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Four swings at the baseball, classic comedy
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Aug 20, 2022 01:33
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Tsilkani posted:I vote if we're going to send a game thread off into the other forums, we do something that's not D&D or Pathfinder. Do Lancer, or Fellowship, or Ironsworn. Everyone who's heard of RPGs has heard of D&D, and Pathfinder is probably one of the biggest names right behind it. We really don't need to give them more spotlight time. We can be the ambassadors for something different and unknown. I agree with this wholeheartedly. Sending the new edition of D&D thread is same old same old.
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Aug 20, 2022 01:51
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SirFozzie posted:
I am very immature but 'bender' is rude slang here and never stops being amusing on some level Like how 'trump' means 'fart'.
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Aug 20, 2022 02:02
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I was listening to the Adventure Zone (I like it, shut up) and their next two games are going to be a short game in Urban Shadows and then Blades in the Dark, which is cool because I thought they'd probably just chase the D&D audience from here on out.
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Aug 20, 2022 02:07
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Tsilkani posted:I vote if we're going to send a game thread off into the other forums, we do something that's not D&D or Pathfinder. Do Lancer, or Fellowship, or Ironsworn. Everyone who's heard of RPGs has heard of D&D, and Pathfinder is probably one of the biggest names right behind it. We really don't need to give them more spotlight time. We can be the ambassadors for something different and unknown. A thousand times this. Something weird and approachable. Like if there were a Ryutama thread that’d be perfect.
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Aug 20, 2022 02:26
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Apologies if this is more appropriate in a new thread or whatever, but kind of thinking about this One D&D more generally. I was talking about this with my wife and she posited: Is this shift to a live service game (including monetizing and incentivizing whale mentality) completely antagonistic to lower income gamers? I think lower income brackets make up a huge component of D&D players and this whole approach is kind of like a giant gently caress you. “We have a version of D&D for people like that…”
Finster Dexter fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Aug 20, 2022 |
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Aug 20, 2022 02:26
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Finster Dexter posted:Apologies if this is more appropriate in a new thread or whatever, but kind of thinking about this One D&D more generally. I was talking about this with my wife and she posited: Is this shift to a live service game (including monetizing and incentivizing whale mentality) completely antagonistic to lower income gamers? I think lower income brackets make up a huge component of D&D players and this whole approach is kind of like a giant gently caress you. “We have a version of D&D for people like that…” In terms of asking people to pay for a subscription service, for whatever that gets you, yes, it is, compared to free games, or completely self-contained books. It's the continued infiltration of rentier capitalism into the industry (though to be clear, far from the first wave of it)
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Aug 20, 2022 02:35
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It's less about a travelling thread and more about promoting stuff to other folks who might not normally wander into Trad Games, just to clarify!
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Aug 20, 2022 02:38
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Finster Dexter posted:Apologies if this is more appropriate in a new thread or whatever, but kind of thinking about this One D&D more generally. I was talking about this with my wife and she posited: Is this shift to a live service game (including monetizing and incentivizing whale mentality) completely antagonistic to lower income gamers? I think lower income brackets make up a huge component of D&D players and this whole approach is kind of like a giant gently caress you. “We have a version of D&D for people like that…” They will almost assuredly still sell you books and other things individually. Both on Beyond and physical. My guess is the digital Unreal Engine tabletop stuff will probably be monetized to hell and back, with Dice and Minis and probably like build sets to buy on their marketplace. But like if you just want the digital books/physical book materials you will probably be fine.
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Aug 20, 2022 02:42
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Podima posted:It's less about a travelling thread and more about promoting stuff to other folks who might not normally wander into Trad Games, just to clarify! Which sounds better as a pitch, a game everyone has heard of or a game that’s new and different?
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Aug 20, 2022 02:43
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Like D&D Beyond before WotC bought them were doing things like selling character sheet styles and dice and poo poo. If that's what you really want to spend money on lol. I don't particularly have a problem with that, but yeah.
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Aug 20, 2022 02:44
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Podima posted:It's less about a travelling thread and more about promoting stuff to other folks who might not normally wander into Trad Games, just to clarify! Hell, give 'em FATAL and Friends, then. Can't do more (anti)promotion than that.
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Aug 20, 2022 02:52
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Dexo posted:Like D&D Beyond before WotC bought them were doing things like selling character sheet styles and dice and poo poo. If that's what you really want to spend money on lol. I don’t have a problem with it directly, but I think it creates incentive on the part of WotC to tailor the GaaS to the whales, similar to other live service games.
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Aug 20, 2022 02:53
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Finster Dexter posted:I don’t have a problem with it directly, but I think it creates incentive on the part of WotC to tailor the GaaS to the whales, similar to other live service games. What is the GAAS they are actually adding? Like sit and look at what they are doing.. This is just a new edition or version or an edition that now that they own D&D beyond and now actually have a digital marketplace they are creeating a VTT to play the game in on said system. Which will probably allow you to spend dumb amounts of money on cosmetic poo poo and books and modules they create for their own stuff. But won't be mandatory if you don't want to engage with it. And want to use like R20 or Foundry or something. They are using the language of services because shareholders love that poo poo, but they are still gonna sell you books. I would be extremely shocked if they cut off the ability for in person play Also even if they do go complete worse case walled garden, which is unlikely, as like what the gently caress is gonna happen at cons. There are always  The suckers(hi) buying books physically or digitally are already whales to them.
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Aug 20, 2022 03:12
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I think speculating on the exact form that WotC is going to try to digitally monetize D&D going forward is probably fruitless because it could take a lot of different forms, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that they're almost certainly going to try more than just selling pdfs.Finster Dexter posted:I don’t have a problem with it directly, but I think it creates incentive on the part of WotC to tailor the GaaS to the whales, similar to other live service games. This is ultimately what any "games as a service" comes down to in the end. Now the thing I'm curious to see is how well games as a service translates to TRPGs specifically. Something that got brought up in a grogs.txt thread of the past were some stories from people who worked on/were in the periphery of people who worked on MMOs, in particular those who tried to court TRPG players as a demographic, and overwhelmingly the data that this initiative gathered was that the TRPG players were: 1). The most prone to complaining and demanding things be changed to suit their tastes 2). The least inclined to pay any amount of money for anything by a wide margin And historically, RPG purchasers are extremely accustomed to an industry that prices everything cheaper than it should be (paying its creatives poorly in the process), and will spend hours writing college-length essays explaining why it's entirely unreasonable for someone to charge $30 for a 400+ page pdf. Now the entire games-as-a-service industry is extremely good at getting people onboard and turning percentages of them into whales, and I certainly don't think elfgamers possess some special "immune to being monetarily exploited" factor, but I admit I'm curious to see how it shakes out when this sort of thing is turned towards a hobby full of people who essentially pride themselves on being as miserly as possible.
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Aug 20, 2022 03:24
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Mostly this is just a play to leverage The fact that people are going to buy modules or sourcebooks on their digital marketplace to get them to use the VTT that wizards is running. Where WotC will probably be very happy to sell you stuff like "cool" minis for monsters or playsets or maps or if they want to get comically evil and granular as far as money making, stuff like selling paint to paint said minis or small items to add to your custom mini. But like the very model of D&D as it has been for a while is selling you Addons to the core game you purchase to get new rules, features and content. It's already there lol. And they've been selling Overpriced minis forever too. This is just them stepping into the 3D VTT space mostly.
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Aug 20, 2022 03:26
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Xiahou Dun posted:Which sounds better as a pitch, a game everyone has heard of or a game that’s new and different? Well it’s also new version of popular game everyone has heard of and you might be able to influence the direction of the game a bit with your feedback. Both have merits. We could try and promote multiple things.
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Aug 20, 2022 03:36
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Kai Tave posted:*Snip* My general thinking is just that just outside of going complete walled garden which would be aggressive as all hell at least early, this isn't going to change all that much except now they own a digital marketplace and tabletop They already sell updates to rules and addons for content for people to use/play in their games. They already literally do all this poo poo, except it was physical books or on Beyond Tabletop gamers at least when it comes to ones like D&D where they sell rules addons, classes, etc in books should already be used to content updates in their game and things like that. It's literally been there forever. They are used to Errata, patching the game or however you want to word it. Less used to the cosmetic poo poo that's almost assuredly coming in the digital tabletop. But yeah. And if they do end up offering a sub to get everything it is a very good point that it would be a pretty massive blow to any sort of value in selling PDFs and books across the industy. As no one could afford to eat losses like WotC can to get users in this industry.
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Aug 20, 2022 03:39
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Yusin posted:Well it’s also new version of popular game everyone has heard of and you might be able to influence the direction of the game a bit with your feedback. I do not think that moving a thread to Goons with Spoons will have much effect on WotC's business decisions.
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Aug 20, 2022 03:48
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My bet is the Virtual Tabletop will be on a subscription, with books you buy being unlocked on it.
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Aug 20, 2022 03:49
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Dexo posted:My general thinking is just that just outside of going complete walled garden which would be aggressive as all hell at least early, this isn't going to change all that much except now they own a digital marketplace and tabletop Yeah I agree with a lot of this, especially the dynamics of WotC's approach here potentially sending ripples throughout the hobby on a wider level. As much as RPG hobbyists have dug their heels in about things in the past, the industry has often moved on without the loudest voices having much lasting impact...when publishers first started selling pdf versions of books, you saw people loudly swearing that they would never, ever buy digital games, RPGs are meant to be physical books, and they'd never play RPGs using a computer, etc etc, and it's pretty easy to see which way the wind blew there. If WotC does really push these new digital initiatives of theirs instead of their pretty lackluster efforts at anything digital over the last few editions, then there really isn't a lot that could stop them from just eating a bunch of losses to make it happen. About the one thing the hobby can't shake is lovely wages/pricing, which I guess it's not really alone in. I think it's ultimately going to come down to whether they have the proper management for it, which historically they've kind of struggled with on the digital end of things. When 5E was new, for example, there was some whole debacle with them trying to outsource a digital character builder project that went nowhere, the 4E digital initiative fell afoul of tragic circumstances but you can also argue that it's kind of poor project management for something like that to completely fall apart because one person was killed, etc.
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Aug 20, 2022 03:53
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Xiahou Dun posted:I do not think that moving a thread to Goons with Spoons will have much effect on WotC's business decisions. I do not think it will, but part of the current thing about One D&D is that it’s a playtest they will be sending surveys on. Some people will think they might be able to influence the game due to that. Though it’s not very likely unless it’s a big group with similar opinions. Though if enough people ask I think something like bringing the Warlord back is possible.
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Aug 20, 2022 03:55
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Podima posted:It's less about a travelling thread and more about promoting stuff to other folks who might not normally wander into Trad Games, just to clarify! It also has a good solid hook (tactical mech combat) while sneaking in some of the more fancy indie game stuff up through the door. And Comp/Con seems to be an industry leader in terms of organizing your poo poo.
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Aug 20, 2022 04:01
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Yusin posted:I do not think it will, but part of the current thing about One D&D is that it’s a playtest they will be sending surveys on. Some people will think they might be able to influence the game due to that. Though it’s not very likely unless it’s a big group with similar opinions. So why did you respond to me talking about moving a TG thread around????????? Nessus posted:I think Lancer would be a good choice of a non-D&D game to showcase. It has a good distinct hook, and while I love Ryuutama (for instance) it is very much a Cozy Anime Game. I believe Lancer would fall under the heading of "battlemech stuff" (you could make loose analogies to BattleTech, even), avoiding that whole issue. This is an excellent point.
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Aug 20, 2022 04:03
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Yusin posted:I do not think it will, but part of the current thing about One D&D is that it’s a playtest they will be sending surveys on. Some people will think they might be able to influence the game due to that. Though it’s not very likely unless it’s a big group with similar opinions. Based on what people who have worked for WotC and attended D&D meetings have said about the prevailing attitudes of the lead design team, they seem to have a pretty firm and unyielding internal house vision for what D&D is meant to be, and so I kind of doubt that any amount of open playtesting or petitioning is actually going to meaningfully push things outside of the framework they've already decided is the correct one. Or to put it another way, I think the only real changes that playtesting are likely to produce are things the team is already predisposed to, and "let's just forget the Warlord existed" has been pretty clear since D&D Next.
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Aug 20, 2022 04:11
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Kai Tave posted:Based on what people who have worked for WotC and attended D&D meetings have said about the prevailing attitudes of the lead design team, they seem to have a pretty firm and unyielding internal house vision for what D&D is meant to be, and so I kind of doubt that any amount of open playtesting or petitioning is actually going to meaningfully push things outside of the framework they've already decided is the correct one. Or to put it another way, I think the only real changes that playtesting are likely to produce are things the team is already predisposed to, and "let's just forget the Warlord existed" has been pretty clear since D&D Next. There has been a large amount of change up in the Team since Next, which is why I think it's possible if there is enough demand.
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Aug 20, 2022 04:18
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I like the work of a bunch of the people they've recently brought in who are presumably working on this(as they've been hiring/contracting like crazy for it), but yeah, being consumed by a corporate entity and trying to carve your own stuff into it or any sort of change is always a fight. I guess we'll see, I generally like the direction they seem to be going, compared to now but need to see a larger picture with classes, and like the actual text of stuff like spells .
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Aug 20, 2022 04:24
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Yusin posted:There has been a large amount of change up in the Team since Next, which is why I think it's possible if there is enough demand. Yeah but the accounts of the people who have worked for WotC and since stopped doing so have been a lot more recent, is the thing. There's not really a lot of evidence that the current D&D design team is interested in changing things outside their own held vision for things regardless of how many people on the internet go "death to ability scores" or "bring back warlords" or whatever. Hell, there have been repeated calls for them to roll back the weird bioessentialism baked into the game and all that's resulted in them doing is shuffling some names around and writing a bunch of paragraphs about how if you're a mixed-parentage child you have to take after one of your parents or the other.
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Aug 20, 2022 04:25
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Games that move to subscriptions or add microtransactions always start by emphasizing just how totally optional it is, and how you can still buy the game normally, play for free, etc. But when big companies are involved, the end result is always the same: features that might have gone to everyone become subscriber-only, development effort gets funneled into whaling rather than improving the base product, and the free players/non-subscribers eventually end up getting an inferior product. Which is to say, there's nothing to worry about here, because D&D has always been an inferior product 
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Aug 20, 2022 04:27
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Jimbozig posted:Games that move to subscriptions or add microtransactions Well there does not appear to have been any changes on that front yet. We don't know if those will actually be a thing yet.
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Aug 20, 2022 04:35
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D&D Beyond already has microtransactions though - they sell special colours of dice to roll on your screen and stuff. And there's already a subscription tier.
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Aug 20, 2022 04:37
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Yusin posted:There has been a large amount of change up in the Team since Next, which is why I think it's possible if there is enough demand. My dude, the absolute brass ring of incorporated criticism is a little sidebar telling you to ask your GM about it.
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Aug 20, 2022 04:38
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Jimbozig posted:Games that move to subscriptions or add microtransactions always start by emphasizing just how totally optional it is, and how you can still buy the game normally, play for free, etc. But when big companies are involved, the end result is always the same: features that might have gone to everyone become subscriber-only, development effort gets funneled into whaling rather than improving the base product, and the free players/non-subscribers eventually end up getting an inferior product. The thing is, they literally, do this now, which is my point. Roll20 does this, Fantasy Grounds does this, D&D beyond does this. They all require you to pay for specific functionality that isn't core to the feature set of the application, as an addon. R20 requires you to pay to get access to the API, and for dynamic lighting and other features like sharing owned books, I'm less familiar off the top of my head with FG's monetization, Beyond in order to share owned content you need to be a Master Tier subscriber, and to have unlimited characters and access to homebrew, and other tools you need to be a normal subscriber. Unless they just don't sell books(physical or digital) anymore, which would be a completely loving wild and honestly hilarious business decision, as someone who has mostly operated in the VTT space playing these games over the past 6 years or so it just doesn't feel that different to me. Maybe that's the disconnect? Like from the start of D&D beyond(before WotC bought them) you could do this  If there was really only one specific thing you wanted from that book for a character you were creating or playing or monster they allowed you to buy it separately.
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Aug 20, 2022 04:47
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Arivia posted:D&D Beyond already has microtransactions though - they sell special colours of dice to roll on your screen and stuff. And there's already a subscription tier. That's why I said have yet to see any changes. The current subs and micros been there for years now. Like my bet is that the VTT is going to be added on to that Subscription, but so far nothing about One D&D has been linked to them.
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Aug 20, 2022 04:53
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Yusin posted:I do not think it will, but part of the current thing about One D&D is that it’s a playtest they will be sending surveys on. Some people will think they might be able to influence the game due to that. Though it’s not very likely unless it’s a big group with similar opinions. There was a playtest for D&D Next, as well, and we got to watch them actually take out the coolest stuff as it progressed. I don't have high hopes for this one, and I certainly don't think we should care about enough to try and give them word of mouth. There are countless other games we can raise awareness of instead that deserve it infinitely more.
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Aug 20, 2022 05:53
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HI sorry if I was unclear or confusing but I have not proposed to move a TG thread to some other forum! Rather, we are talking about getting a thread link in the biweekly admin announcement that Athanatos has been doing recently. That announcement penetrates the firewall of the user control panel bookmarks-only readers all over SA, and it's also across the whole forums. So it gets fresh eyeballs in a couple of ways. BUT it's supposed to be for highlighting threads that are A) good and/or B) interesting to folks all over the forums. It's also not a one-off deal here, we could request stuff to be added as frequently as every couple of weeks when he runs those announcements. I think doing things like highlighting the Lancer thread is a fine idea too. Today I got excited because I was thinking that there are D&D players across the forums who never post in TG (I know there are, I've seen people say stuff in the football forum chat thread "we're playin some D&D tonight") whose interest might be grabbed by a "hey there's news about the next edition and a thread to chat about it" kinda thing and come check that out. But I've pushed that out a couple weeks because as was pointed out here and in the D&D 5e thread, it might be good for a new thread to at least establish that it's got any legs at all, and also there's more news coming in two weeks apparently that could give more grist for that mill. Arivia suggested promoting the new Pathfinder 2e thread and I've put that forward as a possible option for this week. Because it's a new thread, it doesn't have the "giant megathread" intimidation factor, and also I don't really have to evaluate a thorny question like "is this actually a good thread". I do question how many people in BFC have heard of Pathfinder but I guess we'll find out! Maybe!
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Aug 20, 2022 06:20
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Dexo posted:The thing is, they literally, do this now, which is my point. My problem, personally, is less about this being unprecedented and more about how Hasbro is a serious corporation. I don't trust them to not take a monetization scheme that's relatively fine on the surface and crank it until the handle breaks off now that they have a system they completely control. Also, that a lot of people are going to walk directly into whatever system they make no matter how exploitative it gets because D&D has that much name recognition.
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Aug 20, 2022 06:23
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Lurks With Wolves posted:My problem, personally, is less about this being unprecedented and more about how Hasbro is a serious corporation. I don't trust them to not take a monetization scheme that's relatively fine on the surface and crank it until the handle breaks off now that they have a system they completely control. Also, that a lot of people are going to walk directly into whatever system they make no matter how exploitative it gets because D&D has that much name recognition. I think a great deal of inspiration for this new direction is coming from magic: the gathering: arena's success. Arena is making gobs of money... and at the same time, paper magic continues to make gobs of money. I struggle to imagine the exact same branch of the exact same company somehow thinking that killing off "paper D&D" would be a good idea in any way. I think they just want to make gobs of money on digital D&D offerings that can both serve players who genuinely have little interest in playing tabletop pen and paper games, and, help pen & paper players spend money during the middle of the week when they're in between live games. There's Magic whales who play paper magic every friday at the game store and then also drop fifty bucks a month on Arena, there's players who have no interest in Arena (or only play free and never deposit money), and there's players who would never have played any form of magic before Arena lowered the bar to entry to its absolute minimum ever.
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Aug 20, 2022 06:35
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WotC hasn't killed off Paper Magic entirely, but they have shifted a lot of the profit margin into themselves and Amazon and away from the FLGS. If people start looking askance at OD&D Beyond: The Quest for Vertical Integration as a means to pull money from B&M and into WotC's massive e-wallet, it's not paranoia: it's learning from their history. This is already evident in their Secret-Lair-Style handling of the Dragonlance physical+digital bundle that won't be available to FLGS.
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Aug 20, 2022 07:04
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I think the one big thing that stands to make big changes assuming WotC doesn't fumble it is, as noted upthread, much more direct VTT integration, that is D&D becoming a game with its own specialized VTT ecosystem which also comes with its own monetization system. That's going to be the game-changer if anything is. There are VTTs that charge money, games obviously charge money and have both digital and physical offerings, but thus far RPGs have never really gone the route of a really comprehensive first-party digital play service, not just "here's a character builder" or "here's a storefront" but "here is the official D&D virtual tabletop and marketplace service." It could go nowhere, but if it does happen to take off then I would expect it to have the effect of even further distancing D&D from the rest of the hobby as well as putting additional pressure on smaller publishers who don't have the wherewithal to either create or pay to have someone else create their own digital integration stuff. Might be that we'll see more of an uptick in platforms like Role working out deals with such publishers whereby Role does the heavy lifting of VTT stuff and in exchange they get the exclusive storefront rights to your game, which is a hypothetical future I can't say I'm super stoked about from a standpoint of creator control over things, to say nothing of how hard it is already to carve out a niche for yourself in the industry if your name isn't Dungeons & Dragons or maybe Pathfinder.
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Aug 20, 2022 07:05
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