Wow, Andy K just pulled a "Crane", and not the "Denny" kind of Crane.
How pathetic.


A hint: If you say something on the internet, it could be read by people. If you make a big buffooney accusation, that nicely fits with your personal and social agenda of guerilla marketing, it´s a sign of good journalism if somebody presents some facts of your former behaviour.

So, maybe what you say is true. But all evidence point in a different direction. Especially since I´m pretty closely following the Open Design projects of Wolfgang Baur, wherein he talks a lot about how things go in the WotC, Paizo and d20 designwork, I cannpt imagine it being true. And it doesn´t in any way indicate the stuff you´ve been claiming without evidence or factoids.

All in all, you just sound hysterical, biased and pathetic.
You might review that behaviour if you want to be taken seriously.

Yeah, I dunno.

Whether knowing a public anecdote about someone "equals cyber-stalking" I'll leave up to the jury of my peers. I personally think Andy fears confrontation, and hopes to throw it off by throwing a fit and tying it back to the issue-o-the-day.

But I will say two things.

He PM'd me with a guys name! And it is indeed a guy who wrote some of one of the fluffy sourcebooks of Eberron. I PM'd him back but I don't think he will answer me back.

Ok:

1) This was a fluffy sourcebook with very few rules items. So let's say it's totally true, right? I'll pretend it is for a second. Let's say there is a hypothetical guy, who writes part of a fluffy Eberron sourcebook, but has never played D&D.

Well, you can't actually playtest fluff. You playtest rules. So this doesn't even apply.

So it seems like an exaggeration at best, if not downright dishonest and misleading accusation. And just as I predicted, Andy did turn around and immediately make a case for the stuff he advocates. The entire point of the exercise? Fear, uncertainty and doubt.

2) I'm still not sure I believe that this is a guy "who has never played the current version of D&D". I read his bio. Maybe it's a guy who hasn't played it often, or doesn't play in a regular group. Maybe it's a guy who hasn't played in a year or two. You know.. maybe. But I'm still stuck back at this "I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend..." and just not believing it.

Quote from: SettembriniAll in all, you just sound hysterical, biased and pathetic.
You might review that behaviour if you want to be taken seriously.

This is funny. Well funny coming from you. Thanks for the laugh.

Regards,
David R

I do not want to be taken seriously. I´m not selling anything. I´m not here for business.

I´m just me: The Titan of Truth and Lighthouse of Good Taste

EDIT:

If it needs someone to be hysterical, pathetic and biased to show the bias, guerilla agenda & hysteria of Forger Game Designers, then I will gladly be the most hysterical, pathetic and biased person that can be. Because I´m here for Truth, not for myself or my wanker game. I´m here for the love of the hobby, and not for some  overpriced  conspicous consumption  itsy-bitsy-one-idea-joke-of-product.

Quote from: Christmas ApeI don't have much of a dog in this fight, save my tremendous love for Stolze's ORE, but I respectfully disagree with your conclusions, Silverlion.

There are options for playing more competent Special Operations PCs, while the basic rules are generally intended for raw recruits, teenage Privates fresh off the boat, unless I'm badly disoriented. This doesn't suggest to me "bad game design" as "very low starting competency". How competent were you hoping they'd be? A 6d Rifle pool is the man who lifts the gun to his shoulder, fires without aiming, and hits his target 85% of the time in a combat situation.

Except of course in /actual/ play--6d turns out to barely be competent. The numbers don't work on a small scale. Sure you might get 85% success out of 200 rolls, but out of 5 it tends not to work so well. Because those statistics used to determine success are based on mathematic systems that really cover a LARGE number of rolls. In play only people with hard/wiggle dice (at least two hard dice, or one wiggle) were regularly successful at tasks--the normal dice didn't matter much at all. Because an individual die has no impact on further dice rolls, no influence at all. In say Storyteller--you aim for a number or higher, which means you can get any of three or so results per die that count as a "hit", bigger pools mean more chance that a number of dice hit that fixed number. But since there ARE no fixed targets in ORE you have no guarantee of a single match even at 10D.

You can love the game all you want--but in more than one session of play using it we saw the same comedic failures for anyone who didn't have special dice.

Quote from: SilverlionExcept of course in /actual/ play--6d turns out to barely be competent. The numbers don't work on a small scale. Sure you might get 85% success out of 200 rolls, but out of 5 it tends not to work so well. Because those statistics used to determine success are based on mathematic systems that really cover a LARGE number of rolls. In play only people with hard/wiggle dice (at least two hard dice, or one wiggle) were regularly successful at tasks--the normal dice didn't matter much at all. Because an individual die has no impact on further dice rolls, no influence at all. In say Storyteller--you aim for a number or higher, which means you can get any of three or so results per die that count as a "hit", bigger pools mean more chance that a number of dice hit that fixed number. But since there ARE no fixed targets in ORE you have no guarantee of a single match even at 10D.

You can love the game all you want--but in more than one session of play using it we saw the same comedic failures for anyone who didn't have special dice.

(See, now this is an example of rules that require playtesting having an actual effect on how the game experience works out-- there's clearly a divide between stuff like this-- rules-- requiring playtesting. And content such as "The Yuan Ti in this region are all working for the Inspired of Sarlona" requiring playtesting. My point is-- it should be obvious that "playtesting" content would have negligible effect).

Quote from: BalbinusIf Greg Stolze doesn't work for you, insert a game designer who hires out that you do like, I doubt he's the only example that we could use.

The SJ Games playtest process was deeply flawed in my experience, sounds like it was in yours too even though your experience was slightly different.  Not sure why One Horse ignored that in saying it was all hearsay, I was posting about stuff I actually participated in.

Nothing sinister in it. I was responding to an earlier post of yours and didn't have time last night to respond to your later post.

Your blanket statement that playtesting doesn't happen (or is not effective) still isn't true, however. My experience tells me otherwise, just as your experience hasn't been good. As usual, the truth is probably somewhere between the two.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw(See, now this is an example of rules that require playtesting having an actual effect on how the game experience works out-- there's clearly a divide between stuff like this-- rules-- requiring playtesting. And content such as "The Yuan Ti in this region are all working for the Inspired of Sarlona" requiring playtesting. My point is-- it should be obvious that "playtesting" content would have negligible effect).

What's really funny is a friend with his freshly minted copy of Wild Talents in hand said "No, it works.." and then using a computer roller* I rolled a few multi-dice pools--of a half dozen 6d+ dice pools there were only a couple of matches in any of the sets. (He rolled a couple times as well, we ended up using Truth & Justice for a system for his pitch though--I don't know if that's telling or not)


*To be fair computer rollers only simulate randomness with a seed, not truly random, but it would appear to be so to most people.

Playtesting is definitely something that seperates the layers of quality in our hobby.

It´s not all about professionality, but it´s about what can you trust in a given product.

Example: The fact-checking at GDW was quite good, but their playtesting...left a lot to be desired.

And there´s a lot of niche products and adventures that saw a lot of playtest, but wouldn´t earn anybody anything.

It´s the mid-tier publishers  who continue to chafe under playtesting demands. Too small to do in-house, schedules too professional to wait for external playtests in a meaningful way.

Quote from: One Horse TownNothing sinister in it. I was responding to an earlier post of yours and didn't have time last night to respond to your later post.

Your blanket statement that playtesting doesn't happen (or is not effective) still isn't true, however. My experience tells me otherwise, just as your experience hasn't been good. As usual, the truth is probably somewhere between the two.

Playtesting certainly happens, I'm not saying it doesn't at all, just that there are more examples of it not happening than many people think.

The trouble is, there is a vested economic interest in not disclosing it when it does, so we're all stumbling in the dark a bit.  Fair or not, revealing that the designer never playtested some new rules would deter sales, so nobody will ever do that.

Keith Herber was the name I was trying to recall earlier, I read an interview with him in which he said he had stopped roleplaying entirely some years earlier.  He was still writing scenarios for CoC though, scenarios which often were heavily railroaded and very difficult to actually run.  I think that was because the writer wasn't in fact running them at all, or anything else.

But yeah, it's a mixed bag, some games get playtested, some don't, some that do are good and some are bad and some that don't are good and some are bad.  I think not playtesting leaves you vulnerable to certain kinds of errors that playtesting would have caught, but playtesting alone doesn't guarantee a good product.

Edit:  I slightly misremembered, he stopped gaming in 1993 after leaving Chaosium, so his CoC stuff (some of which was excellent) may well have been played.  He did however work as a game designer for White Wolf and others after that date even though he had stopped all roleplaying and no longer played at all.

Quote from: SettembriniEDIT:

If it needs someone to be hysterical, pathetic and biased to show the bias, guerilla agenda & hysteria of Forger Game Designers, then I will gladly be the most hysterical, pathetic and biased person that can be. Because I´m here for Truth, not for myself or my wanker game. I´m here for the love of the hobby, and not for some  overpriced  conspicous consumption  itsy-bitsy-one-idea-joke-of-product.

You are here to create divisions among gamers. You're not here for the love of the hobby. You here for the love of your game, a playstyle by your own words you think is morally superior. Let's not drag "Truth" into the fray.

Regards,
David R

It's possible we're coming at this from different approaches to using the system - I like as few rolls as possible, no idea how you feel - or just different experience. I have trouble not rolling a match just messing around with 5 or 6 d10s, maybe I just have better luck?

But either way, let me say this.
Come Monday, my group's getting together to discuss the specifics of a military sci-fi game I'll be running with a slight hack of Wild Talents, as well as doing a sample squad-level combat with the system to get our ORE feet under us. I'll probably put together something to discuss my experience on this site, paying attention to success and failure rates in particular given your statement. Since I think I'm the only ORE junkie around these parts, I can have all the vanity threads I want on it.

QuoteLet's not drag "Truth" into the fray.

The Truth is:

Others have divided gamers into "childish and under the influence of big business brainwash, but sane", "real adult-artists" & "emotional, braindamaged cripples", and sell product with that idea.

True is also, that WotC does the most, best and deepest playtesting of all RPG companies that exist.

Truth:

Forgers try to push the idea of the nuked applecart, that only individuals can deliver quality. IPR, IPR, IPR. That´s what this is about.

Also truth:

Andy K belongs to that group, and spreads his propaganda here. Now, bullying for public space is okay on the marketplace of ideas. But lying and distorting truth isn´t.

That´s why this is about truth, my dear fellow gamer.

And as before, you can think about me what you want, as long as you think equally bad about the other side.

If all your defense is: "But Set, all the ugly things you attribute them with, you do them, too!"
Then, albeit it does not justice to me, the important part of the message has come through: The uglyness that is the IPR-movements modus operandi.

Quote from: Christmas ApeBut either way, let me say this.
Come Monday, my group's getting together to discuss the specifics of a military sci-fi game I'll be running with a slight hack of Wild Talents, as well as doing a sample squad-level combat with the system to get our ORE feet under us. I'll probably put together something to discuss my experience on this site, paying attention to success and failure rates in particular given your statement. Since I think I'm the only ORE junkie around these parts, I can have all the vanity threads I want on it.

Cool, it be nice to see. Are you going to record the die results and give us a complete accounting? Or just summarize the experience?


As to luck--well I've been told I'm not allowed to roll d20's against my players in d20/Talislanta/Waste World--because of the repeated strings of 20's I get as a GM against the players (maybe it was balancing that out..). Though in Godlike it wasn't just me but an entire group who had the issue in play.

Or in a nutshell, because I've labored with some of this thoughts before, Sett fights dirty because they (IPR/Forge/Swine/Story Games/whatever) started a dirty fight.

I'm too far from The War to say one way or the other if it's right, but I respect his conviction.

Edited to better represent Sett's position.