paizo's customers clearly don't care about that in the slightest, and I've long held the suspicion that you could make decent money selling "RPGs" that are nothing but flashy art, warmed-over cliche worldbuilding, and simply having a Markov chain handle the mechanics and a non-zero number of people not only wouldn't mind that the rules are garbage but would actually defend them against critics. Positioning Paizo as "the only sustainable business model in the RPG industry" is a bit of a weird position to take given that it completely ignores people who are able to regularly successfully produce games via crowdfunding. Kevin Crawford is on his sixth Kickstarter. Stars Without Number Revised is bringing in over $130,000 in funds and it's not even complete. John Harper's Blades in the Dark made over $180,000 by the time it was done. And while they've had some bumps and snags it's kind of hard to deny that Onyx Path has made a pretty solid go of things. Apocalypse World doesn't follow Paizo's model because that's not what Vincent Baker wants to do, nor do I imagine many of his fans and backers are interested in the Paizoification of the game where it turns into a constant churn of derivative, low-effort material designed to sink its hooks into completionists and people who tie their identity to which brand of elfgames they pledge allegiance to. I am also intensely skeptical of the idea that people who work for Paizo are making a "great living" at it, greater than those who've successfully gone the route of independent crowdfunding self-employment at any rate. Good for Paizo that they've figured out how to assemble the cards they were dealt into a winning hand, but nobody needs to aspire to become the next Paizo.
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Aug 24, 2017 01:47
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Subjunctive posted:Is your point that Paizo's is the only sustainable business model in the RPG industry? That would be depressing indeed. The point is that Paizo's business model isn't helpful from the standpoint of constructing a viable tabletop business because it has a near unique niche that it's expanded to fill completely.
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Aug 24, 2017 01:48
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Mr. Maltose posted:The point is that Paizo's business model isn't helpful from the standpoint of constructing a viable tabletop business because it has a near unique niche that it's expanded to fill completely. This too. The circumstances that precipitated Paizo's success are pretty much the definition of capturing lightning in a bottle. No RPG publisher to the best of my knowledge had ever let their game go "open source" enough to directly fuel the rise of their own closest competitor before. Paizo was uniquely positioned to keep a waning edition of the most popular tabletop RPG in history going as a serial-numbers-filed-off version, with a staff comprised of people who had worked on it for a living previously, and were able to tap into a whole lot of acrimony over the changing editions to position themselves as the Saviors of True D&D. Also in order to be an earnest 3.X d20 fan you have to be pretty uncritical given how shoddy and ramshackle a system it is in the first place which means that Paizo has never even had to try to up their game design chops, someone who is an avowed Paizo fan is someone who is basically telling you "I will buy anything that has Pathfinder on the cover, no I don't care if the rules work or not," which makes it much easier to churn out product on a regular basis since your own customers have basically given you a free pass on cutting corners.
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Aug 24, 2017 01:54
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Paizo is literally a monster created by Hasbro's incompetence where D&D is concerned, albeit a monster so small Hasbro can barely see them from its towering height. It's easy to make them out as the bad guys for a variety of reasons, but Wizards of the Coast was and is a company built on marketing exploitation of its customers (unless Magic became an LCG while I wasn't looking) and whose first RPG product relied on nabbing the systems of others without permission. There are respectable RPG companies out there, but the big money has always had to do with marketing and not mechanics. It's possible to create a game so bad that nobody will play it, of course, but the bar to make a game people will buy has never been as high as dedicated hobbyists would hope.
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Aug 24, 2017 02:14
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Kai Tave posted:The lesson you can take away from Paizo and Pathfinder is that the economics of building a viable RPG business involve everything but actual good game design because Paizo's customers clearly don't care about that in the slightest, and I've long held the suspicion that you could make decent money selling "RPGs" that are nothing but flashy art, warmed-over cliche worldbuilding, and simply having a Markov chain handle the mechanics and a non-zero number of people not only wouldn't mind that the rules are garbage but would actually defend them against critics Don't forget that White Wolf's own writers didn't understand the probabilities of their games. And that was the last game to really challenge D&D.
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Aug 24, 2017 02:39
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Nuns with Guns posted:No, not really. Games like Apocalypse World don't lend themselves to an ongoing subscription based/splatbook model like d20 does. PbtA games are limited in their scope and they're intentionally vague enough that adding too much extra fluff and rules would undermine their appeal. I don't follow this. There are a billion playbooks and variants out there in the PbtA ecosystem. Are they not basically splatbooks? My point is not that people should copy Paizo's business model specifically; depending on a dominant franchise shooting itself in the nether regions isn't generally viable. It's that more RPG authors should be thinking about a business model, in addition to mechanics and setting.
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Aug 24, 2017 02:41
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Subjunctive posted:I don't follow this. There are a billion playbooks and variants out there in the PbtA ecosystem. Are they not basically splatbooks? Most of them are fanworks and most of them are garbage. If you can come up with a way to sell people garbage they could normally get somewhere for free then you're probably wasting your talents trying to turn Apocalypse World into a business. quote:My point is not that people should copy Paizo's business model specifically; depending on a dominant franchise shooting itself in the nether regions isn't generally viable. It's that more RPG authors should be thinking about a business model, in addition to mechanics and setting. They have a business model, it's called crowdsourced patronage. Vince Baker seems pretty happy with it.
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Aug 24, 2017 02:46
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Modiphius is doing quite well now too with Mutant Chronicles and Conan, and they have the new Star Trek and Fallout RPGs along with some other stuff coming out.
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Aug 24, 2017 03:09
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I think that crowdfunding and patronage-supported games is absolutely a sustainable model. If you are prolific enough, you could even potentially make a living off of it. One of the biggest obstacles to this is the amount of art that people expect in an RPG. Your typical RPG book has between $3000 and $10000 of art. If all that money went to the author/designer instead, it would make the whole thing more lucrative. But even still, this model has supported the creation of hundreds of really good games. Most of the RPGs worth playing in the last decade have used this. The three other models people have had success with are: 1. License big-name IPs and pump out some crap based on them. 2. Be D&D. 3. Put in the sweat and make a pittance for years until you get a critical mass of fans and can make a poor living wage instead. #1 is risky. Even the Marvel RPG couldn't make enough money to afford the license. But with the right licenses, people make it work. #2 is the way to go, obviously. The two companies doing it are making more money than any other RPG companies. #3 is the typical route by which people made their way in RPGs before crowdfunding. It works, for some values of "works".
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Aug 24, 2017 03:33
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I think the Marvel RPG was a case of the license agreement suddenly changing and/or fees shooting sharply upward given how abruptly it all happened, with books in the pipeline being unceremoniously cancelled practically overnight. There'd been no prior indications that they were struggling beforehand, but we'll never really know for sure.
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Aug 24, 2017 03:42
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