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hectorgrey
Oct 14, 2011
Right, now that I don't have a Pathfinder one shot to prepare on short notice, time to take another look at a good game.

Burning Wheel Part 3: Advancement

The book says rather grandly that "Advancement is the Lifeblood of Burning Wheel". Yeah, maybe a little pretentious. Unlike in many games, skills and stats in Burning Wheel improve through use. There are three difficulties of tests - routine, difficult and challenging. This is important for advancement, because in order to advance, you need a specific number of different difficulty tests. If a skill is 4 or lower, you require a number of routine tests, and a number of difficult or challenging tests. At 5 and higher, routine tests no longer count, and the tests must come from a specific number of difficult and challenging tests. For stats, only difficult and challenging tests are counted. Note that the rolls do not have to be successful - you learn as much from failure as success. Once you gain the required number of tests at each difficulty, the score immediately increases.

The Instructor posted:

Applicable Situations

Tests are only rewarded to players when their characters act in appropriate and applicable in-game situations. Everything else counts as practice.

The Ranter posted:

Test Mongering

Tests are very important to the game, but badgering the GM for them is very bad form. Can I test? Can I? Sometimes, a player will wish to have his character roll his dice for something at an inappropriate juncture in play. It is the GM's role to pace events and keep play flowing evenly. Therefore, he can have a player hold off on making a test until the appropriate time, or even stay his hand entirely.

Test mongering also involves pestering the GM for a particular test. "I need a routine. Can I make a routine test?" "Dude, it's a dragon. I don't think there are going to be any routine tests." The GM's job here is to flat out say "No." Let the difficulty of the tests arise organically, not at the player's request so his character can advance. It makes for a much more interesting game.

In a situation where a character rolls the same skill or stat multiple times in one situation (combat is a really good example of this), the entire situation only counts as one test. The highest difficulty test of the encounter is the difficulty used. However, if a player is only one test from advancing, as soon as a test of appropriate difficulty is rolled, that is the difficulty used.

Graduated tests (wherein any number of successes count as a success, but more successes give a better result) always count as a routine test, and once a skill or stat advances, all of the successes for that skill are removed. For versus tests, the difficulty is the number of successes rolled by the opposing side.

Because helping adds dice to the person rolling, this may reduce the difficulty of the test (and as a result make it harder to get the more difficult tests for advancement). The person helping, however, also gets a test, as though they had made a test against that difficulty with their own skill. FoRKs and Advantage Dice are also counted towards the dice rolled for the test, and may also reduce the difficulty for advancement. Dice gained from spending Artha, meanwhile, do not count.

Use in stressful situations is not the only way to increase skills and stats - they can also be increased through practice and instruction. Each skill and stat has a cycle period (typically months and can be as much as a year), during which time the character must spend a certain number of hours per day practicing. At the end of that period, if they have spent that many hours every day practicing, they get one test. The difficulty of the test is based off of the number of hours spent practicing each day, and the most amount of time a character can spend practicing is Will * 3, or 20; whichever is lower. An instructor can give tests in a matter of weeks rather than months based on a roll on the Instruction skill by the instructor. The Instruction takes up all of a character's free time, and no other skills may be practiced during that time.

Learning a new skill also requires tests of that skills - beginner's luck allows one to test the base stat at double the difficulty, while instruction and practice can provide tests as well. A number of tests (regardless of difficulty) equal to the character's aptitude in that skill - the aptitude being 10 - the base stat. Once the skill is learned, it starts at half the score of the base stat.

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FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Kai Tave posted:

Which essentially means that if you're rolling up a Would-Be Knight and you happen to wind up Weapon Spec'd in maces then it sucks to be you because you're stuck using a d6 damage weapon when what you really wanted was that d8 longsword. It's a tiny thing, but it's (as far as I can tell) a pointless tiny thing that's in there for no other reason than "D&D did it," which to me is the biggest shortcoming of a lot of OSR stuff in general.
And it's not even that - really really old skool D&D didn't even have different damage ratings for weapons - everything did a D6. Stabbed by a dagger or shot by an arrow or chopped by an axe? Same effect - which makes sense given how abstract hit points are supposed to be.

BTW looks like a wonderful game, tied to a bunch of unnecessary old rules about damage dice and saves vs. paralysis.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

Simian_Prime posted:

I'd say they lost all sense of proportion, but I'm not sure they had any to begin with.

That's what happens when you spend decades convincing yourself that a half-inch square is really a ten by ten corridor.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Simian_Prime posted:

Now they're advocating selling T-shirts in support of Moorcock, like he got shot by a cop or something.

Because Some Guys on The Internet said mean things about a 20-year-old game.

I'd say they lost all sense of proportion, but I'm not sure they had any to begin with.

It always amazes me how some gamers (or game writers) simply cannot wrap their heads around the concept that some people may not like their favorite game and would say so. I mean, I know GSFs and everything but still.

Simian_Prime
Nov 6, 2011

When they passed out body parts in the comics today, I got Cathy's nose and Dick Tracy's private parts.

ThisIsNoZaku posted:

All-bear party

GimpInBlack
Sep 27, 2012

That's right, kids, take lots of drugs, leave the universe behind, and pilot Enlightenment Voltron out into the cosmos to meet Alien Jesus.
Jeez, I go to bed and everybody discovers the Village Bear without me. :)

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

I've had this game since it was released. The Bear is tied for the best with the Witch. The Nobleman's Wild Daughter is right behind them.

On further assessment, I agree with this ranking. Really, the only playbooks I'm not a huge fan of are the demihuman ones, and that's just because, as Kai Tave and FMguru brought up, Beyond the Wall is really at its best when it's not clinging to the structure of D&D. The Fae Foundling is about the farthest I like to go into nonhuman PCs for this game, and it's actually another really cool one.


FMguru posted:

And it's not even that - really really old skool D&D didn't even have different damage ratings for weapons - everything did a D6. Stabbed by a dagger or shot by an arrow or chopped by an axe? Same effect - which makes sense given how abstract hit points are supposed to be.

BTW looks like a wonderful game, tied to a bunch of unnecessary old rules about damage dice and saves vs. paralysis.

In fairness to the designers, they at least admit that the saves vs. paralysis are in there purely to make it easier to drop old modules in with a minimum of work, and they give you a Fort/Ref/Will option (pity there's no character sheet with Fort/Ref/Will saves marked, though). The Moorcockian alignment, damage by weapon type, and hireling rules (I still can't get over that one. Hireling rules. In a game about teenagers exploring the dangerous woods. It's almost as irrelevant as the Battlestar Galactica RPG having a Swim skill.) though, definitely feel like they're there because that's what the OSR audience expects to be there.

Thing is, I like the core mechanic. It doesn't do a whole lot of fancy narrative bells and whistles, but it's simple and transparent and covers just about anything you might want to try. There's just, like, three things that should really be changed to make it great.


Kai Tave posted:

For a game like this I think it's interesting to consider a party that maybe just straight up sucks at combat and has to get by through other means, because for one thing older D&Ds often did have a strong undercurrent of "find a way to get the loot/get to your goal without fighting every monster" (up to a point anyway, once you hit AD&D2E fighting monsters in dungeons seemed to be the go-to game) and provided this game lends support to that it isn't a terrible way to approach things, and also it seems appropriate to the source material that the game is ostensibly aiming for.

I second this wholeheartedly. I mean, you have to have a GM that doesn't treat monsters like they've all got a little red circle under their feet and they automatically charge the instant a player is within 50 feet, but because the game relies on a philosophy of "most anyone can try most anything with an attribute check" it's really easy to adjudicate crazy stunts, and you're encouraged to award monster XP for overcoming the challenge, not just red-handed slaughter. And, again, part of the GM's job is to look at the PCs' stuff and muse on ways it could be surprisingly useful. Arawn's not going to be braining many giant spiders with his smith's hammer, but you can bet it's made of iron and might very well give a hefty bonus if he has to clobber a redcap later on.

Further Afield also introduces some optional XP tweaks that can further disincentivize combat, including a really neat variant on the old "XP for treasure" system that I'm looking forward to talking about when we get there.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Last one I promise:

yay Elric fans posted:

Okay, I got through 23 minutes of two douchey guys being nowhere near as funny as they think they are before having to ragequit.

Elric being sickly and weak is "bullshit" because there are ways to counteract it, with drugs and with Stormbringer? If you had read the actual story, you stupid bastards, you would have known that one, it's a frequent plot point for him to be separated from his sword and his drugs and therefore get too weak to even move, and two, it's a frequent characterisation point that he's reliant on the sword even though he hates it and hates what it turns him into. But of course you haven't read the story, you stupid bastards. Because why would you, am I right, you stupid bastards? Why bother actually taking a look at something before deciding you know all about it?

Aaaarggggghh.

So let's see.... douchey and not funny. Accurate.
I think my favorite part of all of these is that they're just helping reinforce our initial review about how lovely the book we actually read is. Stormbringer left us with such negative reactions to Elric that every fan of Elric thinks we're assholes, but our opinion is solely formed by what we read in Stormbringer. If it's super vital for the casual reader to know that sometimes Elric isn't allowed access to his ultra-magic doomsword, well, the books probably say so, but not the book we read about those books.

Being mad at us is like being mad at someone reviewing a terrible child's book report because of a critical misunderstanding of the original source material.. All like "According to this report we read, Sense and Sensibility is about two guys named Sense and Sensibility. They lived in ancient England times and sometimes had swordfights. We understand that the cover had pretty flowers on it, and it was written by Jane Austen. It was 210 pages long and we hoped you enjoyed hearing this report of that report."

PoptartsNinja
May 9, 2008

He is still almost definitely not a spy


Soiled Meat

Kurieg posted:

there was once a "Vulgar" house, the Divous clan who had a Boar as their crest.

And yet, like Weresharks, Boars are apparently unplayable?

There goes my dream of convincing you to make Bebop and Rocksteady as sample characters when it comes time to show us all how broken the characters are.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

PoptartsNinja posted:

And yet, like Weresharks, Boars are apparently unplayable?

There goes my dream of convincing you to make Bebop and Rocksteady as sample characters when it comes time to show us all how broken the characters are.

There's always making them in Heroes Unlimited or the Marvel Roleplaying System.

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

theironjef posted:

Last one I promise:


So let's see.... douchey and not funny. Accurate.
I think my favorite part of all of these is that they're just helping reinforce our initial review about how lovely the book we actually read is. Stormbringer left us with such negative reactions to Elric that every fan of Elric thinks we're assholes, but our opinion is solely formed by what we read in Stormbringer. If it's super vital for the casual reader to know that sometimes Elric isn't allowed access to his ultra-magic doomsword, well, the books probably say so, but not the book we read about those books.

Being mad at us is like being mad at someone reviewing a terrible child's book report because of a critical misunderstanding of the original source material.. All like "According to this report we read, Sense and Sensibility is about two guys named Sense and Sensibility. They lived in ancient England times and sometimes had swordfights. We understand that the cover had pretty flowers on it, and it was written by Jane Austen. It was 210 pages long and we hoped you enjoyed hearing this report of that report."

Don't forget that you're stupid bastards, you stupid bastards.

I agree that a licensed game system should be representative of the source material. If that angry dude is right, and Elric isn't really hot poo poo (which I doubt, though I haven't read the books), then it's a failing of the Stormbringer RPG to represent that.

occamsnailfile
Nov 4, 2007



zamtrios so lonely
Grimey Drawer
I read several of the Elric books as a kid and my reaction to them was kind of a bored shrug. The prose was kind of leaden, Elric was a whiney douche who was incapable of solving his own problems and had to call on his chaos-god deus ex machina constantly. Moorcock had some kind of entertaining weirdness in some of his plot setups but it never felt cohesive enough to click with me. Mind you, this was a very long time ago I read them at this point but that is my general recollection. I sort of want to go read the first one again as an adult just to better understand their influence on others, but I can't help but feel other authors have done it better since.

Like I get that Moorcock was hugely influential in that era of sci-fi and fantasy with promoting the New Wave stuff and trying to pull genre fiction away from the Gernsbeck/Campell rut it had kind of been stuck in but reading him now is less...groundbreaking?

Also re: New Wave thing, back in the day people used to bitch about how upstarts like Moorcock and Zelazny and Delany were ruining the proper science fiction genre. Having people grog about them now is very :3:

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

theironjef posted:

Last one I promise:

No! Keep sharing these reactions.

I like the Elric series. I like the Stormbringer game. I also completely agree with all the points you brought up. The response of 'I like this game so everybody has to...:colbert::smug:' is the real problem.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

occamsnailfile posted:

I read several of the Elric books as a kid and my reaction to them was kind of a bored shrug. The prose was kind of leaden, Elric was a whiney douche who was incapable of solving his own problems and had to call on his chaos-god deus ex machina constantly. Moorcock had some kind of entertaining weirdness in some of his plot setups but it never felt cohesive enough to click with me. Mind you, this was a very long time ago I read them at this point but that is my general recollection. I sort of want to go read the first one again as an adult just to better understand their influence on others, but I can't help but feel other authors have done it better since.

There's a single part in the RPG that references a beaten Elric. He's like stripped of his sword and kicked off a ship in heavy armor. And then he immediately summons the god of the ocean to carry him to safety. So even in that moment where he's beaten and he doesn't have his thee-thou magic blade, he still just commands gods to do whatever he wants.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

No! Keep sharing these reactions.

I like the Elric series. I like the Stormbringer game. I also completely agree with all the points you brought up. The response of 'I like this game so everybody has to...:colbert::smug:' is the real problem.

It's more of a "how DARE someone speak negatively of a game!", which is worse to me.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

PoptartsNinja posted:

And yet, like Weresharks, Boars are apparently unplayable?

There goes my dream of convincing you to make Bebop and Rocksteady as sample characters when it comes time to show us all how broken the characters are.

The game gives you rules to build your own, but no there are no official boars.

The dumb thing is that it keeps going on about how snakes are a noble house and there is literally only one weresnake breed, and they are all mucisians. Not assassins, not social predators, musicians.


Evil Mastermind posted:

It's more of a "how DARE someone speak negatively of a game!", which is worse to me.

I wonder how they'd respond to half of Fields' stuff.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

No! Keep sharing these reactions.

I like the Elric series. I like the Stormbringer game. I also completely agree with all the points you brought up. The response of 'I like this game so everybody has to...:colbert::smug:' is the real problem.

It's actually neat that this podcast dropped after we'd developed any amount of a following. We've covered a bunch of licensed games, and we've tried a variety of approaches for prior knowledge of the license. Like Buffy was one deep fan, one very casual fan. Indiana Jones was two deep fans. Everquest would have been going in blind, so we recruited a heavy player, and Star Wars was one heavy fan, and one who had actually played that game. For Stormbringer we tried going in fully blind to see if the book did a good job of selling the source. And just like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, the answer was a resounding nope. Honestly I figure that's valuable information. A podcast with two deep Elric fans would also be valuable information.

I just hope we find as deeply invested fans for our next couple of licensed games, including Tales from the Crypt.

Evil Mastermind posted:

It's more of a "how DARE someone speak negatively of a game!", which is worse to me.

Including one of the authors, which freaks me out everytime. We've received emails from the Tales from the Floating Vagabond guy and the Steve Jackson team before. Honestly I have a lot of respect for the folks that actually make games, it's why we skew towards really old stuff.

theironjef fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Mar 30, 2015

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

theironjef posted:

Including one of the authors, which freaks me out everytime. We've received emails from the Tales from the Floating Vagabond guy and the Steve Jackson team before. Honestly I have a lot of respect for the folks that actually make games, it's why we skew towards really old stuff.

I will never for the life of me understand why people who can't take any kind of negative feedback get into creative fields where you will, invariably, at some point, get negative feedback.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Evil Mastermind posted:

I will never for the life of me understand why people who can't take any kind of negative feedback get into creative fields where you will, invariably, at some point, get negative feedback.

Well, to be fair the Tales from the Floating Vagabond fellow, Lee Garvin, was very friendly and actually tweeted our show, it was a neat early break for us (2nd episode after all), he was just grumpy because we had the edition of the game with a famous typo in it, basically cutting the player's health in half so any damage you took from anything was likely to be deadly.

The Car Wars guy had a hilarious sign-off of like "I'm not really looking for an argument, far too busy making rad Steve Jackson games." Honestly I miss when Steve Jackson Games didn't primarily make endless recyclings of Munchkin junk. I'm still planning on making a Toon episode.

We have an industry guy that listens and contributes, Plague of Hats, and I know he made it through our Exalted episode without exploding, so hopefully there's a few more like that around.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

theironjef posted:

The Car Wars guy had a hilarious sign-off of like "I'm not really looking for an argument, far too busy making rad Steve Jackson games." Honestly I miss when Steve Jackson Games didn't primarily make endless recyclings of Munchkin junk. I'm still planning on making a Toon episode.

Honestly, I didn't think the Car Wars episode was that great, because you guys kept acting like this board/war game was a full-fledged RPG and judging it as such. I couldn't tell if you were doing a bit or if you were reviewing it "straight".

(and yeah gently caress Munchkin)

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

GimpInBlack posted:

In fairness to the designers, they at least admit that the saves vs. paralysis are in there purely to make it easier to drop old modules in with a minimum of work, and they give you a Fort/Ref/Will option (pity there's no character sheet with Fort/Ref/Will saves marked, though). The Moorcockian alignment, damage by weapon type, and hireling rules (I still can't get over that one. Hireling rules. In a game about teenagers exploring the dangerous woods. It's almost as irrelevant as the Battlestar Galactica RPG having a Swim skill.) though, definitely feel like they're there because that's what the OSR audience expects to be there.

Thing is, I like the core mechanic. It doesn't do a whole lot of fancy narrative bells and whistles, but it's simple and transparent and covers just about anything you might want to try. There's just, like, three things that should really be changed to make it great.

Yeah, the hireling rules are kind of out of place too. I can almost accept those because I'm willing to imagine a scenario where, say, the kids scrape up some money to hire a grizzled mercenary to accompany them/teach them some swordplay for a while, but that's the sort of thing that doesn't need full-fledged D&D-style hireling rules to accomplish.

If I were to hack the game re: weapon damage, I'd assign damage values by role rather than by weapon. Warriors would do d8 damage with hand weapons and bows or d10 damage with great weapons but couldn't use shields at the same time, Rogues would do d6 with hand weapons and bows but couldn't use great weapons, and Mages would do d4 damage with hand weapons and couldn't use anything else. You could keep Weapon Specialization the same, even.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Honestly, I didn't think the Car Wars episode was that great, because you guys kept acting like this board/war game was a full-fledged RPG and judging it as such. I couldn't tell if you were doing a bit or if you were reviewing it "straight".

(and yeah gently caress Munchkin)

I'm not thrilled with it either. We honestly didn't know what Car Wars was going in. I was aware of it on a cultural level and was happy to find a cheap copy, and by the time we had realized it was really a hybrid RPG/wargame weighted heavily towards wargame, it was recording time and we figured it'd be a neat challenge. We're both wargamers anyway. It just didn't gel the way we were hoping.

Also dammit a mod just told everyone to stop attacking us. I was enjoying it!

Kai Tave posted:

If I were to hack the game re: weapon damage, I'd assign damage values by role rather than by weapon. Warriors would do d8 damage with hand weapons and bows or d10 damage with great weapons but couldn't use shields at the same time, Rogues would do d6 with hand weapons and bows but couldn't use great weapons, and Mages would do d4 damage with hand weapons and couldn't use anything else. You could keep Weapon Specialization the same, even.

This is the best weapons model for a stripped down game. Always liked it. It keeps the classes balanced but allows for expressive character design.

theironjef fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Mar 30, 2015

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

Kai Tave posted:

If I were to hack the game re: weapon damage, I'd assign damage values by role rather than by weapon. Warriors would do d8 damage with hand weapons and bows or d10 damage with great weapons but couldn't use shields at the same time, Rogues would do d6 with hand weapons and bows but couldn't use great weapons, and Mages would do d4 damage with hand weapons and couldn't use anything else. You could keep Weapon Specialization the same, even.

This is basically what 13th Age does.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Green Intern posted:

This is basically what 13th Age does.

Dungeon World does it too. Honestly, assigning damage by class/role/playbook/whatever instead of by weapon is one of those obvious things that made me slap my head that I'd never thought of it myself when I first saw it.

GimpInBlack
Sep 27, 2012

That's right, kids, take lots of drugs, leave the universe behind, and pilot Enlightenment Voltron out into the cosmos to meet Alien Jesus.

Kai Tave posted:

If I were to hack the game re: weapon damage, I'd assign damage values by role rather than by weapon. Warriors would do d8 damage with hand weapons and bows or d10 damage with great weapons but couldn't use shields at the same time, Rogues would do d6 with hand weapons and bows but couldn't use great weapons, and Mages would do d4 damage with hand weapons and couldn't use anything else. You could keep Weapon Specialization the same, even.

I'd probably still let rogues and mages step up damage by one die type for going with a two-handed weapon, but yeah, that's pretty close to how I'd run it. I'd love to turn attacks and saves into attribute checks to get one consistent task resolution mechanic, but then I'd have to give all the monsters attribute lines and I'm deeply, deeply lazy.

Hmm... maybe you could eyeball it by saying monsters have a "good" attribute that's 10 + HD and a "bad" attribute that's 5 + HD, and you roll whichever seems appropriate (a big stupid ogre probably rolls its bad attribute to avoid being bamboozled by fast talk, but definitely uses its "good" attribute to smash the fast talker into paste). Turn armor into an attack penalty and I think you might have something. At least ballparking with a few monster stats it looks like the probabilities end up roughly within 5%.

EDIT: The only problem with a system like this is it doesn't scale well with level--there's no "we'll come back and fight this giant when we're level 4" because your to-hit roll is still Strength - the giant's AC. Maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing, it pushes big, scary monsters into the "find another solution" arena, but it's something that might cause problems.

GimpInBlack fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Mar 30, 2015

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
I suppose I can't really argue with the image of the Witch's Prentice grabbing a two-handed hammer or something and trying to kneecap an ogre.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

Evil Mastermind posted:

I will never for the life of me understand why people who can't take any kind of negative feedback get into creative fields where you will, invariably, at some point, get negative feedback.

Speaking as a sensitive, introverted creative type... it's a skill, same as grammar, same as plotting, same as systems design. Unfortunately, criticism is too, and the kind of people most likely to offer feedback are just going to offer encouragement, regardless of whether it's warranted or not.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Bieeardo posted:

Speaking as a sensitive, introverted creative type... it's a skill, same as grammar, same as plotting, same as systems design. Unfortunately, criticism is too, and the kind of people most likely to offer feedback are just going to offer encouragement, regardless of whether it's warranted or not.

It's funny, because I ran into that recently with the whole Fyxt RPG thing. They were on RPGGeek asking for "reviews", but it became clear very quickly (once the real, honest feedback started coming in) that when they said "reviews" what they meant was "tell us how cool we are". They didn't seem to know how to deal with people questioning the design decisions because it probably didn't occur to them that people might not automatically praise their game.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Bieeardo posted:

Speaking as a sensitive, introverted creative type... it's a skill, same as grammar, same as plotting, same as systems design. Unfortunately, criticism is too, and the kind of people most likely to offer feedback are just going to offer encouragement, regardless of whether it's warranted or not.

At the same time this (the RPGnet thread plus Twitter beefs et al) is still a ridiculously overwrought reaction for what's essentially some random dumb podcast (no offense theironjef) making fun of a 20+ year old RPG about a fantasy novel series that most people don't give a poo poo about anymore. Like, people are getting seriously loving pissed that two random dudes on the internet aren't displaying rigorous critical standards when they make fun of Stormbringer: The Fantasy Epic: The Game. Taking criticism effectively is a learned skill, yes, but there's a difference between not being able to take criticism and irrationally stripping a gear whenever someone says a mean thing about something you like.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Kai Tave posted:

At the same time this (the RPGnet thread plus Twitter beefs et al) is still a ridiculously overwrought reaction for what's essentially some random dumb podcast (no offense theironjef)

None taken, that's actually a pretty good pull quote.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Kai Tave posted:

At the same time this (the RPGnet thread plus Twitter beefs et al) is still a ridiculously overwrought reaction for what's essentially some random dumb podcast (no offense theironjef) making fun of a 20+ year old RPG about a fantasy novel series that most people don't give a poo poo about anymore. Like, people are getting seriously loving pissed that two random dudes on the internet aren't displaying rigorous critical standards when they make fun of Stormbringer: The Fantasy Epic: The Game. Taking criticism effectively is a learned skill, yes, but there's a difference between not being able to take criticism and irrationally stripping a gear whenever someone says a mean thing about something you like.
The actual designer guy who showed up in that thread (Lawrence Whitaker) only briefly addressing the podcast, and only said "I won't voice my thoughts publicly." about it. Which is entirely fair - he's not obligated to laugh along with the SM guys any more than they're obligated to like the game he worked on. His response to the lack of modern popularity of Moorcock was to shrug and say tastes change.

Seems like he's a creative person in a creative endeavor who's taking criticism just fine.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

FMguru posted:

The actual designer guy who showed up in that thread (Lawrence Whitaker) only briefly addressing the podcast, and only said "I won't voice my thoughts publicly." about it. Which is entirely fair - he's not obligated to laugh along with the SM guys any more than they're obligated to like the game he worked on. His response to the lack of modern popularity of Moorcock was to shrug and say tastes change.

Seems like he's a creative person in a creative endeavor who's taking criticism just fine.

Yep. Seems fine to me.

AmiYumi
Oct 10, 2005

I FORGOT TO HAIL KING TORG

theironjef posted:

Last one I promise:
Not only am I joining the "please continue" bandwagon, I'm requesting that your future subjects be in the same vein. Like, I know there's a Song of Ice and Fire RPG, there's a Firefly RPG that I'm pretty sure has multiple editions...is there a terrible "Superwholock" RPG out there, somewhere? :getin:

Speaking of terrible affronts to Man and God, I looked into getting you guys a copy of the Dragon Ball Z: The Anime Adventure Game, but it's just monetarily infeasible unless I sent you guys my personal copy, which I don't want to do.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

AmiYumi posted:

Not only am I joining the "please continue" bandwagon, I'm requesting that your future subjects be in the same vein. Like, I know there's a Song of Ice and Fire RPG, there's a Firefly RPG that I'm pretty sure has multiple editions...is there a terrible "Superwholock" RPG out there, somewhere? :getin:

Speaking of terrible affronts to Man and God, I looked into getting you guys a copy of the Dragon Ball Z: The Anime Adventure Game, but it's just monetarily infeasible unless I sent you guys my personal copy, which I don't want to do.

We don't usually get into upcoming episodes, but we do own A Song of Fire and Ice already, along with the Wheel of Time RPG, so going after the popular licenses is certainly in our future cards. Both coming after World of Tales from the Crypt, though. Man I'm excited about Tales from the Crypt.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

theironjef posted:

We don't usually get into upcoming episodes, but we do own A Song of Fire and Ice already, along with the Wheel of Time RPG, so going after the popular licenses is certainly in our future cards. Both coming after World of Tales from the Crypt, though. Man I'm excited about Tales from the Crypt.
1990s WEG was an absolute powerhouse of poo poo-tier RPG licenses. Some were understandable (Indiana Jones, Men In Black, Hercules & Xena), but then you had Tank Girl and Species and Necroscope and Tales From The Crypt. WEG was supposedly set up as an intentional money-loser for tax purposes of the company that owned it, and looking at their 1990s output, that certainly seems plausible.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

AmiYumi posted:

Not only am I joining the "please continue" bandwagon, I'm requesting that your future subjects be in the same vein. Like, I know there's a Song of Ice and Fire RPG, there's a Firefly RPG that I'm pretty sure has multiple editions...is there a terrible "Superwholock" RPG out there, somewhere? :getin:

There are two Firefly RPGs, both by Margaret Weiss Productions. The first one was one of the very first iterations of the Cortex system and was generally not considered to be super great even among fans of the show, the second version is a much more recent release and, if the license doesn't instantly turn you away, is actually a much improved game given that MWP has refined their system over numerous games.

There's also an MWP Supernatural RPG and Cubicle 7's Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, but I don't think either of those is supposed to be super terrible (assuming you're aiming for terrible games specifically). I would absolutely agree with FMguru that if you want lovely licensed RPGs you really want 90's era WEG. Don't forget the Lawnmower Man RPG! I actually briefly owned a copy of that thanks to an RPG book white elephant exchange and it was about as dumb and pointless as you might imagine.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Kai Tave posted:

Don't forget the Lawnmower Man RPG! I actually briefly owned a copy of that thanks to an RPG book white elephant exchange and it was about as dumb and pointless as you might imagine.
That was by Leading Edge Games, who produced the famously detailed combat system masquerading as an RPG Phoenix Command (also Living Steel and Sword & Glory). They also had the licenses to do Aliens and that early 90s Dracula film by Coppola.

Yes, you were expected to play the Winona Ryder/Gary Oldman/Anthony Hopkins/Keanu Reeves characters in the Dracula movie using a cut down version of a series of combat wargame rules designed by people who thought Aftermath and Rolemaster were too simple.

unseenlibrarian
Jun 4, 2012

There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.
Weirdly, from what I remember, WEG wasn't set up so much as an intentional tax loser as it was basically viewed as a giant piggy-bank they could use to bail out the owner's parents' company. And this actually worked while they had the Star Wars license. But then they lost that and started chasing the next big money maker and so much for the rainy day funds.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

FMguru posted:

That was by Leading Edge Games, who produced the famously detailed combat system masquerading as an RPG Phoenix Command (also Living Steel and Sword & Glory). They also had the licenses to do Aliens and that early 90s Dracula film by Coppola.

poo poo, I'm getting my terrible licensed RPG publishers mixed up.

Aliens as a Phoenix Command game almost, almost makes sense though.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

unseenlibrarian posted:

Weirdly, from what I remember, WEG wasn't set up so much as an intentional tax loser as it was basically viewed as a giant piggy-bank they could use to bail out the owner's parents' company. And this actually worked while they had the Star Wars license. But then they lost that and started chasing the next big money maker and so much for the rainy day funds.
I do know that they owners' other business was as the authorized American imported for expensive Bruno Magli shoes, which underwent a remarkable boom/bust market cycle when they were tied to the OJ Simpson murder trial; the bust phase tanked the company and pretty much took WEG with it. The name and some of the (non-licensed) IP was sold off to another starry-eyed nerd in the late 1990s and there begins a tale even weirder and more sordid and tragic than The Day OJ Simpson Murdered A Nerd Game Company.

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Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

unseenlibrarian posted:

Weirdly, from what I remember, WEG wasn't set up so much as an intentional tax loser as it was basically viewed as a giant piggy-bank they could use to bail out the owner's parents' company. And this actually worked while they had the Star Wars license. But then they lost that and started chasing the next big money maker and so much for the rainy day funds.
From what I've heard, the owners of WEG owned a number of companies, and had a policy of spreading the profits around so that successful ventures would help failing ones. One of the owner's other investments was a Bruno Magli franchise. Bruno Magli was the brand of Italian shoes most famous for being the brand OJ Simpson was wearing when he murdered his wife.

FMguru posted:

That was by Leading Edge Games, who produced the famously detailed combat system masquerading as an RPG Phoenix Command (also Living Steel and Sword & Glory). They also had the licenses to do Aliens and that early 90s Dracula film by Coppola.

Yes, you were expected to play the Winona Ryder/Gary Oldman/Anthony Hopkins/Keanu Reeves characters in the Dracula movie using a cut down version of a series of combat wargame rules designed by people who thought Aftermath and Rolemaster were too simple.
Does anybody have the Bram Stoker's Dracula RPG? Used copies are too expensive for me to satisfy my curiosity, but I heard it was much, much simpler than Phoenix Command.

If I remember right, Leading Edge folded when the owners decided to release miniatures sets, and realized they had overextended themselves beyond their very niche audience and a couple successful licenses. They went back to their day jobs as successful engineers.

FMguru posted:

1990s WEG was an absolute powerhouse of poo poo-tier RPG licenses. Some were understandable (Indiana Jones, Men In Black, Hercules & Xena), but then you had Tank Girl and Species and Necroscope and Tales From The Crypt. WEG was supposedly set up as an intentional money-loser for tax purposes of the company that owned it, and looking at their 1990s output, that certainly seems plausible.
The Tales from the Crypt boxed set was one of the first RPGs I owned. It's actually pretty interesting, although I'm not sure it can capture the feel of the show even if you run it as a series of one-shots. The concept for ongoing campaigns is that the Cryptkeeper drops the PCs' minds into the bodies of people in a horror scenario, so it's sort of like a cross between the show and "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream."

It goes without saying that Masterbook is a weird old clunky system that the game doesn't really need.

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