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King of Solomon posted:LANCER also released as a free playtest version at least a year before the kickstarter launched. Oh right, I completely forgot about COMP/CON which makes the whole thing that much more of a black swan. So, uhhhh....maybe Fragged Empire is a better model? It spawned a number of reasonably successful spinoffs, and we're getting a 2E correct? That one came out of more or less standard beginnings for the industry, yes?
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Nov 12, 2021 21:17
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Lurker here. I haven't filed any reports or notified mods via PM or otherwise to shut down the discussion, but it is irritating for the thread to be filled with off topic posts that bump it to the top of my bookmarks. There is an existing thread for that design talk, you can do it there.
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Nov 12, 2021 21:25
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I’d say a large amount of Lancer’s success is based on style, not substance. The fact that it’s a good game is a great bonus, but most Kickstarter backers in gaming as a whole are in for art and concept and know very little about the actual games. Anecdotally, I know like 5 people that backed it and never even tried to play. Having a well established name was also a huge part of getting eyes on a first KS project, but it took off far from there thanks to the great pitch.
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Nov 12, 2021 21:26
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Pickled Tink posted:Lurker here. I don’t know why talking about why 4E failed in the market and why spinoffs struggle isn’t on topic.
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Nov 12, 2021 21:27
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Why are people so offended that we talk about anything but sexual assault and Actual Play podcasts
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Nov 12, 2021 21:29
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What even counts as success in this dead gay industry? You can rake in fifty grand or more with some tiddy figures and completely rear end wargame rules.
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Nov 12, 2021 21:34
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Mr. Maltose posted:I think most people in the conversation are claiming that LANCER is successful in spite of the lack of good intro adventure, which is fair because Wallflower is not what I'd point to when discussing good adventure design to introduce a game and setting. Wallflower challenges a lot of the setting assumptions, and requires a lot of buy-in on those assumptions to get what's going on. But in my opinion the bigger problem was the lack of pre-made maps, which was the thing that was most challenging and daunting part of making a mission for a new GM. If I could go back in time and make a suggestion to the Kickstarter, it would be a small pack of pre-made maps with matching sitreps, to illustrate how it's suppose to work from the GM side. Tibalt fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Nov 12, 2021 |
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Nov 12, 2021 21:35
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King of Solomon posted:LANCER also released as a free playtest version at least a year before the kickstarter launched. Honestly the more and more I think about it I think 3 is so important for more "crunchy" games nowadays. Having a web interface and character creator/manager that isn't trash, either official, or fan created or whatever, is so useful as a barrier to entry thing. When it comes to getting players to play in games where just like trying to build a character from the book with so many potential options and prereq's and limitations would be tedious. I was able to get my friends into a Lancer game by just showing them comp/con's name generators. Also I have to imagine D&D Beyond, and R20's charactermancer has to help a ton just quickly getting new players into a game.
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Nov 12, 2021 22:01
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4E also had app support, and from what I heard it got pretty vital for keeping up with your options by the end. Edit: Heck, 3.0 had an app but it was useless because you couldn’t update it.
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Nov 12, 2021 22:07
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Siivola posted:4E also had app support, and from what I heard it got pretty vital for keeping up with your options by the end. OH, buddy, wait until you find out how that story ends.
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Nov 12, 2021 22:19
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I thought the one people used was a completely different piece of software than what the tragedy guy was working on.
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Nov 12, 2021 22:25
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Dexo posted:Honestly the more and more I think about it I think 3 is so important for more "crunchy" games nowadays. I would go so far as to say that though it's a (relatively) recent development, I'd consider an Actual Play of a full adventure (probably not your published introductory adventure) to be essential as well. While a good video setup requires more resources than is probably realistic, I'd say that a podcast is certainly within reach of even an indie RPG publisher. For example, I think that LA By Night had a massive influence on the amount of traction that V:tM 5E was able to get at its launch, particularly after the playtest shitshow.
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Nov 12, 2021 22:37
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IIRC, and it's been a million years so my timeline is probably a little off, they started with the idea of making a whole cross-platform online suite of tools, of which only the character builder really got off the ground, but it was really good and (more importantly) easily modifiable by the user. Then a bunch of corporate shuffling happened and the whole murder-suicide thing, and all progress on that particular set of tools was cancelled, and they put the company they had hired to manage the forums in charge of making a new set of tools from scratch. Gleemax ended up making a functional web-only character builder, but it wasn't as versatile as the classic builder so fans took the old code and turned it into the offline character builder that was maintained unofficially for a long time. I'm also in pretty strong agreement that strong digital tools are very important in a modern RPG with any mechanical complexity.
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Nov 12, 2021 22:42
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Don’t forget that original 4e tool was written in Silverlight. Remember that? Exactly. I still find character generators to be a case study in how modern UI conventions make simple things unnecessarily hard to program.
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Nov 12, 2021 22:50
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Jimbozig posted:Mothership is having a big Kickstarter now and people were saying stuff like "yeah, the new version is supposed to have updated these rules so they actually work now." FWIW, the rules were never broken in the first place and IMO the changes in the 1e version are exclusively negative ones, to the point where I won't be running 1e and am genuinely considering canceling my pledge - but that's a whole segue maybe not suited for here, they just never released anything GM-facing so there was no guidance for setting up adventures or anything else normally viewed as essential. The game itself always worked fine.
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Nov 12, 2021 23:06
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SkyeAuroline posted:FWIW, the rules were never broken in the first place and IMO the changes in the 1e version are exclusively negative ones, to the point where I won't be running 1e and am genuinely considering canceling my pledge - but that's a whole segue maybe not suited for here, they just never released anything GM-facing so there was no guidance for setting up adventures or anything else normally viewed as essential. The game itself always worked fine. I would read a longform discussion of this. Wouldn't be able to contribute much as, at most, I've listened to an unfinished AP of Mothership.
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Nov 12, 2021 23:08
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As a lurker of specific threads, the 4e chat has been really interesting to me, as I bounced hard off it at launch coming off of 3.5e. the chat definitely makes me want to take a second pass at it, now that I own more than a single rpg line and know what I like.
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Nov 12, 2021 23:11
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Tibalt posted:Yeah, I think that a good introductory adventure should serve as an excellent 'template' adventure that GMs can use as guide when making their own adventure, as well as giving the (probably new, probably inexperienced) GM everything they need to run a group out of the box. As part of that, it should probably set the standard for what the game is about - a gumshoe detective system should probably have some sort of mystery in it, for example. And extra credit in my opinion, the adventure should be a great on-ramp to the setting, as a way to introduce and explain the setting without requiring a lot of investment by the players ahead of time. It should also be a good adventure on it's own merits, preferably with some memorable moments. the tricky thing is that you also can't make it too much of a "template" - most people find B2 Keep on the Borderlands to be a much easier introduction to Basic D&D when it has it all laid out for you. In contrast, B1 Into The Unknown is literally a fill in the blanks kind of "this is how you do it" and people bounce off it all the time (including myself) because it's asking you to stock (fill with encounters or details) about 50 rooms before you play for the first time. It's too little already set up and too much of a guide/template to actually be useful. e: as another backer I would be interested in your take on the 1e rules as well, SkyeAuroline.
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Nov 12, 2021 23:15
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Honestly, I think some of you guys are discounting the fact that Lancer filled a badly needed niche in gaming, a decent game about mechs. I have been playing rpgs for nearly 25 years, and it is pretty crazy that it is the first Mech game that I ever really saw. Other than extremely bad rpgs like the Mech Warrior one, and maybe Heavy Gear if you like hazard stripes and rules that are way too much. Having good rules and an incredible artist on payroll for essentially free is obviously a strong thing too.
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Nov 12, 2021 23:39
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I would read a longform discussion of this. Wouldn't be able to contribute much as, at most, I've listened to an unfinished AP of Mothership. I would also really like to dig into MoSh. It’s come up here and in the Kickstarter thread and it feels like there are some interesting things to discuss. Is clearly a flawed system, but still one appealing enough to make people spend a million bucks on pamphlets. Playing Mothership online during the pandemic has been my main TTRPG experience aside from dabbling in D&D as a teen. Our (normally board-game playing) group loves it. We exclusively play home brew scenarios, mostly one-shots. We also ignore about half the rules. I would have no desire to play a mechanically heavier system, but at the same time I really feel that something entirely narrative-driven like powered by the apocalypse would fall flat for us. It feels like having that backbone of mechanics is important to establish the rules of the world, or maybe the stakes? I dunno. I really want to read your thoughts on the rule changes SkyeAuroline, since they seem entirely positive to me?
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Nov 12, 2021 23:41
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Honestly, I think some of you guys are discounting the fact that Lancer filled a badly needed niche in gaming, a decent game about mechs. Hey now, Battle Century G is at least decent. It's indie as hell to the point where it has hilariously awful art in it, but it's a good game about mechs.
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Nov 12, 2021 23:57
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Honestly, I think some of you guys are discounting the fact that Lancer filled a badly needed niche in gaming, a decent game about mechs. I'm not sure you can separate that from it being 4e-inspired because the thing you need in "a decent game about mechs" (that isn't Firebrands/Beam Saber obv) is a good combat and mech customization system. Hitting that balance without going too far in the direction of Mech Warrior is vital.
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Nov 13, 2021 00:00
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admanb posted:I'm not sure you can separate that from it being 4e-inspired because the thing you need in "a decent game about mechs" (that isn't Firebrands/Beam Saber obv) is a good combat and mech customization system. Hitting that balance without going too far in the direction of Mech Warrior is vital. In as much as there is a "mech genre", you could always do it in the Universal Genre Emulation Engine that is PtbA. You'd probably want something alone the lines of strings from Monsterhearts (some sort of secondary mechanic to reinforce your genre themes) but that's certainly a hell of a lot easier than a more detailed combat & character building system. Which is to say, you don't have to have a mech game that is also crunchy, but I suspect the overlap between the two is pretty sizeable and worth chasing. But you have to walk that fine line between "Wouldn't this be better as a straight-up board/minis game?" and "I got bored before my turn in initiative came up" and that's non-trivial.
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Nov 13, 2021 00:08
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Everything people have said about Lancer having a lot of advantages out of the gate are true and I would never try to dispute them. Having an internet-famous artist to do cool art, having a lot of word of mouth, having a slick app, it is 100% true that this stuff is all a big factor in the success of its Kickstarter and how much traction it gained. All of this stuff is correct and beyond question. However, I will say that I think as advantaged as it is in all those many respects, which are things that can't easily be replicated (unless you're also an internet-famous artist who does cool art I guess), that Lancer's longevity both pre- and post-release does probably have a lot to do with its system and design making it a game people actually want to play, and a bunch of people do play it. There are multiple discord servers full of people who just organize pickup games or run ongoing campaigns, Interpoint, Ukuwa Station, GateSEC, the "main" discord for Lancer has like 20,000 members, there are actual play podcasts, people aren't just buying a book full of pretty art but are actually playing the game, and I don't think it's unreasonable to say that if the game was a slapdash afterthought that while it might have still spiked a solid Kickstarter payday that it probably wouldn't have the degree of ongoing enthusiasm it had before and after. The long open playtest was brought up, which is a big factor in its success, and that was a period where the game had minimal art and no layout, and something that's worth discussing I think is that this was an actual open playtest. I know open playtesting is used a lot as a glorified ad campaign just to build hype, but the amount that Lancer changed in ways both big and small over the years it was in testing are actually pretty significant. People played the game a lot, gave feedback, and that feedback was taken into account. The game's whole action economy structure changed, various rules were added and removed, it underwent a lot of refinement and there was a very clear sense that gameplay was a concern beyond a skeleton to drape cool art over. You go back and look at the earliest drafts and drat was that a way different, way jankier game. It didn't get where it is now because people weren't smacking it with hammers pretty regularly. So I don't know precisely where it leaves the importance of gameplay here, because on the one hand it is correct that Lancer has a lot of advantages fueling its success which aren't tied to how good, bad, or indifferently it plays as a game (and as a game it isn't perfect, nothing is), but I also think it's incorrect to say that the game under all of that didn't play any part in its success and doesn't factor in to the ongoing enthusiasm for it. Doubtlessly that will wane at some point, but if it was a shittier game I feel like it would have been waning a lot harder a lot sooner. Lord_Hambrose posted:Honestly, I think some of you guys are discounting the fact that Lancer filled a badly needed niche in gaming, a decent game about mechs. This is also a big part of its success for sure. What's the last big tactical mech RPG with rules that aren't a total mess anyone remembers? Mech games aren't exactly everywhere, even now when some others are releasing like Maharlika. A lot of existing mech games also seem to broadly interested in either trying to recreate anime tropes or use finely-grained point buy systems where you have to build mechs from the ground up (or are kind of rules light, on the opposite end of the spectrum), Lancer exists within a sort of middleground that I think appeals to a lot of folks where mechs snap together out of an assortment of parts in a way that's very satisfying for people to mess around with, and also goes quick enough that you aren't having to do weight calculations and armor distributions. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Nov 13, 2021 |
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Nov 13, 2021 00:13
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:4e was a decade ago, do the edition wars even exist anymore? I have with my own eyes witnessed grown-rear end adults in TYOOL 2021 shouting at each other over whether the introduction of 2nd Edition was a horrible crime against the 1e diehards and how it snuffed out the BECMI D&D game that was largely Arneson-led and thus served mostly to destroy the influence of one of the founders of the hobby never, ever underestimate the length of time that nerds will hold on to Angry Nerd Opinions Lord_Hambrose posted:Honestly, I think some of you guys are discounting the fact that Lancer filled a badly needed niche in gaming, a decent game about mechs. Look at this Palladium Robotech disrespe-- oh wait you said 'decent' never mind, objection withdrawn
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Nov 13, 2021 00:31
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Kai Tave posted:The long open playtest was brought up, which is a big factor in its success, and that was a period where the game had minimal art and no layout, and something that's worth discussing I think is that this was an actual open playtest. I know open playtesting is used a lot as a glorified ad campaign just to build hype, but the amount that Lancer changed in ways both big and small over the years it was in testing are actually pretty significant. People played the game a lot, gave feedback, and that feedback was taken into account. The game's whole action economy structure changed, various rules were added and removed, it underwent a lot of refinement and there was a very clear sense that gameplay was a concern beyond a skeleton to drape cool art over. You go back and look at the earliest drafts and drat was that a way different, way jankier game. It didn't get where it is now because people weren't smacking it with hammers pretty regularly. I brought the playtest up as one of the main reasons for LANCER's success for a reason. That word of mouth that helped it succeed didn't just appear out of nowhere, it was a direct result of a long and positive playtest experience for a substantial number of people.
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Nov 13, 2021 00:32
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:I have with my own eyes witnessed grown-rear end adults in TYOOL 2021 shouting at each other over whether the introduction of 2nd Edition was a horrible crime against the 1e diehards and how it snuffed out the BECMI D&D game that was largely Arneson-led and thus served mostly to destroy the influence of one of the founders of the hobby Just to add to this, never underestimate how little they will defend those opinions to people that aren't other angry nerds. I remember listening to an episode commentary on the simpsons recalled an anecdote where Mike Scully offered to have a guy who would write extremely detailed breakdowns of why each releasing episode was dog poo poo take a look at some scripts and see if he could find some flaws before they went into the farther parts of production because he thought the guy seemed smart, and the guy just went "n-n-no sir thats fine i was joking anyway" and deleted his account and all of his posts. Internet nerds will literally pop their top screeching at someone whether Jimmy Game Design meant roll under target number or roll under or match target number, but if Jimmy Game Design shows up and says they'll explain the problem nobody's interested. Almost like seething about pointless crap on the internet isn't about making sure you have the best and most up to date information.
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Nov 13, 2021 00:44
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As a lurker, I feel like different people want different things out of this thread. "The TG Industry" is way too broad of an umbrella. Is it entirely about the people and personalities in the industry? If so, of course design talk will feel off topic. However, if you're talking about the industry as an industry, I feel like design, innovation, and how those factors play into the market is more on topic than a tabletop man's Twitter posts. I think a rename to generalize it less, or maybe a thread split, might help these two conversations get less tangled up.
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Nov 13, 2021 00:54
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Just to add to this, never underestimate how little they will defend those opinions to people that aren't other angry nerds. There's also just random folks who have only ever been exposed to people who agreed with them completely that X edition was garbo, and they then post as if everyone would of course agree with that, without realizing that here on SA, no, everyone does not agree with that. Sometimes the expression of contempt for those who actually play X edition is enough to trigger a fight, and sometimes it just exposes them sufficiently that everyone just rolls their eyes and ignores it. The definition I'm using is: edition warring is distinct from just lengthy, detailed edition-oriented discussion and analysis; the former is basically starting fights with posters who have allied themselves with the enemy D&D clan, and actually easier to deal with using mod buttons, the latter is just a topic that is often tedious for those who don't play or care about D&D (and sometimes for those who do, too).
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Nov 13, 2021 01:01
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DashingGentleman posted:I would also really like to dig into MoSh. It’s come up here and in the Kickstarter thread and it feels like there are some interesting things to discuss. Is clearly a flawed system, but still one appealing enough to make people spend a million bucks on pamphlets. Do you want me to bounce over to Trad Games Chat since it's definitely not "industry" talk, or maybe someone spin up a MoSh thread? I'm wrapping up work at the moment and can't write long-form till later tonight, but the core of my objections is the new health and damage system, with lesser complaints about the new sanity system. (Both are easily rectified by writing my own "home game" of MoSh, but I haven't been in a mental state to do any writing, much less horror.)
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Nov 13, 2021 01:06
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King of Solomon posted:Hey now, Battle Century G is at least decent. It's indie as hell to the point where it has hilariously awful art in it, but it's a good game about mechs. BCG may not have COMP/CON but it has functioning encounter design rules and a much saner range of player options. I'll run it over Lancer any day. There's also Armour Astir Advent now, which is PbtA and perfect if what you want is "ragtag group of resistance fighters on a carrier wage a guerilla war against an evil empire, but everything is powered by magic." Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Nov 13, 2021 |
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Nov 13, 2021 01:10
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King of Solomon posted:I brought the playtest up as one of the main reasons for LANCER's success for a reason. That word of mouth that helped it succeed didn't just appear out of nowhere, it was a direct result of a long and positive playtest experience for a substantial number of people. Yeah, and a big part of this feedback loop was the main mechanical-side designer's willingness to actually discuss with people what sorts of things he wanted out of the game, why he incorporated or didn't incorporate the feedback he did, his own take on design, etc. Everything from the decision to eventually drop trying to incorporate more detailed Titanfall-esque pilot combat rules in order to focus the game more upon mech action rather than trying to split focus by making two separate games within games or the decision to make a hard division between narrative and tactical play (a thing which has informed the design of his latest project ICON as well) to "I could make this thing deal 3d6+3 damage or I could make it deal 4d6 damage and on average those are basically the same thing, but people see four entire d6s as being way sexier, so that's what I'm going with." Community engagement yes, but also there was (and remains) a lot of interest in poking at game design that was fostered during that playtest period and that's continued on with an extremely robust and active homebrew/3PP scene.
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Nov 13, 2021 01:11
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An interesting thing I witnessed as part of running Lancer's No Room For A Wallflower campaign, which I think I also would have seen if I had been a recent DnD GM, is how much a community invested in a game supports itself and others when running what is effectively 'the latest adventure path'. Because everyone is more or less running through similar scenarios, this means you can share tips with other GMs on the internet of "yeah this encounter is a little too easy, so if you wanted to drop a custom boss, this is the place to do it" or "this plot thread never gets tied up if your PCs don't do x, so here's how I did it" so everyone who runs through the campaign subsequently in theory has an easier time of it thanks to the earlier trailblazers. Since it's impossible to get the adventure without an internet connection this also means that the lack of premade maps (which was a notable omission) was only a problem until someone posted their own maps online for sharing. The downside here, of course, is that all this is on a discord, instead of any kind of official searchable forum. One of the reasons Lancer's subreddit is mostly quiet is precisely because PilotNET is so active and engageable as long as you don't raise red flags about yourself within minutes of joining.
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Nov 13, 2021 01:24
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bewilderment posted:
Discord search is way better than any forum search I've ever used.
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Nov 13, 2021 01:29
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bewilderment posted:An interesting thing I witnessed as part of running Lancer's No Room For A Wallflower campaign, which I think I also would have seen if I had been a recent DnD GM, is how much a community invested in a game supports itself and others when running what is effectively 'the latest adventure path'. As someone who did a lot of the work on Wallflower's encounters, it's also been extremely helpful and enjoyable feedback watching people come back to report on how their games have been going in realtime. Something I've kept an eye out for is whether or not there's been any particular encounter that everyone hits like a roadblock, too hard or too easy or too much of a slog, and while various groups have had their own personal high points and low points it's been gratifying that there hasn't been any sort of prevailing trend to the effect of "yeah this fight here sucks rocks, you need to completely overhaul it." There's a few things that given a second chance I'd go back and touch up, but for the most part nothing seems to have been an unmitigated dud so I'm kind of proud of that. Bottom Liner posted:Discord search is way better than any forum search I've ever used. Yeah, I get all the arguments for both the impermanence and impenetrability from an outside websearch of using discord servers as an information repository but it's not like this place is immaculately curated and not full of dead links, broken images, etc. Even on forums that aren't held together with spit and bailing wire, I can't always find what I'm looking for. Speaking of which, if anyone offhand knows where to find the "I ran D&D for a Brazilian death squad" story that got posted to RPGnet way back when, I'd appreciate it.
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Nov 13, 2021 01:39
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Bottom Liner posted:Discord search is way better than any forum search I've ever used. Agree to disagree there, even setting aside personal reasons not to use Discord for this. You at least don't have to already be a member to find poo poo on (most) forums, and many get indexed by Google so you can cast a wide enough net to actually get the answer to what you're after.
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Nov 13, 2021 01:40
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Impermanent posted:4e dying at the hands of paizo and mearls is the largest tragedy design-wise in TTRPGs to date so it makes sense that we would endlessly circle it. The degree to which it set us back is vast. Did Paizo not like 4e because they genuinely disagreed with the design philosophy or because they were still mad about WOTC pulling the magazine license Nissin Cup Nudist fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Nov 13, 2021 |
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Nov 13, 2021 01:45
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Just to add to this, never underestimate how little they will defend those opinions to people that aren't other angry nerds. I remember listening to an episode commentary on the simpsons recalled an anecdote where Mike Scully offered to have a guy who would write extremely detailed breakdowns of why each releasing episode was dog poo poo take a look at some scripts and see if he could find some flaws before they went into the farther parts of production because he thought the guy seemed smart, and the guy just went "n-n-no sir thats fine i was joking anyway" and deleted his account and all of his posts. Internet nerds will literally pop their top screeching at someone whether Jimmy Game Design meant roll under target number or roll under or match target number, but if Jimmy Game Design shows up and says they'll explain the problem nobody's interested. This is also 100% correct the dirty little secret (except it's not really a secret) of Edition Warring is that the vast majority of it is not nerds going "here are the flaws I have identified in this iteration of a game's mechanics, perhaps we should find a way to address that" - it's nerds going "I don't like this edition of a game, and I will throw out whatever justification I need to in order to get you to shut up and agree that it is worthless" and shouting reasons past one another into the void, which is why it becomes toxic and threads need to have rules prohibiting it. The mechanical argument, or the virtues of one edition over another, are secondary at best, far behind the primary motivation of "I want you all to tell me how smart I am for not liking a thing that I don't like, and I'll use whatever arguments I can find to bludgeon you into this admission." 'Cause, again... nerds will still have 1e/2e Edition Wars despite 2e being published in 1989. Mind you, this isn't super-relevant in the Industry thread except to note that the worst excesses of the TG Industry are generally fostered by their audience, and how the 'hobbyist' trajectory of the industry means many of those lovely traits about the audience will reinforce the lovely traits of the industry as the audience becomes the next generation of designers, so I'll drop it here; still, I do think it bears noting, if only because so much of the lovely industry behavior has sprung from lovely audience behavior over the decades.
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Nov 13, 2021 01:51
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KingKalamari posted:I think, to tie things back into the topic of the thread, the response to 4e teaches us something about the industry as a whole: Presentation, timing and sample adventure modules can make or break a system, perhaps even more than the system's mechanical foundation. What's kind of unfortunate is that I feel like WotC hasn't really learned the right lesson from this experience, as I think they've begun working under the assumption "RPG Design doesn't matter" rather than "It takes more than solid RPG design to make a system successful" One thing I was surprised to learn recently, but that makes sense once you think about it, was that one of the big drives behind the OGL in the first place was that WotC felt that adventures were terrible deals on a production costs vs profits balance, and they just wanted to be able to offload the cost of producing them onto third parties while still having a big library of adventures for sale. I wonder to what degree this is still the case--I wouldn't be surprised if organized play becoming such a big thing has changed the math.
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Nov 13, 2021 01:52
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OtspIII posted:One thing I was surprised to learn recently, but that makes sense once you think about it, was that one of the big drives behind the OGL in the first place was that WotC felt that adventures were terrible deals on a production costs vs profits balance, and they just wanted to be able to offload the cost of producing them onto third parties while still having a big library of adventures for sale. Adventures, halfway decent ones especially, are honestly kind of a huge pain in the rear end to make, so it wouldn't surprise me if that still holds true. One of Paizo's enormous advantages with Pathfinder has always been their adventure path offerings, which are a big selling point for a lot of folks. Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Did Paizo not like 4e because they genuinely disagreed with the design philosophy or because they were still mad about WOTC pulling the magazine license I'm not convinced there was ever any actual enmity coming from Paizo so much as they were just willing to capitalize on edition war rhetoric to get butts in seats. I'm sure they probably weren't thrilled at the way they'd been let go off of Dragon/Dungeon, but also I don't think there was a lot of genuine "ooh I hate this new version of D&D!" going on so much as cynical marketing. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Nov 13, 2021 |
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Nov 13, 2021 01:56
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