TG July Chat Thread: Now with 20% less uncanny valley

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG July Chat Thread: Now with 20% less uncanny valley

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Mr. Maltose posted:

It's amazing how terrible all teen anime games are

Everyone always forgets Teenagers From Outer Space

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 21:18

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 01:38

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Fuego Fish posted:

How can you be a fan of Pundit? Like, legitimately, I am curious. What particular facet of his giant rambling posts that don't go anywhere is engaging enough for someone to go "wow, I should read more of these!

I figure it's the same sort of person who listens to hours of AM talk radio a week going "Yeah! Yeah! You tell 'em, Rush! You put those homersexuals and those feminazis in their place!!"

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 20:13

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Parkreiner posted:

Bethesda is actually a funny example since Ken Rolston was actually a tabletop RPG guy from way back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Rolston

There's a little more crossover between TRPGs and video games than you might think. Forgotten Realms guru Jeff Grubb worked on Guild Wars at some point (maybe GW2?), and Dakan & Emmert from City of Heroes and Champions Online got their start in the '90s on Pinnacle's (terrible) Brave New World. Some Call of Cthulhu/Pagan Publishing guys I forget offhand work(ed) at Valve and Radical, I believe. ' 90s White Wolf guys like Rich Dansky and Lucien Soulban are over at Ubisoft (not to mention whatever WW peeps CCP didn't fire). And doesn't Rafael Chandler have some computer-game day job that's been preventing him from finishing the new version of Scorn, the game formerly known as the game called Dread that doesn't use Jenga blocks?

Computer/video games been the escape hatch for talented people in RPGs who wanted to someday have a mortgage or raise a family since at least the early 1990s. The most famous example is probably Sandy Peterson, the designer of Call of Cthulhu, who left the big-money world of RPGs to work for a tiny little outfit named "id software". Another common exit is writing genre fiction, which is where Aaron Allston (RIP) and Mike Stackpole ended up.

As for RPGs being more trouble than they're worth for IP licensors, that makes perfect sense when you consider how small the RPG market is and how little evidence there is of RPGs pulling people into your IP and promoting it. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there were some crossover sales for licensed games but those have largely petered out because publishers realized they could publish their own, more broadly appealing, reference and fan material, and now you can buy shelves of Star Trek and Buffy and Dr. Who and Spider-Man guidebooks and references and encyclopedias without pages of game stats. If JK Rowling wanted to release a big guide to the Harry Potter universe, pretty much the last thing she'd do is partner with an RPG company to do it. Plus, in the 2010s, there are plenty of freely-available fan sites and wikis where people obsessively track all the details and continuity of any given IP, so who really needs a $40 RPG book about the various aliens races in Star Wars when you can google Wookiepedia from your pocket phone?

So RPG licenses sell only to RPG players, and require a lot of approval and hassle compared to, say, signing off on an action figure line or lunchbox or t-shirt design. Who needs it?

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 13:09

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Winson_Paine posted:

Top Secret SI, the best thing TSR ever did.

WRONG

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 16:05

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

unseenlibrarian posted:

The best part was that the Rocky and Bullwinkle game came with hand puppets to help get into character.

Instead of dice, it had spinner wheels!

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 16:09

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Lemon Curdistan posted:

In other news, my copy of Age of Rebellion arrived and it weighs 1.8kg.

The Guide To Glorantha (shipping now!) weighs in at 6 kilograms.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 13:53

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

neonchameleon posted:

3 hardcover volumes, 1000 pages, 14.5 pounds, and $200 worth of pure Glorantha goodness (including the separate atlas with 117 full-color maps).

The PDFs came out late last week and I've pretty much been doing this ever since:

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 14:01

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Nancy_Noxious posted:

*If I remember correctly, the book was originally meant to be a fanfic guide/setting bible for the novels � then along came Gabriel Strange and his bizarre rage-boner for White Wolf and the AD&D heartbreaker of a system he wrote in college that was a ~perfect match~ for the source material.

IIRC on RPGnet he would go on and on about how his system was simply the first step in releasing his gigantic masterwork all-genre universal RPG system and would wax rhapsodic about using the system for giant space robot fights.

Surprise, surprise, it was warmed-over AD&D with a zillion things bolted on to the side that bragged about breakthrough innovations that actually dated back to original RuneQuest and Rolemaster.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 16:18

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

zachol posted:

Mike Mearles.

Noooooooooooooooooooo.....

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 21:04

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Cyphoderus posted:

Basically Metropolis-Hastings is the basic way to deal with Bayes' formula, which has as its denominator a hairy integral that's usually impossible to compute analytically. It makes Bayesian inference achievable. Bayesian inference is super useful; off the top of my head, it's used for weather forecasting, face recognition both in standard digital cameras and police systems, and google choosing what results to show you at the top of the page, among thousands of other applications. It's cool!

Bayes' theorem best theorem.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 00:31

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Evil Sagan posted:

Well now I don't know what to believe!

Just trust the computer.

Can't go wrong trusting the computer.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 01:00

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Impermanent posted:

Grogs actually want an imbalanced, unfun experience that allows their extensive free time and spergy attention to the rules to let them be better than not even really the jocks, but their "friends" at the table.

Grog games reward the players who put in extra time on their homework. If you put in the effort to comb the books and online charop boards to learn the ins and outs of the magic system, well, then you should be able to take control of the game ahead of those jocks who just want to jump around and hit things with a sword. It's what every nerd wishes the real world was like - a place where your ability to grind through books and do extra homework makes you the king of the universe.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 18:39

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Evil Sagan posted:

Glorantha is cool, but what makes now the best time?

The great big giant final authoritative world-defining guidebook has just been released. 40 years in the making!

S.J. posted:

Speak to me about this mythical place.

Fantasy, but non-Tolkien. Based on the setting creator's love of mythology and anthropology. There are elfs and dwarfs, but they are very different than normal (elfs are living bipedal plants who are plugged into the forest hivemind, dwarfs are atheistic machine constructs who are more like modrons than drunk scottish midgets). The world is the sort of place where myth is true: diseases are caused by evil spirits and not germs, the sun god travels across the sky in an enormous chariot every day and passes through the underworld at night (if you go far enough east or west, you can see the giant gates he uses at dawn and dusk), precious metals and gems in the earth are actually the bones and crystalized blood of long-dead gods, and so on. All the cultures are very well defined, and myth is more powerful than science - literally, the way you perform major magic is you have to open a gateway into the realm of the gods and re-enact one of their myths (or, if you're feeling especially badass, change the myth through your actions).

Here's a free PDF detailing a number of the cultures: http://www.glorantha.com/docs/heroquest-voices/

# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 02:24

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 01:38

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

It is true that Glorantha fans tend to get wrapped up in either the big-picture aspects of the setting (what was the God Learner secret? who was the Red Goddess initially?) or the minutae, and it can be really off-putting to newcomers. Hell, I just pitched the $50 ($200 for the physical copy) 800-page guidebook as an entry point for the setting. The trick is to have someone who knows the setting but is willing to set 90% of it aside in order to have a good game for newbies. I've done it myself:

FMguru's campaign pitch posted:

You guys are the up-and-coming young weaponthanes and god-talkers of a clan of celtic/viking dudes who worship the storm god Orlanth. Your leader had told you to accompany the tribe's main trade negotiator on a visit to a neighboring clan that is holding a trade market - which is odd, since it isn't market season. Escort him through the wilderness, help him make some good trade deals, see what's going on with the other clans, and try and find out why they're holding this market out of season.

And you're off and running - the GM can throw anything he wants at the players, drop in all kinds of cool Gloranthan facts and trivia, see what engages the players, and just see what they take an interest in and build towards that.

It's a big big world, but you start with a small bit of it (usually somewhere in Dragon Pass) and just proceed from there. The "Sartar: Land of Heroes" campaign book has everything you need to run a long campaign in Dragon Pass, or you can get the big Pavis book for more traditional D&D adventure (dusty frontier city on the edge of bunch of barely-explored ruins that has just been occupied by a foreign army wielding unsettling and power magic). Once you get your feet wet, you can dive in to the depths.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 03:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG July Chat Thread: Now with 20% less uncanny valley