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

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

Arivia posted:

Starfinder has been a big success for Paizo and will not lead to them changing their product design because it is successful as it follows their usual product strategy.

it's important also to mention that it is very bad, which it shares with PF and 5e, but somehow that hasn't translated into poor sales, which I find very frustrating.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2018 19:23

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 08:13

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

Xelkelvos posted:

That was assume Wizards wants to use D&D for anything other than as a product to keep the brand warm while holding their essentially permanent stake in the market. Only recently did they even start making D&D stuff set in some of the MtG settings. If there's any sort of vision in Wizards, it's squarely part of their MtG brands and far, far away from their D&D brands.

I used to think releasing a D&D Campaign setting in Dominaria was dead-easy money, most of the lore was written just codify and slap on some prestige classes. I now see that WotC was correct to keep those brands far apart. Not because they hate money, but because they don't want their golden goose to get tainted with the stink of D&D.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2018 03:26

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

Fuego Fish posted:

Back in the 4e days I was working on a bit of a homebrew thing for D&D in space. A lot of it was quite fun to stat up but I may have gone a smidge overboard in trying to figure out if it was feasible to do zero-G combat.

One of these days I'll rework that setting into a system less trashy than D&D. It had some quirky fun bits included, with an overall more "industrial" sort of feel than your standard Spelljammer stuff. Basically a magitech kind of thing, I suppose.

I was able to brute Force 3D combat with a die showing relative elevation to a fixed point (the dragon they were all fighting), but it was clunky

# ¿ Feb 17, 2018 02:11

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

Captain Rufus posted:

I had more backstabbing in my TIE Fighter Braunstein campaign that was basically Space Above and Beyond only with Imperial test pilots.

hold the loving phone a second there

Braunstein-rules TIE Fighter RPG?

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 07:58

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

Subjunctive posted:

I’d help you dispose of the body.

I can make the wiki!

# ¿ Mar 4, 2018 23:26

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

UrbanLabyrinth posted:

So Paizo just announced Pathfinder 2.0.

Let's see if they get the same backlash they created towards WotC for this one.

Edit: At least some portion of their fanbase seems very worried about whether their unplayed hoard of 3.51 D&D materials will be compatible with 3.52.
"We are holding you to this. I personally choose Paizo over WotC because 3.0/3.5 wasn't compatible with 4th ... and 5th wasn't compatible with either. Don't be like WotC!!"
"All those books I have will be pointless with another new combat system, another magic system, another over engineered, over thought, over fan serviced system. Thanks, another few hundred dollars down the drain."
"Great... now all the stuff I already have is obsolete."

Oh God yes slam this poo poo into myveins

hhhnnnngggghhhgghh

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 02:03

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

spectralent posted:

also LFQW is just "I have fun when other people have less fun". Yeah, sure, people who like playing wizards probably love it but I imagine the pool of people who really want to have to sit on their hands for four hours and get told all their fun ideas are impossible while Dave conjours his eleventh platinum half-demon orca to trivially save everyone is probably much smaller.

just post this and close the thread

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

# ¿ Mar 11, 2018 22:45

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

As someone who's been balls-deep in Slay the Spire for the last month, cards as a way of generating a random array of options available along with a path to upgrades/character advancement seem like the platonic ideal and I have no idea how we even bothered with dice.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2018 22:34

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

FordCQC posted:

The creator is a little too obsessed with big anime titties though.

Aren't we all, though? :allears:

# ¿ Apr 4, 2018 23:19

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

Pham Nuwen posted:

In an effort to turn the topic away from cartoons:

Are there any games being published as small booklets in the style of the very oldest D&D rulebooks? It seems a nice way to provide player guides, anyway: summarize character creation & the basic mechanics in 20 pages, add a couple character sheets at the end, and sell it for $5. Write notes in it as you please and throw it away when it gets ratty.

I haven't seen this sort of thing in local game shops, but it feels like most modern game shops I go to are 95% board games and miniatures wargames with a shelf or two for Pathfinder and 5e.

FAE Accelerated is this exactly, down to printing "JUST $5" on the cover like Arizona Iced Tea so they can't jack up the price.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2018 18:13

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

Darksaber posted:

This is on top of him setting the game back by god knows how many years, but that's just a personal grudge.

Mearls blocked me on Twitter when I asked where page 2 of the fighters character sheet was early in 5es development.

Not even mad.

# ¿ May 23, 2018 20:44

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

MadScientistWorking posted:

No. The Magic the Gathering side of WoTC is kind of a performative dumpster fire too. Never have I ever seen anyone whose sole existence of a business is dependent on MtG complain that their handling of a racist dipshit dumbass was to basically do nothing and shift all the responsibility on store owners whereas a company like Nintendo is like,"Yup this is our job. We've got this."

Ah the Jim Sterling "Teddybears full of cum" explanation.

Shrecknet fucked around with this message at 02:14 on May 24, 2018

# ¿ May 24, 2018 02:07

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

GlyphGryph posted:

Speaking of Star Wars CCGs, there was one I really liked that involved placing location cards and having characters move between the locations and I remember literally nothing else from it other than that I enjoyed it and no one else ever wanted to play. Oh and the cards had like... red and blue lightsaber ratings instead of numbers? Late 90s or early 2000s, I think. Anyone know which one that was?

That was the Decipher Star Wars CCG, it was insanely good but also bloated as hell with dozens of silver-bullet cards and a preponderance of cards that let you do things from the movies, not necessarily win the game.
It was later put out with the Star part (and license) filed off as "Wars" but obviously didn't go anywhere and then Decipher had their entire company embezzled out from under them.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2023 03:54

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

theironjef posted:

How are psionics impossible to engage with in non 3rd editions?

2nd Ed psionics was a nightmare of counterintuitive bolted-on systems that made no sense

# ¿ Feb 7, 2023 00:00

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

Leperflesh posted:

30A was a giveaway to stores, they nominally "sold" sets on their site for like an hour in order to officially legally be able to say that a box was $1k, but it was not intended to be an actual product people bought. Many stores gave away the product as prizes, which I believe was the intent.

However Wizards appears to have so badly mismanaged messaging on this that tons of people keep talking about it as if it was a $1k product, including here on SA where the above sentence has been typed in some form or another repeatedly for weeks. So I lay that on Wizards for loving that up so badly.

This is bullshit post facto excuses. Wizards has had a way to reward their WPN stores and send out prize support as well as appreciation cards forever. It was a bald money grab preying on whales that backfired.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2023 23:32

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

The stat that blows my mind as to how much of a rounding-error D&D is to WotC/Hasbro is that in Hasbro's game division, Jenga makes more than D&D y-o-y.

Like, not Hasbro's entire retail game division (Monopoly and Risk, etc), but just Jenga is a bigger moneymaker than all of D&D

# ¿ Feb 9, 2023 17:11

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

Tybalt

# ¿ Feb 11, 2023 17:07

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

Siivola posted:

Nobody thought 3.5 was flawless, and Paizo made a whole deal about improving it.

pretty sure you're getting whooshed because :thejoke:

# ¿ Feb 20, 2023 18:31

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

somewhat unrelated but I've been working on a theory about this, how every Ryan Reynolds or The Rock movie is just them playing themselves and winking and going, hey isn't this a hoot? and the reason stuff like John Wick and Mad Max hit so hard is that they were like, "yeah were just gonna unironically do the thing and not be embarrassed about it.

Its a corollary to"The New Sincerity"

Shrecknet fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Feb 21, 2023

# ¿ Feb 21, 2023 04:12

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

there has never been a better book than the digest-sized 4e Rules Compendium for actually playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons

# ¿ Feb 25, 2023 12:08

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 08:13

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

some of yall haven't read that viral Tumblr post about a d&D group of 9 year Olds sneaking by a zombie Warren by singing "sleeeeep.... zooom-bies sleeep" and it shows

# ¿ Feb 27, 2023 02:41

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