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Dawgstar posted:"Pirates are BIG now," John said, ignoring the public's disenchantment and boredom with innumerable Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Also, I think the IP value of "elves" or "vampires" or "pirates" is essentially nil as a licensed product. So you're left with the brand. Because I could make a "basically 7th Sea" movie or video game without licensing the product at all. So how much is it worth slapping "7th Sea" onto the title of my movie or video game? D&D? Something. Maybe not a lot. World of Darkness? Maybe something. 7th Sea? Likely nothing.
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Dec 26, 2018 17:37
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hyphz posted:There tends to be a problem when what gets rewards in the industry does not match what customers mostly actually want, and that seems to be the case here. You seem to be conflating "wanting to play" with "wanting to own". I'm probably never going to run another game of Fate again. I still buy every Fate book I can. I'm probably never going to run a game of 2d20, but I buy everything in that line that Modiphius puts out. I bought Chuubo. I have no interest in playing it. An online Chuubo-game-finder would be useless to me. In fact, less than useless, since it would mean that Jenna Moran had spent Chuubo resources on that game-finder that could have been spent on something I would derive value from.
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Dec 27, 2018 18:07
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I hope I don't get fired for saying this ten years from now, as I'm hesitant to dive into this, but... This feels like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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Dec 29, 2018 04:05
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That's fair. I stand corrected, and apologize.
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Dec 29, 2018 04:29
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homullus posted:So... you're agreeing with me? Tons of 3e books, a couple 4e books, now in 5e a 175-page PDF-only treatment? That's not the pattern of growing popularity. I mean, but as a percentage of all of 5E books, my gut is Eberron is exactly where it was. On phone, but I'll do the math on my laptop.
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Dec 31, 2018 17:47
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https://sla-cs1.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders/project_updatesquote:New Year Announcement regarding canon for SLA Industries I thought this was rather interesting.
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Jan 3, 2019 16:53
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https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/41294/roleplaying-games/justin-atlas-games Justin Alexander replaced Cam Banks and is now the RPG Producer for Atlas Games, taking charge of Feng Shui, Over the Edge, Unknown Armies, and Ars Magica.
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Jan 24, 2019 19:56
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Lemon-Lime posted:Oh cool, more good games getting ruined. By "more games" I infer you think he's already ruined one. Which one? Or are you just knee-jerking based on your own personal dislike?
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Jan 24, 2019 20:06
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Kai Tave posted:At any rate, however you slice it, I'm hard-pressed to see how Justin Alexander is a step up from Cam Banks. Even if you don't give a poo poo about 4E or the edition warriors thereof, I'm not seeing how that's an improvement. As someone who is ostensibly a big fan of Alexander's blog, also a huge fan of Banks, and also as someone who doesn't give a poo poo about 4E or edition wars... I don't know that anyone's established it as a step up. I'm actually surprised Atlas was able to get Banks. I think it just goes to show how hard it is to get someone else to pay your paycheck in the RPG business.
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Jan 26, 2019 00:59
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Nuns with Guns posted:You don't care about his 4e rumblings, but how do you feel about the guy using the same strained, self-serving logic to justify deadnaming a trans woman, and expressing no regrets or apologies even after she expressly demands that he correct his articles on her? (Correcting his mistake being the baseline decent thing to do here and obviously minimal effort once he was prodded to.) I think I'm allowed to be a fan of someone's writing, theory, and contributions to one of my hobbies without having to agree with them on everything they've ever done or standing by every statement they've ever made. I don't know Alexander, I don't have an exhaustive knowledge of his post history or works, but he's written a lot of posts that have made me say "Huh, that interesting..." and many more that have improved my game. I don't agree with everything he's ever written, but I don't think I have to and I don't think I've seen anything so damnable that I have to disavow any iota of respect I have for somebody who had made things I like.
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Jan 26, 2019 03:49
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Kai Tave posted:Sometimes personal problems are just that, personal problems, and not indicative of a larger issue. Everything you've ever posted here about your gaming group sounds fuckin miserable and dysfunctional and I'd literally rather stay home and shitpost on a dying forum than try to play games with a group like that. Could hyphz's posts be exactly that?
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Jan 26, 2019 07:32
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Ewen Cluney posted:OTOH I'd need something that plays significantly faster, since I just don't have the ability to have regular 6+ hour game sessions anymore. That was what damned 4E for me. It was a perfectly serviceable RPG and I welcomed innovation in D&D, but I never felt like we got very much done relative to other RPGs, in a three or four hour session.
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Jan 27, 2019 19:44
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DalaranJ posted:Arguing against the person who was in charge of the product lines he just took over BTW. Yeah, you can almost hear the incredulity in Banks' voice. Nuns with Guns posted:Someone turn "mechanical lubricant" into the new pop game philosophy term Does "mechanical lubricant" beget "mechanical santorum"?
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Jan 30, 2019 20:56
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I have a reasonably strong dislike of Numenera, but Cyphers as a mechanical idea ("give players one-time options to break encounters wide open") is something I love and have stolen for many other systems.
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Jan 31, 2019 18:10
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One thing I find interesting is how much of this is phrased (elsewhere, not necessarily here) as the "Matt Mercer effect" as opposed to the "Critical Role effect". Like, Matt's good, but it's the whole group. They're all relatively amazing. The entire thing is polished together. When I read GM's complaining about players showing up with the expectations that the GM be Mercer, I wonder where the retort is why aren't they that good, either? Newbie players showing up expecting Critical Role is like a fat guy with a small dick wondering why his sex life isn't like porn. True, some of it is that porn sets weird expectations, but some of it is "get in shape and last more than 45 sad seconds". If you're a player and you're not asking "What can I be doing to make the game better?" then you're as sad and disappointing as your GM.
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Feb 5, 2019 04:56
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Anytime I ask "Why is nobody doing this? It's easy and they'd make a tidy sum!" and it hasn't been done, my immediate reaction is that it must either be harder than I think it is or not as profitable as I think it is.
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Feb 8, 2019 02:28
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andrew smash posted:I dunno, he could have and should have just not said anything instead of making a big deal about how he wasn't going to say anything. Not that it's remotely the same thing, but further up the page Mearls is getting criticized for not saying anything. I think sometimes you're not allowed to not say anything. As such, if you don't want to say anything, you have to acknowledge that you aren't going to say anything, as a way of going "I hear you, I'm aware that there's this problem, no comment." Maybe I'm wrong.
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Feb 12, 2019 22:22
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I don't want Zak stricken from 5E. I want that to be a stain D&D and WotC have to bear and work off and overcome. A few years from now, when #MeToo is even further along than it is, I want them ashamed his name is in their book. gently caress erasing it: point to it. WotC put known rapists on the credits page of the RPG flagship.
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Feb 14, 2019 06:26
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Echoing both Dungeon World and Shadow. It really comes down to which you consider more work: wrapping your mind around not using a d20 and thinking in terms of "moves", or stripping out all the weird grimdark and poopstuff.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:20
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Yeah, the solution seems simple. Go to a lower priced competitor like itch.io, and don't use IP you don't own.
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Feb 19, 2019 23:11
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Terrible Opinions posted:any issue with say the word "assassination" Maybe it's because I haven't had coffee yet, but what's wrong with "assassination"? ("They" is fine.)
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Feb 22, 2019 14:33
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I have had my coffee now and I agree with the things people are saying.
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Feb 22, 2019 17:16
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The whole "tourist" thing feels like such bullshit. First, it just completely undervalues the appeal of recognition and having your "name in lights". True, you can't pay rent with recognition, but that doesn't mean it's worthless.[1] I remember my first RPG writing credit, and I walked on cloud for months. I'm sure the marginal value of a writing credit to someone like Jenna Moran or Robert Schwalb is negligible, but to some beginning writer whose writing credits to date consist of an eighth-author-alphabetically credit on a Kickstarter zine, there's a lot of value there. And pretending like that value is worthless because it's not cash-money just feels offensive. "Kennedy, you're just getting started, and you're barely able to get work, but you have to charge more because the 'real writers' are struggling to pay bills." Second, why does RPG writing have to be a full-time job? Every creative endeavor is like this. I work down the hall from a well-known, widely respected, and actively working comic writer. But also, more money is good and he can do both. Maybe Avery makes good money doing a job they love[2], but they could make $5,000 a year writing RPG adventures for the DMs Guild or small Kickstarters or somesuch. Not enough to live off of, but $5,000 a year isn't nothing. It's a real difference in QOL. And then some person on the internet tells them "You should charge more. You're not charging a living wage. You're hurting the industry." Why is it on them? I'm all for the fall of global capitalism, and I think people should be paid more, and I agree with a lot of the recent sentiments and the principles of the QTPoC post. But the idea that if you're not doing this full time or if you care about something other than financial compensation you're a "tourist" is kinda offensive. [1] And there's a distinction between an author valuing recognition and a publisher preying on people and offering recognition as compensation. [2] Or maybe their circumstances don't allow them to be a full-time writer, due to being a SAHP or having a chronic illness or what-have-you.
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Feb 25, 2019 06:06
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I thought we were in a golden age of RPGs.
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Feb 25, 2019 06:46
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fosborb posted:Thats dangerously close to https://twitter.com/forexposure_txt, to be honest See my footnote #1.
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Feb 25, 2019 14:09
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I'm not saying anything new here, but: Creativity (often) scales freely. I'm a hobbyist baker. I can spend a lot of time making a cake that meets professional standards, and my doing so doesn't undercut professional bakers. It took me twice as long, but I can't give away infinite cake for free. A hobbyist adventure designer can spend a lot of time making an adventure (thrice as much time as a professional!), and the cost to distribute it is free. Maybe you spend $500 on a cover, some stock illustrations, a custom illustration, and a Dyson-esque map or three. So you charge $2 hoping to claw that money back. But now that it's made, there's no marginal cost of distribution. And that's a force that I don't know how we can combat. Unless the cost to manufacture is sufficiently high (see, movies), creativity compensation is always going to be weighed down by hobbyists because there's no marginal cost.
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Feb 25, 2019 20:03
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Impermanent posted:imo if making rpg things is a hobby for you, you should either price it at professional rates or release it for free. This whole realm of "bob's elf guide" for $1 dollar doesn't make any one any money and is just an arbitrary barrier between people who really don't have a spare dollar and your ramblings about elves. I mean, is that true? $250 for Bob's Elf Guide might not be a professional rate, but it may be the cost of art (the one thing Bob hasn't been able to teach himself, unlike layout or proofreading), and it may be the cost of art at professional art rates. $250 may be the difference between a text-only document (which nobody will ever read), and an Elf Guide people will read. Essentially, Bob is releasing it for free, but the $1 times the 250 sales means Bob doesn't have to explain to his partner why he spent $250 on pictures of elves.
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Feb 25, 2019 23:23
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One additional note about curation... It takes a while. How long do I have to stare at a painting to decide if it's good? An hour? How long do I have to watch a movie to decide if it's good? Two hours? How long do I have to be exposed to an RPG book to decide if it's good? For a new system and setting book, I don't think I could speak to it without at least ten hours. And I can't do it by myself, either. I've got to rope my friends in to playing this new hotness as well.
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Feb 26, 2019 14:01
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Lemon-Lime posted:You can spot nearly every obvious issues with any RPG by just reading the book, as long as you are someone who has played a lot of games and read even more. It's still several hours, but you don't need to rope any friends in to play (but discussing your findings with other people who are also well-read will help pick out a wider range of issues). Yeah, I think that's only true if the game is similar to the games that come before it. Sure, you can probably get a sense of Shadow of the Demon Lord without playing it if you've played a lot of other d20 OSR-adjacent games. But, say, Blades? Even if you've played oodles of Powered by the Apocalypse, the "feel" of the game isn't immediately obvious. You have to play it to see how it hums. Besides, I'm not looking for the obvious issues. I'm looking for curation. I'm looking for someone to help guide me between the great and the "pretty solid if you're into that kinda thing." I wouldn't trust a board game reviewer who hadn't played a game they were reviewing. And I wouldn't trust and RPG reviewer who hadn't played the game. When an RPG reviewer posts a "review" that's just them reading through the book and commenting on that, I consider that the board game equivalent of a "box opening", it's a review of the book, not the game.
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Feb 26, 2019 15:33
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hyphz posted:The problem with that is that any RPG can be made or broken by the group, so one group’s experience can be radically different from another. The book is the only constant. To which I say "pish posh". Both those arguments can be made about board games, and yet there seems to be a strong element of curation there (e.g., when Tabletop or SUSD do a review and then the game sells out everywhere). I have a copy of Root. I haven't played it. But I have the pieces and the rules, "the only constant". And yet, your group's experience with it would be radically different from mine. And there are definitely board games that read as dry and awful and simple yet when they hit the table there's an unquantifiable magic that happens (see, like, every review of Happy Salmon). There are tons of board games out there that are amazing, come across as bad, and curation has shown us that they're awesome if you give them a chance. Now, I'm willing to accept that there's something special about RPGs versus board games. But my impression remains that any RPG reviewer that hasn't played the game they're reviewing isn't really reviewing a game, they're just reviewing a book. And there's value in "RPGs as texts we take inspiration from" as opposed to "RPGs as games we play", so there's value in those book-reviews, but I wouldn't rely on them for my purchase decisions.
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Feb 26, 2019 16:02
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Lemon-Lime posted:No, you can 100% spot glaring issues in systems you've never seen before or that are very different from existing systems. All it requires is for the reader to have read widely, instead of just having read 50 different d20 games. Again, if it's glaring, I don't really a curator, do I? I don't need to go to Rotten Tomatoes to be told that Holmes and Watson sucked. I'm looking for the less obvious, pernicious problems that are endemic to a system that are only really apparent after a few sessions.
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Feb 26, 2019 17:03
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hyphz posted:Even Blades in the Dark has had issues with its obvious associations with Thief: The Dark Project and Dishonored, since those games generally portray powered and heroic rogues, not ones who are having to go on raids with broken ankles in order to get the money to have the ankle set. By hearsay, Dresden Files has the same issue - the version of FATE it uses is actually pretty "gritty", which is a definite tone shift compared to the books. So am I correct in assuming that you feel that Blades, taken in terms of its Kickstarter claims and text alone, is a failure of a text? That because it marketed "daring scoundrels" and the text talks of "daring scoundrels" but what the game often (but not always) plays like is "desperate, hungry scoundrels", that it's a failure of a text? Because I think it's a really solid game, but I knew about the "desperate, hungry" part going in because of reviews and Let's Plays. Which feels like an argument in favor of curation, but I don't want to ascribe that to you if that's not what you're going for.
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Feb 26, 2019 18:01
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So, the thing I struggled with Blades with, both as a GM and now as a player, is that while putting difficulty (as opposed to ProfessorCirno's likelihood) front and center is really refreshing, the lack of any likelihood is... something I struggle with. Like, there are things that The Goddamned Batman (TM) might find himself unlikely to succeed at, even with hard work. And the only way I've found to emulate those situations in Blades is to break a roll up into multiple rolls so you increase the chance that one of them is a failure. But even that feels unsatisfying. If you make a thing your "thing", in Blades, its pretty easy to auto-succeed, just with varying degrees of cost. It's pretty easy in Blades to get to a 94% chance of success on every roll of a given verb (and ~50% chance of success at no cost). And that's only balanced by increased harm. There's no way (that I'm aware of) to emulate "unlikely but not terribly risky". Now, most games go the other way (easy to emulate likelihood, hard to emulate actual effort), so I'm all in favor of Blades. But with about 100 hours of Blades under my belt, I'm beginning to feel like the pendulum went a little too far for me. It's one of the things that drew my eye to Spire. It's got a similar "how big a deal is what you're trying to undertake" in three tiers, just like Blades. But it's also got a likelihood dial if the GM decides that something is unlikely to succeed, but since your player is the Goddamned Batman (TM), they'll probably fail safely. Multiple invisible dials is good. Alien Rope Burn posted:Well, at the time compared to its peers (games like Traveller, Spacemaster, Robotech, or FASA's Star Trek), West End's Star Wars was pretty much the wacky waving tube-man storygame of its day. Whereas other games of the time were either D&D-derivatives or really, really obsessed with tracking every year of your military career, Star Wars was a breath of fresh air in that you didn't worry about levels or service terms. It even gave you a resource you could use to improve your rolls when you wanted! Shocking! When d6 went OpenD6, I was confident it would become a bigger darling than it is. I feel like a lot of... second generation grognards (?) look back on it fondly, but somehow it never really morphed into something more modern in the way I would have expected it to.
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Feb 27, 2019 18:07
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Serf posted:in my experience with blades, that's not really all that interesting. risk is where the game thrives, so if something isn't risky then it just happens. if its unlikely, make it a fortune roll with 1 die, or hell 2 dice taking the lowest. its not really something i encountered in my time with blades and scum & villainy because it doesn't really feed into the action the system is trying to create I mean, that's like saying "All Controlled Actions" are uninteresting. Just because the chance of fallout is low doesn't mean the odds of success are high. Your table is different than the tables I've played at, I guess. I think you can have very interesting questions where the fallout is just "Your mentor is angry but don't worry they still love you" and that doesn't immediately translate into "Well, you're guaranteed a success."
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Feb 27, 2019 18:34
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hyphz posted:If everybody who can teleport says that teleporting is not a problem, that still gives no information to me who cannot. I mean, to be fair, if everybody I talked to could teleport, and I could not, I would probably I assume I was the problem.
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Feb 27, 2019 23:34
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I had a bit of an eye-opening moment comparing Blades in the Dark to Spire: City Must Fall. So, similar mechanics, similar game conceits (you're criminals trying to accomplish your mission while the city tries to keep you down), narrative-structurally-similar settings (there's a city, you can't really leave easily, it's well-defined in a very high level sense and then just make up what you're "Doskvol" / "Spire" looks like and there is no canon). Blades seemed to say "It's narrative, good luck, you're on your own!" and there's been no official support in the form of adventures or any such. The closest we've seen is Sean Nittner's scores (example), which are one page of hooks and a vague idea. Spire, meanwhile, releases adventures like Eidolon Sky, which acknowledge that it's basically impossible to design an adventure in such a narrative heavy / player agency full game. And yet. Eidolon Sky and the others are full of well described NPCs, agendas with scenes that can occur as the GM thinks they're necessary, locations that might be relevant, etc. You can pick up Charterhall University and you're barely further than if I pitched an adventure seed on this thread. You pick up Eidolon Sky and you're about as ready as a published adventure can get you. (And I'm not criticizing Nittner - that's a cool tool. But it's even worse when you consider it's fan-made and Blades has nothing official.)
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Feb 28, 2019 19:47
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Yeah, I linked to another prefab Score (Gaddoc Rail is also by Nittner). I just think it's too bare bones. I'd rather start with something that is malleable. "Here's an idea. You and your players do all the work" is the story game ethos, but it didn't have to be. It's neither friendly now helpful to people new to a genre or type of game. It could instead be "Here is a detailed framework for events, with advice on different ways to run it depending on how your players go off the rails"
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Feb 28, 2019 20:11
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I realize it wasn't obvious, because I didn't say it: Eidolon Sky is a pay-what-you-want adventure. So you can check it out for free. It shows why I think a Blades adventure could be 29 pages / what I would want from a full adventure. Gaddoc Station / Charterhall Universities aren't adventures, they're just adventure writing prompts.
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Feb 28, 2019 20:20
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Because clicking through and signing up for the rowanrookanddecard website might be a bit much, some highlights:   
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Feb 28, 2019 20:27
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I fundamentally reject the notion that Blades is any more special as some kind of "narrative conversation" game than Spire. People like games where there are conversations. But the whole point of a prefab adventure is that the GM can sit down and say "Here's the sitch. You start here, you're doing this." You can do a Gaddoc Station-style sheet for Spire, and you can do a Eudolon Sky-style adventure for Blades. If you want to sit down with your players and answer fundamental questions about the universe with your players (sometimes I do, sometimes I don't), Gaddoc Station is good enough. But if I just want something handed to me, it's not enough. You can run Blades with a conversation. You can also run it as a "Here's the adventure." and as the game progresses have the conversation as questions not answered by the adventure come up. "Hmm, I don't know, do you know the bartender at the Angry Lion?" The idea that you can only have a good adventure of Blades if the players get to help design the initial adventure is poppycock. Blades would be well served by having cool published adventures, which I think goes back to the original point that good adventures that show cool stuff and assumptions are something a lot of narrative games have abandoned because they take a lot of loving work.
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Feb 28, 2019 21:48
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