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i’m from the rpg commissariat and i’m here to make sure you are actually running 1 game of blades in the dark per week
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Dec 28, 2018 00:51
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Good daycycle, citizen! Is your Mandatory Fun Mandatory License in order for that game of Vulture Squaddies & Vertical Shafts you're planning on running? Please hold the license over your head with nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine thirty seconds to comply.
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Dec 28, 2018 01:02
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Meinberg posted:Kindle Unlimited does pay authors based off of pages read but charges a monthly fee to readers and is mostly crap to be clear this is a great example of this idea being a piece of poo poo if they ever tried to implement it
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Dec 28, 2018 01:43
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atholbrose posted: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. And I'm looking forward to this one. Lots of women chopping up British soldiers with swords. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKmkMVaNu9g
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Dec 28, 2018 01:54
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I bought Monopoly last week but returned it because it didn't come with a way for me to force people to play it with me. Should have at least had some heavy twine and a cattle prod in there.
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Dec 28, 2018 02:03
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theironjef posted:I bought Monopoly last week but returned it because it didn't come with a way for me to force people to play it with me. Should have at least had some heavy twine and a cattle prod in there. Well, hopefully force would not be required. If it was, that would probably be a game design issue. I can understand it being required for Monopoly, though.
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Dec 28, 2018 02:20
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mllaneza posted:And I'm looking forward to this one. Lots of women chopping up British soldiers with swords. That looks great.
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Dec 28, 2018 02:25
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remusclaw posted:I would like to see a mock up of how one could enforce a pay only when you play system. Not because it's a good idea, but because its a crazy idea that would likely require absurd amounts of effort and possibly legislation. In (awful, awful) theory, I can picture an app that you could pay a buck to get access to semirandomized character sheets for a mystery game? Sounds awful, though.
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Dec 28, 2018 03:09
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Kai Tave posted:It took a lot of work to top someone claiming their English degree made them more qualified to criticize RPGs for the dumbest thing posted to the TG As An Industry thread before the end of the year but congratulations everyone, we pulled it out at the last minute. There's four entire days left until 2019, don't you dare tempt fate like this.
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Dec 28, 2018 03:12
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Andrast posted:I have read all the books on my bookshelf. Is that weird or something? Yes, absolutely.
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Dec 28, 2018 03:36
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WaywardWoodwose posted:The real secret to playing all those dusty games languishing on your shelf is to just run them yourself. Grab starter kit instead of all the core books to begin with, look for quickstart rules, or just get some free adventures online. Offer up a game, teach people the rules, and you'll never have to have a gameless night again. If word gets out you are running games, or better yet you run them in public at your FLGS, you'll have so many prospective players you'll have to chase them away with a broom. Cool. Did that for a year at an FLGS near the University of Pittsburgh. Drew up demos, printed out character sheets, made up a rotating schedule, threw away my Saturdays for an entire year, passed out flyers and posted on the store site. Ran two short demos in all that time, for some curious tourists. No one else even showed up. Eventually gave up when a minis league needed the table. I may be giving it another try in the new year. What's your secret sauce?
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Dec 28, 2018 04:52
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hyphz posted:Well, hopefully force would not be required. If it was, that would probably be a game design issue. I can understand it being required for Monopoly, though. Really? You couldn’t read that sarcasm? How do you like buy groceries or pay your rent, you bizarre broke-brained man-baby? Every point you “make” is just another surreal reveal into the bizarre dystopia you think in. Attacking RPGs as a capitalist conspiracy is just insane. None of the poo poo you’re saying makes sense. I mean this in an honest and nice way, not a throw-away insult : I truly honestly think you need to get therapy. This isn’t how “normal peoples’” brains work. You really love repeatedly trying the same things that don’t work for obvious reasons to predictable results. I’m sincerely worried about your health and safety if this is even a little bit reflective of your life. Get help. I’m American so I don’t know about British resources but I have friends I can ask who are.
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Dec 28, 2018 07:25
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Xiahou Dun posted:Attacking RPGs as a capitalist conspiracy is just insane. RPGs aren't worth attacking like that because they're so bad at it, but they are, along with just about everything else, definitely a capitalist conspiracy.
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Dec 28, 2018 07:45
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Quibble but Capitalism is the conspiracy.
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Dec 28, 2018 07:54
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I do think there are market pressures on indie RPGs that produce a glut of unique systems, while other games are pressed to produce tons of material constantly (like Pathfinder). New system books for indie RPGs sell better than supplements, so creators who don't strike gold with a system are incentivized to make a new one rather than doubling down. On the other hand, it's way easier to generate more material for an established system once it has a following. This does not result in RPGs being inclined against /play/ but it does mean that indie RPGs might tend to be numerous and varied, more than a lot of people have time to play. Now, I think that having games I don't play is only a loss if I get nothing out of them, and that has nothing to do with anything but the game's writing and design. Further, the bottleneck is on my end: I already run and play in plenty of games, so I know that if I pick up a new system it's unlikely to get used directly for a while. Basically I think the material analysis of indie games writing is valuable but it's not at all what hyphz is suggesting except in the very broadest 'game system production is not directly tied to how long people spend playing their current games, because that would be bizarre.'
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Dec 28, 2018 08:40
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Make a tinder app that lets you find campaigns/characters. Bam, done.
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Dec 28, 2018 08:48
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Hello officer, I'm playing/running five gives a week but it appears my friends with lives are only playing once a week.
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Dec 28, 2018 09:30
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Capfalcon posted:In (awful, awful) theory, I can picture an app that you could pay a buck to get access to semirandomized character sheets for a mystery game?
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Dec 28, 2018 09:34
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Joe Slowboat posted:I do think there are market pressures on indie RPGs that produce a glut of unique systems, while other games are pressed to produce tons of material constantly (like Pathfinder). New system books for indie RPGs sell better than supplements, so creators who don't strike gold with a system are incentivized to make a new one rather than doubling down. On the other hand, it's way easier to generate more material for an established system once it has a following. A little caution's needed to sift c) apart from a) and b), of course.
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Dec 28, 2018 12:45
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90s Cringe Rock posted:DCC sells a pack of scratch-off pregen character sheets. And each player requires like four sheets to play a funnel, so you can go through a ton. I could see myself paying for a novelty like that if I found a group that was up for it.
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Dec 28, 2018 14:57
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Argas posted:Make a tinder app that lets you find campaigns/characters. Bam, done. I don't want to see the inevitable Drizzt snapchat filter
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Dec 28, 2018 14:58
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hyphz posted:Alas, D&D also gets reward for bad rules design because its customers are so locked in they won't move if they're bad. What no, D&D fans love bad design, as evidenced by massive backlash from introducing good rules once. Argas posted:Make a tinder app that lets you find campaigns/characters. Bam, done. This would also help nerds creep women out of the hobby faster than anything else imaginable.
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Dec 28, 2018 15:15
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Hyphz’s posts are just a campaign by Lowtax to get us to pay for a forums account but never use it, sparing him the bandwidth costs.
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Dec 28, 2018 15:44
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It is stunning to me that someone would go "look at all these games I buy but never use, how shall we address this problem" and opt immediately for "let's upend the basic economic underpinnings of the RPG industry" and not, oh I don't know, "maybe I should find some loving friends"
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Dec 28, 2018 16:40
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:"maybe I should find some loving friends" Now you’ve done it.
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Dec 28, 2018 16:41
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Xiahou Dun posted:Really? You couldn’t read that sarcasm? I figured that ironjef's post was sarcasm, but at the same time I thought it needed a response because injecting "force" into discussion of responsibility for social engagement is a classic straw man. Saying that there's an issue if nobody wants to play an RPG is obviously not the same as saying that the RPG would be better if people were made to play at gunpoint. It's also not a "conspiracy" because there's not necessarily deliberate action involved, or if there is, it isn't underhanded. It's the same issue as to why software ends up being shite because relatively few customers, especially not individual users, shop for reliability and security; they shop for features and then have unlimited tolerance of reliability and security being patched in after the sale. It's a mess, but nobody can fix it well, because if any company does take the extra time to focus on reliability and security in those markets, they get either undercut on price or left behind of features and driven out of the market; and then when their competitor's software leaks a ton of user data, the competitor gets to patch it but doesn't lose the customers. What they do is totally rational. It's not evil or conspiratorial to do all they can do to survive. But the result of it is that a hell a lot of individual-facing software is poo poo and full of security holes. Saying that people shouldn't pay for the book at all was obviously over the top and just me being frustrated - although I do notice a remarkable number of RPG authors making their books CC anyway. But it is notable, as some said, that there's not that much reward for taking the time to carefully design, balance and playtest rules systems in any RPG, indie or otherwise. But if say some of the play platforms could team up with authors and pay them a royalty from the subscription income of players who play those games on the platform - the same way, as I mentioned, UK libraries do with books (yes, the author gets a small royalty whenever their book is taken out) - it'd be a bonus to that.
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Dec 28, 2018 16:42
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hyphz posted:I figured that ironjef's post was sarcasm, but at the same time I thought it needed a response because injecting "force" into discussion of responsibility for social engagement is a classic straw man. Saying that there's an issue if nobody wants to play an RPG is obviously not the same as saying that the RPG would be better if people were made to play at gunpoint. Your solution to "there's no incentive to make better rules" does not create incentive to make better rules. It creates incentive to do more marketing.
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Dec 28, 2018 16:55
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"there are rational actors in the rpg industry" is a take, for sure
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Dec 28, 2018 17:14
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moths posted:What no, D&D fans love bad design, as evidenced by massive backlash from introducing good rules once. In general the whole idea of the "supplement train" traditional to the game makes meaningful playtesting a practical impossibility. Even a company like Paizo that throws a decent amount of money into playtesting their core game (no, really, they do, but their intent in doing so is "customer satisfaction", not "rigorous design", as far as I can tell) likely doesn't worry about a full playthrough of each Adventure Path before it hits the shelves. (Certainly, I can't find any credited playtesters, or much mention of playtesting in flipping through a few APs - sometimes of secondary systems, but none of the actual adventure.) In general, if a company rapidly pumps out books on a weekly or monthly basis, chances are playtesting can't occur. See: White Wolf, Palladium, AEG, etc. Granted, the whole D&D model often (if not always) makes a full playtest impractical anyway- can you playtest what it's like to play for years to hit top level? Have you tested every class? Every monster? Every magic item? Even with that kind of notion, having a book only have a month or so in the queue for review can be a recipe for disaster, too. I've more come to the conclusion in the past year or two that can't be a "perfect D&D" for a number of factors including this one. In the world of traditional fantasy gaming, I think you just have to worry about what you're willing to trade off for the features you want.
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Dec 28, 2018 17:15
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homullus posted:Your solution to "there's no incentive to make better rules" does not create incentive to make better rules. It creates incentive to do more marketing. Which of course something that is expensive to do. RPG marketing at any level but like D&D itself is done in niche publications where the only people who will see it are the people who already know about it. D&D is pretty much only marketed in niche publications like that. Maybe they could make a little more money and get some more visibility by spending some of... the no money at all that they make on RPGs on marketing? I feel like much like with pro wrestling the only way to end up with a million dollars in the RPG industry is start with ten million. Alien Rope Burn posted:In general, if a company rapidly pumps out books on a weekly or monthly basis, chances are playtesting can't occur. See: White Wolf, Palladium, AEG, etc. Granted, the whole D&D model often (if not always) makes a full playtest impractical anyway- can you playtest what it's like to play for years to hit top level? When I was still into OSR stuff I read somewhere that during the big 2nd edition publishing glut, TSR banned playtesting. Though admittedly, that could be some myth making by the 2nd edition was the devil people. remusclaw fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Dec 28, 2018 |
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Dec 28, 2018 17:23
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hyphz posted:I figured that ironjef's post was sarcasm, but at the same time I thought it needed a response because injecting "force" into discussion of responsibility for social engagement is a classic straw man. BREAKING NEWS: forums poster prone to vague and ill-conceived metaphors and that are easily disproven, only to nitpick the rebuttals with more incoherent metaphors, accuses another forums poster of strawmanning.
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Dec 28, 2018 18:05
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I've more come to the conclusion in the past year or two that can't be a "perfect D&D" for a number of factors including this one. In the world of traditional fantasy gaming, I think you just have to worry about what you're willing to trade off for the features you want. You can't really have a "perfect" anything unless it's a closed-system, and even then its flaws will be discovered in time. That said, the Rules Cyclopedia is about as perfect as D&D (or any other RPG) has ever gotten. (Largely because it avoids the issues you describe.)
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Dec 28, 2018 18:41
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Zurui posted:Hey! This is a thing I know something about! I'm glad I clicked through to read this post because this is very interesting. theironjef posted:I bought Monopoly last week but returned it because it didn't come with a way for me to force people to play it with me. Should have at least had some heavy twine and a cattle prod in there. You'd only have to shock me once, maybe twice, to get me to play Monopoly.
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Dec 28, 2018 19:00
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remusclaw posted:I feel like much like with pro wrestling the only way to end up with a million dollars in the RPG industry is start with ten million. how do we sell rpgs to the saudi royals?
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Dec 28, 2018 19:42
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The Lore Bear posted:how do we sell rpgs to the saudi royals? I think you would have to undercut the Russians.
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Dec 28, 2018 19:45
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The Lore Bear posted:how do we sell rpgs to the saudi royals? Big tiddy Patreon streamers.
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Dec 28, 2018 19:48
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I do think the low level of saturation problem exists for indies. If a game sells, say, 5,000 copies evenly distributed across the united states, the number of buyers in any given town is so low that it may be difficult for them to easily find one another... and that's assuming random strangers want to play together, which is not always the case (for example, I have little interest in doing so, and as a consequence, I don't play much live RPGs.) I think that random matchmaking with strangers works much better for a casual commitment like an online multiplayer video game, though. If my fellow players turn out to be jackasses, I've likely only put a few minutes into that game session, and it's fairly trivial to quit and go find another one. If we're talking in-person, around a real table RPGing, the time commitment (and personal risk) is much much higher. You might well say that the RPG world would benefit from some indie games designed around different assumptions for who will play together, and for how long. An indie game in which any four random strangers can sit down, be playing in 2 minutes, and easily quit in 20 or an hour or whatever without spoiling a big time commitment from any of the others if it isn't working out, might be interesting. They're called board games, of course, and there's thousands of them. Board games don't tend to have a lot of free-roll character acting options, but that's probably part of what is only possible with larger commitment of time and resources for players to accomplish anyway. There's also online play, of course. Live online play such as with Roll20 is one mode; play-by-post is another. In both cases, I mostly see ad-hoc informal mechanisms for finding and joining games, and games tend to be more successful and have more longevity when the participants have taken the time to introduce themselves or be introduced, build some camaraderie, etc.: in other words, it's still something of a social commitment, albeit in some cases (particularly PbP) still possible with pseudonymous acquaintances. But here again there are opportunities for indie games to be designed with these game modes in particular in mind; an author could intentionally select mechanics that make online or asynchronous play go more smoothly. I don't know if there are RPGs made with play-by-post as the presumed most-common play mode, but I certainly think there's space for one or more, and have put some thought into that idea over the past few years myself. And there are sites like Role Gate that are trying to create system-independent matchmaking PbP platforms, too. That's third-party, though, Role Gate doesn't have their own in-house PbP game system or anything. All of these efforts circle around what I think hyphz has been talking about: there may be ways for indie game designers, or other independent actors, to improve the rate at which the games outside the most recognizable and popular top ten can get played. That in no way removes the responsibility of individuals to take the initiative and be less shy about finding people to play with, but it certainly isn't a laughable or (I would argue) impossible task. Charging on a per-play basis is, of course, and that's a silly idea for an RPG, and I'm not defending hyphz on that count.
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Dec 28, 2018 21:08
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Leperflesh posted:If a game sells, say, 5,000 copies evenly distributed across the united states It's not going to do this though, since the density of RPG players is not distributed evenly across the US.
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Dec 28, 2018 21:11
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Lemon-Lime posted:It's not going to do this though, since the density of RPG players is not distributed evenly across the US.
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Dec 28, 2018 21:49
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remusclaw posted:When I was still into OSR stuff I read somewhere that during the big 2nd edition publishing glut, TSR banned playtesting. Though admittedly, that could be some myth making by the 2nd edition was the devil people. Also grogs complaining about Lorraine Williams because she ruined TSR for some of it's employees who had essentially spent 90% of their time on the clock playing games under the guise of "playtesting."
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Dec 28, 2018 22:28
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