Moderator: JC Denton
by icycalm » 10 Feb 2021 19:01
by ChevRage » 11 Feb 2021 01:21
by recoil » 11 Feb 2021 01:59
by icycalm » 08 Jul 2021 05:13
Cayzn wrote:Our game will contain around 20 players at any given time with no set groups, that will need to reach out to other adventurers to form expedidtion groups between 3-5 players and explore this new world together.. and make it back alive of course.. Each time a group comes back, they bring back knowldge, both for the NPCs including information about resource locations, but also knowledge for the other PCs, which could include hostile areas, dangerous monsters, or even now empty dungeons that may still contain loot.
by icycalm » 14 Sep 2021 22:13
Alex Smith 908 wrote:Yes the highest selling fantasy TTRPG on the market makes less than 5% of the revenue of Magic the Gathering the single most popular table top game period in the current market. WotC is first and foremost a company to make Magic cards and everything else is at best secondary. D&D is not even mentioned in their share holders meetings, whereas Magic is toted as one of their top brands responsible for a substantial level of growth.
Hasbro only keeps making D&D for the cultural penetration value, if it makes a profit that's just a nice bonus.
edit: Just another point even in D&D's golden era of mainstream play the 1980s, the D&D tie-in novels outsold the actual rulesbooks by a factor of 4 to one. Dragonlance and Drizzt were more popular than actually playing the game.
by icycalm » 16 Sep 2021 06:04
@Owen_Stephens I honestly did not know that this was your story, I just ran into it again. It’s still awesome! #TTRPG
by icycalm » 17 Sep 2021 03:05
thaX wrote:The thing to remember is that Pathfinder is more than just the rules, as the setting is very much something that Paizo has worked hard to cultivate and expand on. Starting on a little island surrounded by a number of nations, it has become the ultimate kitchen sink setting.
Yeah, you can use the rules and create your "own game." The setting, however, is the backbone of the Pathfinder experience.
Leon Aquilla wrote:You can crib the rules from Pathfinder 2e easily, for sure. But if they cared about that they wouldn't have put them all up for us to use for free.
But I don't buy Paizo products for the rules, but the creative world they've built, which is definitely copyright.
With no disrespect to Owen Stephens above, I don't find a whole lot of 3rd-party stuff that well done. And a lot of it is just taking stuff that already exists and "converting" it to the pet ruleset, regardless of whether it's thematically appropriate or is balanced. 3rd party material is best when it fulfills a niche currently unfulfilled: That's why I bought Fat Goblin Games' "Close Encounters: Hyperspace Fiends", because it converted a lot of 1e demons/devils that I felt were important to Starfinder.
Lissa Guillet wrote:The setting is what makes Pathfinder great. Rules are rules. Some people will like them, others will find ways to do their own thing: house rules, 3rd party publishers, whatever. You can pick and choose the rules all you want. They are really selling you Golarion or the-mystery-of-what-happened-to-space-golarion. It's in the pathfinder/starfinder society. It's in all the books after the rules. It's in everything they produce because that's what's important. Rules are rules, but Golarion is the magic that binds it all together, this world built by a 100 authors and everyone who plays and reads all the flavor text.
Owen KC Stephens wrote:There are at least three camps, none of which are small.
Gimme the rules, I don't care about the setting.
Gimme the setting, I don't care about the rules.
Gimme both, I need them together.
Obviously, Paizo has a significant advantage in marketing to all three at once. And since no one can do the setting without Paizo, and Paizo already gives away the rules without setting for free, pretty clearly they don't see people trying to steal those markets as serious issues.
Of course, there are sub-groups, like "Gimme these rules AND a complete setting, made by these people, with this tone, I don't care if it's Golarion." That group MIGHT be one someone could steal... but it would be difficult and time consuming.
I sat in a lot of meetings about these questions for Starfinder and PF2 within the company. Everyone involved is expertly aware of the potential risks, and what it would take for any person or group to try to capitalize on them in a way that would damage Paizo's sales.
by icycalm » 20 Sep 2021 22:37
Valatar wrote:All I can say is, thank God for Wizards of the Coast's bold new stance on evil races. Without that, I wouldn't have been able to play my non-evil Drow. In 1993. With Unearthed Arcana rules. Which were published in 1985.
Myrdin Potter wrote:Or the non-Evil (Chaos) Orc Character in Men and Magic, Vol 1 of the original D&D rules from the mid-70's.
by icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 04:08
by icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 05:30
People in rec.games.frp.* used to talk about the Threefold Way, the divide between Storyteller, Simulationist (=verisimilitude) and Gamist.
Storyteller is (by that definition) about the GM and players creating a narrativist story about their characters. It has a plot with High Drama and Character-Shaping Conflict and Emotional Resonance and Acting and all that fun stuff. Without which it's just a boardgame.
Simulationist is the GM creating a world which makes internal sense, and players doing what they "realistically" can within that coherent world. Balance is not relevant. If there should be a dragon or a giant or a peasant there, that's what's there. Without this, the game is just incoherent babble with dice.
Gamist is about balance, action, risk, rules and fun. It's what ensures a 1st level party doesn't face a mob of fire giants or carry a truckload of Holy Avengers. Without this it's not a game, it's just collaborative storytelling and/or railroading.
Different groups want, and different game systems provide, a different balance between these 3 elements. One session of a campaign may have an entirely different balance from the next. Amber (very Storyteller) and Living Steel (very Simulationist) and 4e (very Gamist, IMHO) will inevitably give different experiences, and some people won't like some of them for that reason.
The trick (which needs a good system and an expert GM) is to get lots of all three. Of course, some GMs are just bitter, spiteful railroading incompetents, and they tend to provide not enough story, verisimilitude or game.
But calling someone else's game badwrongfun because you prefer a different balance is elitist, fallacious and arrogant.
I'll admit it: I'm a bit of an elitist. I have very strong opinions about ttrpg's and what makes a game/session better or worse than others.
But I've tried to lighten up. I've tried to open my perspective a bit and give people outside my old crew a chance.
And...I mean...there were fun little moments. But I spent the majority of the time grinding my teeth or wishing I was elsewhere.
I can understand wanting to offer players as much agency as possible. That's cool. But the less restrictions there are, the more issues there could potentially be with things like pacing.
I don't like being told "there's fun stuff n this game. Go find it." Like. I have such precious little free time nowadays. Can we just skip to the point where we find something fun?
Don't get me wrong. Haggling over told at the inn, drinking contests--they can all be part of the fantasy and discovery and expression. But if we've been playing for 2 hours, I would hope that there's more to it than that.
If I may offer a brief example:
We come into town. The scene is set, but there's nothing inherently interesting as of yet. The GM asks what I do. I figure, I'll find the nearest tavern, get some food and a room and listen for any interesting rumors. I basically put up a big sign that says "PLOT HOOK WELCOME". I learn about some stuff that happened recently, but it's all resolved. Nothing needs to be done. No problems or mysteries present.
Then the GM asks the other five players. None of them seem to have my experience, so they flounder a bit and spend quite a bit of time on a bunch of nothing, and the GM gladly indulges them.
It takes over an hour and a half to get through their what do you do's.
At the end of the day, we pack up and head out again. The GM asks us "which direction do you go?" Um. I don't know. I don't have a map. Or a reason to want to go anywhere in particular. So we just pick a direction at random.
Some trolls ambush us. We fight them and defeat them. It's been three hours, now.
--is this normal? Is this enjoyable to anyone? I'm just so confused, frustrated and disheartened from the experience.
I made a pretty neat character. I asked about the setting and the game, to make sure he fit into them both as well as possible. But I got nothing, so I made a character just full of story seeds and specific motivations and all sorts of stuff. And the GM just...shot it all down or ignored it, and gave us...I don't know. Errands and a bog-standard random encounter. I didn't sign up to play Road Trips & Errands.
Has anyone else run into this? I'm struggling to find a way to tell these guys I'm bored out of my skull without being offensive. It doesn't help that they think the GM is absolutely amazing. None more so than the GM.
And I get it. I get prickly, too. It puts you in a very vulnerable position, running a game. But...I want to get better at it, not stagnant. I just wish more people were at least slightly open to even gentle critique.
by icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 13:27
by icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 13:44
by icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 14:58
by icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 17:10
by icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 17:19
by icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 17:39
by icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 17:59
by icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 18:23
by icycalm » 29 Sep 2021 19:24
by icycalm » 01 Oct 2021 23:58
by icycalm » 08 Dec 2021 11:21
by icycalm » 08 Dec 2021 11:58