TG As An Industry - Past, Present, Future - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG As An Industry - Past, Present, Future

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Evil Mastermind posted:

I guess technically this should go in the KS thread, but I think this is an interesting example of how Evil Hat handles being customer- and fanbase-focused.

The Fate More KS has hit the usual "stagnation" phase projects tend to get around the middle of the backing period. So in order to help keep things moving, Fred just released a bunch of mini-stretch goals that will focus on a) making a lot of their PDF content available in epub/mobi format, and probably more importantly b) making a lot of the mechanics from Atomic Robo, the various Patreon-funded books, and other assorted Fate products open content. I'm interested to see if this ends up kicking off another "boom" in third-party Fate content.

I would love to back this, but the grim reality is that I have played Fate Core and powered-by-Fate games exactly zero times since the first kickstarter ended.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 19:37

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 07:12

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

This, I learned, was why the fantastic Young Justice got cancelled despite being really great and proving once and for all that Robin is better than batman.

Girls liked it. Girls don't buy action figures. Sorry, everyone, gotta shut it down.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 20:02

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Kai Tave posted:

To put things in another perspective, how many Black Widow toys are out there despite that character being a fairly major figure in at least three major blockbuster Marvel movies to date?

My boys are way into Superheroes and she appears on zero of their many Avengers-themed items. They have actually asked me about this.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 21:29

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

From all accounts, comics just had a fantastic year. So I think the doom & gloom is a bit unwarranted.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2016 04:56

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

I think it's kinda funny that all of those are already downloadable as :filez:

but they are requesting re-scans.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2016 00:27

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Serf posted:

Didn't Expedition to the Barrier Peaks have ray-guns, aliens and robots? Seems to me that "silly" things have been around in D&D since before I was even born.

Oh definitely.

Remember that in the wild, wooly days of the 70's, the lines between fantasy and sci-fi weren't as firmly drawn. They weren't even separate sections of the bookstore; fantasy was just a sub-genre of the larger sci-fi category.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2016 22:05

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

bongwizzard posted:

I hope the future of ttrpgs isn't all pdfs. I really hate reading them and digitally flipping back and forth is super annoying to me. I backed the DCC kickstarter and have really like the little bits of it I have read, but I am not going to even try to drum up interest without a book to hand my friends.

I kinda want it all, myself.

I've been playing for 35ish years, myself, and I still want a real, paper book I can hold and flip through and mark pages on while learning a game. I learn RPGs by flipping around, and doing that on my tablet is rough. But at the same time, I also want electronic tools for actual use of that material for reference during game-time. (If such a thing is even necessary) And for complex games, I want a good character builder.

Note that this "physical book" thing is only RPGs, though - I have no more use for physical novels, since I find my Kindle to be completely superior to paper books.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2016 16:36

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Ignite Memories posted:

I wish there were a simpler answer than this.

So monster manual 3 is the only one with 'good math', but the only reason I would want a monster manual is to have stats for the "basic" monsters (goblins and skeletons and poo poo) that I can then extrapolate from. By the time they get to MM3 wouldn't we be looking at the really obscure monsters that they didn't have room for in the first two? I want normal monsters. Is it a better idea to just buy MM1 and keep the postcard on hand? I already kludge monster stats around whenever things feel too difficult/easy.

Get Monster Vault and stop worrying. It's even better, mathematically and thematically, than MM3. It also has the iconic monsters everyone expects.

quote:

So does the PHB3 have rules for the classes from PHB 1 and 2? When I looked at them in a bookstore, it seemed like all the classes were split between the 3 books. Are some classes more out-of-date and broken than the others, even between the same edition of players' handbooks?

No, there's no overlap. I'd go with PHB 1 and 2, and skip 3 entirely. 3 has the Monk, which is rad, but everything else is either marginal (Runepriest, Seeker), or dysfunctional (all the power point Psionic classes).

The most powerful classes are all in PHB1, and they are pretty much Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard, Warlord. That's largely a function of the volume of post-publishing support.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2016 19:02

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Asimo posted:

Does anyone even actually give a poo poo about Greyhawk anymore besides 45+ year old super-grognards?

I like it. It's a perfectly good s&s world, with a gorgeous map and light detail.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 00:25

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Comrade Koba posted:

"Light detail" is a massive overstatement.

Yes, and unironically, that sort of pencil-sketch setting is exactly what I look for when I'm running a game. :shrug:

Give me a pretty map, a few names, a paragraph here and there, an aura of mystery, and 'here there be dragons' and I'm set.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 15:33

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

I remember thinking (back in 2000) that 3e had also cribbed a lot from Earthdawn, but I can't for the life of me remember my reasoning behind this claim.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 17:15

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

So um...

http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?3300-D-D-comes-to-Middle-Earth-%28from-Cubicle-7%29

5e Middle Earth...

# ¿ Mar 14, 2016 22:00

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

FMguru posted:

Weren't the ENnies once a juried award, and the awards tended to go to the companies that sent the jurors the biggest bundles of comp copies (suitable for flipping on the used market)?

It's a two step process. The judges pick a selection of candidates, and the public votes for the winners from those lists.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2016 20:26

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

This poo poo's hard, man.

I'm trying to think of how I'd feel if something like this was directed at me, and I was innocent.

Covok posted:

Frankly, he came off as a dick due to how he choose to word everything and the general vibe of "oh, this poo poo" throughout the whole thing.

Dude, that's the same loving tone policing that turd bongwizard was doing before.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2016 05:00

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

RiotGearEpsilon posted:

When someone is a registered sex offender, do you get to know how they got on the list? My understanding is that there's a lot of surprisingly easy, non-horrible ways to get on it.

The one I've heard about is public urination. I dunno if that's actual fact or just a rumor, though.

I checked the registry when we moved to our current home, a few years back. I don't know if it's run by states or counties, but in central Illinois, I only found whether it was an adult or juvenile victim. Which is really the key information, mind you. No further details, though if there's public court records, that's easily solved.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2016 16:58

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Evil Mastermind posted:

The second-best part of it was when the store owner got mad that I "went behind his back" telling the guy he was banned from the store (I didn't, I was only going to kick him from our table), like somehow I shouldn't have told the guy he wasn't welcome. Bear in mind this was also YuGiOh night and the store was close to a school.

The best part was when the guy I kicked out messaged me through the meetup and tried to guilt me about kicking him out.

So I think we talked about this before. On the one hand, I try to be an optimist, and if the guy has served his time and is going through therapy and whatever other sorts of things he has to, well, isn't that what society expects? If he hasn't been ordered by the court to stay away from schools or public places with kids, is he an actual danger to others?

On the other hand, I wouldn't want my kids playing at that table and I wouldn't want him in my house at my own game, so it's not like I can say I disagree, either.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2016 17:43

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Evil Mastermind posted:

See, then this turns into a "yeah, he's making literally everyone else at the table uncomfortable, but..." situation. Has he done his "time"? Presumably. Is he seeking help? No idea, but I hope he is.

But at the end of the day, it's my table. I'm the GM, I'm the guy driving the metaphorical bus. I feel responsible for their fun, their enjoyment, and their sense of safety. If people at my table don't feel safe around one of the players, then I need to deal with that poo poo. And if it's person A making persons B though G feel unsafe, then I'm sorry (not sorry) but person A is the problem and needs to be dealt with. And despite his attempt to try to make me feel guilty, I did not lose a wink of sleep over it. I've never once felt that I might have made the wrong decision.

Absolutely. There is no duty on you to run a game for anyone you're not comfortable having at your table.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2016 19:03

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

So here's a weird thing. Guess how ENWorld is responding to this post?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?482661-Harassment-in-gaming

a whole lot more sensibly than whatever has been going on here! At least until the top of page 3; don't shoot me if it gets lovely after this.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 05:21

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Ningyou posted:

i'd say something but my eyes rolled so far up into my head from the PERHAPS SHE HAS A POINT BUT THIS TITLE IS RACIST AND SEXIST A-AND INFLAMMATORY AGAINST WHITE MEN!!! thing and the poo poo about how welllllllllll curbing harassment is important but the only sexism i've seen in elfgames is misandry and women harassing men!!! stuff that i literally cannot see or parse anything any more and can only even type this post bc muscle memory

how will i contribute to this conversation?

how will i do anything anymore?

please send hel

Yeah and it got stomped on pretty well, unless there's more posts now? I have no doubt that it will soon turn lovely because enworld, but it was mostly sensible so far?

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 05:39

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

unseenlibrarian posted:

For the record, this is what the character actually says. It's behind at least two other conversation prompts where you ask her about the origin of her name.

That's all. For this there are multiple videos of dudes killing the character and people cheering them on for sticking it to the SJWs and bad review spamming.

Holy poo poo, that's it?

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 00:04

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Yeah, so forget the nice things I said about ENWorld's thread on harassment.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 17:52

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

demota posted:

Aren't those the people that applauded the Order of the Scarlet Lady or whatever it was called?

It's a good bit more complicated than that. Lots of posters there said, "yo this is messed up." The ones who insulted the poster of that trainwreck got bans, while the guy who posted it did not.

ENWorld is basically run on tone policing. You can say whatever you want so long as you're not mean about it, no matter how mean/gross your actual content is.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 21:03

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Only took 19 posts...

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?483106-We-re-All-Gamers-Together-Why-Harassment-Has-To-Stop

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 02:51

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

gtrmp posted:

At least everyone else in the thread is telling that one guy off (well, so far anyways).

I'm waiting for someone to take a bold, pro-harassment stance.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 03:48

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

I dunno, the whole bit about chalk writings was really pretty bad. I thought while reading the news reports, "Great, now regressive idiots have a new dumb example to make legitimate concerns look dumb by placing them side by side."

Which, yes, just happened.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 05:15

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

gnome7 posted:

The chalk writings thing didn't trigger anyone or lead to counseling of any kind. No one involved went to counseling, nobody involved used the phrases "safe space," "triggered," or "traumatized." All that happened was some students protested pro-Trump vandalism at their school. Everything else was added in later by the reporters, and the exaggerated reports blew up on social media.

So no, it really wasn't 'pretty bad.' It was blown out of proportion by sensationalist journalists wanting to make crybabies out of reasonable adults just because they're young millennials.

Well, there you have it. So it's like the McDonald's Hot Coffee case; something totally reasonable that got blown out of proportion for a rhetorical point.

Also, I can't believe I just read these words. This is not grogstxt, but for real.

quote:

If there are no objective societal ills coming from sexism in games (even if we assume that all claims of sexism are actually instances of sexism), what makes this different from me not liking green beans? Without objective harm this seems to come down to just a difference in tastes. If this is just a difference in tastes get in line because I'm a mustang fan and I think camaros are ugly and that's a really big issue that's facing our society that we need to be made aware of!

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 06:02

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Libertad! posted:

I find that it's really easy to tell whether you're speaking with a lawyer or one who works in the legal field by asking about the McDonald's case. What actually happened (180 degree Fareneit coffee melted through bottom of cup in a stationary car onto lap, leaving 3rd degree burns) is totally different than what McDonald's and the general public believed happened (woman drank lukewarm coffee while driving fast and spilled it on her lap).

I caught Ralph Nader on a talk show many years ago discussing it, which was a good start. And then the Hot Coffee documentary, more recently.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 06:31

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

gtrmp posted:

At least everyone else in the thread is telling that one guy off (well, so far anyways).

Don't look now. Keep that sunny outlook.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 13:12

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

A local urologist is named Dr. Leak.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2016 05:25

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Falstaff posted:

A lawyer weighs in on the class action suit against Wizards.

tl;dr doesn't look too good for WotC.

Good to know. And yeah, they're going to settle, I'm sure.

Mors Rattus posted:

Most con volunteers are 'paid' in the form of comped tickets to the con, IIRC. Certainly Origins gives 'em out if you GM at least, like, six hours.

Isn't Gen Con a nonprofit entity? Or am I way off base?

# ¿ Apr 23, 2016 17:03

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Chill la Chill posted:

WTF is this poo poo? Seriously. Who ever used this? Who's gonna get mad about this going away? I started with 3e and never has this poo poo come up. I remember seeing this in the rulebook and it was just a neat observation. "Oh, this must be how the wizards do astronomy." That's it.

You have to admire the useless/confusing lenses though.

I admit it, I'm a sucker for the barely-usable collection of death traps in the 1e Manual of the Planes.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2016 04:39

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

ProfessorCirno posted:

At a certain point those planes weren't invented for D&D the game, they were invented for D&D the shitter thought exercise, and then eventually crept up and actually interfered with D&D the game. You can guess which most 3e fans thought was more important.

The only reason there are that many planes to begin with was a grid-filling exercise while loving around with alignments. Nobody really needs a Neutral Evil plane that's somewhat more Neutral, or a Chaotic Evil plane that's kinda halfway Neutral Evil and so on.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2016 05:09

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

gradenko_2000 posted:

Why didn't we get edition wars with the number of revisions Call of Cthulhu has done to itself, though? You've got standard arrays and Advantage/Disadvantage with 7th Edition and it didn't seem to light fires under anyone's rear end.

7th chapped a lot of asses.

Before that, changes were incredibly gradual.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2016 04:30

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Covok posted:

Does the SGL still exist? Can you legally make 4e content?

The GSL? Stuff is still being produced - like the Zeitgeist adventure path - but there might be hurdles regarding getting a new license as opposed to just using your existing one.

# ¿ May 1, 2016 21:38

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Nuns with Guns posted:

bonus fun-

He kept the goons out by making sure it was unplayable. That's a promise kept, my friends.

# ¿ May 2, 2016 02:41

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Piell posted:

Call of Cthulhu d20 was surprisingly good.

As I've said before, what's arguably my most successful campaign of all time used my hack of the Call of Cthulhu d20 rules. (I even made a character sheet specially for it.)

The rulebook itself has excellent advice on how to run a horror campaign. And a lot more than you probably ever wanted to know about 20th Century guns and gun laws.

# ¿ May 2, 2016 19:11

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

ImpactVector posted:

Right, and Monte Cook.

Cook is at least really good on settings.

# ¿ May 16, 2016 20:49

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Kai Tave posted:

I feel like Cook has a rep as a "setting guy" due to working on Planescape back in the day, a setting which is viewed with enough rosy-lensed nostalgia to power a small sun, but none of the Monte Cook Presents a World by Monte Cook settings that I've read (Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, Monte Cook's WoD, Numenera) have ever struck me with half the "man this is so rad I can't wait to play something in it" as, say, Keith Baker's Eberron or any random given game by Greg Stolze.

I'll go to bat for the Diamond Throne setting and for Ptolus. Numenara seems like a neat enough setting, despite garbage mechanics.

# ¿ May 17, 2016 02:19

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Serf posted:

Counterpoint: the Nibovian Wife.

I can like some of the stuff he's done without going all-in on everything he's made.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Numenera is barely a setting. It's the future, maybe post-apocalypse, and all the technologies from previous eras is bizarre magic super-science that nobody really understands. The idea is that you're a wandering hero/dungeon diver as per normal D&D spec, but nothing about the given setting really stands out.

The setting chapter is huge, but it spends more time describing villages than places you can go and actually find or do cool stuff. This is a setting where you have abandoned magitech factories and weird mutated beasts roaming forgotten undergroud bunkers, but let's spend four loving pages describing this generic village in detail.

That's not a joke, by the way. Pages 140 to 143 describe a village that the book even says is generic as hell. Meanwhile, the largest city in the same region gets a little over a page, and major landmark artifacts are lucky if they get half a page.

Good to know; as I said, it sounded neat, but it's not like I was going to shell out any cash for the system. I know it mostly from rad artwork, and if that's not reflected in the setting text, that's too bad.

# ¿ May 17, 2016 14:45

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 07:12

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

So WotC is no longer paying up-front for Adventurer's League adventures. Now, authors will instead get royalties by selling those adventures on DM's Guild.

Some facets to keep in mind apparently...

(1) WotC was previously paying $250-$500 per adventure, depending on length.
(2) Quite a few of the authors are piping in to say they are making more from royalties than they got paid by WotC. (Earlier adventures were actually purchased by WotC; WotC owns them and has already paid the authors, but they are letting those authors earn royalties from DM's Guild anyway as a show of goodwill.
(3) Adventurer's League adventures were previously available for free, but only to DMs who ran organized play.

I am no kind of professional writer, so I'm curious what the folks here think about this. Obviously, this is cheaper for WotC. It also migrates all the risk and cost onto authors and buyers, so it's right in line with their "we aren't really doing anything" management philosophy.

# ¿ May 17, 2016 15:03

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