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The only thing I didn't like there was the "when leadership gets back," which suggests this isn't the official GR posture.
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Nov 9, 2017 21:11
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ProfessorCirno posted:Mostly this is just a fun reminder that the tabletop industry continues not to understand what PR is and continues to generally eschew the idea, to absolutely easily foreseen consequences. It's alternatively a reminder that they understand exactly what PR is, and this is an example of catering to the extremely wrong crowd.
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Nov 9, 2017 23:07
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quote:But (whether we're dealing with kickstarter, harassment, or anything else) you can't take the leap from what Bob did to what kind of person Bob is or what Bob intends. Back a bit, but I this looks like the root of their rules problem. Rule 4 states that you can't interpret your observations. You watched me enjoy playing golf on several occasions, but eat a ban if you call me a golfer. (Excerpt harassment instead of golf.)
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Nov 11, 2017 13:57
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I don't think AD&D (and earlier) had the same brain-searing tribalism because there wasn't much competition in the early days of fantasy gaming. Which makes sense in the context of how the "nostalgia" crowd doubled down after the D20 glut. Plus nostalgia is more effective for things that never were, like rolling your attributes in order or the 1950s as presented on television.
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Nov 23, 2017 20:24
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The writing was on the wall for a few days that a ban was imminent, he had plenty of time to liquidate his cards. Also I kind of love that there were fiscal consequences to being a poo poo.
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Dec 9, 2017 13:57
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I kind of get what MRH is trying to say but ugh that's some ivory tower thinking. Maybe the optics of letting Nazis beat you up plays better for an audience, but maybe we're all better off in a society where if you heil poo poo you get hit.
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Jan 2, 2018 12:23
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I'm honestly relieved that he's just kind of a naive enabler instead of a nazi, given this industry. His heart's in the right place, even if his perspective isn't.
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Jan 2, 2018 13:02
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Wouldn't it be easier to transition since you basically assume your spirit's form? Guy turns into a wolf, wolf turns back into a sexy lady, job's done. I also distinctly remember an amputee werewolf.
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Jan 2, 2018 14:59
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It's ok for the fictional fascist space patriarchy to have regressive hiring practices. They aren't good people we should be emulating . It's also just as ok for the Daughters of Cacophony not to make boy vampires!
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Jan 2, 2018 16:30
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Agreed, it's a big universe.
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Jan 2, 2018 16:42
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I completely love the Bretonian thing where all knights are men, but if Sir Percivere gets caught being a woman she needs to go on a penitent quest that essentially amounts to the questing she'd do normally.
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Jan 2, 2018 16:48
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If vampires don't have souls, how would demons even notice the Baali? This is dumb. WW is dumb.
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Jan 3, 2018 19:26
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It's very likely just more holdover backlash against 4e. Theater of the Mind D&D wasn't a cornerstone thing in practice, I'd never even seen a table without a grid map, but as soon as 4e doubled down on it all the grogs came out to to praise how immersive and intuitive and verisimilitudeity TotM was compared to *scoff* a board game.
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Jan 5, 2018 15:02
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4e was a Benghazi or HER EMAILS for a lot of nerds. They didn't understand it, but they were told it was awful and it somehow proved some undefined tummyfeel was right all along.
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Jan 5, 2018 15:14
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He likely spared us from the most adorable cat mummy apocalypse.
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Jan 6, 2018 12:54
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gradenko_2000 posted:So what would you do? How would/should playtests be run? I'm envisioning something like a series of "arena battles" or context-less combats to look at how the class plays at various levels and against various types of enemies and with various other players. Would you get other people for this? My group did a lot of 13A playtesting, and most of our problems and concerns were addressed so I feel like we did a good job. Our most important contributions came from actual play using only the materials provided. A read through or series of calculator battles might catch math problems, but a surprising amount of problems only become evident in an actual session. Use an outside group and be as hands-off as possible, logging difficulties as they arise. "We couldn't understand why the <stinky> keyword was on both monsters and weapons and what it does exactly" or "[class] completely stops being fun when you run out of resource" is more valuable feedback than fine tuning any particular combat balance or mechanic. This looks like subjective opinions or operator error, but your players will absolutely encounter the same problem unless you address it. For a negative example, the 4e PHB playtesters obviously knew what [W] meant from an outside source, or WotC would have caught one problem everyone had at launch: A core mechanic is only explained once in an unlikely place, but referenced everywhere. This was definitely a situation where the players knew what it meant because they were in house, or they asked someone (who then didn't log that nobody could find the rule. ) The 4e math was beautiful, but their tests missed core problems like skill challenges' barely working rules. This is something you'd miss worth arena testing or just plowing through combats.
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Jan 9, 2018 13:42
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They've already done the core ones anyway. Just in time for me to stop buying from them!
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Jan 9, 2018 17:00
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Mister Olympus posted:13A is turning out to be my favorite d20 system by a wide margin so it worked, but I am curious: did you ever run into things like the hyper-lethality of certain monsters as a problem, or was it just inherent to the sort of game style you were running? I double checked my feedback emails, and it looks like we actually had an encounter with a minotaur who was did serious damage. I pointed it at the beefiest hero, he took a sizeable chunk out of him, and then the players immediately adapted their tactics. But they definitely needed to adapt, which seemed like the point of a thing like that. Sorry I can't be more specific, the NDA lifted but I forget exactly how they handled it. You could try asking in the 13A thread here though.
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Jan 9, 2018 18:37
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I wonder how much (if any) thought has been given to combating piracy by reeling-back MSRPs to what customers are willing to pay, along with incorporating PoD to keep more of your lines in print. You could still release high production premium editions, but die-hards aside most people consider $79.95 steep for a boardgame. If the same essential game was available scaled to sell legitimately at $20, I don't think there would be as much interest in counterfeiting. The knockoffs would have to cut too far to the bone to be worthwhile.
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Jan 9, 2018 21:58
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homullus posted:I think you may be unaware that games are not high-margin items: they are not sold for a lot more than they cost to make. No I'm completely aware of this. I might have been unclear in expressing what I meant earlier, though. Currently an $80 game is a premium product, priced at a premium. But no game NEEDS top shelf components. Those are for BGG people to spooge themselves over in unboxing videos. The current model forces everyone to buy the deluxe edition because that's all that exists. Standees work as well as miniatures, the cards version of wings of war plays as well as x-Wing. Someone like FFG or Asmodee releasing normal versions alongside the coffinbox ones would go a long way towards eliminating piracy. And even more so if they're able to keep the regular editions in print. We're actually starting to see this with games like Love Letter existing in both a $30 deluxe and $10 mass market format. Despite LL being a great game, I'd expect minimal piracy problems because of the legit $10 version.
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Jan 9, 2018 23:26
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Kai Tave posted:Publishers make board games with flossy components because that's what people want, it's not just weirdos on BGG jerking off to their collection. If this were 100% true, then nobody would be buying sub-par counterfeits. I think it's more that component inflation has gotten to a point where it's assumed that everyone wants wooden parts, double thick boards, miniatures, and other premium bits. Or maybe people genuinely want them, but it seems like it's just as likely a function of having no alternative. To compare it to the music industry, they quit crying about piracy after $20 CDs were replaced by $8 downloads. Legit purchases got a lot more appealing. The example in the article was that pirates learned a game would sell great at $20. So why didn't Asmodee learn that lesson and produce a version they can sell for $20 with the same (or bigger) margin? If the game is fun on it's own merits with cardboard pieces, they'll certainly have people double dip for the premium one with wooden ones.
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Jan 10, 2018 00:56
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The dumbest thing about werewolves being immune to birth control is that a silver alloy IUD would be drat near 100% effective in a werewolf.admanb posted:so calling out wooden parts and premium bits as the problem is Missing the Point. Well yeah, the problem is that it costs $60. The premium bits are arguably why it costs that much.
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Jan 10, 2018 04:16
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If a customer is buying a product for 80% off on AliExpress or from an eBay vendor in China, they're certainly aware of what they're getting. The BGG component complaints are just as likely from whichever friends unknowingly played the counterfeit game. Everyone is making the same problematic assumption the film industry does: that each pirated copy 1:1 represents a lost sale. It doesn't. Someone buying a $20 copy of Pandemic Legacy would likely never buy the $60 one. What I'm saying is that the industry should be reaching out to the $20-30 customers in addition to their $60-80 ones. Piracy is demonstrating that they exist, but are only being served by counterfeiters - there's no legitimate way to buy the big games at that price level. I realize more goes into developing a game than the cost of the components, just like I understand a music CD represents more than the dime's worth of plastic squished into a circle. Piracy fills a niche where consumers feel the price doesn't line up with the value, just like scalping exists when they feel it misaligns the opposite way. You'll never completely eliminate either, but you can minimize both by bringing the MSRP more in line with perceived value.
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Jan 10, 2018 13:16
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homullus posted:I strongly doubt you are correct, and people who use "certainly" and "surely" usually doubt the thing adjacent to those adverbs, so I think you doubt it too. This is a function of forums culture. I've noticed that posting an absolute, definite statement is essentially a challenge for someone to post a contrary anecdote. So now it's all "certainly" and "most likely." I can't say it's impossible to order an 80% discounted game from China expecting it to be legit without getting derailed by an anecdote about someone's confused grandma finding AliExpress. homullus posted:Again, I encourage you to try it: take an expensive game and try to make it for $20. This isn't what I'm saying at all. Don't try to cheapen an existing game, start by designing a minimalist $20 game and then produce a lavish $60 version.
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Jan 10, 2018 15:23
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Comrade Gorbash posted:That isn't what you've been saying at all. This entire time you've been talking about existing games using cheaper components, and you started by talking about games at $80. You've shifted the goal posts pretty far to make that claim. I'm talking about the industry going forward. As in, games that aren't yet produced or designed. The reason we have $80 games is that the industry has accepted as fact the idea that rulebooks need glossy pages with embedded art, premium components, miniatures, wooden parts, custom dice, etc. The ship's already sailed on games that are currently being pirated, but the problem won't go away until they rethink some very basic assumptions.
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Jan 10, 2018 16:52
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Kai Tave posted:I mean you're also looking at the situation and going "clearly this means there's a huge untapped market for cheap minimalist board games, and glossy components are only the norm because Big Board Game has brainwashed people into thinking so." No - Per the article, Pirates have looked at the situation and determined that there is a market for affordable board games with lesser quality components. Would they be bothering if it wasn't profitable? Then why not do exactly that in-house? Kai Tave posted:Even if companies started making two versions of the same game, a cheapy minimalist version and a glossy deluxe version, if counterfeiters are still going to continue making knockoff versions of the deluxe game for the same price as the minimalist game are you really solving the problem? Do board gamers specifically not care about components and construction quality to the point where they'd find an official el-cheapo version of a game an appealing buy out of some sort of convenience, or are they going to continue to want the glossy version but still as cheaply as they can possibly get it? We just don't know. Right now the only choice we have is between the glossy one and the knockoff one, and the fact that people are choosing the knockoff suggests that there absolutely is a market for a non-premium, "standard version." Kai Tave posted:Straightaway deciding to publish multiple versions of the same game from the outset without even knowing if one version is likely to be successful seems like something of a risky venture. It's near standard practice to release videogames in a "standard" and "collector's edition" format. I was using Love Letter as an example of that this works in practice for tabletop, I doubt the intent was to combat piracy by releasing a mass-market edition. Boardgaming is already beginning to dip into deluxe, collectors', and anniversary editions, but they're generally aimed at mass-market games which are already produced in affordable formats. I honestly don't know why this idea is generating so much push-back. From the perspective that $80-$100 high-end games are the leather-bound hardcover illustrated pop-up books of gaming, it's bizarre and confusing to be told "No, these stories simply cannot be told in paperback editions."
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Jan 10, 2018 22:21
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Comrade Gorbash posted:You're getting push back because you keep shifting your goal posts, and you refuse to actually consider the push back. First it was $80 games, then it was $60 games, then talk about a $10-15 game with a $30-40 premium edition, and now it's $80-100 games again. You brought in a minis game at some point for some reason, then dropped that. Wow that's some unexpected hostility. There are a lot of moving parts here, and it looks like you're getting hung up on semantics and tangents. First, I'm using theoretical prices interchangeable because they're all standing in for "high end." I'm probably using pirates and counterfeiters interchangeably because the original article did. The article got a little sloppy with the distinction, I don't see how practical getting pissy about the distinction is here. Pirates are counterfeiting games? Whatever, it's entirely tangential to the discussion. What I do see is that customers are pursuing alternative paths to acquire "rare and expensive items." So here's a crazy loving idea: Why not offer a legitimate alternative from the manufacturer? What is preventing FFG or Asmodee would produce "cheap knockoffs" of their own games under a budget imprint? The value in a game is the gameplay experience, not the tchotkies. The high end games on the market are essentially collector's editions with no standard option.
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Jan 11, 2018 01:58
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You can find old pricing info through Sears catalogues which are hosted online. In 1986, LIFE was a $12 game, which is roughly $26 in 2018 dollars.
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Jan 11, 2018 16:13
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FWIW, this hobby is like catnip to certain pedant assholes. If you explicitly make rules encouraging them to socially engage in a positive way, they'll rules lawyer and min/max their poo poo to optimize how much of a jerk they can be without crossing any stated rules. It's an "I'm not touching you!" scenario, and you can either 1) endlessly amend the no-touching rule or 2) hand out probations until the not-touchers modify their behavior or gently caress off. Something Awful tends more towards 2, and I think we have probably the best TG forum on the internet as a result.
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Jan 31, 2018 23:14
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Have you seen the rest of the internet?
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Jan 31, 2018 23:19
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People can be rude here, but can't just drop into a thread and start problem-posting knowing they're immune to consequences (since no specific rule exists against their specific behavior.) We've absolutely had some garbage people register here, with the aim of doing exactly that, and they aren't around anymore.
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Jan 31, 2018 23:38
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Cannibal Smiley posted:We have to correct people all the time. One person's apprehension that they're going to be banned does not translate to an entire board living in fear of the moderation. I think this is exactly the kind of "nah there's no problem"-ism that creates the fear she had. You don't address fear of speaking out by correction, you address it by policing your culture. This speaks to a culture where the mods are seen as unapproachable, flippant, and arbitrary - especially if you need to "correct people all the time. "
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Feb 1, 2018 21:15
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Also everybody over there really, really needs to understand that neither 1) an accusation of wrongdoing or 2) criticism taken personally constitutes a personal attack.
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Feb 2, 2018 17:06
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Objectionable posters can also be silenced with the Ignore feature here, which goes a long way towards mitigating high noise / low content blowhards. It puts the onus of policing tone onto the individual user, rather than forcing moderators into the impossible task of arbitration between any two individuals whose boundaries don't align. Determining the content a user can and cannot post far more challenging, unhealthy for the community, and problematic than just empowering users to choose whose content they view.
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Feb 2, 2018 21:27
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Sage Genesis posted:I did say it was an extreme example, and followed it up with a significantly less extreme one - and one which actually happened at that. I think we can all agree here that the n-bomb scenario is unacceptable. Good. But then what is acceptable? That we create an environment with lots of hostility and expect those who are turned off by that to use ignore lists? Obviously you'd need a floor of decency, but when you can't say "this rules set is garbage" because a theoretical person will be offended at the harshness of that view, you're better off giving that hypothetical person the ability to ignore your views instead of trying to come up with a set of conditional rules to protect their sensibilities. Like, it doesn't need to be wild west anything goes n-bombs and DIE IN A FIRE posts, but it's impossible to know exactly where to draw the line for everybody - so just do the best you can and let users ignore jerks. Tuxedo Catfish posted:that's not an impossible task, that's literally the definition of moderation lol Policing the tone of a public discussion is impossible and counterproductive because everyone involved has their personal lines and boundaries drawn at different places. I'm not saying hands off everything let the users decide, I'm saying that moderators should focus on tasks they can actually enforce effectively.
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Feb 2, 2018 22:37
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It seems like the difference between "Alice Anderson is a bad designer" and "Alice Anderson only designs bad games" is trivial and doesn't warrant the disproportionate emphasis they put on preventing people from "badmouthing" a niche celebrity. Who may be on the board, which is probably a big deal in niche hobby like this.
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Feb 6, 2018 03:19
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| # ¿ May 8, 2024 21:41 |
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Wraith PDF is out for backers, and apparently the first number of pages is a reprint of the Face of Death art book. Fun!
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Feb 10, 2018 19:05
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