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I've been spending all day downloading my DriveThru library since I've never downloaded all of it, and I want to see how big it really is. I've been doing this for about 9 hours, I'm just at the start of the "L"s, and I'm already at 11.6 GB pre-decompression.
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Nov 3, 2014 05:23
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:47 |
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Fast Forward Entertainment made a ton of bad supplements, including Dungeon World (which I own). When I'm not on my tablet I can tell the tale of how FFE imploded because it's pretty funny.
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Nov 11, 2014 13:13
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unseenlibrarian posted:The Foundation, the first attempt at a d20 Supers game, was notably awful by all accounts. I actually saw a copy of this once. The interior art was just those hero silhouettes you can get so non-artists like me can draw your character's costume over it. They didn't even bother to fill them in. Arivia posted:Please do! Also explain d20 Dungeon World, it sounds uniquely horrible.  Anyway, the sad tale of Fast Forward Entertainment. FFE was the d20 publishing house of James "Drawmij" Ward, one of the original D&D players/designers. Jim designed the original Metamorphosis Alpha, the old Greyhawk Adventures hardcover and Gamma World, and co-wrote the original Deities & Demigods. So yeah, he's an important figure in the history of the hobby. When 3rd Edition came out, he and a few other TSR guys founded Fast Forward as a publishing house for d20-compatible product. Like Kai Tave said, they were part of the d20 shovelware boom; 128-page hardcovers full of nothing but magic items, spells, and so on. They also released the terrible "Dungeon World" setting, which was supposed to be a sort of otherdimensional megadungeon where adventurers go when they die, but was instead just a bunch of dungeon levels jammed together. Now, as we all know, the way d20 licensing works was that there was the System Reference Document, which was all the official rules that anyone could use in their products. If you wanted to use an official spell or monster or whatever that wasn't in the SRD, you couldn't because it was WotC's intellectual property. It wasn't complicated. As the sheer amount of third party product demonstrated, even non-industry folks could figure out how it worked. Not Jim, though. Four of FFE's releases (a book of mini-adventures, Dungeon World, a Dungeon World supplement, and a 128-page book of rings) contained references to numerous D&D gods like Lolth and Gruumsh, numerous non-OLG monsters, and (hilariously) the major Greyhawk character of Drawmij. Surprisingly, none of these characters were open gaming content, so FFE wasn't legally able to use them. Which, again, wasn't that big a surprise if you knew how the SRD and OGL worked. Except that Jim didn't. He didn't work off the SRD, he worked off the core books. Not the same thing. So of course WotC finds out, and tells FFE that they broke the OGL and are violating copyright. Which meant that FFE had to destroy all their undistributed copies of four of their books, as well as shelving a book they were working on at the time. Jim Ward made a public apology where he accepted the blame then shifted it immediately to WotC one paragraph later. quote:There is no way in the world that designers and editors can be expected to do their job and keep track of the thousands of legal details the ogl dectates. These were honest mistakes that have caused Fast Forward to pull product off the shelves. Life happens. As you can imagine, people weren't really sympathetic to Jim's problem since there were dozens upon dozens of people with zero industry experience who managed to release stuff without violating the OGL. On top of that, FFE's fans would try to explain to them "no, that's not how this works, just do this and you're good" and the advice was ignored. Not that it mattered; between the overall poor reception of their products and having to pulp a large chunk of inventory, FFE wasn't long for the world after that.
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Nov 11, 2014 15:39
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Pretty much all that's left of FFE is threads on other forums (the official site has long since been deleted, as near as I can tell), but apparently the fine folks at FFE would respond to poor reviews by stating on their official site that the reviewer was 12. e: dwarf74 posted:Were they the ones who put out that Green Races book? I remember hearing that was bad even for shovelware. Yup. Here's a fun review.
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Nov 11, 2014 16:05
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Alien Rope Burn posted:You'd think it would be hard, but I recall working on a d20 project where we were trying to do a collection of hells for planar adventuring, and no matter how many times I would mention "by the way, we can't use Planescape material", people would repeatedly bring up canon demons or locales or factions or whatever. Never underestimate the willful ignorance of fans. I wouldn't be surprised if Jim Ward thought he was going to get the by because he was one of the original members of Gary's crew.
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Nov 11, 2014 17:22
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ErichZahn posted:Wasn't the entire point of the OGL to crowd out other, better games by cramming the shelves full of D&D poo poo? Pretty much. The idea was that if everyone could make d20/D&D product, then nobody would ever play anything else! Everyone would just buy the core books and WotC would corner the market! It's an amazing fundamental misunderstanding of human nature in general and gamers in particular. Like how, for example, if you release all your rules in one big free document people are less likely to shell out $90 for the books.
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Nov 11, 2014 19:11
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Alien Rope Burn posted:You'd think it would be hard, but I recall working on a d20 project where we were trying to do a collection of hells for planar adventuring, and no matter how many times I would mention "by the way, we can't use Planescape material", people would repeatedly bring up canon demons or locales or factions or whatever. Never underestimate the willful ignorance of fans. That's funny, doubly so because I'm going through an old huge thread on RPGNet about FFE, and you mentioned it there too 
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Nov 11, 2014 19:42
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Oh god and I'd forgotten all about this:quote:Fast Forward Offers Lifetime Subscription Two grand for all the d20 shovelware you can stand!
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Nov 11, 2014 19:47
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Going by this list, that's 37 products. Even guesstimating $25 a book on average, they didn't even break four figures.
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Nov 11, 2014 19:58
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The problem isn't using tables to spark ideas or give you an idea you probably wouldn't have thought of. Everyone does that; sometimes all you need is a simple spark to get you going into your own thing. The problem is when the tables take the place of creativity, becoming so detailed you don't have to think of things outside of "well, the table says..."
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Nov 11, 2014 21:21
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Adept Nightingale posted:I kind of want to run a game with tables detailed to this extent with no GM, just a D20 to determine what happens next. I'm not sure, but I think that's how the Mythic GM Emulator is supposed to work.
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Nov 11, 2014 21:55
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Meinberg posted:Avery McDaldno, meanwhile, stated that "mechanics and systems are political" and brought attention to how traditional design is very much from a privileged/colonial point of view, with the idea that the players simply determine the character's actions, rather than examining the biases and forces (both internal and external) that lead to those actions. I'd like to hear more about this. Because I read that and my first thought was "holy poo poo that explains so much."
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Nov 12, 2014 00:51
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For anyone who's in the southern New England area, I just got confirmation that we're going to be doing Games on Demand again. Show up, and you may be lucky enough to have me run a game for you because I know you all want to see how I GM.
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Nov 13, 2014 04:17
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Boston, MA on March 6-8 Holy poo poo they're already almost sold out. 
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Nov 13, 2014 04:46
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Alternately: do you like long, grueling lines, waiting up to two hours in advance for big events, and watching people draw nothing but penises in Pictochat? That's pretty much why I stick to the Tabletop area. It's been improving over the past few years, but it's still mostly focused on board games over RPGs. And the huge-rear end lines are pretty much relegated to the main videogame floor. Although at GoD last year we had so many people who wanted to play DW we had to turn people away because we didn't have enough GMs. Meanwhile, the "play 5e now!" area was barely half-full.
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Nov 13, 2014 18:48
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah. Honestly, some of the lines are worth it- like, waiting two hours 1for a whole night of concerts is worth it in my estimation. Well, that's any con, really. I didn't have the greatest time the one time I went to GenCon because of a sort of opposite problem: I couldn't find anything to really do. Admittedly this was before GoD was really a thing and I was there solo anyway. Zurui posted:PAX really turns me off because of the scramble for passes. I had fun the year I went, but not that much fun. It's like some sort of Burning Man for nerds. Well, in the New England area there's not a lot of options. I live in RI and there's no real good game stores anywhere, and the only big "game convention" is more focused on steampunk culture and Warmahordes. PAX East is the biggest con in this part of the country.
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Nov 13, 2014 19:49
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Well, GenCon is also spread out over multiple buildings (unlike PAX, which is entirely in the Boston Convention Center) so occupancy isn't as much of a concern. e: You know what, this shouldn't be in this thread. Sorry. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 20:08
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I've been seeing more and more "virtual cons", but a large part of the fun of a convention is meeting designers, meeting new people, and wandering the dealer room and buying obscure poo poo you're never going to play.
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Nov 13, 2014 22:06
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I have Bookhounds from the Bundle of Holding but I haven't read it yet. I've heard a ton of good things about it, though. GUMSHOE is one of those systems I really want to play. Speaking of which, The Armitage Files is amazing and got me really psyched for Dracula Dossier.
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Nov 14, 2014 00:32
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FMguru posted:When Mad Max II: The Road Warrior debuted in America in the early 1980s, most Americans believed it to be a documentary. Of course, nowadays we all know that the actual documentary is Young Einstein.
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Nov 14, 2014 04:04
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Sionak posted:This is where I'm at; even with cutting down on Bundles of Holding this year I haven't had time to read them all. Tell me about it. I'm only about halfway through sorting out my entire DriveThru library (21 GB all told), then I need to download all my Bundles, stuff off the unstore, IPR, then all the miscellaneous stuff I've accumulated over the years. Sionak posted:It's an answer to the question, "What if the novel Dracula was an edited version of real events when English Intelligence services tried to recruit a vampire to work for them? Then what if it was released as misinformation? It should also be pointed out that the Dossier is a separate book that is Stokers first draft/after action report, with notes and corrections from people involved in the other missions. It's an in-game artifact (the GM just hands the PCs the book and they decide how to use all the info), but it's done as a separate systemless book so you can just read it on its own.
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Nov 14, 2014 15:33
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Quarex posted:Well it is not as though any other thread makes more sense for ConChat. At least until The Turn Of The New Year when I make the annual Gen-Con thread unless some young whippersnapper beats me to it. No, the edit was referring to something else I edited out of my post. I don't see why we shouldn't have conchat here.
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Nov 15, 2014 05:04
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sentrygun posted:As someone who just learned today that FAE isn't an old version of FATE and is just a lighter version of Core, can anyone tell me what the big differences between the two are? I scrolled through the FAE pdf and the only thing that jumped out at me was turning skills into approaches, but I honestly don't know enough about FATE to tell if there's any other real differences. Just to expand on what Galaga Galaxian said: there are three main differences between Fate Core and FAE. 1. The replacement of skills with Approaches. 2. Where Fate Core has two expandable stress tracks that start at two boxes, FAE has one stress track that only has three boxes and can't be extended. 3. In FAE, there are only two "base" types of stunts: +2 to an approach/action combination under a specific circumstance, and "because <aspect> I can do this thing outside the rules once per session". In Fate Core stunts can be more involved.
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Nov 17, 2014 15:53
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Alternately, get him one of these.
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Nov 17, 2014 18:08
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Baron Snow posted:These look awesome! Do you have one? I'm curious how it looks in actual use. Yeah, I have one and I love it. I can post a pic when I get home, but I keep a few sets of dice in it, as well as a bunch of dry erase cards and markers.
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Nov 18, 2014 00:29
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And now I am home. Sorry for the blurry pic. This thing currently holds two sets of standard dice with spare d20's, d6's and d10s, some Zocci dice, a few sets of Fate Dice, a NoteBoard I sliced up a bit to make a mini-dry-erase map and some dry-erase cards, a deck of playing cards, and assorted writing implements.
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Nov 18, 2014 02:00
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I'm incredibly jealous because I've been in four or five PbP games and they all faded after like a month.
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Nov 18, 2014 05:01
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Kemper Boyd posted:Someone said somewhere that writing 90% of something is the easy part and the last 10% is the hard part. 90%? Geez, I'm lucky if I can get about halfway before I stop.
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Nov 19, 2014 00:25
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Quarex posted:Is this a Goon project? The existence of grenades as toggles by itself does not necessarily guarantee it, but the existence of grenades as the only alternatives to the normal toggles makes me wonder. Not that I'm aware of; I found out about these from G+.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:14
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ImpactVector posted:FFG just started their holiday sale. Ugh, I hate this because I'm always tempted to get the WH3e boxes just so I have them, despite not ever playing the base set. Hell, I haven't even popped out the chits yet.
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Nov 19, 2014 22:45
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grassy gnoll posted:Remind me, Anima is the hysterically overcomplicated Final Fantasy ripoff, right? Yes. It's a ridiculously complex system that wasn't helped by being translated by three separate people from Spanish to English.
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Nov 19, 2014 23:20
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The gently caress happened in this thread?
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Nov 23, 2014 16:58
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I'm honestly amazed that I seem to be in the minority because I play all my games face-to-face.
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Nov 24, 2014 18:21
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I guess I'm lucky that my friends are into indie games, and that my old Encounters group was willing to try 13th Age because we've been doing that organized play instead for the past 6 months or so.
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Nov 24, 2014 19:55
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He's said that the Dragon Lee pic is sourced from a public-domain movie, but that probably doesn't apply to the other ones. e: Error 404 posted:I wonder how many of his fans were monitoring my skarka is an asshat about ferguson G+ post about him that got necro'd and those got posted. What's his stance on Ferguson? Or do I want to know?
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Nov 25, 2014 03:15
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ravenkult posted:GMS needs some lessons from Mykal Lakim. No matter how terrible someone is, there's always someone on the internet who'll defend them.
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Nov 25, 2014 05:19
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I'll be honest; I backed it because I love western RPGs and a friend of mine backed it too. I was still in "that phase" of backing everything. It's still one of my biggest regrets. (another is pre-ordering the Buckaroo Banzai RPG)
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Nov 25, 2014 05:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:Any thoughts on "Wealth Level" mechanics to replace explicit tracking of individual gold pieces? I first ran into this in True20 where characters have a Wealth Level, can safely buy anything that's well below the level, have to roll a "Wealth Check" if they want to buy something above their current status, and accomplishing quests and getting loot and whatnot increases their Wealth Level. Error 404 posted:Who is Lakim again?
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Nov 25, 2014 05:48
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Tollymain posted:i think that guy who made the lovely transparent wod knockoff? also possibly the reason the grogs thread got nuked so hard it went into the admin-only part of the site Really? When did that happen?
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Nov 25, 2014 05:49
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:47 |
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Tollymain posted:the one that succeeded the original grogs, the one before the no-discussion rule was instated. Oh, okay. I've deliberately not looked at g.txt since my last meltdown post.
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Nov 25, 2014 05:52
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