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That Old Tree posted:Is Monte Cook Games the greatest? —an article from Monte Cook Games Wow. I had no idea Numenera was actually award-winning and it wasn't a Razzie.
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Sep 22, 2016 22:39
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Glazius posted:Wow. I had no idea Numenera was actually award-winning and it wasn't a Razzie.
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Sep 22, 2016 23:52
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dwarf74 posted:I think we can break it down to its literal meaning here, since we're talking about Monte Cook - "inventing again." As in, "inventing" stuff that someone else already invented, while claiming credit for innovation. Passive perception, Compels, the list goes on.... Is Monte Cook Games reinventing the wheel? Desiden posted:What I find most hilarious about that article is they make such a big deal about how they've never seen anything like it, omg, the kicktraq curve is like nothing else in kickstarter! Not only is it a perfectly normal curve with occasional spikes like any other kickstarter with marketing pieces and stretch goals in the middle, but they actually provide a picture of the curve that shows that its bullshit. Yeah, the daily data is exactly the picture of any niche product with a kickstarter of that size. Can you guess which days they did publicity interviews? Yes, yes you can.
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Sep 23, 2016 00:49
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Evil Mastermind posted:One thing I kept seeing about Invisible Sun is how the people involved were convinced that the project is "the future of RPGs", which is a pretty depressing idea. I still don't understand what the game is or how it works. The entire project seems like smoke an mirrors to begin with. Has there been any details about the mechanics or anything? Ominous Jazz posted:If only we could do your idea without fifteen pages of charts and tables but since we only play our games in the infinite realm of imagination we can't Yeah, the only way I can role play any more is by doing lines of powdered fate rulebooks.
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Sep 23, 2016 01:02
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I love the hell out of Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, but even I can't defend Monte Cook. Guy picks up and drops projects on whims, and when the whim strikes good luck ever seeing any further support for whichever project was just dropped. He has plenty of good ideas for game design, but is awful at seeing a project through.
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Sep 23, 2016 01:17
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kingcom posted:I still don't understand what the game is or how it works. The entire project seems like smoke an mirrors to begin with. Has there been any details about the mechanics or anything? It basically seems like Everway 2.0. Valatar posted:He has plenty of good ideas for game design ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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Sep 23, 2016 01:20
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He does have plenty of good ideas, but the problem is that a lot of them were dreamed up by other people ages ago.
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Sep 23, 2016 01:35
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Kurieg posted:Don't forget him taking credit for inventing bluebooking. What is bluebooking? Honest question. Kurieg posted:The next monte cook game is going to be a plastic dildo. He should get into the practice of putting his name in front of everything, like what Sid Meier does. Monte Cook's A Dildo
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Sep 23, 2016 02:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:What is bluebooking? Honest question.
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Sep 23, 2016 02:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:What is bluebooking? Honest question. Bluebooking is when you write down things into a notebook (the earliest ones were blue, hence 'bluebooking') and you shared it with your GM. Usually it was downtime stuff like what skills you wanted to train, shopping you didn't get done during the session, etc. In some cases it would be long-form text RP equivalent to play-by-mail (or play by post, these days). GURPS used a lot of bluebooking prior to 4th edition, as it had extensive training time rules, it even had its own forms to fill out for it.
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Sep 23, 2016 02:55
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Evil Mastermind posted:He does have plenty of good ideas, but the problem is that a lot of them were dreamed up by other people ages ago. No, the problem is he takes good ideas other people had but makes them worse. Numenera is full of this poo poo, from the awful "GM Intrusions" being a lackluster and more antagonistic version of Fate's compels to the character backgrounds that work like you'd find in various *World games to tie character backstories and histories together except instead of stuff like "so-and-so owes me big for what I did" it's stuff like "nominate a party member who gets hit by your critical failures XD." Like, I don't have a problem with someone stealing liberally from other peoples' ideas, but he's just so bad at it.
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Sep 23, 2016 02:58
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These days I think it's mostly a LARP thing for between-game downtime.
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Sep 23, 2016 02:58
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NGDBSS posted:It refers to doing in-character things in a written manner outside sessions of play, generally through email and the like. Aaron Allston's group first popularized the term back in the '90s as a reference to blank exam booklets known as "blue books". Kwyndig posted:Bluebooking is when you write down things into a notebook (the earliest ones were blue, hence 'bluebooking') and you shared it with your GM. Usually it was downtime stuff like what skills you wanted to train, shopping you didn't get done during the session, etc. In some cases it would be long-form text RP equivalent to play-by-mail (or play by post, these days). GURPS used a lot of bluebooking prior to 4th edition, as it had extensive training time rules, it even had its own forms to fill out for it. That actually sounds pretty cool for games that have extensive downtime rules, like AD&D / BECMI D&D. Like, I've also seen the modern way of doing it in the form of vignettes (Red Markets, Delta Green), but that sounds cool.
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Sep 23, 2016 03:02
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Kai Tave posted:No, the problem is he takes good ideas other people had but makes them worse. Numenera is full of this poo poo, from the awful "GM Intrusions" being a lackluster and more antagonistic version of Fate's compels to the character backgrounds that work like you'd find in various *World games to tie character backstories and histories together except instead of stuff like "so-and-so owes me big for what I did" it's stuff like "nominate a party member who gets hit by your critical failures XD." Like, I don't have a problem with someone stealing liberally from other peoples' ideas, but he's just so bad at it. As someone who never played 3.5 and dodged that whole era of cooke games/design I was genuinely excited about Numenera as having a narrative focus but still having plenty of crunch to fall back on but then the first entry I saw was describing how the special fighter stuff was 'lose health for damage, do +1 damage with weapon type' bullshit while the wizard just continued to be a dnd wizard and altered reality at will. Stealing ideas is good and cool and I actively encourage it if it improves the system and is stolen with an understand of WHY something is useful and valuable but Monte is a hack fraud who only knows how games work (or maybe only knows how to design) from a very limited perspective. gradenko_2000 posted:That actually sounds pretty cool for games that have extensive downtime Let me introduce you to my friend Campaign for North Africa.
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Sep 23, 2016 03:11
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kingcom posted:As someone who never played 3.5 and dodged that whole era of cooke games/design I was genuinely excited about Numenera as having a narrative focus but still having plenty of crunch to fall back on but then the first entry I saw was describing how the special fighter stuff was 'lose health for damage, do +1 damage with weapon type' bullshit while the wizard just continued to be a dnd wizard and altered reality at will. Stealing ideas is good and cool and I actively encourage it if it improves the system and is stolen with an understand of WHY something is useful and valuable but Monte is a hack fraud who only knows how games work (or maybe only knows how to design) from a very limited perspective. Yeah I mean there's that too, Numenera is almost like a parody in that respect. Here's this far-flung sci-fantasy setting set gazillions of years in the future after nine various eras of weird science and technology have built up on top of one another like archaeological strata. Now here are your three character classes, Fight-Guy, Skill-Guy, and Wizard.
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Sep 23, 2016 03:13
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Too a'Monty Cook's a'spoil a'soup. He's had some good concepts and brushes with competent ideas. At one point he posted a blog article where he really, really seemed to get it - and then he turned around and designed Numeneria. I feel like he knows what he wants to do, but he doesn't know how to do it so he just falls back on old, bad ideas. Which resonates with his fan club, who wants to believe they're open to new and exciting ideas ... but really just want old, bad ideas from a name they can trust.
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Sep 23, 2016 03:16
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kingcom posted:
There's no such thing as downtime in Campaign for North Africa. Either you're
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Sep 23, 2016 03:17
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I appreciate the fact that Cook is trying to keep up with modern design trends, and that is certainly a hundred times more laudable than believing that the hobby peaked at Gary's table sometime in 1975. It's just that he really doesn't understand any of these new-fangled "narrativist" approaches to RPGs and he keeps trying to cram them into his 1980s Rolemaster baseline assumptions about RPG design, and the whole thing ends up as a hilarious mess.
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Sep 23, 2016 03:20
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FMguru posted:his 1980s Rolemaster baseline assumptions about RPG design, and the whole thing ends up as a hilarious mess. Cook edited some Rolemaster supplements, but I think we overstate "he worked on Rolemaster!" as having played a role in his design chops. I venture that the 3rd Edition skill system would be far better than what we otherwise got if it was more derived from RM than not.
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Sep 23, 2016 03:45
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I can't wait to see what's going to influence the next thread title change. 
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Sep 23, 2016 03:52
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Would it be too long to add "Yes, says SA." ?
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Sep 23, 2016 04:22
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kingcom posted:I still don't understand what the game is or how it works. The entire project seems like smoke an mirrors to begin with. Has there been any details about the mechanics or anything? So far it looks like it's based around d10s and rolling to beat target numbers. Other players can help you build dice pools by giving some magic buffs. the sun symbols seem to influence the environments and mechanics sort of like the planes cards influence global mechanics in the Planechase MtG variant. Kurieg posted:Don't forget him taking credit for inventing bluebooking. the out-of-session thing seems halfway between bluebooking and frequent individual/side RPs, only integrated in the system as expected elements of play. I think my big concern with something like that would be if the game incentivizes it in some way, and if so, does lead to imbalances between players who engage in it a lot vs players who don't or aren't able to?
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Sep 23, 2016 04:43
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Nuns with Guns posted:the out-of-session thing seems halfway between bluebooking and frequent individual/side RPs, only integrated in the system as expected elements of play. I think my big concern with something like that would be if the game incentivizes it in some way, and if so, does lead to imbalances between players who engage in it a lot vs players who don't or aren't able to? It's Monte 'Trap Option' Cook, of course it will lead to imbalances.
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Sep 23, 2016 05:27
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Kwyndig posted:Bluebooking is when you write down things into a notebook (the earliest ones were blue, hence 'bluebooking') and you shared it with your GM. Usually it was downtime stuff like what skills you wanted to train, shopping you didn't get done during the session, etc. In some cases it would be long-form text RP equivalent to play-by-mail (or play by post, these days). GURPS used a lot of bluebooking prior to 4th edition, as it had extensive training time rules, it even had its own forms to fill out for it.
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Sep 23, 2016 05:30
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Dr. Quarex posted:I am no Anime Man, but did Record of Lodoss War not invent bluebooking even earlier than the 1990s, albeit surely not with that name? The 'actual' practice of bluebooking as solo/side RP dates back to Gary's goddamn table.
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Sep 23, 2016 05:36
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Kwyndig posted:The 'actual' practice of bluebooking as solo/side RP dates back to Gary's goddamn table.
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Sep 23, 2016 05:39
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Valatar posted:I love the hell out of Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, but even I can't defend Monte Cook. Guy picks up and drops projects on whims, and when the whim strikes good luck ever seeing any further support for whichever project was just dropped. He has plenty of good ideas for game design, but is awful at seeing a project through. I like Dead Gods. But Faction War is one of the worst things to happen to D&D. The Cook giveth and taketh away. gradenko_2000 posted:Cook edited some Rolemaster supplements, but I think we overstate "he worked on Rolemaster!" as having played a role in his design chops. I venture that the 3rd Edition skill system would be far better than what we otherwise got if it was more derived from RM than not. I'm starting to think Rolemaster is like the RPG equivalent of Superman III - something that is widely hated mostly based on what people have heard about it secondhand or dim memories, but isn't nearly as bad as it's claimed to be. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Sep 23, 2016 |
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Sep 23, 2016 07:55
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Lightning Lord posted:I'm starting to think Rolemaster is like the RPG equivalent of Superman III - something that is widely hated mostly based on what people have heard about it secondhand or dim memories, but isn't nearly as bad as it's claimed to be. This might be a fine sentiment about Rolemaster, except Superman 3 is bonkers terrible.
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Sep 23, 2016 10:27
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That Old Tree posted:This might be a fine sentiment about Rolemaster, except Superman 3 is bonkers terrible. I think Superman III is goofy as gently caress, weirdly fun and kind of like a 60s Superman comic. Check out this review, which got me to watch it instead of just saying "it's bad" without having seen it because of nerd received wisdom. It certainly has a different tone than 1 and 2 though, I'll agree with that. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Sep 23, 2016 |
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Sep 23, 2016 10:47
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Superman 3 has Richard Pryor in it acting his rear end off. How can people be so wrong?
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Sep 23, 2016 10:52
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Serf posted:Superman 3 has Richard Pryor in it acting his rear end off. How can people be so wrong? It has Napoleon Solo as Evil 80s Businessman.
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Sep 23, 2016 10:53
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Media can be simultaneously really fun and objectively badly composed, you know. I mean this is the TG Industry thread, you'd think everyone who plays TTRPGs would be acutely aware of this already.
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Sep 23, 2016 11:27
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Asimo posted:Media can be simultaneously really fun and objectively badly composed, you know. Well, the review I link up there suggests that Superman 3 is actually not badly composed. That's a digression from my point though, which is that neither Superman 3 or Rolemaster cause the equivalent of people's flesh searing off upon contact, but people act like they do and I think it's mostly the reasons I state. Regardless of whether they're good or bad or anything in between, they're boogeymen and I don't think it's really merited. Like gradenko points out, I don't think working for ICE for a hot minute was Monte Cook's supervillain origin. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Sep 23, 2016 |
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Sep 23, 2016 11:33
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Asimo posted:Media can be simultaneously really fun and objectively badly composed, you know. I don't think anyone has said anything that runs contrary to this?
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Sep 23, 2016 11:38
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Lightning Lord posted:I'm starting to think Rolemaster is like the RPG equivalent of Superman III - something that is widely hated mostly based on what people have heard about it secondhand or dim memories, but isn't nearly as bad as it's claimed to be. Pretty sure no one in this thread ever said rolemaster was bad, in fact I think many people would agree it's better balanced than many iterations of D&D. gradenko had previously pointed out that Cook was obviously inspired somewhat by his work on the game and adapted some of the base mechanics to 3.0 D&D
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Sep 23, 2016 12:17
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Nuns with Guns posted:Pretty sure no one in this thread ever said rolemaster was bad, in fact I think many people would agree it's better balanced than many iterations of D&D. gradenko had previously pointed out that Cook was obviously inspired somewhat by his work on the game and adapted some of the base mechanics to 3.0 D&D Yeah but people all over the place online and off are all Rollmaster, Rollmonster, Chartmaster, etc. For years all I ever heard about it was "That piece of poo poo game with all the charts that played and looked like crap and was adapted into a horrible Lord of the Rings game that was just D&D", repeated ad nauseum. It has a bad rep in general that I don't think it deserves.
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Sep 23, 2016 12:22
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all I remember hearing about it was it had a lot of charts, but so do most games from its era 
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Sep 23, 2016 12:23
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Evil Mastermind posted:Answer: No
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Sep 23, 2016 12:59
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Nuns with Guns posted:Pretty sure no one in this thread ever said rolemaster was bad, in fact I think many people would agree it's better balanced than many iterations of D&D. gradenko had previously pointed out that Cook was obviously inspired somewhat by his work on the game and adapted some of the base mechanics to 3.0 D&D Actually, my point was: Other people would routinely reflect upon Rolemaster as an inspiration for D&D 3rd Edition, since Cook worked on both. Rolemaster's basic resolution system was d100 + stat modifier + skill modifier D&D 3.0's basic resolution system was d20 + stat modifier + skill modifier And where one "skill rank" in Rolemaster was a +5 to the roll, one "skill rank" in D&D 3.0 was a +1. And D&D 3.0 also seemingly inherited Rolemaster's "armor check penalty", where wearing heavy armor would impose a penalty on all "movement-related" skill checks. And D&D 3.0 also seemingly inherited Rolemaster's limit on skill ranks based on character level But what I observed was, after a close reading of Rolemaster, there are a couple of essential differences: 1. Rolemaster has a static target number: get to 100 or better for a basic success. The GM can apply difficulty modifiers, of course, but even that means you can only push the target number so high 2. There's a diminishing returns effect to additional skill ranks. +5 per rank only applies to the first 10 ranks, after that it's +2 per rank for ranks 11 to 20, and then +1 per rank for ranks 21+. This combines with the previous point where you don't "need" a +5 per rank forever you have a static goal of 100 in the first place. In contrast, 1 rank always equals +1 to a roll in D&D 3.0, and the target number scales up forever. ProfessorCirno has talked about this before, but the problem with D&D 3.0 adopting the ascending numbers system that it did was that everything was uncapped, which meant that you were at the mercy of the GM either following the strict guidelines on the difficulty of a Use Rope check, or they didn't and they could set it whatever arbitrarily high number they wanted, which meant you were screwed, as compared to TSR-era D&D where the Thief, sucky as their level 1 percentile skills might have been, could not have their 50% lockpick chance taken from them once they finally got there, which is also how Rolemaster actually worked. What I'm saying is that while there are superficial similarities between RM and D&D 3.0, D&D actually swerved away from that made RM's system work at the last second, and that if D&D 3.0 actually did imitate RM much more closely, then we might have gotten a much more balanced system. The fact that it didn't, doesn't speak well to Monte Cook's design chops. EDIT: Or to put it another way, perhaps he's been doing that thing where he imitates a mechanic from a different game, without really understanding what it made it work, for a long time now. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Sep 23, 2016 |
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Sep 23, 2016 13:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:
That is, has always been, and probably will always be, Cook's MO. I've never seen an actually new idea/mechanic from him, it's always been 'here is thing I saw in other game' with no clear understanding of the mechanics originally behind it. Even his setting stuff is just lifted from other things without a basic understanding of their themes (like there was that Torg-alike where a certain percentage of people from other dimensions didn't have souls). Or, to put it another way, Monte Cook is an alien from another planet trying to make it as a game designer. He's doing quite well considering his basic handicap of being completely unable to understand human beings and only ape their behavior.
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Sep 23, 2016 17:10
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