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Yeah that's exactly what I was trying to go for with my vindaloo analogy but probably failed. It's totally cool to not like a caustic, molten assault of spice on your mouth, it's not everyone's idea of fun. But if your primary problem with a particular vindaloo is that it's too hot... uh I think the problem isn't the recipe, it's just that you don't like vindaloo. (God drat it now I want Indian food.)
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Jan 6, 2021 01:31
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Seems like maybe there are two different discussions being had but that might be mistaken for the same conversation: The answer to these two questions are "yes" and "yes if you want the thing the previous question was asking about," respectively. If you don't want the thing, you won't have fun, but that's completely irrelevant because the game is explicitly not intended or designed for you. Also "but is it fun?" has no place in a discussion about successful game design.  The question people want to be asking is "does it only introduce as much frustration as is strictly necessary to drive its themes" instead.
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Jan 6, 2021 01:44
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Very well said. Fundamentally, if you're talking about how a hammer doesn't dig good holes we're not really discussing how to make a good hammer and are just having a conversation about your lack of shovel.
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Jan 6, 2021 01:51
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Lemon-Lime posted:The answer to these two questions are "yes" and "yes if you want the thing the previous question was asking about," respectively. If you don't want the thing, you won't have fun, but that's completely irrelevant because the game is explicitly not intended or designed for you. Well, to put the original questions into context, they were intended as steering for prospective designers coming to Sorensen, Luke Crane, Wick, asking for advice with presumably the goal of having a popular design. So I think I could have worded that different as more of a “is this likely to be considered fun for some significant number of people who might try this game?” Or something. Like, if your goal is to have people play your design, and your design does an incredible job of capturing the experience of having open heart surgery or something, you might need to think about the f-word unless your goal is to make a piece of art or statement or something different than what people typically play games for. I should know better though than to get in a discussion about the f word in trad games edit: Like if you follow the MDA framework research, you could maybe ask if you can imagine the design appealing to any of the aesthetics listed there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDA_framework F-word nihilism is totally a position I can respect, too, though fozzy fosbourne fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Jan 6, 2021 |
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Jan 6, 2021 01:55
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Yeah but that's about marketability, not game design. People like different things and making niche games is cool and good. Some of my favorite games are really hard to get to the table cause they're basically designed with specifically someone like me in mind. So they might not having a rousing commercial success but they speak to me specifically and how much money something makes has nothing to do with how good it is. There's nothing wrong with making a game for weirdos and I'd argue that's actually a good goal. I'll take ten weird-rear end indie games that use a knife as their resolution mechanic over a single page of 5e D&D.
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Jan 6, 2021 02:03
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Yeah, I agree that whether a game is broadly or narrowly appealing to play doesn’t mean it’s good or bad. Unless I don’t like it, in which case it’s poo poo
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Jan 6, 2021 02:07
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Xiahou Dun posted:Yeah that's exactly what I was trying to go for with my vindaloo analogy but probably failed. 
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Jan 6, 2021 02:07
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You know, I'm looking at the website for the product Band of Blades and it says this:quote:
what I'm not seeing there is: Lemon-Lime posted:This is extremely not the case. BoB is very good at doing the exactly one thing it wants to do, which is replicating the early Black Company/Malaz 7th Army feeling from Black Company/MBotF. It's not a generic "Blades in the Dark but you're mercenaries" hack, it's a hack for playing one specific military campaign with a very specific fictional positioning and an understanding of the game's theme that everyone at the table needs to share for the game to work. 90% of the stuff you bring up (Corruption, high lethality, recruits being a shared pool of initially-nameless characters, campaign roles being given out to players, the existence of Scale and Threat as two different axes) exist specifically to drive that fiction. It's not designed to, and will not, work for anything else, but it also makes it very clear that it's not interested in even trying to work for anything else. The ad copy definitely does not "make it very clear that it's not interested in even trying to work for anything else". It has a bunch of fluff, before and after what I quoted, but none of that says "we are telling the story in these particular works and nothing else". The cover says that it's "Military Fantasy - Forged in the Dark". I'm glad that people in the know who are aware what the game was actually for had a blast, but this isn't how the product is sold. It is absolutely legitimate for someone to buy this thinking they're getting something with more general applicability and to judge it by that standard and find it wanting. Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Jan 6, 2021 |
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Jan 6, 2021 02:08
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Yawgmoth posted:I just had chicken vindaloo and I ordered it Indian Spicy™, it was extremely good. Wisdom. When I get a really good curry as take-out, sometimes a cat will come and want attention. Then they get within 6 feet of the curry and just yeet the gently caress out. That's how you know it's the good stuff.
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Jan 6, 2021 02:29
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fozzy fosbourne posted:TL;DR: Are games art???
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Jan 6, 2021 02:34
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Evil Mastermind posted:Yes. Next question. If a game has never been played, is it still a game?
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Jan 6, 2021 02:36
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fozzy fosbourne posted:If a game has never been played, is it still a game?
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Jan 6, 2021 02:49
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fozzy fosbourne posted:If a game has never been played, is it still a game? Man, this is easy. (90% of this hobby is games that are never played. Or read. God how do I stop buying games)
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Jan 6, 2021 02:49
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Evil Mastermind posted:Also yes. Is a pop tart a sandwich?
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Jan 6, 2021 02:50
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It's a dumpling.
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Jan 6, 2021 03:04
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It's a ravioli.
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Jan 6, 2021 03:12
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Personally I found the point about how the distributed-GM roles actually don't function very salient, regardless of genre or style preference. Nobody is actually going to allot the military authority to decide 'send your Specialist on this mission' to one player. It's very hard to enforce military hierarchy in a tabletop game, out of character, and that's what would be necessary to make that operation work. I think that's a meaningful criticism of the game and one that makes me think about how one might distribute roles in ways that don't break down like that.
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Jan 6, 2021 03:31
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It's fairly trivial whether or not games are art, but that means we have to figure out a good critical vocabulary for discussing them that isn't pure extension of existing literary/movie/music criticism. It's particularly acute with tabletop games since the game is in a lot of ways a toolbox for creating further art, but I'd say its art on its own regardless of its other merits. Being more specific I really like the way Polaris handles GMing but I also just really like Polaris so.
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Jan 6, 2021 03:45
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Leraika posted:It's a ravioli.
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Jan 6, 2021 04:02
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Tulip posted:It's fairly trivial whether or not games are art, but that means we have to figure out a good critical vocabulary for discussing them that isn't pure extension of existing literary/movie/music criticism. It's particularly acute with tabletop games since the game is in a lot of ways a toolbox for creating further art, but I'd say its art on its own regardless of its other merits. extremely true the sooner people start thinking of mechanics as objects of aesthetic appeal, the better
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Jan 6, 2021 04:19
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aldantefax posted:fwiw I got your deal but yeah. Is there a translated version?
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Jan 6, 2021 05:32
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I think I mentioned in the old chat thread that I'd be up for it, but idk if you ever followed up on that 'cause holidays.
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Jan 6, 2021 05:47
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Joe Slowboat posted:Personally I found the point about how the distributed-GM roles actually don't function very salient, regardless of genre or style preference. Yeah, absolutely. And for me also the part about downtime being too stingy. Like, it's emulating a series where the characters actually get a lot of downtime. Croaker is always working on his annals, the Wizards are loading up every spell they can onto a ballista bolt to attempt to maim or kill a Taken, etc. It's soldiering - you spend most of your time waiting around when you're not marching. And how many chapters of the book are about what you'd call missions vs what you'd call downtime? I think not that many, but it has been a while since I read them. But even if that wasn't true, if you're being so stingy with downtime actions that all people can do is recover, then you might as well not have downtime rules and just put in plain recovery rules instead.
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Jan 6, 2021 05:56
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Jimbozig posted:But even if that wasn't true, if you're being so stingy with downtime actions that all people can do is recover, then you might as well not have downtime rules and just put in plain recovery rules instead. Just expanding on this real quick with the actual mechanics, no opinions included. At high morale, you get two campaign actions between missions; at medium, one; at low, none. You can spend one supply to get an extra campaign action. (Supply is limited, from mission rewards only, and you can only carry 3 + number of Supply Carts forward with you, low single digits. Without spoiling listed missions, you get 1-3 Supply on dedicated Supply missions.) Legion morale is not actually listed as a number breakdown in the book, anywhere but it's on the playsheet for the Marshal. Gauge from 1-10. 1-3 is Low, 4-7 is Medium, 8-10 is High. Drop below 1 and you lose a soldier to desertion each time, drop below 15 soldiers and instantly lose. Couple things increase or decrease it but are campaign-tied, also -1 per death. Five types of campaign action. You can only do each once per campaign phase (between missions). Spend an additional supply to boost a campaign action.
Every resistance roll in FitD is 6-1d6 stress suffered, the more intense harm mechanics have been discussed. There is no quartermaster move to remove corruption/blight. Draw your own conclusions, I guess. e: fixed some mixed terminology SkyeAuroline fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Jan 6, 2021 |
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Jan 6, 2021 06:15
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Hypnobeard posted:Is there a translated version?  Finished it right at the rear end-end of last year, with everything available here. And by "everything" I mean "just the three core rulebooks so far", and by that I mean "I totally skipped out on the little scenario/mini module adventures in each of the three books because I totally thought they were replays and not actually viable adventures so I need to translate them over the next few days." Outside of that, 100% playable as-is, and I'd be more than happy to answer questions and such via PM, mostly so it doesn't clutter the thread.
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Jan 6, 2021 08:21
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Joe Slowboat posted:Personally I found the point about how the distributed-GM roles actually don't function very salient, regardless of genre or style preference. They're not meant to be taking load off the GM - they're meant for the players to have control over what the Legion is doing as a military force so they can more closely identify with the unit as a whole.
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Jan 6, 2021 09:52
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Aniodia posted:
I can’t imagine translating a document that was neither fish nor fowl. Hell yeah go you. It owns bones. Would there be a rights problem if I wanted to read the original? I’m down to pay money of course.
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Jan 6, 2021 10:18
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This is probably applicable to a bunch of threads, but I adapted the solo play rules from Issue 458 of White Dwarf and mixed them with Scarlet Heroes to make old school D&D statblocks out of the Nighthaunt. Behold: Old School Sigmar: Nighthaunt.
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Jan 6, 2021 10:26
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Aniodia posted:
This is most righteous, assuming you'll be continuing translating past the core books, what could be some things we might see in the future?
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Jan 6, 2021 11:05
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SkyeAuroline posted:"Fantasy XCOM RPG" is something I'm interested in, though less "troupe play" and more "roll a new character if yours dies, otherwise keep a running cast" because the latter allows for running stories much better. "Force a fantasy tactical combat game into an intentionally loose narrative framework & break fundamental mechanics to get where you want to go" is not, and that's all that Band of Blades is. Some really good setting writing and ideas shoved into the absolute wrong framework for its goals. It could have been done well in a system that actually supported combat-heavy play.
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Jan 6, 2021 12:58
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Xiahou Dun posted:I can’t imagine translating a document that was neither fish nor fowl. Hell yeah go you. It owns bones. Would there be a rights problem if I wanted to read the original? I’m down to pay money of course. So as I mentioned in the previous thread, this is merely an unofficial fan translation. I do not have the official rights, nor do I claim to, to say mine is the definitive translation, and were I asked by anyone at Group SNE or Kadokawa Publishing to take it down, I would. That being said, one of the massive (and I mean massive updates that helped me out considerably was Kindle versions of all of the books. That's not just core rulebooks, but also supplements, region books, replays, etc. Downside is, they're only available through Amazon Japan to Japanese accounts only. Upside, one of my old, old high school nerd buddies from back at the turn of the millennium ended up going into the Navy (and became a cook on a submarine like he wanted) now actually lives in Japan, and let me borrow his Amazon Japan account in order to get said versions. If something like that is not feasible, the original paper books are still fairly cheap, and iirc they should ship from Amazon Japan super quickly even considering the current plague. I wanna say that the basic core rulebooks should still only be around ¥700, ¥800 or so each, though some of the supplements get up around ¥3500-¥4000 or so before shipping. drrockso20 posted:This is most righteous, assuming you'll be continuing translating past the core books, what could be some things we might see in the future? So there are about 10 or so rules supplements, that for the most part add various new races, classes, combat feats, spells, etc. There's a couple of books that allow for playable Barbaros characters, as well as one particular book covering epic-level play (above 15th level, though I don't know how far above). Another describes gameplay in a past era, while a whole bunch of new gods and religions are the basis for yet another supplement. There's also 8 books that cover various regions in the world, adding a bunch of background and NPCs to be used during play. I do appreciate the thanks, as it's definitely not a project I'd blasted out over the course of a weekend. There's a number of reasons it took me almost a decade to get this done, though the plague lockdowns honestly helped to give me the time to work on it. As far as continuing, unless I get asked to pull it down I do plan on continuing, starting with the various rules supplements when I finish with the scenarios I'd skipped. Dunno how long that'll take, but with any luck hopefully not another decade.
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Jan 6, 2021 13:45
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fozzy fosbourne posted:If a game has never been played, is it still a game? It's an indie game. 
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Jan 6, 2021 16:03
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Splicer posted:Are there any games that lean heavily into this with an explicitly enshrined in the rules B team? Your guy dies or is in recovery or just isn't suitable for the mission so you pick up a guy from the B team, but also there's rules and tables for what the B team gets up to on their missions? Not quite what you want, but Star Trek Adventures has some good "background character steps up" rules. Basically, if Troi doesn't make sense on the Klingon/Cardassian stealth/battle mission, then you grab Lieutenant T'Kar from the lower decks. T'Kar starts out as a subset of a character with just enough stats to sneak around and stab some Cardassians, but each time you take them on a mission, they progress toward becoming a full character. It's nothing terribly novel on its face, but its implementation is pretty solid and rewards fleshing out the crew of a big ship.
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Jan 6, 2021 16:41
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Is Agricola OSR?
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Jan 6, 2021 19:32
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Is Agricola OSR?
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Jan 6, 2021 19:34
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Tulip posted:It's fairly trivial whether or not games are art, but that means we have to figure out a good critical vocabulary for discussing them that isn't pure extension of existing literary/movie/music criticism. It's particularly acute with tabletop games since the game is in a lot of ways a toolbox for creating further art, but I'd say its art on its own regardless of its other merits. Tuxedo Catfish posted:extremely true I agree that we need a critical vocabulary that isn't just a pure extension of criticism of other entertainment and arts media, but we can certainly borrow from them and learn from them, and I feel like for the most part we aren't even clearing that hurdle. I'm arts-criticism-adjacent in my real life, in that I'm married to an artist with a masters degree and we've been together for... uhhh... 23 years+ now. She's primarily a ceramic artist, works as an arts administrator, and has a long history of engagement with gallery and presentational work (as opposed to pure-utilitarian ware, which she also has a history with but isn't as relevant here). As her tag-along and wingman, I've sponged up a fair bit myself, enough to have long discussions with her and to develop my own Opinions About Art. One of the things she occasionally points out to me is that there can be a divergence between what an artist apparently intended to convey with their work, and the fineness of control and execution evidenced by their technique. The former is usually easier for an audience - in particular, an audience unversed in that particular art - to notice and evaluate than the latter, although not always; and that can extend even to "experts" such as the person jurying an exhibition. Consequently, we sometimes see artwork that is impressive on its surface, in that it might be striking, or have a moving theme, or intelligently convey an interesting idea: but which has visible flaws in execution which detracts from the work. And the cool thing is that sometimes those flaws are simply imperceptible to what we might call the "lay audience", but sometimes they're only subconsciously perceptible, negatively affecting people's appreciation of the work in ways they can't properly articulate. This could toss us into tangential conversations like "who is art actually for" and "does the audience matter" and "death of the artist" etc. etc. ad nauseum, but I think there's a gem of wisdom here that is highly applicable to especially Tuxedo Catfish's comment. Which is that, even if you were primed to enjoy a particular RPG product (as art or otherwise), and even if you lack the depth of experience or study or understanding to consciously identify them, mechanical flaws are flaws of technique that may (or may not) affect your enjoyment or experience of that game. To wit: A ceramic artist with experience notices that this teapot, which has an interesting form and colors and is cool that way, had a run of excess glaze that touched the foot and was then ground off, and this means while it's totally a functional teapot and would be fine to sell it's not really a good example of execution (but note that sometimes glaze dripping is done intentionally, and it's fine when that's the case...). We see this often in student work: good ideas, poor execution reflective of a novice's skillset. It's not a condemnation of an artist, but if you're looking at stuff "with good ideas, but poor technique" that's valid criticism that is valuable to other people who might not otherwise spot the poor technique right off the bat. And poor technique may or may not affect the function of an object that has both a functional and an artistic aspect, but that doesn't mean it's invalid to mention it. Similarly, I have seen (and own!) beautiful and apparently well-executed teapots that, when actually used, dribble out the spout, because it turns out that getting a teapot spout to not dribble is very technically challenging, and you almost never get an opportunity to try pouring some tea from a given teapot before you buy it, especially if you buy it at an art gallery. So mechanical/execution flaws sometimes are hidden and only emerge during use. The language for expressing this kind of criticism already exists and would work fine for RPGs. It is valid to express appreciation for a work that you found aesthetically pleasing even if it has technical flaws: it is also valid to point out those technical flaws. Technical flaws may or may not rise to the point of disqualifiers for different people. Someone may not mind that their teapot would dribble, because for them, that's either a minor thing to deal with, or maybe they never even use the teapot but bought it and appreciate it purely as an artistic object. And another person might view the dribble as not only making the teapot worthless, but also reflecting badly on the teapot-maker, who really ought to know better and shouldn't be submitting dribble teapots to art shows and slapping big price tags on them, and it's just not plausible that they didn't know their pots dribble given what we know of their artist resume and bona-fides. RPG mechanics are part of their structure; structure is part of aesthetic appeal; excellent function is aesthetically pleasing. Concept, function, and form interact; they can reinforce or conflict. It's OK to appreciate artwork that is more about aesthetic or concept than function; it's also OK to appreciate "pure craft" (if there is such a thing there isn't) with no particular regard for aesthetic, if all you want is a hot pot of tea. It's OK to regard a work within the context of a larger body of work, or the entire artistic genre, or view it as part of the conversation taking place between the artists within that genre. A work can be a meta-commentary, it can be a subversion, it can be an intentional violation of the supposed rules. It can mean something different to you than it does to the maker, it can be a failure of the maker's intent but still be valuable, or vice-versa. Critique isn't about telling the audience what they are or are not allowed to like; rather, it's about giving the audience (and the artist) additional tools and context to better understand a work.
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Jan 6, 2021 19:46
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A few questions: - Do you (generically) want to criticize a specific work or its mechanics in the game space as a comparative thing for its entire composition like the Band of Blades vs. Blades in the Dark comparison, or fixating on a specific component or two of one thing to compare it to other systems? - Does assuming the enjoyment of others (other than yourself) factor into a game's worth either via its commercial success or its aesthetic design? - Does someone need to necessarily use an agreed upon language for some to criticize something and learn that vocabulary as a prerequisite for delivering an opinion? I think on the last question, there doesn't need to be a rigorous vocabulary to talk about why people do / don't like a game or its components, at least, but I get this impression from the thread that for others, that point is more important than the criticism or opinion being delivered, which seems to stifle discussion.
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Jan 7, 2021 00:14
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aldantefax posted:- Does someone need to necessarily use an agreed upon language for some to criticize something and learn that vocabulary as a prerequisite for delivering an opinion?
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Jan 7, 2021 00:42
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Lemon-Lime posted:They're not meant to be taking load off the GM - they're meant for the players to have control over what the Legion is doing as a military force so they can more closely identify with the unit as a whole. Sure, but that doesn't change that some of the roles don't function as individual roles given how they fit together.
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Jan 7, 2021 00:58
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So how do you handle military ranks/authority/chain of command in tabletop RPGs? In my Rogue Trader campaign, we gave the captain role to the guy with the most rules/setting knowledge. Which has worked out great, since it means the guy in charge of space battle strategy is also the one who knows what actually works in the game system. Similarly I've had scenarios where I gave the squad leader/sergeant pregen to the player who was a real world military historian or veteran or what-have-you. This approach can backfire though. In Delta Green we tried a game where the player who had read the books was the Agent, while the others were "Friendlies" who had a lower level of setting knowledge both in and out of character. In practice it devolved into "the Agent plays the game, while the Friendlies follow them around". The other approach is making the players scouts/guerillas/partisans or some other unit that operates independently, without strict adherence to a chain of command. I think this is the easiest approach to make work, but there are settings/scenarios that don't permit it. The third option I've seen tried is where the leader is an NPC who takes input from the player characters, then decides what the group will do. In cases where not everyone agrees on a course of action, the decision is based on how well everyone argues their case. I saw this used in a playtest game of Star Trek Adventures to good effect - imitating the part of the show where the captain has a ready room discussion with all the main characters about what to do next.
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Jan 7, 2021 01:34
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