dwarf74 posted:For about a decade I was in a pseudo-LARP that didn't have almost any of the RPG trappings. We had funny names, we wore garb, and a few did some characterization. There were no character classes, no beanbag spells, no hit points (well, except for the "you get hit in the torso or in two limbs, you die" variety). I hadn't really thought much about that kind of LARPing, which, frankly, is my bad. It's definitely a legitimate expression of the form, just not one that I have any experience with.
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Nov 6, 2018 16:39
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Biomute is clearly misapplying Marxian labor-value, as understood in the context of factory production, and also thinks Mage: The Awakening is a terrible game. Why engage at all?
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Nov 6, 2018 16:40
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Joe Slowboat posted:Biomute is clearly misapplying Marxian labor-value, as understood in the context of factory production, and also thinks Mage: The Awakening is a terrible game. Sometimes delivering withering bon mots in an end to itself. There's definitely no actually convincing Biomute, and I think by this time any unbiased observer would recognize the fallacies in their arguments. Now it's just arguing/dunking for its own sake.
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Nov 6, 2018 16:42
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Joe Slowboat posted:Biomute is clearly misapplying Marxian labor-value, as understood in the context of factory production, and also thinks Mage: The Awakening is a terrible game.
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Nov 6, 2018 16:46
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Joe Slowboat posted:Biomute is clearly misapplying Marxian labor-value, as understood in the context of factory production, and also thinks Mage: The Awakening is a terrible game. It might be the best realized game ever made; if the design philosophy was to evoke the setting by making the books as hard to decipher as the grimoires described therein. thotsky fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Nov 6, 2018 |
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Nov 6, 2018 16:49
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Meinberg posted:I hadn't really thought much about that kind of LARPing, which, frankly, is my bad. It's definitely a legitimate expression of the form, just not one that I have any experience with.
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Nov 6, 2018 16:50
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spectralent posted:I'm sympathetic, but I'm not sure who the person is who'd prefer to spend around £50-100 on glossy hardback books but not £50 plus the (admittedly undervalued) amount on a cheap tablet and PDFs, which are easier to transport and use, generally. I wouldn't claim to be rolling in it, but physical RPGs absolutely look like more of a sting cost-wise than PDFs even considering tablet costs (which aren't that high in comparison). Maybe the tablet market is hugely different in the US and it looks like more of a gulf? A low end tablet in the US will run you about $30, cheaper than a single D&D hardback. I mean those are pretty trashy tablets but they’ll absolutely let you read PDF or ePub. I usually share out the rules to my player’s phones, which is already a sunk cost for them. That being said paging through still seems a lot easier with a physical book.
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Nov 6, 2018 17:29
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Mage the Awakening is a good game and Save Point is a good rote.
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Nov 6, 2018 17:33
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Pope Guilty posted:I have no idea what the bit I've bolded is about- that's a feature of several boffer LARPs I'm aware of (and part of why I'm utterly uninterested in playing any LARP that's run as a business) but I've been playing live-action Vampire for almost twenty years and I've never seen any payment that wasn't for site fees, organization membership, or like convention fees. It's the for-profit boffer games like Dystopia Rising that want to sell you extra XP. The Cam was always bad about giving out perks for 'service', which generally amounted to sucking storyteller dick (metaphorically).
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Nov 6, 2018 17:59
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Liquid Communism posted:The Cam was always bad about giving out perks for 'service', which generally amounted to sucking storyteller dick (metaphorically). The cam was real bad for it. Membership Clearance was a feature, not a bug.
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Nov 6, 2018 18:12
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Biomute posted:Publishers like Burning Wheel HQ and Vincent Baker has it right: produce a compelling physical product, that is practical and fulfilling to use and pass around, while providing digital handouts for easy printing and a free pdf of the book for searching or giving to that friend who is keen enough to read it, but too cheap to buy it. I only buy ebooks now and am in the process of converting all my dead tree stuff over. I'm trying desperately to reduce the amount of clutter in my life. The only stuff I'm hanging on to physically is the really esoteric RPGs and books I know I'll never find digital copies of.
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Nov 6, 2018 19:06
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I'm really not sure if it's worth wading in on this but I can't help myself: the labor theory of value is a useful model but we are mostly or all of us living in capitalist economies, and in these economies value as measured by sales price is determined by supply and demand, not by cost of labor. It is entirely possible to put lots of labor into making something that is then worthless, because nobody wants it. This is of course not a universally accepted theory of valuation but it is very useful in this particular case, because it proves conclusively that PDFs of games have monetary value: demonstratably, people pay money for PDFs of RPG products. Therefore those PDFs have a measurable, nonzero value. That's it. It's the entire end of the idiotic premise. If PDFs had no value, nobody would pay for them. People pay for them, therefore they have value.
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Nov 6, 2018 20:34
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Biomute posted:A good is only worth the average amount of labor necessary to produce it, or the socially-necessary labor-time to produce it. I hate to break this to you, but... 
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Nov 6, 2018 20:40
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Cessna posted:I hate to break this to you, but... Supply and demand does not determine value, they only make the market price of stuff fluctuate above or below their value.
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Nov 6, 2018 20:51
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Cessna posted:I hate to break this to you, but... Those axes are backwards. As quantity of supply goes up price goes down, and as quantity of demand increases price goes up.
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Nov 6, 2018 21:01
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Biomute posted:Supply and demand does not determine value, they only make the market price of stuff fluctuate above or below their value. Your model of labor-value is flawed, because it cannot handle the idea of intellectual or literary labor. This is a known oversight in Marx, who was talking about factory labor and physically productive labor. You're talking about the production of objects to a known plan, not the production of that plan, itself. A more complete model of the labor value involved here would require a way of understanding intellectual production. There's plenty written on this, maybe you could read it. Pretty sure 'Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' doesn't just end in 'photocopies make written works valueless.' But, out of curiosity - what is the relative value of two books, bound and produced identically, but one has computer-generated gibberish for the text, and the other has an RPG's text? Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Nov 6, 2018 |
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Nov 6, 2018 21:10
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Biomute posted:Supply and demand does not determine value, they only make the market price of stuff fluctuate above or below their value. Oh, I forgot - you do.
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Nov 6, 2018 21:10
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Joe Slowboat posted:But, out of curiosity - what is the relative value of two books, bound and produced identically, but one has computer-generated gibberish for the text, and the other has an RPG's text? Trick question, they're the same thing.
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Nov 6, 2018 21:14
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Joe Slowboat posted:But, out of curiosity - what is the relative value of two books, bound and produced identically, but one has computer-generated gibberish for the text, and the other has an RPG's text?
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Nov 6, 2018 21:27
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I'm just wondering, are books on my kindle worthless too?
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Nov 6, 2018 21:44
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Biomute posted:Can't you see you are wrong to hate playing from PDFs? They are clearly more practical, books just gather dust, you're taking away the livelihood of struggling artists and you are also killing the rainforest. Just because bedlamdan's been probated for a month doesn't mean you have to fill the void of bad faith, incredibly lovely posting left in his wake.
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Nov 6, 2018 21:44
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Bruceski posted:Those axes are backwards. As quantity of supply goes up price goes down, and as quantity of demand increases price goes up. The chart tracks quantity and price. What you do is find a point corresponding to quantity and price, and the purple line shows the demand implied by that point. Notably, intellectual property that is infinitely reproduceable at almost no cost is harder to put on a chart like this, because there is little or no effective limit on supply. However, there is an initial cost, so there is a minimum price necessary in order for there to be any supply; so, supply is reactive to price and demand in a nonlinear fashion. At first there has to be enough demand to produce the intellectual property (or at least, to endeavor to produce it as a profit-making venture: of course you can write things you have no intention of selling irrespective of any demand); but once there is enough demand to justify production, you can produce enough supply for any amount of demand. Setting a price then becomes an exercise in optimization, comparative to other similar products, your other own products, and concepts like market share, etc. etc. etc. This chart is still useful to demonstrate the concept of how the equilibrium of supply and demand corresponds to the price and quantity of a good that the market will cause to be transacted. Biomute posted:Supply and demand does not determine value, they only make the market price of stuff fluctuate above or below their value. You keep using this word, "value," but I think one source of your confusion is conflating multiple different and incompatible definitions for it. The market price of a thing is one definition of its value; the utility of a thing is another; the uniqueness or cultural contribution of a thing is another; the prioritization its creators place on producing it is yet another. But for the purposes of this particular conversation, in which we are discussing whether games companies ought to make PDFs, the most operative definition of "value" is "the price the market will bear." This is clearly a nonzero number, as demonstrated by the fact that RPG companies are actively selling PDFs to customers for more than zero dollars, and often at a profit. Your argument rests on discounting that people are willing to give money to get RPG PDFs as any indicator or measure of value. For this to make even a little bit of sense, you're going to have to explain what you actually mean by the word. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Nov 6, 2018 |
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Nov 6, 2018 21:47
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Poundstone’s book Priceless argues that price and value aren’t determined economically at all, but psychologically. Understandable since pure economic pricing tends to fail to account for sales strategies, decoy pricing, prestiging etc. Ref invisible sun and most RPG Kickstarters.
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Nov 6, 2018 22:19
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Kai Tave posted:Just because bedlamdan's been probated for a month doesn't mean you have to fill the void of bad faith, incredibly lovely posting left in his wake. Well, there was an attempt to have a discussion about the aesthetic and subjective value of PDFs vs physical RPG books a few pages ago, but angry amateur publishers and economists kept falling over themselves to take it in this direction, and it was amusing, so I went with it. It's kept everyone busy so it can't be that bad.
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Nov 6, 2018 23:07
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Ah, the "my stupidity was all a great ruse" ploy. One of the classics. Would have probably worked better if he read the whole wiki entry on value theory before trying, though.
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Nov 6, 2018 23:25
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Biomute posted:Well, there was an attempt to have a discussion about the aesthetic and subjective value of PDFs vs physical RPG books a few pages ago, but angry amateur publishers and economists kept falling over themselves to take it in this direction, and it was amusing, so I went with it. It's kept everyone busy so it can't be that bad. Weird that people think that their work should be compensated fairly. I guess I'm the one that looks like the fool here somehow??? Bravo on your shining victory over us poor deluded artists, I bet you're feeling so satisfied with yourself right now. Good job, well done, congratulations, I'm sure Ayn Rand is proud of you.
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Nov 6, 2018 23:47
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Biomute posted:Well, there was an attempt to have a discussion about the aesthetic and subjective value of PDFs vs physical RPG books a few pages ago No there wasn't, you posted a bunch of dumb poo poo and got called on it, then decided to double down with this weak-rear end puppetmaster defense. gently caress off.
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Nov 6, 2018 23:49
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Yeah, me not wanting your stupid PDFs must mean that I want you to starve in the streets. Please, both of you, continue posting endlessly about how you don't care about my preference for books.
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Nov 6, 2018 23:52
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Kai Tave posted:No there wasn't, you posted a bunch of dumb poo poo and got called on it, then decided to double down with this weak-rear end puppetmaster defense. gently caress off. 
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Nov 6, 2018 23:58
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Biomute posted:Well, there was an attempt to have a discussion about the aesthetic and subjective value of PDFs vs physical RPG books a few pages ago, but angry amateur publishers and economists kept falling over themselves to take it in this direction, and it was amusing, so I went with it. It's kept everyone busy so it can't be that bad. Holy lol, going 'actually I was just pretending to be retarded' puppetmaster.
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Nov 7, 2018 00:00
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FMguru posted:Way back in the misty before-times I proposed the Iron Law of Grognards.TXT, which was that "Nerds + Economics = Hilarity, Every Time" Hell, Economists + Economics = Hilarity
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Nov 7, 2018 00:20
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Hell, Economists + Economics = Hilarity
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Nov 7, 2018 01:18
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Zereth posted:Doesn't the field of economics make a lot of "Spherical frictionless cow in a vacuum" type assumptions about human behavior? "Assuming a purely rational actor" is a preface on a lot of economic problems, yes.
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Nov 7, 2018 01:29
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In intro ec, when learning about the models, yes. Modern, actual economics does a lot of work to account for the evidence of how humans actually behave rather than relying on theoretical models divorced from reality. But that's not what you'll learn about in high school, or even an introductory college course.
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Nov 7, 2018 01:33
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Zereth posted:Doesn't the field of economics make a lot of "Spherical frictionless cow in a vacuum" type assumptions about human behavior? Yeah, and they also have a lot of problems with some billionaire's foundation saying "there's a 350k per year job for the first ten credentialed economists who support our theory that squeezing the poor in a huge grape press will produce delicious money juice AND help the middle class" edit: they also have a huge problem with excluding women in the field Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Nov 7, 2018 |
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Nov 7, 2018 01:34
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Leperflesh posted:In intro ec, when learning about the models, yes. Modern, actual economics does a lot of work to account for the evidence of how humans actually behave rather than relying on theoretical models divorced from reality. Working through 2nd year University Economics courses. Perfectly spherical cows very much in evidence. 
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Nov 7, 2018 02:06
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Are you at one of those austrian-school uh, schools? I was not an economics major, I'm repeating what econ majors have told me.
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Nov 7, 2018 02:31
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Leperflesh posted:Are you at one of those austrian-school uh, schools? So far it's mostly been classical, but I expect some Austrian economics is coming my direction. The way the Macroeconomics prof was trying to talk down Keynes is not filling me with confidence.
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Nov 7, 2018 03:23
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It's constant at the undergrad level. You don't stop seeing models that assume rational actors until post-grad economics, if that.
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Nov 7, 2018 07:44
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Economist Steve Keen has remarked that beyond just deliberate obfuscation of economics to serve the desires of capital, there's probably an element of sunk-cost fallacy in these things. To wit, once you finally get to the point where you're supposed to stop making these oversimplified assumptions, you're so deep in the weeds that you don't want to let go of them, because that would mean throwing out a bunch of work that you've already done. At the same time, people who don't get that far into economics don't get disabused of these assumptions in the first place.
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Nov 7, 2018 08:20
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