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sexpig by night posted:Yea I love the guy but he's apparently been in cryosleep since the TSR days and doesn't know he's basically trying to sell "What if D&D...but MORE generic and easily available in other sources???" It bums me out to see him having a rough go but I can't say it's not expected when he's trying to push 'we're not unique or special at all' and name recognition that's kinda a decade too late at best? The problem isn't even that Mentzer is trying to sell people some kind of fantasy heartbreaker cooked up by a groggy dude stuck in the D&D mindset, because there's definitely always going to be a market for that sort of thing, especially by someone with the sort of actual cachet behind his name as Mentzer has. The problem isn't even that he apparently doesn't think that insulting someone via ability scores is the saddest fuckin thing in the world. The problem is that Mentzer dove headfirst into running a Kickstarter having apparently done no real research on how to properly set up, promote, or manage a Kickstarter and so of course it failed, but it did so because he didn't bother to do his homework more than it failed because nerds wouldn't line up to throw their money at Frank Mentzer Sells You a Big Box of Crap. Yeah, part of doing your homework includes things like "hmm, maybe a quarter million dollars for an overly-ambitious box set RPG is asking a lot, especially for a first time outing," but things like Monte Cook Presents Monte Cook's Invisible Sun by Monte Cook proves that it's entirely possible to sell gamers overpriced bullshit for hundreds of dollars a pop, but Monte Cook actually knows how to keep a hype train rolling. A quick look shows that the Invisible Sun KS had fifty, that's five-zero, updates between the time it launched and the time it funded, which for a 30 day Kickstarter is just slightly shy of two updates a day. I mean that's not the only difference I'm sure, but it's a pretty noticeable one.
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Oct 17, 2017 09:05
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I think Mentzer and Co. thought the 10 system compatibility thing was a huge selling point but most people that I talked to either thought it was laughable, or were annoyed that you could really only get one system book, especially when many of those 10 games are so similar. All the goofy living campaign stuff and the backer levels being so tied to that instead of content was a negative too. They should retool and make it more of a straightforward fantasy setting boxed set with better backer levels and I think it would do better and not be a weird sideshow.
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Oct 17, 2017 09:17
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Kai Tave posted:A quick look shows that the Invisible Sun KS had fifty, that's five-zero, updates between the time it launched and the time it funded, which for a 30 day Kickstarter is just slightly shy of two updates a day. I mean that's not the only difference I'm sure, but it's a pretty noticeable one. I backed Numenera when it first came out (I'm a sucker for Kieran Yanner's art) and MCG sent so many updates -- the majority of which were just spam advertising for other Kickstarters -- that I just started ignoring them. Then I got a very snippy message asking why I hadn't responded to the backer survey. I didn't send a snippy message back because I was younger and more patient, but I was still peeved. On the other hand, now that I think about it, they did expend the effort to mail all the people who hadn't filled in the survey. So that's something in their favour, even if the wording of the email could have used some work. Lightning Lord posted:They should retool and make it more of a straightforward fantasy setting boxed set with better backer levels and I think it would do better and not be a weird sideshow. I mean, even with the half-assed KS and forum drama the dude still raised $50K. That's not small potatoes! With a more reasonable goal I'm sure he'll do just fine.
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Oct 17, 2017 09:36
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potatocubed posted:I backed Numenera when it first came out (I'm a sucker for Kieran Yanner's art) and MCG sent so many updates -- the majority of which were just spam advertising for other Kickstarters -- that I just started ignoring them. Oh yeah sure, quantity doesn't always equal quality, but in my opinion it's probably better even on just a cynical level to have too many updates than too few simply because it avoids the perception that you've just dumped a KS out there and ran. potatocubed posted:I mean, even with the half-assed KS and forum drama the dude still raised $50K. That's not small potatoes! With a more reasonable goal I'm sure he'll do just fine. "A more reasonable goal" in this case might have to mean "not making a box set RPG" if he's looking at somewhere in the ballpark of $50k for funds.
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Oct 17, 2017 09:48
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Meanwhile: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/xcrawl-the-movie-rpg-fantasy#/ Funnily enough, they're asking for less to make a movie than Metzner is for his generic fantasy setting.
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Oct 17, 2017 12:48
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And the saga of Alas Vegas continues... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jameswallis/alas-vegas-an-rpg-of-bad-memories-bad-luck-and-bad/posts/2017707 tl;dr Wallis just pulped all the hardbacks because the printer hosed them up...and a lot of the softcovers are somehow in Reno because...? At least the PDF was awesome.
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Oct 17, 2017 18:59
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There was a kickstarter a few days ago for some Steampunk-ish looking miniatures that kind of looked like they belonged in Super Dungeon Explore. I can't find it now and forgot to save it. Anyone know if it was cancelled?
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Oct 18, 2017 02:58
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dwarf74 posted:On a ... note of some kind ... one of the posters over on Tenkar's is sad there's not a system guide planned for MYFAROG. some loving LIAR posted:That guy seems to have posted several reviews of MYFAROG supplements on Amazon.com (one of which is the "top critical review" of the product-- only 3/5 stars), along with a bunch of random non-racist (for SF/F) products under his real name. His G+ discloses a high degree of MYFAROG fanboyism, slightly less Conan fandom, and no overt fascist sympathies otherwise. dwarf74 posted:Well, I mean "semi-historical, Norse mythical quasi-Europe" is totally my poo poo. So maybe he just doesn't notice? Hostile V posted:Judging by the hardcore Conan love and what I read of the dude's stuff, he's probably just an old-guard grog who really loves blood and thunder low-fantasy adventure and death metal and probably gets very mad at you when you point out the cultural elements of pulp that hasn't aged well. Like he has a thing about making the game classless but each race and ethnicity has access to certain classes. He loves these things uncritically and ignores anyone who tries to tell him otherwise and is misguidedly focused on streamlining the mechanics over reading the text because he's a grog. It's not surprising in the slightest because old school fantasy was racist and fascist as gently caress. Fantasy has always been a deeply, deeply conservative genre, and nerds have always leaned towards mildly wealthy white libertarian dudes. If the guy doesn't realize MYFAROG is straight up fascism, it's for the same reason a fish doesn't realize it's in water.
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Oct 18, 2017 05:43
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I completely agree with you but am of the opinion that he does realize this but his biggest complaint isn't the fascism because it lets him play the game he wants. His biggest complaint is that the mechanics could be better and he could fix them dammit!!!! 
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Oct 18, 2017 05:49
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It was actually really shocking when I did some old writing projects in a Conan-style setting. I wasn't expecting the sheer degree of fascist leanings I found doing the source readings.
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Oct 18, 2017 06:05
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ProfessorCirno posted:It's not surprising in the slightest because old school fantasy was racist and fascist as gently caress. Fantasy has always been a deeply, deeply conservative genre, and nerds have always leaned towards mildly wealthy white libertarian dudes. If the guy doesn't realize MYFAROG is straight up fascism, it's for the same reason a fish doesn't realize it's in water. Wellllll…he's commenting on poo poo on the Tavern and leaving reviews on Amazon, and he's wishing for wider support for HOPKIN GREEN MYFAROG, so it's kind of a stretch to me that he never once got around to going to Vikernes' website where he outright tells you that his fantasy setting is something like a transcription of the ~true history of the real world~ of the glorious, superior white race and the betrayals of all the browner peoples that he received in a vision while meditating. Also when Googling his name to make sure I spelled it right, one of the top results led me to an article where he waffles about being called a Nazi (which he has called himself at times), because quote:A Scandinavian, for instance, has no good reasons to emotionally react negatively to "nazism", but I understand that a Slav has a perfectly good reason to do so. While the German "nazis" behaved exemplary in Denmark and Norway during WWII, they certainly didn't behave exemplary in Poland or the former Soviet Union. quote:I have also experienced that most of the people supporting me or what I stand for are so-called "nazis" - while almost everybody else has just condemned me and then boycotted me and everything I have done. What makes me different from the "nazis" are basically three things; unlike them I am not socialistic (not even on a national level), I am not materialistic and I believe in (the ancient Scandinavian!) democracy. quote:So, since I am not a "nazi" I began to use another term, in the late 90ies. I did it not just to avoid confusion, but also to find a term more suitable and accurate than the other terms I had used. This new term was odalism, from Norse óðal ("homeland", "allodium", "allodial law", "nobility", "noble", "inherited goods", "fatherland", "land property", "distinguished family", "distinguished", "splendid", "kin" and "the nation"). This term replaces everything positive about all the other -isms I have ever used, and in it lies Paganism, traditional nationalism, racialism and environmentalism. It is not only a more accurate but also a more inclusive term that can be used by all Europeans (and others too for that sake). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is not a term tainted by history. See, he's not a Nazi because he believes all this crazy Nazi-occultist stuff but he's ~not socialist like a Nazi~ and he's one of those wishy-washy types who doesn't say "we need to kill the browns" but just "something must be done about the browns." He's totally willing to admit some Nazis have even behaved badly, sometimes. Also, after distancing himself (somewhat) from Nazism, you reach the bottom of the page and it says: quote:Blóð ok Óðal! Which means "blood and soil", because he's a loving Nazi. I can sadly grant that some dude who somehow finds MYFAROG on a store shelf somewhere might gloss over the overt racism in it because, well, RPGs and RPG players do that all the time with plenty of other games. But anyone with enough interest to shop it around the internet and review the book? Nah. They are almost certainly knowingly supporting Nazi propaganda.
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Oct 18, 2017 06:06
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Odin's going to punch him in the dick when he turns up in the afterlife trying to blag his way into Valhalla for rejecting materialism.
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Oct 18, 2017 06:15
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Oh, hey, maybe don't back Empyrea or whateverthefuck when it relaunches no matter what because https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/920489843821486080 I mean, the product was going to be kind of a shitshow top to bottom anyway, but maybe don't even buy it "ironically."
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Oct 18, 2017 06:19
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Loomer posted:It was actually really shocking when I did some old writing projects in a Conan-style setting. I wasn't expecting the sheer degree of fascist leanings I found doing the source readings. Oh yeah, Howard makes Lovecraft seem modern and inclusive. My favorite bit of Mr Howard trivia is that one of his Conan stories (looked it up - Vale of lost women) was so racist it was rejected for publication in like 1934. Just try to imagine how racist you have to be that 1930s America tells you to dial it the gently caress back.
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Oct 18, 2017 06:45
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That Old Tree posted:Oh, hey, maybe don't back Empyrea or whateverthefuck when it relaunches no matter what because What does that even mean?
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Oct 18, 2017 06:50
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Xotl posted:What does that even mean? you're supposed to click on the tweet to see the full thread
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Oct 18, 2017 06:55
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Oh, ewww.Ohthehugemanatee posted:My favorite bit of Mr Howard trivia is that one of his Conan stories (looked it up - Vale of lost women) was so racist it was rejected for publication in like 1934. Just try to imagine how racist you have to be that 1930s America tells you to dial it the gently caress back. Are you sure about this? I wasn't aware Vale was ever submitted for publication. That and it's actually pretty tame by 1930s standards. Xotl fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Oct 18, 2017 |
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Oct 18, 2017 06:58
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Apparently my assessment of Frank Mentzer has been vastly too generous by half.
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Oct 18, 2017 07:46
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That Old Tree posted:he's a loving Nazi. Oh, I wasn't trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. Quite the opposite! Sorry if it seemed that way.
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Oct 18, 2017 08:33
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Kai Tave posted:Apparently my assessment of Frank Mentzer has been vastly too generous by half. 
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Oct 18, 2017 08:37
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Just noticed that there's Tiny Epic Dungeon. I feel as though there has been a ton of these Tiny Epic games. Does anybody know the difference between these various Tiny Epic games?
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Oct 18, 2017 10:45
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Hackjack posted:Just noticed that there's Tiny Epic Dungeon. Tiny Epic Kingdom: 4X Tiny Epic Defenders: Co Op, think Pandemic Tiny Epic Galaxy: SF 4X? Tiny Epic Western: Worker Placement? Tiny Epic Quest: I can't remember the mechanic They're basically tiny, simpler versions of well established mechanics. Personally I will say that despite never buying TE Defenders, I used the P&P surprisingly often as a game with kids, and if the shipping wasn't so high I would probably back it to have a real copy.
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Oct 18, 2017 11:48
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There is also an Ultra Tiny Epic Kingdoms which is a smaller, cheaper version of the main game.
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Oct 18, 2017 12:06
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Ohthehugemanatee posted:Oh yeah, Howard makes Lovecraft seem modern and inclusive. This is pretty weird, since Howard was the one who sent letters to Lovecraft going "hey maybe tone down the racism!"
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Oct 18, 2017 13:09
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Hackjack posted:Just noticed that there's Tiny Epic Dungeon. 
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Oct 18, 2017 13:28
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I have officially been on SA too long, since this immediately made me think of 
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Oct 18, 2017 14:10
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I have all of the Tiny Epic games except Defense 2nd Edition, but Galaxies is the only one that's really seen relplays.
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Oct 18, 2017 14:38
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Xotl posted:Oh, ewww. Huh, the anthology I read that included it prefaced the story with that bit. Maybe I'm misremembering it though.
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Oct 18, 2017 14:39
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That Old Tree posted:I mean, the product was going to be kind of a shitshow top to bottom anyway, but maybe don't even buy it "ironically." I don’t think anyone was remotely interested in buying it, except possibly for F&F.
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Oct 18, 2017 15:21
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LatwPIAT posted:This is pretty weird, since Howard was the one who sent letters to Lovecraft going "hey maybe tone down the racism!" Remember this is weird old timey racism. They were both anti-Black racists but Lovecraft also hated Catholic immigrants like Irish, while Howard was of Irish decent. IIRC Howard also was fairly pro native American, albiet in a noble Savage patronizing way but really hated Mexicans.
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Oct 18, 2017 16:16
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DalaranJ posted:I don’t think anyone was remotely interested in buying it, except possibly for F&F.
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Oct 18, 2017 16:25
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neaden posted:Remember this is weird old timey racism. They were both anti-Black racists but Lovecraft also hated Catholic immigrants like Irish, while Howard was of Irish decent. IIRC Howard also was fairly pro native American, albiet in a noble Savage patronizing way but really hated Mexicans. Howard's Conan stories are inconsistent in their racism, too. In one story, Conan is chatting with a properly white overlord and agrees with him about the need to have a good white master over the savage darkies. (Although it's not completely clear whether Conan genuinely agrees, or is just working the guy.) In another story, Conan has a good black friend who is portrayed in a positive light and is competent and smart. And in yet another story, a mostly naked white woman is captain of a pirate crew of black dudes, and they're in savage awe of her and she's totally in charge and smart and capable (but in the end her greed gets the better of her) and also of course she hurls herself at Conan within seconds of meeting him. So Howard kind of mixed things up, sometimes I think fully embracing the casual racism of his most influential predecessors like Burroughs, and sometimes I think sneaking in remarkably progressive ideas for his time. He was a complicated guy, and while I may be reflexively defending the Conan stories because I love them, I think I'm not way off base in saying that for 1930s pulp fantasy, his writing was absolutely not particularly or notably racist, and at times, pushed the boundaries of how progressive you could be and still be printed. The much more confusing label is fascism. The most important theme in the Conan stories - and the one are in which Howard and Lovecraft fiercely disagreed and carried on a lengthy and fascinating debate about - was over the conflict between civilization and barbarism. As Howard saw things, the natural state of humanity was barbarism, which was pure and clean, in which a man was free to do as he wished; civilization was the embodiment of corruption, in which men oppressed one another and created slaves of one another. Essentially he was espousing anarchism, which is about as opposite to fascism as you can get. If Howard fully embraced the "noble savage" racist meme, it was at least in part out of admiration, some sense that living in that state was far better. And we should remember that he was a child during WWI, coming of age in a time when the entire western world was reeling from the horrors of the Great War. Conan's wild, unrestrained character resonated with a lot of people. He was no Tarzan of Greystoke, superior because of his noble white blood: he was a wild, dusky-skinned, black-haired savage, sharply intelligent as well as physically capable. Not to overdo the praise: Conan is a serial murderer and thief who is absurdly quick to kill anyone who is doing something he doesn't approve of (although, conveniently, pretty much everyone he kills is a bad guy, so Howard excuses Conan's behavior through authorial fiat); he's a male power fantasy whose first appeal is to adolescent boys who wish they had mighty thews and that naked women would throw themselves at their feet with satisfying regularity; and as I mentioned before, he's (inconsistently, but very definitely) casually racist about uncivilized black people scarcely more than apes (and as an aside, in Howard's Hyboria, various races have in the past risen up from the apes and descended back into apes, sometimes more than once - he was perhaps a bit confused about how evolution works). So yeah. I'm fully on board with describing Howard as being typically racist for any young white man growing up in Texas, but really confused by the accusations of fascism, and there's no way in hell he was anywhere near as racist as his pen-pal H.P. Lovecraft.
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Oct 18, 2017 17:02
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On a non- "Who's more racist" tangent my favorite weird Howard and Lovecraft trivia is how blatantly Red Sonya of Rogatino (As opposed to the comic character) was weird fanfiction about Lovecraft's wife written after their divorce. Both were Ukrainian. The name (Red Sonya, Sonia Green.) Red Sonya spends most of the story she originally appears dragging the male lead out of trouble his mouth gets him into. Which is pretty accurate to Lovecraft and Sonia Greene's relationship. It's like "Wow, you put up with him for way longer than I thought, have a sword and an adventure"
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Oct 18, 2017 17:18
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Leperflesh posted:Howard's Conan stories are inconsistent in their racism, too. In one story, Conan is chatting with a properly white overlord and agrees with him about the need to have a good white master over the savage darkies. (Although it's not completely clear whether Conan genuinely agrees, or is just working the guy.) In another story, Conan has a good black friend who is portrayed in a positive light and is competent and smart. And in yet another story, a mostly naked white woman is captain of a pirate crew of black dudes, and they're in savage awe of her and she's totally in charge and smart and capable (but in the end her greed gets the better of her) and also of course she hurls herself at Conan within seconds of meeting him. I would agree with this assessment--Howard was basically a nerd in small town Texas in the early part of the 20th century who grew up around a bunch of oilmen near the border with Mexico. He read what was available to him to read, and developed notions about civilization that were...interesting but which didn't necessarily use race as a simple hierarchy in the way that many other "theories of civilization" have done. He does seem to consider "whites" as he defined them (which was...somewhat progressive for the time, remember the Irish and Italians and other poorer Euro folks were still discriminated against) to be the men of highest estate even though they too shall inevitably fall. Conan himself has contempt for a lot of civilized weakness, but he came out of the mountains of Cimmeria nonetheless and isn't hesitant to enjoy himself on civilized riches. Howard was also always vehement in his defense of the abilities of women, again in kind of what we'd call a pedestal sort of way, but he didn't think they should be limited to the kitchen and bedroom. The women in his stories are often concubines and always beautiful but they do often have their own agency, act for good and for evil, and wore about as much clothing as he did. Writing now, of course, we want more, but his successors and illustrators failed in that area far more than he. Nowhere in all that is the same level of bone-deep fear of the Other and the Outside that define a lot of Lovecraft's work. Howard admits the lives of individual men are insignificant and even our great works shall fall to dust by the wayside and isn't really deeply bothered by this. Lovecraft cannot get over the idea that humankind is polluted and pointless. There's some sign that Howard was lightening up a little bit on some of the direct racism, since it wasn't really an identity thing for him--but then he killed himself at age 30 and that's that.
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Oct 18, 2017 17:36
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RE Howard would have absolutely flirted with Reddit red pill forums if he lived today. Having said that, he had an enormous amount of writing ability and drive, and his really lovely views were softening as he went around Texas and interviewed all sorts of people for his stories. I would like to think that he would have grown out of his Reddit libertarian phase, like most decent people do.
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Oct 18, 2017 20:11
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Yea Howard absolutely has some troubling stuff in his works, but 90% of it is more 'ignorant rear end nerd boy' than actual hate. You can almost track his success and traveling with those troubling bits starting to fade away. Lovecraft's stuff never had a 'softening' as he experienced the world, dude just hated people. They're for sure both very valid to bring up as discussion topics but it absolutely is an 'ignorance and the times around him' thing vs 'boy this motherfucker hated blacks and catholics until he died huh'
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Oct 18, 2017 20:23
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Empyrea's dead, apparently. Also, crowdfunding is circumventing the hobby for personal benefit.
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Oct 18, 2017 23:34
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What a fuckin chump.
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Oct 18, 2017 23:44
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ProfessorCirno posted:Oh, I wasn't trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. Quite the opposite! Sorry if it seemed that way. Yeah, same.
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Oct 18, 2017 23:59
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Just to clarify, I wasn't trying to say Conan is a 'hey kids, you know who's great? FRANCO' Fascist screed or that Howard was secretly jerking off in a brownshirt outfit while mouthing the fourteen words to himself in the mirror so much as that the early genre works of sword and sorcery/heroic fantasy has a lot of overlap with Fascist propaganda and ideals as a whole. It's part of the weird duplicity of fascism in that it simultaneously is disgusted by the individual while esteeming the hero and denouncing civilization as decadent but seeking to cement its stranglehold, which is where a lot of the heroic fantasy stuff winds up sitting sort of uneasily as 'is this fascist or just, you know, fantasy?' The root cause is largely them both drawing on the same root stock of myth, storytelling, and propaganda, much like how Tolkein is constantly getting all sorts of accusations even though if you had to pick one grumpy English novelist of the 20th Century to have a cagefight with Hitler it'd be either him or Orwell.
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Oct 19, 2017 00:16
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