TG as an Industry: A pendulum swing against the excesses of Rule 0 culture

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG as an Industry: A pendulum swing against the excesses of Rule 0 culture

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Pinnacle Kickstarters have been pretty consistently on time (Or even early for the PDF deliveries) I think the only one I've backed where there was even a slight delay was when a literal epidemic caused their fulfillment warehouse to be closed down for a few days, and even then they let us know.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2018 13:54

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 04:22

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Each of those squares is about 4 squares on a 3.0/3.5/4.0 map, and you aren't assumed to be standing one person to a square. Hell, you can have an entire fight happen in one square, since one of the standard encounters is 'one monster in a ten by ten room.'

It's not a tactical battle map, it's a way to show scale on a dungeon map.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2018 05:19

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

The best tactical combat RPG is still Spellbound Kingdoms where the tactical options have nothing to do with moving on a map.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2018 05:37

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

DigitalRaven posted:

Is Skarka even a designer any more?

What's he done since not releasing Far West?

People occasionally hire him for other projects, or talk about hiring him, and then someone says "Hey, uh, really? Given he hasn't delivered on Far West" and then often as not his role on said product is reduced.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 11:40

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Evil Hat's gotten a lot of good exposure and sales increases from streaming games of Fate and Monster of the Week. (TAZ's MOTW mini-arc paid off by selling off their initial print run to the point they're doing reprints.)

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 15:26

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

To be honest I only half believe it because "Fakes his own death so he can keep trying to publish stolen property" is entirely in character. Like, maybe if a new "J. S." doesn't pop up on Lulu in a few months selling Tunnels and Trolls reprints with stolen illustrations from Deviantart, then I'll be convinced.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2018 09:55

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Paizo also introduced an alchemical treatment that's basically hormone therapy that you take over a series of weeks/months to transition for folks who can't afford magic one-shot belts, for exactly that reason.

# ¿ May 17, 2018 18:27

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Comrade Gorbash posted:

No one's advocating this, and to read that as what people here are saying is frankly disingenuous.

Several folks have in the Blades, actually, and in the original Google+ discussion. Not in this thread sure, but it's not a thing people are making up, either.

# ¿ May 31, 2018 01:36

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

I think she means Matt Dawkins, who is the only name I see with both V5 credits and OP Credits on the podcast.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2018 14:57

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

I'm pretty sure at least some of the folks who approached him with concerns weren't straight cis white dudes so to be honest he can gently caress off.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2018 00:24

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Also for all he goes "Oh, minorities know you have to ally with unsavory people to get things done" it's really interesting that there aren't any minority identified groups as part of your allies. It's all just groups that would mostly be made of white people. Your cyborgs don't have to form an uneasy detente with, like, the Black Panthers, just rich business libertarians and the religious right.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2018 00:44

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Parsons features in the last episode of the new season of Lore TV, apparently.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2018 14:18

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Notably the game changes for the 1e/2E fighter with access to weapon specialization, and with the addition of another level, since 7th level specialists start getting more attacks per round, going up to 2 per round for melee weapons, 3/ round for bows, and 5/1 for the Dart specialist. (Who added his strength bonus to damage with darts, and if he had gauntlets of ogre power or a belt of giant strength by 7th level, which was entirely possible, welp.)

# ¿ Dec 21, 2018 12:01

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

ProfessorCirno posted:

As far as I know, what happened is way more gross, because it was Monte Cook being brought on board and then basically chased and harassed out by Mearls. Reminder that Mearls was Cook's protoge and basically got hired into WotC by Cook.

Less by Mearls, more "By Pundit" or at least Pundit took all credit for it.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2018 04:27

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

To given an example of how a different recently published new edition of an RPG from the seventies handles it:

Not a sidebar, it's actually the first point in the last part of chargen, and doesn't conflate sex and gender, even.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2018 20:23

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Didn't some of the sorcerer kings have this explained by the fact that they'd genocided some of the regular D&D humanoid types that didn't exist in the setting? Like I think one of them had killed off the Athas gnome population or something, and another one had done for ogres.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2019 14:33

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Gonna guess a lot of folks first game is gonna be Monster of the Week given the way Adventure Zone is apparently driving sales of it for Evil Hat.

But my first RPG was Runequest, and I rolled up a duck named Donald because that's what you do when you're five and have the option to play a talking duck.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2019 16:25

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

I'm like 90 percent certain that SJG stuff showing up on drivethru had less to do with "Finally go where the customers are and more "Well, the guy who founded drivethru that Jackson had a beef with is dead, I guess we can bury the hatchet with the corpse"

# ¿ Feb 4, 2019 12:06

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Side note, you probably don't need to be worried that D&D is the only game AP podcasts will encourage anyone to try.

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/42405/the-adventure-zone-bump-sales-little-known-rpg-surge

# ¿ Feb 5, 2019 02:14

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

My short-lived Monster of the week game was basically just "Ghost Hunter TV show crew who are cynically faking it just keep encountering real monsters and it's really getting off-putting" Like Scooby Doo in reverse so I can safely say it's a great subplot to use, if not necessarily for an actual play.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2019 02:43

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Morke, his co-developer. Who crawled briefly out of the woodwork when all this started to go "Zak bad" as if it'd be redeeming.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2019 07:26

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

The only even vaguely interesting product I remember being Desborough adjacent was some sort of sixties spy comedy game, but I never bought it, because Desborough.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2019 14:12

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Unity is a solid implementation of 4E-esque design with some indy stuff tossed in. (The non-combat gear rules feel sort of dungeon-world inspired?) and -way- too many words wasted on the homebrew setting and having mecha rules? For some reason? I mean I'm not gonna turn down giant robot fights but it felt weirdly out of place.

Mostly I want to see what they do to expand the splat options. It feels like there's design space for Presence/Charisma based classes that didn't make it to the corebook,

# ¿ Feb 22, 2019 04:25

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

It's probably better to compare it to the success of other nerd-adjacent TV and movie kickstarter projects, like Bring Back MST3K and the Veronica Mars movie, which pulled similar numbers, though admittedly not as fast.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2019 14:25

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

90s Cringe Rock posted:

Then there's Mythras as a renamed RuneQuest 6.

Traveller's up to double digits, including two Mongoose and two GURPS editions. Did RuneQuest ever have a D20 edition?

Kind of? 13th Age in Glorantha.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2019 11:44

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Mors Rattus posted:

A lot of it has to do with the time he decided he would write all Kickstarter updates in the voice of a wizard, and would be extremely nasty and rude to people asking him to do things like 'clarify what he was saying about shipping dates because the wizard voice is not helpful.'

Don't forget "At the same time, had a conflict of interest because if you wanted to complain about how he was handling his kickstarter your complaints would go to some dude named Luke Crane who works for Kickstarter."

# ¿ Apr 10, 2019 23:24

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Everyone who backed at a level to get physical books is getting at-cost POD codes anyway, they've included that in almost every kickstarter since Exalted 3rd since the POD was available so much earlier than the deluxe books.

Honestly I think the actual errata is shorter than the apology for needing to have errata.

unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 14:06 on May 9, 2019

# ¿ May 9, 2019 13:56

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Holden would definitely be one to know about knowingly shielding abusers.

# ¿ May 9, 2019 15:14

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

There was no page XX reference in the final draft, for the record, so that was mostly just Neall rambling about his fears

# ¿ May 9, 2019 22:30

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Kurieg posted:

The 3 age groups were basically "Small child" "Teenager" and "So old it defies belief, Jesus Christ it's depressing just being around you."

The last category notably included 'basically everyone above 25 or so'

# ¿ May 15, 2019 18:23

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

I want to say The One Ring uses Front/Back positioning stuff but it's definitely not highly tactical in the -combat- system.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2019 13:20

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

It also doesn't have an int stat. (You could argue it has 3, with control being "I'm good at manipulating science devices" and Reason being "I'm good at logic puzzles" and Intuition being 'I'm good at making educated guesses)

# ¿ Aug 18, 2019 00:46

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

One of the early "Let's try to beat D&D at its own game" RPGs, SPI's Dragonquest, had no intelligence stat at all, just a "Magic Aptitude" stat and Perception, the latter of which was the same for everyone. Various schools of magic required more magic aptitude to play with, with greater summoning requiring basically average values while being a psychic required a pretty high score, based on the idea that demons want people to be able to contact and contract with them fairly easily and being a psychic was almost all your own internal power.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2019 03:47

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Kickstarter's been pretty lovely about unions for a while.

Like they once tried to convince their employees that unionizing was culture appropriation.

https://twitter.com/bombsfall/status/1108825767914291200

# ¿ Sep 13, 2019 00:59

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Leperflesh posted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/startrekadventures/comments/dp8vrt/modiphius_has_decided_to_remove_this_subreddit/

The accusation that Modiphius has withdrawn/blackballed DBS from submitting or publishing content is the most serious one to me, and I haven't seen discussion about it yet.

From the linked thread they at least claim to have not removed anyone's free content, RPGWebby's the guy called out as Modiphius' RPG lead.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2019 23:51

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 04:22

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

The Blighted (and Anakim, which are really just a type of blighted, blighted's a catch-all term for "Folks who got hosed up by attempts at magical gengineering) aren't really meant to be unproblematic enemies you can kill without worrying about it- there's a giant half page sidebar on players wanting to cure the blight and talking about how it should be hard but possible, but also talking about how they're meant to be a moral dilemma because it's not their fault that aliens or wizards or alien wizards made it hard for them to co-exist with humans so taking it as "They're trying to make enemies that are unproblematic to kill" is exactly the opposite of the design goal. In setting, the Anakim aren't even always evil, the one all-Anakim and blighted faction in the game is a theocratic state with a not-Christian church that preaches mercy and pity for those you feel instinctive disgust and hate for (Humans) just to get around their creator's programming. So it's more "The Outsiders who created them -wanted- them to be orcs and ogres but a significant fraction of them basically went "Yeah, gently caress that."

There's an argument to be made that the issue with that sidebar is more the assumption that people with certain kinds of inherited capability issues can be/should be 'cured' of them which is a whole other kettle of fish I don't feel qualified to comment on.

# ¿ May 15, 2021 18:51

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