Quote from: Machinegun Blue;403101I never got into all that metaplot stuff. I only ever played a couple games here and there that never really went anywhere. A lot of abortive games by first time GMs too. I did run a short Gurps Vampire campaign (strange when you think about it) and a few games of Changeling. I view Vampire the same way I view Toon. Fun for a while but nothing really to get stuck on.

Alright, nothing wrong with that. How's GURPS Vampire? I was puzzled by it and almost picked it up a few times.

Quote from: Cylonophile;403093it might have been their LARP boxed set and at least one other product.

So now it's in a LARP book that the players looked too good/in sync with the game, and I'm the blockhead?

Dude, I'm fine with you not liking WW for whatever reasons you have, I'm really not a big fan of the WW games myself,  but to me nothing of what you've been saying qualifies them as villains of the industry... especially not that the people in their larp books looked too good in surroundings that looked too cool.

Quote from: Benoist;403111Alright, nothing wrong with that. How's GURPS Vampire? I was puzzled by it and almost picked it up a few times.

The details are fuzzy but I was and still am a Gurps fan. It worked fine to me and still very much played out as a VtM game.

Quote from: RPGPundit;402445The Art in Palladium books had been consistently high quality for at least something like 5 years before Vampire ever came along.

Some of the art, certainly --esp. the Parkinson stuff, and Kevin Long's illos were great for their purpose.

OTOH, as has been mentioned, the layout in Palladium's stuff was (and continues to be) contemptible and purely amateurish (in the bad sense of the word).  And for you to argue otherwise proves you know jack fuck all about layout... which actually has professional, not-entirely-subjective standards of quality of which I am aware and you, obviously, are not.

KoOS

Quote from: Cylonophile;403001One reason I quit WW was because all their pix were a bunch of 20 something gen x goth model types who looked nothing like any gamers I know, and they were often taken in grungy bars that most gamers would have the intelligence scores to avoid.

Yes, WW concluded -- rightly -- that the vast majority of their customers were uninterested in illustrations of grossly obese, basement-dwelling shut-ins.

KoOS

Quote from: Machinegun Blue;403065WW just published stuff they hoped would sell. If anything, it would be the people who thought that it was innovative that would be the villians here.

No shit.  How did they dare to make games people liked?  What were they thinking?

Quote from: jgants;403352No shit.  How did they dare to make games people liked?  What were they thinking?

"I like money."?
(or, perhaps, I like perky goth girls? <-comic reference)

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;402694Yeah, it's hard to find RPG art more evocative and atmospheric than Stephen Fabian's work on Ravenloft. I still have that Tarokka deck he did, which is pretty damned cool divested of its context.

Everything Fabian drew is great,

Somehow or another I ended up with a spare set of those still wrapped, which I found in a box yesterday. I'm torn between opening them, or trying to find the open ones and hanging on to the wrapped ones for "emergencies." I like using Tarot cards and such for random generation sometimes. I think all forms of fortune-telling are nonsense, but since they're image based as well as numerical, the cards can jog my imagination. The Waite deck works well for gritty fantasy, the Crowley deck for Swords & Sorcery - the Fabian 'tarokka' would be good for a lot of settings other than just Hammer Horror, though, I think.

Quote from: Cylonophile;403001One reason I quit WW was because all their pix were a bunch of 20 something gen x goth model types who looked nothing like any gamers I know, and they were often taken in grungy bars that most gamers would have the intelligence scores to avoid.

As a 20 something Gen X goth type* with the Wisdom score too low to avoid WORKING in one of those bars, the pix reminded me uncomfortably of people who didn't tip.

Quote from: King of Old School;403263Yes, WW concluded -- rightly -- that the vast majority of their customers were uninterested in illustrations of grossly obese, basement-dwelling shut-ins.

We loyal Call of Cthulhu customers have occupied the market for that art style since the early 80's.

Quote from: Machinegun Blue;403094And here, I just quit playing Vampire because I got tired of playing vampires. It never occured to me that somebody would quit because the vampires weren't drawn from the ranks of the gothapotamus.

I was all psyched to write up the Gothapotamus for D&D, but then I figured just use the Devil Swine stats, make it Undead, maybe put level drain on the bite attack if you're feeling especially mean.

* note that I omit "model."

Quote from: David Johansen;399897Don't get me wrong, Darren's moderation (heh there's an oxymoron if I ever saw one) was hilarious back when tbp was still a free and open forum for public discussion.  The problem was that for a couple years after they clamped down he was still out there being a complete dick while his victims weren't even permitted to reply in kind.  Which led to the frustration and flaming of the mod wars that went on for years.

What eventually came out of it all was the biggest independant rpg forums becoming sanitized and stale.  Try to discuss anything with the least bit of passion or deviation from the enforced politically correct ideology and you're banned.

The only time I ever got banned was for discussing D&D and its fans.  And that was for a pretty tame statement that the largest game would automatically have the most cat-piss men.

So yeah, I'd nominate Darren McLennan for one of the biggest villains.  His methods are largely responsible for the big purple toilet as it exists today.

Just speaking of RPG.net, I was 'Banned for one day' (I only ever posted there a few times) for using "Retarded" as a derogatory term. Which was not the worst of it. After asking the moderator "Really?" I was spoken to by him as if I had posted some sort of 4chan grotesque-ity (I know that's not a word) and he was some sort of machine gun -toting cop.

I simply left and did not return after that but there is still a part of me that wants to meet the RPG.net mods face to face to see how bad ass they really are.

As for my list of "villains" (in no particular order):

1) James Shipman/Outlaw Press - More evidence that America's legal system is in huge trouble.

2) TSR/Gary Gygax - (A)D&D was just plain bad game design. It is forgivable for being the original but what angers me is that they did not have to balls to evolve. The original description in Dragon Magazine for what 2nd ed. AD&D was going to be (New magic system to replace the silly 'Fire & Forget' one etc.) was a complete 180 degrees from what was published years later. Why? Because there is this common, knee-jerk reaction people have to change. TSR received a lot of mail from gamers basically saying "I became a gamer because of AD&D and never play anything else and if you change stuff I will unleash a campaign to boycott you!". A lot like the 'New Coke' fiasco (not saying New Coke was better or worse than old Coke but let's face it; if New Coke had the most universally pleasant taste ever conceived, backlash would have been exactly the same).
So TSR did the 'safe' thing in there eyes but I think this was a huge mistake. If AD&D's flaws had been fixed none of those kids would have left the game. it just would have taken them a few play sessions to see the apocalypse had not come. What TSR DID lose were people like me who found RuneQuest (3rd. ed. in particular) and other well designed systems.

3) Storyteller/Narrativist types - My issue with these guys is this repeated notion I see that rules are unimportant and the only thing that matters is 'quickness and fun!'. I always ask them why they don't save a lot of money by just joining some sort of drama club/improvisational acting troupe and quit buying 'games' with only a 'rock, paper, scissors' type 'mechanic' to even call them 'games'. The 'Games' part of 'Role Playing Games' is the most important part of the term. 'Role playing' occurs in every hobby and every type of game you can imagine. The brilliance of RPGs is the quantified mechanics that enable and promote 'role playing'.

*Puts on flame retardant suit*

I think the "Crisis of Treachery" guy deserves mention but since I don't think too highly of Palladium's system (It is far from the worst and for some games/genres it works fairly well. Such as Robotech) it is hard for me to worry too much about Palladium potentially going out of business.

I have never owned or played "Fatal" but I think that games designers get way more hatred than they deserve. Sure a lot of the options in their rules systems dealing with rape and "vaginal circumference'(Which I think were one or two pages of the 500 page rule book) and such are stupid bloat but other than that...*shrug*. They actually managed to put up a decent defense of their product in answer to the RPG.net review for which they had become infamous.

Quote from: Cole;403586I like using Tarot cards and such for random generation sometimes. I think all forms of fortune-telling are nonsense, but since they're image based as well as numerical, the cards can jog my imagination.

Saying "I think fortune telling with tarot cards is nonsense" is a bit like saying "I think the internet is worthless because its just full of cat jokes and korean dance craze videos".

Its only nonsense if you're using it wrong.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;649155Its only nonsense if you're using it wrong.

Steven: I'm a peripheral visionary.  I can see into the future, but only way off to the sides.

Fran:  Are you often right?

Steven: Sometimes.

Fran: And the other times?

Steven: I'm not right.

Fran: How is that different from guessing?

Steven: Don't mock me.

~ "Fran" and "Steven", _Mad About You_

Quote from: Saphim;398527Well, there is Kevin Siembieda who fucks his customers and writers over again and again and who milks the death of his friend for all it is worth. That is simply despiccable.

Not the first time I've heard someone say this. But I've never heard anyone actually give any evidence to back it up. Other than taking forever to put out books, how does he fuck over his customers? Other than rewriting freelancer work and giving them partial credit (since he rewrote their material) how does he fuck over his writers? Sure Bill Coffin wrote a brilliantly angry piece, but he later retracted it and apologized. Kevin basically gave CJ Carella free reign with Rifts and Nightbane. And lastly, how exactly did he milk Eric's death? I don't recall Kevin saying, "My best friend died, buy my shit!"

and while it's not said here, it is the same with the old, "Kevin S. is a big meanie because he sues people for posting conversions without permission!" It's like, every person who posts something negative about Palladium and Kevin knows someone who is cousins with someone whose dad knows a guy who got sued or ripped off or something.

Haters gonna hate.

I wouldn't say he "intentionally fucks over his customers", but Palladium has had it's fair share of shady business decisions. Amazon.com comes to mind; when they posted on Amazon, they posted books at MSRP + Shipping + Amazon fees.

Now, MSRP is supposed to cover things like Distribution and Retail costs, which typically make up somewhere to 70-80% of the cost of the book. It's not uncommon for a publisher to get $4-5 for a book that sells to the customer at $20 at the bookstore. This is pretty much standard book trade, pre-Internet.

For Amazon sales, Amazon is effectively acting as retailer (IIRC, Amazon charges 20-25%, as a fee), and the publisher has to use a mail carrier as the distributor. Which in the above example, means if Palladium gets charged less than $10 for postage, they call sell at MSRP and still make better profit, than traditional brick & mortar sale.

Palladium didn't do that, they tacked on Shipping and Amazon fees wholesale to the MSRP, trying to pocket the extra money difference. In fact, that violates Amazon's term of service; you cannot sell for a cheaper price, elsewhere on the Internet (in this case, Palladium's own storefront).

And rather than eat the cost of Amazon's storefront, you know, the largest bookseller in the world currently, Palladium pulled it's entire library from Amazon.

I would call that a marketing blunder based on Kevin's ignorance, rather than intentionally trying to stick it to their customers. In fact, the whole time I was reading that, I was saying to myself, "if that's the case, why not just go to the Palladium site?"

I mean, look at the Christmas grab bags, you order one, and you basically get half the stuff for free. It's one of the best deals out there for actual RPG books, and the deal lasts for like 4 months out of the year. That doesn't seem like something someone who hates their customers would do.

I'm not a big fan of Palladium's business practices, in fact I left their forums after getting "warned" by a mod because I posted a snarky comment about Kevin needing an actual business plan that wasn't written on a napkin 30 years ago. But I've never seen anything he's ever done as intentional malicious - it's always just really bad business/marketing decisions because, well, he's not really a businessman and he's definitely not a marketer. He's a gamer who got lucky a bunch of times.

To me, the biggest villain in the RPG industry is the owner of the local game store who decides to charge full cover price for a raggedy used book, that he has 12 copies of and doesn't understand why he hasn't sold a single one in a decade.