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Yeah, maybe I'm not being clear. I'm not at all assuming it's unbalanced. I just can't tell. I wish it was better written because it has some cool ideas, but I just bounced off it.
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Mar 7, 2018 18:42
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food court bailiff posted:The fiction in Fragged Empire seems bad to me, although perhaps it is I who is actually bad. The fiction in Fragged Empire itself is pretty good. Like it's not blowing anyone's minds but it's a setting that explains why a bunch of diverse weirdoes are hanging out together on a spaceship, gives them places to go and things to do, and is thematically about learning to trust people despite a history of war and atrocity. The Protagonist Archive stuff is also solid; I love the Zhou. Fragged Aeternum was a huge disappointment on that front, though, to the point where if you're not just using it to literally run a Bloodborne or Dark Souls game or a homebrew setting I just wouldn't bother. I picked it up for the rules knowing this was probably the case but I feel bad for anyone who expected otherwise. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Mar 7, 2018 |
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Mar 7, 2018 18:51
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DalaranJ posted:Is this true? I always assumed that (us) storygamers were considered the snobs of RPGs. Have you every tried to get a self identified Pathfinder player to play any other system?
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Mar 7, 2018 19:13
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Have you every tried to get a self identified Pathfinder player to play any other system? Eww, why would I do that? Point taken.
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Mar 7, 2018 19:56
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in the magical future of the internet everyone gets to be a snob about their entertainment consumption
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Mar 7, 2018 20:07
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DalaranJ posted:Is this true? I always assumed that (us) storygamers were considered the snobs of RPGs.
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Mar 7, 2018 20:10
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dwarf74 posted:Looking at the blog it's basically "5e with houserules" Excellent. At last a D&D 5E without the toxicity of Zak Smith.
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Mar 7, 2018 20:29
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I just wanna see how aggressive their release schedule is, because 5e's schedule is super slow.
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Mar 7, 2018 20:55
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is there any cited reason for it being so slow? i never actually followed it because the core system wasn't interesting to me but I recall hearing that they took a phenomenally long time to release even a single book after the initial 3.
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Mar 7, 2018 20:57
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S.J. posted:I just wanna see how aggressive their release schedule is, because 5e's schedule is super slow. It’s Pathfinder so expect at least two books a month, a big rulebook every few months, and as many support materials as your budget can take.
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Mar 7, 2018 21:01
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Countblanc posted:is there any cited reason for it being so slow? i never actually followed it because the core system wasn't interesting to me but I recall hearing that they took a phenomenally long time to release even a single book after the initial 3. their staff is like 3 people in a broom closet that the mtg staff forgot about
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Mar 7, 2018 21:01
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Arivia posted:It’s Pathfinder so expect at least two books a month, a big rulebook every few months, and as many support materials as your budget can take. People don’t just use mega upload for all their gaming needs?
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Mar 7, 2018 21:05
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Arivia posted:It’s Pathfinder so expect at least two books a month, a big rulebook every few months, and as many support materials as your budget can take. Well it's usually something like, one campaign supplement, one adventure, a map, and either a new big rulebook or a mini version of an existing one, plus maybe some pawns or cards, plus Bones/Wizkids minis... yeah 
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Mar 7, 2018 21:06
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System Mastery once compared WotC to a rounding error in Hasbro's ledgers and that's still pretty accurate.
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Mar 7, 2018 21:07
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Countblanc posted:is there any cited reason for it being so slow? i never actually followed it because the core system wasn't interesting to me but I recall hearing that they took a phenomenally long time to release even a single book after the initial 3. Too many supplements will spoil the broth. In all seriousness, Hasbro probably can't be bothered to care and the people who are left are deathly afraid of killing the game by releasing too many splatbooks. It's probably more profitable to maintain a skeleton crew and ride the coattails of name recognition than it is to promote the brand through regularly released supplements (which some accountant probably figured out that it's more likely to cost them money to produce as opposed to the profit they maintain by doing nothing).
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Mar 7, 2018 21:08
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Countblanc posted:is there any cited reason for it being so slow? i never actually followed it because the core system wasn't interesting to me but I recall hearing that they took a phenomenally long time to release even a single book after the initial 3. Even before the "initial 3". It took a hell of a long time for the DMG to finally be released - Hoard of the Dragon Queen actually came out a month or two beforehand IIRC.
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Mar 7, 2018 21:12
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Serf posted:their staff is like 3 people in a broom closet that the mtg staff forgot about Which did they forget about, the closet or the people?
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Mar 7, 2018 21:19
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Countblanc posted:is there any cited reason for it being so slow? i never actually followed it because the core system wasn't interesting to me but I recall hearing that they took a phenomenally long time to release even a single book after the initial 3. The stated reason was that they intend 5e to be evergreen, so there’s no need to keep adding things. But their core product is living Forgotten Realms so they have to keep adding things.
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Mar 7, 2018 21:21
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LongDarkNight posted:Which did they forget about, the closet or the people? The closet probably costs them more money in energy costs than the salary of D&D employees.
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Mar 7, 2018 21:21
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Serf posted:their staff is like 3 people in a broom closet that the mtg staff
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Mar 7, 2018 21:35
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LongDarkNight posted:Which did they forget about, the closet or the people? its like that part in the new wolfenstein game where a hundred nazis have been hiding on a submarine for months behind a door covered up by a bookcase only except for a bunch of emaciated nazis its mike mearls
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Mar 7, 2018 21:39
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Hostile V posted:System Mastery once compared WotC to a rounding error in Hasbro's ledgers and that's still pretty accurate.
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Mar 7, 2018 23:01
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Turns out getting entire generations hooked on loot boxes as kids is a profitable business model.
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Mar 7, 2018 23:31
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LuiCypher posted:Too many supplements will spoil the broth. Don't forget that the DM's Guild is doing a lot of the heavy lifting as far as supplements and creative content is concerned.
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Mar 8, 2018 00:26
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Well, that was the whole intent.
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Mar 8, 2018 03:54
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Countblanc posted:is there any cited reason for it being so slow? i never actually followed it because the core system wasn't interesting to me but I recall hearing that they took a phenomenally long time to release even a single book after the initial 3. The official reason is that they didn't want to duplicate the supplement bloat of 3rd and 4th Editions, since that's bad and WOTC can do better. The real reason is because the team is small and has low output.
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Mar 8, 2018 04:09
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food court bailiff posted:Even before the "initial 3". It took a hell of a long time for the DMG to finally be released - Hoard of the Dragon Queen actually came out a month or two beforehand IIRC. Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat came out before the DMG. There was some delay with the DMG though. It might've been the time someone dev team had jury duty?
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Mar 8, 2018 04:24
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Nuns with Guns posted:Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat came out before the DMG. There was some delay with the DMG though. It might've been the time someone dev team had jury duty? HOTDQ at least was written before the rules were finalized, which made them coincide well with the release, but left things like encounter balance and monster stats a little janky. It should also be mentioned that HOTDQ was outsourced to, I believe it was Kobold Press, so it wasn't even the WOTC team that did the writing. And a lot of the new mechanics in later splatbooks are just rehashes of Unearthed Arcana articles, and Tales from the Dawning Portal is a rehash of old dungeons already written before and converted. There's just this patina of low-energy over the entire edition.
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Mar 8, 2018 05:05
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gradenko_2000 posted:There's just this patina of low-energy over the entire edition. I mean, the strategy is debatably working. WOTC is clearly putting minimal effort and resources into D&D and it's selling like hotcakes apparently (thanks to clever digital marketing more than anything), so I don't see Wizards changing that formula at all.
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Mar 8, 2018 08:26
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potatocubed posted:Don't forget that the DM's Guild is doing a lot of the heavy lifting as far as supplements and creative content is concerned. That's what it's supposed to do, but the quality is really bad.
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Mar 8, 2018 08:36
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Arivia posted:That's what it's supposed to do, but the quality is really bad. Given their main competition, does that really matter?
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Mar 8, 2018 09:38
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Inescapable Duck posted:Given their main competition, does that really matter? yes? Regardless of what you think of the system, Paizo at least has editors and a layout team.
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Mar 8, 2018 10:13
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Drone posted:I mean, the strategy is debatably working. WOTC is clearly putting minimal effort and resources into D&D and it's selling like hotcakes apparently (thanks to clever digital marketing more than anything), so I don't see Wizards changing that formula at all. i mean they really just got lucky as they put out a new edition at the same time as digital content producers were looking to branch out from video games imo
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Mar 8, 2018 11:14
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Drone posted:I mean, the strategy is debatably working. WOTC is clearly putting minimal effort and resources into D&D and it's selling like hotcakes apparently (thanks to clever digital marketing more than anything), so I don't see Wizards changing that formula at all. If you consider the target audience, their strategy seems to be perfect. That doesn’t stop me hating them for it.
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Mar 8, 2018 16:11
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As a really random aside, HotDQ/RoT are godawful garbage fires of plots that barely link up at all, but I thought the first two chapters of HotDQ were actually surprisingly good. The game opens with a city under attack, and gives a ton of little encounters that the PCs can do to help the defense effort. It's nothing super groundbreaking, but it is way more freeform than a standard intro dungeon crawl and nobody is sitting around in a tavern looking mysterious until the party shows up. Plus, the layout made it pretty easy to DM. The next chapter is another cool one, the party basically has to rescue a guy the cult captured in the raid, so they just kind of tag along back to the cultist's camp pretending to be coming back from the raid with everyone else. This one I just liked because (again, unlike pretty much everything else across both books), it flows so well from the first chapter, plus it's the kind of scenario that either rewards some careful planning and quick thinking, or can turn into a kind of smash-and-grab-and-run clusterfuck if the party decides to go loud.
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Mar 8, 2018 16:15
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Elfgames posted:i mean they really just got lucky as they put out a new edition at the same time as digital content producers were looking to branch out from video games imo Yeah, don't give WotC too much credit. They deserve some because someone handed them a good thing and they didn't screw it up, but they definitely were in the right place at the right time through minimal fault of their own as far as I can tell.
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Mar 8, 2018 19:52
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Everybody who had a PC capable of running games in the 90s loves Planescape: Torment, so I'm running a game set in Sigil. I'm reading the 2nd edition Planescape manual to bone up, and this is basically the tone of everything: Whoever wrote this was extremely opposed to the idea of player characters defeating any powerful entity or claiming any treasure or doing anything at all.
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Mar 9, 2018 09:45
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quote:whoever wrote this was extremely opposed to the idea of player characters defeating any powerful entity or claiming any treasure or doing anything at all. 90sgamedesign.txt
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Mar 9, 2018 10:10
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We needed the Seinfeld RPG.
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Mar 9, 2018 11:32
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Inescapable Duck posted:We needed the Seinfeld RPG. 
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Mar 9, 2018 11:51
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