Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

JackMann posted:

Apropos of nothing, I vaguely remember a game designer once had a tone deaf suggestion of using the inner city as the setting for a dungeon crawl. I want to say this was from something in the 90's. Does anyone else remember this, or am I going crazy?

Isn't that the plot of The Warriors?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Pretty much. If you wanted a general mecha game that was relatively true to mecha shows in the '80s and '90s, Mekton was your only option at the time. Battletech didn't do it, Robotech didn't do it. Eventually you'd have Heavy Gear or Jovian Chronicles, but those were very specific interpretations of different anime (Armored Trooper Votoms and Gundam Universal Century, respectively). Ironically, R. Talsorian would do an Armored Trooper Votoms game that game out around the same time Heavy Gear was still being published, so you had your choice of hard mil-fi mecha at the time.

There was also a weird semi-wargame/semi-RPG called Mecha which had a MesoAmerican themed vibe with Jaguar Warriors.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Kai Tave posted:

You probably shouldn't spend $300 on Shadowrun either tbh.

Far too late...I started with 1st edition and have kept current.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Arivia posted:

The thing with Ptolus was that it was a shitload of money for an absolute shitload of content. Like you paid a ton, but it was actually worth it. And it had and still probably has the best layout in any d20 product ever.

Invisible Sun was just gimmicks on gimmicks on gimmicks.

I have Ptolus and it was 100% worth the money.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
I really like Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Evolved and I really like Ptolus. I can't stand Numenara or The Strange and I have mixed feelings on Iron Heroes and his take on World of Darkness, but like or hate the content; the production quality is always fantastic.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
Buh-bye Blades in the Dark community.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

neaden posted:

Greg Stafford died. One of my favorite RPG creators of all time.

Greg gave me one of my first writing gigs doing some stuff for Different Worlds.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

PST posted:

James Wallis is one of the panel. James Wallis who has been a hack failure in the industry for most of his life, is an arrogant opinonated wanker, lied multiple times to his kickstarter backers and throws poo poo at his freelancers, who was writing pretentious bullshit in interzone and somehow managed to become thought of as an intellectual in an industry where 100+ people have more of a clue than he does.

Says it all really.

On the flip side, Alas Vegas is loving amazing...after it finally was published years late.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
That does seem to be the goal.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Xiahou Dun posted:

Also Tyranids.

For some all values of “happy” "hungry".

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
I do all my gaming online these days so I only buy hard copies of stuff that really interests me.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Biomute posted:

Publishers like Burning Wheel HQ and Vincent Baker has it right: produce a compelling physical product, that is practical and fulfilling to use and pass around, while providing digital handouts for easy printing and a free pdf of the book for searching or giving to that friend who is keen enough to read it, but too cheap to buy it.

In the world of fiction, which is totally different, the eReader can somewhat replace the paperback, but I would not fill a bookshelf with e-readers, nor would I get cookbooks for one. RPGs are a communal activity, where interacting with the props have value, it is closer to board games than it is to fiction, and few would argue all boardgames should just go digital.

I only buy ebooks now and am in the process of converting all my dead tree stuff over. I'm trying desperately to reduce the amount of clutter in my life. The only stuff I'm hanging on to physically is the really esoteric RPGs and books I know I'll never find digital copies of.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
Interesting article about KS marketing techniques for a video game but the same methods could be used for TGs of course.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ChrisZukowski/20181031/329102/Boyfriend_Dungeon_the_secrets_of_their_email_marketing_strategy.php

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
Even though I don't play those style of games being a grog rear end in a top hat to the core, I will continue to support those developers because God knows the deck is stacked against them.

On a lighter note. Bundle of Holding is selling Early (1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition) Champions. I bought it because I am a huge grog who loves that system. I'm looking through Enemies II and what do I find?


Check out the Markered price...




And the hand-colored character pictures.





They actually bought a used copy from some game store's clearance/used shelf, scanned it, and put it on DriveThru Rpg. I really kind of love that.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
He's not. Enemies II came out years before Watchmen the comic was ever created.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Warthur posted:

Someone who knows PoD technology better than me might have an answer.

I assume from stuff like the Metamorphosis Alpha reprint that printing from scans is possible because they sure as poo poo didn't have files for that one, and I know that MA was available print-on-demand for a while.

You probably won't get a pristine, gorgeous book with modern day top-tier production values out of it, but anyone expecting that from a book with "Palladium Books" proudly displayed on its cover was always going to be disappointed regardless of the printing method.

The early Hero Games stuff that was just released on Bundle of Holding and are the ones on DriveThruRPG, all appear to be scans from copies picked up on the sale/consignment/used shelf at an FLGS or at Half-Price books. These scans look really rough.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
Some kind of fusion of Godbound and Stars Without Number would probably handle Warframe the best,

e;fb

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Warthur posted:

It's really, really weird to me that they keep pushing SLA Industries. I don't think it ever really picked up very much steam but the Nightfall guys just keep trying to make SLA a thing and putting out new products at a slow drip.

Why SLA and not, say, Tales of Gargentihr or A|State or any number of other UK indie games which mashes up a really weird setting with a really pedestrian game system?

Tales of Gargentihr is an amazing setting with some of the worst made-up slang and boring rules put together. I ended up running a campaign of it using Savage Worlds that worked pretty well though.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Warthur posted:

I mean, that's true, but the slang isn't that much worse than the stuff in SLA or Jorune and both of those have an actual active fan community out there. You're literally the only person I'm aware of who's even run or played Gargentihr.

It is a bizarre as gently caress concept (Continents floating on a sea of dust that compresses and makes bridges between them periodically is not the weirdest thing for example).

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/15/dungeons-and-dragons-is-more-popular-than-ever-thanks-to-twitch.html

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9Urosc-JEY

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Elector_Nerdlingen posted:

Seems like it's a massive overreaction if that's the case but also I can't be mad about it.

Massive overreaction is kind of the CCP's stock in trade.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

LatwPIAT posted:

Chivalry & Sorcery. After a 3rd and 4th edition by two different companies, one of the original authors published his own revised edition of 1st edition C&S. Since he no longer owned the rights to C&S, this caused a conflict that was solved by letting the author republish C&S 1e as "The Red Book" (with all the Tolkien stuff removed).

Soon thereafter, the original revised C&S 1e started circulating again as an underground bootleg RPG with numerous additions made by a self-proclaimed fan group. For free, but very much violating the copyright on C&S.

Scott Bizar is scum when it came to relinquishing rights to other authors' work.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
Burning Wheel has some fantastic GMing advice married to a mess of a ruleset.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Leperflesh posted:

I've thought about doing this, actually; but it'd be pretty ballsy to claim expertise while never having even attempted to write & publish a RPG product. So I'd have to do some proper research and talk to a bunch of professional game publishers; my standards for something I'd print with my name on it are way way higher than just talking poo poo in a forums post.

Kevin Crawford did produce this and it's free

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/144651/Exemplars--Eidolons

Basically, a way to mimic the little brown book style with templates and commentary, but a lot of the points he makes are good for any gaming book layout.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Leperflesh posted:

modiphius? are they bad?

I've backed most of the projects they have put out, and with one very notable exception (Siege of the Citadel) I have gotten everything on time. Siege is a nasty outlier as the project is done and has shipped...maybe? It's not clear.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Roadie posted:

To me, the missing context of D&D characters is less setting, and more that there's no room for characters to have any kind of hooks into the setting, whatever it is. Even Exalted's extremely threadbare Resources/Retainers/Hearthstone backgrounds do more. It doesn't help, of course, that prewritten adventures generally have the baked-in assumption that characters have exactly zero attachments to keep them from wanting to move across the country, take a caravan to China, or whatever.

Weapons of the Gods does the 'integrate characters into the world and its history and lore' better than any other game. Pity the dice system is so awful.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Sage Genesis posted:

Hey now! WotG has its issues but I'll not hear any slander against the dice system. Matching up sets is fun!

It's a bitch to do with a VTT system.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Terrible Opinions posted:

The fiddliness of 3.X is the point. No one is playing it in the modern day for any reason besides enjoying the fiddliness or out of nostalgia. Both of which is fulfills better than 5th ed. The rules cyclopedia is better than 5th ed for simple dungeon crawling, and a different era of nostalgia. 4th ed is better for a tactical skirmish game, and a skill different era of nostalgia. What niche does 5th ed fill better? Trying to make critical role fan games?

Not true. I'm with a couple of groups that play various variations of 3.x because we simply like the system. We also have played 4e, 5e, Dungeon World and FATE, in the last few years and 3.x seems to be the most popular.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

PST posted:

Far West is absolutely coming any day now.

Also no more updates on the Kickstarter, where you know, people can comment:

http://intothefarwest.com/2019/07/12/far-west-update/

Cool! I'll get my copy from backing Alas Vegas any day now.

James Wallis posted:

NOVEMBER 26, 2014
UPDATE #52
Far Out

Hey backers. We're still waiting on the last of the stretch-goal writers and artists to deliver their pieces for Alas Vegas. My small and trusted group of readers and playtesters are reporting back and I'm making changes to the manuscript based on their comments. We are rolling towards completion.

But it's almost Thanksgiving, whatever that is, and I thought it'd be nice to give you long-suffering backers something to show my gratitude for your patience. So here's a thing. There are a number of RPG Kickstarters that have taken far, far too long to deliver on their promises, and I'm pleased to say that another member of the overdue crew is about to finally reach the end of its journey. It's called Far West and it's a well-matured blend of steampunk, spaghetti westerns and wuxia martial-arts movies. And I hope you think that sounds head-kickingly cool, because your premature Christmas present is a free PDF of the Far West rulebook.

For real. Gareth-Michael Skarka, who's behind Far West, and I go back a way, and we put our heads together and cooked up a deal. Everyone who backed Alas Vegas at the PDF level or higher is going to get Far West for free, and all the Far West backers are getting Alas Vegas for free, as soon as they're ready to go. Compliments of the season and the management of both establishments, and thank you for bearing with us during some difficult times.

If you backed both games then we are both supremely grateful to you, and you should drop me a line directly and something bonus will be sorted out.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

NLJP posted:

I'm very much A Casual when it comes to all things TG but is there a summary somewhere for far west and what happened? I also think cowboy western wuxia sounds rad but also like reading about things that sound like disasters.

Edit: I hope the author isn't just bullshitting about mental health issues to garner sympathy for all the problems with the project and that they get better.

Well, there is also this which I did back (I am not that much of an idiot to trust anything Gary has to offer) and was completed and shipped.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brokenrulergames/high-plains-samurai

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

theironjef posted:

You can't shoot that many hogs! They're feral! It's to shoot his kids.

God, I wish I could find the Bushman posts in TFR. He's a goon in Louisiana whose family raised rice. Feral hogs kept rampaging through the paddies and destroyed thousands and thousands of dollars of the crop, so Bushman went positively medieval on their piggy asses.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
So something popped up on the Legend Keeper Patreon.

Legend Keeper is an online world management system that integrates maps, text, characters...everything for regions down to individual buildings if you're that crazy. It went to closed beta a little while ago and it is really nicely done.

Braden, Designer of Legend Keeper, posted:

Earlier today, WorldAnvil announced a new feature that looked familiar to me. Per their announcement, they've been working on this feature for 2 weeks. Dimitris, the creator of WorldAnvil, gained private access to the LegendKeeper Closed Beta 2 weeks ago. I figured I would address this here. (The sidebar, in particular, is a pretty candid lift of LK's design, down to the palette choices for icons.)

I have to be honest: I was pretty bummed out when I saw this. It feels weird that a large player in the space would pay me to access my closed beta, and then turn around and use it to benefit their publically-released product.

As a competitor, I guess I could understand what drives a person to do this.

As a person, I thought we were better than this. It kinda feels like I'm in middle school again.

Both my designer (who created this design expression) and I are pretty disappointed in WorldAnvil and Dimitris' behavior. After I confronted him about it, Dmitris joined my Discord server, said a few untrue things in the public channel, and then messaged me privately and admitted he created designs directly based on the content he was allowed to view in the closed beta. He stated it non-apologetically, matter-of-factly, paid me lots of compliments and told me I was "probably just stressed right now".

Part of me just wants to let it go, but as an independent creator, I feel like I should stand up for myself and my designer. LegendKeeper frowns on this kind of blatant copying. If we were in 1.0, I'd brush it off, but these folks paid to access closed beta in order to use our designs. Something about that just makes me kinda queasy in my stomach.

So what are we going to do now? I've stated my piece; I just wanted people to know what happened. Now...We're just going to keep making. We're going to move forward, continuing in the same spirit of curiosity and kindness that we have been. We'll continue to develop a user-focused, empowering creative tool that I hope will inspire everyone to make things that they love.

We're proud to be creating something that inspires everyone, even our competitors. ;)

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

DicktheCat posted:

If you play a man, are you required to have:
A) a porn stache
B) an afro
C) a combination of both, and maybe some sideburns for good measure

Because, if so, I will be purchasing this game.

Chest hair is, of course, a given.

No, but it is recommended. Also, this is a goon created game.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
The job I retired from was as a technical writer of extremely complex documentation for custom database interfaces.

The things that were most important to those were:

Clarity of language. (As little jargon as possible)
A steady and controlled flow of ideas from basic concepts with examples and reasons why these examples work, and only then moving up to more advanced principles
Logical grouping of sections.
A good index

If you only follow those four things, your game becomes immediately more understandable.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Lemon-Lime posted:

The caveat here is that "as little jargon as possible" in a game (or documentation intended for experts in a narrow field) is not the same "as little jargon as possible" in documentation intended for use by the average person.

Bullshit. Do not make up words for things like 'Bonus' or 'Penalty' just because they sound cool. If you want to make up words, use them in places like fluff and setting.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Roadie posted:

There is some wiggle room here in thematic implication, though. Like, Essence in Exalted is basically a mana pool, but it's named differently in part so that people don't assume it can only be used on blatantly magical effects.

Use Power Pool then.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Comrade Gorbash posted:

Toss a coin to your Witcher...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_50m0Vm5VvQ

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

I know, I am the diehards. :v:

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
I use roll20, because of the battle map options and character and handout management. I like designing my own character sheets so it really doesn't matter what weird system I'm running at the time, I'll have it covered.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply