|
Lemon Curdistan posted:It's not a store. You're not buying anything, nor are you getting a legally backed goods-for-money exchange. It's a website via which you can donate money to people and companies, and to make you want to donate they promise you certain things which Kickstarter's ToS say they have to make their best effort to deliver on. So here's a question I've been wondering about lately in the wake of things like Dwimmermount and the guy who blew 75 grand in six months; I know that by Kickstarter's ToS people who put up a project have to make a "good faith effort" to deliver on their stated goals, including any backer rewards they promised. At what point does Kickstarter judge someone's efforts to be insufficiently "good faith" or not, and if they don't feel that such efforts have been suitably so then what happens next? Does Kickstarter take any sort of legal action? That seems like it'd be a pretty nebulous suit to try and pursue. Or is that ToS mostly just a pro forma thing in this case?
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2013 09:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 05:03 |
|
|
ravenkult posted:It's not a store, it's just a place where you can order very specific things, pay a specific price, pay for shipping and then have the items delivered to you. Then if they don't deliver them, you call them thieves and scam artists. Okay, not to get dragged into what I'm sure is going to be a fascinating and productive exchange of views, but I would say the biggest thing that keeps Kickstarter from being "a store" is that when you go into a store to buy something (or buy it online from someone like Amazon) there is more or less an expectation that the thing you want to buy is right there and if it isn't they will tell you "sorry, we're out of stock" instead of taking your money up-front and telling you "oh yeah, we might get this in someday." If I pay Amazon money for a book and it doesn't show up then I get to talk to customer service and file a complaint and if Amazon decides to just shrug their shoulders and say "eh, poo poo happens" then I have further methods of legal recourse to employ should I do so, and if this happens to a bunch of people repeatedly then Amazon's reputation goes to poo poo and they probably get investigated by some sort of fraud service. If I pay a guy on Kickstarter for a book and receive nothing in return then tough poo poo. Once something's funded it's out of Kickstarter's hands, it's up to the guy I pledged to whether or not he ever delivers, Kickstarter doesn't guarantee anything beyond what's in their ToS and there have been enough Kickstarters that have pledged and then fizzled that I don't think it's unfair to say that Kickstarter's ToS aren't exactly a solidly binding agreement. But Kickstarter isn't doing anything wrong if you don't get your book, because they don't promise you that you will. All Kickstarter does is give people like you a way to pay other people money and take your chances. You aren't paying for goods and/or services, you are essentially gambling that your money is going to produce something for which you have been quasi-formally promised a reward for.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2013 10:22
|
|
|
ravenkult posted:So it's a lovely store, is what you're saying. If by store you mean "place that doesn't actually sell goods and/or services, merely the vague promise thereof," then yes. quote:I won't argue semantics with you and I get what you're saying. But if it's pretty much used like a store or at least a preorder service, that's how I see it. If White Wolf stiffs you out of 100$, maybe you have no legal recourse because of Kickstarter's TOS, but you sure as gently caress not going to give White Wolf any more of your money in the future. Sure, that's how people use it. And that's how come so many Kickstarters turn into fiascos and why people continue to throw money at people they don't know and then don't understand why when a year goes by they don't have anything to show for it. Some people, like White Wolf (or Onyx Path I guess) can reliably get away with this but that's entirely down to their own reputation and it's a reputation they have to maintain or else, like you said, people stop giving them money. But it's still entirely a matter of personal ethics (and business sense) that they do so, and you're still only paying for the promise of a thing instead of a thing that exists. That is not, to the best of my knowledge, how most stores operate.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2013 10:38
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:I admit to feeling weird about it, too. CCP is not a company that needs Kickstarter to do anything. They have the sort of money that would make most TG companies void their loins just to contemplate. I'll be supporting the Exalted Kickstarter all the same, but it's important to recognize this as a marketing tool and not like, some bone they need to be thrown to make a particular game. Kickstarter doesn't provide any means to differentiate a small company's struggling startup from a big company's marketing push, and it's hard not to feel a little hornswoggled. I don't know all the details 100% so bear that in mind, but my understanding is that the situation with White Wolf and CCP these days is similar to that between WotC and D&D. Wizards of the Coast makes mad millions of dollars because Magic: the Gathering is super-huge, but this doesn't mean that the D&D side of things gets to just dip into those millions to do their own thing. My understanding is that when CCP's finances took a downturn one of the first things to be cut was virtually near-everything that had to do with the elfgame side of White Wolf because, well, it made the least amount of money and gently caress it, they own all the licenses now so they pretty much got all the really important stuff (I'm not trying to ascribe a sinister motivation to CCP here, it's just that of all their assets an RPG publisher is pretty much going to be one of the first things to go when you're looking to tighten the belt). That White Wolf gets to continue working on elfgames at all is largely, to my understanding, due to the outstanding work of a bunch of its freelancers and those staff that remained putting together some really killer books that sold pretty well and pitched a convincing case to CCP to let them continue to do stuff like that, and CCP looked at the numbers and said "sure, okay," but the numbers aren't so good that CCP is willing to just fund them outright out of pocket, hence Kickstarter. Again, my understanding, grain of salt, etc.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2013 13:57
|
|
|
ravenkult posted:Arguably, you could pre-order a game from a store and have the store declare bankruptcy before you get your game. But the stuff you're "buying" doesn't exist is the thing. If I go to a mall or a grocery or whatever I don't give the cashier a bunch of my money as soon as I walk in and then if it turns out they don't have what I'm looking for go "aw shucks" and leave. The pre-order and store thing is a pretty big corner case, you have to admit. I've pre-ordered things like video games before and you get a receipt and everything, if poo poo breaks down you can go to the store that has your money and be like "I would like my money back," and of course they can get shirty with you I suppose but the bagboy at the grocery could also decide to engage in fearsome bat'leth combat with you over your eggs, the point is that when you buy things in stores you are buying a thing that actually exists and is there for you to purchase there and then (eggs) or you are putting money down in advance for a thing that you know will be coming out (Gears of War 5, I'm pretty sure that places like Gamestop don't take pre-orders for games unless those games are for-sure coming out). Again, with Kickstarter all you are buying is a promise. For your hypothetical mall to be closer to what Kickstarter is like you would go into a store full of signs advertising really cool things that don't exist yet, paying the clerk money, and having him tell you that just as soon as someone gets around to making one of those things he'll make sure you get one, scout's honor. Treating Kickstarter like a store is a good way to pitch your money into a hole with no guarantee of seeing anything, nothing more ironclad that the word of people who are, as it turns out in a number of instances, pretty loving bad at handling money. Nobody goes to a store thinking "man I hope I actually get something for my money today."
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2013 15:07
|
|
|
ravenkult posted:There's plenty of cases where a Kickstarter project is already finished and the money goes for extras or for print costs. That's basically a pre-order. When you preorder a videogame, it's not like the DVD is behind the counter, the game might not even be finished yet and it sure ain't produced, but they will take your money and you can wait 'till it comes out to get the physical thing in your hands. I'm not saying there aren't cases where product doesn't already exist (Greg Stolze did this with his "ransom model" supplements for Reign), but a lot of the stuff we're seeing now (and a lot of the stuff that seems to be falling through/having problems) is of the "give me money and I totally promise I'll do this, scout's honor" variety which isn't store shopping, it's either patronage, charity, or gambling. If Kickstarter only took pledges for things that were already done and ready to simply be sold then it would be a different beast entirely. And like I said, I'm pretty sure that stores like Gamestop don't take pre-orders for games until there's more or less a solid guarantee that the game is coming out and not going to be cancelled, like there are legal and contractual things that people can get in a lot of trouble for otherwise. Maybe I am wrong! If there's a story of some big video game pre-order (non-Kickstarter, I mean like go into a Gamestop and see "Pre-Order Mass Effect 4!!!") where stores took pre-orders and then the game got cancelled before release I would love to hear how that went down.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2013 15:20
|
|
|
I guess Duke Nukem Forever would be the game that hosed everything up. So how do video game pre-orders work on the back end, then? Can a publisher just say "Yep, at some point we'll be making [GAME], dunno when it's coming out if ever, but whatever" and Gamestop can start taking pre-orders at that point? Just whenever they feel like it?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2013 15:38
|
|
|
JoshTheStampede posted:Yeah, Gamestop takes pre-orders on their own initiative, just on good word from the publisher that the game is coming out someday. The publisher has nothing to do with it. Well I learn something new every day, and in the process further validate my decision to not pre-order stuff. quote:You don't have to pay in full but you can. I don't know at what point Gamestop accepts that a game is never coming out - I'm sure that Duke Nukem guy could have gotten his money back at any point during that ten years. Well this is kind of another thing that separates Kickstarter from stores is that there's pretty much no way to go to Kickstarter and be like "hey, I put down money for this sweet flying car and a year later I have no flying car, I would like my money back." Yes, I know that some stores don't do refunds, but yet and still. Once the pledge has funded and Kickstarter has their cut, it's up to the guy on the other end whether you get your money back or not, and that guy has already had a chunk taken out of the funds he raised for Kickstarter's cut and also probably taxes too, which means that in a lot of cases they don't have all the money pledged to give back. Yes, Kickstarter can sometimes be a store if the person pitching has already finished their products in some demonstrable fashion and, I suppose, you trust them enough not to be a flake. On the other hand, Kickstarter is also what raised nearly two and a half million bucks for a Pathfinder MMO that wasn't even in alpha at the time, so "buying promises" seems pretty apt to me. I think people treat Kickstarter like a store or a pre-ordering service when they should not be. I think that by them doing so a lot more Kickstarters are funding that otherwise might not, but because those Kickstarters are funding we're also seeing what happens when people start soliciting funds for this wicked-rad idea for a game they had and then suddenly a year later it's like "no really, any day now."
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2013 15:50
|
|
|
I'll cop some of the blame for that too, I wasn't really clear. I knew that Onyx Path made enough money to keep people making stuff, but as you said, for deluxe stuff like luxury hardbacks they can't get CCP to shell out for that, so they have to turn to either conventional pre-ordering or Kickstarter and Kickstarter is at least marginally more beneficial than pre-ordering because if it completely falls flat and doesn't fund then nobody gets charged.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2013 05:01
|
|
|
Well that's basically what Greg Stolze did with his Reign supplements. It's called the ransom model. He told people "hey, I've written 10,000 words of Reign stuff that I'd like to get paid to self-publish, if I can get $1,000 then I'll release it for everybody" (which is, of course, the big difference between your project and his in that you can't realistically give away free terrain to everybody who wants some, backer or no, once you've reached your funding threshold). I see nothing wrong with ransoming projects per se, though I'm not sure whether you can actually use Kickstarter itself to do something like that.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2013 15:06
|
|
|
You basically said "well if they can't do what they want to do using Kickstarter's lovely survey tools then maybe they shouldn't use Kickstarter for their croudsourcing" which is kind of a weird and dumb position to hold, and then you doggedly stuck to your guns even when a bunch of people with way better reps around here than me were telling you "You're getting way worked up over nothing, chillax." Kickstarter can be good at some things and bad at others. Evil Hat is probably using Kickstarter because A). Every nerd on the internet knows what Kickstarter is. B). A lot of nerds on the internet already have Kickstarter accounts. C). Kickstarter, deserved or not, has a veneer of legitimacy that other croudfunding sites don't (like, what else is there? IndieGoGo, home of the flex-funding scam? Donald Trump's crowdfunding site? Offbeatr?). But if the survey tools Kickstarter has are crap then why shouldn't they go elsewhere to use better tools for that part of the job? I don't want someone going "gosh, well I know I started this project on Kickstarter so it's Kickstarter all the way, boom or bust," I want them using the best tools for the job. Also you think Kickstarter gives a poo poo about their TOS, that's adorable.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2013 08:05
|
|
|
jivjov posted:Evil Hat didn't bother to disclose that this third party utility would be required at the outset of the Kickstarter campaign. At such time I could have researched Backerkit and made a decision at a more appropriate time. As it is, they waited until long after my money had been taken before informing me that I would have to make utilize said third party utility. And now they're giving you your money back and you're still bitching and trying to get Kickstarter to conduct some sort of internal inquest. I don't blame Fred for wanting to wash his hands of you. quote:Why would they have a Terms of Service if not to enforce it? They've investigated, frozen, and cancelled projects before. Kickstarter let a multi-millionaire run a "fund my life" KS using a story about sending her kid to RPG Maker camp as a paper-thin veneer over it and let her raise $20,000 bucks out of it. They've let the Penny Arcade guys run not one but two Kickstarters that were basically elaborate piss-takes, one of which was to remove a banner ad from their website, and the other of which had a goal set at "$10" which turned it into an ersatz IndieGoGo flex-funding deal which meant that instead of having to set a project goal and then attempt to meet it they basically said "give us as much money as you want and we'll just keep all of it, thanks." Most recently they let a PUA raise 16 grand for a book where he teaches you that the way to get women to sleep with you is to whip out your dick and put her hand on it and while they've since apologized for that and done all sorts of backpedaling they let the project fund to completion beforehand with plenty of time to "investigate" some reditor's "it's totally not rape I swear" activity book. More directly relevant to the discussion, lest Winson think I'm trying to drag GBS stuff into his nice clean TG forum, Kickstarter generally doesn't give gently caress one about anything after a project has funded. The "How Not to Run a Game Business" thread is full of examples of Kickstarters falling through and failing to deliver anything and at that point there's nothing Kickstarter can or cares to do. Once a project has funded that's generally when Kickstarter goes "great show everybody" and stops taking an active interest in it, so your chronic brainlock here is even stupider in light of plenty of prior evidence that any "issue" you try to raise with Kickstarter is going to be met with a shrug. Plenty of people frothed out over the Shadowrun CRPG having to incorporate some sort of DRM after talking up how it was going to be DRM free and guess what Kickstarter did about that? Nothing. Kickstarter is pretty inconsistent at times about how strenuously they move to enforce their TOS, especially when it seems like they might get a nice payday out of it. I expect any correspondence you receive back from them on this matter to be some politely-worded variation of "That's nice, dear." Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Jul 1, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2013 08:24
|
|
|
Seriously, all Kickstarter itself is is a way for people to give other people money, that's it. Kickstarter doesn't give a gently caress past that, they aren't going to make Evil Hat go back and use their own lovely survey tools, it is out of their hands and in Evil Hat's now. Kickstarter doesn't care how Evil Hat fulfills its pledges, or frankly if Evil Hat fulfills them at all. How many failed gaming Kickstarters have resulted in successful class-action lawsuits? How many nerds have banded together to successfully take some guy to task for not delivering their promised retroclone and "Ale and Whores" t-shirts?jivjov posted:Then why wasn't that alternative made clear to backers before the Kickstarter concluded? Maybe because Fred, in his naivete, couldn't conceive of someone as massively whiny and entitled as you actually existing.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2013 08:35
|
|
|
Gonna be honest man, I'm not sure any game where "rape a woman" is a victory condition, even one set up to ask searching questions of the player who clicked on "y" when prompted, is actually all that worthy. Maybe that's me being shortsighted or something but I think a better game would be one where rape doesn't actually come up at all.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2013 08:53
|
|
|
jivjov posted:The only position I can take is that every single person on this green earth has done some manner of "bad thing". Be it stealing a candy bar, saying something rude to a cashier, or doing layout work on a questionable RPG product. Telling someone "I don't like this project you're doing layout for, so you can no longer work on Inverse World or any other project my company makes" seems harsh to me; if doing something you find objectionable is such a black mark and makes someone unfit to be a co-worker/co-collaborator/whatever, you'll quickly find yourself out of co-workers. That's how consequences work, though. If you steal a candy bar then maybe the cop who catches you will let you off with a stern warning, but on the other hand maybe you might still get in some actual trouble for shoplifting. You say something rude to a cashier and the manager might tell you to get the gently caress out and not come back. You work for an act-out-your-rape-fantasies game and other people might not want to associate with you. If you don't want to risk those consequences happening then guess what? You don't loving do those things. That's a choice you make. The reason I imagine that this is causing such cognitive dissonance inside your head is that it's really actually pretty rare for anyone in the elfgame "industry" to actually go "y'know what, this guy's game is completely loving terrible, I don't actually want to be associated with it in any way shape or form" and take the steps to distance themselves from it. And anyway, shoplifting and being rude to cashiers are sort of outside the point here. The point is this guy is working on a tabletop game, and the producers of another tabletop game don't want to be associated with that project. That's much more directly relevant to the question of "who do we want working on our own tabletop game?" than "well this guy's a lousy tipper."
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2013 22:20
|
|
|
Yeah, that's the first I've ever heard of the Foglios being spoken of in the same breath as James Desborough. What's up?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2013 00:45
|
|
|
I will admit that I'm a little gobsmacked by the idea that one of the stumbling blocks to making miniatures of female characters that don't look like they were pulled out of a Frazetta painting or some dude's semi-pornographic Deviantart isn't just "oh well that won't sell" (which is the answer I would expect to hear from people) but "there just aren't any sculptors who know how to make lady figures that aren't in full cheesecake mode."
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2013 01:55
|
|
|
I dunno, his example about the Privateer Press sculpt that started out as a sensible figure in a sensible pose and then ended up like a come-hither Herbal Essences commercial makes it sound like the problem lies on the sculpting side, not the conceptual side. You can stipulate whatever you want in your contract but if everyone you approach shoots you down because they won't or can't do the work you're asking of them then all the stipulations in the world aren't going to get you anywhere. I'm sure there must be sculptors out there capable of not instinctively making lady miniatures that you couldn't show mom without an awkward conversation ensuing, but you might have to look further afield than the tabletop gaming hobby to find them.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2013 04:26
|
|
|
Bucnasti posted:There's not enough demand for this kind of work for real professionals to turn down paying gigs. I've worked with quite a few mini sculptors in-house and freelance and not once did we get told "that's not sexy enough". 50 Foot Ant posted:It took about 10 tries before the publisher finally found someone that would do the figures like we wanted, and I threw a fit over the first round, since suddenly everyone was topless in the Zombie Apocalypse. I guess there's enough demand that ten different sculptors could afford to give someone the runaround when it came to the onerous task of "we'd like some miniatures, but without the ripped shirts and boobs on display if that's okay." Seriously, this doesn't sound like a problem that lies in the realm of "oh well you just need to give them better art direction because professionals will do it no question." Come on, ten tries to find someone who can sculpt non-cheesecake minis for the zombie apocalypse?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2013 05:49
|
|
|
Yeah, I don't know 50 Foot Ant's forum rep or whatever but I'm definitely not willing to discount it out of hand simply given the stories I've heard about TRPG art. Remember that story about the illustration in the 4E Primal Power sourcebook? "This lithe and athletic survivor is wearing HIDE ARMOR made from the gray, spiky plates of a macetail behemoth. Her skin is dark brown, and her curly black hair is kept short; on Earth, one would assume that she was from Africa. She has a simple, functional, and deadly-looking GREATAXE strapped over her back, and a coil of rope at her belt." What got sent back, and what did they wind up publishing?  Hey wow, that's spot on in every respect. And that's WotC, which is as professional as it comes in the land of elfgames.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2013 06:37
|
|
|
Alternately, someone higher up the chain than the person who set down those directions either looked at the piece the artist turned in and said "actually I like this better" or saw the directions and went "nope, here's what you're actually going to do, we need a light-skinned woman with her tits on display or else we won't meet quota."
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2013 07:40
|
|
|
Jedit posted:I'm not sure what kind of company you think would defer a multimillion dollar project for several weeks minimum to replace a single piece of art, but if the adjective you're using is "professional" you need to buy a dictionary. There's also kind of a big difference between "one of the artists didn't know what a lemure was, thought it was a lemur, and we all had a big laugh about it" and "one of the artists received explicit directions that only a complete loving moron could possibly misinterpret and turned in a piece of art that bears no resemblance to the description except for the fact that the subject is a woman." One of those is a silly mistake, the other is either gross incompetence or someone higher up stepping in to deliberately overrule the original description. I wasn't aware about the M:tG thing RPZip, thanks. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 11:42 on Aug 16, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2013 11:40
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:I can see it being useful as a game aid for games with unwieldy mechanics; the Arkham Horror app comes to mind. A vehicle design and vehicle sheet app for games like Star Fleet Battles or Car Wars would be another example. Really if there's a strength of technology, it would be in handling complex mechanics. One of the things you could do with an app or the like would be to have resolution mechanics involving math that would never function for players to process, but a machine could efficiently do. Another possibility is doing simultaneous turn resolution, blind or double-blind mechanics with devices. The problem is that a lot of games try and use apps to solve problems that don't exist (I don't need an app to roll to-hit or for me in most circumstances), when they should be looking to do things we can't already do with dice, pen, and paper. If a game is sufficiently rules dense/complex/chunky that it's best handled digitally then I'm not sure why I'd want to pair that with the physical tabletop side of things. Complex games tend to be involved on the setup and tablespace side of things too. You mention Arkham Horror which is a huge pain in the rear end but not just mechanically, it's a pain simply getting started as you have to unpack and set up the board, dole out character sheets and cards and tokens and pick an Old One and god forbid you start bringing expansions into the mix. Better hope nobody hits the table with their leg by accident either, or your cat doesn't jump up onto the board, etc. etc. My own inexpert assessment of tabletop miniatures gaming is that a not-insignificant percentage of people involved in that hobby derive more enjoyment out of the modeling and painting side of things than actually playing the games themselves, which is totally cool mind you but that right there is a compelling reason for the physical tabletop side of things to exist, because that in and of itself is the hobby to those folks. But if you're just talking in terms of gameplay then all the physical set-up of a game like that is more of a barrier to getting started than anything else (along with "how does this rule work, time to look it up in my collection of books and errata and then argue about it because the writers were unclear"), and since the Kickstarter in question is going with pre-assembled and pre-painted figures to begin with it feels like the tabletop aspect is kind of superficial here.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2013 13:53
|
|
|
You totally know that if they did make female space marines that they'd have huge boobplate power armor though, there's virtually no way that they'd make female miniatures that didn't have huge stonking tits or "people wouldn't be able to identify them at a glance" which I believe is the usual excuse.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2013 22:46
|
|
|
That doesn't seem tremendously surprising to me, at least on first glance. If people can get something for free with the same ease and convenience of a legit storefront that seems to just be asking to have everybody exploit it.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2013 01:07
|
|
|
The thing about GMS is, in a hobby where people will line up to breathlessly extol the virtues of even mediocre designers, a perennial also-ran. He's published a bunch of stuff and nobody cares about it. Who's pushing for a revised Underworld? Where's the enthusiastic fan-community for his Napoleonic+magic game? Or the Barsoom knock-off he wrote? Where are all the GMS fans? He doesn't have any outside of those gamers who venerate anyone who calls themselves a "professional game designer." John Wick might get poo poo talked about him, but he can at least point to L5R and go "yeah, I made that, and you still talk about Seventh Sea too." Except for some reason GMS also has the ego of a rock star to go along with his complete lack of anything noteworthy in his publishing career which has resulted in the most amazingly hilarious case of sour grapes you'll ever see. His jealousy and resentment over the fact that gamers won't bow down at the altar of his experience as a
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2013 01:15
|
|
|
FMguru posted:There was a segment a couple of weeks ago on the Ken Hite/Robin Laws podcast (which you should all be listening to) where they declared that the biggest misconception about game industry pros is that they have really strong, tribal feelings about games and companies and designers in the same way their most intense fans do. K&R pointed out that most people in the industry get along with each other very well, and for obvious reasons - it's a small field, you will encounter everyone in person at cons, reputations matter, being a troublemaking loudmouth will result in your not getting assignments, and your next gig may be for a company that's the exact opposite of what your last gig was. They cited the example of 3E vs. 4E D&D over which so much e-blood has been spilled by fans, and how the two games' designers not only are great friends, but they seamlessly collaborated on their own well-received fantasy RPG, 13TH AGE. I'm absolutely convinced that the only reason the Tianxia Kickstarer brought GMS onboard to contribute to the fiction anthology stretch goal is because Jack Norris must be buddies with Skarka (somehow). I don't know why else you'd choose to work with someone synonymous with being an insufferable, egotistical internet tough guy and whose own Kickstarter is two years overdue with no drop date in sight. Alien Rope Burn posted:To be fair, a squad of unsung writers really helped to turn Wick's (very) rough draft into what we know as Legend of the Five Rings, but it's hard to deny Wick hasn't certainly made some interesting games since. Oh yeah, it's absolutely true what you say about L5R, but even still Wick can legitimately point to L5R as a game he had a significant hand in and is still going strong today with an active fanbase. GMS doesn't even have that.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2013 07:57
|
|
|
Well no, but for all his own overinflated sense of self-importance he's at least managed to attach himself to a number of games significantly more impressive than anything GMS has ever done...he's got credits on the DC RPG that was put out by Green Ronin using M&M3E and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, possibly some other Cortex credits, and credit where credit is due the Tianxia Kickstarter has delivered in a way Far West has thoroughly failed to do. He also did Scroll of the Monk for Exalted 2E which most Exalted fans and even other Exalted writers seem to hold in low regard but I guess they can't all be winners.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2013 08:30
|
|
|
My personal interactions with Rose Bailey have given me no reason to believe she's anything other than a level-headed and pleasant person.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2013 11:30
|
|
|
Plague of Hats posted:Just because I think it might be unclear, I want to reiterate that I'm pretty sure Jack didn't have anything to do with Scroll of the Monk. Then it's entirely possible I got those two "Scroll of" books confused. I knew he'd written for one of them and his work was considered rather poor quality. I think Stephen Lea Sheppard actually copped a probation on RPGnet for talking some smack about Jack over it out in the open where everyone could see. As far as Tianxia goes, he and his design partner already beat out several other RPG Kickstarters by having an actual game 99% ready to go and available to backers. I agree that it's got its rough spots but its also got plenty of potential, so at this point it's down to how well they refine the beta before the official release. I can't say I feel like my $15 is going to waste there.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2013 16:16
|
|
|
Plague of Hats posted:Lea and Rand Brittain both sniped at Jack over Heroes when he rolled into a thread to brag about being a dependable "oh poo poo our book isn't done we need a last-minute guy to fill in and make everything great." He specifically mentioned being able to quickly get a handle on the material. Lea and Rand got probated for a week, and Rand resigned as moderator. Nah, Rand resigned after completely blowing his stack at some other dude over something else I don't remember but he was really angry for some reason. It wasn't at Jack though. But this is now veering away from industry chat into "other internet messageboards chat" so I'm not gonna go dig any further into that here. Plague of Hats posted:Yeah. My only really significant complaint was Skarka, and, welp. For those who don't give as much of a poo poo about that, it's a pretty great Kickstarter through-and-through. I think it's pretty telling that the only thing they brought Skarka on for was a contribution to a fiction anthology tacked on as a stretch goal. They aren't actually letting him anywhere near the game itself despite his self-professed "wuxia expertise." I was actually sort of disappointed that one of the stretch goals wasn't a Western genre mashup supplement. Maybe once Tianxia comes out somebody should write that.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2013 16:37
|
|
|
Wasn't there also some sort of issue with something ICONS related where some supplement that GMS was working on was stuck in a similar limbo as Far West? I vaguely remember him getting angry over people asking him about something like that.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2013 02:19
|
|
|
neonchameleon posted:Actual release date 5th August 2013. And according to at least a couple comments in that RPGnet thread it's 28 pages short of the original advertised pagecount.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2013 03:47
|
|
|
GMS doesn't have a habit of loving over freelancers (that I know of) at least.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2013 04:08
|
|
|
Oh man, they link to Bill Coffin explaining what it's like to work with Kevin Sembieda. Seriously, you should go read that. Coffin later apologized for posting it but frankly if even half the poo poo that circulates about Sembieda is true then that seems like it was long overdue.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2013 09:15
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:He got known as somebody who dragged personal matters into a public arena?... I mean, there's a reason he made an apology later. As a fan it was fascinating to see all the dirty laundry dragged out, but it remains a big black mark on Palladium's reputation. I have nothing against Coffin myself, but it's easy to understand why a company might not want to risk that sort of lambasting, justified or not. The thing is, Palladium deserves to have some black marks against their reputation because it isn't just stuff like "Kevin Sembieda doesn't use computers, let us mock him!" or "Rifts sucks lol," it's stuff like "Kevin Sembieda will yell at you like a crazy dude, also if you're a freelancer he'll gently caress you out of the money he promised you and take credit for your work." This isn't really in the same league as what happened with Catalyst in terms of gross financial misappropriation, but it's still stuff that I feel is a level beyond simply airing dirty laundry and petty gossip, freelancers just getting into this hobby should know to avoid Palladium. And to be honest, Bill Coffin apologized and that was classy of him, but I don't think he did it because his reputation suddenly tanked.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2013 09:14
|
|
|
Yeah, you get a lot of that in places where game designers descend from their money-thrones made of hookers and blow to talk to the common gamer. RPGnet's not quite as bad as it used to be about it but there's still a strong undercurrent of "how dare you criticize game designers, don't you know they might leave!? And won't you be sorry!" that rears its head from time to time. And it was recently brought up in the Exalted thread that part of the reason the White Wolf forum is so echo-chambery is largely due to writers getting pissed and threatening to take their ball and go home, so the community actively works to shut down criticism in order to prevent being denied sweet previews. A lot of gamers can be terrible, but a lot of game designers really don't know how to A). accept criticism and B). tune their mental filters so they don't get riled up over dumb poo poo they shouldn't pay attention to while still listening to the stuff they ought to. That's admittedly a fine line to walk when it comes to this hobby, but these are learned skills that a lot of designers don't bother learning because why bother? I highly doubt it has any effect on sales either way, and plenty of people are eager to rush to the defense of maligned game designers.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2013 16:14
|
|
|
Every forum has its echo chamber moments, this one included. It's just sort of the nature of online communities that they tend to develop overall opinions and attitudes over time, it happens. Some get worse about it than others, and White Wolf's is far from the worst offender in that regard, but the response during that preview didn't present a strong case for it not being full of people ready to shout down anyone criticizing it with all the usual suspects ("it's not for you, go play something else then, it's art and you just don't understand it, white-knighting," etc). Maybe that was just a spike, I don't know, but the times I've visited it before it seemed devoid of actual criticism like BryanChavez said...it was either people obsessing over pet peeves or people dancing around contentious issues without ever actually addressing them like a wary detente. That could just have been the Mage fans, though.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2013 16:53
|
|
|
That's not really a gamer thing so much as a general internet idiot thing.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2013 22:50
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 05:03 |
|
|
"Write this and give it to us and maybe we'll pay you one day if we're lucky" is an absolutely atrocious business model and I honestly can't muster a ton of sympathy for publishers who do that and then get bitched about by freelancers who get stiffed. It's one thing if sudden unforeseen circumstances beyond one's control mean that payment gets delayed, that sucks but that's life, but someone who can't pay out for work has no business soliciting it from others with vague promises of future money, no really, the check is going out next week. That there's a seemingly inexhaustible supply of freelancers willing to go "yeah, that sounds like a great deal" doesn't somehow make it any better a practice than people arguing that writers should only get paid one cent a word because they should be doing it for the love of the craft.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2013 17:00
|
|