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Nuns with Guns posted:Mortal Engines is by the woman that plagiarized published books for her Draco Malfoy fanfic, right? no, that's Mortal Instruments. Mortal Engines is something like cities that eat other cities or something like that.
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Dec 27, 2018 14:03
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Mortal Engines from what I've read of it seems to basically be a brutal satire of capitalism with cities crawling across a post-apocalyptic wasteland eating each other even after there's barely any 'prey' towns left and sifting through relics of ancient capitalism, including the occasional superweapon. Also there's Terminators. It was pretty drat grim as YA fiction goes, to an almost absurd degree at times.
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Dec 27, 2018 14:12
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Xiahou Dun posted:Adding “economics” to the whiteboard labeled “Things Hyphz Can’t Do”. Fair enough. But that doesn’t make it right or sensible for the non-play rate to just be left as a gigantic elephant in the room. To say it doesn’t have an effect on consumer behaviour - and on the badness of the math - would be silly.
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Dec 27, 2018 14:17
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neongrey posted:no, that's Mortal Instruments. Mortal Engines is something like cities that eat other cities or something like that. Oh thank god. I was confused for a bit there.
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Dec 27, 2018 14:18
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That movie had the worst trailer I've ever seen on my life. Who the gently caress thought adapting that was a good idea??? Is it a chinese money laundering scheme like Mors said???
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Dec 27, 2018 14:28
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Plutonis posted:That movie had the worst trailer I've ever seen on my life. Who the gently caress thought adapting that was a good idea??? Is it a chinese money laundering scheme like Mors said??? Well, you know Peter Jackson and his passion projects.
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Dec 27, 2018 14:53
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hyphz posted:Fair enough. But that doesn’t make it right or sensible for the non-play rate to just be left as a gigantic elephant in the room. To say it doesn’t have an effect on consumer behaviour - and on the badness of the math - would be silly. "It would cut into the already slim profits and take a ton of time and effort the creators might not be able to spare" is a pretty sensible reason for tabletop RPGs to not have some kind of "always find players online" thing to have to worry about. Like I said, there's sites out there that people go to to find others to try out games they're interested in. And even with something like Roll 20, wouldn't that require a good amount of work on both the creators and the people programming stuff for Roll 20? If John Harper wanted to have Roll 20 support BITD like you said he should, then he'd have to go to them, work out how much it'll cost and how it'll work, and have to deal with any problems that might arise if it's explicitly something you're supposed to always have access to if buying the rules. Lesser known designers might not even be able to do that - is Roll 20 willing to officially set stuff up for any game designer who asks? Aren't a lot of them done by fans?
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Dec 27, 2018 15:32
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Even if I had time to play every rpg I read, I still wouldn't want to play them with randos
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Dec 27, 2018 15:36
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As I understand it BitD’s Roll20 support is fan made. I understand the randos issue too. But RPGs as they are feel a bit like the gym membership structure - not a scam or malicious per se, but having the effect of creating misery and making money in spite of it.
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Dec 27, 2018 16:03
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Andrast posted:Even if I had time to play every rpg I read, I still wouldn't want to play them with randos I have been playing living campaigns for twenty years, and there is a goddamn reason I don't play at a table unless I already know and like at least three other people at it.
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Dec 27, 2018 16:07
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hyphz posted:As I understand it BitD’s Roll20 support is fan made. This feels very hyperbolic to me. How does an unplayed game “create misery?”
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Dec 27, 2018 16:20
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Meinberg posted:This feels very hyperbolic to me. How does an unplayed game “create misery?” Just look at the resolutions threads.
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Dec 27, 2018 16:28
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hyphz posted:Just look at the resolutions threads. Is this the entire basis of this argument of yours? Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Dec 27, 2018 |
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Dec 27, 2018 16:42
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Heliotrope posted:"It would cut into the already slim profits and take a ton of time and effort the creators might not be able to spare" is a pretty sensible reason for tabletop RPGs to not have some kind of "always find players online" thing to have to worry about. Like I said, there's sites out there that people go to to find others to try out games they're interested in. And even with something like Roll 20, wouldn't that require a good amount of work on both the creators and the people programming stuff for Roll 20? If John Harper wanted to have Roll 20 support BITD like you said he should, then he'd have to go to them, work out how much it'll cost and how it'll work, and have to deal with any problems that might arise if it's explicitly something you're supposed to always have access to if buying the rules. Lesser known designers might not even be able to do that - is Roll 20 willing to officially set stuff up for any game designer who asks? Aren't a lot of them done by fans?
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Dec 27, 2018 17:11
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hyphz posted:As I understand it BitD’s Roll20 support is fan made. maybe rpgs aren't for you
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Dec 27, 2018 17:14
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hyphz posted:Just look at the resolutions threads. Depression is a hell of a thing
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Dec 27, 2018 17:16
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Lemon-Lime posted:Is this the entire basis of this argument of yours? Partly. And the fact that a friend who saw my shame shelves commented that he wondered if they “saw me coming”. And the other gold panning sales that tend to pop up at this time, and some comments on Discord about Savage Worlds. Did ya know Chuubo is a platinum seller on DTRPG? How many successful games of it do you know? There tends to be a problem when what gets rewards in the industry does not match what customers mostly actually want, and that seems to be the case here. hyphz fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Dec 27, 2018 |
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Dec 27, 2018 17:40
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hyphz posted:Partly. And the fact that a friend who saw my shame shelves commented that he wondered if they “saw me coming”. And the other gold panning sales that tend to pop up at this time, and some comments on Discord about Savage Worlds. Did ya know Chuubo is a platinum seller on DTRPG? How many successful games of it do you know? You know it's ok to just, like, buy books to read
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Dec 27, 2018 17:48
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Doesn't hurt there's a considerable history of Chinese pirates. They actually got a minor appearance in the third PotC movie. Not sure if they're romanticised to the same extent, but still. The Americas seem to romanticize pirates more than Europeans afaict and one big thing that America tends to romanticize that other countries don't are "outlaws" or "rebels." Whether its cowboys in the Wild West, gangsters in Prohibition, or pirates during the Age of Sail, Americans tend to romanticize figures that defy authority (or at least are purported to) more than other cultures in a way that isn't about maintaining their national or cultural identity. Chinese culture, otoh, seems to be more praising of authority and romanticize benevolent rulers over benevolent rebels. Part of that is based on Confucian ethics, I believe. Aside from that, the arguable most successful pirate in history is of Chinese descent: Ching Shih who, at her peak, reportedly commanded a fleet of 300 ships and 20k-40k pirates before finally being bested by the Portuguese Navy. As far as her romanticization by the Chinese, I'm not entirely sure, but her story is definitely one full of potential. She originally was a brothel madame/prostitute that married and became second to a pirate of his own renown that helped the Vietnamese fight off the Qing. After he died, she married their adopted son who became her second-in-command. After her defeat, she was given amnesty, allowed to keep her loot, and opened up a gambling house and brothel and even assisted as an advisor to the Chinese during the First Opium War. I'm sure a historian can do better justice to this, but this is baiscally the high points of her legacy
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Dec 27, 2018 17:51
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hyphz posted:Partly. And the fact that a friend who saw my shame shelves commented that he wondered if they “saw me coming”. And the other gold panning sales that tend to pop up at this time, and some comments on Discord about Savage Worlds. Did ya know Chuubo is a platinum seller on DTRPG? How many successful games of it do you know? People tend to buy a ton of games on Steam, especially when there's a sale, that they either never get around to playing or only play a little bit. Is that the fault of those games or Steam?
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Dec 27, 2018 17:53
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Heliotrope posted:People tend to buy a ton of games on Steam, especially when there's a sale, that they either never get around to playing or only play a little bit. Is that the fault of those games or Steam?
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Dec 27, 2018 17:56
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Huh, I hadn't noticed Chuubo becoming a platinum seller. That's neat! But if you haven't bought it, please go ahead and do so. Buy copies for all your friends! Really, I don't see why it being highly successful would be a sign of something wrong in the industry at all!
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Dec 27, 2018 18:06
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hyphz posted:There tends to be a problem when what gets rewards in the industry does not match what customers mostly actually want, and that seems to be the case here. You seem to be conflating "wanting to play" with "wanting to own". I'm probably never going to run another game of Fate again. I still buy every Fate book I can. I'm probably never going to run a game of 2d20, but I buy everything in that line that Modiphius puts out. I bought Chuubo. I have no interest in playing it. An online Chuubo-game-finder would be useless to me. In fact, less than useless, since it would mean that Jenna Moran had spent Chuubo resources on that game-finder that could have been spent on something I would derive value from.
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Dec 27, 2018 18:07
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I occasionally buy something on Steam just because I have no other way to purchase its soundtrack while having absolutely no intent to ever play the game itself, am I part of the problem Edit: to be frank, I quite often buy something on DTRPG explicitly to salvage its better parts or get some inspiration while knowing well in advance I would absolutely never run that game as is (or even run it in any form still even vaguely recognizable as ‘Title: The Adventuring’ to anyone), how and why is this an undesirable strategy and what remedies should the authors apply to control, prevent or rectify all the Wrong Purchases Foglet fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Dec 27, 2018 |
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Dec 27, 2018 18:10
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Achmed Jones posted:I would watch the hell out of wuxia buccaneers I'm late to the party and Bollywood is a bit west of Wuxia, but Pirates of Hindoostan might be something the thread can dig.
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Dec 27, 2018 18:37
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:You know it's ok to just, like, buy books to read Yep, it’s fine, if you’re choosing to buy them to read. Obviously I’m talking about empowering buyers here, not forcing play on them if they don’t want it. But most RPG blurbs and KS campaigns focus on selling the play experience, not the reading value. Here’s the Chuubo’s Kickstarter: quote:It's not only the best thing I've ever written but I suspect that you can get ~500 hours of tightly-themed gaming from it without prep or players feeling on rails.
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Dec 27, 2018 18:37
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moths posted:I'm late to the party and Bollywood is a bit west of Wuxia, but Pirates of Hindoostan might be something the thread can dig.
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Dec 27, 2018 18:46
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moths posted:I'm late to the party and Bollywood is a bit west of Wuxia, but Pirates of Hindoostan might be something the thread can dig. Rad, thanks for the link!
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Dec 27, 2018 18:49
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moths posted:I'm late to the party and Bollywood is a bit west of Wuxia, but Pirates of Hindoostan might be something the thread can dig. I wish I liked Pirates of Hindostan better. It had some great stuff, but as a kind of transparent attempt to duplicate Baahubali it falls miserably short. Thanks for reminding me I wanted to watch Gangs of Wasseypur over my vacation.
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Dec 27, 2018 19:00
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hyphz posted:Yep, it’s fine, if you’re choosing to buy them to read. Obviously I’m talking about empowering buyers here, not forcing play on them if they don’t want it. But most RPG blurbs and KS campaigns focus on selling the play experience, not the reading value. yes hello better business bureau? this kickstarter promised if I bought a game book I would get on average 500 hours of pleasant play experience, but I can't find any games on or offline because I'm kind of an antisocial weirdo and- hello hello
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Dec 27, 2018 20:24
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hyphz posted:Has that claim been checked for success rate? Do you really want to say that people need to support their claims with evidence?
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Dec 27, 2018 20:35
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spectralent posted:Wait, what? I'm not sure I follow. Is there some mechanism by which Outrider style things are tax evasion or something? No, they just got to a point where the IRS wanted them to start paying taxes on the payments (product) for the volunteers and they decided to shut the program down instead.
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Dec 27, 2018 20:41
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Mors Rattus posted:yes hello better business bureau? this kickstarter promised if I bought a game book I would get on average 500 hours of pleasant play experience, but I can't find any games on or offline because I'm kind of an antisocial weirdo and- It's a fair consideration. But again, there's the underlying trend. Like, the thing that's bad about gym memberships in industry terms isn't that people are lazy. It's that that model means that the most profitable gyms are the ones who get the most people who buy memberships and don't work out. As in, if there are two gyms who get the same number of members, and one manages to get them in the door and the other doesn't, the one that doesn't will be more successful because its costs are lower. It might even get more renewals, because people who have actually worked out can find it's not for them, whereas people who don't but believe they will in the future will pay to maintain that belief. And it might not be malicious, the second gym owner might just have been clueless, but when he's the one who stays in business that "cluelessness" will propagate. One article estimated that some gyms actually depend on only 18% of their members actually showing up; if more did, they'd run out of capacity, and if they couldn't sell that number of memberships, they wouldn't make money. And that's what the friend who saw the shelves thought about the "indie" RPG market. Basically, the argument is that anyone who regularly buys RPGs off the mainstream of D&D and a few of the other biggies like Cthulhu and maybe SR is pigeonholed as a customer who's prepared to buy new small systems when dissatisfied, and the Invisible Hand worked out that the way to get the most money from them is to not satisfy them. After all, if they were happily playing, they'd stop buying. It's the old White Wolf model of selling supplement after supplement to players who're hoping they'll eventually get the promised epic stories, except instead of selling supplement after supplement it's system after system. It might not be to the benefit of individual authors, but to the centralized platforms like DTRPG it's ideal. And thinking about that, it's easy to see alternative reasons why Genesys never fixed autofire, WH never fixed encounter borders, the Google+ threads are still mandatory reading for FATE, etc.. I mean, I used to feel hope about this stuff, but the feeling that it was all a lie is seriously tempting at this point.
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Dec 27, 2018 20:47
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hyphz posted:Yep, it’s fine, if you’re choosing to buy them to read. Obviously I’m talking about empowering buyers here, not forcing play on them if they don’t want it. But most RPG blurbs and KS campaigns focus on selling the play experience, not the reading value. Okay, guess I'll throw my two cents into this black void. Yes, it'd be nice if online lfg tools more advanced than recruitment posts on forums/roll20 existed. It'd be great if every tabletop rpg had a complete character builder and encounter builder and recruitment program. Do you know why none of this stuff exists? Because that all takes time, money, and skills that are severely limited by indie tabletop rpgs being made and sold largely by semi-professional hobbyists. Like do you realize your whole argument boils down to "Tabletop RPGs can't afford to create complicated play aids for me!" Do you think it's a shocking twist that an industry that's built on self publishing and which had always been heavily analog and populated with luddites is slow in making web tools and digital aids? Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Dec 27, 2018 |
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Dec 27, 2018 20:48
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hyphz posted:It's a fair consideration. But again, there's the underlying trend. have you ever stopped and considered that, rather than the Tabletop RPG industry being a great conspiracy to steal your money without you getting to play games, perhaps the issue is that you are depressed and also extremely bad at communication
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Dec 27, 2018 20:53
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Mors Rattus posted:have you ever stopped and considered that, rather than the Tabletop RPG industry being a great conspiracy to steal your money without you getting to play games, perhaps the issue is that you are depressed and also extremely bad at communication It's not a conspiracy because it's not deliberate, any more than the gym owner who didn't try to get people in the door and made more money might have just been lazy. But I would say it's a potential market failure. And it isn't just me, literally any forum - including this one with stuff on chat, F&F, resolutions, etc. - will be full of people saying they can't get games of non mainstream systems. Given how that's been the case for so long and given how that's the most profitable situation for DTRPG and Co, there's at least a good chance that the reason that's not changing is that that's the equilibrium. Imagine how different the RPG industry and RPG books would be if authors got a payment each time a game was played? It'd be the same as if gyms could only charge when people actually walked through the door to exercise. And pretty soon, average fitness would go up. hyphz fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Dec 27, 2018 |
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Dec 27, 2018 21:00
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hyphz posted:It's not a conspiracy because it's not deliberate, any more than the gym owner who didn't try to get people in the door and made more money might have just been lazy. But I would say it's a potential market failure. I propose the solution to your problem is to leave the market and find another hobby, then.
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Dec 27, 2018 21:02
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hyphz posted:
There would just be fewer gyms and fewer RPGs out there, and without the competition and drive and inter-communication between designers, the RPGs created would be worse.
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Dec 27, 2018 21:06
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Meinberg posted:There would just be fewer gyms and fewer RPGs out there, and without the competition and drive and inter-communication between designers, the RPGs created would be worse. I would wonder if losing a gym which could not afford to have people actually exercise would be much of a loss. It's also difficult to think why it would make RPGs worse for authors to have to think through a play experience rather than just writing enough blurb to sell a book.
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Dec 27, 2018 21:10
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hyphz posted:I would wonder if losing a gym which could not afford to have people actually exercise would be much of a loss. It's also difficult to think why it would make RPGs worse for authors to have to think through a play experience rather than just writing enough blurb to sell a book. What does this even mean, 'think through a play experience' has nothing to do with 'make a thing so hyphz can find a group.'
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Dec 27, 2018 21:11
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