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Gonna make my post-about-2d20-Conan-every-50-pages post, this time in response to the "what about unreliable magic" idea. In Conan, everything is unreliable, including magic. Everything works off of the same basic mechanic, which is rolling 2 to 5 20-sided dice to try and get enough successes, but with a potential to also generate consequences, so you have success, fail, success-with-consequence, and fail-with-consequence all possible on every roll; and further, additional successes beyond those you needed to pass, generate a resource (momentum); and further, there's a Doom pool which you can add to to buy dice, you can even buy automatic success (but with automatic consequences), and both the shared momentum pool and the GM's doom pool are in play to add more successes and consequences and complications etc. etc. What it all works out at is: yeah if you try and hit someone with a sword, or if you try to animate a skeleton, or if you try to demoralize foes with a display, or if you try to sneak into a gloomy mansion, or if you try to survive a blizzard... poo poo can go wrong, in predictable or unpredictable ways, and you and your team will have to deal with it. But you also have mechanics and tools to affect the narrative, resources to spend to ensure that the most critical moments of your adventure don't wind up being anticlimactic (trivial success/disappointing failure). Including with magic. This stands in stark contrast to the D&D design of magic as a separate mechanical system from non-magical attempts to do things. Not only because of the complications/momentum possibilities, but because whatever exotic effects you decide spells can do, the GM can almost always spend some doom dice to have there be some nasty side effects or consequences (which is flavorful and appropriate for the setting). But this isn't horrible for the magic-using character because it's equally true of just hacking with the sword: maybe a bad consequence comes out of the dice and your sword shatters. Which is also thematically appropriate. Especially since there's no magic swords so you're really not taking away critical character equipment that a character's entire sheet is built around, rendering them poo poo. Yeah if you have a spell that can levitate you that's easier than climbing a rope and makes the rope-climber's skill at it less useful (there's no rope-climbing skill anyway but you get what I'm saying); but there's no loving levitate spell. Some degree of thought went into the design of this game, and making spells that make the spellcaster character better at doing things than another character whose archetype resolves around doing that specific thing just... doesn't seem to be a problem for this game. Also the game doesn't have character classes, and you don't have this huge level 1 to 20 (or 30) level grind either, and your caster character can also totally be badass with a scimitar if you want. And she probably only knows like one or three spells anyway? The age of hyboria is not exactly stuffed with kitchen-sink-style casting, your typical arch-wizard is probably just forcing a demonic being to do them favors in some horribly dangerous way that is totally gonna backfire, he's sure not trotting around with a swiss army knife scroll caddy. Sorry. I'm getting too far afield. My point here is that the "problem" of magic either sucking (unreliable) or being too good (reliable) only exists in D&D because D&D is such a pass/fail focused game, and because D&D's writers are too afraid to take away most of the fundamentally broken magic spell ideas from the game. You can absolutely build fantasy RPG games that avoid both problems.
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Jul 16, 2020 01:19
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Funzo posted:Thanks for this. I've been thinking of checking it out as a possible substitute for 5E for games with the kids. PF 2e is more fiddly and crunchy than D&D 5e. However, it also has less footguns than both Pathfinder 1e and most editions of D&D, most broadly in that you can never actually make yourself worse at basic functionality, as your numbers stuff is all baked into the class chassis†, so that almost all character options are adding new abilities† rather than more numbers. The practical upside in this case is that as long as the kid can handle having a hotbar's worth of different abilities all usable at any given time††, they can pretty much just pick whatever out of the list of class feats† and have a working character. Even the high-end charop stuff is almost all in party synergies around comboing debuffs and triggers rather single-character tricks†††. † The exception is Alchemist, which basically everyone agrees needs a revamped version, both because it has really poor mechanical focus and because there's a bunch of must-pick class feats to get sufficient numbers to keep up. †† Two hotbars by the time they get to level 10-14 or so. ††† The exception is the gnome flickmace fighter, which is really, really good at knocking people down again every time they try to get up, and even that needs party members to really take advantage of it.
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Jul 16, 2020 01:27
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my friend's job created a position like this and they've burned through three in less than two years
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Jul 16, 2020 01:42
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MadScientistWorking posted:So I went to a local retail store and I saw something really weird. Mixed in with the 5e books was a copy of Ghostwalk setting for 3e which looked pristine. One of the employees who must have heard me saying what repeatedly was confused too. If they use game distributors for it, it could be that the distributor had an overstock sale at some point and the NC stockist got it on a heavy discount not realizing it was for an older edition. It wouldn't shock me if distributors got stuck with some 3E overstock. Alternately, I think NC has been in the RPG business for a while, so they might have had it at one of their central warehouses from that era.
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Jul 16, 2020 01:57
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Cat Face Joe posted:my friend's job created a position like this and they've burned through three in less than two years Yeah, unless that job also comes with discretionary firing power it's pretty fuckin' useless. All "Make this place diverse, but you can't change the current roster of samey white guys."
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Jul 16, 2020 02:03
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Leperflesh posted:Gonna make my post-about-2d20-Conan-every-50-pages post, this time in response to the "what about unreliable magic" idea. Yea, Conan really nails this stuff in my opinion. Makes sense of course, because the whole thing with Conan world is unless your name is Conan and you have Howard crafted plot armor even a skilled soldier can make a mistake and magic is...well it's a direct Lovecraft ripoff. I think 'critical fail' style systems are fine, but they need a Momentum and Doom style thing to balance it out. Plus yea the magic is just designed better. You don't sell your soul to the demon lords to loving hover, you do it to call down the black deaths of Stygia upon your foe's screaming houses. Johnny Thief is still the party rope trick do-er, that's his job, your job is to summon the unholy and perverse darkness across the land. Bing bong so easy, Johnny Thief gets to be mr Mission Impossible cool guy, and Jimmy Wizard gets to do cool magic poo poo, we all get to do our thing.
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Jul 16, 2020 02:55
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Cat Face Joe posted:my friend's job created a position like this and they've burned through three in less than two years These sorts of jobs almost always just exist as a rubber-stamp on current hiring practices so the company can point to the person and go "look, we're progressive" whenever their lovely hiring practices are questioned.
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Jul 16, 2020 08:47
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Cat Face Joe posted:my friend's job created a position like this and they've burned through three in less than two years I have a particular hate for these kinds of things, because not only are they showboating fake gestures at addressing systemic racism, which would be upsetting enough... but they burn out all the people who take the job. So what ends up happening is not only do the issues not get resolved, but they actually reinforce white supremacy by sucking talented people of colour into these positions and then completely destroying at least their careers in the given industry and sometimes the rest of their lives.
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Jul 16, 2020 10:35
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Leperflesh posted:Gonna make my post-about-2d20-Conan-every-50-pages post, this time in response to the "what about unreliable magic" idea. And conveniently enough, it looks like the entire Conan line is on sale on DTRPG through late July. The individual books are 25% off, but the "gently caress it, give me every book that's been published so far" bundle appears to be a little over 50% off.
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Jul 16, 2020 10:50
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Cat Face Joe posted:my friend's job created a position like this and they've burned through three in less than two years loving UGH. I've literally never seen, or heard about, any company starting that position and not cocking it up royally. I can guarantee Wizards will give that position zero teeth, and the higher ups won't even listen to them. I'm really excited to see them "lose" somebody within a year of hiring, and make them sign an NDA so they can't talk about it.
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Jul 16, 2020 21:20
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The position is similar to having a "safety czar" at a work site: it's only as potentially effective as that position has real power and independence. And even then, in order to actually be effective (by exercising power), the person has to make certain other high-level people mad at them constantly, by forcing them to do things they don't want to do. As with workplace safety, the actual good effective approach is to change the workplace culture to the point where the policy person is merely documenting the processes and policies that everyone is already following, so there's something to point at when you discipline the occasional rare employee who breaks those rules. If you already have a culture of unsafe work/discriminatory workplace, top-down imposition of major cultural change is very hard and very emotionally destructive and often also thankless. In other words, Hasbro probably needs to bring in a cleaner and clean house at WotC, smashing the cliques and tight-nit culture and inertia and aggressively replacing it, and that cleaner needs to have an iron will and the ability to shrug off absolutely vicious hatred that they will definitely catch from within and without while doing it.
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Jul 17, 2020 01:32
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Leperflesh posted:In other words, Hasbro probably needs to bring in a cleaner and clean house at WotC, smashing the cliques and tight-nit culture and inertia and aggressively replacing it, and that cleaner needs to have an iron will and the ability to shrug off absolutely vicious hatred that they will definitely catch from within and without while doing it. They probably won't do that until they're forced to. Either a scandal at WotC that is so horrendous that they notice, or pressure from protestors effects the bottom line for MTG cards. Hasbro barely cares about D&D as a revenue stream at all.
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Jul 17, 2020 01:41
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I'm not sure why we would assume that Hasbro is better.
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Jul 17, 2020 01:45
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Leperflesh posted:In other words, Hasbro probably needs to bring in a cleaner and clean house at WotC, smashing the cliques and tight-nit culture and inertia and aggressively replacing it, and that cleaner needs to have an iron will and the ability to shrug off absolutely vicious hatred that they will definitely catch from within and without while doing it.
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Jul 17, 2020 01:52
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Lambo Trillrissian posted:but they burn out all the people who take the job. So what ends up happening is not only do the issues not get resolved, but they actually reinforce white supremacy by sucking talented people of colour into these positions and then completely destroying at least their careers in the given industry this is what happened to all three of them
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Jul 17, 2020 02:06
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Hasbro made Ms Monopoly, they extremely are not better than WotC
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Jul 17, 2020 14:26
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thetoughestbean posted:Hasbro made Ms Monopoly, they extremely are not better than WotC And millennial monopoly, and monopoly for cheaters....
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Jul 17, 2020 14:35
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Kurieg posted:And millennial monopoly, and monopoly for cheaters....
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Jul 17, 2020 15:15
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thetoughestbean posted:Hasbro made Ms Monopoly, they extremely are not better than WotC how dare you impugn Monopoly #GirlBoss
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Jul 17, 2020 20:40
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Qoey posted:loving UGH. I've literally never seen, or heard about, any company starting that position and not cocking it up royally. I can guarantee Wizards will give that position zero teeth, and the higher ups won't even listen to them. I'm really excited to see them "lose" somebody within a year of hiring, and make them sign an NDA so they can't talk about it.
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Jul 18, 2020 12:40
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Zereth posted:It's not a cockup if the goal from the start is "deflect criticism without having to make meaningful change". True. It's like the people who like to remind me that "capitalism is working as intended." I need to stop thinking that corporations actually apply ethics when not pressed.
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Jul 18, 2020 21:32
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Qoey posted:True. It's like the people who like to remind me that "capitalism is working as intended." I need to stop thinking that corporations actually apply ethics Fixed that for ya
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Jul 19, 2020 05:15
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Feel like I should say a bit more than just driving by. The underlying problem is that corporations exist to make money, above all other things. They have other effects, and may do other things, but their primary purpose, the purpose to which everything else can be subordinated or sacrificed, is to make money. Hence, in the Ur-Example, a dude bro day trader who makes a million dollars for the company is worth more to the company than the secretary that he harasses. She gets fired, he gets protected. This is not moral, this is not ethical, this is not right. But this is how corporations function: there is "no incentive" to protect a minor worker who doesn't produce money for the shareholders. Companies pretty quickly adapted to the idea that women, LGBT+, and BIPOC people can also make money, but the entrenched ideals are the same -- Profit before People. The sort of people who own stock want to see it go up each quarter, and they're not going to be understanding about a 25% loss on their investment because the company did the ethical thing and gave everyone a raise. Lest you think this is something that can be avoided by ethical consuming or "good corporate values", I'll point to the example of No Evil Foods, a socialist vegan meat company that just made a huge anti-union drive: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/g5pbex/audio-no-evil-foods-a-faux-leftist-vegan-meat-company-busts-union-drive WotC doesn't ultimately give a poo poo what Mearls does to who, provided he keeps D&D Beyond subscriptions rolling in at a great profit. His job isn't to make a good game; his job is to make money for Hasbro. Which he does. Tons of it. They aren't going to fire him because he's doing his job and doing it well. If they see a dip in Beyond subs, then his job will be in jeopardy, but otherwise it'd take a pretty major scandal to dislodge him -- they've already shown that they don't care that he hangs around with porn star abusing sociopaths and right wing nazis, so why would they care if he got rid of (in their view) a contract employee who is big on Twitter? None of these scandals have ultimately hurt the bottom line. Hasbro stock is doing pretty well, all things considered, and historically performed quite well: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/better-buy%3A-amazon-vs.-hasbro-2020-07-11 Public shaming has worked occasionally on companies, but doesn't seem to have any lasting effects. I doubt there's a big enough scandal that WotC couldn't just sweep people off the creative team and say "Look, we're going to do better in the future, and we love our fans and look at this person we just hired" and not have it go away in 3-6 months because ultimately, D&D and Magic control so much of the market share that to stop carrying them/using them would be financial suicide for many game stores, APs, YouTube personalities, tournament players, etc. WotC can be shamed occasionally into posting about how much Black Lives Matter or making their logo a rainbow, but ultimately, those who aren't ruthless enough to understand that Money is the goal, not art, will be discarded. Mearls understands this, hence the subscription character generator service, the getting you to buy both print and digital copies of the books from a premium service, the pdfs available of the entire D&D back catalogue... Unless a company like Mattel decided to get into the RPG market and aggressively push Pathfinder or Earthdawn or Rifts or another old RPG that has a gigantic back catalogue of supplements, I don't think we're going to see any meaningful competition to D&D. I've never seen Fellowship or Apocalypse World for sale in Target or Walmart, and I feel confidant in saying that I never will. Killing D&D would be like killing Monopoly or Clue. It'd be like trying to get Tom Clancy or VC Andrews off the shelf. It will die when tabletop role playing as a hobby dies. Is it the best game? No, of course not. But it's the only game with the backing of a large corporation and a side industry of media savvy people dedicated to keeping it alive. WotC's closest competitor, Paizo, doesn't even come close to the sheer financial weight that Hasbro can swing if they choose. For example, D&D has multiple MMOs out; how's the Pathfinder MMO folks kickstarted years back coming along? Supermarkets stock Wonderbread not because it's the best tasting or healthiest bread on the market, but because there's a demand for white bread, and the other bread types pale in comparison when it comes to volume of sales. Corporate culture cannot, and will not, be meaningfully reformed until another incentive other than Profit Above All Else is found, and any company that achieves any measure of success will begin to think this way. It is the nature of companies in a capitalist society. Do I have a workable solution for this? Heck no! If I did, I'd be writing an academic paper or book about corporate reform, not posting on SA. Ultimately, it ends up being a Scorpion and the Frog type scenario, where that's just what these things do, and saying "Well, they shouldn't do that" kinda misses the point. I'd like it if they didn't do it too, but well, money ultimately trumps any ethics 99/100 times, and the 1/100th gets eaten by the more ruthless. Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Jul 19, 2020 |
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Jul 19, 2020 06:13
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You are 100% right but a pedantic note but D&D Beyond is not run by Wizards, they license the name from them, but are run by Fandom.
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Jul 19, 2020 06:17
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Dexo posted:You are 100% right but a pedantic note but D&D Beyond is not run by Wizards, they license the name from them, but are run by Fandom. I will fully cop to quote:D&D Beyond derives its income from digital content purchases (revenue from which is shared with Wizards of the Coast, which publishes the official Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition books)... being wrong here. Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Jul 19, 2020 |
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Jul 19, 2020 06:19
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I'd be extremely shocked if their subscription service was in any way part of the shared revenue rather than the actual purchasing of the books (subs don't get you the books, they get you unlimited character creation for the first level, and the ability to share your content with friends via the other)
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Jul 19, 2020 06:22
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Toph Bei Fong posted:I will fully cop to just going off the Wikipedia entry for this bit, which says Read the rest of the sentence.
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Jul 19, 2020 06:25
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Back in 2011, in the height of the 4e era, there were about 45k listed subscribers to D&D Insider, according to the WotC forum data. Assuming that's correct and not an undercount (i.e. folks who subscribed but without forum accounts), at $10/month for a subscription, that was $450,000 going into WotC's pocket before overhead and salaries, or $5.4 million per year. The character generator ended up a bad, lowest bid product run in Silverlight of all things, and Dragon magazine paid peanuts to its writers, many of whom were fans super excited to be part of "Real D&D" and didn't care about the crappy pay. Part of Mearls' job was to make more money than all this. He's still there 6 years after 5e launched, so it's safe to assume he has. Hasbro famous fires people right before Christmas, when Q4 numbers are released -- I doubt they'd let him just hang on and lose them money. D&D Beyond will sell you digital copies of the books, for a total of up to $637 for all of them, which I don't suspect is happening as often as subscriptions are. I can't find total subscriber numbers, unfortunately, but I suspect Fandom is paying a pretty penny to WotC for that revenue. Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Jul 19, 2020 |
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Jul 19, 2020 06:39
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Subscription doesn't get you the books. Have to pay for those suckers seperately. Sub just gets you like campaign compendium sharing for up to I think like 3 groups, and unlimited characters you can use with the app/site They almost certainly like every other digital retailer have to pay Wizards their money for the books they sell, as well as pay Hasbro/Wizards for licensing the D&D name for use with their service D&D beyond. But there's no ditect link with the company other than that. It's been a part of like 2 different aquisitions recently. Neither invite living Wizards.
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Jul 19, 2020 06:45
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This is entirely correct but also entirely depressing. capitalism feels like a dragon so big no sword can pierce it. Like Mammon in k6bd.
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Jul 19, 2020 07:00
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Powerful people can get *fired but it needs to reach a certain level of outrage that becomes an embarrassment to the company. And hurts something they care about. Maybe not just money, but rep or anything else. Like Ubisoft has been seemingly cleaning house like literally *firing people who are the head of games that are mid development for this year and next year. But it's only because it's such a black eye on their company and hurts recruiting in a relatively competitive market for them. With these stories out there. I'm not saying Ubisoft is going to fix their broken culture but they are at least *firing those at the top(well besides their CEO who is doing the firings and escaping all blame for allowing it). Wizards doesn't need to worry or care because they are such a small company with so few FTE and a bunch of people on contract who are at their whims. And with so few opportunities and relatively consistent well paying jobs in this space there will always be people willing to take that shot. *allowed them to resign on their own terms
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Jul 19, 2020 07:24
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Kurieg posted:And millennial monopoly, and monopoly for cheaters....  im so tired
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Jul 20, 2020 00:33
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That has to be a photoshop. No. Please, god no. Edit : gently caress the world.
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Jul 20, 2020 03:21
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At $40 it's the cheapest way to get 6 miniature game tokens from Games Workshop.
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Jul 20, 2020 03:35
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...there is only rent.
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Jul 20, 2020 04:23
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gradenko_2000 posted:
No. No no. No no no no no. No. I refuse to believe this reality is real.
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Jul 20, 2020 12:19
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thespaceinvader posted:No. Search your feelings, you know it to be true! quote:A classic flagship title meets MONOPOLY in a game that takes the infinite war to new levels. Featuring 28 key locations from the setting, MONOPOLY: Warhammer 40,000 lets you play as one of six iconic metal tokens representing key factions and make your way around the board buying, selling, and trading properties in the 41st Millennium. Build up your conquered locations with Outposts and Fortifications, seal your destiny with Fate and Glory cards, and collect a Billion Souls for the Emperor to continue your quest to dominate the board! They couldn't even bother doing the obvious Rogue Trader thing, truly lazy. Piell fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Jul 20, 2020 |
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Jul 20, 2020 13:22
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I googled it before posting. I still refuse to believe this is real and not a glitch in the matrix or an elaborate practical joke. I mean, of all the themes for Monopoly 'THERE IS ONLY WAR' is the one that least makes loving sense, including monopoly: socialism or whatever it was.
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Jul 20, 2020 14:24
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Why is this surprising? Monopoly isn't really a game at this point. It's a modifier you slap on [Brand]. Do you have a popular media product? Then at some point you need to have a Monopoly game, a Funko Pop, and a fast food tie-in. Making sense isn't the point, it's about checking off boxes. This is a 'game' that started off by stealing the IP of an art piece demonstrating the moral and ethical failures of land ownership, good faith and sense were never involved.
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Jul 20, 2020 14:30
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BlackIronHeart posted:At $40 it's the cheapest way to get 6 miniature game tokens from Games Workshop. I guess I’m a little surprised that there aren’t any reviews of the token quality.
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Jul 20, 2020 14:38
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