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Onyx Path generally does Kickstarters for deluxe core releases, where these fill the role of preorders in a much more beneficial way than old-style preorders. I suppose Onyx Path/quasi-WW could have done traditional preorders for longer, as V20 did just fine using traditional preorders. Nowadays, I'm not sure how well it would work because the consumer culture has shifted, so even if the demand is there, people will automatically look to Kickstarter to fill that demand. Honestly, I think that if the division could get it past Hasbro and retail partners, WotC would seriously consider doing it as well, even though they could ship without it. Preorders get one person a product. Blah. Kickstarters are cooler. They: 1) Make preordering social, by bring folks to a common portal and driving discussion. 2) Drive orders with the promise of extras. 3) Provide tiers where people will essentially pay for nothing -- technically a name. 4) Provide metrics to see how the product might do when it ships to everyone else. 5) Put product in the hands of a vocal minority first, adding promotional value. So even if you don't need the money, Kickstarter (and foreign-accented Indiegogo, to a lesser extent) are an improvement on preorders and initial sales to a modest-sized market in most ways. I have no doubt that if Pathfinder was being released today, it would have used Kickstarter. As Dwimmermount kind of showed us, Kickstarters are actually worse at the things they're supposed to be for than as an enhanced preorder tool. If you actually need the money to get the product made, there's more risk, and funders don't have the motoves of traditional investors where they expect to make money in return. Small creative projects don't use the kind of ramped up project management that almost keeps big projects hitting deadlines, and even if you were to apply them, they might be an ill fit -- timeboxed agile dev meetings aren't going to make drafts happen any faster. Licensed products usually aren't going to use them because there's a whole other stakeholder involved, but I think that until there's some kind of implosion based on Kickstarters failing to deliver, this is where things are going regardless of how much money companies have to develop products. My concern is that connecting rewards to preorders creates the expectation that this stuff will get done fast, which shrinks deadlines and affects quality. Best practice requires the draft done beforehand, and the rush to get the Kickstarter up may shrink those deadlines too.
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Apr 3, 2013 00:09
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Verdugo posted:I must disagree. Kickstarter is a horrible preorder tool, because at it's core, Kickstarter is not a store. When it nets six figures in preorders in the RPG industry, it is not horrible, even if it's bad at e-commerce functions. On the other hand, large companies are going to use it for major releases only, not for every sub-200 page sourcebook.
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Apr 3, 2013 02:14
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Gau posted:My estimates indicate it's a lot closer to, if not at, seven figures - and that's not including board games or miniatures. I'm talking about funding for individual books. Six figures in preorders for a single book isn't bad, and it's not uncommon for large-ish companies now. I think Numenera's half-million bag is about as good as it's going to get until Paizo releases a new edition of Pathfinder or a major supplement this way, which they almost certainly will.
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Apr 3, 2013 03:28
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jivjov posted:I really wish the management of my FLGS was more...accepting of Kickstarter. I'd really like to support my local store more, and every time I see a cool Kickstarter that has a retailer backer level, I try to convince my store to buy in, but it never seems to happen. The owner is of the (somewhat justified) opinion that Kickstarters are harming Brick and Mortar sales; people who are super interested in a game and would buy it Day One probably already saw and backed the Kickstarter. With brick and mortar gaming stores being such a niche idea these days, I can really see his point, but I'm not sure if how much of his attitude really is justified and how much is just bitterness. That's because retailer packages don't fit the business model of many retailers, who move low volume items (like RPGs) according to pull requests instead of stocking and praying someone will pick them up. So "blow some money and buy ten!" doesn't work for them at all unless they feel confident they can move them.
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Jul 22, 2013 19:32
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Yea I'm not sure where all these hysterical crazies demanding we gather every copy of Sword Rape The Game Where You Literally Rape A Lady With A Sword This Is A Real Thing That Happens and burn it. People are just saying it's disgusting and terrible. Using this (and what it was responding to) as a jumping off point I think the trap a lot of people concerned about this stuff get into is that they get dumped with the onus to argue that this is a terrible idea when of course, the person making this stuff is, though their work, making the extraordinary claim that this is worthwhile. *They* have to prove it isn't poo poo. By conflating criticism with a challenge to the right to create, they falsely shift the onus on other people. This is basically the Zak S. rhetorical maneuver in a nutshell. "YOU prove robot sperm-thief mamas that make evil babies are stupid monsters!" when it's really the creator's job to demonstrate this isn't dumb.
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Aug 7, 2013 13:24
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I like the probably-untrue story that militaries assess new gear in part by giving it to soldiers and just seeing if they want to ditch it during maneuvers as a guide to how to integrate technology. When something gets in the way, a good group drops it. When it helps, they go after it. With RPGs, this also gives us a sense of what exactly people like doing. There tends to be too much emphasis on procedure as a means instead of an end, which I think manifests in the fact that as far as I can see (after querying almost a hundred people about it over the past couple of years) that folks generally avoid technology when it takes over certain procedures completely. They want virtual dice, but not necessarily a system that, say, automates all D&D combat procedures. (Part of the reason is that this also removes pauses for fudging and house rulings--it doesn't have to make those things go away,but procedures inform the rhythm of play.) Plus, players often just plain enjoy being the bridge between discrete procedures and the outcome. I've seen this in the way that people use Dicenomicon. I'm sure people are out there doing it, but I've never seen folks employ the more robust tools in the app. I myself dropped it for a much simpler app some time ago. What I *would* like to see is automation being used to manage the extremely complex systems that arose in the 1980s,like Phoenix Command (in fact, the only person I know who ever used it coded a utility for it himself). These are games that are a pain in the rear end to manage without a computer and represent fertile ground for original game design, even if those designs have objectives that aren't that popular nowadays. I think interface design,such as it is, is a bit on the artless side, partly due to lack of resources,and partly due to a lack of imagination. We're less than a decade away from being able to turn any image with perspective into an animated 3D doohickey anyway. I wonder what things would be like with a more chess-like aesthetic, partly to class up my nerdery,and partly because it would address the common complaint that representations the table force you to do a double take and remind yourself that this week, the ogre is actually an elemental with the same size.
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Sep 13, 2013 11:04
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Mikan posted:Monte Cook announced what is probably the worst license terms I've seen in a long time. If you don't have the chops to negotiate a better agreement with the man himself and expect to gross chump change, the license tells you how exactly you can gently caress off. This is not all bad, though not all good. It's kind of Not Great to have a license that squeeze some cash out of the segment least likely to have a viable business plan--and "I'm gonna gross $2000 and they'll let me on panels and poo poo!" is not a good business plan. On the other hand, it protects Numenera from a bunch of long tail pamphlet releases--they apparently don't want that, and it's in their right to control it. Finally, it's specifically not a fan policy. Basically, if a WotC alumnus wants to use Numenera's system for a major project, s/he's going to sidestep this license completely and negotiate something different. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Oct 9, 2013 |
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Oct 9, 2013 02:26
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MisterShine posted:Wasn't there some legal case where you couldnt copyright game mechanics because it was ruled there were only so many ways to make a randomized chance of something happening or something? Hoo boy: 0) I am not a lawyer but my understanding is: 1) Game mechanics cannot be copyrighted (http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html). 2) Expressions of game mechanics can. So d20+mod to hit DC can't be copyrighted, but that phrase can, and maybe the term DC could be protected. 3) Trademark is a separate thing, but see 4. 4) *However*, C&Ds routinely cite copyright and trademark violations whether or not both are actually in play (example: Hasbro's action against the producers of what was Scrabulous claimed trademark over game systems, not just names and trade dress). Companies routinely assert trademark over systems, even though this is a Maybe Not True. 5) Some companies have floated the notion that game systems are copyrightable by way of analogy with software copyrights, in that numeric values can be copyrighted. I have never read about this being tested. Ryan Dancey has made this claim (specifically with respect to OSRIC) so who knows? 6) I suspect that the thing actually enforcing customs around using systems is the resource disparity between companies with popular intellectual properties and everyone else. If you are not yourself an intellectual property lawyer or can't get one for free, Hasbro's ability to annoy you exists regardless of the merits of the action.
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Oct 9, 2013 03:12
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Halloween Jack posted:He's the Ryan Dancey of being the Steve Jobs of book covers. His "some work for ICE and AD&D" was actually as a full time editor and designer for Iron Crown (Covering RM and HERO) and then TSR, which means he had a hand in a vast number of D&D and other TSR books for a very long time.
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Oct 10, 2013 04:26
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Alien Rope Burn posted:By "vast" he means about 15 or so, but yes. It's true Monte Cook has had a long career in the gaming industry. But he made his name big based on his 3e and d20 work. Relatively few folks remember him for his work on Rolemaster Companion V, Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs, or Champions in 3-D. At most, Planescape fans will know him pretty well for having a big mark on that line, but for both good and ill. Ultimately, though, his Malhavoc work dwarfs his TSR contributions. Generally when you work for a company full time, it means that every product under your purview passes over your desk. He was the editor in charge of Hero and RM from the late 80s to the early 90s (http://www.rpg.net/columns/briefhistory/briefhistory8.phtml), so he worked on pretty much everything released from that company, not just what you might turn up with some Googling. (And now I miss the old pen-paper.net, which wasn't too bad about recording creator credits.) I seriously doubt he has no more than 15 TSR credits (RPGnet's listings are incomplete, and list maybe 18, not including a few dozen Dragon Magazine articles). The rest of this sounds like "Surely nothing notable was done in the field before the existence of web forums!" Okay, I get that you don't like the way he designs games, but he was an extremely experienced writer, editor and designer before he was involved in D&D, and didn't get momentum to do his own thing purely out of a sense of entitlement.
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Oct 10, 2013 07:05
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Well, d20 design is painfully incremental most of the time. Sometimes this is just lazy tweak-and-it's-done, but not always. I like Arcana Unearthed's fighter replacements and leveled races, for example, because beyond sheer novelty, they addressed issues in core D&D play. All the same, it's not the kind of thing that's going to wow people either.
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Oct 10, 2013 07:24
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Bucnasti posted:Not paying people, paying them late, or shorting them payments is so common in this industry that just paying someone what you agreed upon on time makes you a saint in the eyes of most freelancers. You have to understand that 90% of industry horror stories are one man bands operating at a loss not paying somebody who would not get work were there not said one man bands. This reminds me of the time Zak Smith polled his freelancer readers for how much money they made to make some point about how freelancing was a sucker's game, when in fact, he really succeeded in mostly getting people who are sufficiently unsuccessful that their rates don't qualify as significant information about their personal finances.
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Jul 21, 2014 14:20
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ravenkult posted:90% of the industry is one man bands, so that's not saying much. Unfortunately, the window where products could be split into pro, semipro and amateur tiers has passed due to partly market driven, but also kinda-intentional attacks on the middle of both the business and labour sides of the industry. I think a largely undifferentiated industry beyond the Two Big Dungeons and Dragons really isn't helping. If there were 4-5 flagships split among three or more genres I believe the industry would be much healthier, and that the benefits would extend beyond those flagships, for Reasons. Honestly, the practical litmus for Really Real Industry these days is probably as simple as the answer to this question: "Can you keep your hand out of your booth's till for all of Gencon?" Lots of companies can't.
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Jul 21, 2014 15:03
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FMguru posted:One of the traditional escape hatches for RPG writers is to move up to genre fiction writing (Mike Stackpole and Aaron Allston both did this, among others). Genre fiction pays like rear end (unless you're the next J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Myers or Suzanne Collins) so it really says something about pay rates in RPGs that writing midlist SF and fantasy and franchise novels is a big step up in terms of compensation. In many cases it's more about the steady paycheck compared to RPGs than the actual rate. This is true at virtually all levels below superstars, which is why well-known UK SF writers have written Warhammer novels.
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Jul 21, 2014 15:20
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ravenkult posted:I'm mostly out of the RPG freelancing arena because I priced myself out of it at 300$ for a cover or 200$ for full page interiors. That's how small the industry is. Heh. I paid that kind of money when I published Aeternal Legends due to an operating principle where I paid people living wages that respected their experience. AEL's cover artist Leo Lingas mostly does commercial storyboards now, while Chris Huth (interior/layout) is now Pelgrane's go-to guy. The game didn't do much for me in the end (it kinda broke even) but it did build credentials for Chris and Stew Wilson, so there's that social good at least.
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Jul 21, 2014 15:25
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Kai Tave posted:I do agree with Leperflesh that you should aim for a flat project payout of some sort rather than a per-word arrangement, as it seems that what you're after isn't just someone writing up an article but actually converting a game from one system to another, which in addition to being a degree of work in and of itself isn't the sort of thing you want padded out with extra wordcount if you can avoid it. I want to address this because it really looks like a basic misunderstanding of what per-word means. Proper word contracts set out a minimum length for the author, and calculate payment based on that length ahead of time. This means that a contract tells me I need to devote 10K to weebles, and my compensation is based on that 10K. I do not get extra money for doing 15K on weeble wobbles. If I do that it's wasted work, and the editor/developer probably tells me to cut 5K. The publisher may choose to print 5K of that, but that's none of my business. I'm not paid for *published* words, but *produced* words, unless I have some kind of lovely contract I never should have signed with a company whose name appears on the periodic table of elements. If I did 15K like an idiot, the publisher *might* use it all (but probably not) and I gain *nothing* from that extra effort. Concern about padding is *mostly* nonsense (in the "I like terse technical writing, and mistake my preferences for an objective good" sense). The publisher gains nothing by contracting for more words than it needs, and the writer gains nothing for writing more than the contract specifies. You might see padding when the E/D lays out too much space for a section in the outline (which forms the basis for the wordcount in the contract). When this happens to me, I usually add bonus material because I've been around enough to be trusted to do that. That's why Void Engineers has spaceship construction rules. They weren't asked for in the outline. I just did 'em because I managed to deliver a lot of tightly packed content. Some development styles work well with this kind of back and forth, where the freelancer is really being hired because he or she is a cool dude who can deliver unexpected cool content. So if you (the publisher) don't want padding, your E/D should outline accordingly. I can't speak to lovely contracts where you only get paid for stuff that gets printed, because I don't sign lovely contracts.
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Jul 21, 2014 15:43
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moths posted:I think the issue with word count is that you're selling a rules package that's intended to be consumed differently than conventional text. Actually, they do both. The developer's job is to ask for X content in Y word count. If that content needs many more or less words, the developer hosed up. There are developing styles and specific freelancer relations as well. I often get outlines that are "I generally want this, do your thing," but sometimes the developer contracts out for exactly what you describe--this many classes, items and so on, to be delivered in this many words. One dev may be loose, and another may look for stricter requirements for some writers than others. These days I often get outlines telling me to put in whatever I want in general parameters because I earned that. Someone else may be given a detailed outline, In Darkening Sky, I worked with a new writer and even though the outline was loose, essentially outlined his section for him by taking a mentorship role.
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Jul 21, 2014 16:26
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moths posted:That's interesting, I guess it really does come down to the publisher. Dude it came out recently. http://theonyxpath.com/new-release-dark-ages-darkening-sky/
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Jul 21, 2014 16:34
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I knew this would get all hosed up the moment I read the letter and immediately the qualifier that Gencon had no plants to break its contract. This is essentially saying, "We'd be so made we'd have no choice but to give your state about a quarter billion dollars, but no more!" It doesn't matter how practical breaking the contract is. This was its moral force--kind of weak. Not their fault, but still. It was a mistake for the first letter not to directly address this reality, even if obliquely, since this was a public communication. It gave a number of people hope that Gencon would be able to make a more substantial gesture. But beyond this, the company did the best it could. It's in a bad position. From what I've been told, it's full of good people. On the other hand, it doesn't really matter if they're good folks. Gencon is a business. It's not a charity. If you have a sentimental relationship with it, that's not going both ways. Gencon has a *business* relationship with you, and the medium of conversation is economic in the form of your attendance (or not) or how you impact their marketing/promo (or not). I've been talking and listening to folks in the design community directly affected by this, and the consensus seems to be that going this year is fine. Too much is already locked in for all concerned, including attendees and exhibitors. But next year? Maybe not. This is not because the people at Gencon are awful, but because the medium of conversation and influence *is* economic. You don't owe Gencon charity; Gencon doesn't owe you charity. Meanwhile some folks are trying to head off any discussion of a boycott with the spurious argument that you will harm progressive businesses. This misunderstands the nature of boycotts. *All* effective boycotts inconvenience perfectly decent people. All of them. All boycotts *should* do this, because the die hard bigots won't be swayed by them. Boycotts work when progressives and moderates caught up in them decide they're done with the assholes in their midst. They either put pressure on the assholes, or steamroll them with a solution that doesn't require their consent. So unless there's a substantial change I would encourage individuals and companies alike to give Gencon a miss in 2016, not because Gencon has done anything wrong, but because this is a pillar of effective action. This is a serious issue. It affects your friends, brothers, sisters, parents, lovers. It subjects them to bigotry we associate with the nightmarish era of American racism. This is bad. I'm sorry that it requires hard choices. I'm sorry that good people will be inconvenienced. But good people stand to be inconvenienced already. That's my opinion.
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Mar 28, 2015 01:36
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PresidentBeard posted:So by boycotting what are you attempting to convince Gencon to do? They're already not going to renew their contract, and if the penalty for breaking contract was small enough to increased sales by progressives would cover it I'm sure they would have already broke contract. So you request is to harm a progressive business for no benefit. The target isn't Gencon. The target is the state of Indiana, which enjoys $50 million/year in economic activity in Indianapolis from Gencon attendees. That Gencon suffers should not be relevant. The company made its choice, no matter how regretfully, but it isn't a loving charity, remember? It'll gross $4-5 million at the turnstiles and whatever exhibitors pay. It's full of perfectly nice people who I'm sure are upset about this, but you don't go to Gencon with nice words. You go with cash. It's just a for-profit convention. There are others. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Mar 28, 2015 |
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Mar 28, 2015 12:58
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clockworkjoe posted:Well, yeah. I was pointing out that a larger economic sanction has already been implemented (Salesforce) and it didn't have an effect. A Gen Con boycott is meaningless because it won't work. The legislators who made the decision are far too ideologically driven and removed from the consequences of their actions. After all, the boycotts aren't targeting the smaller and more conservative districts that voted for these assholes. They're targeting the city, which is more liberal than the small towns and suburbs. Look at the 2012 election map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Indiana,_2012 I hear that when teachers strike little children--children yet!--don't learn. Better call that poo poo off too. Right? I have no sympathy, because this is standard issue, slippery slope capitulation. The notion that one only takes an action when the action itself will provide the total effect, and only if no precious innocent people are inconvenienced, is such blatant foot-shooting soft liberal self-defeat that it only deserves addressing because of the number of people who seem to hold these sorts of errant opinions. I get that nerds hate to hear that a small band of people don't make a difference, and that change doesn't happen according to an unambiguous narrative around a single action, but it's the truth. It doesn't matter that refusing to go to Indiana in spite of Gencon will not bring the state to its knees. It matters because it's one gesture in an ecosystem of them that supports and strengthens others. It doesn't matter that the Cool People of Indy stand to lose--their inconvenience is in fact as likely to drive change, because they are far more like to take matters up at the state level than people committed to anti-LGBTQ segregation. Once again though: This year? Things are too locked in. But as long as Indiana remains a state with legally sanctioned homophobic segregation, I believe you should avoid it in 2016, and limit your economic support of the state generally.
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Mar 28, 2015 20:20
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clockworkjoe posted:That was a terrible metaphor and missed my point entirely. My point is any generic boycott of all of Indiana won't influence Mike Pence and the GOP legislators that passed this law. They didn't care that Salesforce canceled their expansion plans and they won't care if Gen Con leaves. It won't hurt them at all. I think they WANT Gen Con to leave. They want everyone that disagrees with them to leave the state. They want a theocracy, which is easier to do if there's no opposition. It didn't miss your point. It disagrees with your point, because affecting Nice People by withholding something that you have the right to withhold is effective and ethical. Boycotts rarely work through direct pressure on the bad actor, because said bad actor doesn't give a poo poo. A homophobic business doesn't give a poo poo that an Indianapolis business puts up a sign. A homophobic business outside the city doesn't care about an ordinance.Pressure that makes it a broad problem even for sympathetic actors so that they take action works. This is actually how your Rush example worked, because the advertisers were the ones who pressures him. Opposing this without broadly avoiding Indiana is sort of like saying you're not going hurt the sponsors, but just refuse to buy Rush mugs. In the case of Indianapolis it's obvious, because limiting a boycott to people who backed a law where the point was not having to serve you is an obvious exercise on capitulation. Anyway, it's been a blast seeing industry discussion explode over this because so many people capable of broad poo poo-talk over who deserves to be lambasted over Twitter are desperately looking for any reason to slink into Indy without guilt pangs. This year? Sure--like I said, vendors and visitors are locked in, though I sure as hell wouldn't make any plans now. Next? If things are still bad, good luck with that.
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Apr 1, 2015 05:00
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Halloween Jack posted:As far as What Gary Wanted is concerned, remember he went on to design Dangerous Journeys and Lejendary Adventure, which were not very good and rather behind the times. He later said that Castles & Crusades was basically what he wanted AD&D 3rd Edition to be, but he had a business relationship with Troll Lord and Gygax was always a huckster, to put it bluntly. In not total defense of GG, it's commonly understood that much of his post-TSR output was heavily shaped by the threat of lawsuits for copyright infringement by TSR for everything from names to game systems, whether those threats were legitimate or not. Lots of the weird-rear end elements of his game design resulted from this. Other folks could get away with stuff that TSR would sue him for at the drop of a hat.
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Jun 4, 2015 09:42
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grassy gnoll posted:John Rogers is a pretty cool guy. Fel's Five, Blue Beetle, Leverage, I love all that poo poo. I don't care for his style but I should point out that screenwriting is a difficult mix of technical and creative writing. Even poo poo screenplays are hard to produce.
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Jun 4, 2015 09:47
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Bucnasti posted:Did Gary every design anything other than RPGs after D&D? He had so much background in wargaming he might have had better luck designing them. Just chess variants as far as I know.
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Jun 4, 2015 09:48
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I think Mike Mearls is a fine game designer, but he's not designing "his" D&D. Nobody working at that level designs a game entirely the way they want to. Really, much of his early work presages 4e. He submitted the basic concept of 4e hit points at his interview with WotC. I think he's not a bad creative writer either, but that doesn't really shine through. Still, some of his talent shines through in early work, where the creative side is a little less leashed to the technical. Blood Bayou for Scarred Lands is fun, for instance. Iron Heroes was highly innovative for its time as well. Mainly though, I think you guys should treat anything you read from him on social media as business communications. WotC has formal contractual obligations and employee policies that ensure that while Mearls is never lying to you, he's not giving you 100% of his opinions. Combined with the consensus he has to build to design anything, you should consider Mike Mearls, D&D designer, as not necessarily indicative of his real opinions or talents. I personally think there's something at WotC that keeps staff from really doing their best, but I really don't know what it is.
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Jun 4, 2015 10:00
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kaynorr posted:They tried that with 4th edition and ended up writing it off as a failure. Damned if anyone can figure out why, outside of clearly it wasn't in line with Mike Mearls' personal design sensibilities and once he was put in charge, it had to go. My personal conspiracy theory is that Pathfinder convinced someone above Mearls that they were leaving a ton of money on the table and they could just get it back if they made a new edition with the explicit goal of being More Like Old D&D, regardless of how that's not a design thesis so much as a marketing ploy. Again, I don't know where the idea that Mearls secretly disliked 4e comes from. It uses a number of design concepts from his prior work. Iron Heroes is a dry run for a lot of them. Maybe it's that as a representative of WotC it was his job to tell you to buy the new edition after it was time to start hawking 5e, but everybody selling a new edition tells you it's better than the old one. Saying stuff like that is just his job. If he was told D&D had to utilize rubber chickens, he'd praise the monster type: stretchy fowl. He has a passion for the game, but I doubt he's especially partisan about it. I think it's extremely likely that 4e didn't meet targets set by upper management (even though many of these targets were probably missed due to reasons related to things outside their control, like the poor online play and community tools) and that the design team looked at the state of D&D and decided to pitch a version of the game marketed by fans' direct participation in its design, where they would choose from lots and lots of redundant game design assets they company had lying around from years of design and development processes. Mind you even if 4e didn't stick, it still lasted about as long as a typical edition of 21st Century D&D does. We had 6 years of 4e compared to 8 years of 3e, and midpoint revisions for both. Anyway I'm sure 5.5 or whatever will be neat when it arrives in 2017 or 2018.
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Sep 29, 2015 20:25
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bunnielab posted: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 I'm running modified 2e now. Without any power ups for spell memorization and with progressive saving throws it isn't too bad except for the odd overpowered spell. In our group's case it's Color Spray, because it disallows a save. Saves really are a big deal pre-3e because at a high enough level many spells become all but useless against high level/HD types.
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Sep 29, 2015 20:31
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ProfessorCirno posted:Because once he actually took the wheels of D&D, it sure as hell stopped looking like Iron Heroes? Yes, people sell the new edition by telling you the old edition is bad before the new edition comes out. For 4e, they made cartoons and everything! In any event, I think you guys have a loose grasp on how commercial games are designed, and how that differs from designing for yourself, or for a smaller audience. When you're designing for a broad audience, you have a responsibility to set your preferences aside. Working on a smaller game recently, the design document was still the result of a management imperative to use certain dice, character traits and other bits. With D&D, those preferences are set by market research. When market research indicates a bunch of people wanting a thing? You design it. Period. Furthermore, it's not a solitary process. It's set by a design document, and that design document is ultimately the promise you make to the folks above you. You want to break that promise? You have to have a meeting and negotiate those changes. So the idea that Essentials was Mearls making D&D his is absurd. It never was. It will never be. For better or worse, there are no auteurs, and the way they work is designed to crush that. No Warlord in the Essentials core (though it was supposed to appear in a supplement)? The chance it was Mearls hating on the Warlord is minute compared to the chance it wasn't popping up as often as other classes in data ripped from the character builder and forum discussions.
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Sep 30, 2015 16:49
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moths posted:The problem with this is that the research for Next was so incompetent as to be worse than useless. Well, some of the research for the playtesting phase was clearly market*ing*. The playtest was one of a number of elements that were designed to make folks take ownership of the game. (Hiring bloggers is another -- did you know Google used to punish blogs' search rankings for that? Man.) I think it's likely that they were punting surveys at selected site users and mining data from their own and other communities long before any of this. WotC has the expertise and money to do that sort of thing. This was probably harvested and distilled into some thesis about what the game should be, so that any other feedback would be to tweak the details.
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Sep 30, 2015 19:45
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Halloween Jack posted:By the by, I don't mean to dismiss what you were saying about design documents out of hand. My next question for you is, is there good reason to believe that the D&D team agreeing on a design document with upper management isn't just a rubber stamp process? It depends on how integrated it is into D&D's business plan. If the design document is "We're supporting market research that says people want X and Y by designing this way, to hit the targets in Z," then yeah, it's not just a rubber stamp. D&D is ultimately managed as a brand, which means that there is a demand for a consistent experience associated with it, and a planned, definite way to translate that into selling stuff, including the game. In any event it looks like Greg Bilsland (their digital marketing guy) does know about D&D as a pastime, and if that's the sort of person doing that work then they need to know how the game is designed, and what the resulting vibe is going to be. Finally, marketing this sort of thing seems way more sensitive to early fandom than it used to be. They know that the first in to any spinoff will include large numbers of TT players who will use word of mouth blogging and social media to judge it according to some notion of the "D&D experience." And nowadays, they know that the sense of authenticity can be taken away from them.
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Sep 30, 2015 20:36
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Half of Palladium's staff is pushing or past 60. The company's had a 34 year run. I wouldn't be surprised if the main goal now is to pay off any lingering debts and get Palladium in shape for sale by 2020. Kevin and whoever also has a stake will split seven figures and then things will get interesting. EDIT: I have to say though, the Grab Bag thing is brilliant. They take a couple of flagship/request books and mix it with whatever they need to clear. Keep in mind that by contrast, I've received surprise games in the past as . . . packing material, because whoever wants it gone. Some of this stock would be worth literally less than nothing (given warehousing costs and taxes) so monetizing it is a fantastic idea. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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Nov 10, 2015 13:06
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NTRabbit posted:In what world is Palladium worth 7 figures? The only IP and back catalogue you'd get out of it have no wide appeal, and audiences that are already miniscule and still dwindling, and any hardware or technology would be second rate and small in number. I doubt they even own the building they're in, the company has gently caress all value. In a world that largely doesn't care that the company has beefs with ex-amployees and supply chain problems for a Kickstarter and would buy Rifts with the rest of the portfolio on the side. In any event, with six full time employees operating out of a dedicated warehouse/office (like many companies you think are doing better can't afford to do) I'd be surprised if PB was grossing less than half a million bucks a year. If the company pays off its debts (the embezzlement/theft business was nearly a decade ago, so this is likely) a low seven figure payout is entirely reasonably, and probably no big deal -- it's not a lot of money. Rifts has proven its value over 25 years. It's less important that nobody made a movie than the fact that people have paid for the option twice. As for Robotech, PB appears to have a pretty good license -- they were able to sub-license it, for instance. If it transfers smoothly with the entity of PB changing hands, it's got value.
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Nov 11, 2015 00:34
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NTRabbit posted:They don't own Robotech, they have a contract granting them limited rights to produce certain kinds of games based on the IP, and should Palladium be sold Harmony Gold would almost certainly have a clause in the contract granting them immediate release if they so chose. Depends on how well it was negotiated. Things run the gamut from the super-tight contracts done for LotR games while the movies were out, to the license that keeps Star Fleet Battles around, no matter what.
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Nov 11, 2015 00:37
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Bucnasti posted:When Kevin got the licenses to both Robotech and TMNT, nobody had any idea what they were doing. They're likely the same type of stupidly good deals as the Star Fleet Battle guys have. That said there's no way Palladium would fetch even close to a million dollars, their original IPs are pretty crappy, their licenses are only for games and their reputation is crap. White Wolf just sold for 1.2M and it's got a lot more mainstream value behind it. White Wolf didn't sell for $US 1.2 million. It sold for a multiple of that. The article you're thinking of just notes that SEK10 million = $US 1.2 million. The old White Wolf's goodwill value was around $US4 million and didn't significantly decrease in CCP's financial statements. That + MMO production assets mean Paradox probably spent in the mid-seven figures USD. These strained explanations for why somebody you don't like continues to survive with a company that outlived TSR, White Wolf v. 1.0 and WEG, and outlasted a disaster comparable to the one that sank Decipher seems to be getting increasingly disconnected from the facts. It's incoherent to complain that Kevin got a bunch of fans to bail him out while simultaneously saying their IP has no value -- if it wasn't valuable, he wouldn't have been bailed out. Don't worry, the dodgy quality of Palladium's offerings are a given and everything. That's baked into their process. Just because Kevin looks on track to be a successful retired small business guy doesn't take away the fact that the operation is pretty much guaranteed to filter out competence. But even if they never get a Carella or Coffin again, they're good at selling their backlist.
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Nov 11, 2015 03:36
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I think it's amazing. We have a complete business history for the last iteration of this but most people are going to make exactly the same mistakes. Me, I'm happy with the new OGL except for the format (.rtf is much easier to start with). The rules were never the valuable thing in of themselves. What's valuable is that the text lets you avoid a great deal of boring work and people feel brand loyalty that can be exploited. WotC made little to no use of 3p open content and I don't see that changing. I wonder if WotC is going to do what they did last time and use 3pp as a stalking horse for official releases, so that when your elf book sells well it will be bum's rushed by Official Elf Book down the line.
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Jan 12, 2016 21:31
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Maxwell Lord posted:Nowadays what few hex and counter wargames get published tend to be very hardcore groggy simulations- nobody's printing Tactics or Kriegspiel, they've sort of accepted their fate as a niche. Wargaming now more or less means miniatures wargaming, which is fine but limits some ideas based on scale (and tends to be less about terrain because you end up making the battlefield yourself.) Board games frequently explore weird concepts, but the standard for components and art there are high enough that there's no point trying to do it on the cheap. Board wargaming is very much a thing, but computer games hit it pretty drat hard. Nowadays you get company-based crowdfunding, where if X customers order, it comes out, and they hand out draft rules and such along the way. See: http://www.gmtgames.com/t-GMTP500Details.aspx
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Feb 28, 2016 18:12
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Slimnoid posted:That's likely because Basic "lost" the "war" between it and AD&D. This is despite Basic selling something like a million copies at its high point, and introducing a ton of people to D&D. Actually, after AD&D2 was released D&D was given a new 5-level basic set and the Rules Cyclopedia But it was always going to be about AD&D because D&D existed as a separate game as part of the legal wrangling with Arneson.
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Feb 28, 2016 18:18
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't see how what Slimnoid said doesn't still hold true. The Cyclopedia, while an excellent compendium, was the last gasp of the Basic product line. The Black Box was a replacement for Basic and solely intended as an introduction to AD&D. The black box was an intro to RC D&D. My point is that it wasn't a contest because D&D (for which DA was credited) was always meant to lose to AD&D (for which he was not -- the "A" was successfully used as a way to dodge royalty payments). Considering its place as a legal compromise, D&D punched well above its weight. The GAZ series probably extended its life because it became immensely popular. But it was still given a fraction of AD&D's coverage and no organized play support that I'm aware of. So you can't really blame gamers for not sticking with a game whose creators provided so little support. It wasn't just nerds liking fiddly rules. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Feb 29, 2016 |
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Feb 28, 2016 23:21
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Covok posted:They aren't doing that, but I remember seeing anniversary copies of some of their older games popping up in my FLGs shortly before it closed down. They definitely looked official. Probably should have bought those then. Yes. They released anniversary editions of OD&D, 1e (including UA and a few module series) and 2e. I would have loved a Rules Cyclopedia re-release.
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Mar 14, 2016 21:23
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