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TenjouUtena posted:If you want to play something with Money and Auction action, I suggest Scott Nicholson did a fantastic video on this, pointing out some of the problems of Monopoly, along with some recommendations on games that share similarities with some of the various aspects of Monopoly.
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| # ? Dec 6, 2011 23:37 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 23:30 |
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jmzero posted:I've been reading a lot of Richard Garfield's game theory work lately, and one thing he emphasizes often is to study successful games (even if they seem simple or bad). I've been studying Risk for just this purpose, seeing if I can figure out how to salvage the core, simple game that people like while shedding some of the problems. I haven't had any luck, if you're wondering, but it has been an interesting exercise. Have you played Small World? It's territory-based warfare game like Risk, but removes a lot of the issues with it. It doesn't have player elimination since you can re-buy into the game when you run out of units (or any time before), it doesn't have a hugely random aspect since you only roll a die once per turn, and it doesn't take forever to play because each game lasts a fixed amount of turns.
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| # ? Dec 7, 2011 01:49 |
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We've only done a few rounds of Small World. I think it's well made and it works - but it doesn't really fit my tastes. The group I play with is reasonably competitive, and most of us are mentally tracking points. Doing so really hurts the game - the last turns become quite political when it's clear who's ahead. And I suppose that's really the problem I'd like to solve; not the luck or player elimination, but the politics.
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| # ? Dec 7, 2011 03:36 |
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jmzero posted:We've only done a few rounds of Small World. I think it's well made and it works - but it doesn't really fit my tastes. The group I play with is reasonably competitive, and most of us are mentally tracking points. Doing so really hurts the game - the last turns become quite political when it's clear who's ahead. I've found an easy way to get rid of the politics in any situation--just get rid of the people.
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| # ? Dec 7, 2011 04:07 |
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I'm not sure that's a "problem" so much as a matter of preference - the appeal of diplomacy is entirely politics. Perhaps someone could recommend an all against one sort of war game?
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| # ? Dec 7, 2011 04:11 |
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Sorry, it's a busy week, and my blog exploded with comments this morning! Some of them are good. Some of them were...not good. I'm trying to keep up with this thread, so as to not appear like a guy who just drive-bys the discussion every few days.Leperflesh posted:This is where a knowledgable and friendly staffer at a well-lit, odor-free, has-reasonable-hours local gaming store can add a ton of value. The current oversaturation of the market makes this job much harder for that staffer of course, especially if you're considering not just "what came out this month" but everything they might have in stock plus everything they are capable of special ordering for you. This is really a key to where I'm going in my next post. People always come back to game stores. I actually had an old friend and employee at the only really good gaming store to grace this town in the last ten years find the blog and email me; he now blogs on his own about game stores, amongst other things. Cool guy. Beyond the aforementioned issues with game stores, I think all of the good stores would love to have enough introductory products that they could have a shelf at the front of the store to take new people to. Unfortunately, there just aren't that many introductory products. A lot of the "bad" stores, however, don't want this new business; it's service-intensive (unlike, you know, playing games with your customers). Also, thank you for that blog. I will most certainly be using it!
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| # ? Dec 7, 2011 04:55 |
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I've had the idea to combine all my ideas I feel are worth running with into a single product/package. A core of universal mechanics so it isn't handful of completely separate things taped together. Ideally it would then be able to cover enough genres and stuff to have a wide appeal. But it could mean that most people would feel that they are paying for material they won't use if they only want one of the pieces of the package. Does it sound like a good way to market a game(s)?
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| # ? Dec 7, 2011 05:47 |
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That's a model a lot of games have used. I don't know if it's a good way to market things unless you have a "draw" to some of the settings, or if the system is very, very good. There are dozens of "universal" systems.
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| # ? Dec 7, 2011 17:07 |
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I was reading your latest blog post, Gau, as well as the comments and something from marketing class struck me. It seems to me that the RPG industry has consumers that are very similar to those in the cigarette or alcohol (specifically beer) markets. That is, there aren't a whole lot of people leaving or entering the market at specific times and they tend to be long-term customers with specific brand loyalty. The main difference I can see though is that gamers supposedly pla lots of different games. I'm not actually sure this is true, because for every "I run Shadowrun, L5R, D&D, and Paranoia" there's a guy/group that's played AD&D 2nd ed as their only game for 25 years. If the latter group is the norm, then your supposition about a glut of mediocre to lovely games hurting the industry gains a lot of weight by showing that the industry is effectively zero-sum. Do you have any information that points to RPG gamers mostly sticking with a single product for the majority of their lives?
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| # ? Dec 7, 2011 18:34 |
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Gomi posted:Speaking of salvaging the core of Risk games, while I haven't played either of them, both Risk 2210 and Risk Godstorm are well regarded around here as games that keep the Risk flavor while not taking forever (because they have a set turn limit) and promoting more interaction instead of turtling. Enjoyed the turn limit though. Definitely approve of the turn limit.
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| # ? Dec 7, 2011 19:21 |
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FordCQC posted:Do you have any information that points to RPG gamers mostly sticking with a single product for the majority of their lives? There is very, very little research in the RPG industry at all. The vast majority of research that goes on is in TCGs, because that's where the money is. It is very aggravating.
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| # ? Dec 7, 2011 20:18 |
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Gau posted:That's a model a lot of games have used. I don't know if it's a good way to market things unless you have a "draw" to some of the settings, or if the system is very, very good. There are dozens of "universal" systems. Oh really? I don't know of any, unless you mean universal systems in general.
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| # ? Dec 7, 2011 20:57 |
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TheTatteredKing posted:Oh really? I don't know of any, unless you mean universal systems in general. Your idea is just a universal game system like *insert one of many here*, with your own setting books bundled with it. edit: except since they're part of the core book they're necessarily not going to be as fleshed out as any sort of standalone project would be (unless you have infinite time to work before release). Your mechanics and settings both would have to be spectacular for anyone to use them. Swagger Dagger fucked around with this message at Dec 7, 2011 around 22:06 |
| # ? Dec 7, 2011 22:03 |
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Maddman posted:... something Vincent Baker said. What gaming needs is a deck of cards. Not actual card-based mechanics, but a central way of doing games. Discount bins are still drowning in unsold, unwanted D20 material from the only time there's been a gaming "deck of cards". The other edge of the sword is that after you introduce something like this, it will bring a glut of garbage the likes of which no hobby has seen before. DriveThruRPG is still bloated with D20 crap like birth defects as feats, and I think that's exactly what needs to be avoided for the health of gaming as a whole.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 00:36 |
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Same thing happened to Atari. When you relax the standards, the gateways pop open and the market becomes flooded with crap, and you can't tell that it's crap until you play it. One thing that I think I can add to the discussion is that RPGs are a lot like video games in the sense that it's really hard to tell how good they are from a casual level of perusal. Unlike clothes or some other physical good you can't just look at it and go, "Oh that shirt looks like cheaply made garbage." It's like, Mouse Guard is a really good RPG, but who the gently caress is gonna know that from the cover? And RIFTS is terrible, but you look at the cover and it's like a van from the 70s and it's TIME TO ROCK AND ROLL! That means you need to have some sort of barrier to entry to the market in order to keep it from being flooded with cheap horrible crap, which I don't really think RPGs have (5k is really not THAT much money).
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 00:44 |
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Gau posted:There is very, very little research in the RPG industry at all. The vast majority of research that goes on is in TCGs, because that's where the money is. Oh yeah, I'm sure that's the case. I just didn't know if you had come across anything that pointed one way or the other. What do you think is the case, do gamers tend to stick with one product or no?
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 00:57 |
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FordCQC posted:Oh yeah, I'm sure that's the case. I just didn't know if you had come across anything that pointed one way or the other. What do you think is the case, do gamers tend to stick with one product or no? According to an ENWorld poll back around 2003, a lot of 3.0 players bought multiple systems to play, as well as being willing to buy a single $5 supplement off of RPGNow that would give them a few neat things to have in the campaign. I can't remember the exact ratio, but the people who bought multiple systems far outstripped the single system guys, but the single system guys had a post count far far higher than the multisystem guys. The grogs who stick to one system are just the loudest.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 01:57 |
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The vocal minority is a universal phenomena.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 01:58 |
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50 Foot Ant posted:According to an ENWorld poll back around 2003, a lot of 3.0 players bought multiple systems to play, as well as being willing to buy a single $5 supplement off of RPGNow that would give them a few neat things to have in the campaign. Not to mention that merely being a poster on ENWorld is already some kind of selective criteria, and add in that choosing to participate in the poll adds another level of self-selection, and this kind of poll winds up being fairly meaningless. Anecdotally (and therefore just as meaninglessly), I know a lot of people who played D&D for a bit in high school or sometimes college, and that's it. I suspect that as soon as you step out of that "mainstream" level of involvement with RPGs, you have a subset of people who are much more likely to have tried multiple systems, by virtue of the fact that they were the kind of person interested in trying an "alternative" system in the first place.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 02:28 |
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Gau posted:There is very, very little research in the RPG industry at all. The vast majority of research that goes on is in TCGs, because that's where the money is. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at Dec 8, 2011 around 03:23 |
| # ? Dec 8, 2011 03:19 |
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God drat It, Make Something New! In Which I contradict my previous post, and start a Contest. My last post apparently SET FIRE TO THE TWITTERS, resulting in pile of comments on the blog. It was fun! Once finals week is over, I may go back and see what I can say. For now, I want to focus on moving forward. Our topic for today? We need to move out of any and all model train territory. What do I mean by this? I mean that a defining characteristic of tabletop games is that they are inherently social, in a way that a lot of hobbies aren't. Yet, some people seem to want to relegate us to the sort of things that hobby trains are dying of: people sitting in their basements alone, making tired and boring iterations of the same old poo poo, and trying to foist it on others. Now, I'm not saying that one in ten thousand, or a hundred thousand, of these gamers isn't on to something. However, for every Old School Hack or Brikwars in this group, there are a dozen nascent heartbreakers, games that are the equivalent of someone putting a cardboard spoiler on their car and calling themselves a tuner. I'm also not saying that games shouldn't have a single-player component. Army-building, figurine painting and construction, character building, all of that is good in a game. It gives you something to do when you can't play. However, building armies or characters in a vacuum is a pretty useless and obsessive thing; what are you doing it for? Let's use Magic as an example. Magic has single-player aspects (deckbuilding, learning new cards) and multiplayer aspects (actually playing the game, metagaming). In order to shine at the game, ideally, you need to be good at both. When you're sitting at home, building a deck, the first decision you make is which format. If you're really good, you're going to build a deck and sideboard not just for Standard, but for Friday Night Magic at Merlyn's (considering the metagame and that one rear end in a top hat who netdecks all the loving time). Any good game should encourage this. A good RPG should make your character not only important, but make your character choices important in the context of your play group. What's more, games need to work on making there be more valid choices at reasonable levels of competition. Most games are completely, utterly awful at this. There are more than 5,000 feats in Fourth Edition D&D, and I would bet money that less than 500 see play with any regularity. Tomes have been written on the awful parts of system mastery that are inherent to previous editions of D&D, other RPGs, almost all wargames, and especially card games. The goal of all of this is to emphasize the social parts of this hobby. How do you get people to play with you? Well, you ask them to play, of course! You don't sell them on the myriad character options or dozens of splatbooks, you don't talk about how awesome it is that this game uses these dice or how amazing a unified task resolution mechanic is. You just sit down and play. Games need to be built for this kind of accessibility. I'm not cutting out the idea of depth in games, I am saying that along with that depth needs to be an easy of initial play that equals or eclipses what's already on the market. You know what? Let's generalize that a lot: Anything you design, any game you even want to think about making or releasing, needs to beat the hell out of everything else out there. I mean it. No more clones. No more RPGs on this or that subject. No more generic systems, no more rehashed miniature wargames, no more d100 systems (dear God, please no more d100 systems). No more bizarrely specific storygames. NO. MORE. loving. FANTASY. RPGS. Don't do it. Lie down until you feel better. It's been done, it's been done a thousand times, and you can't do better. Get over yourself, and move on. "Well, that's just not nice, Mr. Gau," you might say. "I am a creative person, I want to create! Who are you to tell me not to?" Okay. You're a creative person? That's where we're going with this? Let's put that to the test: Make something new. I don't mean a new Abandoned Kingdoms setting, or some new houserules for Fields of Warhammer. I mean blow me away with something so new, so creative, so out there, that I just do this  for ten minutes until I realize what a loving genius you are. I'm not being sarcastic. This is a loving challenge. It's such a loving challenge that I'm willing to put (a small amount of) cold hard cash on the line for it. I'm willing to bet you that you're not as creative as you say you are. Are you gonna just sit there and take that? Gau's "Fill My Brain Full of gently caress" Game Idea Contest Let's do this. I've got ten bucks on the line for you. Here are the rules: 1. Each submission should be the basic outline of a coherent tabletop game idea. I reserve the right to rule things out because they involve paintball guns or cooking, but I might just not if it's really that awesome. 2. The three keys you will be graded on are: bodacity, originalness, and sensemaking. Something that is all of these three things will do very well. 3. The limit for submissions is 4. Email me submissions at brainfullofgames@gmail.com. Anything you send me becomes Creative Commons Share-Alike licensed. That means I can publish it and say what I like about it, but you still are the originator of the idea. Also, sending me a submission means you agree to these terms. 5. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, 14 December at Midnight GMT. That gives you just under a week to wow me. I'll pick my top FIVE favorite ideas and review them on the blog. The best idea (once again, graded on bodacity, originalness, and sensemaking) will earn you a paypal reward of TEN AMERICAN DOLLARS. What have you got to lose? Service guarantees citizenship! Gau fucked around with this message at Dec 8, 2011 around 04:41 |
| # ? Dec 8, 2011 04:21 |
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Gau, on your blog you mention Eclipse Phase as a good RPG. Did you talk about why this is earlier in the thread, and if not, could you expand on that? Also, is this more from a production-values standpoint, or a game standpoint? I was personally really psyched about EP, since it was a transhuman/scifi setting not stuck in the 80s (and not GURPS), but I found the game part of it to be head-scratchingly dense in places to the point where the system really killed it for me -- I just couldn't see my group having a good time with it. I mean, maybe there's a kernel of innovation in there somewhere beyond the liberally slanted scifi setting (something I can dig), but I didn't really see it. What sets it apart from any other rules-are-physics/loads of skills/crunchy combat RPG?
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 04:39 |
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Hm. Saying 'no fantasy' cuts off some avenues that I feel are still underutilized; we see a lot of fantasy medieval poo poo, and that is totally not something we need more of. Also a lot of urban fantasy. But, like - what about something fantasy based on the Aztecs, or Aboriginal myth? Since fantasy is a pretty wide field.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 04:55 |
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Mors Rattus posted:Hm. Saying 'no fantasy' cuts off some avenues that I feel are still underutilized; we see a lot of fantasy medieval poo poo, and that is totally not something we need more of. Also a lot of urban fantasy. If you can present Anthropological Fantasy in a way that blows my mind, go for it!
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 04:57 |
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Gau posted:
Just submitted, with 11 words to spare. 
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 05:44 |
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Gau posted:no more d100 systems (dear God, please no more d100 systems). There's more d100 system bloat than dicepool systems?
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 06:33 |
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Submitted! That was really fun. EDIT: I don't think the thing I submitted would blow anyone's mind, but I'd play it at least once, and I think the mechanics could support some pretty tense RP. I hope I haven't completely missed the point. Sulecrist fucked around with this message at Dec 8, 2011 around 07:24 |
| # ? Dec 8, 2011 07:18 |
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TheTatteredKing posted:There's more d100 system bloat than dicepool systems? I think the issue is less that there are a lot of d100 systems out there and more that d100 as a general system sucks because it's more resolution that you need compared to other methods and only serves to make things more complex for little gain. So I guess it's really that there are, in fact, d100 systems out there, and therefore there is a number of them greater than zero, where zero is the number it ought to be.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 14:34 |
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Isn't Unknown Armies a D100 system? And isn't Unknown Armies loving AWESOME? Anyway, I'll probably send you something Gau, if I can just figure out how to make it work.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 15:33 |
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Yes, but the UA system isn't anything particularly special. It could run just as well in any other system. The setting and tone are what make UA. Also, for anyone who was worried, I'm not going to use your real name unless you include it in your contact information. In Project Internet, we have no names.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 15:45 |
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Just submitted an idea that came to me last night and is probably really terrible and not what you are looking for!
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 16:17 |
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Sent. I'm unoriginal as gently caress!
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 17:12 |
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Just sent a dumb Swiney story-game that's probably already been duplicated in a number of ways!
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 18:30 |
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I have the explanation of the concept/basic rules of my game down to less than 250 words, but it has a peculiar component. Can I include an attached figure and brief description even if it takes me over the word limit? edit: I doubt the description of the component would take more than 50 words.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 18:59 |
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Sure!
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 19:05 |
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How detailed do you want the 250-word thing to go on mechanics? Because I've always found setting much easier to write than mechanics and would only be able to go 'and I want the mechanics to reinforce theme X and Y'.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 19:22 |
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Okay, my thing is sent. My MSpaint skills are terrible but hopefully the figure is sensemakeable. And now having thought about it for a little while, I want to make a mockup and try playing it, since, hell, I made it so it's obviously something I want to play, deep down inside. Tao Jones fucked around with this message at Dec 8, 2011 around 19:36 |
| # ? Dec 8, 2011 19:32 |
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I've had an idea kicking around in my head for a while. Thanks for giving me a reason to dust it off and think of how it might actually work someday.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 20:50 |
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Trasson posted:I think the issue is less that there are a lot of d100 systems out there and more that d100 as a general system sucks because it's more resolution that you need compared to other methods and only serves to make things more complex for little gain. Man what? That contradicts my experience. When I started with a group of new players we tried Gamma World 4e but switched to Dark Heresy because it was simpler for them to roll against one number instead of roll and add three numbers to that number.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 21:43 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 23:30 |
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TheTatteredKing posted:Man what? That contradicts my experience. When I started with a group of new players we tried Gamma World 4e but switched to Dark Heresy because it was simpler for them to roll against one number instead of roll and add three numbers to that number. I think he means more that knowing you have a 77% chance of doing something vs. a 78% chance of doing something isn't really useful, so you end up with a system that can run just as easily in D20 (Because everything is +/-5%, all modifiers, etc.).
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| # ? Dec 8, 2011 21:59 |
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