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Mors Rattus posted:You do know they've been releasing stuff regularly, significantly more so than, say, Shadowrun, right? Yeah, but it's mostly retroclones of their own products at this point. Shadowrun is its own can of worms, though. Catalyst Game Labs are loving horrible. Most recently they did a reprint of Street Grimoire, one of the primary magic books for SR5, that was supposed to have new cover art and be updated with the errata to date (which is current as of 2014). As usual for Catalyst, they somehow managed to gently caress up at such a fundamental level that none of the errata made it into the reprint. Cover change did, though! I honestly cannot wait for Topps, the holders of the actual SR license, to get it back and go looking for another publisher, because Catalyst's handling of the brand has been flatly incompetent for years now.
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Aug 28, 2016 06:38
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:As a kid, I LOVED the Cyberpunk Chromebooks. Never mind that they were just big lists of gear and mods and items, there was something really cool about them, or at least there was in the far past of the 90s. I feel like cyberpunk, as a genre, lends itself to that kind of equipment fetishisation (sometimes literally) in a way that pulp adventure like Star Wars doesn't. The ones that are written in-universe are awesome like that. Shadowrun is the groggiest of grog when it comes to pointlessly over-detailed gear lists (especially in the more modern editions where there is a clear Best Option in most things), but I dearly loved the early edition Street Samurai Catalog. The whole thing is written in-universe as a stolen corporate arms dealer's catalog posted to a neo-anarchist computer forum, with page-sized illustrations of gear and and ad copy, followed by a bunch of hacked-in comments where the posters comment on the gear's place in the world or drop plot hooks. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Sep 8, 2016 |
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Sep 8, 2016 12:42
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Haystack posted:Serious question: What are some crunchy games/systems that you all think of when you think "good crunchy game," and why? Shadowrun 2nd Edition, before the magic creep got too bad, is both crunchy and a legitimately pretty good game. I've enjoyed games of GURPS, BESM, and even the old Iron Crown Middle-Earth Roleplaying Game (which is thankfully more streamlined than Rolemaster, the Game of Charts).
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Sep 9, 2016 09:05
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frankenfreak posted:I think that's the one I had that and if I remember correctly, it really tried to sell you Rolemaster, though. A lot of "this is what you can do with this game, but in Rolemaster you could do so much more...". Also "more streamlined than the Game of Charts" is deceptive since that book still had more than enough charts. Oh, yes. But it caught me at an impressionable time with a really good GM, so I had a lot of fun.
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Sep 9, 2016 11:17
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Zurui posted:I know y'all are joking but this sounds like a legitimately good idea under the right leadership. The Games Workshop Memorial Award For True Awfulness
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Sep 24, 2016 01:30
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JackMann posted:Basically, there are a lot of publishers who drastically underpay their artists and writers. Sometimes, they'll delay or even forego payment entirely because there are writers and artists who will want to contribute just to feel like they're a part of the industry, and to see their name in the book. For example, see Catalyst Game Labs, who decided letting one of their execs get away with massive embezzlement for home improvement was better than paying freelancers, some of whom had been writing Shadowrun for 20+ years by that point, for work that was already in and ready to go to the printers.
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Oct 25, 2016 02:37
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Arivia posted:Considering that Hasbro largely deals with pop culture stuff at their licensing level, if they were involved in any way it wouldn't be a surprise for them to just treat D&D as equivalent to Sorry or Trouble or whatever. Just another easy conversion for the licensee and we collect the money, right? Honestly, I could write this off to Hasbro being Hasbro. They are a pop culture toy company... that is reliably a couple years behind their own trends when it comes to merchandising for anything but movies. Let's be honest, they probably only even bother to keep WotC around because Magic is a surefire recipe to turn cardboard into gold.
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Mar 26, 2017 15:20
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It makes sense, but I wouldn't make any large bets on it happening. Irrationality in this market is a norm, see also how FF lost the 40k license.
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Mar 29, 2017 07:52
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I thought there were writers who confirmed they were in the middle of the next 40k RPG books when the rights were dropped.
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Mar 29, 2017 11:49
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gradenko_2000 posted:I daresay PF is still a better product than 5e. PF has such a terrible state of splatbook sprawl and power creep that it's essentially unplayable without the GM setting specific limits as to what content can be used. It's approaching Rifts, as each new sourcebook tends to have feats that are straight upgrades from previously published work. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Mar 31, 2017 14:21
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Piell posted:A thing said by someone who doesn't understand D&D 3.5 or pathfinder. A lot of the most powerful stuff is core. Pfft. I take it you never did the math on 3.5 Warlocks or PF's Witches, then.
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Mar 31, 2017 14:25
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dwarf74 posted:"Pathfinder is actually good" I can only assume they have never, ever tried to play it with anyone outside of a carefully curated gaming group that would be fine in pretty much any system.
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Mar 31, 2017 14:27
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Piell posted:Holy loving poo poo you think 3.5 Warlocks are good No, I think they're terrible, but they have an edge case (low level 24hr duration flight plus infinite ray attacks) that can really let a player who wants to be a dick obsolete the party for a while.
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Mar 31, 2017 15:01
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Kwyndig posted:You can buy Magic cards in nearly any store that caters to children. Magic has organized tournament play with professional standards. Magic advertises in comic books and on websites popular with their target demographic. Magic has a sustainable business model based on selling ever more cards. Magic is in Walmarts and Targets, they know exactly who they're selling to, and they've basically slotted right into the niche that used to be baseball cards.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:"Magic is made by people who can actually design worth a drat" is the salient point. I honestly think 4e would have done better without the D&D name on it. I didn't really enjoy playing it, but I could see it being a much more accepted game if it wasn't trying to deal with a rules-as-worldbuilding universe like the D&D world.
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Apr 1, 2017 02:20
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slap me and kiss me posted:Is there actually a difference in the minis between editions/versions of 40k (like obviously yes between the first iteration and now, but what about between two subsequent editions)? gently caress no. There's still sculpts from the 1990's that are the latest most up to date sculpt for some units, and even the 'recent' refresh on the Orks I just put together is dated 2005.
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Apr 1, 2017 05:03
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slap me and kiss me posted:I'm confused. How do your models age out then? Or am I just not understanding the crazy that is mini games? They don't. If I could find the orks I painted up back in 1998, they'd probably still be a field-legal army (that looks like poo poo, because the old sculpts weren't great and teenage me was even worse as a painter than I am now). The rotation for minis games isn't really the minis, it's the players. People get tired of one army and buy into a different one, or apathetically wander out of the hobby and just have a couple grand in minis in boxes in a closet somewhere. Maybe if they're quitting on purpose they put it up on ebay at a huge loss. For GW specifically, every few years a new edition of rules will come out, at $140 or so for the books you need to run a single army and generally changes the balance around to further nerf Tyranids and so you have to go buy new models to be competitive in tourneys unless you're playing space marines. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Apr 1, 2017 |
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Apr 1, 2017 05:20
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Kai Tave posted:He is a salty Sci-Fi dude. The movement to stuff the ballot box for the Hugos because something something not enough manly rayguns and rocketships and too many minorities wasn't spearheaded by Day but he was quick to jump onto it and much like how several other thoroughly lovely activist movements in recent memory started out as something (somewhat, maybe, vaguely) less repugnant before being hollowed out and worn like a skin-suit by the hardcore assholes, the originators of the movement made the most insignificant, low-effort attempt to distance themselves from him as they could because they cared more about getting what they wanted out of the Hugos than undermining their efforts by taking an actually principled stand. He is the salty Sci-Fi dude. The only author ever to be expelled from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (their professional organization) for posting the following of fellow SFWA author N. K. Jemisin from the shared SFWA authorial twitter : "…it is not that I, and others, do not view [Jemisin] as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens), it is that we simply do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious historical reason that she is not." Jemsin is, as you probably assumed, a black woman. Vox also has a charming habit of calling John Scalzi a rapist at every opportunity. His whole screed is here, if for some reason you really feel the need to read a couple thousand words of an openly racist, misogynist, libertarian rambling about bullshit. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Apr 1, 2017 |
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Apr 1, 2017 06:38
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Zurui posted:
The even more hilarious part is that rape accusation is purestrain autistic gold. It's all based on this satirical blogpost written to criticize archconservative social positions. Vox justifies this in his inimitable style: quote:Wait, he claims his confession is satire? Well, that might fool anyone unfamiliar with the concept of blown cover as cover. But even if we were to take him at his word to not take him at his word, where is the satire? Satire is supposed to be ironic, but where is the irony? What is being exaggerated? Given that a) one-third of all forcible rapists are black, and, b) blacks heavily support the Democratic party while whites are fairly evenly split, the statistics indicate that it is very nearly twice as likely a rapist would be inclined to write a fan letter to a Democratic politician rather than to a conservative Republican politician. Associated idiots have even gone so far as to self-publish a since-removed book on Amazon entitled "John Scalzi Is A Rapist : Why SJWs Always Lie In Bed Waiting For His Gentle Touch" under the guise of 'just asking questions' and 'I can't prove he's not a rapist...'
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Apr 1, 2017 06:59
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LatwPIAT posted:I have an actual diagnose for an autism spectrum disorder and could you please not. Sorry, don't mean to be offensive, but it was the best term that fit for aggressively taking something completely literally and out of context. I'll watch my language better in the future.
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Apr 1, 2017 18:06
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Kwyndig posted:Some naval warships, if they fire enough cannon at once, can be moved by the recoil. I have no idea if the Missouri was actually one of them, but yeah, that's how you drift a battleship. That movie was loving nuts and to this day I'm still not sure how it got made. Given that the Mighty Mo is one of the Iowa class BBs, it's a 57,000 ton ship. The guns don't recoil -that- hard. Barudak posted:A Rust Monster makes perfect sense in a game where every room has piles of random weapons and chances for good stuff and swapping between weapons is negligible penalties or loss of a small neat benefit. In a game where your character must be built around specific gear and getting new gear is intended to be difficult, its extremely rude. IIRC that used to be a thing Mind Flayers did, back in the day. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Apr 12, 2017 |
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Apr 12, 2017 07:11
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Rand Brittain posted:Incidentally, there's a connection here. There are a lot fewer people crying out for the chance to be published technical writing editors just to see their name in print, and for-serious editors are going to cost you multiple thousands of dollars, which in a lot of cases means an editor would stand to make more money off the book than the person who wrote it. Because technical writers know something game designers and writers don't: They can get paid to use those skills elsewhere, and "gently caress YOU PAY ME" is not unreasonable.
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Apr 17, 2017 00:32
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Rand Brittain posted:Mongrelmen should combine the best traits of humans, elves, and dwarves, with short, muscular builds, beautiful features and a connection to nature, and really good distance running skills, and also be despised by all the major cultural powers for being half-breeds. Hobbits, then?
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May 23, 2017 04:07
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blastron posted:The Dresden Files are really fun and I love them but drat are they nowhere close to "good". The RPG, though, was my first introduction to FATE and it absolutely sold me on the system. I find the books are a lot more amusing when you realize they're a rough novelization of his late 1990's World of Darkness LARP game. Same as Codex Alera was his Exalted campaign.
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May 26, 2017 18:06
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PJOmega posted:Didn't the first Codex Alara predate Exalted? I'm guessing the series was written around the time StarCraft: Brood War came around because it becomes straight up Zerg down the line. Nah, Exalted 1e was 2001, Alera didn't start until 2004.
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Jun 4, 2017 07:39
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Nuns with Guns posted:Post-apocalyptic DC was always strange to me. Like the brown wasteland made sense for other post-apoc games like Wasteland and the older Fallouts because they were set in the southwest that would naturally be brown desert, but surely DC would revert to an overgrown swampy wilderness instead? Also they should do a Fallout in the pacific northwest or along the rockies or something. It'd pretty much be Skyrim and Bethesda loves Skyrim. Yeah, then look at Boston. North Atlantic coast, ocean's still right there no matter how much you nuke it, but here we are with 200+ year old dessicated skeletons posed everywhere and half-naked settlers in rags because Bethesda can't give up the 'everything is the mojave' desert aesthetic.
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Jul 4, 2017 12:18
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I like to note that FO4 somehow included iradiated desert themed cranberry bogs in an open world where it rains. Often.
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Jul 4, 2017 23:26
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Bongo Bill posted:Everybody knows the post-apocalypse looks like Mad Max. Did you play the recent Mad Max game? It looks like that, but actually justifies why it does so much better than Fallout's east coast forays that it's ridiculous. Running 90 miles an hour in a beat to poo poo hot rod down a sandy plain that used to be the shallows off Australia is amazing.
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Jul 5, 2017 03:41
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Hey, beats 4 where the only good choice is the one you're prevented from taking : Ruling the ruins of Boston from your skull throne as the Only Competent Person In The Wastes.
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Jul 5, 2017 04:20
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Anne Rice kind of varies. Like her mummy book is absolutely, straight-up, a romance that also has a subplot about someone's re-animated disembodied hand swimming around the Nile. Most of her actual Vampire books on the other hand are basically the World of Darkness. Ancient evil re-awakening, curses imposed by God or something like it, archaic hierarchies who murder anyone who breaks their rules, self-loathing parasitism, the works. I think that's the other way around. WoD based some of the Cam vampires off of Anne Rice's characters. Interview With The Vampire was published in the 70's, after all.
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Jul 7, 2017 07:14
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Yrah, WoTC isn't publishing much, and Pathfinder is finally running out of things to sloppily convert from 3.5.
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Jul 9, 2017 18:27
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Sage Genesis posted:Good question. Those Atomic Bees sound lame. It's basically just The Jetsons Effect - you take a normal thing and slap prefixes on it ("space" in the case of The Jetsons). Shadowrun had lightning bees years ago. Siberian Bees. They'd developed a skill to get rid of large predators, like say bears, in that each one could deliver a little shock... or a whole swarm could magic up a full on lightning bolt. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Jul 11, 2017 |
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Jul 11, 2017 14:46
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Halloween Jack posted:Well yes, it should go without saying that "It's not for the PCs to use!" is not an excuse to write dozens of rape/murder fantasies into an RPG. A lesson the Exalted team never learned.
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Jul 12, 2017 02:19
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blackmongoose posted:Anyone who can give you a detailed and accurate answer to this question probably won't do so without being paid. In terms of general non-legal advice, you should probably err on the side of caution since regardless of the actual legality, if a company goes through the effort to send you nasty messages it's unlikely you'll have the money to do anything but shut down your project. As a general hint, I'd suggest looking at other products that use similar elements and see how genericized they went in order to be 'safe'. Covok, you mention anime, so BESM is probably worth a look.
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Jul 12, 2017 10:50
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Bieeardo posted:Bonus points if they're easily reverse-engineered, or actually good examples of playable characters. Zero if they've been tossed undocumented bennies. I've seen that stunt a few times, including what I dimly recall being an early edition of Shadowrun. Every edition of Shadowrun. Every one. Even the current, 5th Edition, has the sample characters impossible to create by rules as written, and overstatted heavily, and Anarchy's pregens might as well be for another game entirely.
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Aug 24, 2017 06:15
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8 hours isn't a big deal so long as things are moving along, but I'm a warhams player so I have a pretty strong tolerance for tactical miniatures combat in my RPGs and that can drag a little.
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Aug 24, 2017 06:44
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MadScientistWorking posted:The last time I looked this up it is kind of depressing and sad but its partially Gary Gygax's fault. He hosed up the D&D licencing so badly that only recently did Hasbro get it fixed. Its why at one point there was made for tv D&D movies. IIRC Hasbro's never really bothered to unfuck the D&D video game licensing since they sold Hasbro Interactive, and that's why the last serious D&D video game was NWN2 back in 2006. Everything since has been wanna-be Gauntlet clones, and the most recent one was Sword Coast Legends which flopped hard.
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Aug 24, 2017 12:15
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gourdcaptain posted:Aren't there rumors that there were various factions of freelancers with different visions for the game passive-aggressively sniping at each other through their writing resulting in stuff like the crazy cyberware price increase between editions? Less that, from what the freelancers have said, and more that they flatly had no idea what each other were working on. The wireless bonuses for gear, for example, were written by a different person than the rest of the wireless system, under the impression that it was supposed to be synergies for having stuff on a Personal Area Network (ie linked locally). The rest of the wireless system turned that into having to be linked to the greater Matrix because some idiot in the design shop decided that giving the hacker something to do in combat must at no point involve getting a weapon and being involved in combat so all cyberware needs to be online at all times, with basic functionality gated behind online bonuses.
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Aug 25, 2017 00:40
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frankenfreak posted:To be fair, the decker trying to prevent his buddies' cyberware from being hacked from the outside sounds like a solid idea. I mean in the age of Internet of Things that stuff is in there and it's vulnerable. And the last thing you want is the street samurai's gun cyberarm suddenly yanking back and firing at you. It's poo poo in a retro-futuristic cyberpunk game that has no reason for an Internet of Things to exist, much less for deliberately anonymous career criminals to wear anything broadcasting an identity. The Matrix is quite literally balkanized thanks to being run by mutually hostile megacorps. That said, they didn't even implement it in an interesting way. All you can do is make gear stop working, not make it go off when it shouldn't or control it in any way. It's lovely.
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Aug 25, 2017 05:11
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Jimbozig posted:If you have wifi-enabled nanobots suffusing the air in your facility, you can wirelessly interface with even offline devices through those nanobots. Yeah, but then you run into the same problem the writers realized they caused in 4e Shadowrun. Once there's a sufficiently advanced security panopitcon, career street criminals are a thing of the past. They're too easy to identify, so at best they are good for one or two jobs before they're useless. That doesn't make for fun gameplay.
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Aug 25, 2017 05:50
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