|
Lemon-Lime posted:b) this is what happens when you give away your entire loving product line to all your KS backers. What do you mean?
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 22:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 22:49 |
|
|
Dawgstar posted:What do you mean? Like backing it got you PDFs of literally every supplement ever released for free. It was INSANE
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 22:26
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:What do you mean? Backers of the 7th Sea 2e kickstarter were promised - and received - every product in the line as a PDF, ending at the Khitai stuff which you had to back Khitai to get instead (and which isn't out yet regardless). These books are extremely high production values and most people who now own them only paid for, uh, the core, effectively.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 22:26
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:Backers of the 7th Sea 2e kickstarter were promised - and received - every product in the line as a PDF, ending at the Khitai stuff which you had to back Khitai to get instead (and which isn't out yet regardless). These books are extremely high production values and most people who now own them only paid for, uh, the core, effectively. Um. Wow. Allow me to take a drink so that I might properly do a spit-take.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 22:27
|
|
|
Paying for PDFs is pretty dumb anyway. Pen and Paper RPGs is pretty much a nostalgia-based industry at this point and any business model should revolve around producing collectible, tangible books and goods.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 22:30
|
|
|
yes, because paper and ink has value but the time and effort people put into creating content is worthless
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 22:41
|
|
|
Biomute posted:Paying for PDFs is pretty dumb anyway. Pen and Paper RPGs is pretty much a nostalgia-based industry at this point and any business model should revolve around producing collectible, tangible books and goods. I almonst never back anything beyond the basic PDF tier, and I'm sure plenty of people are in the same position.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 22:58
|
|
|
Biomute posted:Paying for PDFs is pretty dumb anyway. Pen and Paper RPGs is pretty much a nostalgia-based industry at this point and any business model should revolve around producing collectible, tangible books and goods. how do you post from 2008 and please take me back with you
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 23:08
|
|
|
Biomute posted:Paying for PDFs is pretty dumb anyway. Go into detail about why you think this is the case.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 23:36
|
|
|
Books do work better for getting a game played in real life. PDFs work better for getting a game played online, provided they either give permission for group sharing or get pirated. That’s usually the killer - if a game allows its PDF to be shared with group members, that’s an easy way to get a free copy which unlike an RL shared copy you can keep forever. If it doesn’t, it will never be played. And yea, it’s fine to pay for PDFs. Although if an RPG could just be reduced to a geek code it might be a bad deal.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 23:37
|
|
|
Do people not have tablets or something? It's way, way easier to bring a few PDFs to a game than physically lug the equivalent amount of books, especially if they're thick. Like, Golden Sky Stories isn't the world's biggest RPG and it's still a pain to carry around until you get to the FLGS, and literally gently caress ever remotely bringing all the books for even something like dark heresy. I feel like trying to bring a full 4e set would just be impossible.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 23:43
|
|
|
It can be easier, but I find a) searching through a book is faster on PDF but going to a known place is faster physically. Muscle memory is still a thing b) getting away from screens is a highlight of physical RPG play for many folks I’ve met so bringing them back is undesirable.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 23:49
|
|
|
PDFs are better than books but neither is particularly great. I think an indexed, cross-linked wiki is probably better than either. I feel like "look up one thing, which prompts you to look up something else" is an extremely common and fairly slow operation on either format. Obviously cross-links are possible to do in a pdf, but it never works as well as a browser with a wiki and often people don't bother. Even when I buy books, I then go pirate the PDF to actually use during play 
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 23:50
|
|
|
Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:PDFs are better than books but neither is particularly great. I think an indexed, cross-linked wiki is probably better than either. I feel like "look up one thing, which prompts you to look up something else" is an extremely common and fairly slow operation on either format. Obviously cross-links are possible to do in a pdf, but it never works as well as a browser with a wiki and often people don't bother. The D&D 3.5 hypertext SRD was so groundbreaking and so fantastically useful that it continues to baffle me that hardly any RPGs have done it since. I understand that there is some apprehension about putting your rules online so they can get stolen, but this represents a failure to understand that the rules themselves - separate from your fluff writing - aren't protected by copyright anyway. It's not like having the hyperlinked SRD available cost them book sales! Of course, the site is made by a third party - they also have the 5e site. So I guess we're still at "0" as the number of game creators who put up hyperlinked cross-referenced rules reference sites themselves? As an aside... the D20 hypertext SRD won an Ennie in 2005, lol.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 23:58
|
|
|
Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I think an indexed, cross-linked wiki is probably better than either. I feel like "look up one thing, which prompts you to look up something else" is an extremely common and fairly slow operation on either format. Which leads to the irony that, out of all large-run RPGs, Pathfinder is likely the most user-friendly due to the PFSRD wiki.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 23:58
|
|
|
Zurui posted:Which leads to the irony that, out of all large-run RPGs, Pathfinder is likely the most user-friendly due to the PFSRD wiki. I'm baffled at how easy it was to play this campaign I joined because of that lmfao. It's a crap system but god drat playing it online on roll20 is a breeze because of that support.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 00:00
|
|
|
Also it’s easier to bring a bunch of books for people to look through and say “hey do you fancy playing these” than to pass around a tablet or hand out a shared link that everyone will get lost navigating (and/or just scrape the whole share, cha-ching)
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 00:00
|
|
|
If someone had the idea of making a wiki site for a system and like charge 5 bucks a month to have access to it, as long as I get hyperlink articles containing all the content of the game line I'd subscribe on a heartbeat instead of buying pdfs.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 00:02
|
|
|
spectralent posted:Do people not have tablets or something? It's way, way easier to bring a few PDFs to a game than physically lug the equivalent amount of books, especially if they're thick. Like, Golden Sky Stories isn't the world's biggest RPG and it's still a pain to carry around until you get to the FLGS, and literally gently caress ever remotely bringing all the books for even something like dark heresy. I feel like trying to bring a full 4e set would just be impossible. I entirely agree with everything about this statement except for your example. Like, Golden Sky Stories is probably significantly smaller than the novel I was reading on the train to a game. (And if you're driving jesus christ it's nothing.) . I get what you're saying but you picked the least egregious example. That book is so small I'd debate whether to bring a bag or not and then remember that I need to carry cigarette and bring my messenger bag, and those would be the only things in it. I know you were trying for understatement, but it's basically a comic book. But yeah if we could all move to hyperlinked .pdfs that'd be really great. I love the physical feel of books, probably more so than most people, but the pure functionality of rules just having bookmarks to their full explanations (maybe a short summary on a mouse-over if we're very lucky?????) would be amazing.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 00:03
|
|
|
It's funny to me as a technical writer because at my company we stopped printing books over a decade ago, and we're starting to leave PDFs behind as obsolete technology already now. Connectivity is ubiquitous enough that people don't need to download our content, and online hyperlinked pages are much more powerful than the forced linearity and inflexible page sizing/layout choices that PDFs force you into. It's also far easier to update and maintain content that is single-sourced and granularized rather than having to republish a PDF and get everyone to re-download it every time you make a content change. Of course printed material and PDFs both have their advantages and ideally a game publisher would do both. It's so easy to generate a PDF from whatever system you're using to create your physical books that it's fairly ridiculous not to do it. And if you're using more granular authoring (every topic is its own entity in your content management system, you create documents by mapping topics into a structure) you can generate print, PDF, and web output from the same source without much trouble. ...but of course, anyone with significant competence in single-sourced content management and technical document creation can get a job paying double or triple what they can get at a random RPG company, which is as always the real problem; one for which, not coincidentally, the only cure is to be willing to pay more for content, which takes us right full circle back to Biomute posted:Paying for PDFs is pretty dumb anyway. Pen and Paper RPGs is pretty much a nostalgia-based industry at this point and any business model should revolve around producing collectible, tangible books and goods. being the exact opposite of a good outcome for this dumb industry.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 00:12
|
|
|
ePub, y'all.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 00:14
|
|
|
Pricing is hard to nail down on digital RPG books, too. Most prose books don't have to worry about recouping costs from commissioned art and tessting play material in addition to editing and formatting technial layouts. The closest comparison are textbooks, which are famously overpriced. Comic collections are close, I guess, except that similar price points have much smaller page counts, or lager page counts at a much higher price point, which are usually considered prestige colletons for niche fans.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 00:36
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:The D&D 3.5 hypertext SRD was so groundbreaking and so fantastically useful that it continues to baffle me that hardly any RPGs have done it since. I understand that there is some apprehension about putting your rules online so they can get stolen, but this represents a failure to understand that the rules themselves - separate from your fluff writing - aren't protected by copyright anyway. It's not like having the hyperlinked SRD available cost them book sales! Our very own Gimmickman, maker of notably good and well balanced mechgame Battle Century G made his rules available for free on his blog in SRD format. So that's at least one author who gets it!
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 02:32
|
|
|
So, this has been rattling around in my head for a while, and I decided to talk about it here. LARP has a pretty reputation, and for fairly good reasons, in the USA. It's widely associated with the boffer community of dorks in bad costumes yelling numbers at each other while they hit at each other with padded sticks and packets full of bird seed. From an outside perspective (and often an inside one), it seems very silly. The international LARP scene is often quite different, though. In the Nordic countries, public clubs, even recreational ones, are eligible for public funding if they meet certain requirements for open membership and size. An average tabletop group won't meet these requirement, but a LARP group with dozens or hundreds of members would. This stream of funding has allowed for the Nordic LARP scene to develop in ways that its American counterparts just haven't been able to, historically. The one international constant in LARPing, though, is Vampire: the Masquerade LARPs. It's easy to do a Vampire LARP cheap, but increased production values can make them even more exciting. Low costuming requirements, a wide spread of local games to limit transportation, and not having overnight games drops the financial barrier to entry for players, and game runners can play out of relatively cheap locations, allowing them to charge limited fees for entry. Vampire LARPs also tend to be or become incredibly toxic, due to the high level of PvP in the games, the systems rewarding players for paying more, power structures that can give people with in game and out of game power a sense of megalomania, and general vampire themes being a bit rapey. Still, they've become the standard for parlor LARPs in the USA and abroad, that other parlor LARPs have evolved from. In addition to boffer LARPs, which are still relatively popular, and parlor LARPs, which continue to putter along slowly, neither of which are really home for much innovation, there is also a tradition of freeform LARPs. American freeform is largely designed for con games, with four hour run times and simplified mechanics, which also allow them to be easily be picked up for local freeform groups to run through a number of them in short order over a weekend. Similiar traditions have also grown up in the Nordic countries, though there the themes have become increasingly political and emotionally intense. As telecommunications technology has increased, so has the interconnectivity between the USA and Nordic scenes, leading to a cultural exchange that has largely resulted in American designers and game runners taking techniques that had been developed in the Nordic communities and adapting them for use in home games. Another trend that is slowly being imported from the Nordic countries is the concept of the blockbuster LARP. Blockbuster LARPs are, generally, low mechanics, high production values, on location LARPs, like a Hamlet inspired LARP set in Elsinore castle. A lot of these blockbusters in Europe take place in castles actually. A key result of all of these blockbuster LARPs, which often revolve around taking popular media and adapting them to LARP with the IPs changed just enough, is that a lot of people who would not otherwise LARP get involved. New World Magischola in the USA has done similar things, having a Harry Potter inspired LARP set on actual college campuses, with significant percentages of first time LARPers, attracted by the theme and the production values. Still, without government funding, these LARPs are significantly more expensive and significantly rarer in the USA. In the end, this has created a Nordic gaming scene that is heavily LARP driven, with RPGs falling into the shadow. This is also why White Wolf was purchased by Paradox, a Swedish company with an interest in the Vampire LARP scene, and why NuWolf has been pushing for LARP focused material. The toxicity of Vamp LARPs worldwide may also help explain why NuWolf is so lovely. I've probably skimped over a lot of important details in this overview, but considering how often I see "why LARP" in various forms about the White Wolf thing, I figured an effort post on the topic in general might be of interest to some folks.
|
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 03:02
|
|
|
I do all my gaming online these days so I only buy hard copies of stuff that really interests me.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 03:19
|
|
|
Physical books are legitimately generally better for real life games where you can physically point to things in the book, but also just period for new games, so players can flip through and actually look through the art and pick up on the game's general aesthetics and whatnot. Games do a pretty terrible job of explaining themselves, but often enough the art does a far better job, and it always increases player buy-in when they can point to something in the book and say "That's sick as hell, I wanna do that" or "look at this total babe, can I be her?" That said, in most other situations, I prefer pdf, because I gotta live within my means, which ain't much, and books take up room that pdfs don't, and cost more money then pdfs do. Anyways buy pdfs, support your artists.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 04:20
|
|
|
The minute some RPG drops with a physical product you'll have people overseas who don't want to pay prohibitive shipping costs. Understandably so.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 04:22
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:or "look at this total babe, can I be her?"  Yes, this is what the total babes in RPG art are for... so players will want to... be her.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 04:38
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:
Yes it is dude. That's why i pick hot anime babe art on boorus when making characters.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 04:41
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:
Just because you're a manchild doesn't mean us ladies don't want to be badass and hot too?
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 04:44
|
|
|
Oh okay, I feel reassured now, RPG art isn't packed full of T&A squarely aimed at a cishet male audience. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 04:55
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:Oh okay, I feel reassured now, RPG art isn't packed full of T&A squarely aimed at a cishet male audience. You don't need to be an rear end in a top hat about this.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 05:06
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:Oh okay, I feel reassured now, RPG art isn't packed full of T&A squarely aimed at a cishet male audience. I don’t think you want to die on this hill. While male gaze is very much a problem in this hobby, you’re responding to a woman who took inspiration from the art. This seems like a bad play at best.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 05:15
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:I don’t think you want to die on this hill. Yeah I ain't trying to man-splain sexism to a woman, but I also ain't gonna not roll my eyes at the idea the sexy babes in rpg art are there exclusively to inspire players and with no prurient context, neither. If molly likes those pics that's fine and legit. Doesnt change why they're there or that it's a problem. If I hurt cirno's feelings well I'm sorry, that wasn't my intent.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 05:37
|
|
|
The most powerful (and sexy) rpg book is the MM1 for D&D 3e because it looks like it was made out of a red dragon. The 3.5e MM is a tarted-up hussy.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 06:13
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:The most powerful (and sexy) rpg book is the MM1 for D&D 3e because it looks like it was made out of a red dragon. The 3.5e MM is a tarted-up hussy. yeah, Henry Higgenbotham is the goddamn boss for those. If you're wondering how they look so good, they're actually photographs of sculptures. He MADE those. Wonder what he's up to these days.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 06:18
|
|
|
I've been thinking about this while doing the dishes for the last half-hour and I think I want to double-down on the apologies. This: Leperflesh posted:
was originally intended to be lighthearted and a joke, at the expense of the legions of immature men who have dominated our hobby for 30 years. But pointing it at ProffessorCirno was unfair and the joke is in poor taste and the sarcasm after MollyMetroid posted was rude. I apologize to both of you. A serious subject like the problems of male gaze and sexist portrayals and pandering to male fantasies in gaming deserves serious thoughtful posts, not backhanded bad jokes and sarcasm. And I'm pretty sure we've spent a few pages on this topic before, so we don't need to revisit it if nobody else is interested.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 06:40
|
|
|
Thank you. I apologize for assuming you were what you were parodying.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 07:14
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:The minute some RPG drops with a physical product you'll have people overseas who don't want to pay prohibitive shipping costs. Understandably so. I'm not gonna lie that this is a massive consideration for me. I'm aware this is basically because of the US government's obsession with making sure public companies fail, but it's a real consideration these days when you can pay half the cost or more in shipping. That said I still think PDFs are just generally better even if you're playing IRL, though obviously the more easily connected you are to rules you want to look at the better it is. The problem is, a physical book isn't connected; sure, there's muscle memory, but I also vaguely remember where everything in most of the books I regularly use is and can punch that page number in. In most other respects it's straight up worse. I still have a ton of books because lol I'm a nerd.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 08:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 22:49 |
|
|
RPG companies are also generally bizarrely terrible at managing cross-reference page numbers for anything even though literally every piece of layout software and word processor from Word 95 on have had page refs as a built-in feature.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 09:54
|
|
