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I remember seeing an ENWorld article a year or two back about the costs of print vs. PDF publishing, and the whole "Bits and Mortar" thing, and some idiot in the comments was seriously saying that game writers shouldn't be paid because they're basically doing a "dream job". Everyone else shut him down, but I'm sure that to a lot of non-industry people game design doesn't seem like "work" due to the fact that a) it's your hobby, you do this for fun, and b) writing a game isn't hard, it's just numbers.
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Aug 24, 2017 15:29
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Serf posted:This could be worded better. Could it? I do not mean to equate it with professions that earn their pay based on their daily risk. I did mean to imply, and will now make explicit, that I think pursuing a creative entrepreneurial job without other income and at the same time without health insurance is a serious risk.
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Aug 24, 2017 15:37
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homullus posted:Could it? I do not mean to equate it with professions that earn their pay based on their daily risk. I did mean to imply, and will now make explicit, that I think pursuing a creative entrepreneurial job without other income and at the same time without health insurance is a serious risk. If the implication is that we need mincome and universal healthcare so that people can pursue their creative endeavors without risking their wellbeing, then I agree.
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Aug 24, 2017 15:39
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I'm pretty sure it was statistically established that there's a significant uptick in entrepreneurial pursuits once people hit eligibility-age for Medicaid. Like, yeah this is the TG industry thread, but Full Communism Now would be a huge boon for private pursuits, not just RPG development.
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Aug 24, 2017 15:41
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homullus posted:How good would games be if anybody could commit to making them without risking their lives? This. I'm pretty sure the only way Arc Dream/Pagan Publishing survive is because all of the people involved have their fingers in multiple pies in order to make a decent living. By my last count, Dennis Detwiller has Arc Dream, a Patreon, Monte Cook games, and probably some other things to boot. It's pretty standard in the industry too. I think Rob Heinsoo described it to me using samurai and the flags some of them carried on their backs to represent which lord they fought for. If those samurai were RPG designers, he said, then they would have a lot of flags representing all of the different publishers/companies they work for at any given moment.
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Aug 24, 2017 16:09
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MadScientistWorking posted:The last time I looked this up it is kind of depressing and sad but its partially Gary Gygax's fault. He hosed up the D&D licencing so badly that only recently did Hasbro get it fixed. Its why at one point there was made for tv D&D movies. yeah but even those movies weren't given any care or advertising Also why would you ever make a book of vile darkness movie???? i'm pretty sure i'm like one of 5 people who've seen it.
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Aug 24, 2017 16:26
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So. We actually saw the proof of concept/test print of Invisible Sun at Gen Con and Holy poo poo the box is the size of a medium sized pumpkin. Did anyone play it? What is it like? Is it bad for the industry or inconsequential?
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Aug 24, 2017 16:59
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WiiFitForWindows8 posted:So. We actually saw the proof of concept/test print of Invisible Sun at Gen Con and Holy poo poo the box is the size of a medium sized pumpkin. Did anyone play it? What is it like? Is it bad for the industry or inconsequential? This is true even if the game is great and innovative, which it will not be, given that Monte Cook is writing it.
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Aug 24, 2017 17:28
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Its the new Eoris Essence isn't it?
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Aug 24, 2017 17:29
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WiiFitForWindows8 posted:So. We actually saw the proof of concept/test print of Invisible Sun at Gen Con and Holy poo poo the box is the size of a medium sized pumpkin. Did anyone play it? What is it like? Is it bad for the industry or inconsequential? Just like the entire concept of Invisible Sun, the size of the box produces a false sense of value for what little it will actually contain of value. The box is truly meta-commentary.
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Aug 24, 2017 17:32
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Der Waffle Mous posted:Its the new Eoris Essence isn't it? This one will at least be clearly written with a good setting - two things MCG is good at. And I'm sure it will be visually striking.
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Aug 24, 2017 17:34
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Has Monte Cook jumped on anything King in Yellow related yet? I feel like that's inevitable. It's very weird to me that this odd tangent of the Lovecraft mythos, which has usually been badly mishandled by everyone going all the way back to Derleth's "Return of Hastur," suddenly became a hot topic thanks to a prestige TV miniseries.
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Aug 24, 2017 17:45
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quote:SHADOWRUN! God drat it. Elfgame never changes. Goa Tse-tung posted:1st ed had a pregen with military grade armor and an LMG, they called it Mercenary so I thought I could just put them as is in side encounters... That son of a bitch is one of my clearest memories of 1E. Gang banging! Cat burglary! Gibsonian hacking! ...and a bastard with a frigging LMG that was the first character seized for play by my friends. That alleyway fight never had a chance. Oh god. The Stuffer Shack food fight. hyphz posted:And for god's sake make sure that the sample adventure actually matches the intended player experience. As much as I was annoyed by Eclipse Phase's canned adventure being very likely to include a TPK partway through, it immediately followed that eventuality with an introduction to resleeving and some of the weird fallout from the process... like not necessarily getting to choose your new body.
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Aug 24, 2017 17:58
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I still hate Monte Cook for perpetuating the dumb idea of groups pooling their money to buy one giant expensive thing for their DM to run for them.
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Aug 24, 2017 18:02
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I dunno about previous editions, but in the latest Shadowrun, 5e, the reason the pregens are hosed is because the entire book (and EVERY Shadowrun book) is made incredibly piecemeal between freelancers who barely communicate, and the pregens were made...before the final rules were. Even better, they were made at different times, so several pregens are using different old sets of rules between each other.
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Aug 24, 2017 20:10
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ProfessorCirno posted:I dunno about previous editions, but in the latest Shadowrun, 5e, the reason the pregens are hosed is because the entire book (and EVERY Shadowrun book) is made incredibly piecemeal between freelancers who barely communicate, and the pregens were made...before the final rules were. Aren't there rumors that there were various factions of freelancers with different visions for the game passive-aggressively sniping at each other through their writing resulting in stuff like the crazy cyberware price increase between editions?
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Aug 24, 2017 21:42
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Elfgames posted:yeah but even those movies weren't given any care or advertising Also why would you ever make a book of vile darkness movie???? i'm pretty sure i'm like one of 5 people who've seen it. Hey screw you the BoVD movie was amazingly hilarious because it was so bad. Just imagine that the swarm dude is the protag and it's a much better movie.
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Aug 24, 2017 21:55
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ProfessorCirno posted:I dunno about previous editions, but in the latest Shadowrun, 5e, the reason the pregens are hosed is because the entire book (and EVERY Shadowrun book) is made incredibly piecemeal between freelancers who barely communicate, and the pregens were made...before the final rules were.
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Aug 24, 2017 22:02
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Oh god, in SR4a they made most of the pregens allergic to gold. Cue munchkin players saying "see, we're totally meant to take irrelevant advantages for points, the sample characters do!"
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Aug 24, 2017 22:47
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hyphz posted:Oh god, in SR4a they made most of the pregens allergic to gold. Cue munchkin players saying "see, we're totally meant to take irrelevant advantages for points, the sample characters do!" Conspiracy X is another good example. I never got the impression that the writers don't want you to take traits like Always Tells Jokes and Obsessed With Vengeance for more points. Quite the opposite.
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Aug 24, 2017 22:58
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Darwinism posted:Hey screw you the BoVD movie was amazingly hilarious because it was so bad. Just imagine that the swarm dude is the protag and it's a much better movie. I unironically love the scene where the little undead girl suckles on the taste of people's evil, as a sort of "purity test" for evil parties. Especially when the protagonist, who had been doing bad poo poo to fake being evil so he could infiltrate the band, turned out to have fully slipped down the dark side by then. I thought that was pretty neat.
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Aug 24, 2017 23:31
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Halloween Jack posted:Those "munchkins" are correct. If the game is designed that way, and especially if the sample characters are built that way, you absolutely are "meant to." Even if the sample characters aren't, you are still meant to. If a game includes an option, it is 100% meant to be used. Disadvantage/advantage systems are the silly target of a lot of people's ire in this regard, like people are badwrongfun players for using rules that people were meant to use.
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Aug 24, 2017 23:37
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Halloween Jack posted:Those "munchkins" are correct. If the game is designed that way, and especially if the sample characters are built that way, you absolutely are "meant to." Yeah, that's definitely something I've never understood from designers who create systems that reward certain actions, but when point the finger at players who opt to "exploit" the system they created. I mean, yes, it may or may not be intended, but the response should be "Well, I didn't foresee that, here's how to fix it." instead of "You pricks, you broke it!"
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Aug 25, 2017 00:05
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gourdcaptain posted:Aren't there rumors that there were various factions of freelancers with different visions for the game passive-aggressively sniping at each other through their writing resulting in stuff like the crazy cyberware price increase between editions? Less that, from what the freelancers have said, and more that they flatly had no idea what each other were working on. The wireless bonuses for gear, for example, were written by a different person than the rest of the wireless system, under the impression that it was supposed to be synergies for having stuff on a Personal Area Network (ie linked locally). The rest of the wireless system turned that into having to be linked to the greater Matrix because some idiot in the design shop decided that giving the hacker something to do in combat must at no point involve getting a weapon and being involved in combat so all cyberware needs to be online at all times, with basic functionality gated behind online bonuses.
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Aug 25, 2017 00:40
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Liquid Communism posted:Less that, from what the freelancers have said, and more that they flatly had no idea what each other were working on. The wireless bonuses for gear, for example, were written by a different person than the rest of the wireless system, under the impression that it was supposed to be synergies for having stuff on a Personal Area Network (ie linked locally). The rest of the wireless system turned that into having to be linked to the greater Matrix because some idiot in the design shop decided that giving the hacker something to do in combat must at no point involve getting a weapon and being involved in combat so all cyberware needs to be online at all times, with basic functionality gated behind online bonuses. I now imagine someone in awesome cyberarmor waddling around the battlefield trying to keep an ethernet cable from catching on things.
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Aug 25, 2017 01:53
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LAN to LAN combat.
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Aug 25, 2017 02:03
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, that's definitely something I've never understood from designers who create systems that reward certain actions, but when point the finger at players who opt to "exploit" the system they created. I mean, yes, it may or may not be intended, but the response should be "Well, I didn't foresee that, here's how to fix it." instead of "You pricks, you broke it!" But with the Ads/Disads in Shadowrun, Cthulhutech, ConX and dozens of other games, you're looking at an entire subsystem that's just there to be gamed for points.
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Aug 25, 2017 02:35
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, that's definitely something I've never understood from designers who create systems that reward certain actions, but when point the finger at players who opt to "exploit" the system they created. I mean, yes, it may or may not be intended, but the response should be "Well, I didn't foresee that, here's how to fix it." instead of "You pricks, you broke it!" I'm personally a fan of the new edition of Delta Green's approach towards min-maxing: Who cares? They're all doomed anyway 
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Aug 25, 2017 02:52
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You say that but then you meet dr Mcheadbutt, staff medic.
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Aug 25, 2017 03:22
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rumble in the bunghole posted:You say that but then you meet dr Mcheadbutt, staff medic. Unfortunately for our Agents, even Dr. McHeadbutt can't do much about lethality ratings. For the record, here's the specific quote from the preliminary text of the Case Officer's Handbook (Or whatever they're calling it now) quote:OPINT: MIN-MAXING IS NOT AN ISSUE It's a response that's fairly unique to the system and the setting, but it's an interesting take all the same.
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Aug 25, 2017 03:29
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Liquid Communism posted:The rest of the wireless system turned that into having to be linked to the greater Matrix because some idiot in the design shop decided that giving the hacker something to do in combat must at no point involve getting a weapon and being involved in combat so all cyberware needs to be online at all times, with basic functionality gated behind online bonuses.
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Aug 25, 2017 03:52
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The fact that tabletop RPGs have this extensive vocabulary for describing players who *gasp* understand the rules and use them to their advantage is both dumb on its own merits, and also just a symptom of one (or possibly two) larger problems. In a well-designed game, min-maxing is something to aspire to, but should also be no harder or less accessible than it needs to be. This means: don't design trap options, do your best to spot and fix balance issues in general, and don't design abilities whose functions are hazy or so open to interpretation that it becomes a contest in exploiting your GM's good will rather than the game system. Min-maxing is looked down upon because RPG devs all too frequently don't do these things and blaming a player for their mastery "ruining everything" is easier than admitting the game sucks and playing something else. The other (smaller, but much more difficult to solve) issue is that "tabletop RPG" is a really wide genre and a lot of the time you have to take on players who don't really know what they're doing or simply aren't willing to learn the rules at all, except possibly by osmosis. And this isn't really a black mark on them, either, because there are plenty of RPGs where system mastery isn't a big thing and they would be perfectly happy there. But people still run mastery-dependent games and invite these folks (because they're friends, or because they asked and didn't really know what they were getting into, or because you just plain don't have enough people otherwise) and anyone with a decent amount of mastery is going to outshine them both at character generation and in terms of actually resolving actions in combat. There isn't really a solution to this. You can hold their hand, but that's easy to turn into quarterbacking. You can design pre-gen characters and make the relationship between combat rules and RP / character concept as loose as possible, but they still need to engage with the same gameplay as everyone else sooner or later. You can play only with like-minded players of similar ability, or at least who don't mind taking a simpler role, but it's easy to misjudge how boring the latter can get. Or just play Apocalypse World or something. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Aug 25, 2017 |
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Aug 25, 2017 03:56
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Halloween Jack posted:I mean, I get it when there's one option that's poorly designed so that it's the superior choice, and if a player takes it his PC outclasses everyone else, and as a GM you have to say "don't do that" and then say to the publisher "hey fix this in the next edition." Yeah, I'm just flashing back to EX3, where people were like, "uh, the bonus point system can be gamed for scores of experience points" and the devs' response was more or less "nobody does that but assholes".
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Aug 25, 2017 04:04
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Liquid Communism posted:Less that, from what the freelancers have said, and more that they flatly had no idea what each other were working on. The wireless bonuses for gear, for example, were written by a different person than the rest of the wireless system, under the impression that it was supposed to be synergies for having stuff on a Personal Area Network (ie linked locally). The rest of the wireless system turned that into having to be linked to the greater Matrix because some idiot in the design shop decided that giving the hacker something to do in combat must at no point involve getting a weapon and being involved in combat so all cyberware needs to be online at all times, with basic functionality gated behind online bonuses. Bruceski posted:I now imagine someone in awesome cyberarmor waddling around the battlefield trying to keep an ethernet cable from catching on things. frankenfreak posted:To be fair, the decker trying to prevent his buddies' cyberware from being hacked from the outside sounds like a solid idea. I mean in the age of Internet of Things that stuff is in there and it's vulnerable. And the last thing you want is the street samurai's gun cyberarm suddenly yanking back and firing at you. Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, I'm just flashing back to EX3, where people were like, "uh, the bonus point system can be gamed for scores of experience points" and the devs' response was more or less "nobody does that but assholes".
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Aug 25, 2017 04:08
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Elfgames posted:yeah but even those movies weren't given any care or advertising Also why would you ever make a book of vile darkness movie???? i'm pretty sure i'm like one of 5 people who've seen it.
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Aug 25, 2017 04:10
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frankenfreak posted:To be fair, the decker trying to prevent his buddies' cyberware from being hacked from the outside sounds like a solid idea. I mean in the age of Internet of Things that stuff is in there and it's vulnerable. And the last thing you want is the street samurai's gun cyberarm suddenly yanking back and firing at you. The stupidity of hackable always-on devices on Runners is amazing, though. These are people that, in that same setting, have hacked SINs because otherwise they'd be caught in seconds. But, yeah, sure, your arm is online and you definitely didn't download an offline-only firmware from The Shadowpirate Bay.
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Aug 25, 2017 04:33
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frankenfreak posted:To be fair, the decker trying to prevent his buddies' cyberware from being hacked from the outside sounds like a solid idea. I mean in the age of Internet of Things that stuff is in there and it's vulnerable. And the last thing you want is the street samurai's gun cyberarm suddenly yanking back and firing at you. It's poo poo in a retro-futuristic cyberpunk game that has no reason for an Internet of Things to exist, much less for deliberately anonymous career criminals to wear anything broadcasting an identity. The Matrix is quite literally balkanized thanks to being run by mutually hostile megacorps. That said, they didn't even implement it in an interesting way. All you can do is make gear stop working, not make it go off when it shouldn't or control it in any way. It's lovely.
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Aug 25, 2017 05:11
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If you have wifi-enabled nanobots suffusing the air in your facility, you can wirelessly interface with even offline devices through those nanobots. That's the justification I would use for making runners' gear vulnerable to hacking if I needed such a justification.
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Aug 25, 2017 05:28
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Kai Tave posted:Nerd stuff is actually super mainstream and while I don't think this means people won't look at you funny if you're animatedly talking about your adventures in elfmurder on the bus I feel like we're past the point where mentioning to someone that you play D&D on the weekends means they're instantly going to brand you a social pariah. There's still a whiff. Maybe it's more prevalent among older people, or people from certain socioeconomic backgrounds, or I don't know. But this is also kind of my point: as I mentioned earlier, game of thrones and harry potter are totally mainstream, to the point that I think it's inaccurate to call them "nerd stuff." Basically if something is mainstream now, it's not really nerdy any more, or the word has no meaning; but RPGs really still are "nerd stuff" to most people, and that's something I'd like to see change. quote:But watching television? Really? That's a comparison you're going to go with? Something that requires zero effort, can be done at a multitude of times on demand thanks to modern television, and can be done by yourself or in a group as desired, with no more commitment beforehand other than "I feel like watching some TV?" Absolutely, and the attributes you mentioned are intentional. There is a gamut of pre-prep and commitment and effort across the panoply of "things you can do with your spare time," and "playing an RPG" doesn't have to only fit at one extreme end of that spectrum. Remember, this discussion - at least, the one I'm trying to engage in - is about seeking a way forward in which RPGs are more mainstream, popular, profitable, and by virtue of those things, financially rewarding to their creators and therefore capable of attracting and retaining high-grade professional talent. The talent:success ratio is I suspect a positive feedback loop, although not the only one (a big reason for D&D's original success was novelty, and novelty is another attribute of successful products that I suspect most RPG products are unsuccessfully grasping for, but that's a side issue). quote:You're right that it isn't the time commitment on its own, but it's not cultural inertia either. Maybe this is a terminology disagreement, because I think we can't be communicating effectively if you can say this, but then also say: quote:The entrenched RPG hobby market is likely to be apathetic to resistant to games designed primarily for one-shots because, again, they're steeped in the idea (however impractical it may be) that RPGs = ongoing campaign, which means that any attempt to jumpstart an RPG industry revolution along this lines means you're probably going to have to try and create an entirely new market from scratch while also convincing them that they really want to play nuRPGs instead of card games, board games, video games, or any of the other industries competing for their limited social time and dollars. To me this is cultural inertia, on the part of RPG players, and also part and parcel of the cultural stigma (actual or imagined) from non-RPG players. Basically summed up by the semi-ironic phrase "filthy casuals." I think it's likely that an essential aspect of a really professionally-designed, marketed, and produced new-modern RPG is going to be providing game modes that do not require months- or years-long commitments to a specific group, and flexibility that supports different people playing at different sessions. Longer campaign modes might be optional or might not even be part of such games. At the very least, I'd like to see a new generation of RPGs that do not single out the referee for a huge up-front time and effort commitment that winds up being a massive waste of time if the group can't or won't sustain months and months of regular sessions. Or even just decides not to play that game this week. Along these lines: quote:Like here's a recent-ish example of this sort of thing in action I think you maybe recognized this, but it sounds to me like Pandemic: Legacy is substantially more brittle in this respect than basically any RPG, even a campaign. Because RPGs generally have some kind of way to deal with an absent player - a designated alternate, or the GM runs the PC for a session, or one of my favorite options, pause the main action and run a quick side-adventure in the same setting with alternate premade characters that helps to flesh out the setting or explain what's going on nearby or maybe events in the main characters' distant past or something. This is possible in no small part because RPGs are (usually) cooperative storytelling games, and at its core, "cooperative storytelling" is an extremely flexible premise. Game makers can and should explicitly recognize this need for flexibility and give players the advice and tools that encourages it. In fact I'll go so far as to say that a good, well-designed, modern RPG definitely should support pulling it out at an unplanned gathering of people who have a basic understanding of what an RPG is, including one or two players familiar with the basic rules, and getting going on some cooperative storytelling within maybe 30 minutes - a similar setup time to a complex boardgame or a good tabletop wargame. And I think it's definitely possible to design an RPG that supports play with as little commitment and setup as deciding to watch some TV for a couple hours. That would probably have to include rapid online matchmaking systems and online play, much like most multiplayer computer games. quote:edit; I guess hardcore big group MMO raids are another similar example, every person I've ever known who was into that sort of thing described it as 90% frustration and herding cats and juggling schedules versus 10% actual fun. And I think that's a great comparison. We've suffered 30+ years of RPGs that are functionally similar to those MMO raids: amazing fun in your imagination, amazingly frustrating to consistently pull off in real life for anyone who is no longer in high school. Good online multiplayer games don't make the massive big group raid a central or default play mode... RPGs shouldn't either. hyphz posted:Thing is, many of those are shared experiences in a way that RPGs aren't. Plenty of adults burn out on learning musical instruments if they aren't having any connection to others related to them. But you can talk to plenty of other people and make friends on the basis of following football, baseball, or popular TV. Nobody really cares what your RPG group did last session. Yeah. People don't really care to hear a detailed recounting of your Call of Duty session or your Friday Night Magic session or your golf game went either. I don't really see that as a big problem. People burn out of every possible hobby and interest, and when someone asks you how your weekend was, your response of "I went and saw <latest movie> with some friends" is not dissimilar to "I played a couple hours of RPG with some friends." If someone else is into RPGs they might engage in a longer discussion, just as if someone else is a fan of your favorite sports team, you might engage in a longer discussion of that. This is a common attribute of basically any hobby or interest or social engagement. Tuxedo Catfish posted:The other (smaller, but much more difficult to solve) issue is that "tabletop RPG" is a really wide genre and a lot of the time you have to take on players who don't really know what they're doing or simply aren't willing to learn the rules at all, except possibly by osmosis. And this isn't really a black mark on them, either, because there are plenty of RPGs where system mastery isn't a big thing and they would be perfectly happy there. But people still run mastery-dependent games and invite these folks (because they're friends, or because they asked and didn't really know what they were getting into, or because you just plain don't have enough people otherwise) and anyone with a decent amount of mastery is going to outshine them both at character generation and in terms of actually resolving actions in combat. I feel like this is actually a problem with any game of any stripe, and not something that needs to be solved especially. Anyone trying to play a game who is not willing to learn the rules or engage with the system is going to be bad at the game. The only games you can play totally disinterestedly and do just as well, are games of pure chance, like candyland. RPGs being cooperative games means the disengaged person isn't necessarily "losing the game" to the one who has bothered to try to win, like a competitive game, but in another sense they're losing the game because they're not getting out of the game the basic reward that any game offers. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Aug 25, 2017 |
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Aug 25, 2017 05:30
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Jimbozig posted:If you have wifi-enabled nanobots suffusing the air in your facility, you can wirelessly interface with even offline devices through those nanobots. Yeah, but then you run into the same problem the writers realized they caused in 4e Shadowrun. Once there's a sufficiently advanced security panopitcon, career street criminals are a thing of the past. They're too easy to identify, so at best they are good for one or two jobs before they're useless. That doesn't make for fun gameplay.
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Aug 25, 2017 05:50
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