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Covok posted:Short version: Zak S is a douchebag who's been banned on almost every RPG site online for being a whiny bitch who constantly argues. He was brought in as a consultant to appeal to grognards because he has sway with them. They gave him special thanks in the front of the book and paid him.  I am kinda glad I didn't pick up a starter set then.
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Apr 21, 2018 00:28
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Covok posted:He's the anti-Luke-Crane. ??? When has Luke been late? Luke releases things on time, builds up a brand and customer loyalty (he literally just mailed me and every other backer of one of his projects a physical item that was never promised to us, at no cost to us - completely at his own expense, months and months after all the rewards were delivered. Just a pure bonus that he sent us for supporting him. That sort of thing builds customer loyalty.) That last bit, though... knows how to monetize his products... no, he definitely doesn't do that. He sells very high quality physical products at very reasonable prices. His margins must be very small - I don't imagine he makes much money off of his games compared to what he could be making if he charged Monte Cook prices.
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Apr 21, 2018 00:28
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Jimbozig posted:??? When has Luke been late? Luke releases things on time, builds up a brand and customer loyalty (he literally just mailed me and every other backer of one of his projects a physical item that was never promised to us, at no cost to us - completely at his own expense, months and months after all the rewards were delivered. Just a pure bonus that he sent us for supporting him. That sort of thing builds customer loyalty.) It was really just a joke about the last point. I often joke that Luke Crane has a crippling fear of money and success.
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Apr 21, 2018 00:29
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Antivehicular posted:The $50-a-corebook price tag does feel kind of harsh, though. It's a lot cheaper on Amazon, and has been since day one. Which really sucks for FLGS. 
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Apr 21, 2018 00:36
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DalaranJ posted:It's a lot cheaper on Amazon, and has been since day one. Which really sucks for FLGS. Wait, what the gently caress, it's $20 there. Why? Ugh, gently caress, reading a bit more about Blades in the Dark, I really should have picked it up. It sounds super cool.
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Apr 21, 2018 00:37
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5E may be the worst edition of D&D if for no other reason than the fact that it so clearly lacks anything remotely resembling any sort of creative vision or passion behind it. Even 3.X with its dumb obviously busted and lovely rules was at least aiming towards something, even AD&D2E with its endless reams of cruft everywhere at least felt more like somebody sitting down to try and make their ideal game, but while people joke that 5E is Mike Mearls' Ideal D&D I don't even think that's true anymore, it's just a bland, flabby rehash that does nothing interesting, goes nowhere boldly, and while it's bad in other respects (bad encounter design framework, bad rules, bad balance, bad adventures, etc) it's that forgettable sort of bad. Forget D&D, buy Blades in the Dark.
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Apr 21, 2018 00:45
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Another person was made aware of 5e's background and general mechanical shittiness, and steered towards better gaming. Good job, goons.
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Apr 21, 2018 00:46
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paradoxGentleman posted:Another person was made aware of 5e's background and general mechanical shittiness, and steered towards better gaming. We do this a lot, don't we?
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Apr 21, 2018 00:47
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Ordered the book. I am weak, but at least I have a cool game to play!
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Apr 21, 2018 00:53
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paradoxGentleman posted:Another person was made aware of 5e's background and general mechanical shittiness, and steered towards better gaming. "Better"
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Apr 21, 2018 00:53
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Plutonis posted:"Better" Even you are gonna have to concede that BitD is better than D&D: Plain Unsalted Noodles edition.
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Apr 21, 2018 00:57
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I've been asked if I'll ever review Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition after reviewing Pathfinder and Starfinder, and it was never even really on the table for me. Paizo, in success and failure, is at least interesting. Which is ironic, because all three games are derivative as all hell. But at least Paizo producing copies of D&D is interesting in them making a success with a game that, frankly, the majority of role-playing gamers already owned. Making a success on that? That was worth puzzling out me. Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition is derivative and safe, though, so there's no real risk. The owners of Dungeons & Dragons making the least ambitious version of the game since 2nd Edition? What's there to say? I don't think 5th Edition is the worst game. It's just, for those with experience with D&D, a relatively boring and lackluster game, which is actually worse in my eyes.
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Apr 21, 2018 01:28
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Mediocrity and boredom is indeed a greater sin than being absolute poo poo or being wildly incompetent. You can still dissect and articulate why things don't work in the latter cases. The former is just "it exists and it is functional" there's nothing fun or interesting to it.
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Apr 21, 2018 01:35
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A random message I sent on another discord came up interesting: the owners said that they had a lot of GMs seeking to run more unusual games, but a lot of players who wanted to play the standards like 5e and Pathfinder. It makes a certain amount of sense thinking about it. Almost all of the traits that people ascribe to other systems can be fudged into D&D etc. by the GM, so from the players' point of view there seems to be limited benefit. On the other hand, they do have a) availability and b) books full of cool superpowers to shop for. Is this something indies need to improve on to be noticed more?
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Apr 21, 2018 02:06
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hyphz posted:A random message I sent on another discord came up interesting: the owners said that they had a lot of GMs seeking to run more unusual games, but a lot of players who wanted to play the standards like 5e and Pathfinder. Not suck. Nyuk nyuk!
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Apr 21, 2018 02:07
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Shut up about 5E, Jesus.
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Apr 21, 2018 02:43
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Ettin posted:Shut up about 5E, Jesus. Why is Jesus talking about 5e?
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Apr 21, 2018 02:44
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Covok posted:Why is Jesus talking about 5e? He’s suffering in our place.
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Apr 21, 2018 02:44
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Jesus just plain doesn't work without saving throws hth.
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Apr 21, 2018 02:48
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Stats for Jesus.
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Apr 21, 2018 02:49
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Pollyanna posted:Ordered the book. I am weak, but at least I have a cool game to play! BitD also has a good number of hacks in production that use the same system for different sorts of games. So if you can't find anyone who wants to play a crew of criminals in a fantasy city, you might be able to interest them in Adventure Archeologists or gritty space adventures. https://bladesinthedark.com/forged-dark Also see the fan stuff.
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Apr 21, 2018 03:09
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So, while looking up other stuff, I stumbled across Lotus Dimension.  Anybody get a look at this thing? Hear anything about it?
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Apr 21, 2018 12:18
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Pollyanna posted:I have little to no TRPG experience so I have no real perspective on how hard something is to play. Ah, yeah, with nothing to compare it to, Blades looks like it has a ton of moving parts to keep track of. One of the reasons, I think, is because the book clearly chunks out all of its different systems. You have all these little sections on reducing stress, healing harm, expanding a crew's turf, managing reputations and heat, NPC contacts that your player characters have, and a whole lot of other things. It looks like there are all these separate complex systems that come into play that you have to remember (or remember to look up). The nice thing, though, is that most of them are built from the same building blocks: rolling the action dice and using "clocks" to track progress. The challenge with Blades in the Dark as a first TTRPG is probably in the way it'll want you to GM. It's definitely a PbtA-style game, where the GM doesn't have very many numbers to worry about, but instead has the important (and difficult) job of reacting on the fly to player character actions and managing the narrative flow. That said, I think that's probably the best way to learn to GM, because a lot of the habits you'll pick up will make you a better GM with any other game you run in the future, so I hope you can get a group together. Blades is really, really good stuff! One reason my group ended up loving it is because I think a lot of them secretly wanted to play the "bad guy" for a while, so getting to play a bunch of scoundrels stealing from and beating up other scoundrels really appealed to them. But it's also just a really well-made game with a fun setting. It's Dishonored mixed with The Lies of Locke Lamora. What could go wrong?
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Apr 21, 2018 12:49
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Regardless, I don't have anyone to play with, but if I come across the book again I might just pick it up.
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Pollyanna posted:I have little to no TRPG experience so I have no real perspective on how hard something is to play. Consider checking out 13th Age if you want a dnd-esque game that isn't utterly boring.
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Apr 21, 2018 16:11
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Ettin posted:Shut up about 5E. I’ll shut up about it when it’s not the only game in town while I have a shelf full of other stuff that looks much better but no one else will look at twice. 
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Apr 21, 2018 16:18
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I finally got to play On the Edge, coercing my friends to play with a couple hastily kludged together decks from my embarrassingly large collection. It's really fun game, if weird, and best suited for playing with 3+ players. The cards that throw alternate victory conditions are great fun for loving everything up (I pulled a win away from one of the other players) but can kind of make the game a slog.
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Apr 22, 2018 04:04
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Vulpes Vulpes posted:I finally got to play On the Edge, coercing my friends to play with a couple hastily kludged together decks from my embarrassingly large collection. It's really fun game, if weird, and best suited for playing with 3+ players. The cards that throw alternate victory conditions are great fun for loving everything up (I pulled a win away from one of the other players) but can kind of make the game a slog. OnTE is radically different in multiplayer and with the number of players because of the fixed depth of Conspiracy. I've seen that loved and hated in equal measure.
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Apr 22, 2018 17:03
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hyphz posted:A random message I sent on another discord came up interesting: the owners said that they had a lot of GMs seeking to run more unusual games, but a lot of players who wanted to play the standards like 5e and Pathfinder. The GM needs to understand the rules more than the players do, so bad rules are more obvious on their side. That can't really be changed without a culture shift. Until the players start caring about rules quality, they'll never seek out good rules, and indies can't have the shear volume of material present for 5e and Pathfinder.
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Apr 22, 2018 17:45
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golden bubble posted:The GM needs to understand the rules more than the players do, so bad rules are more obvious on their side. That can't really be changed without a culture shift. Until the players start caring about rules quality, they'll never seek out good rules, and indies can't have the shear volume of material present for 5e and Pathfinder. Empty quoting this.
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Apr 22, 2018 18:11
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golden bubble posted:The GM needs to understand the rules more than the players do, so bad rules are more obvious on their side. That can't really be changed without a culture shift. Until the players start caring about rules quality, they'll never seek out good rules, and indies can't have the shear volume of material present for 5e and Pathfinder. Hmm, I'm not sure about that. For example, the bad rules that create caster supremacy aren't necessarily too much of a problem for the GM unless they deliberately insulate players against it. I guess the real problem is that trying to introduce an indie tends to run into the question "why can't we just do [indie's USP] with D&D and have all these options too, plus not have to learn a new system?" I do notice that codified advancement seems to be a lot more important to players than it's generally considered to be.
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Apr 22, 2018 18:49
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I wanna try a Scorcese blades in the darks game and rename the archetypes to De Niro, Pacino and Pesci
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Apr 22, 2018 18:53
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hyphz posted:the bad rules that create caster supremacy aren't necessarily too much of a problem for the GM unless they deliberately insulate players against it. I take it you've never run a 3.5 game with casters and non-casters in the same party?
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Apr 22, 2018 18:55
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Lemon-Lime posted:I take it you've never run a 3.5 game with casters and non-casters in the same party? I've run it, yes. Again, the fact the classes are unbalanced isn't a problem for me as GM if the players don't have a problem with it.
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Apr 22, 2018 18:58
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hyphz posted:Hmm, I'm not sure about that. For example, the bad rules that create caster supremacy aren't necessarily too much of a problem for the GM unless they deliberately insulate players against it.
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Apr 22, 2018 19:46
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golden bubble posted:indies can't have the shear volume of material present for 5e and Pathfinder. SotDL has a *lot* of (humanely priced) content. I’d be surprised if it was much less than 5e has.
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Apr 22, 2018 20:00
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Yawgmoth posted:I am repeatedly impressed with your ability to not only have, but argue the dumbest and most provably wrong opinions all the time. To be fair, if you go by hyphz's previous arguments that imply the major purpose of a GM is to create and adjudicate obstacles of objectively-determined appropriate difficulty, it may be fair to say that wild power imbalances in a party aren't a big deal as long as the GM can still develop obstacles that are fair to the group. "Someone's not contributing and isn't having fun" isn't an issue for this kind of GM to solve, in the same way that "someone's feeling unhappy for any reason that isn't the difficulty level or fairness of obstacles" isn't.
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Apr 22, 2018 20:07
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Antivehicular posted:To be fair, if you go by hyphz's previous arguments that imply the major purpose of a GM is to create and adjudicate obstacles of objectively-determined appropriate difficulty, it may be fair to say that wild power imbalances in a party aren't a big deal as long as the GM can still develop obstacles that are fair to the group. "Someone's not contributing and isn't having fun" isn't an issue for this kind of GM to solve, in the same way that "someone's feeling unhappy for any reason that isn't the difficulty level or fairness of obstacles" isn't. It's more that if you take "X player is not able to contribute, because of the system" as a GM problem rather than a player problem, then by definition all bad rules become the GM's problem because they are held responsible for everything. But it seems that getting past the "GMs want to run unusual stuff, players only want 5e/PF" problem must require at some point the problems with those being exposed to the players, otherwise their logic is sound. (And although I know it's maligned, there are players who don't have a problem with unequal contributions.)
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Apr 22, 2018 20:19
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Antivehicular posted:To be fair, if you go by hyphz's previous arguments that imply the major purpose of a GM is to create and adjudicate obstacles of objectively-determined appropriate difficulty, it may be fair to say that wild power imbalances in a party aren't a big deal as long as the GM can still develop obstacles that are fair to the group. "Someone's not contributing and isn't having fun" isn't an issue for this kind of GM to solve, in the same way that "someone's feeling unhappy for any reason that isn't the difficulty level or fairness of obstacles" isn't.
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Apr 22, 2018 20:41
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That's a game design failure. Its only a GM problem because typically the GM decides what game is being played. The GM also isn't solely responsible for all participants having fun, but that's another matter.
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Apr 23, 2018 00:27
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Yawgmoth posted:Yeah except that argument is "if you're not having fun as a player it's your own fault" and falls apart from the premise because if your party is imbalanced then having objectively "appropriately difficult" challenges for the party are objectively impossible to create in the first place. If someone can't contribute because the rules of the game say "the wizard can do everything you can and they do it faster and more completely" then I can't see how that isn't a GM problem since (a) that informs how those obstacles are created in the first place and (b) informs the difficulty of the challenges. If character A has an AC of 30 and character B has an AC of 15, no matter what monster you throw at them you either make one character immune to damage or one character gets auto-hit. In either case character B is gonna feel like poo poo. Oh, sure, I'm not disagreeing with you; it's an argument that falls apart as soon as you consider roleplaying to be any kind of collaborative storytelling activity where the participants care about each other as human beings. My point is just that it's not logically inconsistent with hyphz's other stated beliefs, not that those beliefs are remotely good ones.
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Apr 23, 2018 00:33
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