Quote from: flyingmice;272730To me, KotDT is an example of the endless capacity of most gamers for self-loathing, like many threads on tBP.

-clash

Well, I can see why you'd say that, to an extent. However, I think there's a difference between self-loathing and self-recognition. Pretty much everything in KoDT is based on at least a kernel of truth. Trouble is, sometimes those kernels are embellished upon to such an exaggerated extent that they cease to be recognizably amusing.

The recent "paintball assassin" storyline is an example. So is the (tangentially related) HackCon storyline. The main problem with such storylines is that they explore no new ground - yeah, we know that everyone will be paintballing each other at every opportunity, and the most innocent-seeming characters will turn out to be more ruthless than anyone else. Yeah, we know some "door nazi" will make some of the major characters miss all or most of the con. Fuck, either make this stuff just a minor backdrop to some other stories, ones which take the Knights and their allies and enemies into new territory, or don't do them. They're the kinds of tropes that have been done to death in one form or another in sitcoms and cartoons. Gosh, I wonder if there is an eventual nasty break-up in store for Bob and his girlfriend, one that will cause all kinds of mayhem at the gaming table?

All that said, I really do love the comic. The gaming stuff I liked a lot back when it was HackMaster-specific. I still like Westermeyer's reviews, as well as the other review columns besides the late (and, for me, unlamented) "Gamer's Rants," as well as what HackMaster stuff still makes it in.

The draw seems to be "we should all like third-rate humour because this is about US!", as if that's a good reason.  I've never seen a comic about gaming that I've found regularly amusing, and can only conclude the fans of these types of comics are such rabid followers only because they want to feel like they're part of some kind of a "culture", rather than a hobby.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;273013The draw seems to be "we should all like third-rate humour because this is about US!", as if that's a good reason.  I've never seen a comic about gaming that I've found regularly amusing, and can only conclude the fans of these types of comics are such rabid followers only because they want to feel like they're part of some kind of a "culture", rather than a hobby.

RPGPundit

I wouldn't say it was third-rate humor; it was satire.

At the core, besides mocking many conventions of our hobby, it showed gamers as what many gamers are: social nobodies whose only achievements are within a narrow genre hobby. And it touched on issues that face every gamer: the difficulty in finding a group, maintaining a group, of coming up with ideas for campaigns, and to keep a campaign fun for all.

But it also showed the good in gaming in a fashion that was not heavy-handed: the intelligence of gamers, the social interaction that helps many people out of their shell, the relief of stress, the entertainment of the hobby.

Of course, it fell apart around #90, when the writters started spending whole issues depicting game designers coping with budget cuts and deadlines (about the same time Kenzer was taking the fatal hits that reduced it to a pdf-pusher and 'soon we'll have something-just wait!' it is today), but the early material was very good. Of course, you had to read it as a continuation; the individual strips or even comics of themselves are not sustainable humor.

At its best, KODT was a ballad or on-going tale. Not a 'punchline' humor source.

People used to talk about it all the time in the 90's like an episode of last night's M*A*S*H* kind of thing. Dragon really was kind of weak at that time so it might actually have been the best thing about the mag. The girl and the DM were pretty typical of cheesy games I've attended over the years as far as behavior (groaning "Jerry Springer" DM and his eye-rolling "girl familiar". Give me a nickel for every time that I seen that!) but the other three I just never see that type. I think they were trying to be too comedy snuffing politically correct with the "bad" players perhaps.

Quote from: Gene Weigel;273040People used to talk about it all the time in the 90's like an episode of last night's M*A*S*H* kind of thing. Dragon really was kind of weak at that time so it might actually have been the best thing about the mag. The girl and the DM were pretty typical of cheesy games I've attended over the years as far as behavior (groaning "Jerry Springer" DM and his eye-rolling "girl familiar". Give me a nickel for every time that I seen that!) but the other three I just never see that type. I think they were trying to be too comedy snuffing politically correct with the "bad" players perhaps.

:confused:

Man, where to start?

Sara, the female in the group, was an excellent role-player, the only one who had a PC with more depth than the sheet of paper the PC was written on. She was there to show that not all gamers are geek losers. She was the GM's cousin, BTW.

The other three are Brian, a cat-piss-type rules lawyer who has weekly 'rules drills'; Dave, a munchkin whose PC is just a deployment tool for his enchanted sword (a hackmaster +12); and Bob, who quits jobs to attend cons and for whom every adverse action in the game is a personal attack by the GM.

I've seen Brians, Bobs, and Daves at game stores and interviewing prospestive players (and, God help me, gamed with a couple in the early years) for my games over the years. They are an unfortunate staple of the hobby. Geeks for whom gaming is the only thing they have in their lives.

To be fair: Dave is also the sort of casual gamer 'I don't know the rules that well but my gear totally rocks' sort of player, or at least he was supposed to be.  It can be understood that he has more of a life outside the game than Brian or Bob, though it isn't delved into with any regularity.

Then again its been a few years since I read it with any regularity.

Quote from: Spike;273053To be fair: Dave is also the sort of casual gamer 'I don't know the rules that well but my gear totally rocks' sort of player, or at least he was supposed to be.  It can be understood that he has more of a life outside the game than Brian or Bob, though it isn't delved into with any regularity.

You're right-now that I think of it, he has ex-girlfriends crop up, and he is in college.

Quote from: OneTinSoldier;273035Of course, it fell apart around #90, when the writters started spending whole issues depicting game designers coping with budget cuts and deadlines (about the same time Kenzer was taking the fatal hits that reduced it to a pdf-pusher and 'soon we'll have something-just wait!' it is today), but the early material was very good.

Wow, you really didn't like the #90s issues, huh?  

Ive been reading it pretty regularly since issue 1.  (Still have my first 3 issues bagged and boarded!)

I preferred it when it was just a comic and not 1/3rd comic 1/3rd gaming mag 1/3rd house organ.

(Though sometimes the house organ bits creeped their way into the other 2/3rds of the magazine...)

Its a good read and for what you get the price IS right, but the magazine parts can sometimes be off.  Hell, I have close to a complete set of the issues if we count a few Bundles of Trouble I needed when my local comic shop closed and getting them from the not so local game store was a pain, and I never even KNEW about the stupid vote for what stays in the mag thing they did.

Which seems to have mostly been used by the forum posters at the Kenzer site.  If the Net has taught us anything, its that FORUM POSTERS DON'T REALLY MATTER.  They are the hardcore lunatic fringe in a product.  Its nice to have a fanforum and all, but it services about 10-20% of the actual customer base.

And because of those 10-20% we lost some perfectly good things.  (Fuzzy Knights and Gamer's Rant being the most notable.)

I'd rather lose anything directly related to Hackmaster or A&8 myself.  I don't play either, and the former sucked and the latter sounds cool but its so far back on the "I want to buy this!" list I may as well wait for the inevitable 2nd edition.

Its pretty much useless material to anyone BUT the folks who play those games.  Yet they stay in and some actual entertaining/amusing content gets dropped?

I dunno.  Once that vote thing happened my enthusiasm for the book has dropped to an all new low.

Quote from: Captain Rufus;273131Its a good read and for what you get the price IS right, but the magazine parts can sometimes be off.  Hell, I have close to a complete set of the issues if we count a few Bundles of Trouble I needed when my local comic shop closed and getting them from the not so local game store was a pain, and I never even KNEW about the stupid vote for what stays in the mag thing they did.

Which seems to have mostly been used by the forum posters at the Kenzer site.  If the Net has taught us anything, its that FORUM POSTERS DON'T REALLY MATTER.  They are the hardcore lunatic fringe in a product.  Its nice to have a fanforum and all, but it services about 10-20% of the actual customer base.

And because of those 10-20% we lost some perfectly good things.  (Fuzzy Knights and Gamer's Rant being the most notable.)

I dunno.  Once that vote thing happened my enthusiasm for the book has dropped to an all new low.

To be clear - we didn't pull any features based on a forum poll.  The poll was simply asking "Do you agree with the decision?" and as the discussion continued so did the poll.  (Even if we had, generally most forum-goers seemed to like what we pulled, so the result would have been the reverse.)

What happened was simply that we pulled some features that had lost their popularity -- slowly -- over a period of years,  with people weighing in on all sides through email, conversations at conventions, etc.

Yes, we did choose to do a larger readership online survey - we emailed people that shopped on our online store and hadn't chosen to opt out of emails from us.  However, the survey wasn't the sole deciding factor. It was just a final bit of data.  

A lot of comments mentioned "I wish I hadn't missed the survey I could have made a difference."  We understood many readers want to be heard and would have liked to have participated, but the survey was never attempting to get every reader to "get out and vote".  The goal was to get a "sampling" of responses which were in turn analyzed and crunched by a professional. According to her, the sample was statistically relevant, in fact, we had double or more than what was needed. She claimed that any additional surveys wouldn't have changed the results with a 98% (or something) certainty. So the fact that some people weren't notified or respond probably wouldn't have changed the results any.

We always leave open the possibility of any feature's return based on reader feedback.  Of course, in the case of the Rants, they were always (and still are) also published on the author's website, and I suspect he'll continue to do them. So if you want new Rants they're still available.

Quote from: Captain Rufus;273131(Fuzzy Knights and Gamer's Rant being the most notable.)

See, those were my two least favorite things - a photo-comic of stuffed animals playing a RPG and a movie column based on the writer hating every movie he talked about, using poorly-constructed analogies and flat-as-15-year-old-Pepsi hyperbole.

The former was, at best, mildly amusing once in a great while, while the latter could have benefited by the writer reading and trying to emulate genuinely good movie reviewers who could actually be funny - Steve Puchalski of Shock Cinema (and many of the other reviewers in that magazine) is a good example, as is Roger Ebert and Joe Bob Briggs.

Paul Westermeyer, who reviews books in KoDT, is a great reviewer and a good contrast to the "Gamer's Rant", his reviews being well-thought-out and showing a mastery of the English language sorely lacking in most KoDT articles (and in the comic - jeez, when will Jolly shake off the Random Comma Syndrome?). No, his reviews aren't funny...but they're good writing.

Quote from: RPGPundit;273013The draw seems to be "we should all like third-rate humour because this is about US!", as if that's a good reason.  I've never seen a comic about gaming that I've found regularly amusing, and can only conclude the fans of these types of comics are such rabid followers only because they want to feel like they're part of some kind of a "culture", rather than a hobby.

RPGPundit

Says the man who has obviously read none of the Bagwars saga.  

Quote from: OneTinSoldier;272668Kenzer as a whole went from a shining star in the gaming business with several very promising lines, to the nearly-dead entitiy it is now at about the same time. Its down to publishing (late) generic supps for Kalamar, a decent enough setting. Its various systems (Hackmaster & varients) are gone due to the loss of their license, and the promising new lines (Aces & Eights) are years behind shedule, or to be more accurate, dead. PDFs sales of abandoned lines such as Fairy Meat are about all that is sustaining them. They claim that they are planning a comeback as soon as they get their licensing issues solved (and funding), but that's unlikely.

say whaaaa.....?

licensing issues? funding?  

That's so far off base i don't even know where to begin. I don't blame you however. I know how the "net" is. There's a lot of misinformation out there.

Whatta ya going to do?

Aces and Eights was a few years late largely because we bit off a LOT to chew and underestimated how long it would take to write/develop the game.
Funding has zip to do with it being late. We just suck at keeping deadlines. It all worked out in the end though. First print run blew out the door. Took best rpg of the year. yadda yadda. No complaints.

BTW pdf sales and fairy meat (Fairy Meat?) are really a very, very, very small part of our revenue stream.

Aces and Eights and KODT are currently our best sellers last time I checked.

We've been spending our time quietly working on HackMaster 5 which I can confidently say will be out this summer.

Our licensing agreement for HackMaster 4 had a finite end date. We knew that going in. Which is why we stared working on HM5 well before that license ended. It was yanked. We werent' caught off guard.

It simply ended and we moved on.

We've been play testing HM5 over a year now and and frankly having a great time doing what we do.

Hope that clears some things up.

Interesting thread btw. I don't get this way very often but a good read.

I don't usually comment on KODT criticisms. I figure the reader best knows his/her reason for liking/not liking the comic.

It's enough (for me anyway) that it's been a fun ride and I enjoy doing my part on the magazine. Thankfully enough people seem to enjoy it to allow me to keep fat and happy and doing what I love.

Peace all.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;273203jeez, when will Jolly shake off the Random Comma Syndrome?).

lol. yes it is  my curse. Dyslexia

I'm glad someone's been paying attention.