|
Yeah, System Mastery is still one of my favorite podcasts! Right up there with Hardcore Gaming 101. Hearing y'all discuss various RPGs really helps get the designer juice flowing, so thanks for that!
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2021 04:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 23:20 |
|
|
theironjef posted:Oh thanks! I know we had a good run shortly after deciding to do the occasional newer game, stuff like Sentinels and Starcrossed. That was when we were really starting to burn up our catalog of weird old PDFs at the tail end of remote recording for the pandemic. It's got tons of formulas, weird balance, some 80's baggage, and unbalanced fantasy superpowers you can just get by random rolling - like you're making a dwarf warrior but now you can also cast air magic and talk to birds, or maybe you get super strength. Also plagiarized Frazetta art! I'd provide my physical copy.... but I kinda love it  https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=16N7EPuHdv4Dr1sJ1fBcXcpfTG0rPgHkZ (also bookmarking the thread) (oops, hosed up the permissions... Fixed) dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Jul 12, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 12, 2021 01:07
|
|
|
Today's Engel episode was a real doozy, what a fascinatingly botched game.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2021 16:05
|
|
|
Warthur posted:Today's Engel episode was a real doozy, what a fascinatingly botched game. My sneaking suspicion is that it was rushed to print. It's from 2000 which I think was the first year of the OGL, right? I'm just envisioning a writing team from white wolf being handed a new ruleset they've never seen, an insane book about German future angels, and a 30 day deadline.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2021 16:10
|
|
|
People were mad that you ragged on D20 Testament? That's like Exhibit A for why D20 can't and shouldn't try to do everything.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2021 04:06
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:People were mad that you ragged on D20 Testament? That's like Exhibit A for why D20 can't and shouldn't try to do everything. I think they thought we were being a little too flippant about the Christianity stuff. Which, honestly, gently caress 'em. Jon's a catholic school survivor with a Lutheran Pastor dad, he earned his religious opinions fair and square.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2021 04:12
|
|
|
For some reason, I thought that game came out in the early to mid 80s when there was still a whole lot of sincere Christian media that they released outside of Christian bookstores and sunday afternoon screenings, unworried people would make fun of it. I at least have considered that it would be pretty funny to spring that on my friends next time someone doesn't show up and we need to play a game to fill that slot.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2021 10:57
|
|
|
I don’t know what episode it’s on, but I can’t see all of this October branding without thinking about the “I’LL gently caress A PUMPKIN” guy that Jet and Jon made up.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2021 03:23
|
|
|
Lumbermouth posted:I don’t know what episode it’s on, but I can’t see all of this October branding without thinking about the “I’LL gently caress A PUMPKIN” guy that Jet and Jon made up. Man I don't remember when he turned up either. He wasn't a joke from the show originally, we were sitting around listening to the Frankie Yankovic recording of Too Fat Polka and celebrating the guy that's hitting the counterpoints of "She's just right for me!" and saying that dude is awesome and probably into some wild stuff.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2021 04:19
|
|
|
Has James Wallis designed a game that anyone here really likes? He has some pointed opinions on the Ludonarrative Dissidents show, and I'm curious where he's coming from. All I can find are producer credits for games a decade or two back, and a Kickstarter that doesn't seem to have left any lasting impressions.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 17:11
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:Has James Wallis designed a game that anyone here really likes? He has some pointed opinions on the Ludonarrative Dissidents show, and I'm curious where he's coming from. All I can find are producer credits for games a decade or two back, and a Kickstarter that doesn't seem to have left any lasting impressions. Hogshead in the 1990s were a) pretty much the last British RPG publisher standing of any particular note (beyond brief flash-in-the-pan startups and outfits like Nightfall which somehow manage to keep existing like cockroackes) in the dark interregnum in between Games Workshop pulling out of the hobby and the likes of Mongoose and Cubicle 7 rising from the ashes, and b) one of the few RPG publishers to not only talk the talk on making RPGs a True Art Form, Maaan but actually kind of walked the walk. Keeping 1st Edition WFRP in print is what largely kept the lights on, but they also put out Interactive Fantasy magazine, which was one of the few serious-minded RPG theory and discussion organs out there. It has probably dated poorly because the conversation has moved on several decades since, but in comparison to the rest of the RPG magazine field at the time it was like the Starchild from the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey compared to the apes from the start of 2001: A Space Odyssey. They also put out the New Style Line, which pioneered the "Little hyper-targeted indie game with a small page count and low cost" format well before the Forge made it standard, and the big white version of Nobilis. When it comes to his own designs the record is shakier. It would be unfair to characterise him as someone who's announced more products than he's finished, but it's sometimes felt that way. He co-designed did the Once Upon a Time card game, and he did Adventures of Baron Munchausen which is essentially a riff on a similar idea but takes away the cards and substitutes in a wagering mechanic. For most of Hogshead's existence he kept hyping up his pet project, a parody RPG set in a fantasy world where thinly-veiled equivalents of the AD&D core books had fallen out of the sky and were taken as holy scripture, but he never finished the thing. He did a nasty, passive-aggressive scenario for the Hogshead reprint of Power Behind the Throne which started the "James Wallis burned my boat" meme, which came from a place of assuming that the players are idiot children who will refuse to go along to the next part of the Enemy Within campaign if asked nicely and, if you don't burn the boat, will dick around on the rivers of the Empire doing Warhammer Traveller forevermore, not considering that actually if the playing group finds that fun then there's no reason to stop that fun, and a lot of his scenario design has rather adversarial assumptions about the player-GM relationship which are tiresome. His latest things have been Alas Vegas and the new edition of Paranoia. I go into tedious detail about my thoughts on these elsewhere (Alas Vegas, Paranoia), but the bottom line is that both of those are much-delayed Kickstarter projects which, when they finally delivered, were underwhelming. Slow delivery and mediocre nature of Alas Vegas was solely on James and included a non-zero number of flat-out breaches of promises made to the Kickstarter backers, Paranoia being a bad edition of that game is not 100% on him because he was working with some misguided constraints imposed by the rights-holders but his relationship with Mongoose became so bad that, as of Matt Sprange's last statement on the subject, Mongoose and Wallis were only communicating through intermediaries and Mongoose had written off any hope that an entire adventure supplement that James had committed to write would ever actually manifest. I would regard Wallis as a good source to hear about the trials and tribulations of RPG publishing in the 1990s but give his general game design opinions less weight than the electrons used to transmit his podcast to your device. That said, I'm the guy who was enough of a bastard to take him to small claims court for an Alas Vegas refund, so take that with a pinch of salt - I certainly have salt to spare on the matter. (If I've been nice enough to read over draft Kickstarter updates for you to help you try and calm down the backers, and then you give me the same year's worth of the silent treatment you subject the other backers to, don't expect me to have much of a sense of humour about it.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 17:49
|
|
|
Thank you for the detailed and relatively evenhanded writeup. It explains why his critiques on the show often focus on minutia like whether a book's double column format is laid out according to the standards he would use. Ludonarrative Dissidents was funded through a Kickstarter, and has so far delivered several episodes on-time. So either he's learned some important lessons about project scoping and deadlines, or it was just managed by someone else.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 17:59
|
|
|
How is that show anyway? It's the closest to anything approaching direct competition to what I do that I know about.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 18:05
|
|
|
theironjef posted:How is that show anyway? It's the closest to anything approaching direct competition to what I do that I know about. Some of their discussions are pedantic in a way that's not funny or interesting, like Greg Stolze going after the author for not using his favorite verb tense. They poll backers of the Kickstarter to decide which games to discuss, and my guess is at some point they'll end up having to do a blind read of something that the fans wanted to hear about, but they had never run or played. There's also some bonus content for backers that I don't have access to because I didn't pay into the Kickstarter.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 18:19
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:I'm going to be straight with you, I like it much better than your show. I prefer writeups and discussions by people who have actually played the game they're talking about. The most interesting part of RPG discussion to me is the tension between what the rules say you should expect from a game, versus how it actually functions in practice. Whereas I can only listen to you and the other guy complain about bad 90s RPGs for so many episodes before it all starts to sound the same. Works for me, I know there's been a constant request from people who have listened to our show for something more in depth and serious, glad it exists now.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 18:27
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:Thank you for the detailed and relatively evenhanded writeup. It explains why his critiques on the show often focus on minutia like whether a book's double column format is laid out according to the standards he would use. As I understand it was managed by someone else (a goon, who I warned about Wallis and who assured me that Wallis would not be handling anything time-critical beyond showing up and talking into a microphone).
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 18:29
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Works for me, I know there's been a constant request from people who have listened to our show for something more in depth and serious, glad it exists now.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 18:35
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:Has James Wallis designed a game that anyone here really likes? He has some pointed opinions on the Ludonarrative Dissidents show, and I'm curious where he's coming from. All I can find are producer credits for games a decade or two back, and a Kickstarter that doesn't seem to have left any lasting impressions. I think the fourth of Alas, Vegas I've read is legitimately great (and said so to Wallis, who appreciated it as the KS was...not great, and he's gotten a lot of poo poo for it, much deserved but also, y'know, internet folks do have a tendency to escalate way past the point of reason). Given the premise of the game I did not want to spoil myself on the rest but TBH I'm not convinced I'll ever get it played so I may change that. That said...I just think the scenario is cool, I have no real ability to weigh in on how well it stands up to play.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 22:49
|
|
|
malkav11 posted:I think the fourth of Alas, Vegas I've read is legitimately great (and said so to Wallis, who appreciated it as the KS was...not great, and he's gotten a lot of poo poo for it, much deserved but also, y'know, internet folks do have a tendency to escalate way past the point of reason). Given the premise of the game I did not want to spoil myself on the rest but TBH I'm not convinced I'll ever get it played so I may change that. That said...I just think the scenario is cool, I have no real ability to weigh in on how well it stands up to play.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 23:32
|
|
|
Actually, there is one thing I am going to flag, because if you want to play the scenario more or less close to the way you are directed to play it, then whoever is GMing Act 4 will need to buy into something major which Wallis does not give any heads-up about before he actually provides the info on Act 4, and could potentially ruin the entire experience for them if it isn't something they are comfy with. Specifically, they will need to be comfortable with the destiny of their PC being largely out of their hands, as James directs them to write out their PC in a very specific way, a manner which isn't necessarily going to be consistent with the way said player has been playing said PC so far.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 01:06
|
|
|
RPPR After Hours bonus episode Holy poo poo it’s Cody! And he seems like a half-decent dude now!
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2021 23:20
|
|
|
I just finished listening to the Snick bonus episodes and I have a lot of feelings. I loved Clarissa Explains It All. This is just one of those things you look back on and go, wow, it's ridiculous that it took me so long to realize I'm not straight. I always hated All That and Roundhouse. I was in late elementary school when they debuted and they just weren't good. They probably replaced shows that I liked better. I actually liked watching most of the Nick at Nite shows with my parents, so these tween-targeted shows that served as a bridge were just a void of quality to me. I didn't get Pete & Pete at first, but really grew to appreciate it, especially when I was like 18-20 and Adult Swim was starting to do more quirky stuff in that vein. I tried to describe it to my spouse, who lived in a suburb of Philly where they couldn't get Nickelodeon, and realized the closest thing to it that had a lot of mainstream success was Malcolm in the Middle. The episodes that stick in my mind the most are "Inspector 34," where the whole town becomes obsessed with perfecting everything, and the one where Artie leaves. Surprised y'all didn't do Hey Dude, Salute Your Shorts, or Alex Mack. The first two weren't part of Snick, but I'm pretty sure they kept playing reruns until at least 2000.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2021 01:18
|
|
|
Jon considered Alex Mack a few times, and I think he ultimately passed on it just because it was too good of a chance to do Goosebumps the show and Goosebumps the movie the same night. We considered jumping on the Columbo thing that's happening these days for the next series, but ultimately felt like other people were already doing a good job at it. So we're moving on... to the Flying Nun. No good reason, just wanted to watch some silly 60s feel-good TV.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2021 01:32
|
|
|
Did Jon Systemmastery ever actually codify or write out his mechanics for the scenarios of Heroes Unlimited where aliens kidnap and straight upgrade the players, cuz now I'm curious how that would look and work.
|
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2022 23:24
|
|
|
Regarding the Lawnmower Man RPG: It sounds like you could replace the title with Scanners and make the exact same thing. So there are these psychics, and they've brainwashed people to help them. Also they can hack computers with their minds. And you're trying to stop them. The low-key, very-near-future cyberpunk premise actually sounds intriguing. Too bad you're just playing cops who are hunting down the actually interesting people, though. I had a lot of thoughts about Silver Age Sentinels but I forgot most of them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2022 03:25
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Regarding the Lawnmower Man RPG: It sounds like you could replace the title with Scanners and make the exact same thing. So there are these psychics, and they've brainwashed people to help them. Also they can hack computers with their minds. And you're trying to stop them. That makes me think you could probably take all the semi-horror movies from roughly that era and make a little contained world. Scanners, Firestarter, Species, Lawnmower Man, Puppetmaster, The Frighteners... just any movie where horrific psychic powers are either not the main thrust or are just sort of present with not much commentary.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2022 03:34
|
|
|
It came off to me like Lawnmower Man game is one that would've ended up good in like the third edition had Lawnmower Man been some sort of culture phenom.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2022 03:48
|
|
|
Masterbook's World of Species and World of Necroscope are more of the same, too. Monsters exist, you play cops hunting the monsters, and also by the way psychics exist! It would be more interesting to play people who actually benefited from cyberdrugpsychicvideogame technology who are trying to prevent it from being misused. Or you just work for Jobe. There's no reason he has to be the villain. Leading Edge Games didn't just use the complete Phoenix Command rules for everything they published, but they were still way more complicated than most people want to deal with. I think Bram Stoker's Dracula and Lawnmower Man might have been the last things they published before the company folded and they went back to their engineering careers. They actually put out minis for most of their games, too. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Feb 21, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2022 04:08
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Masterbook's World of Species and World of Necroscope are more of the same, too. Monsters exist, you play cops hunting the monsters, and also by the way psychics exist! He does murder a lot of people, but other than that, you're not wrong.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2022 04:09
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:Has James Wallis designed a game that anyone here really likes? He has some pointed opinions on the Ludonarrative Dissidents show, and I'm curious where he's coming from. All I can find are producer credits for games a decade or two back, and a Kickstarter that doesn't seem to have left any lasting impressions. "Pointed" is a good way of putting it. warthur is correct that James Wallis has a lot to say about the 90s role-playing scene (there's a lot of that in one fo the backer specific episodes on the unpublished game Outlaws of the Water Marsh) and he just seems more cheerful when talking about that or Ars Magica as opposed to Blades in the Dark or Apocalypse World. I've enjoyed the Ludonarrative Dissidents podcast but also feel like it's really not much like System Mastery. I was really hoping that they would get into some of the less traditional games on the list - I feel like Golden Sky Stories would have been outside their comfort zone. Sure, I am glad they did Bluebeard's Bride and Thousand Year Old Vampire. But I have a pretty good idea already what Ross and Greg Stolze think about Delta Green already, for instance.. My friend and I have started our own discussion podcast for some reason. It's been fun and I think we'll have some topics/shows that I haven't seen others do, but I have no idea how to promote the dang thing. My friend tried instagram and twitter promotion but really didn't pick up many people. Any tips from y'all in the thread who have been at this a while?
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 15:07
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I had a lot of thoughts about Silver Age Sentinels but I forgot most of them. The game will let you make just about any type of character, but there are a lot of rules. I like Dynamic Power and Power Flux, but they both mean that you're constantly rebuilding on the fly, and that's not feasible in a system where every power has a bunch of add-ons and modifiers that all have variable point costs. For comparison, Wild Talents isn't perfect, but at least you're never rolling more than 10 dice (or counting 10 auto-successes). theironjef posted:He does murder a lot of people, but other than that, you're not wrong. Working for Jobe would be spookier, and yet more hopeful than hunting espers for the government. "Hi, I used to be a disabled gardener. Now I'm omniscient. Will you help me prevent climate disaster and WWIII?" Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Feb 23, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 16:04
|
|
|
Sionak posted:My friend and I have started our own discussion podcast for some reason. It's been fun and I think we'll have some topics/shows that I haven't seen others do, but I have no idea how to promote the dang thing. My friend tried instagram and twitter promotion but really didn't pick up many people. Any tips from y'all in the thread who have been at this a while? Give your show some time to develop into a rhythm before you start promoting it anywhere. We didn't tell people we were making stuff til we had made like 10 episodes. Just wanted to make sure we both could do and wanted to keep doing it. After that just bring it places like here, reddit threads about ttrpg discussion, twitter, whatever. There's no magic conveyor belt to a listener pool, you just have to keep trying. We got sort of lucky in the early days because a few of the people whose games we ripped into didn't actually mind and retweeted for us, etc.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 18:00
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Give your show some time to develop into a rhythm before you start promoting it anywhere. We didn't tell people we were making stuff til we had made like 10 episodes. Just wanted to make sure we both could do and wanted to keep doing it. Awesome. Thanks for the pointers.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 18:55
|
|
|
1) The Secret Fire is giving me some hard grognards.txt flashbacks. 2) the string “harem-kennel” is both hilarious and viscerally horrifying.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 19:04
|
|
|
Sionak posted:
For me, I make a show because I really enjoy making a show. The only time I ever crossed the 5 listener mark for the first year was when I said some things that caused some Raptors fans to pass an episode of my show around a ton but translated into maybe one regular listener. Year 2 someone was nice enough to post about it in the NBA thread I started to hover around the 12 listener mark; also at least one of the listeners was a person who was kind of doing some light stalking of me and it was a bit funny that I could actively tell if it was good or bad stalking by when the plays came through but whatever. Year 3, despite that person thankfully moving on with their life, I'm hovering around 40, another NBA thread post but also does seem to be picking up some natural growth despite me doing nothing. I'm being honest about these real low numbers because 1)I have never tried to heavily promote it; (I auto post to my main twitter account and post the episode on LinkedIn if I don't think it has content that will get me fired because I think it's funny to post the show on LinkedIn). 2) I have a bad voice to begin with and now have a medical condition that actively makes it worse; anyone listening to my show is making a mistake but also for some reason a few people choose to make this mistake, so you shouldn't worry too much about how you sound when it comes to things you can't control (due to money or health or whatever) 3)to point out that it kind of grows even if you do nothing but just keep putting it out. 4) I actually wish I didn't know these numbers at all, but the podbean service shoves them in your face whenever you login, but they're the cheapest way to host a show. I just want to do the art to do the art, man, but it doesn't let me. 5) You'll probably quickly surpass these milestones and know you're better than at least one podcast. A truth that is very annoying that it is true though, is that nothing hurts your product more than not getting your episodes out on a regular schedule, at least at my popularity level and I've heard more popular people than me echo this. The permanent dip from skipping a week is REAL. I can somewhat get away with it in the summer because my show is about a seasonal product that doesn't exist then but in the season I pretty much just have to get something out even if I don't feel like it. Rick fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Feb 23, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 19:45
|
|
|
Sionak posted:My friend and I have started our own discussion podcast for some reason. It's been fun and I think we'll have some topics/shows that I haven't seen others do, but I have no idea how to promote the dang thing. My friend tried instagram and twitter promotion but really didn't pick up many people. Any tips from y'all in the thread who have been at this a while?
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 19:47
|
|
|
I've never checked our show's numbers against any other show's numbers. I think it'd instantly kill me.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 20:03
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I remembered a few things. So...if I remember right, there's a "trick shot" rule that lets you increase the difficulty of your target's defense roll by increasing the difficulty of the attack roll. I remember this because it's next to an illo of a not-Merlyn ricocheting a trick arrow off a wall. If I'm right, they really should have highlighted this maneuver instead of burying it with the rest. Didn't the Tri-Stat engine get super wonky when you tried to do high level stuff? Like it was fine for your average action anime series but superheroes made the system snap?
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 23:29
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:In my experience it's pretty easy to get indie devs to promote your show, if you let them know you'll be covering their game in an episode. And people who follow indie devs on twitter and other sites are pre-selected for interest in further game design discussions about other RPGs. All good advice and much appreciated. This one in particular is easy since I'm trying to promote indie games as much as possible. In the mean time, we'll keep working on getting our foundation built up. As noted, there's not really many shows like System Mastery and Ludonarrative Dissonance, so we're planning to do some system focused episodes. We also thought it'd be fun to address the "system matters" idea by discussing how a superficially similar encounter would play in different games - D&D vs Dungeon World vs Fellowship, and so on.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2022 16:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 23:20 |
|
|
Dawgstar posted:Didn't the Tri-Stat engine get super wonky when you tried to do high level stuff? Like it was fine for your average action anime series but superheroes made the system snap?
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2022 17:00
|
|