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Yeah, gamers are ultra-bad at predictions for some reason, but mine is that one day there will be a gigantic Kickstarter that completely fails to deliver anything whatsoever ("sorry, we spent all your money giving it a try and failed"), there will be a lawsuit about it, and that lawsuit will also fail to deliver anything whatsoever.
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Apr 20, 2013 07:40
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You might check out etsy and see how other people who do handmade stuff handle limited online sales. I almost think etsy is a little better for craft-type gaming products like awesome miniatures or terrain.
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Apr 23, 2013 03:00
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Ettin posted:Come to think of it... Paranoia rushes to mind... Ghostbusters, the source material is satire, it's hard to remember that at this late date... There were satirical sourcebooks/adventures for Toon... GURPS Goblins... Really, Paranoia is the king here.
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Aug 15, 2013 18:04
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Kickstarter is kind of the only new thing in the abysmal slide that the RPG hobby's been in since the d20 boom ended. It's fine to grouse about it, I have my own problems with it, but honestly there is no reason for anyone to put their artistic and game-design attention to RPGs without knowing they're going to be getting paid what they want up front. For other things (card games, mini games) I'm not as knowledgeable so won't comment, but for RPGs Kickstarter has been an unalloyed good thing because it's the only growing thing about the hobby.
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Aug 15, 2013 22:28
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Mikan posted:My next kickstarter is going to be for art and layout budget only. No physical books, no shipping, no huge stretch goals, nothing fancy. Backers will get the pdf and whatever other digital things their backer tier receives, and all backers will have a code to order the physical book on DrivethruRPG/Amazon/wherever minus the cost of the pdf. The full rules of the game will be available once you back it, the only thing that won't already be finished is the art and layout and things I need money for. I won't need to bother with fulfillment, backers won't have to wait on me for their books. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with a "small" Kickstarter - I've backed a few that have been like "welp I need $300" and they made it with minutes to spare and all 13 of us who backed it were happy. If you accidentally make $50,000 with such a request, put all the money in your back pocket and walk away, don't feel like you need to do any stretch goals or other weird things. It's a free country.
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Aug 16, 2013 01:17
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I think it's relevant that Malhavoc made the first well-produced third party d20 supplements. There is a big advantage to being there early with something good. Around here d20 is not really treasured but it was insanely popular and Malhavoc was actually pretty aggressive and had some solid stuff. People are saying "oh it's just Malhavoc" but it was a good drat run.
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Oct 10, 2013 07:09
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I disagree that Adamant hasn't ever done anything notable or good. Most people around these parts don't value d20 that much but there are a lot of things Adamant did right: * Mars is real dang solid, to the point where I don't even like it that much because I don't like Edgar Rice Burroughs that much. * In the Thrilling Tales line Adamant actually put in period serial movies that were adapted. The number of pulp RPGs that don't seem to notice tons of solid source material was now in the public domain and could be freely distributed and adapted is amazing. Adamant also used advice from period pulp writers to structure their GM advice. This is much better/more interesting/unique than most games which primarily reference neo-pulp nostalgia (Indiana Jones, The Mummy.) * Imperial Age was pretty decent but had a cool True20 adaptation, which was one of the first/best historical fantasy things going on into True20. Also the India sourcebook was very interesting. * The magazine format for Amazing Triple Action was pretty cool, I don't think anybody wanted to buy superhero RPG supplements that were more like comic length than "complete guide to the X-Men" length though. * Adamant tried "app pricing" for its supplements for a while, trying to see if it was viable to just sell virtually all supplements for $2.99 or under, and shared the results with others. (It didn't work that well.) * Adamant and Skarka were very involved in the production of ICONS, a FATE-based superhero game that's had great success. (It's now back with Steve Kenson at Ad Infinitum.) Not going to get into the dude personally, I don't really care that much, but saying "he hasn't done anything worth remembering" is off base. I'd be up for a revised Underworld - it's a cool game but the circumstances of its creation/publication made it unpolished/unfinished. If you think things are bad now you shoulda seen Usenet. The 1990s was the first sustained interaction between RPG designers and the people playing their games and the result was hilarious hatred - there was a time when I was in the killfile (primitive ignore list) of each and every White Wolf writer and developer that ever posted on Usenet. I was a fan but not their kind of fan.
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Nov 21, 2013 21:17
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Sure, some things on that list were more notable and some were more good. And you have to believe that d20 games can be good before you can believe most of that stuff could be good, which is a burden lots can't carry.
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Nov 22, 2013 00:48
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I do think the "back catalog" of RPGs is underexamined in terms of the hobby's economics. Clearly some people really really care that their favored edition of their favorite game remains somehow available forever and will agitate and bring people to it and work on it feverishly until the last days of humanity. And plenty of people don't care at all about a game if it didn't come out after a particular date. (I had one fellow once tell me that before 2003 all RPGs were "identical non-games".) Me, I like a good game no matter when it came out, which makes it hard for me to browse online because browsing options are "what's new" or "what's everyone buying" and that's about it, there's few ways for me to apply my standards to a potential RPG purchase unless it's one of those two things. The Adamant app pricing theory was "hey, almost exactly nobody buys a supplement 2 years after it's out anyway, why not make it available cheap and see if people will pick up whole lines of less expensive stuff based on a big, normally-priced central book". Answer: Yes, there are such "line collectors" who spring up at a lower price point but they are pretty rare.
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Nov 22, 2013 02:07
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Yeah, ICONS Team-Up was incredibly delayed.
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Nov 22, 2013 02:54
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The TRPG customers don't seem to care about solid game design or good writing, so why try to sell it to them I guess? The whole thing is depressing to think about.
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Nov 30, 2013 18:41
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SCP is what happens when Project: Twilight tries to do Aegis Kai Doru's job. I'm definitely running a Hunter game that starts in the smouldering wreckage of a SCP site.
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Apr 29, 2014 01:02
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Just in case you were wondering what the gold standard in introductory text is for a RPG supplement in TYOOL 2011, here's something I spotted today. That's the entirety of the introduction. That's comic sans. "Wyrmthane" is how the author is listed in the credits.
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Mar 31, 2015 05:55
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All RPG awards are now and have always been trash, but you don't see anyone putting the time/effort/money in to make a good one.
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Jun 8, 2015 02:33
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TG As An Industry: It's fairly in keeping with the whole Robotech zeitgeist to not really understand what you're doing.
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Jun 8, 2015 19:50
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No need to grog-smiley it up, EM, that's a great post about comedy. There were good things both about the MIB and Ghostbusters RPG for comedy - both had good advice on how to create a scenario for them for example, but yeah. You play the threat to the Earth straight, and the hapless entrepreneurs (Ghostbusters) or officious authorities (Men in Black) bring the comedy by being who they are. Character based comedy is where it's at, but so few games really emphasize the role of setups, straight men, or other comedic elements to help the players be funny. A bunch of RPG people on my Google+ feed teased Guardians of the Galaxy as "this is a RPG group which is comedically tormenting its DM, who is trying to run a serious space adventure" and my mind just boggled. To run a funny game, the DM should almost always be serious, since the world should be grounded before the comedy starts to lift off.
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Jun 9, 2015 15:39
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That Sandy Petersen interview is a pro click. I also think the openness towards the interviewer shows how important yog-sothoth.com is to the fandom of Call of Cthulhu. It's a tremendous resource, one of the better fan sites out there. Very smart for Petersen to recognize that.
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Jun 10, 2015 17:36
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The toy store era was really just a tiny slice of the 1980s. Before that it was hobby stores only (heck, in my area you could buy D&D supplements in the same store as your baseball cards), after that it was hobby stores and bookstores. As the bookstore has disappeared, RPGs have clung to the hobby store.
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Jul 10, 2015 15:25
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I can certainly remember the Usenet rage of L5R RPG players being upset that their ~unmatchable independent vision~ for their home campaign would be sullied by what a bunch of trashy. johnny-come-lately card players were going to do with their boring who cares card games. Now let me tell you what I think this fictional mashup of fictional faux-Japachinokorean warriors would think honor is.
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Jul 13, 2015 01:34
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It's an interesting lawsuit from an industry perspective primarily because Magic's success (after its downturn) is almost 100% attributable (in my view) to improving the tournament experience. If WOTC is in the cardboard selling business that's one thing. But I suspect there's a good argument they're in the tournament-organizing business.
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Apr 23, 2016 08:58
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