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To switch topics and steal from another derail (also from the board game thread; we're just really noisy in there), I'm wondering what the future of traditional gaming journalism is going to morph into. TGs are a much more niche hobby than video games - Even with their growing acceptance, board games just aren't really a media in the way video games, movies, or television. You aren't going to read scholarly papers on how the violent themes in Ameritrash games are leading to school shootings. Much like video games, the people who are most involved in the journalism aspects are fans, and basically none of them make a living off of it like you might scrape by working for Kotaku. What's more, the biggest board game site (Boardgamegeek) is filled to the brim with fan reviews of games, but very little in the way of actual commentary. There's also no established language for discussing them critically like you would have with everything from books to tea; In the BG thread people were just saying that "fun" gets thrown around a ton, and can mean anything from being synonymous with lightweight fast games (which some people took issue with, since it implicitly states that longer, meatier games aren't fun) to just meaning "I enjoyed my time playing this" (without really discussing how much of it was facilitated by the game vs how much was the people it was played with, or what other games they might enjoy). And the problems don't stop at "fun," there's arguments about if games are even things that can or should be discussed critically, since the objective of 99.9% of games is to end with the players having enjoyed the last 10 minutes/hours and who are we to say that Fakey McHypothetical's group of totally-real people just adore Space Pirate Ninja Catgirls so since three people like it you can't technically say it's objectively bad. I'm really excited to see where the new SU&SD site/project goes, since their stated goal is to basically be THE place for board game related media and critique. e: I admit that I don't know a ton regarding RPGs and mostly stick to board games, so if someone wants to discuss that feel free!
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Apr 2, 2013 20:42
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I have no idea where this derail came from but holy moly it sounds like a doozy.
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Aug 6, 2013 04:35
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Did Maid's development team want to be "taken seriously" in the way that Misery Tourism's do? I was under the impression it was just a silly little anime game, not a troll/"satire" of power dynamics present in romantic and economic environments between people who hold power over one another.
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Aug 9, 2013 23:33
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A lot of women like playing as women characters in games. I think making female units sexy as the status quo is stupid as hell, but saying "look, you can play as someone who looks like you" is like, not regressive in the slightest.
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Apr 21, 2014 23:47
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Evil Mastermind posted:So remember Fyxt? Have you ever wondered what the actual mindset is behind making games like that is? Story tellers are a blight on rpgs.
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Mar 19, 2015 21:20
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Good thing another highly modular 4e-based rpg didn't just have a very successful kickstarter, lookin good Fyxt guy.
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Mar 19, 2015 23:23
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Having your stuff update automatically with every errata is super cool though.
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Mar 20, 2015 01:13
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bunnielab posted:This is a general issue I have noticed, where in gamers want to play a, in some cases a very very, specific type of character, irrespective of weather it fits, thematically or mechanically, a given game. You played Shadowrun with Ferrinus?! Evil Mastermind posted:GenCon has released a letter/statement/thingy in regards to Indiana Governor Mike Pence's support of SB101, a.k.a. the "legal discrimination against them homos" bill. drat this is pretty ballsy, good on GenCon.
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Mar 24, 2015 22:30
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Ratpick posted:For all the talk of the shittiness in this hobby and industry, it's really great seeing one of the big movers and shakers make a stand like this once in a while. Very much appreciated. I think it's easy to notice the poo poo when we're looking for it. Everyone barring 2-3 people I've ever played games with - board, rpg, or otherwise - have all been at the very least milquetoast social liberals, and in a few cases as politically left as some radical socialists. My experiences working with people in the industry have been similar (though admittedly limited to ~12-15 people). It's always struck me as weird when this thread seems to think the traditional gaming industry is the dregs of society; Have any of you ever looked at poo poo like the political opinions and practices of professional sports executives or managers? That's not even touching obvious stuff like right wing political pundits. I just don't see it as any worse than lots of other industries, if not slightly more public when it is vile since trad game companies can rarely afford PR people to filter their responses for obvious racism.
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Mar 24, 2015 23:26
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Evil Mastermind posted:That's what I figured, yeah. I don't know if normal congoers have started booking and whatnot, but I know that dealers and industry folks know the dates and things well in advance. Not only have people started booking, but most hotels were full within hours of reservations going up.
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Mar 24, 2015 23:34
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clockworkjoe posted:Wow, nerds find a way to make everything terrible I'd be shocked if the people making bank off DragonCon, and making these decisions, are people who actually frequent and enjoy the con
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Mar 26, 2015 06:44
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Bedlamdan posted:Well, I remember your pm being shared around on IRC when it happened so somebody might have it IRC sounds like a real cool place
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Mar 29, 2015 05:19
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Rand Brittain posted:Yes, yes, we're all very impressed with the people who only like Mature Things For Grown Ups. lol Good poo poo.
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Jun 24, 2015 23:39
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ManMythLegend posted:I think the future of tabletop gaming is certainly digital, just not in the traditional way of simply transitioning the rules to a digital space, but a game that is both fully "digital" and fully tabletop. Something that creates a full digital world that players can interact with, and change, around the table. Why? Why is this the inevitable, ultimate endgame? That's like saying the endgame for board games is digital since they can't compete with video games otherwise (and I'd be shocked if TTRPGs occupy the same "headspace" as video games, but board games don't for some reason), yet board games are enjoying a golden age never before seen in the medium. There's some that use digital elements and some of the bigger ones get iOS versions, but they're hardly the standard and the physicality of the medium is a big part of the appeal to many players, dedicated collectors and casual fans alike. Are you sure you aren't just saying what you think would be cool and assuming it's the obvious conclusion?
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Jun 25, 2015 18:41
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Guilty Spork posted:My understanding is that card games (and to a lesser extent board games in general) have bigger boxes than they strictly speaking need because they tend to sell more copies for a higher price that way, even if the game could fit into a simple tuck box. Yup. It's not just card games, board games in general try to monopolize shelf space since, like, if your game is "just" two decks of cards and a handful of tokens in a tiny box how do you expect uninformed people to see it and think it's a good value compared to the giant box next to it? Some games are getting away from this and it's great news for consumer shelves and backpacks the world over, but it's a slow progress and a lot of times you get stuff like the "well duh people are just gonna buy three more expansions so we NEED the box to be big"
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Jul 10, 2015 20:31
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It's imperative that we start people on the games that I personally like the most, as that turns them into the best roleplayers.
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Jul 10, 2015 23:59
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Feeple posted:Sorry to interrupt, but I have a question I'd like to pose to the group: With Age of Sigmar, Game Workshop's grand gesture as to the future of one of their flagship games, I see a lot of vitriol and (literally) setting fire to collections of tiny plastic soldiers. I think it's worth noting that, while everything everyone said is completely right about why games don't maintain large communities once they're "dead," that doesn't stop people from playing them anyway. Evo, the largest annual fighting game tournament, hosts side events for practically any FG you can think of, from Street Fighter 2 to VSav to (probably) Breaker's Revenge, because there's a grassroots effort out there from players who like those games. It isn't limited to video games either, the DBZ TCG has had yearly community-run tournaments at Gencon with plenty of entrants and an active online community despite the game having died around 2006 (the game was officially revived with some modifications last year but yeah). It's pretty fuckin' rare for games to grow once they stop being officially supported - some new people join up, sure, but probably not faster than old people quit - but a community can absolutely be maintained, especially with the powerful social tools we have now.
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Jul 11, 2015 19:24
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That's definitely a hurdle, but it's one that can be overcome. The aforementioned DBZ TCG had some community rulings on the legality of certain cards (which isn't exactly the same thing but it's close) as well as adding new cards. Did those decisions leave some people out in the cold, including some really strong longtime players? Certainly, but when your choices are to piss off a few people to make the rest have a game to play, or to not play at all, I think the community can come together and work toward the former. Without knowing Warhammer particularly well, I don't know why they couldn't figure out a standard format and just run events like that.
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Jul 11, 2015 20:14
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senrath posted:I've only ever seen it used in the context of "You only won because I wasn't trying like some kinda loser would." Yeah I've literally never heard it any other way
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Oct 13, 2015 05:02
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Worse, it's the designer's friend. At least with enough criticism you might say "ok so my work isn't great, I'll find someone else," but saying that to your best bud is a lot harder. Fortunately Sentinels isn't actually very good so consider the art akin to a poison dart frog's colors.
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Nov 6, 2015 20:36
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People already say "I love D&D" while only having played Pathfinder, I don't think it'd really create any sort of indie surge.
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Jan 13, 2016 00:02
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moths posted:WotC has a where to find the D&D team article that ends with: Jesus christ
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Jan 27, 2016 05:38
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ProfessorCirno posted:YA is a gigantic market that is also kinda ignored by people who aren't the target audience or who are catering to that market specifically. The thing to remember is that stuff like Harry Potter being the massive success outside of the YA market is something of a fluke. That said I imagine part of it is also how things are categorized. Yeah young people both have a lot of time to read for leisure, and often can use the same books they read for fun as something for class. Plus they're heavily marketed to with book fairs and poo poo.
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Jan 29, 2016 22:16
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I don't really know where else to ask this; Does anyone know how long it takes for something you list on DriveThruRPG for publication to actually show up? I just listed something for the first time and the fact that the button next to the item keeps saying "Make Public" no matter how many times I interact with it makes me nervous that I'm doing something wrong, but I don't want to keep pressing it in case it resets the timer each time.
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Jan 31, 2016 07:12
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Meinberg posted:It probably also depends on the length of the product. The first thing I put up was like three pages long and got approved in around an hour. I'd expect a multihundred page tome to take considerably longer. Hm, mine was just 4 pages and it still hasn't been approved since Thursday night. I suppose I'll wait a day or two and then shoot out an email if it hasn't changed. Thanks for your replies, everyone.
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Jan 31, 2016 19:42
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Evil Mastermind posted:Has a "let me tell you why that thing you like is actually really bad" or "let me tell you why that thing you don't like is actually really good" ever actually swayed anyone? I've often had my opinion on stuff changed by people who explain why the thing I like sucks. Yes, even people who are rude or abrasive about it. Like I'm pretty sure this is exactly how I started appreciating a lot of nerd things I do now like competitive play in video games, lots of design choices in board games, and even 4e in D&D.
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Feb 9, 2016 23:09
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NinjaDebugger posted:You don't, really. I actually had this awakening just after 3e hit, BECAUSE of 3e. I had been playing Living City for a while at that point, and had started out with a fighter, quickly learned that fighters were bad, and did what everybody else did. Dual class to a caster. Then, when Living Greyhawk started, naturally, fightmans are good now! So I played a fighter, took awesome feats... and then an orc critted me at level 3 with a greataxe and I died horribly with no chance of revival after having been scrounging all campaign (which we called Living Accountant for a very good reason) to buy any armor better than loving chainmail, while casters were doing awesome poo poo from level 1. I rerolled as a caster and never looked back. It's possible to break out of the bubble from the inside, but it requires that you actually want to be something that the designers hate. A lot of people in the bubble weren't actually playing very much, lots of people who know "D&D-isms" have literally never played or played in a game back in college a decade ago where everyone was drinking every session anyway. I know way too many toilet readers who seemed to think that Monks were the most OP thing in 3.5/Pathfinder.
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Feb 10, 2016 02:12
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The Infraggable Cronk
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Feb 10, 2016 03:19
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LatwPIAT posted:Well, first, pretty much every woman in this game smokes. Circe the immortal goddess smokes cigarettes out of a cigarette holder. Minerva the self-insert smokes cigarettes out of a cigarette holder. Whenever Soto draws Princess Lucinda -the-12-year-old from Witch Girl Adventures, she's smoking cigarettes out of a cigarette holder. When I checked out Soto's profile on the Witch Girl wiki, there's like three photos of Soto herself smoking cigarettes out of a cigarette holder. When you start putting you love of cigarettes in the mouth of 12-year-olds, it gets rather noticeable. This insane person owns, holy poo poo
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Feb 14, 2016 23:16
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You're fooling yourself if you think Japanese games are all full of whimsy and modern design just because you can be wacky jrpg races. Many of them are specifically designed with old school ideas in mind; Ryuutama, a game basically about being a wandering artisan that is cute as all get out, has an introduction in the translation that basically says "this and lots of other Japanese RPGs have pretty traditional assumptions when it comes to things like gm fiat/control, the purpose of stats, etc." They take fewer notes from DnD than they do jrpgs, but a lot of classic jrpgs have very player-unfriendly ideas.
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Feb 18, 2016 17:58
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Leperflesh posted:Given the great majority of RPG companies' sales figures are not public, how exactly did you reach the conclusion that the TG industry - or even just RPGs - are in decline? Also the average age of TTG players rising? Also the idea that "nobody has any money"? Also the idea that comic books are in decline? My personal experience with TTRPGs and introducing new people is that you give them your books/pdfs and then they never buy their own, because why would they? New players don't see rpgs as a money-starved industry, indie or not, because they're new and don't know anything about the scene. I'm playing in a Strike game with some irl friends right now and none of them have any interest in buying actual copies rather than passing the laptop and book around the table as needed (this has been particularly frustrating when people don't actually know what their powers do), and this is only going to be magnified with games that have completely self-contained character sheets like ___ World titles. Everyone I know who has ever bought books rather than pirate them has either been a young professional with no dependents (incredibly rare), a GM who wants to introduce a system to their friends or dreams of doing so, or someone who wants something to read on the toilet and theorycraft about with nice art.
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Feb 18, 2016 23:49
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That's all assuming your friends only ever plays with your group and never want access to the book anywhere but the table, is the thing. Like it's easy to give someone a PDF and say "well I'd just hand them my book anyway" for when I need my friends to make characters for a game I'm running, but then they have that PDF forever unless they think it's an SNES rom and delete it in 24 hours each time I share it. If they then go on to play with another group and then another it's entirely possible they're playing with people who never purchased an initial copy at all. This is only magnified for online play like play-by-post games where the same people are often playing in multiple simultaneously, and certainly will play multiple games over time. Like I said I'm still gonna give my friends a $10 pdf at the end of the day because I know none of them are going to pony up for it and my purchase is basically wasted if I don't have friends to play with, but it's not really the same situation as passing a book around the table or lending it out for a week between sessions.
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Feb 19, 2016 02:03
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It would I believe, but then you get into other issues like web hosting (and with it a potential monthly/yearly fee to cover) and people not wanting to risk losing access to a game they like because servers go down, either temporarily or permanently. Also people would need to have constant internet access to read their books at all. Not that those can't be fixed or anything, but they'd need to be considered. It's one thing to ask WotC to do it like they did with 4e - They had a reasonable amount of capital (for a ttrpg company), the books could still be purchased so you couldn't be without them or lose access, they had a Name which could be used to attract the talent needed for projects like that even if they paid them less than other fields. It's a very different thing to have [random person with a kickstarter that just squeaked by] do it.
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Feb 19, 2016 02:25
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Ignite Memories posted:You guys are asking the questions I didn't realize I should be asking. Since it sounds like all the things about 4e that interest you are mechanical (the board game comparison, at-will/encounter powers for everyone, clear roles) rather than thematics, I definitely encourage you to check out Strike in addition to 4e. I'm playing in games for both and each system has its strength, but give it a look. Here's my thread for it: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3758699
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Feb 22, 2016 19:50
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Yeah the reason Bear Lore became the joke it did wasn't because of its content specifically, but because someone found it and reposted it at a time where people were already giving 4e all sorts of dirty looks and slinging mud.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:48
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gnome7 posted:I think part of that defensiveness when posting in a public place (like Twitter or the SA Forums) comes less from trying to say "oh you should try these vampire things, person who said they are tired of vampire things" and more "oh this person says vampire things are tiresome, I hope they don't convince other people that vampires are tiresome, here's a bunch of cool vampire things for everyone else to see so they know vampires are cool actually." It isn't even you specifically they're trying to convince, even if their spiel is directed at you. It's everyone reading your conversation they're trying to convince, because you want more people to like the things you like, right? You don't want them to also think the things you like are dull, so you need to talk about how cool they are wherever someone talks about how dull they are. The frustrating thing is when Thing I Don't Like comes from a place of misinformation since then you have to weigh letting them spread said misinformation or coming across as the person who just can't let people have their own Opinions, maaaan
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Mar 23, 2016 21:38
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TheTatteredKing posted:Well bad groups make every game bad, and every sort of bad. I've ran into power gaming in Maid, which basically has mechanics as a formality. "power gaming"
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Apr 2, 2016 21:59
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bongwizzard posted:Like, harassment is clearly bad, but it also clearly isn't what people mean when they say "terrorism". It's not helpful to one's cause to equate people getting their limbs blown off to having mean things said/emailed to you. maybe if what she was writing was just "people said mean [read: threatened assault/rape] things to me" youd kind of have a pedantic point since it seems like a stretch to say acts against an individual which aren't publicized at all are terrorism since ostensibly the point of terrorism is to shape a narrative and to exclude/frighten a group, but (1) the acts clearly aren't just happening to the author and are in public spaces where other people can see them not just private emails, and (2) several of the instances described aren't just gross things being said but are literal instances of physical sexual assault
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Apr 3, 2016 21:18
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bongwizzard posted:See, I quit reading after the author said that emails were terrorism. 
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Apr 3, 2016 21:21
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Covok posted:It's not hyperbolic at all. It's actually a completely valid term from both a diction and connotation standpoint especially when one considers the levels of harassment that have occurred in the industry and by gamers. Sexual harassment, sexual assault, swatting (calling swat teams to people's homes with the aim of hurting them and killing their pets), and many other acts that got one of the groups she called out branded terrorists by many media outlets and university professors. is there a place to read about Swatting because its something ive heard about but only in passing and its sucha loving bizarre thing that i want to learn more about how and when it happens
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Apr 3, 2016 21:23
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