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FWIW, I've been using Roll20 for years as a player and DM and could not tell you what "system" any of the "campaigns" I've played in were under because it's a meaningless tag unless you are openly recruiting from the R20 forums. If you have a group already, it's not something to ever care about because it's not a functional item, merely ornamental.
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Dec 29, 2021 17:09
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I use roll20 entirely for abstract maps for Scion as well as an honest die roller that is not connected to a horrible FFXIV bot that I was using previously. 
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Dec 29, 2021 18:11
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Why are “Shadowrun 6th Edition” and “Shadowrun Sixth World” separate entries?
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Dec 29, 2021 19:32
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hyphz posted:Why are “Shadowrun 6th Edition” and “Shadowrun Sixth World” separate entries? Why are D&D 5th Ed and Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition separate, for that matter? Also, the first story has the following tidbit: apparently, according to people both at Wizards and at Paizo, 4th Edition always outsold Pathfinder.
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Dec 29, 2021 19:55
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I remember looking at Amazon's best sellers numbers and reaching the same conclusion, but that was only one source. Cool to see it confirmed!
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Dec 29, 2021 20:01
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hyphz posted:Why are “Shadowrun 6th Edition” and “Shadowrun Sixth World” separate entries? if I remember, roll20's "system" field will either let you choose from a list or fill in your own answer, so people are probably just writing one when the roll20 system normally lists the other.
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Dec 29, 2021 20:02
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As a plea for indie industry people here: please make sure that the titles, authors and publication dates in your PDF metadata are accurate! I've been trying to go through a bunch of DTRPG updates and it's often impossible to tell which is the correct "latest" version of a PDF. Also, indexing is a pain when the titles are often wrong or contain internal data and the authors are often mixed up on "unknown" (I even found one author whose deadname was still listed in their PDFs)
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Dec 29, 2021 20:43
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hyphz posted:As a plea for indie industry people here: please make sure that the titles, authors and publication dates in your PDF metadata are accurate! I've been trying to go through a bunch of DTRPG updates and it's often impossible to tell which is the correct "latest" version of a PDF. Also, indexing is a pain when the titles are often wrong or contain internal data and the authors are often mixed up on "unknown" (I even found one author whose deadname was still listed in their PDFs) I'd be fine with them being lazy about metadata as long as they changed the filename to reflect number or date of publication of the new version.
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Dec 29, 2021 20:48
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Xiahou Dun posted:And Arivia is pointing out that while this is true of just about all versions of D&D done now, it wasn't back in the day and there's probably some people still doing it because sufficiently large groups of people always get idiosyncratic. The OD&D 4th level Fighter, who is going to struggle with four orcs inside a dungeon, but can easily take forty orcs at once on a battlefield.
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Dec 29, 2021 21:04
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LatwPIAT posted:The OD&D 4th level Fighter, who is going to struggle with four orcs inside a dungeon, but can easily take forty orcs at once on a battlefield. That's why I pointed out there are different combat systems in OD&D and it's specifically the Chainmail rules that get used for that kind of mass combat, yes.
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Dec 29, 2021 21:08
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Siivola posted:It's a nerd hobby, the barrier to entry is in itself a selling point. That and most nerd tabletop games don't have a way to be "frictionless" even though the best possible efforts have been made. Warhammer, for example, has painting guides for like, 90% of their catalogue, and assembly guides for far less, but the instructions aren't terrible. Helps that they release big starter boxes where the models just clip together - no glue required! Now this process is flawed - GW model painting techniques did teach me that you can make beautiful paintjobs with no experience - but they also tried to teach me you needed at least 28 different paint pots at 5$ a pop to get that effect and don't you dare just mix some white in with your dark pink for the highlight, you need to buy Emperor's Children if you're gonna highlight that Screamer pink! There's also play tutorials and guides for all of the GW games from 40k to all of the boxed games, with the exception of the literal "made for children" Barnes and Noble releases which are simple enough. Taking a complex game and making it as easy to understand as possible kind of makes the game poo poo. Battletech's beginner rules forgo internal structure and heat, and there's no reason to play battletech without critical hits or heat management. I've also played the "quick start" versions of X-Wing and Warhammer Underworlds and both games, again, basically required zero thought or planning, X-Wing the person demoing it to me literally said "Wow, okay I guess I can just spam this move now" and we just did the flippy attacks over and over. Underworlds doesn't involve cards, you just march one mini each to one another and start hitting each other until someone dies, and if you've played either game you will know that's literally less than 2% of the game on display there. Frictionless for RPGs is also as best as it can be, I've only bought two starter sets for RPGs before, and both products came with everything I needed and the second one's adventure was literally tailor made to have each encounter both introduce a new mechanic and add it into the ever-growing pot. These characters also punched up way higher than a "normal" starter character would be so the game seems easier/less punishing that it normally can be. The vast majority of people who get into TTRPGs do so because a friend got them to play DnD with them, and thats not gonna change. And I don't really believe for a second someone is gonna play Candy Crush instead of DnD if they have a friend group who is already playing it unless that friend group sucks. I got gatekept out of a DnD group in highschool because my "in" to the group told the DM I hated him for years and when I approached the DM in my senior year of Highschool and asked to play, he was receptive, but my ride was the player who didn't want me there and when he was told to help me make a character he handed me a sheet and told me to "figure it out" and came up with elaborate tales of how the group would hate my guts if I made a "lovely" character etc. That group ended up not being anything like he said, but basically my point is the biggest friction to getting into DnD is the people who play it. Cool people will help people get in, and others will make it unpleasant. Or just are unpleasant and unaware as to why people don't stick around for session 3 after you tell them their character got raped or whatever
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Dec 30, 2021 01:22
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Toshimo posted:Yes. All Roll20 reports are heavily skewed by how much support Roll20, the company, has made available for the specific game, so it's actually not a great barometer for the industry. Right, half the games I've ran have had 0 roll20 support so simply wouldn't show up. Arivia posted:if I remember, roll20's "system" field will either let you choose from a list or fill in your own answer, so people are probably just writing one when the roll20 system normally lists the other. Not currently, it forces a choice from drop down. Perhaps to get away from 6 different listings for DnD. Though they still hosed that up it seems.
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Dec 30, 2021 01:40
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ShallNoiseUpon posted:From my impression (and I could be totally off base, I have no actual data on this) a lot of PF 2nd ed is being played on Foundry instead of Roll20 as well. Roll20 flatly cannot support hexes but there's a really neat foundry mod for it. Which is a lengthy way of saying "Also Lancer".
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Dec 30, 2021 01:45
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spectralent posted:Roll20 flatly cannot support hexes but there's a really neat foundry mod for it. Which is a lengthy way of saying "Also Lancer".  Sure it can.
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Dec 30, 2021 01:51
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spectralent posted:Roll20 flatly cannot support hexes but there's a really neat foundry mod for it. Which is a lengthy way of saying "Also Lancer". Maybe it didn't at one point, but a GM can set roll20 to use a hex grid in a campaign in the Game Default Settings. I've got several hex maps set up for the Bubblegum Crisis game I'm running on Monday.
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Dec 30, 2021 01:52
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Gao posted:Maybe it didn't at one point, but a GM can set roll20 to use a hex grid in a campaign in the Game Default Settings. I've got several hex maps set up for the Bubblegum Crisis game I'm running on Monday. Yeahband I've got a hex map for the game of heart I'm running. Roll20 has a lot more to it than when I first tried it in I think 2015 or so.
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Dec 30, 2021 02:00
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The thing roll20 is really bad at is isometric, but I'm fairly certain that's a weakness of all vtts. It's possible in several but a real pain.
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Dec 30, 2021 02:10
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Terrible Opinions posted:The thing roll20 is really bad at is isometric, but I'm fairly certain that's a weakness of all vtts. It's possible in several but a real pain. The problem with isometric is there's no good mapping to it from a 2D screen, so you have to allow rotation to get mouse positions right. And if you allow rotation then you're doing full 3D.
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Dec 30, 2021 02:55
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I mean more the fake isometric that isometric sprites/vtt minis are made for. So like the wide diamonds you see in Civilization 2. You can get the same effect in roll20 but rotating the map and futzing with it or turning off the grid entirely and just having everyone measure with the ruler.
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Dec 30, 2021 03:08
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Why are D&D 5th Ed and Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition separate, for that matter? https://twitter.com/ChrisSSims/status/1473693497496682504
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Dec 30, 2021 06:47
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Short of managerial incompetence and utterly unrealistic expectations how did 4e not meet goals? It sold like gangbusters and got a ton of nerds into tabletop games in ways I hadn't seen until the AP boom. Like did they expect everyone to buy every book & tile set, have an individual DDI subscription active at all times, and I guess slip crisp 5 dollar bills into envelopes and mail them to WotC in those multi month spans where nothing was coming out?
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Dec 30, 2021 07:11
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Coolness Averted posted:Short of managerial incompetence and utterly unrealistic expectations how did 4e not meet goals? It sold like gangbusters and got a ton of nerds into tabletop games in ways I hadn't seen until the AP boom. Between the implosion of their digital development thanks to, among other things, a murder/suicide, the inability to leverage 4E for video games due to the Atari lawsuit, and the shuttering of the Borders bookstore chain that had always been a inroads towards brick-and-mortar sales, plus the whole 2008 recession, it probably did fail to meet several internal goals that were predicated on those issues not being issues. Whether those reasons were anything that could have been foreseen or prevented in any way is beside the point when it comes to somebody up the ladder seeing that you failed to meet expectations.
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Dec 30, 2021 07:40
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Words You are stuck with the same mentality as the people running these products, “it’s as good as we can make it, this is how I got into the hobby so we should keep doing it that way.” Sorry it’s 2021, not 1994. There are real dollars on the table now and there are so many ways to reduce friction and bring in new players that these companies are ignoring. How about easy to use integrated digital tools that let me jump into an online game without dealing with third party bullshit? Or a starter package that actually gives me everything I need to play for reals without needing to buy three giant books? How about properly indexed digital rules that are kept up to date instead of relying on some copyright skirting Russians to do it instead? The fact that there are all these other websites supporting the games shows that these things are needed and in demand but being neglected by the property owners.
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Dec 30, 2021 08:04
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Coolness Averted posted:Short of managerial incompetence and utterly unrealistic expectations how did 4e not meet goals? It sold like gangbusters and got a ton of nerds into tabletop games in ways I hadn't seen until the AP boom.
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Dec 30, 2021 08:11
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Terrible Opinions posted:It didn't have a big media phenomenon pushing sales to people who don't normally play ttrpgs. Without the sales driven by actual play podcasts, or big yougn adult novels, or TV shows D&D cannot possibly meet Hasbro's expectations. That's just the sort of unreasonable money giant owners expect. But from what I recall Hasbro didn't expect giant things. Magic was what justified WotC to Hasbro and D&D was a side passion project they were allowed to keep. Like 3x even has the famous anecdote Monte Cook used to share about WotC being really proud 3e had the best sales of any d&d launch year, and the exec just shrugged and said that was a standard GI Joe year. Though I can see there being a wonky thing like "Hang on, you now have 10x the employees full time dedicated to the D&D brand, why aren't we seeing more than 10x the returns?"
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Dec 30, 2021 08:23
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It also had the guy at the wheel facing a personal crisis of being rejected by the very nerds whose approval he craved. Like, it's not a coincidence how quickly that Mearls went from the backwards-facing Essentials to cutting and pasting AD&D into the Next playtest event and surveying about "What will feel like D&D?" instead of examining how the games played.
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Dec 30, 2021 08:27
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moths posted:It also had the guy at the wheel facing a personal crisis of being rejected by the very nerds whose approval he craved. Mearls didn't really start out as the guy in charge though, that was a result of layoffs and reorganization from what I remember. D&D department layoffs were a yearly tradition for a while, though it's not really clear if underperformance (however you care to define it) prompted the layoffs or if the layoffs then resulted in underperformance which then prompted further layoffs etc.
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Dec 30, 2021 08:39
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Bucnasti posted:Or a starter package that actually gives me everything I need to play for reals without needing to buy three giant books?
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Dec 30, 2021 08:39
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Siivola posted:These have existed since the beginning of the hobby, but people keep insisting you have to put the three giant books in the starter set to have "everything you need to play". Right. Why is it “you need to buy and read these books” instead of “download this app, it will walk you through the rules and then help you find an online/local group to play an introductory game. If you like it come back and well sell you some product, and if you really like it we’ll sell you some premium poo poo at a huge markup.” That’s how you bring in completely new customers to your product in the modern world, not relying on people finding your product through their friends or stumbling into a not-lovely game store. As I’ve said before, to the vast majority of the world RPGs == DnD and if we want ttrpgs to grow and flourish we need DND to lead new players into the hobby, which they’re doing a piss poor job of. The same goes for Warhammer and Magic (to a lesser degree), they define their respective spaces to the general public and are going to be the entry point for almost every new player. If somebody sees DND as too troublesome to start playing there’s almost no chance they will try an alternative game regardless of if it’s quality.
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Dec 30, 2021 09:06
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I think what they're saying is there are already starter sets, and they literally don't require buying those three big, expensive books. There's a culture problem where people do insist on needing all three books, but that's an entirely separate can of worms from the starter sets legit not existing.
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Dec 30, 2021 09:16
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The Bee posted:I think what they're saying is there are already starter sets, and they literally don't require buying those three big, expensive books. There's a culture problem where people do insist on needing all three books, but that's an entirely separate can of worms from the starter sets legit not existing. I mean, a lot of starter sets are genuinely not very good is one related problem. Like yeah they exist, but also a lot of the time they seem to do an extremely poor job of onboarding people. I do think there's also something to be said for "buy this starter set or buy this three book 1000+ page collection" as being the assumed default two choices upon which your entry to the hobby lies.
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Dec 30, 2021 09:32
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Right, yes, I was unclear. D&D starters have historically been hit and miss (probably more miss), but the Call of Cthulhu starter box is excellent, for example. It's about as good an intro product you can have while remaining in the printed book realm. Edit: If you insist on moving out of the physical realm, kids these days are making a lot of characters using something called "D&D Beyond", but I'm too groggy to give up my paper sheets and wet erase maps to know anything about that. Siivola fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Dec 30, 2021 |
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Dec 30, 2021 09:32
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the thing that did it for me was fourth ed was looking in the rulebook and seeing there were no gnomes but there was a newer even edgier kind of elf.
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Dec 30, 2021 09:50
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Re: Online gaming, I think it's way more likely that the next big thing in the virtual tabletop world comes from an established video game company deciding to cash in on RPGs than from WotC's software department. All of the big traditional RPGs are hampered by janky rules that need massaging to move to digital, and all the current VTTs suffer from trying to support every game out there. You could do cool poo poo with a bespoke ruleset and a matching platform, but then you also would need an IP to get any eyes on the product. Basically what I'm hoping is that some nerd at Lucasarts delivers me a Star Wars adventure game. Edit: Oh right Lucasarts has been out of business for years. 
Siivola fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Dec 30, 2021 |
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Dec 30, 2021 10:18
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:That and most nerd tabletop games don't have a way to be "frictionless" even though the best possible efforts have been made. Mixing pure white in for your highlight will work okay for pink but will look like a washed out mess for a lot of other colors. The GW system is often lower-investment than how skilled painters mix colors because you need a lot of different light and dark colors tones to mix good shades and highlights.
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Dec 30, 2021 10:36
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Siivola posted:Re: Online gaming, I think it's way more likely that the next big thing in the virtual tabletop world comes from an established video game company deciding to cash in on RPGs than from WotC's software department. All of the big traditional RPGs are hampered by janky rules that need massaging to move to digital, and all the current VTTs suffer from trying to support every game out there. You could do cool poo poo with a bespoke ruleset and a matching platform, but then you also would need an IP to get any eyes on the product. Larian seems well positioned to do this, but considering they're working on BG3 right now, that might be a monkey's paw wish.
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Dec 30, 2021 12:43
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Calico Heart posted:the thing that did it for me was fourth ed was looking in the rulebook and seeing there were no gnomes but there was a newer even edgier kind of elf. We found it, we found the one person who was actually deeply committed to gnomes
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Dec 30, 2021 13:14
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I think it just speaks volumes about the place your franchise is in when gnomes are out and Edgy Elves are in
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Dec 30, 2021 13:58
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Calico Heart posted:I think it just speaks volumes about the place your franchise is in when gnomes are out and Edgy Elves are in Yes, it means you're making things people like instead of sticking to things basically nobody likes because "tradition"
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Dec 30, 2021 14:15
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admanb posted:Mixing pure white in for your highlight will work okay for pink but will look like a washed out mess for a lot of other colors. The GW system is often lower-investment than how skilled painters mix colors because you need a lot of different light and dark colors tones to mix good shades and highlights. Honestly, it's been a gift to me having pre-set paints. I'm pretty red-green colourblind* and being able to grab a red and have a highlight or contrasting colour I can pick off a grid and use opens this world to me**. I almost always use Vallejo or AP paints, though. And I'm trying to learn how to mix colours. *I once went to school in bottle green trousers for the best part of a week before someone told me they weren't grey **It's weird but I can see the difference in shades with a lot of effort but as soon as I move away I lose it and have to rework it again
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Dec 30, 2021 14:21
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