TG Chat Thread 2017

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Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Brother Entropy posted:

i feel like the difference there is ain't no one cares about the legacy of clint barton and laura's been a lady wolverine around long enough that it doesn't feel like a great big shake up for her to take over for a couple years before they inevitably bring logan back

They're bringing Logan back now with the Marvel Legacy series.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2017 14:09

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 04:34

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Halloween Jack posted:

This is why the Moon Knight series that Ellis began is the only Big Two superhero book I've enjoyed in the past two years. Ultimately, Moon Knight's nemesis is the Marvel editorial staff, who will always smash him back down into "White Batman who's crazy!" regardless of any character development undertaken by any writer.

In the post-"Ultimate Marvel" Ultimates (the team run by Carol Davners), Galactus actually stops being the big purple planet-eater and becomes an avatar of life...who then has to fight some of the other cosmic entities who want him to turn back into the Devourer of Worlds because that's who he's always been.

He did manage to fight back, but I think he's back to being "classic" Galactus because god forbid comics have major changes.

(Squirrel Girl is still cool and good because it deliberately ignores every megaevent and is purposefully positive.)

# ¿ Oct 31, 2017 16:33

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

The other main problem with TVTropes is that it gets a lot of people into this mindset where they can only think in terms of tropes. To extend the Lego analogy, when they want to build (write) something, they can't think in terms of plots or "what would make sense to have happen here", they only think in terms of clicking the tropes together.

They're the writer equivalent of people who've only ever played D&D and then try to make their own RPG to "fix" its problems.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2017 17:34

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Wasn't one of the ideas of Ultimate Marvel that stuff could change in major ways since it wasn't the main continuity? I vaguely remember something like that.

I mean, yeah, we got Miles Morales and the whole dumb "Magneto kills several million people through natural disasters", but I don't remember if it was an idea from day one.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2017 18:24

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Now that I think of it, I think Planetary does a good job with handling the "why doesn't the existence of metahumans affect the world in general" issue.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2017 18:52

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Zoro posted:

Anyone know if ICONS: Assembled Edition is good?

It's good if you want a basic superhero-v-supervillain thing. It's Fate-derived (d6-d6), and is pretty Silver Age in tone, so it's intended to be fun and lighthearted. The idea is that you pick/roll your powers and go beat up a bad guy whose theme is some lame pun.

The art's not great, though.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2017 23:26

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

FMguru posted:

That's the curse of every non-licensed superhero RPG, going back to the original Champions. Which is weird, given how many people imitate and practice and doodle superhero artwork.

It's clearly trying for a Bruce Timm style, but, well...

Believe it or not, that's still better than the first edition.

The guy just has no sense of proportion or depth.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2017 23:35

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Zoro posted:

Aren't there good fate core super games though? What makes this different from just doing fate core?

It originally came out a ways before Fate Core, and the Great Power supplement does have conversion rules for FC in it, so if you want to just buy that and use Fate Core, then that's an option too.

As for Fate Core supers games...the only one I've really looked at was Venture City, but that's not really designed for four-color supers.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2017 23:49

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Terrible Opinions posted:

So what are the best/most interesting retroclones anyways? I've been wanting to give some a whirl but there are a huge number to choose from.

Nightmares Underneath by Johnstone Metzger is pretty good. It's got an Arabian theme, and the idea is that dungeons are portals/incursions from a nightmare plane. There's a free version on DriveThru if you want to check it out.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 05:17

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I feel like the only system I can think of off the top of my head that'd work well for Exalted-style stuff is Fate, because you need something with a flexibility that allows you to be the Incarnate of Whatever and do things that make sense for being the Incarnate of Whatever, but without the need to sit down and stat up every individual power. You need something loose but with a mechanical backbone you can hang things off of.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2017 05:55

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I can't wait to see the paid D&D GM market saturate itself in less than a day.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2017 18:50

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Covok posted:

Is it worth buying?

Why?

The answer, as always, is beef.

Allen Varney posted:

Steve Jackson and Steve Wieck, then of White Wolf Game Studio, had a very public, very bitter falling-out in the early '90s over the licensed GURPS versions of the World of Darkness games. Wieck later started the company that eventually became OneBookShelf, owner of DriveThru. SJG's contracts with licensors, such as with Marc Miller for the GURPS Traveller line, pointedly forbade the licensor ever to post SJG material on DriveThru even after rights reverted to the licensor. That longtime rivalry is what makes this new development remarkable.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2017 02:53

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Anime, like role playing games, was a mistake.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2017 20:48

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Evil Hat just posted this. Bolding mine:

quote:

You may have heard today that Patreon has rapidly rolled out a new billing model for patrons without consulting the creators, handily pissing off both parties. We join with the other creators in expressing our disappointment with Patreon for making this move. While it was nominally presented as a means to ensure greater, more reliable revenue goes to the creators, the reality of it is much more likely to have a chilling effect on patrons' willingness to spread the love around or really even pledge in the first place.
Short version is that now the payment processing fees are getting passed on to the patrons rather than the creators. That in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad idea, but Patreon's implementation includes a $0.35 flat fee per pledge on top of the 2.9% for the payment processor. The payment processor usually also has a flat fee, but it's one that scales per charge rather than per pledge; so if you were charged once for an amount that covered ten pledges, that flat fee, as a percentage, would be pretty small. Patreon's choice to go per pledge means that someone who backs, say, 40 creators per month is going to see an added monthly charge of $14. Pretty nasty if that person is providing small-dollar quantities to each: if they pledge $1 to each, then their monthly bill goes from $40 to $54. For some folks' budgets that's a deal breaker. It also reads as a pretty bald attempt by Patreon to max its own revenue at the expense of all parties. We hope they reconsider this move, in light of the bad press it's gotten.

That said, at this time we aren't planning on going anywhere, ourselves. This project still matters to us a great deal, and frankly without the up-front committed dollars from by your pledges, the Worlds line just folds; this Patreon are the line's budget, full stop. It can be desperately hard to get original setting content to draw enough interest independent of something like this platform to recover the costs it takes to develop a World, which is why we reached for something like Patreon to help us meet that oft-asked-for need in the first place.

It's also worth noting that if we didn't use this as our launch strategy for our Worlds, we'd need to sell more just to draw in the same amount of funding: DriveThruRPG takes a 30-35% cut, so a $4 sale on DriveThru only nets us $2.60 at the end of the day.

So, we hope you'll consider staying, but we absolutely understand if Patreon's move drives you to reconsider your patronage. We won't hold it against you at all.

That said, we also don't want to see you forced to pay extra that you didn't originally agree to pay. So as of this post, we've added two new "(Subsidized)" reward tiers, at $3.50 (for the $4 rewards) and $11.30 (for the $12 rewards). The drop in pricing for each reflects the fee you'd have to pay to pledge, so if you want to maintain your commitment at the exact same level, those are the way to do it and stay within the bounds of what you budgeted for this project. If you change your pledge to a subsidized version of the same level, you'll get exactly what you would for the non-subsidized version, you'll just be paying a little less. We'd rather change our structure to support you staying, at the end of the day.

Regardless of your decision, thank you as always for your support! It has meant the Worlds to us.

Fred's been very up-front about the fact that Patreon is pretty much the only way they could have done the Worlds of Adventure line, and even they they're not pulling in a huge profit. This makes sense, but it still sucks that content providers will either lose backers or have to jump through these kinds of hoops to keep everything going.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2017 04:10

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Isn't Kickstarter doing some sort of pledge-per-month thing now?

# ¿ Dec 8, 2017 06:01

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Bear in mind the "fighter problem" isn't just how much damage they do. Yes, it's an issue that a fighter is a lesser damage-dealer in games where that's their main function, but the "fighter issue" more comes down to flexibility. Often they're unable to adapt to different types of foes (swordguy becomes useless when his foe flies, or is invisible, or requires pewter arrows to hurt) or situations. But most importantly, many fighter classes just become... useless outside of combat. That's the chief issue, I think. When other classes are breaking into places, casting spells to teleport to places, or tracking a set of footprints, the fighter quite often has no expertise to apply when there isn't anybody that needs stabbing.

Even in combat, they're not useful. Everyone is capable of dealing damage, usually in ways better than the fighter.

The problem is the the fighter doesn't have any real core concept beyond "well D&D needs a fighter class". They're not the heavy hitters because wizards. They can't be meatshields because the fanbase considers that too video-game-y. They can't command people around because immersion.

The whole point of the fighter is to be the class that the new guy plays because it doesn't require a lot of thought.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2017 05:10

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I like OotS.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2017 05:57

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

gradenko_2000 posted:

Day by Day counts as a fantasy role playing comic, right?

gently caress you for reminding me that exists. t :mad:

# ¿ Dec 18, 2017 20:31

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Everyone knows the best RPG meme jokes are "I rolled a natural 1/20 and..." ones.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2017 02:57

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

"The algorithm won't like that" is going to be the main phrase of 2019.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2017 19:34

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 04:34

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Merry Christmas, you goddamn nerds.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2017 20:00

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Chat Thread 2017

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