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Kickstarter is still (barely) flying under the radar of these big corporate IP holders. Once Disney, Fox, GW, WB etc notice this stuff Cease and Desist letters will start to fly. Very likely KS will be forced to police their own much like Youtube. The law in this case is squarely on the IP holders side, and yes if you carved a Darth Vader action figure out of soap and gave it to your dad it is technically a copyright violation, it's just not one that is worth Disney perusing.
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Jul 6, 2013 19:51
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah, I read that description and it didn't parse until now. But holy poo poo does that sound both horrible and awkward. Every time something like this or boob-girl prestige classes comes up, I immediately wonder... Who would sit down to play this poo poo? Like a bunch of guys with howling wolf shirts sit in mom's basement and pretend to be a magic rapist sword while munching on cheetos? How do you even pitch this to your friends? "Hey guys, there's this awesome sword game where the sword is a rapist. Want to play with me?" A terrible KS posted:We don't design games to make a moral point or push an agenda. We don't design games to offend you or your sociology professor or your congressman. We do it because we believe there is fun to be had in exploring tragedy and depravity with your friends in the safety of your kitchen, den or mother's basement. Apparently they think this is fun.  I would like to request a list of everyone who backs this KS, so I can be sure to NEVER EVER PLAY ANYTHING WITH THEM.
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Aug 6, 2013 05:13
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It really sounds like you're going about this the wrong way. You should be looking for a CONCEPT ARTIST to create your non-sexytime characters, and then contracting a sculptor to sculpt based on the concept art. Your art briefs and contracts then stipulate that any deviation from the concept art must be approved by you. Quality professional sculptors will not turn down work because "it's not sexy enough", lovely amateurs might.
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Aug 16, 2013 03:56
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Kai Tave posted:I dunno, his example about the Privateer Press sculpt that started out as a sensible figure in a sensible pose and then ended up like a come-hither Herbal Essences commercial makes it sound like the problem lies on the sculpting side, not the conceptual side. You can stipulate whatever you want in your contract but if everyone you approach shoots you down because they won't or can't do the work you're asking of them then all the stipulations in the world aren't going to get you anywhere. If that change was made, the art director approved it. When you commission a sculpt the sculptors makes what you tell them to or they don't get paid. If a change needs to be made because of technical limitations (such as a pose not being viable) then it's approved by the art director. There's not enough demand for this kind of work for real professionals to turn down paying gigs. I've worked with quite a few mini sculptors in-house and freelance and not once did we get told "that's not sexy enough". If nothing else there are several Chinese sculpting houses that will make anything you want on the cheap. They're just not as consistent and often take longer to turn around because of multiple revision rounds.
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Aug 16, 2013 05:01
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Kai Tave posted:And that's WotC, which is as professional as it comes in the land of elfgames. Actually WotC is notorious for caring more about deadlines than accurate art.  I will admit that my experiences may be skewed as the minis projects I've worked on have never had to worry about deadlines, but I still think you all need to find some better quality artists.
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Aug 16, 2013 08:43
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Has anyone else seen the videos of Microsoft Surface (now called pixelsense) gaming? It was a smallish table and the entire surface was a touchscreen, and an optical reader. If you placed a game piece on the table it sensed it's location and could see the bottom of the piece, so if you rolled dice, it could read them and record the results, or if you placed scrabble tiles it would automatically tally the score for you. I would love to see this kind of exploration of tabletop gaming, the technology augmenting and streamlining gameplay instead of replacing it. With LCD displays getting cheaper and cheaper having an entire tabletop that's one big display doesn't seem too far off.
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Sep 13, 2013 04:45
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The internet gave them a wider audience, and e-publishing lowered the barrier of entry but people have been producing crappy unpolished game products and expecting people to pay for them since the hobby began.There is much more good high quality free content available for tabletop gamers today then there ever was prior to the internet.
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Oct 9, 2013 03:31
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Buckaroo Banzai? Somebody's making a Buckaroo Banzai game? Tell me more, even if it's all smoke I must know.
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Nov 22, 2013 12:01
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dwarf74 posted:I like xp. Easy enough rules, lots of advice, and one of the best Paranoia adventures I've ever run. The new black Troubleshooter book has basically the same rules as XP. It's a nice book but the art seems to lack the charm of the old school books.
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Nov 25, 2013 08:19
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papasyhotcakes posted:I have already asked this in the " FATAL and friends thread" but seeing as it is related: where can I get Paranoia: troubleshooters book, either in print or pdf? I have been searching the web but the only results have been old editions at outrageous prices and the High Programmer book that Mongoose sells in its website (someone helpfully pasted a link to an UK vendor but sadly I do not live there) Well I was about to suggest Amazon.com where I got mine a couple years ago but it's currently listed for $400.00  Maybe I shouldn't leave my copy under my bed.I have no idea where else to get it.
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Nov 25, 2013 12:09
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I think the reason whistleblowing is considered taboo is because just about every publisher is doing something shady. People don't get into this industry because they're master businessmen, so most of them are struggling in some way. Hell even the big companies that are run by master businessmen *Cough*Upper Deck*Cough* get into shady practices.
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Nov 30, 2013 23:00
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I wasn't really doing tabletop gaming at the time, so I'm asking out of curiosity: When pre-painted minis (Hero-Clicks, DnD Minis etc) were more widely available, what was the demographic split like? Those games seemed to appeal to a younger more casual audience, and I don't remember seeing a bunch of titty model hero-clicks. How popular were they with non-basement dwellers?
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Apr 20, 2014 04:44
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Popular enough that HeroClix are still decently huge and publish minis on popular properties. There were HeroClix for Pacific Rim when that came out and Star Trek too. DnD Minis aren't expanding that I can tell, but board games and Kre-o (knockoff Lego) sets are making it into department stores in Bumfuck, Iceland. Winson_Paine posted:The FFG Star Wars game is crushing it in terms of sales, from what I know, and it is all prepainted things on a good licence with a neat game. So if the prepainted minis can do this I don't see why painted minis wargames can't as well. The argument people make that the potential market is only manbabies sounds invalid to me.
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Apr 20, 2014 07:31
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Kai Tave posted:I don't think it's unfair to point out that prepainted miniatures games have a significantly lower barrier to entry than tabletop wargames where you have to clean, assemble, and paint your own units from scratch, though. To make a potentially clumsy analogy, on the one hand you have tabletop roleplaying games which frequently come in large multi-hundred page volumes of not very clearly explained rules, and on the other hand you have Magic: the Gathering where you can buy a simple starter set or two and much more easily learn how to play. Consequently the roleplaying hobby isn't exactly experiencing a lot of growth, while M:tG rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars. So then only creepy guys are willing to overcome the barrier of entry to tabletop wargames? Women and non-neckbeards can't enjoy assembling and painting models? The two examples you used of hobbies that are on the decline are the two hobbies consistently called out for excluding women. If other games can grow and prosper why can't RPGs and Mini Wargames? Complexity and higher barrier of entry might preclued the hobbies from the levels of success of lower entry cost hobbies, it should not dictate that they only appeal to one shrinking demographic. I personally think there's a place for titty models, it just should be a very small place in a much more diverse hobby.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:39
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occamsnailfile posted:This doesn't actually work very well for women. The target for most of these things is "men," sometimes with an age-demographic qualifier attached, so women liking it is just considered a sidebar. If women play with sexy minis or read sexy comic books or buy sexy video games, then they assume that women like or at least don't mind cheesecakey stupidity. If women don't buy these things, the response is "women just don't like X" and a shrug. There are even cases when too many girls liking something can cause cancellation or otherwise spike a product because "it isn't hitting the target." Paul Dini had some words about this and the response to his cartoons. An artist on the Green Lantern also posted a comic on his experience. This seems relevant: http://www.themarysue.com/young-wom...campaign=buffer Geeky pursuits are becoming more acceptable for young women, games should be taking advantage of this. We have a generation of young people who were raised on a steady diet of sci-fi and fantasy, Harry Potter, LOTR, Star Wars, anime, etc. The major players in the game industry should be aggresivly persuing this new audience (both male and female) and are instead continuing to focus on 40 year old basement dwellers who have already bought their games.
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Apr 22, 2014 19:36
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Leperflesh posted:Thank you! I assure you I can easily afford it. My problem has always been picking something. I am indecisive that way. Then I think this thread should be devoted to suggesting avatars. 
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Apr 28, 2014 01:59
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Error 404 posted:Welp. You're still right about it being way over used in SCP.
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Apr 29, 2014 07:09
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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. Which is really sad.
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Jun 20, 2014 01:17
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Can anyone tell me current rates for freelance RPG writing? I know RPG writing pays poo poo, I read typical rates are 1-3 cents a word, but that might be out of date info.
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Jul 21, 2014 06:09
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Ok, so if I'm budgeting a project, what's a reasonable (as opposed to typical lovely) per word rate? 5 cents a word? Or to be more specific, how much would you expect to pay for someone to write a game conversion like say converting a game to FATE? I want to pay well, but we're talking about an indi RPG, my budget is going to be limited.
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Jul 21, 2014 07:06
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Thanks everyone. One of the things that I'm trying to do with So77 is be part of the solution, pay good people to do good work for a good rate, at least as much as I can afford to do so. When it comes time do do this I intend to bid out the project to whatever degree I can, but right now I need a number to budget for projections down the road.
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Jul 21, 2014 08:26
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ravenkult posted:I do book covers now and I consistently get 300-500$ per cover. Do you have a portfolio I could check out? My current art needs have already been commissioned but I'm going to need more down the road and I'd rather give my money to a goon than some random artist I find on DA. MalcolmSheppard posted: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. It's not just one man ops that do this stuff. Back in the day Upper Deck would wait until the last day of the fiscal year to pay it's freelance artists so they could save a tiny percentage, meanwhile the artists were missing rent because they expected to get paid on time. It eventually led to any artist worth a drat refusing to work with them. Really even if you are a one man op there's no excuse for not paying people on time, you budget appropriately and don't contract for anything you can't afford to pay for.
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Jul 22, 2014 00:43
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I was in Las Vegas this week while some friends were attending GAMA. I saw this in the program guide, I really wish I could have attended it, to see what WotC thinks the TRGP trends are.
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Mar 19, 2015 02:37
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The show really needs to stay in the midwest, it's where all the small and medium sized gaming companies are. Every time they've tried to do a show on the west coast it's failed because very few vendors showed up. Vegas is also a really lovely place to run a convention, unless you're pulling in CES numbers it's not worth the trouble.
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Mar 26, 2015 01:07
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I appreciate the gesture, but I highly doubt Gen Con is in a position to break their just signed 5 year contract over this. I suspect the likely outcome will be, the bill gets signed, it's immediately challenged and by 2020 when the current contract is up it will have been overturned by the courts.
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Mar 26, 2015 04:27
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In my fantasy world, it all comes full circle and they return to Milwaukee.
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Mar 26, 2015 08:14
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Calling for an immediate boycott of Gen Con is severely shortsighted, and shows a lack of understanding about the realities of the current situation. Gen Con signed a contract three years ago for Indianapolis to host the show from 2015 to 2020. Gen Con can't just break that contract, because they likely have a slew of contracts with other companies for that same period of time, logistics, shipping, printing, facilities etc. A show this size is a huge mass with a lot of momentum and it takes years to change course. Expecting them to face financial ruin over this issue is childish. Gen Con is just starting the long process of negotiating a host for it's next five years (2021-2025) and a strong show, with a growing attendance will give them more leverage in those negotiations, losing it will be a bigger stick to Indiana and gaining it will be a bigger carrot to other states. If in two years, this law is still in place as it stands now, AND Gen Con signs another five year contract with Indianapolis then it will be time to boycott the show
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Mar 29, 2015 00:08
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They're not changing anything about housing, they're just not going forward with plans to expand their events into the conference spaces of the nearby hotels.
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Mar 31, 2015 08:37
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I'm pretty sure their business plan was literally... 1. Release the OGL 2. 3. PROFIT!
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May 6, 2015 01:18
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kaynorr posted:Has anyone ever posted a detailed breakdown of the inputs that would go into a (standalone, rules & setting complete) RPG book in terms of labor hours for each task, price out for (publishing, not hobby gaming) standard rates for those tasks - just to establish a baseline for how utterly and completely hosed the economics of the industry are? My complete asspull, off-the-cuff guess would be that you'd look at a book which would cost in the $125-$150 range for break even, given an (hobby game, not publish) industry average sales rate. If everyone(writers, artists, editors etc) was paid reasonable rates for other entertainment industries, RPG books would probably cost at least twice what they do now. If I had to pay myself my regular graphic design rate for all of the work I put into my book it would have easily doubled the production cost, and that's not counting all the writing time my partner and I spent on it. The RPG industry is held together by naivete, shady business practices and passionate people working for free.
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May 6, 2015 21:30
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Thinking $35 dollars in 1988 is the same as $35 today is perfectly understandable if you continue to live with your parents and they pay all your bills.
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May 7, 2015 03:34
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FMguru posted:WotC is focused on CCGs and boardgames, not RPGs, so it makes sense that they don't put a lot of effort into trying to diversify their RPG holdings. They've seen the numbers for RPG market size and customer spending, and they understand that they're much better off investing in growing their other departments instead of trying to launch new RPGs. WotC goes through cycles, they get on the RPG kick and make a bunch of poo poo, then it all fails to perform as well as DnD so they fire everyone who's not working on DnD. Then down the road they do it again. WotC started as an RPG company, then they made Magic, then used all that Magic money to buy a bunch of RPG lines, then shut all those RPG lines down to focus on Magic again, then they bought TSR and made a bunch of new RPGs, then shut them down. I wouldn't be surprised to see them make another attempt down the road, right now they only have three brands, they gotta come up with something new to push out. Littlefinger posted:To be fair, 4e was pretty much their attempt to fix the mechanical problems of 3e that people discovered through play, and to incorporate design 'innovations' that came after 3e's release (e.g. Tome of Battle or SW Saga Ed.). The real problem with 4e was that WotC couldn't figure out how to make money off of it. They built it with the idea that the RPG would drive blind reveal miniatures sales (which were making tons of money for other companies at the time), but the cost of materials went up and suddenly blind reveal painted miniatures were no longer a viable business for them. Most of the bad design decisions in 4e were due to the link with the miniatures line.
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May 7, 2015 19:01
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Leperflesh posted:Just a reminder that D&D's "failure", whether you're talking 4th edition or newer, is only in comparison to Pathfinder. Compared to pretty much any other RPG, D&D is still and always has been selling very well indeed. That's very true, DnD still makes WotC money, money that most of us would consider a lot. Compared to Magic though it's a drop in the bucket, which is what drives a lot of the corporate decisions at WotC, "Why should we invest in this product that makes us a few million when we could instead invest in this product that makes us a hundred million?" They also do pretty well with licensing, specifically video game licensing, and I think that might be the main reason they keep the product going. Leperflesh posted:Hm? But all of that is adjusted for inflation. I spend a smaller percentage of my income on food, but the actual dollar amount I pay at the register is more. So expecting something that cost $10 in 1988 to still cost $10 is ludicrous.
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May 7, 2015 19:46
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Leperflesh posted:
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply I don't agree with you, just that no matter how you compare things dollars today do not equal dollars yesterday. I learned about lot of this writing about the 1970's. It's actually quite fascinating what things went up and what things went down over the last 40 years, and the reasons for them. The rate of inflation from 1975 to 2015 is roughly 425%, but despite that some things have gone down both in absolute and relative amounts, especially electronics. Cars on the other hand have nearly doubled in cost in relative terms, but at the same time they're more than twice as efficient, half as pollutant, many times safer, perform substantially better and last much longer. Bringing this back to RPGs... I have a 1980 6th printing copy of the AD&D player's handbook. It's still got the Toy's R Us price tag for $8.94 on it. I find this amazing for a bunch of reasons: 1. By 1980 (2 years after publishing) TSR made 6 printings of the players handbook. 2. The book would cost $25.97 in 2015 dollars, which is pretty good for a 128pg black and white hardback book. 3. They sold it at Toys R Us - That's how much market penetration DnD had in 1980
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May 7, 2015 20:21
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An Angry Bug posted:An absurd amount. The brand has saved their rear end quite a few times. Yeah, Transformers has been a solid money maker for Hasbro year after year, the recent movies are some really fancy icing on an already impressive cake. Hasbro has locked down the process of separating parents of young boys from their hard earned money in exchange for small pieces of colored plastic that will break and need to be replaced with new pieces of plastic in different colors next year. The Transformers brand reinvents itself every couple of years with new toys, new cartoons and a whole new batch of 8 year olds to sell to. This is the type of lesson WotC has figured out for Magic (appealing to and bringing in new generations of players) but not for D&D.
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May 7, 2015 21:20
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MadScientistWorking posted:Wait has kit building never not been niche in the United States? Its never going away but its always been something that I remind exists when I go to my art store. Model cars were huge in the 60's and into the 70's here in America. Big Daddy Roth made a fortune licensing his crazy car designs and monster hot rods to model companies. FMguru posted:My impression of TF was that it was a smash success in the early 80s, peaking with the animated movie, and then downshifted to mostly catering to long-term fans through the 1990s (where it showed up in a lot of Gen-X pandering "hey, remember these artifacts of your childhood?" articles next to the Ecto-Cooler and the Rubik's Cubes). Then nostalgia got it going again in the early 2000s, leading to the movies, leading to it being a license to print money. My Little Pony is another property that boomed in the 1980s, went fallow for a while (except for long-term fans), and then was brought back later to huge success. Transformers disappeared for a couple years around 1990, but there have been regular releases and new cartoons consistently since then. They might not be the transformers you remember, but they're still part of the brand, they still tie into the same fictional universe and they still sold very well. They didn't start catering to the nostalgia crowd until recently. Give it 10-15 years and you'll be seeing a new wave of nostalgia for these later generations of Transformers, and the cycle will continue.
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May 7, 2015 23:23
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Leperflesh posted:I actually don't think Hasbro is that involved in directly managing the D&D brand. I mean, I'm sure Wizards breaks down their revenues and expenditures by brand, but I've never heard anything along the lines of Hasbro taking an active hand in directing Wizards to do x or y or z with Magic, or D&D, or any of Wizards' other properties. From what I understand that is absolutely true, they're on opposite sides of the country and WotC makes so much money from Magic that Hasbro doesn't want to gently caress with it any more than they have to. I think WotC (or at least D&D) would be better off with more input from Hasbro though. One of the problems WotC has is that they're in the rear end end of Seattle, there is no prestige associated with working there and they pay for poo poo, so it's hard for them to attract talented people to run the company. The really good people they find (like Lisa Stevens) tend to move up to bigger gigs or go off and do their own thing leaving the people behind to rise to mediocrity. If their association with Hasbro was closer they could probably attract more high quality management personnel. WotC has employed a lot of very forward thinking people over the years, but they have all inevitably left and been replaced with people who think they can continue to do business like it's 1990.
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May 7, 2015 23:50
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Halloween Jack posted:D&D design must be a weird, insular little world. I have no idea how it operates or how it can possibly operate. WotC and Paizo must be some of the only companies who can provide what I assume is a living wage. But the result appears to be a situation wherein developing D&D is a job that a few fanboys somehow luck or wheedle their way into, then hope nobody figures out that they're just another loving fanboy. The lunatics are running the asylum. If somebody has the inside track, please explain to me how the gently caress this happened. I personally know a lot of former WotC designers, only few from D&D and none of those very well, but the impression I've gotten is, if you're a good designer at WotC, you get recruited by a video game company who pays a whole lot better and you move on. This leaves behind the zealots, the inexperienced and the consistently mediocre. The thing is to me, I don't even care if the design of D&D is very good or not, as long as it's not regressive. What I consider WotC's unforgivable sin is squandering of the brand. To the majority of the world D&D=Roleplaying, as hard as companies like Piazo might try to change it, the hobby and D&D are intertwined and probably always will be. Instead of using this position to lead the hobby forward and build it up by appealing to younger newer players they continue to go after an aging and shrinking demographic of people who already have a game they are happy with. I wouldn't' even be that upset about it if I thought it was just ignorance on their part, but WotC has demonstrated that they can do it with Magic, where they bring in new waves of players all the time. They keep doing things to keep Magic fresh and relevant without regards to maintaining tradition or placating their older players, but D&D they seem to think needs to stay true to tradition or some bullshit. 4E was far from perfect but it at least was a movement in the right direction and with some iteration it could have been the game they needed, something fast paced, easy to pick up and emulated the types of fantasy fiction people are exposed to today instead of pulp novels written 65 years ago. I have the same complaint about Games Workshop, they dominate a hobby, and instead of using that position to grow it, build a bigger player-base for everyone, they slowly slide backwards and the only people willing to follow them are the shitlords. At least in the case of GW I can blame it on the company being run by legitimate lunatics, WotC doesn't have this excuse.
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May 8, 2015 08:06
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MalcolmSheppard posted: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. 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.
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Jun 4, 2015 09:47
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As I recall Siembieda basically pioneered licensed RPGs with TMNT and Robotech. Whatever his more recent crimes he played a formative role in the industry.
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Jun 8, 2015 01:10
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