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Ratpick posted:Oh god, he also reviewed the Old World Bestiary this is great. This is funny because the Old World Bestiary is one of the best monster manuals I've ever seen, particularly for actually suggesting adventures and fluff and building on what the things are from multiple viewpoints. The Slaughter Margin also makes more sense than anything d20 ever did with CR if only because they actually show you the guy they based the whole thing on (a standard human with the Soldier career, average stats, and about 200 EXP). Even if it's shakey (and it is) they still have at least the basis of 'Can Johann Schmidt, Normal Imperial Soldier With Decent Gear, Take This Thing On Alone' rather than 'Uh, we gave it CR7 because reasons.' Reading it fully, everything about this review is just hilarious. I admit I am rather biased, though, as WHFRP2e is one of my favorite older RPGs and I've despised 3.5 ever since trying to run it. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 07:55 on Sep 4, 2015 |
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Sep 4, 2015 07:45
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I love his complaint that the fluff isn't necessary because GMs "can figure out for yourself why demons, orcs, skaven, dragons, ogres, and vampires are evil and should be killed & looted..." It says a lot about his approach to RPGs.
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Sep 4, 2015 08:25
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JackMann posted:I love his complaint that the fluff isn't necessary because GMs "can figure out for yourself why demons, orcs, skaven, dragons, ogres, and vampires are evil and should be killed & looted..." It says a lot about his approach to RPGs. Especially considering that one of the things WHFRP2e did that made me like it is every single one of the sourcebooks for those guys is a dual-purpose 'Here's ideas for normal people fighting them' and 'And here's how you play AS them if you wish'. Even for the Skaven. Especially for the Skaven.
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Sep 4, 2015 08:33
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I don't think there ever was a book for playing greenskin characters though? Skaven, yes, Vampires too, and even playing as the Chaos-worshiping Norscans, but no supplement for actually playing as orcs and goblins. This I feel was a huge wasted opportunity on Green Ronin's part.
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Sep 4, 2015 08:40
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Ratpick posted:I don't think there ever was a book for playing greenskin characters though? Skaven, yes, Vampires too, and even playing as the Chaos-worshiping Norscans, but no supplement for actually playing as orcs and goblins. This I feel was a huge wasted opportunity on Green Ronin's part. Yeah, I'm also surprised there were no dwarf or elf expansion books from what I'm aware of. No warhammer RPG has ever seemed willing to put the Greenskins out there as PCs.
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Sep 4, 2015 08:44
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Night10194 posted:Yeah, I'm also surprised there were no dwarf or elf expansion books from what I'm aware of. I guess Dwarves and Elves being in the core book made it pretty low on their priorities? I would have played wacky Orc and Goblin adventures in medieval Germany though.
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Sep 4, 2015 09:24
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Night10194 posted:Yeah, I'm also surprised there were no dwarf or elf expansion books from what I'm aware of. The Rogue Trader expansion "Into the Storm" lets you play an Ork Freebooter. Or are we just talking about Warhammer Fantasy (  ).
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Sep 4, 2015 13:02
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Night10194 posted:Especially considering that one of the things WHFRP2e did that made me like it is every single one of the sourcebooks for those guys is a dual-purpose 'Here's ideas for normal people fighting them' and 'And here's how you play AS them if you wish'.
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Sep 4, 2015 13:39
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Halloween Jack posted:Actually, Night's Dark Masters is all like "PCs should not be vampires! Vampire PCs and especially vampire campaigns are not appropriate for WFRP, definitely don't do this. Now, here's all the rules for creating vampires from scratch, just like if they were PCs..." The two reasons for this are simple. Firstly, vampires are sort of meant to be very personalized boss characters and only having to make one NPC like a PC to really customize them isn't that much work for crafting your main villain. Secondly, while they advise against it for balance reasons (having played a vampire PC, they're insanely powerful) and because at their upper levels they kinda break the system down some, they don't really outright forbid it and still include a section of advice on how to make it work if you want to try it. The reason they're sort of against it is also that the balance and feeding issues would make it really awkward to include a vampire in a normal party (one of the biggest pieces of advice they give is all vamps or all mortals, do not mix them because if you do one PC is going to be a monumental badass and the rest his or her spear carriers/snacks).
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Sep 4, 2015 17:52
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OneBookShelf has a follow-up blog post about their content policy http://oneblogshelf.blogspot.com/2015/09/offensive-content-policy-follow-up.html?m=1
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Sep 9, 2015 18:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:OneBookShelf has a follow-up blog post about their content policy I can't wait to see the spin people put on this. It's going to be hilarious.
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Sep 9, 2015 18:54
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gradenko_2000 posted:OneBookShelf has a follow-up blog post about their content policy quote:I think you should make it so that a person has to have spent a minimum dollar value on the site (I'm thinking $50 total and $20 in the last year) to be able to flag something as offensive and that they need to write at least 50 characters of explanation of why they think a flagged product is offensive. I think reports should be limited to actual DriveThruRPG customers and that the reports themselves should have some substance to them. I love whenever people try to come up with a system that will keep the much-feared outsiders from taking away our [INSERT HOBBY HERE] as if that's what's actually happening. Overall the policy makes total sense, looks like it would work just fine. Still gonna have to see it in action before we can say much else.
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Sep 9, 2015 19:22
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Serf posted:I love whenever people try to come up with a system that will keep the much-feared outsiders from taking away our [INSERT HOBBY HERE] as if that's what's actually happening.
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Sep 9, 2015 19:33
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I could get behind having to have an account. (But not a purchase requirement), just so any assholes who submit fake flags can get shut down.
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Sep 9, 2015 19:59
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David Hill mentioned Weick being condescending to Jessica Price. Is this the thing he's talking about? If it is, I'd hate to see the reaction to someone actually being unprofessional. Also, I'm not sure Weick's comparison is a slippery slope, it seems a badly worded "where do you, as a publisher, think should we draw the line?", from my read. You know what's condescending? Linking to logical fallacy pages during a disagreement.
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Sep 16, 2015 02:12
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I remember reading that and cringing. She came across as caring more about scoring points on a company's official Twitter than anything else. When a company fucks up, everything typically goes dark until they can sort out what happened. That's PR 101. DriveThru responding at all, being receptive, and finally doing the right thing is good. Complaining about it on a tumblr with more tags than content only fuels the notion that "nothing is good enough for you skeletons!"
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Sep 16, 2015 03:00
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I could very easily see an another industry reprimanding her for engaging a competing company like that. Luckily there's no standards for communications or conduct in trad or video games, only backlash if popular opinion isn't on your side.
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Sep 16, 2015 03:15
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Tabletop games of the present and the future are very confusing to new gamers. With the popularity of computer games being orders of magnitude above the popularity of tabletop, it's a safe assumption that someone's first game was a computer game. Tabletop games generally continue to cling to some assumptions that computer games dropped a long time ago, such as: PERMA-DEATH, which is so rare in computer games, it's not even a default. (If a game has perma-death, it's now listed as a selling point. Blizzard had to tell people to stop pestering customer service staff about getting their "Hardcore" characters rezzed.) While technically you can get rezzed in D&D, it's not a standard option until you're much higher level, and with much more XP. Someone coming in from computer games, and is used to easy do-overs, often doesn't take it well when they're told their elf is gone for gone. Which leads to... CHEAP DEATH, where characters can die at any time. D&D is a prime offender on this one, where the modern HP of starting characters is often 80% or less of what a foe dishes out in one hit. D&D4 was an exception to this rule, as it started characters with 200% x standard damage or more, with 4 or more heal options, and all "make one roll of save vs. death or die instantly" was removed. For reasons unclear, D&D5 brought back starting with AC 10, 4 HP vs. monsters that dish 1d6+2 apiece. The resulting "rocket tag" turns many new players into scaredy-cats who want to avoid combat. RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, where you needed an Excel spreadsheet to track your character's stuff. Back in the 1980s, no one wanted to track the 3870 gold-piece-weight units your character was able to heft around, and they still don't today. It's a hard sell these days to even make modern players how many arrows that they've fired. Even computer games that could track such things have often simplified their systems into "bags" with item space. Does anyone here remember the "time use forms" that used to fill old magazines? If tabletop games want to stay relevant, they should be studying these trends and working with them. There are some positive notes: Apocalypse World spends a lot of time discussing how to make issues like death and resource-loss into interesting problems ... and it's a big hit with modern audiences. D&D5 hasn't learned any of these lessons at all.
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Sep 29, 2015 16:13
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Rafferty posted:If tabletop games want to stay relevant, they should be studying these trends and working with them. Did this post come straight from 1999? Most successful RPGs released in the last decade have done away with the majority of those (or all, if you consider the focus on having character death only occur when it's meaningful as a solution to perma-death). The issue is that D&D Next is a gigantic pile of poo poo designed to appeal to grogs stuck in 2000, not with the RPG industry in general. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Sep 29, 2015 |
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Sep 29, 2015 16:23
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The other one I would throw out there is: Character Progression Permanence. It's so goddamned inexcusable that any game with "trap options", whether deliberately created or insufficiently playtested, have to be trap options forever (or removable only through a lot of blood, sweat and tears). Lemon Curdistan posted:Did this post come straight from 1999? Most successful RPGs released in the last 5-10 years have done away with the majority of those (or all, if you consider the focus on having character death only occur when it's meaningful as a solution to perma-death). I think it's speaking rather specifically about how D&D and its ilk haven't moved on from that, even though other games (such as Apocalypse World was mentioned) have learned such lessons.
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Sep 29, 2015 16:31
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What is the metric of a "successful" RPG in the past decade?
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Sep 29, 2015 16:36
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It's okay if some games are "old school". Not everything has to have the new, shiny mechanic.
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Sep 29, 2015 16:37
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Halloween Jack posted:What is the metric of a "successful" RPG in the past decade? Critically notable, because we still have absolutely zero reliable sales data about tabletop games.
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Sep 29, 2015 16:39
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Dr. Tough posted:It's okay if some games are "old school". Not everything has to have the new, shiny mechanic. But Dungeons and Dragons is the face of the hobby, and it stubbornly refuses to accept modern design, and even loving erases it when it starts to!
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Sep 29, 2015 16:42
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In computer games the first bot players in fps multiplayer shooters (Doom, Unreal, etc) were simple rules-based behavioral bots like:
They were literally named & described as such and worked exactly as advertised. Sort of amusingly I always thought those broad stereotypes sounded more like living & thinking tabletop players than computers: The hoarder The guy who turtles in his corner The one who punishes anyone gaining something at their expense regardless of cost to them and so on
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Sep 29, 2015 16:48
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Esser-Z posted:But Dungeons and Dragons is the face of the hobby, and it stubbornly refuses to accept modern design, and even loving erases it when it starts to! This is a matter of opinion though. "Modern game design" is a concept vaporous enough to be an invisible stalker. It's really the same song and dance that's been going on since, like, forever with that game. A new edition comes out. Grognards complain. It still sells.
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Sep 29, 2015 16:50
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Dr. Tough posted:It's okay if some games are "old school". Not everything has to have the new, shiny mechanic. The comparison I'm going to make is that WildStar, which embraced what was considered old-school gameplay for MMOs, crashed and burned, while World of Warcraft is still going strong, and basically every other MMO with any sort of playerbase worth writing home about has made similar changes to their gameplay and overall structure to keep pace with industry innovations. Yes, there are still people that want to play EverQuest as it was in 1999, punishing gameplay and all, but a developer that makes a game in 2015 that's deliberately as punishing as EQ-circa-1999 is going to fail, and the people who want to play EQ-circa-1999 just keep playing that game. In the same vein, if you want to go down into a dungeon with a 4 HP Fighter and get killed by a goblin rolling well on their d6 for damage, you can buy the D&D Basic Set on DTRPG for 5 bucks.
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Sep 29, 2015 16:51
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Dr. Tough posted:This is a matter of opinion though. "Modern game design" is a concept vaporous enough to be an invisible stalker. It's really the same song and dance that's been going on since, like, forever with that game. A new edition comes out. Grognards complain. It still sells. Given the miniscule size of the D&D team at WotC and the lack of additional first party product, I'm not so certain about it selling well this time around. And the thing is, very little in 5e is, in fact, new. It basically serves to roll back every innovation from 4e. 4e, which despite claims sold quite well, up until Essentials.
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Sep 29, 2015 16:51
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Rafferty posted:Tabletop games of the present and the future are very confusing to new gamers. With the popularity of computer games being orders of magnitude above the popularity of tabletop, it's a safe assumption that someone's first game was a computer game. I actually like all of these things, which probably explains why I haven't found a modern rpg that has really clicked for me and why I still play Baulder's Gate 1 all the time. Edit: I do live event production for a living and I can see how a youth spent playing AD&D has influenced how I pull gear for shows. Right now I have 50' of rope in my workbox because you never fuckin know man.... bongwizzard fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Sep 29, 2015 |
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Sep 29, 2015 16:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:The comparison I'm going to make is that WildStar, which embraced what was considered old-school gameplay for MMOs, crashed and burned, while World of Warcraft is still going strong, and basically every other MMO with any sort of playerbase worth writing home about has made similar changes to their gameplay and overall structure to keep pace with industry innovations. MMOs are really a completely different animal than table top games so it's not the best comparison. But I see what you're saying. However, the whole OSR thing shows that there's differently some kind market for people that like old style games.
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Sep 29, 2015 16:56
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Death and permadeath, for me, is one of those things that really varies between games and systems as far as how well it works. For D&D and sandbox-y games, character death gives a sense of tension the game would be dull without. That sense of tension was one of the things that set tabletop apart from console rpgs for me - a sense of affecting and being affected by an actual world instead of just being along for the story. I do think some games could use more of a gradient for permadeath or different options to tune the "death level" (dramatic death only, KO vs Dying, etc.), but as most people just houserule what they like anyway, I'm not sure that'll happen. Save or die crap can gently caress right off, though.
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Sep 29, 2015 16:57
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I tend to run my D&D as heroic fantasy, so I prefer not to have PCs die often. Fortunately, my preferred edition makes death much rarer, even at low levels, so it works out pretty well. And if someone does die I can always have a plot about them coming back, likely at some kind of cost that complicates things for the party! Unless the death was cool and the player wants to keep it, of course. Easy death in a game like modern D&D is in conflict with the complexity and length of char gen. Dying easily when chargen takes five minutes to roll up, as with OD&D, is one thing. Dying easily when you spent twenty plus minutes figuring out your character is totally different.
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Sep 29, 2015 17:02
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There's a time and place (and gaming style) for permadeath, but it tends to stick in my craw because of how it's entwined with the "misuse" of D&D: at it's heart the game is still a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler, but since it's THE tabletop roleplaying game, you might end up approaching it with the idea of emulating whatever heroic epic you just watched and/or read (and the heroic epic scope of its published adventures hardly disabuses you of this notion) And that just doesn't play well with a system that can kill you within the first 10 minutes if you're not careful.
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Sep 29, 2015 17:06
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How easy death is in a game is really more about the group and GM than it is about the game itself. Regardless of what game my group is playing we never do cheap death and typically a character only dies when they're up against the main antagonist or if they're doing something really stupid. With the latter I usually warn people that their action could end with Nightleaf or whoever dying and ask if they still want to continue. This is done precisely because members of my group tend to put a lot of time and effort into characters and it would be really lame if they got killed by some random cultist or ganger or whatever.
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Sep 29, 2015 17:08
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Dr. Tough posted:How easy death is in a game is really more about the group and GM than it is about the game itself. Regardless of what game my group is playing we never do cheap death and typically a character only dies when they're up against the main antagonist or if they're doing something really stupid. With the latter I usually warn people that their action could end with Nightleaf or whoever dying and ask if they still want to continue. This is done precisely because members of my group tend to put a lot of time and effort into characters and it would be really lame if they got killed by some random cultist or ganger or whatever. The game totally matters. If players are potentially killed by a single lucky hit, the game makes death far easier. The mechanics absolutely matter. A guy with 10 hp who fights monsters that do 5 damage and crit for 10 is at high risk, regardless of your playstyle.
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Sep 29, 2015 17:10
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But that's just another of those "this assumes an experienced GM" pitfalls of RPG writing. If you have rules for death and dying, then players are going to follow that, and if the rules say you're dead, well, that's what the rules say, right? A learned GM might say "oh we're going to plot-armor that away since you're just fighting mooks right now" but you need that GM advice sidebar right in your book if you want to make it more friendly to new gamers.
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Sep 29, 2015 17:13
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Dr. Tough posted:How easy death is in a game is really more about the group and GM than it is about the game itself. Esser-Z got it right: Esser-Z posted:Easy death in a game like modern D&D is in conflict with the complexity and length of char gen. Dying easily when chargen takes five minutes to roll up, as with OD&D, is one thing. Dying easily when you spent twenty plus minutes figuring out your character is totally different.
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Sep 29, 2015 17:17
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If we're talking D&D 5e specifically, I'd say the fast death is of an issue about the modules (at least the early ones) and some of the monster mechanics not being well balanced in the context of its own system. A big part of the problem is D&D tries to do a lot of things and cover a lot of game types under a single system, and there's some pretty big pain points there because of it. Edit - I guess my point is that I like having death be a thing in my tabletop, but the system should be balanced in such a way that it's not an easy thing to occur. ScaryJen fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Sep 29, 2015 |
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Sep 29, 2015 17:18
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Dr. Tough posted:How easy death is in a game is really more about the group and GM than it is about the game itself. Regardless of what game my group is playing we never do cheap death and typically a character only dies when they're up against the main antagonist or if they're doing something really stupid. With the latter I usually warn people that their action could end with Nightleaf or whoever dying and ask if they still want to continue. This is done precisely because members of my group tend to put a lot of time and effort into characters and it would be really lame if they got killed by some random cultist or ganger or whatever. It's up to you if you want to ignore the rules of a game you're playing, but you don't get to say a game isn't deadly when your failure to play the actual game is the only thing making it that way.
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Sep 29, 2015 17:20
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homullus posted:It's up to you if you want to ignore the rules of a game you're playing, but you don't get to say a game isn't deadly when your failure to play the actual game is the only thing making it that way. Sure, but at the same time, caster supremacy is mitigated alot in AD&D if you actually use all the fussy magic rules, specifically spell components and treating a Mage' spell book as the huge burden it really would be. As a kid I remember having to think hard if it was worth the risk of taking the book into a dungeon or trying to find a safe space to stash it
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Sep 29, 2015 17:26
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