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admanb posted:I feel like the Venn diagram between people who would blame Williams entirely for TSR's failures and people who have a pet campaign setting that they complain endlessly that WotC hasn't printed materials for is a circle. Apparently the person who game up with the "many buckets" theory is a dude named Bill Slavisek, who is currently working at Zenimax writing content for TESO. Lots of tabletop/RPG people can't into business and they tend to use artistic and flourish-y terms when discussing business, Jim Wampler apparently likes to discuss TSR's defeat by WotC as some grand "Ah yes, they slew us on the field of economic combat." which sounds great for pop business articles but doesn't really get into the nitty gritty of how TSR was mismanaged into the grave or explain anything at all. The Buckets Theory makes no sense since having a great diversity of their product range is what was keeping the company afloat. If they only sold DnD they would have gone under much much faster since apparently sales flattened out considerably in 1983. As for attacking williams, I think some people have the right to do so, the anecdote I heard about her walking up to the Dragonlance people after burning bridges with them and telling them she was planning on suing them out of house and home over them writing for a different company is not a good look for her, but the same anecdote source also said she let an employee take six months or so of paid time off so he could focus on his family so who is to say. The one about them trying to create an Olympic Athlete superhero rpg is at least funny
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Mar 23, 2022 11:55
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Is there any place to read more about the evolution from 1st ed to 2nd to 3rd edition AD&D? I was playing from 1st to 2nd and the changeover after 2ed was released was like Dorothy landing in OZ. I was told that further versions tried to chase the WoW trend. Edit: articles, angry blog posts or any of the billion books that were released would be appreciated
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Mar 23, 2022 12:32
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If the "buckets theory" ever actually held true in the 80s (and that's a big "if"), it definitely broke down in the 90s, where much of the D&D player base fractured into multiple mostly-incompatible player bases who only bought material for one or two campaign settings and ignored all the rest of them, which meant that a significant majority of TSR's output wouldn't ever sell to a majority of the players who were still actively buying D&D material. The buckets didn't expand the player base by any meaningful degree; settings like Ravenloft or Planescape were still AD&D through and through, and anyone who'd moved on from D&D wasn't going to pick it up again now that it had different theming but still retained all the same rules. On top of that, most of the material they were producing at the height of campaign setting The various campaign settings that were killed off, as beloved as they might have been by the relatively small fraction of players who ever paid money for them, were killed off specifically because they weren't selling well enough to justify making more material for them. (I believe the sole exception was Al-Qadim, which was intended to be a one-year limited run but sold well enough to merit extending the product line for another year or so.)
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Mar 23, 2022 14:40
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Thanlis posted:Oh hey, he called me a cocksucker once. Although he’s too delicate to spell it out, he had to use asterisks. I recently learned that Kratman had a less than successful tour as an infantry training battalion commander when he was in the army. Apparently in Kratman's mind modern weapons had become so lethal that a return to trench warfare was inevitable. Therefore it follows that we need to spend our training time learning about obsolete stuff like rifles and machineguns - no, boys, we're going to train to go to war with swords. Somehow the army didn't see the wisdom of this. Clearly the reason why the Russian army is doing poorly in Ukraine is because they don't have enough practice using swords.
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Mar 23, 2022 14:44
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I'd argue from my own experience that the many buckets weren't for expansion but for retention. At least in my location D&D had massive competition in the fantasy sector, my group never would have dropped the thousands of dollars on a D&D product if Planescape and Birthright hadn't existed.
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Mar 23, 2022 15:37
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Goa Tse-tung posted:I'd argue from my own experience that the many buckets weren't for expansion but for retention. At least in my location D&D had massive competition in the fantasy sector, my group never would have dropped the thousands of dollars on a D&D product if Planescape and Birthright hadn't existed. I was barely on the tailing edge of 2e so I sort of missed that wave anyway, but I'd say that was true of my group too once 3e came out (or 3.5e, can't remember exactly when we started playing). Everybody was pretty lukewarm on bog-standard fantasy, but the Eberron campaign setting got everybody fired up to play. I don't think I'd have ever gotten as deep into RPGs if it hadn't existed. Also setting aside whether it was a smart choice on Williams's part, as others have pointed out, it ignores the fact that there was a whole host of mismanagement issues across the organization that led to its demise, as well as the market pressure of no longer really being the only game in town. The whole impulse to lay the blame squarely at her feet, because she thought it was worthwhile to try to expand the appeal and playerbase, reads to me as a sort of standard, safe grognard point of criticism: clearly the reason TSR died is because they tried to make D&D something it wasn't, they should have stuck to making the game that grogs personally wanted to play. It's additionally stupid as an argument because it's not as if they stopped producing core supplements or FR books, I remember there being loads of those too, though not to the degree of the 3.5 splatbook era.
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Mar 23, 2022 15:46
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Cessna posted:I recently learned that Kratman had a less than successful tour as an infantry training battalion commander when he was in the army. Apparently in Kratman's mind modern weapons had become so lethal that a return to trench warfare was inevitable. Therefore it follows that we need to spend our training time learning about obsolete stuff like rifles and machineguns - no, boys, we're going to train to go to war with swords. Somehow the army didn't see the wisdom of this. i mean you shouldnt really take "what the army deems as valuable to teach" as a good indicator of what is actually valuable. I'm canadian and I have a few military friends, and americans are constantly impressed by them, thinking that Canadians are like, special ops green beret CIA supersoldiers for knowing how to fully deconstruct, reconstruct, clean and modify their guns. For knowing how to use tomahawks, for having like, basic survival training like how to build shelters in the forest, find their way, trap and hunt animals etc. Even being able to efficiently pitch a tent during a hunting trip was seen as the work of jason bourne-esque supersoldiers. We do teach people how to kill with hand to hand here and there as well and so do the americans, but swords aren't a wise idea because it's an extra 2-5 pounds of kit that's long and awkward to use. That being said, that doesn't mean this person is correct about the return to trench warfare (lol) but I googled this person and loving yikes: Tom Kratman posted:So where do Trump and the nation go from here? Apparently he felt the us military was too PC in the mid 90's and far too pro communist too. What a winner!
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Mar 23, 2022 15:47
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Warthur posted:Also, pretty much everything Lorraine gets criticised for is essentially something which was already present in TSR when she took over - even her Buck Rogers poo poo was just her exercising the sort of nepotism which the Blumes had been masterful at, and it at least led to sellable product (unlike some of the Blumes' less sensible decisions). Nah, things like TSR West, TSR's utterly disastrous attempt to form a comics company spinning out of their desire to monetize Buck Rogers, happened under her watch. (The RPG sold abysmally as well, regardless of its quality.) While Williams was far from the demon she was portrayed as, and there are anecdotes of her being very kind to employees, TSR under her leadership pursued short-term gains and scams to the point they burned every bridge they could and painted themselves into the contractual corners that eventually put them out of business.
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Mar 23, 2022 16:22
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It's also important to mention that beyond a certain point, whether or not a game product sold at the retail end was irrelevant to TSR's business model. They relied on being able to get their money up front from Random House, and via year-long contracts with hobby retailers. It became advantageous for them to just pump out as much product as possible, and any stated strategy was just in service of that.
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Mar 23, 2022 16:33
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:you shouldnt really take "what the army deems as valuable to teach" as a good indicator of what is actually valuable. I generally agree, but "no shooting, boys, we're training with swords now" is jaw-droppingly stupid. I'll also point out he's advocated killing soldiers under his command to "toughen up" the survivors. What leadership!
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Mar 23, 2022 16:44
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Cessna posted:I generally agree, but "no shooting, boys, we're training with swords now" is jaw-droppingly stupid. Protip: fire a gun randomly into a squad of your own men in order to avoid deploying unlucky soldiers.
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Mar 23, 2022 17:01
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Cessna posted:I generally agree, but "no shooting, boys, we're training with swords now" is jaw-droppingly stupid. lol
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Mar 23, 2022 17:22
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Given he literally describes what Trump should do is “start the early Nazi party, complete with street fighting wing” this is not surprising.
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Mar 23, 2022 17:23
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NC Wyeth Death Cult posted:I was told that further versions tried to chase the WoW trend. Can't tell if you're trolling but, yes, that is a thing that some people said, with a nugget of truth and a bucket of willful disregard for truth. Some have liked the changes that come with new editions, some didn't, most came in at edition >1 and didn't know any differently until a new one came out. The 3rd-4th-5th edition cycle was Fully Online and contentious and (sincerely) thanks for asking for sources rather than asking to have it summarized, because veterans of the edition wars are pretty tired of it. Some in this thread have likely written some long-form posts about it and can start you out.
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Mar 23, 2022 17:40
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NC Wyeth Death Cult posted:Is there any place to read more about the evolution from 1st ed to 2nd to 3rd edition AD&D? I was playing from 1st to 2nd and the changeover after 2ed was released was like Dorothy landing in OZ. I was told that further versions tried to chase the WoW trend.
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Mar 23, 2022 17:56
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Basically most of the new editions are written by new teams that genuinely just want to make a good playable D&D product that will make some money (stay tuned for 5e). The audience however, because D&D is some books you have to buy and some years you get to play(therefore they've already bought in and spent years and feel invested), will always have a significant portion that needs a reason to reject the new, so they can feel good about their investment in the old. They find these reasons by comparing D&D unfavorably to whatever popular thing is currently around (2e was written by craven cowards who removed all the cool evil and nasty stuff to appease the church, 3x was Diablo, 4e was WOW). These comparisons are generally just piss poor analogies that fall apart if you poke at them, but they have reach anyway, and it turns into neverending fights. Did you stay tuned for 5e? It's mostly the same as the others but there were a few people in the development process that were actively making decisions not on how to make good D&D, but on how to win back pissed off fans from the 4e rejection cycle, so they did some outlandish and stupid stuff during development that only makes sense as an appeal to chuds and grogs. Those decisions have basically all backfired now, but it soldiers on. theironjef fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 18:05
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WoW wasn't exactly groundbreaking either, mostly iterative improvement over EverQuest, which released in 1999 and was showing it's age due to the rapid advancement of personal computer power and especially graphics processing.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:05
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WoW really succeeded because the strong art direction. Even in tabletop RPGs, most people will reject books that look like trash.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:14
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Splicer posted:Well WoW came out four years after 3rd edition so you can probably disregard that part... You loving wish. The screaming about tabletop Diablo was deafening.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:20
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theironjef posted:Basically most of the new editions are written by new teams that genuinely just want to make a good playable D&D product that will make some money (stay tuned for 5e). The audience however, because D&D is some books you have to buy and some years you get to play(therefore they've already bought in and spent years and feel invested), will always have a significant portion that needs a reason to reject the new, so they can feel good about their investment in the old. They find these reasons by comparing D&D unfavorably to whatever popular thing is currently around (2e was written by craven cowards who removed all the cool evil and nasty stuff to appease the church, 3x was Diablo, 4e was WOW). These comparisons are generally just piss poor analogies that fall apart if you poke at them, but they have reach anyway, and it turns into neverending fights. This is in my opinion a backwards way of looking at it. Nobody's required to buy whichever company's latest product, especially if it makes previous products bought by the same customers obsolete. It's that company's job to market the new. If old customers come up with rationalizations, and those rationalizations are good enough for them to not buy into the company's new product, that's a problem for that company. quote:Did you stay tuned for 5e? It's mostly the same as the others but there were a few people in the development process that were actively making decisions not on how to make good D&D, but on how to win back pissed off fans from the 4e rejection cycle, so they did some outlandish and stupid stuff during development that only makes sense as an appeal to chuds and grogs. Those decisions have basically all backfired now, but it soldiers on. Backfired so spectacularly that it's still by far the most financially and culturally successful version of D&D yet?
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Mar 23, 2022 18:21
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Absurd Alhazred posted:This is in my opinion a backwards way of looking at it. Nobody's required to buy whichever company's latest product, especially if it makes previous products bought by the same customers obsolete. It's that company's job to market the new. If old customers come up with rationalizations, and those rationalizations are good enough for them to not buy into the company's new product, that's a problem for that company. Every version of D&D has so far been the most financially successful version of D&D. And I'm sorry, did I say "spectacularly?" I feel like I didn't. Maybe a ghost stole my word! I dunno, you quoted me so I guess you could probably tell.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:28
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Backfired in terms of "made the game good."
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Mar 23, 2022 18:29
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What developments do you think I was referring to? I meant hiring Zak and Tarnowski as consultants, which has resulted in some embarassed backpedaling as they scrambled to pull their tarnished names out of printings. Did hiring Zak and Tarnowski make the game good? Anyhow this is dumb. I was just saying edition wars are largely puffery by grogs taken too seriously by everyone(including the time a developer took them seriously and hired Zak Sabbath to put his name in the new edition) and look at you both just scrambling to get to the front lines. 5e is a fine game, you can totally play it. I don't care. theironjef fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 18:34
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I thought you were referring to the nostalgia based design wherein warlords go away and fighters lose functionality.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:42
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moths posted:I thought you were referring to the nostalgia based design wherein warlords go away and fighters lose functionality. I mean, I certainly didn't personally like that, but it wasn't something that I think I'd say backfired.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:51
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The "3E is Diablo" bit always struck me as funny for two reasons. First, because late in 2E's life they churned out a Diablo supplement for the game (Diablo II: The Awakening, it was mostly garbo but had some fun magic item prefix and suffix tables), and secondly because Monte Cook wrote at length on his blog about how much they tried to make 3E's mechanics specifically not-Diablo in a variety of areas. Neither of these stopped the talking point, of course.
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Mar 23, 2022 19:09
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Cessna posted:I generally agree, but "no shooting, boys, we're training with swords now" is jaw-droppingly stupid. I talked to some guys who served under him. And their accounts were basically all 'What if Frank Burns was super into PT?'.
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Mar 23, 2022 19:13
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Edition War criticism doesn't have to be tethered to anything or make any sense at all, as can be seen by the other contemporary critique of 3E - which was that its art was all "Anime". Which, uh...
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Mar 23, 2022 19:13
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lol, I'd forgotten that one. Takes me back...
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Mar 23, 2022 19:18
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Sometimes it can be projecting very special experiences to the whole thing, like I complained to my former DM about how I was annoyed at how Eberron-focused 3.5E became and he said "no, it's just that I and a couple of others really liked it, there was loads of material for other settings."
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Mar 23, 2022 19:18
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"The book of weeaboo fightan magic" was a common "joke".
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Mar 23, 2022 19:20
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Falstaff posted:The "3E is Diablo" bit always struck me as funny for two reasons. First, because late in 2E's life they churned out a Diablo supplement for the game (Diablo II: The Awakening, it was mostly garbo but had some fun magic item prefix and suffix tables), and secondly because Monte Cook wrote at length on his blog about how much they tried to make 3E's mechanics specifically not-Diablo in a variety of areas. Neither of these stopped the talking point, of course. I always thought it was funny because fantasy computer and console games over the last 30 years have generally owed a lot of their DNA to dungeons & dragons, to varying degrees. Certainly Diablo and WoW do. I'm sure there's exceptions, but they're rarer.
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Mar 23, 2022 19:22
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I bet the computerization of AD&D lent a lot of weight to the one hour adventure day or whatever, what with the games themselves encouraging save-scumming, and ending up implementing quicker healing cycles, initially by just not changing the game state significantly if you spent weeks recovering your health.
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Mar 23, 2022 19:27
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it turns out that realistic healing and repair rates are not fun at all for most people. Those for whom it is fun are sometimes very loud, though.
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Mar 23, 2022 19:35
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homullus posted:it turns out that realistic healing and repair rates are not fun at all for most people. Those for whom it is fun are sometimes very loud, though. "Oh no the warrior stubbed his toe, guess there's no choice but for me to rest and get back all my max level spell slots."
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Mar 23, 2022 19:41
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The incongruity I always like is the segment of AD&D grogs who cite Conan as the tone they're going for in their game while also being really insistent that slow healing over time is essential to the experience. Because we all remember the stories where Conan was laid up in traction for six weeks after getting stabbed, right? I think I've mentioned it before, but I feel like a big problem some people have wrapping their heads around the idea of quick, nonmagical healing in D&D is that they've internalized certain assumptions about how the game mechanics of healing and damage relate to their representation in the fiction. Basically they have the underlying understanding that "HP damage means physical damage like cuts, scrapes and other injuries > Cuts, scrapes and other injuries take a long time to heal in the real world > Ergo, HP takes a long time to regain unless you get it via magic". They assume that any changes to how long it takes to regain HP must therefore mean a character is healing faster than would be naturally possible rather than examining that their initial assumption of what HP actually represents might not line up with what the rules are going for. It's especially interesting when you look at the incongruity of what aspects of the mechanics some people think of as unrealistic. A lot of old school grogs love healing over time and claim it's more realistic, but ignore the fact that that system also means tougher characters take longer to naturally heal back up to full health, which requires just as many mental gymnastics to justify as any alternative... KingKalamari fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 20:13
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There was some movement toward more video-gamey bits, just from expectations picked up from, well, video-gaming AD&D and 3.0 stuff. Like spell memorization was supposed to be a lot of extra time on top of the 8 hours of rest so wizards and clerics had to balance how much they were memorizing versus the risk of more wandering monster checks when out on adventure. Video games just condensed that down into being part of the 8 hours, and 3rd edition and later largely followed suit. Or Identify shifting from something that took hours to cast and only told you the most basic powers of magic items, something intended for use primarily between adventures when you had downtime, to a one-hour spell (long, but still much faster) that told you everything an item did, letting you take far fewer risks on mystery gear - all in line with more video-gamey expectations of what an identify spell would involve. I'm not sure what 4e was like but 5e got even more casual about identification. The influences are there, but they're far more about QoL features and rules that people largely ignored or house-ruled out already anyway. It's fine if a change isn't to someone's liking, but yeah edition warring is just having cranky fits.
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Mar 23, 2022 20:15
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KingKalamari posted:The incongruity I always like is the segment of AD&D grogs who cite Conan as the tone they're going for in their game while also being really insistent that slow healing over time is essential to the experience. Because we all remember the stories where Conan was laid up in traction for six weeks after getting stabbed, right? To cut the guy a break, a number of other game systems originating in the period (Call of Cthulhu comes to mind, as does GURPS) *did* explicitly model HP as something connected, primarily, to how much meat you got on your bones, to the point where GURPS had an alternative rule that I think just became the normal rule where *Strength* determined HP, as Strength was likely closer to your general quantity of flesh than Health, which could represent intense cardio workout or just good luck.
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Mar 23, 2022 20:19
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homullus posted:yikes I honestly didn't know there were edition wars which is 100% on me because duh but I am only a tabletop miniature and board game grognard now. I worked in book, gaming/comic book and hobby stores throughout the early and mid 90s when second edition was queen and White Wolf was the domain of the dorky goth kids who'd come in and spend hours copying info out of the books. It felt like there was a period in the 80s and early 90s when the idea was to offer the tools for open world adventure through a couple books (but you COULD buy the second monster manual or GURPS CyberWar supplement) and the comment about little buckets reminded me how TSR suddenly released books that had subgroups of bards, etc. dozens of boxed world sets instead of a book. I saw the thread getting away from the early history and I guess I was trying to steer it back. So thank you everyone, I appreciate the knowledge.
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Mar 23, 2022 20:20
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Yea the groggy side of that argument is always weird for me too considering D&D's origins in war gaming and all. HP is always a general abstraction just so you the player have an easy tool to measure 'how hosed up am I getting', with the last few being the 'oh poo poo that dude's down/that unit's wiped out/etc' ones. I did kinda enjoy the GURPS side though because I just genuinely love the idea of every HP hit being you very literally soaking up damage. My compromise for that would be any tanky type has to follow that rule to the horror of their friends. "Hey Jeff how wounded are you" "Eh I still have some meat left before my chest is fully carved open, let's keep going" "...Jesus christ dude just drink this potion."
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Mar 23, 2022 20:23
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