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The lesson seems to be don't give money to unstable people on kickstarter
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Sep 21, 2019 03:36
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MachineIV posted:That was never the plan. Yeah, my "pretty weird" comment is because unless it's disclosed otherwise, everyone is going to assume that a physical book is guaranteed if you back at the tier that offers it. And nothing about the Kickstarter campaign indicated otherwise. And, in fact, betting a print run of books on post-Kickstarter sales would be pretty loving dumb considering that the biggest rush of sales has to be coming from the Kickstarter campaign, so it's a very transparent lie.
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Sep 21, 2019 03:36
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Weren't there other project people in here just a few pages back insisting everything is fine?
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Sep 21, 2019 03:46
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bowmore fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Sep 21, 2019 |
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Sep 21, 2019 04:40
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dwarf74 posted:Weren't there other project people in here just a few pages back insisting everything is fine? we might discover that those people need some time to incorporate some new facts
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Sep 21, 2019 05:06
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Subjunctive posted:we might discover that those people need some time to incorporate some new facts I sympathize. It's a hard thing to find out someone you trusted just hosed you over in a way that seems entirely out of character for your experience of them.
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Sep 21, 2019 05:42
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Yeah. She's a friend, and I kind of forgot "I trust this person to have my back" isn't the same thing as "I trust this person to make good decisions."
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Sep 21, 2019 06:15
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Nuns with Guns posted:Yeah, my "pretty weird" comment is because unless it's disclosed otherwise, everyone is going to assume that a physical book is guaranteed if you back at the tier that offers it. And nothing about the Kickstarter campaign indicated otherwise. And, in fact, betting a print run of books on post-Kickstarter sales would be pretty loving dumb considering that the biggest rush of sales has to be coming from the Kickstarter campaign, so it's a very transparent lie. Yeah... Because in all honesty, just with spitball numbers, she was looking at somewhere in the realm of $20k-25k to fulfill all her obligations to print the book and pay the talent. Expecting a net $25k in PDF sales after your alpha fans have already put down money is so far beyond absurd. Even if it made that much, we're talking about years of sales. Not a reasonable time frame in the least. demota posted:Yeah. She's a friend, and I kind of forgot "I trust this person to have my back" isn't the same thing as "I trust this person to make good decisions." Same. And that's a lot of the worst part of it. I repeatedly had her back. For a number of years, I defended her against numerous accusations. I burned friendships to protect her. I gave her recommendations and references that came back to bite me in the rear end. And this is where that trust and faith ended up. It stinks.
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Sep 21, 2019 06:44
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 I'm really sorry this has happened to you and feel really lovely that I'm sitting here whining about MAYBE NO MORE JAPAN GAMES???? when you're getting so much actual blowback from this.
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Sep 21, 2019 07:05
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Have a contract and have a good lawyer. Anything else in freelancing is going to get you bad.
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Sep 21, 2019 07:06
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Leraika posted:
TBH I feel the same way, living in Tokyo and all that, the intersection of the western and Japanese TRPG industries is hugely interesting to me. But, I think maybe there's a chance this gets salvaged. There's some talks happening that are kinda promising, if not perfect. And if it can be swung into something positive, there are other games already in the pipeline there. From the license perspective, I imagine things aren't as bleak as they seem. It LOOKS like Amy paid the royalties. Which is all they care about.
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Sep 21, 2019 07:11
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Covok posted:Secondly, I really like the engine they developed. It's clear they have a different paradigm than Vincent Baker, but is using the same basic concepts. The game still uses the "conversation", but you can tell they disagree with the random elements of PbtA. They eschew dice and replace it with a token system. It creates a nice gameplay flow. Players need to do actions that put themselves at risk to get tokens they need to solve problems. They can take actions that don't solve the problem and get them temporarily safe, but can't move things forward without taking risk. The later is needed to have a roleplaying game, but the former makes a nice back-and-forth with the game master and other players that pushes players to play in character and satisfy the cliches of the genre. So the game in general looks great, but it really weirds me out how nobody is mentioning Dream Askew here? Like, ‘diceless PbtA powered by a token economy where you take a token by having archetype-specific bad things happen to you and spend a token to do archetype-specific good things’ describes Dream Askew to a tee, but it’s held up here (and on the page) as one of Henshin!’s big innovations. Not suggesting foul play - it’s perfectly possible they never even looked at Dream Askew - but, well, it’s weird.
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Sep 21, 2019 07:56
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Flavivirus posted:So the game in general looks great, but it really weirds me out how nobody is mentioning Dream Askew here? Like, ‘diceless PbtA powered by a token economy where you take a token by having archetype-specific bad things happen to you and spend a token to do archetype-specific good things’ describes Dream Askew to a tee, but it’s held up here (and on the page) as one of Henshin!’s big innovations. Not suggesting foul play - it’s perfectly possible they never even looked at Dream Askew - but, well, it’s weird. I didn't realize this is the engine that Dream Askew uses. I apologize for being misleading. I didn't realize that that was what this was because, while I am aware of the game, I never actually delved into it deeply. As for the kickstarter, I'm not sure. The fact it is not mentioned is why I didn't even think to bring it up here.
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Sep 21, 2019 10:39
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Covok posted:I didn't realize this is the engine that Dream Askew uses. I apologize for being misleading. I didn't realize that that was what this was because, while I am aware of the game, I never actually delved into it deeply. Oh, sorry, I don’t want you to think I’m getting at you! Dream Askew is pretty niche. I’m just somewhat sad that this game, which seems to be heavily based off it, doesn’t seem to mention it at all.
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Sep 21, 2019 11:55
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Liquid Communism posted:I sympathize. It's a hard thing to find out someone you trusted just hosed you over in a way that seems entirely out of character for your experience of them. EDIT: I don't say this just to be all "told ya so", but given a situation where dishonesty is a major factor, let's not compound that by misrepresenting how the discussion went previously. Warthur fucked around with this message at 12:41 on Sep 21, 2019 |
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Sep 21, 2019 12:12
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Yeah, it's out of character. Her outbursts are short-term and immediate and fade within like, 15-30 minutes, and it's limited entirely to things she says, not things she does. She's screwed me over here, yeah, but it's more in the sense of "I let my friend borrow my car and she crashed it."
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Sep 21, 2019 16:01
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Ah, denial.
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Sep 21, 2019 17:36
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Flavivirus posted:So the game in general looks great, but it really weirds me out how nobody is mentioning Dream Askew here? Like, ‘diceless PbtA powered by a token economy where you take a token by having archetype-specific bad things happen to you and spend a token to do archetype-specific good things’ describes Dream Askew to a tee, but it’s held up here (and on the page) as one of Henshin!’s big innovations. Not suggesting foul play - it’s perfectly possible they never even looked at Dream Askew - but, well, it’s weird. Dream Askew/Apart launched the kickstarter (May 2018) months after the free version of Henshin was released (Dec 2017), so it seems like you're kind of flipping who was inspired by who.
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Sep 21, 2019 18:02
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Tricky posted:Dream Askew/Apart launched the kickstarter (May 2018) months after the free version of Henshin was released (Dec 2017), so it seems like you're kind of flipping who was inspired by who. I thought the same thing at first too. But then I looked into it and the first version of Dream Askew was released in 2013 on the website Buried Without Ceremony. And that version of DA from 2013 has the same engine and terminology as this game so I think she's right about that.
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Sep 21, 2019 18:18
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Huh, interesting. I'd definitely never seen it before and I've gone to the website a few times to grab Monsterhearts stuff.
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Sep 21, 2019 19:38
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Tricky posted:Huh, interesting. I'd definitely never seen it before and I've gone to the website a few times to grab Monsterhearts stuff. I remember seeing it back in the day. I couldn't understand how it worked back then. I do remember seeing it. It was on the site the same time as Monsterhearts and Rookville.
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Sep 21, 2019 19:45
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Trilemma Adventures pdf just dropped and it is stunning. Like seriously, there is so much here, and it's so good.
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Sep 21, 2019 19:56
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Yeah, Dream Askew's a lot older than the Dream Askew/Apart kickstarter, that was for the second edition. Plus, well, friends asked the Henshin! folks about the Dream Askew connection and their response was:quote:So Henshin! was inspired by early designs of the diceless mechanic but we haven’t followed that game development in the last couple years so we don't feel comfortable calling it that. I can understand that, to a degree - still, it'd be nice to have acknowledgement of the inspirations. I mean, the kickstarter page only mentions two RPGs: Dungeons and Dragons (in the context of saying it's not a D&D hack) and Dungeon World (in the context of saying that's how the creators met). No mention even of PbtA. So, not how I'd put together a KS page these days.
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Sep 21, 2019 20:00
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Flavivirus posted:Yeah, Dream Askew's a lot older than the Dream Askew/Apart kickstarter, that was for the second edition. Plus, well, friends asked the Henshin! folks about the Dream Askew connection and their response was: Yeah, I did get the vibe they're not big on talking about there system inspiration. Doesn't speak the best of their personalities. But, not bad enough for me to rescind my pledge. Like its lovely, but not like "actually a Nazi" or "screwing over their workers" lovely.
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Sep 21, 2019 20:11
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Covok posted:Yeah, I did get the vibe they're not big on talking about there system inspiration. Doesn't speak the best of their personalities. But, not bad enough for me to rescind my pledge. Like its lovely, but not like "actually a Nazi" or "screwing over their workers" lovely. Yeah, 100%. It's 'I have a philosophical disagreement about the importance of naming your inspirations', not 'I think you're a lovely person and nobody should give you money'.
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Sep 21, 2019 20:32
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Any commentary/inside information on Deviant:The Renagades? This is the first ST game that's interested me in over a decade and I'd like to know more.
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Sep 21, 2019 22:44
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Any commentary/inside information on Deviant:The Renagades? This is the first ST game that's interested me in over a decade and I'd like to know more. I'm not paying close attention, but I am mildly interested in the Conspiracy-building advice/?system? that's supposed to be in it. Hopefully it's as generally applicable as the Krewe system in Geist.
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Sep 21, 2019 23:07
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For some reason one of the stretch goals seems to be... an opportunity to buy the Beast core book PDF for $12? So it's a) kind of a non-prize ("We'll generously give you an opportunity to give us money!") and b) another instance of Onyx Path reminding everyone that Beast exists as opposed to wising up, taking the L, and never mentioning the loving thing again.
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Sep 22, 2019 16:48
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That Old Tree posted:I'm not paying close attention, but I am mildly interested in the Conspiracy-building advice/?system? that's supposed to be in it. Hopefully it's as generally applicable as the Krewe system in Geist. It's the same system. Well, kinda. So years ago, someone made a pitch for Mummy: The Curse second edition that didn't, in the end, make it (although the person who made it did end up writing on MTC2). It contained organization-level mechanics for Storytelling 2, that the writer intended for Mummy Cults. @Gimpinblack and I both really liked them, and used them in Geist 2e and Deviant. In Geist, they're used for the player-driven orgs. In Deviant, they're for the antagonists. The innovations in Deviant are for the ST building the conspiracies from points gathered by the players' chargen choices, and in reactive "downtime" actions that the ST can use to see how the org reacts to the players' shenanigans. But a conspiracy's "character sheet" looks almost exacyly like a Krewe's.
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Sep 22, 2019 17:44
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Dave Brookshaw posted:It's the same system. Eh? This Mummy 2e thing is news to me, I never saw it during Geist development. Geist 2e krewe mechanics were primarily based on crew sheets from Blades in the Dark and the general concept of the Fate fractal. I know we both also suggested that the system would be great for Hunter compacts and conspiracies, but I'm not sure Hunter 2e went that direction or not.
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Sep 22, 2019 20:38
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GimpInBlack posted:Eh? This Mummy 2e thing is news to me, I never saw it during Geist development. Geist 2e krewe mechanics were primarily based on crew sheets from Blades in the Dark and the general concept of the Fate fractal. (Dave digs through four-year old emails) Holy poops, Travis. I have been incorrectly crediting our mutual friend for years. They got the org mechanics from *you*.
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Sep 22, 2019 21:38
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I've ranted about this elsewhere, but the Root RPG is really disappointing to me thus far. I liked Root, the board game, and was excited upon learning that an RPG for it had a KS about to launch, but while downloading the quickstart rules and stuff noticed it was by Magpie, and things went down from there. It has a lot of weird issues, including:
Basically, it's looking rather clunky and messy, and like it's kind of missing the point of PbtA with how many loving weapon rules there are. A lot of this could be ironed out over the course of the campaign and stuff through playtesting and feedback, but that last point there is just a dealbreaker for me. It's absolute nonsense and really gross, and considering that it's probably being done because the Vagabonds are supposed to be able to work with any of the factions, also really cowardly. And it just doesn't feel like Root; the board game, apart from the cute aesthetic, didn't hide the fact that some of the factions were really loving bad, and that's part of what made the lore and stuff interesting, on top of being prime conflict material for an RPG. Like, the Vagabonds' whole thing is choosing between helping the people of the woods, aiding aiding hindering the different factions when convenient, or outright allying with one of the other groups to (And for good measure they went and included a sidebar that talks about how they couldn't fit stuff on the Woodland Alliance in the quickstart rules, but makes sure to mention that their goals "may not be in the denizens' best interests". No reasons given, just, maybe they're actually the bad guys. You know, the one non-Vagabond faction whose goals and methods aren't inherently at least somewhat bad for the woodland's denizens and who are entirely dependent on the support, sympathy, and outrage of said denizens to succeed, and where the mechanic the other factions use to make it harder to spread sympathy in their territory is literally called "Martial Law". They're probably just as bad as the racists and the pillaging invaders and whatnot. But also those guys aren't bad.) Edit: Not to say that the Alliance can't be bad; they don't have any described ideology or whatever, so other than "is opposed to the Marquis, Eyrie, and other groups that want to rule the Woodlands" you can take them in all sorts of directions. It just looks ridiculous, next to apologia for imperialists and bird supremacists and whatnot, for it to go, "but maybe the guys fighting them are the real bad guys". It will only get more ridiculous when they get into the expansion factions, which include a bunch of mercenaries/a PMC who explicitly only care about the conflict insofar as they can profit off of it, another group of invaders, and a cult whose designer stated was based on violent religious extremists like ISIS. A cult that engages in ritual sacrifice. They're not good or evil, guys, some of the things they do help people. You can really tell that Mark Diaz Truman is co-designer on this, huh? Basically, it's really hard for me to support this, as much as I want to because I really liked Root and think that an RPG in the setting is something that could and should be really good. It needs a massive overhaul of the writing, removing all the stuff like arguments for racial hierarchy and imperialists knowing better than the people they've conquered and whatnot, and a mechanical rework as well, though. That, or to just commit to it even more and make another expansion for the "official" fan factions, keeping the "none of them are good or evil" thing even for Fangus loving Khan. I want to read about how the giant snake whose only goal is to eat everyone is as good for the people of the woodlands as it is bad for them. Just a completely earnest and uncritical argument about how Fangus devouring entire villages is no worse than the Alliance trying to free the people from all the lovely factions oppressing and murdering them and all the benefits it brings to the people it hasn't eaten yet. Sadly I think the latter is about as likely as the former, maybe even more likely. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Sep 22, 2019 |
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Sep 22, 2019 22:01
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Roland Jones posted:
 I mean, not at all surprising for Magpie Games, but still, .
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Sep 22, 2019 22:36
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Lemon-Lime posted:
It's just, yeah. It's bad. Like I said, I think it's probably at least partially cowardice due to the fact that Vagabonds can ally with any other faction in the board game (including the aforementioned Fangus Khan, hilariously; it can even craft items for the Vagabonds, though if the items aren't retrieved the fast enough it'll swallow them before the Vagabonds can get them) and thus they didn't want to present any of them as too "bad", but this is possibly the worst way to do that. If you want to sell people on the Eyrie, for example, maybe don't make the racial hierarchy stuff one of the things you establish when introducing them. Let the players decide if the Dynasties are turbo-racists or if they're just entitled nobles who actually do want to help, etc. (Though even then you can't really get around the Marquise being a colonialist and such; harvesting and exploiting the Woodland's resources is core to her strategy and motivations. Root's just a bad setting to use for a "no side is truly bad" thing.) In case people think I'm exaggerating things, here are the sections I'm talking about : quote:In all cases, no faction is “good” or “evil”. All factions do right and wrong. All factions help the denizens sometimes, and hurt others. All factions have members who have empathy and honor and care about those around them, and members who are in this fight purely for their own selfish benefit. A charitable interpretation of this could be that they want to emphasize that even the worst factions can have individuals in them who aren't so bad, and even one whose goals are good can still have terrible people or do terrible things in the pursuit of those goals, but that goes out the window with what comes after. The Marquisate posted:Named for the Marquise de Cat who leads it, the Marquisate is either a faction of foreign invaders and colonizers, or a new force for order and industrialization—it depends upon whom you ask. The Eyrie Dynasties posted:The noble history of the Eyrie Dynasties stretches deep into the Woodland’s past. They claim that they have always ruled the Woodland, and always shall. True, their reign was characterized by infighting, by regime change (often at the edge of a blade), by bird dominance and oppression of the other Woodland denizens...but they also protected the clearings from bandits and the wild. They built and maintained the paths between clearings. They enforced law and order, and they made the Woodland what it is today. I'm actually morbidly curious how they'll pull this for the Lizard Cult. Will they just write out them engaging in sacrifices and stuff, the way they've changed the Marquise's explicit motivation from the game, or will they try to find the positives even in that? Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Sep 22, 2019 |
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Sep 22, 2019 23:24
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This seems like a thing that they should have done with Trail of Cthulhu style “here’s a bunch of different, potentially contradictory ways you could portray this faction in your game” instead of the wishy washy stuff above.
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Sep 23, 2019 03:30
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Glad I checked this thread before backing Root; I was on the fence but hot drat that is a mess.
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Sep 23, 2019 04:46
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I won’t believe that Mark helped write it until they add 38 unneeded instances of the word Cabrón.
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Sep 23, 2019 04:49
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Roland Jones posted:I've ranted about this elsewhere, but the Root RPG is really disappointing to me thus far. I'm disappointed every time I learn it's not a game about playing Root. 
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Sep 23, 2019 05:10
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I don't know what about this is getting to me but there's something about this kickstarter that just feels incredibly off to me. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gamefall/up-cat
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Sep 23, 2019 05:47
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Lumbermouth posted:This seems like a thing that they should have done with Trail of Cthulhu style “here’s a bunch of different, potentially contradictory ways you could portray this faction in your game” instead of the wishy washy stuff above. That could have worked, yeah. Heck, they'd have even been better off doing less than they did; cut out the "all the factions are neutral and can do good and bad and blah blah blah" section, all the bits that are trying to justify the Marquise's and the Eyrie's rules despite the crimes against animal kind, and probably the bird supremacy part, and instead just present them objectively and whatnot, and it's fine. People will realize that they can take the factions and individuals within them in different directions on their own. Adding the wishy-washy both-sides statement makes it far worse, and the equivocation just draws attention to their bad parts. That the book is telling you that none of the factions can be considered evil is probably the worst bit; the supposed safety the Eyrie's rule brought or the increased standards of living the Marquise's "modernization" created could well be reasons why some of those under their rule tolerate or even like them and would support them over another group, but the RPG isn't presenting it like that. It's giving them as things that balance out the other things those factions do, arguing in their favor and preemptively defending them from the reader's judgment. And given that the things being defended are indefensible, it doesn't work, to say the least. (Related, I don't think the Eyrie is ever explicitly stated to be bird supremacists in the board game; they think that they should rule, but them thinking that birds in general are better is at most implied if I am not forgetting something. Makes putting it front-and-center even weirder a decision, given the desire to portray all the factions as neither good nor bad. Who thought that was a good idOkay we all know it was MDT.)
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Sep 23, 2019 06:19
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