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ohh goddd OK I'll stop now, this is clearly a derail, I just want you all to have to revisit the poo poo that made me avoid rec.* like the plague even in the mid 1990s.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:18
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I admit, I liked the basic -idea- of Traveller: New Era, just because it at least gave you an up front "This is what people do in the setting" pitch. (The whole "Star Vikings" default campaign where you'd planet hop to different lost colonies and try to recruit them to your fledgling space coalition rebuilding in the wake of an apocalyptic event.) But you don't ever admit that to any Traveller discussion groups online ever.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:20
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Evil Mastermind posted:People will rail against any change in the games they love, even if it's a mechanic that does nothing or is ignored by 99.9% of the game's fanbase. The AD&D unarmed combat rules are perfect in every way and I will fight anyone who disagrees. 
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Sep 13, 2017 18:20
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Leperflesh posted:ohh goddd
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Sep 13, 2017 18:24
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unseenlibrarian posted:
Well now I want to play a good edition of Traveller.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:25
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Mage pretty much brought that on itself by making a new edition that was dedicated to explaining how much of the stuff they sold you in the previous edition was bad, and you were a fool for liking it.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:27
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And thus we see the cycle of Mage flame wars reviving again.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:30
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Kwyndig posted:Well now I want to play a good edition of Traveller. 
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Sep 13, 2017 18:32
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slap me and kiss me posted:Oh man, that's the good stuff. This is an excellent idea and I can see no possible downside to it.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:33
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Kwyndig posted:Well now I want to play a good edition of Traveller. Stars Without Number is right there.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:34
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This guy is clearly entirely above critique:quote:+-|gonZo|-------------------------------------------|je...@delphi.com|-+ He's a fuckin' Game Theorist for god's sake!
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Sep 13, 2017 18:37
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Evil Mastermind posted:It's interesting to compare the "T$R is trying to get all your money by just releasing more and more books!" thing with the 3e->4e change's "Why isn't WotC putting out more and more and more books? Don't they like money?" comments. I think both arguments stem from the same place, which is incoherent rage at things changing from how they were.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:43
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Evil Mastermind posted:It's interesting to compare the "T$R is trying to get all your money by just releasing more and more books!" thing with the 3e->4e change's "Why isn't WotC putting out more and more and more books? Don't they like money?" comments. To be fair, those aren't being made by the same type of person, because there were definitely people complaining about the supplement treadmill in both 3.x and 4E. 5th edition is the only one where we haven't seen that complaint, and that's because WotC just aren't releasing books for it. 
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Sep 13, 2017 18:48
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gradenko_2000 posted:That oath and Goodman's rabble-rousing about 4e aside, DCC still has a problem with it requiring all these "odd" dice, which makes it unpleasant to run in a face-to-face setting unless you decide to use a digital dice roller. To be honest the dice are a feature instead of a bug for me; I'm a gigantic sucker for strange dice and I've backed every one of Impact's kickstarters and you could basically just hook a Hoover up to my wallet and take my loving money for dumb dice and yes I have a problem leave me alone. alg posted:As long as you stay away from ACKS and Zak S, and G+ (everyone should stay way from G+ anyway) the OSR is basically harmless. DCC is a super fun game with no inherent dangerous ideology. I loved the idea of ACKS and wish someone who wasn't such a piece of human poo poo would execute on it in a better way. gradenko_2000 posted:Some people were really miffed at CoC 7th Edition ditching the Resistance table 7th ed is awesome except for the lack of Know roll. I understand why they ditched it, but it really threw my game for a loop. Ewen Cluney posted:Also, while 4e was a high watermark in D&D edition warring, it's still amazing that people forget just how dumb and bad the discourse around 3rd Edition was. 4th ed isn't my bag, probably because it came out during a time when I played zero D&D so I never really got to play it much apart from a handful of pick-up games. But I honestly don't give a poo poo who plays what system. Play what you like, and let me play what I like, and who the gently caress cares? I really like 5e and I know this forum hates it so,
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Sep 13, 2017 18:48
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JohnnyCanuck posted:If you have access to newsgroup archives from way back when, you can see some original online grog. I was posting back then and it was something. You had edition flame wars between 1st and 2nd. You had flame wars between Skills and Powers players and those who believed in the holy PHB for character creation. Oh and everyone hated TSR because they had the same Palladium's web policy. And it didn't help that the primary point of contact between the community and TSR was SKR. Around the time of the Wizards acquisition the player base on the usenet groups was in favor of WotC acquisition but you had some grogs screaming about how they would make supplements "collectable" in the model of Magic. The DnD focused newsgroups were such a loving poo poo show and I'm pretty ashamed that you'll find posts from a dumbass 16 year old me there. But if you're looking for grog, the mines there are deep and rich if not disgusting.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:52
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Lemon-Lime posted:To be fair, those aren't being made by the same type of person, because there were definitely people complaining about the supplement treadmill in both 3.x and 4E.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:55
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The thing about the 4E edition Wars and the OSR et al is that while a big part of it can be tied to things like increased online arguments and social media presence spreading poo poo far beyond rec newsgroups, another and possibly more important part is the fact that they happened at a time when it was incredibly easy for people to continue purchasing and supporting those older editions in meaningful ways that created ongoing markets for them. Once upon a time when an RPG changed editions then that older edition became relegated to personal collections and maybe dusty shelves in some timelost LGS, but the stuff you saw for sale for the most part were the newest editions. You couldn't just go to Borders in 2001 and buy a copy of OD&D or AD&D2E even if you thought those versions were superior to Diablo on paper 3E. You couldn't tell new people coming into the hobby "oh you should play these older games instead" because you likely didn't have any way for them to buy them short of eBay. People might grumble about how much better things were back in the old days but holdouts weren't catered to and the newer stuff gradually became the new standard because it was, sometimes literally, the only game in town. Suddenly, though it wasn't really sudden but a gradual culmination of factors, this was no longer the case. Paizo attracted a ready-made audience by telling them "you don't have to stop buying this edition you prefer and we will continue making big glossy stuff for you to buy to keep it alive forever," a dozen people started selling games based on that one older game you remember with the serial numbers filed off, and if you didn't see every retroclone and OSR product on store shelves that was fine because bookstores were going out of business and sales were moving online anyway, even outside of RPG circles. Back in the day people would argue about what it meant to call a game "dead" and how that was inaccurate because "you can still play the game, the new edition police aren't going to kick your door down and burn it," but that always missed the more salient point that a game is "dead" if it's a struggle to get people playing it through lack of availability and/or difficulty obtaining it, obscurity, shrinking playerbase, etc. At one point older editions slowly but inexorably died off in a meaningful if not pedantic sense, but these days we've reached a point where that isn't true any more. Now "dead" games can enjoy just as much if not more continual support and promotion as brand new games and are just as easy to find.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:55
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FMguru posted:Someone should start a thread where we can post these snippets of awful nerds being dumb about elfgames and make fun of them. a rec.games.grogs.bork.bork.bork thread that was grognards.txt but only for things posted before 2002 might work.
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Sep 13, 2017 19:00
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Evil Mastermind posted:It's interesting to compare the "T$R is trying to get all your money by just releasing more and more books!" thing with the 3e->4e change's "Why isn't WotC putting out more and more and more books? Don't they like money?" comments. It's hard to underestimate the sheer amount of good will that WotC earned by saying that they had no plans on trying to get your ISP to shut down your account if you made a web page that mentioned D&D, then putting out a kit of logos and stuff for people's web pages. Along with putting in place some professional community managers.
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Sep 13, 2017 19:08
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Lemon-Lime posted:To be fair, those aren't being made by the same type of person, because there were definitely people complaining about the supplement treadmill in both 3.x and 4E. They are releasing books, just books that only 1 person out of every gaming group can use.
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Sep 13, 2017 19:11
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Peas and Rice posted:I really like 5e and I know this forum hates it so, You are aware that Mike Mearls actively courted the toxic elements of the OSR community during the development of 5e, right? I don't think you should stop playing because of that. I just thought you should be aware that the issue isn't as isolated as you might think.
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Sep 13, 2017 19:35
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DalaranJ posted:You are aware that Mike Mearls actively courted the toxic elements of the OSR community during the development of 5e, right? I am, and it's still unclear to me what involvement they actually had and why he actually wanted their input in the first place. I wish WotC / Mearls would have distanced themselves from them after it became clear what pieces of garbage they were (kind of like I wish Reaper would just straight-up fire the shitbag Nazi they have on staff). On the other hand, WotC seems to be taking good strides to be way more inclusive in their adventure design and their art direction, which seems to indicate that any involvement the toxic OSR elements had didn't have much if any effect on the long-term trajectory of D&D adventures and settings, which is important to me.
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Sep 13, 2017 20:16
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Peas and Rice posted:I am, and it's still unclear to me what involvement they actually had and why he actually wanted their input in the first place. Identity politics, like I outlined earlier. That's it, really. It doesn't matter if the actual content contribution that Zak S and Pundnowski made to Next was 0%, publicly inviting them to consult on the new edition of D&D sent the message that this was an edition for the "right kind of people."
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Sep 13, 2017 20:44
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Kai Tave posted:Identity politics, like I outlined earlier. That's it, really. It doesn't matter if the actual content contribution that Zak S and Pundnowski made to Next was 0%, publicly inviting them to consult on the new edition of D&D sent the message that this was an edition for the "right kind of people." So basically to sell copies to shitbag grogs who otherwise might not have bought them? (I typically hear identity politics as a pejorative being levelled against leftist groups like BLM, not what amounts to the gaming version of the alt-right, which is why I'm clarifying.)
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Sep 13, 2017 20:50
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Yeah that was definitely a big part of selling 5E. Not only to people who left when 4E came out, but to people who left during the course of 3E.
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Sep 13, 2017 20:51
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5e is deliberately regressive from a games design standpoint and is written by people who are regressive both design-wise and politically, are friends with regressives, and were interested in hawking the game to regressives. It doesn't mean you're automatically a bigot if you enjoy it, but you have to live with with supporting bigots. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 21:05
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Halloween Jack posted:Now I'm trying to think of the most bitter non-D20 flamewars. The New World of Darkness was very controversial, but I hear that the Mage 2nd Edition vs. Mage Revised edition war was somehow more bitter than the rebooting of the entire WoD. I hear Traveller edition wars are legendarily vicious. Mage: the Ascension already inspires so many inane fights over minutiae that an edition war was downright quaint.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:08
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Peas and Rice posted:So basically to sell copies to shitbag grogs who otherwise might not have bought them? Yeah that's fair. Call it grogwhistling if you like, but publicly and visibly inviting these big name OSR people with reputations for being vehemently anti-4E and pro old-school (and for being lovely to the right sorts of people) was a marketing ploy. This isn't to say that it was nothing but calculated cynicism on Mearls' part, he seems like he's gone a ways down the rabbit hole himself lately, but it was absolutely intended to be a show of solidarity that this D&D would be a return to form and not some disgusting dissociated narrativist MMO filthy casuals game for people who care about, ugh, balance.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:09
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Haha, grogwhistling. I love that.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:18
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah that's fair. Call it grogwhistling if you like, but publicly and visibly inviting these big name OSR people with reputations for being vehemently anti-4E and pro old-school (and for being lovely to the right sorts of people) was a marketing ploy. This isn't to say that it was nothing but calculated cynicism on Mearls' part, he seems like he's gone a ways down the rabbit hole himself lately, but it was absolutely intended to be a show of solidarity that this D&D would be a return to form and not some disgusting dissociated narrativist MMO filthy casuals game for people who care about, ugh, balance. Just out of curiosity, how much of that was Mearls' call versus, say, a brand manager or some marketing douchebag who wanted to make some cynical ploy to get these people on board with the new product? Also grogwhistling is brilliant, well done. Lemon-Lime posted:It doesn't mean you're automatically a bigot if you enjoy it, but you have to live with with supporting bigots. I really like the system and the very deliberate approach toward inclusion that D&D / WotC has made, especially in the last few months.  Except paladins being something other than Lawful Good is loving garbage.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:44
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah that's fair. Call it grogwhistling if you like, but publicly and visibly inviting these big name OSR people with reputations for being vehemently anti-4E and pro old-school (and for being lovely to the right sorts of people) was a marketing ploy. This isn't to say that it was nothing but calculated cynicism on Mearls' part, he seems like he's gone a ways down the rabbit hole himself lately, but it was absolutely intended to be a show of solidarity that this D&D would be a return to form and not some disgusting dissociated narrativist MMO filthy casuals game for people who care about, ugh, balance. Most of the Essentials class design was definitely skewed more towards 3.5 era design sensibilities than 4e's, when it wasn't just being objectively terrible.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:44
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Peas and Rice posted:Just out of curiosity, how much of that was Mearls' call versus, say, a brand manager or some marketing douchebag who wanted to make some cynical ploy to get these people on board with the new product? Also grogwhistling is brilliant, well done. Mearls literally forwarded emails from minority customers who emailed to discuss the fact a known serial harasser was consulting on the books to said harasser during the beginning of 5E's lifespan so it's not exactly just marketing copy.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:51
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Peas and Rice posted:Just out of curiosity, how much of that was Mearls' call versus, say, a brand manager or some marketing douchebag who wanted to make some cynical ploy to get these people on board with the new product? Also grogwhistling is brilliant, well done. Does D&D have proper brand managers, especially ones involved in the industry enough to know those people? I was under the impression D&D was basically a skeleton crew at Hasbro.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:52
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Countblanc posted:Does D&D have proper brand managers, especially ones involved in the industry enough to know those people? I was under the impression D&D was basically a skeleton crew at Hasbro. I'm pretty sure it has a brand manager, yes. It's got an Associate Brand Manager at any rate: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-kidd-a8a55b2b/ Regardless of whether or not they're involved in the industry personally, they've probably got some amount of marketing / audience data, especially if they paid an agency to identify "industry influencers," positive or negative, they could court. Mr. Maltose posted:Mearls literally forwarded emails from minority customers who emailed to discuss the fact a known serial harasser was consulting on the books to said harasser during the beginning of 5E's lifespan so it's not exactly just marketing copy. Jesus Christ.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:55
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Peas and Rice posted:Just out of curiosity, how much of that was Mearls' call versus, say, a brand manager or some marketing douchebag who wanted to make some cynical ploy to get these people on board with the new product? Also grogwhistling is brilliant, well done. I hate marketing geeks as much as the next sane person. But I can't believe that a marketing geek trying to expand the game's audience would advise Mearls to say the poo poo that he did. Like, specifically dropping edition war memes like "shouting limbs back on" in interviews, and using monthly dev articles to propose reintroducing facing rules and other stuff that hasn't been a part of the game since 2e? His, uh, brand ambassadorship was all over the place, and not in a way that points to some poorly-executed marketing principle, besides "court grognards on ENWorld." Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 21:59
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The current Senior Director of D&D at WotC is Nathan Stewart. He's often referred to as a "Brand Director" or "Brand Manager". Don't know much about him, but there you have it.
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Sep 13, 2017 22:25
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I distinctly remember a "brand manager" writing an article that basically said they don't care about the rpg as a property compared to raking in that sweet, sweet fantasy novel cash. I found his honesty refreshing frankly.
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Sep 13, 2017 22:32
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DalaranJ posted:I distinctly remember a "brand manager" writing an article that basically said they don't care about the rpg as a property compared to raking in that sweet, sweet fantasy novel cash. I found his honesty refreshing frankly. Yeah for some reason it's stuck in my head that they care about using the D&D brand to start a movie/entertainment franchise a la the MCU, but I can't find anything online to support that right now.
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Sep 13, 2017 22:38
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I wouldn't be surprised if they also make far more from the board games and various bits of licensing than they do from the RPG. But the problem with trying to launch something really big, like a MCU equivalent, is that other companies ate TSR's lunch decades ago. There's not a whole lot about the D&D brand that people don't already associate with Final Fantasy and Warhammer and Warcraft and so on. They're offering, what, Drizzt fighting mind flayers? Countblanc posted:Does D&D have proper brand managers, especially ones involved in the industry enough to know those people? I was under the impression D&D was basically a skeleton crew at Hasbro. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 22:45
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Their response to "Dark Sun and Eberron when?" Was basically "when people stop buying FR stuff." Because editions can only support one ip at a time now.
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Sep 13, 2017 23:09
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