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Yeah. I don't think they're actually anti-stretch goal, they just want creators to plan them out better so they don't end up bloating the project to unsustainable levels.
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Aug 22, 2013 06:30
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Maybe not digitizing movement, but an app that showed a radius around a piece for legal movement could be useful. Like, you focus your camera on the board, and the screen shows a colored circle around the piece. Especially if it could detect terrain that affects movement.
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Sep 12, 2013 17:17
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It's going to be years before that sort of thing is commonplace, but yeah, once it is, I think it will definitely be useful for gaming. To what extent... Well, that remains to be seen. But I can definitely think of games that would benefit.
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Sep 13, 2013 04:52
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Honestly, I've never seen him as all that great a game designer. He's much better at coming up with interesting and compelling settings. I backed Numenera purely for the setting, with no expectation for the game mechanics.
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Oct 9, 2013 10:43
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To be fair on the Arcana Unearthed bit, apparently he'd worked it out with WotC beforehand. Originally, it was going to be called Unearthed Arcana. Then WotC decided they wanted to put out their own Unearthed Arcana book, and he had to switch it around.
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Oct 9, 2013 21:23
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I haven't heard much bad about Fred Hicks.
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Nov 20, 2013 23:34
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Oh, and the Pinnacle Entertainment Group guys. They're consistently pretty cool. Clint Black's a great guy, in particular.
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Nov 21, 2013 04:26
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I'm reminded of the time GMS sniped at Fred Hicks over the FATE Core KS, implying that transparency was a scam.
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Nov 21, 2013 20:53
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I'm still pissed he's sitting on the Bas-Lag license.
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Nov 22, 2013 13:11
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The Supreme Court posted:What's the story behind this? A New Crobuzon RPG could be bloody brilliant. Adamant got the license back in 2008. They've made announcements, called for artists and writers, but to date, nothing's appeared. So far as I know, they still have the license.
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Nov 23, 2013 06:28
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I can see people being a little wary. I mean, even in the Palladium, we don't necessarily have the whole picture. Though, granted we're just missing, like, a couple of the sky pieces, maybe the trees, but all the edge pieces in place. But in general, I think there's that worry that maybe there's more to the story, since it's hard for a company to respond to that sort of charge. Joe Bob talks about a hostile working environment, but maybe he's the one who made it hostile. The company can't really say anything without looking worse. So, other companies might be a little wary of Joe. Maybe he's entirely justified, maybe he's just a complainer who'll make them look bad if he doesn't get what he wants. But you're right that it creates an environment where people are unwilling to step forward when there's legitimate issues, and people who just want to help protect others from getting into a bad situation (like Coffin) having difficulty finding work later on. Reputation should be a bigger shield than it is. Knowing that Joe Bob worked for five years on various games with no issues should hold more weight than it does.
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Nov 29, 2013 01:59
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Hopefully that's not quite that common in the industry, but then, there are a lot of people who get into it without any real business plan beyond "I like games. I'm gonna sell me some!" I've seen a few Kickstarters where it was clearly a case of, "Well, I'll definitely have the money for this later. No worries." before learning that, well, yes worries. Some have learned from their mistakes and are doing pretty well now. Others, not so much.
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Nov 29, 2013 08:44
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Mikan posted:It will surprise no one to learn GMS is furious about Fred Hicks' latest essay and is ranting about wannabes in the RPG industry, despite missing another Far West delivery date. Out of curiosity, where's he venting his spleen? I don't see anything in his Google+ feed.
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Dec 1, 2013 07:08
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I think it comes down to the fact that people in gaming like and respect Fred Hicks, and praise his decisions. GMS wants that praise and respect. He dreamed of being the next Gygax, the next Steve Jackson. He's got his own company, he's making his own games (in theory), and this is the point where he probably expected to start getting treated as one of those gods on the hill, the way it seemed like the big names in Gaming were treated back in the day. But people are expecting him to actually deliver on promises, to do things worthy of respect. So he gets upset when he sees Hicks say something and get taken seriously in a way that Skarka just isn't (and won't, unless he starts acting more professionally, delivering on his products, and rebuilding his rep). On the note of the Heroquest name, that's pretty much exactly why we have trademark. It's not intended to protect companies, but consumers. If you get Dungeons and Dragons, you should know that it's Wizards of the Coast making it. If you get GURPS, you should know that you're buying from Steve Jackson Games. Just as you should know if you buy a Sony VCR, you're dealing with Sony. That way, companies can build (and lose) reputations and customers can buy based on that. Some schmuck shouldn't be able to come out with his own game called Savage Worlds. Not to protect Pinnacle, but to protect the guy who thought he was getting something from Pinnacle, and ended up a FATAL clone.
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Dec 1, 2013 08:51
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I often give thanks that GW was never able to isolate the market in the US the way they did in the UK.
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Jan 19, 2014 09:47
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That was apparently mentioned by GW's management. They were apparently expecting some degree of slow-down due to the changes in their distribution. They expect it to pick up again now that they've made the changes. We'll see how true that is.
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Jan 19, 2014 19:42
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So, if you haven't been keeping up on the Kickstarter drama, the makers of the Torn Armor game went with a mystery manufacturer some months back, and it was just revealed that it was Defiance. Huge surprise, they took the money and failed to deliver. The owner of Torn Armor wrote a post explaining what had happened.lilljonas posted:Aaaaand we have Kickstarter tabletop company drama fight! My favourite! On the one hand, I'm pretty pissed at the Torn Armor crew for not doing due diligence on Tony Reidy and company. On the other, man that's a terrible lie. "Oh, we only got as far as seeing the files were bad. But we can't give you your money back. Because of reasons. Checking file formats is such hard work."
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Jan 24, 2014 01:22
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I don't think the existence of sexy women minis is necessarily a bad thing. The fact that it's the default is a problem (as is the general lack of sexy men in sexy poses). Like someone said in the room, the existence of counter-examples doesn't help when there's one of those for every ten women pushing out their tits or waiting to be rescued. Reaper isn't as bad about this as some companies, but they have their share of sexism. I'm reminded of the giants in the first Kickstarter. They started with existing frost and fire giant pairs. The men were both in very active poses, getting ready to swing a sword or shaking a fist. The women were both in very passive poses, with their weapons either behind their backs or held at their sides. They weren't bad, otherwise, but the contrast with their male counterparts was striking. The men are acting. The females aren't. They introduced another pair of giants, a storm and a cloud giant. The male storm giant is in the middle of charging. The female is... leaning forward, her club held behind her. Taken as an individual model, it wouldn't be bad (it would even make sense for her to be leaning forward, since adventurers would be about half her height), but when compared to how the male was posed, it kept up the idea that women are not supposed to be active participants in the action. In the next Kickstarter, they decided to "test" people's reactions with a pair of barbarians. The woman was partly topless, but the man was wearing even less. They wanted to see if people complained. Which they did, but I don't think Reaper ever understood why. People complained because again, the male is in a very active pose, giant axe held in front of him, while the female has hers at her side. Reaper took the complaints as, "Well, we tried, and they still complained. No point in trying, since they'll complain no matter what." The folks at Reaper aren't bad people. I don't think it's their intention to perpetuate the stereotypes. But they're not terribly aware that they are. They are better than they used to be. Part of this comes from when they do listen to people about things that bother them. You get minis like Deenah, Female Barbarian, which is in a very active pose (and they've started listing her counterparts as male barbarians instead of just barbarians). I'm not sure they'd make something like Brigitte, Naughty Maid these days. Their mascot remains a succubus, but the models they've made of her are getting better. I guess my point is that things can get better, but only if people keep getting on companies about it. Reward the ones who do well with your money, and steer other people who might be interested in that direction. Highlight problematic poo poo when you can. Understand that it won't get better right away, but don't stop pressing.
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Apr 20, 2014 19:46
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I think Leper has done a pretty good job of showing how you can differentiate between male and female figures without resorting to ridiculous armor.
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Apr 22, 2014 04:10
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But we've shown that you can do that without bared midriffs or cleavage or extensive boob-plate. If you make 'em well, you should be able to tell which minis are male and which are female by comparing them. Oh, this one has narrow hips and broad shoulders? Probably a man. Wider hips, narrower shoulders? Probably a woman.
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Apr 22, 2014 04:46
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I've occasionally thought about grabbing the SCP logo as an avatar, but since I hardly ever post in the SCP thread anymore, it doesn't seem worthwhile.
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Apr 28, 2014 05:02
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Memetics is the idea that ideas go through a sort of selection and evolution analogous to genes. A meme is a unit of cultural information, whether a joke, an idea, or a belief. The theory was popularized by Richard Dawkins. Ideas that can actually harm a person isn't entirely new, but it's still interesting enough you could make good stories from it. Monty Python's "The Funniest Joke in the World" can accurately be described as a harmful meme. Unfortunately, most people have trouble getting exactly what a meme is. They'll use it to refer to things like Lanford's "basilisks" and Stephenson's "snow crash," where it's not an idea, but a sensation that crashes the brain, or various kinds of mind control, telepathy, or other such fictions. Writers use the term "memetic" to refer to these because it's trendy and they figure it's vague enough that they don't need to actually know what they're writing about. I actually wrote a memetic SCP, though of course how paranormal it is is left as an exercise for the reader.
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Apr 29, 2014 06:47
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Oh, in somewhat thread-related news, both Victoria Lamb (creator of the female Arcadian rifle squad) and Julie Guthrie (sculptor mentioned about two pages back) were there. I mentioned the discussion we were having, and that folks thought it was pretty cool that they were sculpting females that were actually cool and dynamic rather than just being eye candy. Guthrie related a story about how she was commissioned to do a slave scene for Ral Partha (involving female slaves and their master). She included a sexy male slave in the scene, and got tremendous kickback on it. She only got it through by promising to do some other stuff for them later on.
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Apr 29, 2014 07:20
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She's really cool in person, too. One person was asking her on tips on sculpting flaming hair, showing the figure they ultimately wanted to give flaming hair to. Guthrie took a look at the figure, grabbed the green stuff, and asked if she minded if she demonstrated on the figure. After getting a yes, she said, "Are you sure it's ok? I don't want to ruin your figure." Julie Guthrie. Worried about ruining someone's miniature. See the figure and the story here.
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Apr 29, 2014 08:15
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Looks like it'll work with the 360 if you have one already. This is really awesome. Deadlands has an awesome setting, and it can make a great television show.
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May 1, 2014 05:17
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Pet peeve of mine. Shamanism is a real religion native to northern Europe and Asia (primarily in Siberia and neighboring areas). One can describe religions as shamanistic that share certain believes/practices with Shamanism. There are only three tribes in North America that practice what could be termed shamanism, and none of them are mentioned in Deadlands, except the Inuit. The shamanism magic fluff actually fits with real world shamanism beliefs fairly well, but it has basically nothing to do with native beliefs. There's a lot in Deadlands I like, but the treatment of natives in the fluff isn't great. I'm only familiar with Reloaded, but I'm given to understand that it was even worse in the older material.
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May 2, 2014 02:37
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clockworkjoe posted:which site? Bits and Mortar.
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May 6, 2014 23:47
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A long while ago, I joined a forum set up by a publisher for one of their authors. They did not moderate it. They did not pay any attention to it, except to fix technical issues when they cropped up. A community formed. It was, generally, a pretty good one, surprisingly. If someone was an rear end in a top hat, we'd tell them off, and if that didn't work, we'd all collectively ignore them. Not, alas, with any ignore function on the forum, but simply through not responding to any of their posts. A fellow got upset that we didn't want to listen to him. I can't even remember what it was that annoyed us so much to start with, but after the shunning began, he started spending about three to four hours every night finding old threads and making contentless responses. Sometimes he'd just put in a short string of random letters to hit the minimum character limit, sometimes he'd have "gently caress you" written over and over again. While each post only took a minute to make, he was spending literally hours. Every night. For nearly a year before we finally gave up and started our own forum with moderation. All because we wouldn't talk to him about Terry Pratchett.
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May 7, 2014 17:59
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There's not really a problem with adults liking entertainment designed for kids. A lot of it's pretty well written these days. Though, there is a pretty serious problem of adults getting really pissy when the creators make choices to appeal to the kids the shows are made for. I haven't seen too much of that with Steven Universe, but I've seen it a lot with bronies and, to a lesser extent, Pokemon fans. Which goes back to the whole gatekeeping thing. Part of the problem with the tabletop community (and other geekly pursuits) is the way older fans try to keep kids out and away, even when the medium is ostensibly for younger fans. "They don't enjoy it like we did." "They just want WoW and YuGiOh." "They don't even know who Cat Grant is!" In some industries (gaming, comics) these attitudes are even prevalent among the creators. By resisting attempts to bring in new blood, they're shooting their industries in the foot.
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Jun 24, 2015 19:46
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Speaking on the subject of enhancing games with electronic stuff... I've been working on a system that helps track events in the background using a couple of player-done rolls, a very simple chart (if morale is this bad, these peple leave, and this guy tries to take over), and some location stuff (if the players helped these people, they're now doing this, if they didn't, this has now happened to them). It's basically designed to be relatively quick for the GM to figure out how things are going while giving the impression of depth and importance of player choices. I think I've done a good job of keeping it fairly simple, but it could also be done pretty well with an app, it occurs to me. GM punches in what's happened, and it tells him how things are progressing. That'd be good for managing multiple events/NPCs that the GM might otherwise lose track of. EDIT: You could also have custom inputs. "When two weeks have passed, remind me that the orcs are returning." "If NPC Farmer Rhubarb dies, his family is going to ask the party to help them leave the valley." Basically just a tracking program for GMs.
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Jun 26, 2015 06:58
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Halloween Jack posted:Games like REIGN, for example, have rules for the strength of nations and organizations, in a way that goes beyond the stronghold-building rules from D&D. So after smashing the cult and saving the king, you can see that the safety and economy of the kingdom has measurably improved because you did that. Thing I've been doing for my project is dividing the environment up by location. Each location has a list of conditions and a timeline. Like, there's a cave full of kobolds that have kidnapped a kid to serve as their winter prince (with the intention to sacrifice him to bring back the sun). If you get there the first week, the kid is scared and ready to go home. If you get there the fourth week, he's gotten used to being pampered and doesn't want to go. By week ten he's gone. Week fourteen, and the kobolds are attacked by orcs. Rescuing the kid or recruiting the kobolds (ideally both) will give a slightly different timeline. Or another location might reference bandits the players might have encountered. If they routed them, they might be set up in the new location. The idea is that the GM will be able to quickly pick out what the scenario is based on what the party's done so far. I've tried to make it as easy as possible for the GM, but I can see how having an app to track this sort of thing would be even easier.
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Jun 26, 2015 18:06
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Name recognition, mostly. Forgotten Realms is recognized by gamers, but doesn't have a lot of cachet outside the hobby, whereas pretty much everyone (at least in the US) has heard of Dungeons and Dragons. They might not be able to find a studio willing to risk the investment on a large budget production without the name Dungeons and Dragons to help sell it. This doesn't preclude smaller-scale productions like animated movies, but they already gave that a go with an animated Dragonlance movie in 2008 which did not do terribly well (animation was pretty bad and they tried to squeeze too much of the novel into the movie). We'll see if they ever decide to try again, perhaps with a more competent animation studio.
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Jun 26, 2015 20:41
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Mors Rattus posted:I think the worst L5R had was occasionally stacking tournament matchups for the 'right' ending? But, like, L5R people have accepted really weird player decisions, like the time two Naga players, going up against each other, made a deal that the winner was whoever could have the bigger army in N turns because naga never fight each other and it was clearly about who could build up the best forces. That's actually kind of cool. Like, not from a tournament standpoint, but from the in-character standpoint. "We don't want to fight each other, so we'll just see who would probably win, and we'll go with that."
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Jul 12, 2015 23:18
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Esser-Z posted:They think they killed Pokemon. Pokemon. I thought you were joling, so I did some googling. you weren't.
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Jul 13, 2015 02:48
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Also, a healthy helping of "But really, why would you play any other game when you could be playing a d20-based game instead?"
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Sep 4, 2015 07:37
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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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I think Rafferty was talking specifically about D&D as the "face" of the hobby. I think the issue with D&D is that it's a bit schizophrenic with what it wants to be. Does it want to be a modern roleplaying game that can appeal to newer players? Does it want to be an oldschool dungeon crawl? Should it try to support more heroic fantasy like Dragonlance or some of the Forgotten Realms stuff? They're trying to market it as capable of all of these, and it's really not. They need to do decide what they want the game to do, design it for that, and then market it as such.
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Sep 29, 2015 18:20
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The fact that they left Paizo holding the bag didn't help much. Not to say no one else could have done a 3.5 clone of their own, but Paizo already had all the contacts and distribution in place for it, and having been given the boot by Wizards, they didn't really have much choice but to try and extend the lifetime of 3.5. Granted, hindsight is 20/20, but they all but forced Paizo to make Pathfinder.
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Sep 30, 2015 01:04
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Y'know, I'm actually okay with spiked chains and dire flails. Yes, they'd be dumb as all heck in real life, but impractical weapons are a staple of fantasy. Hell, give fighters more cool-dumb weapons. Giant swords and hammers. Knife-whips. Mother-lovin' swordchucks. And give them cool mechanical benefits. I'm all about giving fighters more cool stuff to do besides "I swing my weapon. I hit. I do some damage." The problem isn't that you can use a spiked chain effectively, it's that the same can't be said of a longsword or a mace.
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Jan 20, 2016 17:32
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Monsters not tryin' to eat you? What kinda hippie dippie bullshit is that? Next you're gonna say you don't have sentient races who are inherently evil and inferior to PC races.
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Feb 22, 2016 23:27
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