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Liquid Communism posted:Is blue/orange a problem? It contrasts just as sharply.
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Feb 24, 2018 23:22
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Simian_Prime posted:Which could also be fun, but I was imagining more of a sci-fi bent to it. Still won't work. A huge number of players just want basic rear end bog standard DnD with a rough 15th century tech level as they murderhobo through a Tolkienesque world and don't you loving dare deviate. Even stuff like Dark Sun and Spelljammer and to a lesser extent Ravenloft deviate too much. I had an outright revolt trying to do a fantasy game taken to the future with a magic vs technology theme and lots of time traveling shenanigans because it was literally a time war. Another time we never got to the future bit I had planned and players who were happy with Dagon vs Knights of Solamnia in a steampunk Innsmouth, Tyranids, and cybernetic monster sharks told me they would not have liked fighting the big bad Draconian commander in future Krynn. Lots of people don't want anything but in print current edition DnD and stereotypical settings. There can be no discussion, communication, or compromise. EVER. Lots of the reasons the RPG industry really isn't one is because most people forget this. (Even SA here as most of you act like 3.x DnD ate your dog as opposed to it being a well intentioned game that lost the plot and became this meandering pile of a game so tightly connected it's nearly impossible to house rule without it falling apart completely. Y'all seem to have similar opinions on 99% compatible Essentials and whatever 5th is.) It might be a big reason board and card games do a lot better. Generally cheaper or a good toy value for the money hobby games have to charge compared to larger market products and they are more stand alones or one shots that don't "intrude" upon whatever sacred 800 pound gorilla game most people seem to have shoved completely into their buttholes and have decided is their identity and the ONLY THING TO PLAY EVERYTHING ELSE IN GENRE IS THE ENEMY. (See Magic for CCGs, Warhammer 40k for Minis, DnD for RPGs. Everything else is an Also ran or regional thing at Best. Even semi competition like X Wing Minis or the Pokémon CCG had to come in through entirely different vectors of product marketing and customer.) That's one thing the industry and this thread seem to kind of miss quite often. The hardcore fans won't deviate, and casuals look in at both cost and effort and sometimes the sheer toxicity of gamers and nope out. 50 bucks is expensive as poo poo for a book to a normal person as even most gorgeous coffee table books don't get past this normally and even videogame strategy guides are cheap as hell. And then told you might need more of them and still just get berated for not playing Popular Thing X? Yeah. And don't forget online isn't the real world. Even most gamers never go to RPGnet or listen to Fear the Boot, much less know or give a poo poo about the smaller places. (Which may be a good thing in the former. Not so much in the latter unless they all lost their minds over the last year or so.)
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Feb 27, 2018 22:22
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Not everything has to be the biggest thing ever. It's like being upset that your videogame isn't making Overwatch or Zelda money. It's not reasonable. Some people are happy eating McDonalds every day, but that doesn't mean your favorite local hamburger joint should close up shop, or that you shouldn't recommend it. It's a bad argument.
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Feb 27, 2018 23:29
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Not everything has to be the biggest thing ever. It's like being upset that your videogame isn't making Overwatch or Zelda money. It's not reasonable. Some people are happy eating McDonalds every day, but that doesn't mean your favorite local hamburger joint should close up shop, or that you shouldn't recommend it. It's a bad argument. The problem is you need other people for hobby games and most people only play popular thing. Hell, they go to cons just to pay money to play the thing they play at their lgs for free! I'd love to see better and smaller companies and games do well but they rarely do. And they can't afford to even slip up the way GW and Wotc do. Most game companies don't survive things like Age of Sigmar's launch year or 4th ed DnD. (yes y'all here adore it. Many did not for good or ill.) But speaking of fuckups: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/2124551?page=2#comments Not only is the Palladium joke of a game Kickstarter not gonna fulfill their pledges, they are trying some poo poo. As in their license runs out in 2 months or so. Thus they are charging heavy shipping in addition to letting people switch their unfinished pledge dollars to existing product they have said 2ish month window to sell out of. At FULL msrp. Seriously. People are already talking about how Palladium is breaking Kickstarter TOS for the time the Kickstarter happened and getting Facebook pages set up to if not get refunds at least give Kevvy a nice assreaming.
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Feb 28, 2018 04:28
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Captain Rufus posted:Most game companies don't survive things like Age of Sigmar's launch year or 4th ed DnD. (yes y'all here adore it. Many did not for good or ill.) Every edition of D&D has always been the most successful edition of D&D that's been released, up to that point.
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Feb 28, 2018 05:51
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You really don’t have the first clue what you’re talking about, do you?
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Feb 28, 2018 05:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:Every edition of D&D has always been the most successful edition of D&D that's been released, up to that point.
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Feb 28, 2018 05:58
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Terrible Opinions posted:Except Essentials if you count it. The fact that we have to qualify that statement with an "if you count it" is also why that statement is true, yes 
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Feb 28, 2018 05:59
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gradenko_2000 posted:The fact that we have to qualify that statement with an "if you count it" is also why that statement is true, yes I never saw anyone IRL care if you used Essentials or the hardbacks. Hell, it seemed like D&D Encounters got much larger once Essentials came out. Nobody cared if you had builds from any of them and pretty much everyone contributed. TBF it was all low levelish stuff but even by 8th level or so fights became a massive slog even if people knew what their dudes could do. (The real hell was one of the later Encounters series vs Drow. The amount of templates all over the map was just insane.) Again though online discussion of RPGs almost never matches reality whatsoever. But yeah, basically D&D and its general audience just don't CARE if its good or bad. In print D&D? If you don't have an open minded group who isn't dead set on one game you pretty much play D&D whichever ed is in print or you GTFO.  Even at cons most people I saw just played the same poo poo they played in their home/FLGS games in some cases so they could get some cheevo or whatever to bring back there. Or are asking for "legit" games under X rules protocol so they can get THING for their character. (My silly rear end would play homebrews, old OOP games, playtest stuff... and possibly the only Paranoia team ever where it didn't turn into a giant backstab festival. We actually worked TOGETHER for the most part. I had more backstabbing in my TIE Fighter Braunstein campaign that was basically Space Above and Beyond only with Imperial test pilots. To the point there were so many crosses and double crosses and agents going double or triple agents I had to put the campaign on hiatus because I had no clue WTF to do. I was impressed but also horrified. Normally I can roll with it and encourage players to destroy anything I have planned. I trained some too well I think.) For the record my RPGs of choice are First Edition WEG D6 Star Wars, and Basic Roleplaying Call of Cthulhu. There aren't really any versions of D&D I like without at least some house rules or limits to things though BECMI and Castles & Crusades get close. (Pathfinder Beginner Box could have been a nice subline with less idiotic rules and some restraint but they never did an Expert or Companion box to finish it up. I would have been fine with a 10th level cap, and limits on inane rules and a massive feat and skill pile nobody could keep track of. As it was I still used some 4th ed rules with PF Beginner when I ran it for a bit till the Time Wars bit caused it's end.) Edit: vvvv Wouldn't BECMI and BX have sold even more then? And how was Dancey counting it? Total sales? Total dollars with or without "inflation" adjustments? Profits? Game line as a whole? They are all things that would sort of matter. In a way modern RPGs and hobby games seem to be trying the same stuff modern AAA videogames do in getting people to SPEND MORE MONEY by giving reduced or incomplete products. They just don't go for the decade or so 1st and 2nd ed AD&D each more or less ran for with months if not years between essential releases. Even 3.0 didn't release all three books Day One! It was like every month/other month between the three core books. vvvvvv Captain Rufus fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Feb 28, 2018 |
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Feb 28, 2018 06:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:Every edition of D&D has always been the most successful edition of D&D that's been released, up to that point. IIRC second edition apparently broke that pattern. It sold well, but 1st still outsold it, according to Ryan Dancey.
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Feb 28, 2018 06:26
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Xotl posted:IIRC second edition apparently broke that pattern. It sold well, but 1st still outsold it, according to Ryan Dancey. Xotl posted:according to Ryan Dancey. 
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Feb 28, 2018 06:28
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And... 1st was around for the big 80s D&D fad. Why is that hard to believe?
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Feb 28, 2018 06:31
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Xotl posted:And... Because literally everything Ryan Dancey says is wrong or a lie and hes literally burnt down and massively harmed every property hes ever worked with? So it is pretty natural to assume thats not entirely accurate.
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Feb 28, 2018 06:35
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Again, 1st was around during an enormous boom period where it was a huge fad product. Second had the same lifespan, but not as favourable a time period. Why would the claim be so hard to believe, Dancey aside? (As an aside, he claims 1st outsold 3/3.5 as well). Xotl fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Feb 28, 2018 |
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Feb 28, 2018 06:40
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I mean, it's entirely possible. But still. Dancey.
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Feb 28, 2018 07:57
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Captain Rufus posted:I had more backstabbing in my TIE Fighter Braunstein campaign that was basically Space Above and Beyond only with Imperial test pilots. Braunstein-rules TIE Fighter RPG? 
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Feb 28, 2018 07:58
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I actually wouldn't put it past AD&D 2e to not have maintained that pattern, not only because of the timing of AD&D 1e, but also because it was contemporary with BECMI and the Rules Cyclopedia. If I recall correctly they killed off that game line because it was still relatively (if not more) popular, but then it was the AD&D line that cut Arneson out of the royalties.
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Feb 28, 2018 08:15
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Elizabeth Mills posted:hold the loving phone a second there I've actually been meaning to blog about it as part of my Star Wars games series. http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2018/02/operation-game-collection-star-wars.html This post actually has clues but once I get to covering X Wing it should be brought up. Hopefully I at least have my scans of the rules I came up with, or I will just have to retype them. And it was before any of the modern SW ship games were out so I was raiding ebay for cheap Micro Machines or making up counters. Let's say short run I combined Star Wars Silent Death with Star Wars Miniatures (the D20 one) and created magic. Fun murderous magic where poo poo died and Imperials lied. Not sure it entirely fits this thread though. Or like at all. (So I guess subscribe to my silly blog or check it every month or two or be on whatever Discords I am in. I doubt it would be enough of a thing to be worthy of a thread unless I want to do some sort of forums based LP of the thing. And I have had an idea for something involving the super obscure Dougram board games for YEARS now: http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-dougram-boardgames-part-1.html ) I guess maybe sort of kind of the various SW games over the years have shown not even the Star Wars IP at its heights guarantee a game succeeding? And yet they keep basically doing the same games? Think about it. 2 SW Skirmish games. (Imperial Assault and the blind box minis.) 3-4 Starship combat games with a fighter focus. (XWing, Star Warriors, the collectible fighters game, the Wizkids plastic card game.) 2 different Infantry level minis games. (D6 era one, Legion) 3 different RPG core systems each with multiple editions or variants. (D6 with 2 1/2 editions, D20 with 3, FFG with its weird dice one in multiple books.) A butt ton of CCG/LCGs. (3 different Decipher ones, the dice based WOTC game, the FFG LCG thingie. Could that Destiny dice game count? Would the Wizkids card model game be honestly more a CCG than a minis thing? Why do I have so much of this stuff?) That is a LOT of games using the same IP and really most of them weren't big hits outside of X Wing and D6 RPG. A few other ones had somewhat devoted fanbases but they were never huge enough to put a dent into the big names of the genre they were in. It confuses me why they keep trying honestly. Same with Star Trek and it has an even deeper level of odd with the whole Starfleet Universe thing which I kind of like more than canon Trek even if they don't get TOS Movie design stuff. Edit: vvvv Yeah I tried to mention that but probably didn't go far enough. (I write far too long of posts as is and the more I try to cover the LESS lots of folks tend to actually see.) Its a fair cop but board games tend to require less out of people who aren't the owner of the game. For the most part its show up, play for an hour or two, done. And the box has lots of fun toys in it as a wow factor. But its not just tabletop gamers that won't support stuff: https://www.filfre.net/2018/02/the-worlds-of-ultima/ We had Steampunk and Victorian Adventure CRPGs in 91 or so. They bombed in spite of having the name and engine of a megahit of the era. This is why we just can't have nice things!  vvvvvv
Captain Rufus fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Feb 28, 2018 |
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Feb 28, 2018 11:08
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If it was just “you need other people to play” then board games would have the same problem. It’s more about pre-investment (CCGs and minis) and long term commitment (RPGs). I know a fair number of game club organisers who hate RPGs because they create isolated closed groups of players for every meeting for months on end.
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Feb 28, 2018 12:02
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Captain Rufus posted:That is a LOT of games using the same IP and really most of them weren't big hits outside of X Wing and D6 RPG. A few other ones had somewhat devoted fanbases but they were never huge enough to put a dent into the big names of the genre they were in. It confuses me why they keep trying honestly. Same with Star Trek and it has an even deeper level of odd with the whole Starfleet Universe thing which I kind of like more than canon Trek even if they don't get TOS Movie design stuff. Destiny has had huge sales, to the point that popularity is limiting growth because of supply issues. FFG's Star Wars RPG is basically only beaten out by D&D and Pathfinder, though again, availability on books a few weeks after release, or re-release even has caused problems. Imperial Assault was a decent seller, but certainly a niche game. Armada comes in way behind X-Wing but still has pretty good sales X-Wing, of course, is a license to print money, huge piles of it.
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Feb 28, 2018 12:52
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kingcom posted:Because literally everything Ryan Dancey says is wrong or a lie and hes literally burnt down and massively harmed every property hes ever worked with? So it is pretty natural to assume thats not entirely accurate. Incidentally, how's Pathfinder Online going these days?
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Feb 28, 2018 13:24
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Captain Rufus posted:50 bucks is expensive as poo poo for a book to a normal person as even most gorgeous coffee table books don't get past this normally and even videogame strategy guides are cheap as hell. And then told you might need more of them and still just get berated for not playing Popular Thing X? Yeah. And don't forget online isn't the real world. Even most gamers never go to RPGnet or listen to Fear the Boot, much less know or give a poo poo about the smaller places. (Which may be a good thing in the former. Not so much in the latter unless they all lost their minds over the last year or so.) "Normal" people don't buy the PHB when they're jumping into a friend's D&D game after The Adventure Zone made it sound fun. They borrow the book from the GM or maybe if they're lucky one or two players have a copy, too. In online games everyone just shares the PDF that someone (maybe) bought.
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Feb 28, 2018 13:36
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Mors Rattus posted:Incidentally, how's Pathfinder Online going these days? It's still not been put out of its misery.
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Feb 28, 2018 13:41
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Dancey left Goblinworks to go back to AEG. Lisa Stevens had some consultant come assess the disaster. The consultant told her to finish the game in-house because nobody would want to buy it from them. I think their dev team was reported to be like 5 or less people at this point. The consultant also gave them some optimistic line about how the finished game might find a tiny niche to sustain itself in.
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Feb 28, 2018 13:46
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PST posted:FFG's Star Wars RPG is basically only beaten out by D&D and Pathfinder, though again, availability on books a few weeks after release, or re-release even has caused problems. I wonder how much being able to sell PDFs would boost things. Not that I think anybody wants to try and undo the tangle that is PDFs being caught up with electronic games in the Star Wars licensing department.
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Feb 28, 2018 14:09
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Nuns with Guns posted:Dancey left Goblinworks to go back to AEG. Lisa Stevens had some consultant come assess the disaster. The consultant told her to finish the game in-house because nobody would want to buy it from them. I think their dev team was reported to be like 5 or less people at this point. The consultant also gave them some optimistic line about how the finished game might find a tiny niche to sustain itself in. Another Ryan Dancey success story!
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Feb 28, 2018 14:22
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Dawgstar posted:I wonder how much being able to sell PDFs would boost things. Not that I think anybody wants to try and undo the tangle that is PDFs being caught up with electronic games in the Star Wars licensing department. I feel like what probably limits RPG properties like Star Wars and Marvel is more that they still sell in the niche retail spaces reserved for things like RPG's rather than in the places most people go for Star Wars stuff, or non comic Marvel stuff, IE the local Walmart or whatever. As it is, they are visible mainly to people who already want something like D&D, but Star Wars, rather than people who want that cool new Star Wars game. Nobody advertises RPG's outside of niche publications or sells them outside of niche spaces, and nobody buys them except for people who are already into that sort of thing, because they are the only people who see them for sale. Everybody else is content to pick up any one of the million pieces of merchandise they see within their reach. Addendum: I would note that I still don't see a mass marketed popular property RPG as being some kind way to break the industry into the mainstream. I think that these games are being hindered by being pushed only to RPG players rather than to the much larger fanbase of Marvel or Star Wars or whatever. remusclaw fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Feb 28, 2018 |
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Feb 28, 2018 14:53
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RPG box sets are cool - store the full rules (because of course your game isn't more than 50 pages or so), a fold-out map, some dice, minis, and an adventure. Sell it right next to Monopoly Black Panther Edition.
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Feb 28, 2018 15:03
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Terrible Opinions posted:Except Essentials if you count it. If you're counting iterative mid-editions, 3.5e sold worse year-on-year than 3.0e did, and sold fewer copies in total over the course of its five-year run than 3.0e did in three years. At any rate, the new edition outselling the previous edition has only been the rule since 3.0e. 2e sold worse than 1e for sure, and I'd be surprised if any subsequent edition's best year beat 1e's best year in terms of copies moved. And, of course, no edition of the PHB has ever come close to the 1.5 million copies that the Red Box Basic Set moved over the course of its lifetime.
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Feb 28, 2018 15:29
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The Palladium Robotech kickstarter imploded and Siembada is asking people with unfulfilled Wave 2 rewards to pay shipping to get Wave 1 rewards instead.
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Feb 28, 2018 15:32
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quote:So it is with sadness and tremendous heartbreak that I announce that, despite our best efforts, we are unable to produce the Robotech® RPG Tactics Wave Two rewards. Moreover, after proudly carrying the legacy of Robotech® in the role-playing games medium for 30 years, our license has expired and is not being renewed.
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Feb 28, 2018 16:08
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Frankly, anything that makes Harmony Gold unhappy is probably a net good for the world.
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Feb 28, 2018 16:12
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CroatianAlzheimers had some interesting stories about writing for the 2008 edition of the Robotech RPG over in the Palladium thread.
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Feb 28, 2018 17:08
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Dawgstar posted:I wonder how much being able to sell PDFs would boost things. Not that I think anybody wants to try and undo the tangle that is PDFs being caught up with electronic games in the Star Wars licensing department. Random rear end guess, they'd have multiple books in the top 20 on drivethru for a few weeks after they released them. Not that I expect it to happen, but there are a few people out there hoping that 'if' Disney drops EA, then FFG will get to re-negotiate their license. And then there's the 'WTF' of how ImpAss has an app (online assistant) to run Imperial Assault as all rebels, but pdfs are still out.
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Feb 28, 2018 17:10
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Xotl posted:And... I mean, if you really want to get nitpicky about the details, what is he defining as 2e? Are we defining AD&D 2e as definitively 2e, or are we willing to say that the original AD&D (1977-79) is actually 2e? To go even further, what's he defining as 1e, because that in and of itself had a ton of revisions (that would be worthy of a sub-edition like 3.5e) up until AD&D 2e released in 1989. The short of this is - it doesn't matter because it's Dancey making the claim, so he's probably disingenuously assuming whatever definition fits his claim.
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Feb 28, 2018 18:07
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Kurieg posted:The Palladium Robotech kickstarter imploded and Siembada is asking people with unfulfilled Wave 2 rewards to pay shipping to get Wave 1 rewards instead. Apparently not on a 1 for 1 exchange and in some cases only $30 for several hundred dollars of pledges. There's also, allegedly, half a million dollars in unaccounted for money that hasn't been commented on too. I'm pretty sure this will kill Palladium because people are already talking about class action lawsuits, which they have a very strong case for. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Feb 28, 2018 |
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Feb 28, 2018 18:58
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LuiCypher posted:I mean, if you really want to get nitpicky about the details, what is he defining as 2e? Are we defining AD&D 2e as definitively 2e, or are we willing to say that the original AD&D (1977-79) is actually 2e? To go even further, what's he defining as 1e, because that in and of itself had a ton of revisions (that would be worthy of a sub-edition like 3.5e) up until AD&D 2e released in 1989. He was talking about Players Handbooks only. It was pretty straightforward.
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Feb 28, 2018 19:04
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Apparently not on a 1 for 1 exchange and in some cases only $30 for several hundred dollars of pledges. There's also, allegedly, half a million dollars in unaccounted for money that hasn't been commented on too. I'm pretty sure this will kill Palladium because people are already talking about class action lawsuits, which they have a very strong case for. If Siembeda had a corporate lawyer - which I doubt - they’d be pulling their hair out over that post.
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Feb 28, 2018 19:14
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So I've heard that Rose Bailey left Onyx Path. I understand it was because she found better career opportunities, but still, a bit of a shame.
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Feb 28, 2018 19:16
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Yeah, although she's still freelancing, I think.
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Feb 28, 2018 19:17
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