Quote from: J Arcane;399472Don't you know it doesn't count when corporations do it?  That's just free enterprise at work!

****  Buy more crap! ****

**** Procreate! ****

**** We're At War With Martians! ****

Quote from: Vellorian;399473I'll make no excuses for corporations--but governments are *far* more sinister and evil things--who only barely rival religious organizations...

Corporations owning the government?

Quote from: ggroy;399475Corporations owning the government?

Well, when you consider that the Federal Reserve "owns" and controls our economy--and the Federal Reserve is owned by 13 European banks, it's not very far-fetched to realize that our government is owned by the European banking cartels.

I read some interesting stuff on governments and corporations that purported that we really do live in a feudal society--it's just that our "feudal lords" are corporate entities and the "battlefields" are the courts.

Quote from: Vellorian;399478Well, when you consider that the Federal Reserve "owns" and controls our economy--and the Federal Reserve is owned by 13 European banks, it's not very far-fetched to realize that our government is owned by the European banking cartels.

Which ones?

Guesses could be:

- Union Bank of Switzerland
- Barclays
- Deutsche Bank

Quote from: ggroy;399482Which ones?

Guesses could be:

- Union Bank of Switzerland
- Barclays
- Deutsche bank

I used to work for the Fed.  I can tell you some stories that, at the time, seemed just strange--but now that I've done some research on the Fed chill me to the bone.

Two in England.  At least one in Italy.  Two in Austria.  I don't know them all for certain.  But, I have a "candidate list" of about 25 and I'm probably 75-80% correct.

Quote from: Vellorian;399464That is the Darth McClellan we're talking about--and *he* was the "fat kid" that people beat up and uses his vitriolic writing to somehow justify his meager ego.
.

OK, I'm getting confused here. There's daren MACCLENNAN who's a mod on the purple dump that has openly said that the thousand and one rules against personal attacks don't apply to overweight people and who has attacked overweight people in ways that would get anyone else banned if they'd said the same things about any other group and who wrote a wraethu review so laden with hate and violence against overweight people it had to be censored because it violated hate speech and incitement to violence laws in some areas.

Is he this "darren mcclellan" guy you're talking about? The names are different but I admit similar. If so he must be a self hating overweight person.

As to hate speech laws, do you really believe that someone has a right to say something like "All (insert racist, ethnic, religious sexual slur here) are evil and should be shot on sight?" Do you really believe that? Should a redneck be allowed to say "If the goddam monkey worshippers try to build a mosque here we oughtta burn it down?" Do you really think people should be able to use speech with the intent of creating harm and violence towards other people?

Hate speech laws aren't perfect, but they do address a necessary issue: The issue of people who use free speech as a cover to incite violence and crimes.

BTW, even on this site someone would not be allowed to say something like "Well, I hate jews so I'm going to make them a NPC evil race in my game I'm writing. How many XP do you think I should give players for killing them?" Hell even pundit and I wouldn't want that and I think pundit would either ban the guy or have people leave the board until he did.

RAHOWA proves there are limits to free speech even most gamers believe in.

Quote from: Cylonophile;399503Is he this "darren mcclellan" guy you're talking about?

Yes.

Quote from: Benoist;399504Yes.

OK, well not to nag but people are consistently misspelling his name which is kind of confusing....

Quote from: Daedalus;399460Wow, you got this one totally wrong:

1) Eric Gibson owns West End Games (which has sold off most of their properties and he is letting the name die) not D6 games

Fair enough, though for most people d6 is synonymous with WEG; but you are right, I used the wrong company name.

Quote2) Septimus was available in Dead Tree format.

Might want to check your facts before you post

Fuck when?

I'm not talking, taking a .pdf down to Kinko's or getting POD with Lulu or some other service, I'm talking getting the book from Amazon or my FLGS. I'm talking about getting a physical hard or softbound book off a shelf, and being able to point to it when people ask what game we're playing.

Quote from: Novastar;399511Fair enough, though for most people d6 is synonymous with WEG; but you are right, I used the wrong company name.


Fuck when?

I'm not talking, taking a .pdf down to Kinko's or getting POD with Lulu or some other service, I'm talking getting the book from Amazon or my FLGS. I'm talking about getting a physical hard or softbound book off a shelf, and being able to point to it when people ask what game we're playing.

From what I heard septimus was only released in pdf form and POD. According to the entry for WEG in wikipedia it was done as POD.

Quote from: RPGPundit;399390I did. I specifically quit, for about a six-month period, on account of how sick I was of the general collapse of the hobby and the sort of shit that was coming out at that point.  The hobby stopped being fun anymore. I heard that again and again from people who quit in the gaming circles I was in back then.  Out of 20 or 30 people who were in my general gaming environment back then, I know of only one other person (besides me) who I am still absolutely sure games.

RPGPundit

This makes no sense. Were people putting a gun to your head and forcing you to play Vampire, or something?

There are lots of games that I hate and it mildly annoys me that other people play them. But it would never stop my own game sessions being fun. Is it not possible all those people who you know who stopped gaming did so for another reason?

Quote from: noisms;399552This makes no sense. Were people putting a gun to your head and forcing you to play Vampire, or something?

Yes and No. It changed the face of the industry and more importantly it changed the nature of the gaming stores. And this is coming from someone who eventually got int WW gaming because of MAGE. But I'll get to that.

What happened was suddenly in-store games all changed to WW games. Not bad right? But it cut the other options down to almost nil in the larger markets. The punk-goth fad of the 90's was in full swing and a lot of store looked at the short term gain. Kinda the same way the Comics industry bought into it's self hype around the same time.

I survived via Cyberpunk 2020 and GURPS at the time and thankfully had a dedicated group. But then the game invaded even my local groups. I didn't like Vampire and Werewolf seemed racist (strange). When Mage came out I loved the system (long before I understood the Storyteller's mechanical issues) and pushed hard to get a game. I did eventually find one...using GURPS's varient of the rules and then a seperate session using WW's rules. (No guess as to which ran smoother.)

What I painfully discovered was that unless it was a Vampire/Werewolf game most of the new players were not interested in WW's less popular stuff. I couldn't find anyone to play Wraith, etc. I had more luck and fun with WW's non-WOD material than their their core stuff. (Aberrant, Trinity, Adventure!, Exalted) When the WW games started to die off locally I went back to GURPS or D&D (as 3rd Edition was happening then.) And eventualy all except the hardcore fans had moved on. More recent products like Exalted 2nd Edition, ICONS, and the all-but end of their print runs have proven to me that WW's business model is way off as a publisher. The mechanic became more and more arcane and the people trumpeting the lack of metaplot didn't notice that their original fans came into the game because of it. (And contineud to try and apply metaplot rules to their games even against their wishes. This is why the new Scarlet Empress book is looked at by a lot of Exalted fans as the end of the line. They asigned metaplot signfiicance to it. Before it was the death knell of WW Player's Guides with their broketastic merit/flaws and new rules varients. Different story.) CCP's buyout kinda clinched it.

What WW did was carve their own nitch. And that nitch filled with people interested in that very specific style of game. In much the same way I think D&D did at first until other games started filling out the market options. WW didn't help their case when they alienated the oWOD fans with the nWOD.

I think I understand why Games Workshop treats their RPG business the way they do. It's not their nitch. One can be made, Dark Heresy proves this, but a lot of companies are hyper specialized for their market.

So to Pundits point. Very little net gain, but a huge potential for net loss as the hobby ages. Especially if it bottlenecks new development of other products. See the d20 revolution and the near death/rebirth of indy development. Still, one companies death throws won't sink the industry as long as new developers keep trying different products and genres. But attitude and a strong business sense is needed in todays market.

Quote from: ggroy;399469Television is most effective brainwashing device ever invented.  :rolleyes:

Maybe in its era - I'd say the Internet is now the most effective brainwashing device ever invented.

Quote from: noisms;399552This makes no sense. Were people putting a gun to your head and forcing you to play Vampire, or something?

There are lots of games that I hate and it mildly annoys me that other people play them. But it would never stop my own game sessions being fun. Is it not possible all those people who you know who stopped gaming did so for another reason?

There were of course people in small groups who just went "into the wilderness", their little groups playing the same old games completely cut off from the rest of the hobby, but that, for all intents and purposes, counts as leaving the hobby.

The hobby as a living thing was nearly both completely subverted and simultaneously driven to near-demise by the WW-imitators by the end of the 90s. Had Adkinson and Dancey not stepped up and given us D20, it would have been the end.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Cylonophile;399507OK, well not to nag but people are consistently misspelling his name which is kind of confusing....

It's a way of insulting him.