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Mikan posted:No, it's absolutely a good move for them - but it is also kind of weird for me to see the company that made every game I played back in high school, the company that temporarily dethroned Dungeons and Dragons, operating primarily as a Kickstarter publisher. That's before you even get into the weirdness with CCP and Onyx Path and everything else. I admit to feeling weird about it, too. CCP is not a company that needs Kickstarter to do anything. They have the sort of money that would make most TG companies void their loins just to contemplate. I'll be supporting the Exalted Kickstarter all the same, but it's important to recognize this as a marketing tool and not like, some bone they need to be thrown to make a particular game. Kickstarter doesn't provide any means to differentiate a small company's struggling startup from a big company's marketing push, and it's hard not to feel a little hornswoggled.
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Apr 5, 2013 13:22
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GEExCEE posted:It's not a store. I gave a man money and he sent me a game. If that's not a store, what is that? Really it's probably better to think of it as a marketplace. It is a place where people sell things, but they can also just roll up their carpets and vanish or otherwise flake out and buyer beware and all that. People are most certainly buying and selling things, but the consumer protections we're used to as a society just aren't there. I imagine sooner or later we'll see a big, high-profile Failure (instead of the "little f" failures we've had so far) and Kickstarter will have to update their model when legalities start looming. But trying to pretend it's just means to donate to creative causes at this point strikes me as pure naïvete. Even if that's the intention, that's not how it's ending up.
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Apr 5, 2013 13:48
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Lemon Curdistan posted:It's giving a man money and a man sending you a game. You did not buy a game. Yes I did. I gave money. I got a game. Two games. You're arguing semantics. I, on the other hand, have physical evidence. Lemon Curdistan posted:The two are not the same thing, despite having the same end result. No one is pretending anything; the word donation is being used because that's what giving money on Kickstarter is. I could have bought 13th Age through the Kickstarter, or through the site. I did it through the site, but the effect is the same. You can take Kickstarter at face value, or you can take a look at the actual functionality of the thing. I give money, I get a thing, and if I don't get a thing, I can request a refund. It can be used for charitable donations and the like, but as far as TG goes, that's generally not what it's occurring. Lemon Curdistan posted:One of these things involves a whole lot of legal protections afforded to you as a customer, the other is literally the equivalent to just mailing a tenner to someone. This is not true. Kickstarter does not offer refunds, but they require project creators to do so. Kickstarter posted:Is a creator legally obligated to fulfill the promises of their project?
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Apr 5, 2013 14:31
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GEExCEE posted:Actually, Kickstarter can't be used for charitable donations. Go figure. Yeah, thanks for the reminder. I meant in the general sense, though. I've contributed to one or two things that don't directly ship anything to me, but are art, is what I mean. It's not the only thing the system can be used for, true, but as far as TG goes, it's going to be most of it. Kai Tave posted:But the stuff you're "buying" doesn't exist is the thing. If I go to a mall or a grocery or whatever I don't give the cashier a bunch of my money as soon as I walk in and then if it turns out they don't have what I'm looking for go "aw shucks" and leave. Comic stores often require you to preorder if you want to be certain you're getting a copy. Amazon lets you preorder books, albums, DVDs, and other upcoming releases. Microsoft has preorders for their software. Lots of electronics are put up on preorder. Some collectibles pretty much require preorders. You can preorder shoes now. Shoes. If you want the new grape Air Jordan 5s... The idea of preordering things is going to become more and more prevalent for specialty goods, and treating it as an anomaly is going to get harder and harder. Kai Tave posted:Again, with Kickstarter all you are buying is a promise. For your hypothetical mall to be closer to what Kickstarter is like you would go into a store full of signs advertising really cool things that don't exist yet, paying the clerk money, and having him tell you that just as soon as someone gets around to making one of those things he'll make sure you get one, scout's honor. It's legally binding. It's not just a promise. The issue right now is so far nobody's been willing to take a guy to court to get their $30 back for an OSR module or whatever, but if they wanted to, they certainly could do that. Verdugo posted:Stop being deliberately obtuse just for the sake of argument. I gave money and did not receive a refund, so my anecdote counters your anectote. I can't stop when I haven't even started. You got burned, and that sucks. But you still are legally obligated to receive something (product or refund); it's just that the recourse (lawsuit) is generally too onerous for you to consider when it's broken. I've certainly gotten burned with online sellers in the past. But they were legally obligated to deliver. It's a problem, but it's not a problem unique to Kickstarter - it's just with Kickstarter, a wider group is likely to be affected, making it a larger issue.
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Apr 5, 2013 16:35
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Yeah, I know Puzzle Strike was handled entirely through fulfillment, and the fact design was complete before the kickstarter even started meant it had the quickest turnaround time of any Kickstarter I've seen. Whatever you think of Sirlin, his handling of his Kickstarter was pro as hell. I suppose it breaks down to the old time vs. money equation. Still, having helped package Kickstarter envelopes in a dining room, I have to say it sounds like a real swell deal to avoid becoming an assembly line worker on your own product. 
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Jul 1, 2013 18:32
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I have to say I appreciate William Duryea's unpleasantries being displayed front and center. It's a nice innovation. After years of games like Cthulhutech, Pathfinder, and Exalted suddenly dropping rape in their books out of nowhere, I am nicely forewarned and know to avoid Misery Index in advance.quote: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. This is loving hilarious. He's perfectly cognizant that he's trying to push buttons, and trying to pretend otherwise is hilarious. It's the equivalent of me deciding Rudy Johnson's nickname is now "Dung Sundae". I mean, I'm not trying to offend Dung Sundae. I just think it's an interesting name. It's a name worth saying out loud. Dung Sundae. I'm not using it for profanity or vulgarity or because he's being a crummy person. I just like the way it sounds. ... but that would be dishonest of me, and it's dishonest of them, too. And that's the last thing art should be.
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Aug 8, 2013 18:49
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MadScientistWorking posted:Honestly I don't know how Alien Rope Burn missed it because I know rape is mentioned in the core rulebook. Its not called that but the euphemism "often not the result of a loving union" certainly can only mean one thing. Funny you should mention that, because I didn't. I didn't specifically mean in supplements, though yes, Rise of the Runelords gave us rural rapist ogres and their Gau posted:Perhaps Orc culture encourages friends-with-benefits relationships, especially with other races? Nope.
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Aug 8, 2013 20:30
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No biggie. I wasn't that familiar with them outside of Dragon Magazine; for me going into the Pathfinder book was my first real experience with them as a publisher. It's amusing how they appeal to Tolkien to defend their orc portrayal, because I'm trying to remember all the orc rape in Lord of the Rings and just coming up short. (And yet, I've never seen a grog bring up the Tolkienesque notion that elves die when raped. Thanks, Tolkien, for establishing that little factoid.) 
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Aug 8, 2013 21:36
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neonchameleon posted:So RPG.net shut down the thread on Misery Toruism on the grounds that the whole thing was a deliberate troll. Have we evidence of this? The games presented are perfectly in line with Duryea's previous "jeepform" RPGs, only more grotesque and controversy-pushing. The only game he's really known for previously is Danse Macabre, which is a dodgy Memento Mori-based bit about the inevitability of death. He also did Six Page Manual, which was a "playable but unfinished" parody of jeepform games. ("Playable" is pretty arguable, and "parody" - well, being transgressive alone isn't enough to be a parody.) I think trying to distinguish trolling from his regular output is going to be hard. It seems to be part and parcel with what he just does, which is transgression for its own sake. Does that make for good games? I don't really think so - at the very least, I don't see myself wanting to fund or play what he does. There are a lot of other criticisms that can be made, but it really just boils down to that.
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Aug 9, 2013 13:40
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I've heard plenty of rumors about their sexual hijinks, but that's no surprise to those familiar with their work, anyway. Nothing business-related, mind.
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Aug 10, 2013 18:00
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moths posted:But after a few years of bloat, without such a program, you've created an impregnable wall of material. My sister asked me if I wanted Arkham Horror for Christmas; I looked at the bulk of expansions and told her to save her money. It's daunting as gently caress to an outsider, but it's cheaper and easier to produce additional content than design new games. The thing is, most Arkham Horror expansions don't do much for the game in my opinion save add busywork - Dunwich Horror was pretty great, but Kingsport was pure annoyance in expansion form. Having played a ton of it, I feel like I'd rather go back to it with the few better expansions. JDCorley posted:Paranoia rushes to mind... GURPS IOU comes to mind as well. Much of GURPS Illuminati is a parody of conspiracy theories as much as a treatment of it, as are the Illuminati card games. Hell, Car Wars - with its tongue-in-cheek ads and violent bloodsports - has some heavy parody elements, particularly with groups like Eastern Safety Enforcement Driving League (EDSEL) or ASP (a terrorist organization led by the "Black Asp" with his sidekick, Rodrick). Later Car Wars would even parody itself with material like "Uncle Schmalbert". Games like Munchkin and Chez Geek are parody, too. Even In Nomine had parody elements... It may be easier to consider games that Steve Jackson Games produces that aren't parody. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Aug 21, 2013 |
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Aug 21, 2013 14:22
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01011001 posted:My group of friends and I tried a game with every expansion once. It was an absolute loving mess and the game took some ungodly number of hours. Arkham Horror is pretty well overwrought on its own. Dunwich is probably the best, because while it adds busywork, it doesn't add much - mainly just a "boss monster" that's fun to face up against. The point is that expansions aren't always what's best for a game's given design, even if economics will always work against that.
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Aug 21, 2013 17:21
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I can see it being useful as a game aid for games with unwieldy mechanics; the Arkham Horror app comes to mind. A vehicle design and vehicle sheet app for games like Star Fleet Battles or Car Wars would be another example. Really if there's a strength of technology, it would be in handling complex mechanics. One of the things you could do with an app or the like would be to have resolution mechanics involving math that would never function for players to process, but a machine could efficiently do. Another possibility is doing simultaneous turn resolution, blind or double-blind mechanics with devices. The problem is that a lot of games try and use apps to solve problems that don't exist (I don't need an app to roll to-hit or for me in most circumstances), when they should be looking to do things we can't already do with dice, pen, and paper. The Sifteo platform strikes me as having a lot of possibilities for the tabletop space, given infinite money to spend on it. Granted, Hasbro has tried a similar version of the technology and failed, but once again they were trying to add it as a gimmick - Simon or Yahtzee don't need that kind of device. However, imagine something like a minis game where you use the cubes, and the combat system is as complex as something like Lost Worlds - something you couldn't do by hand feasibly without bogging down the game, but small machines could handle readily.
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Sep 12, 2013 13:35
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I think one thing to consider is the tabletop as an interface in and of itself, and it has some advantages you can't get through software (yet). It's shared, reliable, and visceral. I wouldn't underestimate that last part; there's something satisfying about the physical quality of tabletop games. Laying down tiles in Carcassonne is more enjoyable than thumbing with my xbox controller to me, and I can't explain why per se. But on the other hand, letting the xbox work out the scoring is a lifesaver. If the technology was at a point where I could just point my phone at the board and have it recognize the tiles and meeples and auto-score for me, that would be the best of both worlds. Puzzle Strike has a robust online version that works very well, but shaking up a bag of chips in the physical version is just fun to do, and it misses out on that. A lot of the complexity I refer happens before or after the game; for Car Wars I wouldn't require aids during the game, but during scenario setup it could really help, the Arkham Horror example aids setup and breakdown, largely. That's a lot different as an aid from Golem Arcana, where the electronic aspect seems constantly intrusive, and it might be better as just a videogame instead. I'd love to be able to actually try it and give it a shot. Still, efforts like Eye of Judgement are impressive efforts and are at least on to something, and there's got to be a sweet spot where bridging the two interfaces seems worth it. Saying it can't work because VHS "interactive videos" were hokey affairs just strikes me as grandpa talk. Another advantage is that tabletop allows for more social interaction between players, and you can't discount that. Playing poker online and playing it face-to-face end up being rather different games just because of that simple factor. Even if you're in the same room, you don't get the same impact playing with multiple tablets or laptops. What I'm trying to say is that the tabletop is a interface all its own with its own strengths and weaknesses, and interfaces are never just superficial. They, in fact, can be the prime determining factor in the success or failure of a game. See also: Dread.
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Sep 12, 2013 15:12
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JoshTheStampede posted:They're wearing minimum clothing because they don't have the balls to just make naked soldiers and say they don't wear clothes because they have armor skin. And/or people would give them just as much or more poo poo if they did that. Honestly I would probably have a lot more respect if they were like "here are some sculpted tits, we heard you guys like those". It's wanting to pretend what they're doing is anything other than that... is just so tiresome, wanting to have their SERIOUS FANTASY cake and gently caress it, too. I know Kickstarter bans a lot of porny content (in a very dodgy sort of way), but the forced justifications to dance around the sleazy aspects have just become just tiresome and dishonest.
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Sep 16, 2013 04:31
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Yeah, the exact reasoning is largely irrelevant, but clearly bullshit anyway. Thigh-highs aside, if armored skin is good, armor on armored skin is even better! Nor are they the sole faction to have that sort of dress code: Shael Han's "Big Sister" has nearly the exact same outfit.
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Sep 16, 2013 12:06
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It bears mentioning that CoolMiniOrNot.com (of Wrath of Kings) also fronts for and works with Soda Pop Miniatures, who gave us the embarrassing Relic Knights, Tentacle Bento, and this... ... I'm not saying it means anything, I'm just asking questions.
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Sep 16, 2013 20:36
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Leperflesh posted:Might as well link to the source and quote the page, too: Yeah, I just figured Soda Pop's doings were well-known enough at this point that I didn't need to belabor them. But maybe some folks don't know! It's the whole "it's okay to be regressive as hell, because we're just Leperflesh posted:Yes. Hot ladies! Come pose in sexy outfits at our booth at game conventions. What, pay? No, you volunteer. Must be a "Battle Beauty," ugly girls need not apply. Yeah, they had a cosplayer at Gencon... Rin Farrah ("Marie-Claude Bourbonnais"), the same woman seen in the adverts above (and below). Presumably she actually gets paid, if she's being used in ads, at their Gencon booth, and as a model for some of their minis? At least, I hope.  
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Sep 16, 2013 23:10
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Bieeardo posted:I know at least one of the videogame PWYW bundles had to put a floor in because people were buying in at a penny and actually costing the bundle guys money in transaction fees. I've actually bought into one or two of those for cheap soundtracks to games I already had. Humble Bundle had to put a dollar floor in for Steam keys, mainly at the time because people were using it to exploit a Steam promotional contest where they'd create a Steam account, drop a cent for the bundle, achieve some tickets to enter the contest, and repeat. It's been that way ever since, though that kind of promotional contest has never been repeated.
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Sep 17, 2013 21:39
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Mikan posted:My favorite part is where if you have an unexpected success, all of a sudden the license doesn't apply to you anymore and you have to renegotiate with the Numenera folks. What happens during the negotiations? Do you have to take your product down? Do you owe them even more money, which they conveniently don't detail in the license? It's amazing. The fact that it's $2000 ever is particularly bizarre. If it was like $2000 per year or something, that would be lovely but would make some degree of sense. And I guess it doesn't cover production costs, so if you want to maximize profits, better only sell ebooks, because it seems like selling physical books means your production costs effectively count towards that $2000 limit? I want to formally apologize to the Pathfinder Compatibility License. In light of this, all is forgiven. 
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Oct 8, 2013 19:40
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Pumpkin_Paine posted:Not gonna lie, this is a dumbass argument. It really just boils down to the usual "X is getting worse... and it's happening all the time!" Chicken Little argument that rarely holds any water. RPGs are awesomer and cheaper than they ever have been. I remember when there was no such thing as a free RPG save homebrew stuff literally shared around a gaming table. It used to be writing material for somebody else's game was a good way to get sued if you tried to distribute it widely in any sense. Trying to pretend there was some golden age of RPG auteurs is weird, since we're living in it right now.
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Oct 8, 2013 21:35
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01011001 posted:Didn't TSR even actively go after people putting up homebrew online in the 90's or something? Stuff like that's hard to believe in comparison to how things are now. Yeah. Companies like TSR, Palladium, Games Workshop, and Steve Jackson Games have been notorious about that sort of thing in the past. Kwyndig posted:Yes, yes they did. Part of that was people weren't just sharing homebrew, they were sharing entire rulebooks online (text only, for the most part, but the art back then wasn't worth downloading anyway) and TSR's lawyers didn't make any sort of distinction between 'this is fan made content' and 'this is our content'. I remember one widespread compilation of AD&D 2e material just used fantasy porn on the "cover" instead. 
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Oct 9, 2013 00:41
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The legalities of the whole thing are a bit academic, because nobody's been willing to go into the ring with a game company as far as I'm aware. They don't need to necessarily be legally sound, they just need to be able to intimidate hobbyists into backing down. And if that doesn't work, they just need to do the same to their webhost or the like. I've always been curious as to whether or not these companies would actually drag a customer into court, but it hasn't happened to the best of my knowledge.Ewen Cluney posted:But to me the bigger issue with the license is simply that if you're a current or aspiring game publisher, the Numenera license has basically nothing to offer over the many other open systems you can use for free. To be fair, part of the thing is that you're also getting access to the Numenera setting, which is a slightly different deal. With the video game coming out someday, the interest in the setting might explode, or it might tumble, people might be indifferent to it, it's a gamble. Monte Cook is a pretty fierce self-promoter - I mean, look how well-known he is despite not having a lot under his name that could be termed "exceptional". He has a lot of interesting material to his name, but there's no game I could point do and say Monte Cook did GAME X, no game that feels influential or groundbreaking. Yes, there's D&D 3e, but his contributions have gotten tremendously outweighed by those of his peers. And yet he's a big name because he's basically pushed his name so hard people started believing he was a big name. I mean, what games did he have his name all over before Numenera? Oh, right, Call of Cthulhu d20. I think I got off my point somewhere but basically it's an investment in Monte Cook's self-imposed fame more than a system or even a setting.
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Oct 9, 2013 04:34
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neongrey posted:I think Iron Heroes was all right. Enough to justify the fame by itself? Nah, but it was a decent game. Iron Heroes was Mike Mearls. It was published under Monte Cook's Malhavoc brand, which may be where there confusion comes from. Jimbozig posted:Wait, really? I haven't been in the scene all that long and I just assumed that whatever 90's schlock Monte put out back in the 90's was considered innovative for its time. How did he get his fame, then? Writing for one of the D&D magazines or something? Mostly, he wrote for AD&D, and then got a big boost by writing the Dungeon Masters Guide for 3e. The really, really smart move he made was almost immediately jumping ship from WotC afterwards and spinning his five minutes of fame into founding Malhavoc Press, which was them published by White Wolf. He was smart in putting his name on the cover of every book he wrote for it to associate the Malhavoc brand with not only himself, but as a designer that had worked on 3e. Malhavoc thusly not only had a head-start on other d20 brands (after all, it had one of the designers working on it), but also gave it psuedo-legitimacy that no other d20 brand had. After all, he put out a book called Arcana Unearthed that had absolutely nothing to do with Unearthed Arcana, and nobody seemed to blink an eye at his blatant brand-nabbing. He also continued to do freelance work for D&D 3e, the most notable being Book of the Vile Darkness, which got him a fair amount of additional exposure due to its deliberately baiting controversiality, and also put nipple clamps of exquisite pain into the gamer lexicon. JackMann posted:Honestly, I've never seen him as all that great a game designer. He's much better at coming up with interesting and compelling settings. I backed Numenera purely for the setting, with no expectation for the game mechanics. He made it big being the biggest name in d20 outside of WotC, but he's mainly known for making settings instead of games - Ghostwalk, Arcana Evolved, and Plotus being the main examples. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Oct 9, 2013 |
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Oct 9, 2013 13:20
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MalcolmSheppard posted:His "some work for ICE and AD&D" was actually as a full time editor and designer for Iron Crown (Covering RM and HERO) and then TSR, which means he had a hand in a vast number of D&D and other TSR books for a very long time. By "vast" he means about 15 or so, but yes. It's true Monte Cook has had a long career in the gaming industry. But he made his name big based on his 3e and d20 work. Relatively few folks remember him for his work on Rolemaster Companion V, Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs, or Champions in 3-D. At most, Planescape fans will know him pretty well for having a big mark on that line, but for both good and ill. Ultimately, though, his Malhavoc work dwarfs his TSR contributions. JackMann posted:To be fair on the Arcana Unearthed bit, apparently he'd worked it out with WotC beforehand. Originally, it was going to be called Unearthed Arcana. Then WotC decided they wanted to put out their own Unearthed Arcana book, and he had to switch it around. Of course he did - he'd have a decent risk of getting sued, otherwise! I still find it shady for him to try and use the name recognition of Unearthed Arcana to market an entirely unrelated product, though. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Oct 10, 2013 |
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Oct 10, 2013 04:44
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MalcolmSheppard posted:Generally when you work for a company full time, it means that every product under your purview passes over your desk. He was the editor in charge of Hero and RM from the late 80s to the early 90s (http://www.rpg.net/columns/briefhistory/briefhistory8.phtml), so he worked on pretty much everything released from that company, not just what you might turn up with some Googling. (And now I miss the old pen-paper.net, which wasn't too bad about recording creator credits.) I seriously doubt he has no more than 15 TSR credits (RPGnet's listings are incomplete, and list maybe 18, not including a few dozen Dragon Magazine articles). Oh for gently caress's sake. I've been basing my comments off of the bibliography on Monte Cook's own webpage, which lists 16 books books he wrote for TSR, one he "evaluated", and one unreleased product. If you want to imagine he did more than he personally takes credit for, feel free, but 16 is still a lot! That's an awful lot of books! But it's not vast, and it's not as much as the 25+ books he's done for Malhavoc (without even counting his other d20 output). MalcolmSheppard posted:The rest of this sounds like "Surely nothing notable was done in the field before the existence of web forums!" Okay, I get that you don't like the way he designs games, but he was an extremely experienced writer, editor and designer before he was involved in D&D, and didn't get momentum to do his own thing purely out of a sense of entitlement. I'm not talking about how he designs games - he's at least a step up from a lot of d20 publishers (damning with faint praise, I suppose, but he was one of the best). I have a fair number of Monte Cook books on my shelf from Malhavoc, TSR, and WotC, and I'm glad to have them there. If I hated him, they wouldn't be there. It turns out I can criticize him or dislike things he's done without hating him as a person. I can sigh in exasperation at his introduction to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and still proudly slide Beyond Countless Doorways onto my d20 shelf. Amazing, but true! But I think a lot of his success comes from how he's sold Monte Cook rather than how he's sold his work. That doesn't invalidate his work as a whole, but lets us take a more objective view of it.
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Oct 10, 2013 15:10
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I think I've mentioned on grogs.txt way back when, but as somebody that's mined the Pathfinder forums, Jason Bulmahn and Lisa Stevens come across really well. Really, most of the Paizo employees do, people like SKR and Ryan Dancey are in the minority. We also have a good number of perfectly decent designers and reps here like Mikan, Gnome7, CroatianAlzheimers, WadeRockett, and others I'm forgetting, I'm sure.
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Nov 20, 2013 23:44
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Kai Tave posted:John Wick might get poo poo talked about him, but he can at least point to L5R and go "yeah, I made that, and you still talk about Seventh Sea too." To be fair, a squad of unsung writers really helped to turn Wick's (very) rough draft into what we know as Legend of the Five Rings, but it's hard to deny Wick hasn't certainly made some interesting games since. Oh, and the Crafty guys, Alex Flagg, Patrick Kapera, and Steve Hough are really cool. There's a reason why nobody's calling for their heads even though a lot of their projects have been running hideously late. Transparency earns you a lot of forgiveness, as it turns out.
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Nov 21, 2013 06:19
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Plague of Hats posted:Nope! Oh, man, I didn't make that connection between Tianxia and his work on that. Well. Relieved I didn't back it, then. For those that don't play Exalted I don't think it can be emphasized how sloppy and just plain bad the rules design in those books were even compared to some the rules facefaults in other books. Scroll of Heroes was more badly written, but I think Scroll of the Monk's bad rules had a bigger impact. This was because:
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Nov 21, 2013 15:52
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Jack's great crime against Exalted were the Merits & Flaws and half-blood rules in Scroll of Heroes. These were in many ways worse than the excrescence in Monk!
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Plague of Hats posted:Just because I think it might be unclear, I want to reiterate that I'm pretty sure Jack didn't have anything to do with Scroll of the Monk. It's not that I think he worked on both and Heroes was the worse of the two (though I do think the latter). I would agree that since it was also early in the line Monk's horribleness had a bigger impact than it otherwise might have had. Oh. Yeah, I should've done my homework on that. Just forget what I was saying forever then, please.  Kai Tave posted:As far as Tianxia goes, he and his design partner already beat out several other RPG Kickstarters by having an actual game 99% ready to go and available to backers. I agree that it's got its rough spots but its also got plenty of potential, so at this point it's down to how well they refine the beta before the official release. I can't say I feel like my $15 is going to waste there. Yeah, it looks like a really impressive book, I just expect it'll probably have some rough edges, but I'll have to judge for myself when I can.
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Nov 21, 2013 16:34
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moths posted:Difficulty selling your supplements for $3 is probably indicative of bigger systemic problems. From what I understand it was more an experiment than desperation. Mind, it runs into the issue that for the most part in gaming people associate price with value. If you're selling supplements for $3 and there's not an obvious angle (like a single-class supplement, a 100-thingy list, or Cheapass' whole marking strategy), people are going to wonder what's wrong with it that the price is so low. Like I just believe you did, see what I did there.
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Nov 22, 2013 01:51
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moths posted:But if I wasn't buying D20 poo poo Nobody Cares About at $20, dropping the price to $3 doesn't change the underlying problem. I think the main flaw is just thinking you can take iPhone pricing and transfer it to other markets, regardless of the material's quality.
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Nov 22, 2013 04:21
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Kai Tave posted:GMS doesn't have a habit of loving over freelancers (that I know of) at least. That being said, Siembieda, conversely, is eternally apologetic for his lateness. He just doesn't apparently do anything to fix it.
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Nov 22, 2013 13:56
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I would suspect not, at least judging from how much that sort of thing affects comic sales (Before Watchmen, hated on the internet with the fiercest of vitriol, manages to sell perfectly well, for example). But it could be that more RPG players are online and that the smaller pool makes it easier to splash everyone, I dunno. But I think the majority of the RPG-playing audience isn't involved, doesn't care, and isn't quite so critical in general, whether it's Dungeon World or Cthulhutech.
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Nov 22, 2013 22:37
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Yeah, I just think of the play groups I've been involved in, and how many are involved in online RPG talk as much as I am. Of probably two dozen people, I can think of... one, mmmaybe two. A lot are just folks who play what they play and aren't too concerned around rules unless they bypass whatever crunch vs. smooth threshold markers they are.
Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Nov 23, 2013 |
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Nov 22, 2013 23:57
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A lot of whistleblowing boils down to folks making GBS threads in their own pot, and whether or not you think it was justified, it establishes you're willing to throw your employer to the online wolves. It's a small industry and word gets around, and it's not hard to build a reputation. It gets hard to tell the difference between whistleblowing and retaliation, to boot. Take Bill Coffin, for example, who revealed a lot of unkind facts regard Kevin Siembieda's running of Palladium, which seemed pretty clearly done out of anger, and it severely damaged his reputation as a result. At lot of it depends on how professionally you handle it. An artist that reveals they haven't been paid for an unreasonable amount of time by a company (hey, Guardians of Order) will probably come across better than say, John Wick taking potshots at Dancey on his column. I'm not familiar with Trollman's posts on Catalyst, but I think I can make an educated guess that "professional" probably wasn't a word one could use to describe them.
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Nov 28, 2013 03:49
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Halloween Jack posted:How was Bill Coffin's reputation damaged and, if so, does he have any reason to care? He got known as somebody who dragged personal matters into a public arena?... I mean, there's a reason he made an apology later. As a fan it was fascinating to see all the dirty laundry dragged out, but it remains a big black mark on Palladium's reputation. I have nothing against Coffin myself, but it's easy to understand why a company might not want to risk that sort of lambasting, justified or not.
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Nov 28, 2013 04:02
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Kai Tave posted:And to be honest, Bill Coffin apologized and that was classy of him, but I don't think he did it because his reputation suddenly tanked. No, I don't think he did it either, I think he did it for his own reasons. I think it was problematic that it he put it together as a personal attack on Siembieda, but with the caveat being that it's very hard to criticize Palladium without criticizing Siembieda in the first place. ravenkult posted:Because everyone is a huge loving nerd and they can't take criticism. At least in my experience, even the slightest comment will make And this is how assholes protect themselves. Why the hell would Bill's reputation be damaged, unless you are a terrible person yourself? (I don't mean you, Alien Rope Burn.) Or you see him as somebody who's going to blow his stack and turn to the internet over disagreements. I'm reminded of when I was quite young, a business owner visited our school for a talk about how they hired people. At one point he talked about not hiring people if they regularly miss work. One student asks "But what if they were sick?", and his answer was "Why would I want to hire sick people who miss work?" Is that fair? No. But to some people the reason isn't important.
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Nov 29, 2013 00:15
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I could probably name quite a few petty motherfuckers in the TG landscape, and I'm barely on the periphery of the games industry. It's hardly the rule but there's never a shortage of them.
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Nov 29, 2013 00:22
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Halloween Jack posted:I responded to David Hill's post, and he and his partner told me who pays on time and who doesn't. Let me know if I killed their careers. It should be clear that some of those projects he's talking about are pay-on-publish, which means that the book hasn't seen the light of day, so most of them aren't acting outside contract. The companies he names are Catalyst Game Labs, Green Ronin, Crafty, and Margaret Weis Productions, but Crafty has apparently contacted them about paying them ahead of publication (above and beyond the actual contract). Margaret Weis Productions is supposedly particularly notorious for missing payment. He notes that Onyx Path has been late but has always paid, and that Wizards of the Coast is pretty reliable. Still not good in the case of the checks they're waiting on, but just clarifying.
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Dec 1, 2013 01:55
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