Quote from: Conanist on February 12, 2021, 10:24:12 PM

Quote from: Mistwell on February 12, 2021, 05:35:05 PM
Most graphic novels are new and not reprints of monthly published prior comics. The market shifted. It's not Watchman. It's not old comics in a new format. For the most part, it's brand new stuff.

Are you referring to manga? The western "graphic novels" I'm aware of are 99% reprinted monthly stuff. Marvel and DC did produce original graphic novels back in the 80's but you don't see those on the shelves these days.

Here's the top selling graphic novels of 2020/

Quote from: Mistwell on February 13, 2021, 01:35:58 AM

Quote from: Conanist on February 12, 2021, 10:24:12 PM

Quote from: Mistwell on February 12, 2021, 05:35:05 PM
Most graphic novels are new and not reprints of monthly published prior comics. The market shifted. It's not Watchman. It's not old comics in a new format. For the most part, it's brand new stuff.

Are you referring to manga? The western "graphic novels" I'm aware of are 99% reprinted monthly stuff. Marvel and DC did produce original graphic novels back in the 80's but you don't see those on the shelves these days.

Here's the top selling graphic novels of 2020/

So NOT ONE is a traditional superhero comic. It's a mix of Manga and the books sold to library and pushed on parents through the 'scholastic press' scam. The latter mostly being SJW propaganda, none of which would sell under a system that wasn't explicitly set up to trick families into buying them as "educational".

Quote from: RPGPundit on February 13, 2021, 03:01:31 AM

Quote from: Mistwell on February 13, 2021, 01:35:58 AM

Quote from: Conanist on February 12, 2021, 10:24:12 PM

Quote from: Mistwell on February 12, 2021, 05:35:05 PM
Most graphic novels are new and not reprints of monthly published prior comics. The market shifted. It's not Watchman. It's not old comics in a new format. For the most part, it's brand new stuff.

Are you referring to manga? The western "graphic novels" I'm aware of are 99% reprinted monthly stuff. Marvel and DC did produce original graphic novels back in the 80's but you don't see those on the shelves these days.

Here's the top selling graphic novels of 2020/

So NOT ONE is a traditional superhero comic. It's a mix of Manga and the books sold to library and pushed on parents through the 'scholastic press' scam. The latter mostly being SJW propaganda, none of which would sell under a system that wasn't explicitly set up to trick families into buying them as "educational".

I love how the entire argument started from a simple statement that Marvel comics are floundering, while the IP is making all the money.  The comics defenders come out of the woodwork to assert that "ackshully, comics are doing just fine..."  Then, the very stats and links they provide establish that Japanese and alternative comics might be doing well, but Marvel comics don't appear to be the driving force, even on the very list they linked!  So why argue the point in the first place?!?  It's like they hear "Marvel" and think "Oh no, someone is attacking my beloved hobby!"  Well, there's a difference between the weeb crap that's popular with kids today and the traditional superhero comic that Marvel is famous for.  It's like getting in an argument with a religious zealot.  Even evidence against their position is somehow warped as support for it in their mind...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 13, 2021, 08:30:38 AM
I love how the entire argument started from a simple statement that Marvel comics are floundering, while the IP is making all the money.  The comics defenders come out of the woodwork to assert that "ackshully, comics are doing just fine..."  Then, the very stats and links they provide establish that Japanese and alternative comics might be doing well, but Marvel comics don't appear to be the driving force, even on the very list they linked!  So why argue the point in the first place?!?  It's like they hear "Marvel" and think "Oh no, someone is attacking my beloved hobby!"  Well, there's a difference between the weeb crap that's popular with kids today and the traditional superhero comic that Marvel is famous for.  It's like getting in an argument with a religious zealot.  Even evidence against their position is somehow warped as support for it in their mind...

A lot of the discussion (like mine) has been about the comics industry as a whole, with no mention of Marvel. And calling someone like me a comics defender is ridiculous, since I don't like modern comics. There are a handful of people, including you and Pundit, who seem desperate to turn this into some kind of partisan thing, and are jumping to all kinds of false conclusions.

It does seem like traditional super hero comics sold in the traditional format (24 or 32 pages, softcover, appearing monthly) are struggling. Of course manga is huge, but it's a distinct genre and mostly sold in bookstores.

There were 3 local comic shops when I moved to my current city 7 years ago, and they all closed during the last 3 years (before covid). I have no idea whether that says anything about the state of the industry as a whole.

Quote from: Dimitrios on February 13, 2021, 09:48:20 AM
It does seem like traditional super hero comics sold in the traditional format (24 or 32 pages, softcover, appearing monthly) are struggling. Of course manga is huge, but it's a distinct genre and mostly sold in bookstores.

Graphic novels have definitely been growing based on the Diamond numbers, but based on the New York Times list, they seem to be dominated by stuff like Cat Kid or the Babysitter's Club, and secondarily manga. I'm curious about the traditional comic book format. According to the Diamond lists, unit sales seem fairly stable. But is that because traditional super hero comics sales are stable, or are they in a decline and being replaced by alternatives in the same format? And if they are being replaced by something like New Kid or My Hero Academia, where are those issues being sold? Because I haven't seen comic books racks in general book stores, and comic book stores still seem very heavily focused on super heroes. Someone mentioned scholastic fairs, but I don't know anything about them.

Quote from: Pat on February 13, 2021, 09:34:13 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 13, 2021, 08:30:38 AM
I love how the entire argument started from a simple statement that Marvel comics are floundering, while the IP is making all the money.  The comics defenders come out of the woodwork to assert that "ackshully, comics are doing just fine..."  Then, the very stats and links they provide establish that Japanese and alternative comics might be doing well, but Marvel comics don't appear to be the driving force, even on the very list they linked!  So why argue the point in the first place?!?  It's like they hear "Marvel" and think "Oh no, someone is attacking my beloved hobby!"  Well, there's a difference between the weeb crap that's popular with kids today and the traditional superhero comic that Marvel is famous for.  It's like getting in an argument with a religious zealot.  Even evidence against their position is somehow warped as support for it in their mind...

A lot of the discussion (like mine) has been about the comics industry as a whole, with no mention of Marvel. And calling someone like me a comics defender is ridiculous, since I don't like modern comics. There are a handful of people, including you and Pundit, who seem desperate to turn this into some kind of partisan thing, and are jumping to all kinds of false conclusions.

The hit dog is the one that barks.

Someone in this thread made a comment about Marvel comics vs the IP.  Then you and others jump in with assertions about comics and graphic novels in general, which had nothing to do with the original statement or argument.  Nobody here thinks that manga is the same thing as Marvel, so what is your point, if not to defend comics in general, which apparently not even you care about?  It certainly has nothing to do with the topic of this thread, that Hasbro might be trying to grow the D&D IP without concern for the RPG.  The only person who seems to have an ideological axe to grind is you, trying to defend against arguments irrelevant to the topic at hand...

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 13, 2021, 12:10:44 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 12, 2021, 09:50:19 PM
I agree that Blavatsky might have been too extreme to use as the basis for an IP about DIY magic, but I don't think "consensus reality" is all that great either. It plays right into science denial and postmodernist critical theory. E.g. flat earth belief, anti-vaccine sentiment, "woman is a social construct." I don't want to see those promoted as truth even in a fictional context.

But I digress

The digression is more interesting than the actual topic though and is at least game related.

The thing to remember about "consensual reality" is it's pretty much jargon in the same way that "disk drive" is in this era of solid-state flash drives... or the fact that the save icon looks like an old 3.5" floppy disk; it's a term used even though it's not actually all that accurate because it's familiar and still somewhat covers the part related to magic.

Because, since pretty much late 2e and continuing through Revised and V20, the ACTUAL cosmology would be better described as an objective universe with will-based reality warping as an overlay.

That's because late 2e on introduced the idea of "cosmological constants"; gravity, linear time, a round planet that orbits the sun, basic physics and chemistry; all of that stuff (among others) in Ascension has been established to exist independently of any will.

They also clarified "effect-based determinism." i.e. the result of your magic is limited by the spheres used to produce it... you can't use Correspondence to coincidentally get quickly across town by having a Taxi show up (that would be results-based determism... Correspondence allows quick travel from place to place so a coincidental use is that a Taxi just happens to be there and gets all green lights the whole way).

Rather, to just happen to have a Taxi waiting on the corner you'd need matter (to create a taxi), life and mind (to create a meat puppet taxi driver), prime (to create those from nothing), forces (to control the traffic lights) and correspondance (to affect anything beyond your line of sight) and a generous helping of knowledge in engineering (for the taxi) and biology (for the meat puppet driver).

In other words, Correspondence alone doesn't cause reality to subjectively produce a taxi and driver. You have to deliberately warp reality using specific knowledge of many spheres of magic coupled with principles of physics, chemistry and biology.

Another example is that if you want to survive being shot by the bullet coincidentally hitting a whiskey flask in your pocket, then you better either already have a whiskey flask in your pocket (and either entropy or forces to guide the bullet to the flask) OR have matter magic to create a whiskey flask in your pocket.

M20 also clarified "hypothetical average observer" for coincidental/vulgar magic which further defines a less subjective and more objective reality. If you walk into a dark alley, no average person watching would think anything of it. Even if they were following you and couldn't find you when they entered the alley they wouldn't think "magic" they'd think you slipped out via a route you didn't see.

Similarly, if you walked out of a dark alley on the other side of town, no one is going to think "magic" unless they knew for a fact you were 5 miles away 10 seconds ago (though if they did know that's now vulgar with a witness).

Basically, all of these combined establish a non-consensual reality that mages are able to warp using their belief (bolstered by the tools and practices they believe work) to the specific limits of their avatar and will/arete... and which gets pushback from both the degree it violates objective laws (vulgar without witnesses) and even more severely from the unbelief of Sleeper (vulgar with witnesses).

Reality warpers with security blankets (their paradigm, practices and props) is really the only sort of system that can allow "everyone's magical practices work" in any sort of coherent fashion. It's also the version that best interacts with the broader World of Darkness and it's need for certain objective truths for their settings to function.

The alternative is basically the largely rejected "one true way" approach that Awakening used.

So if it's majority objective, why do they call it "consensus reality"? Because it's an easy shorthand for explaining the fundamentals of the "reality warpers" abilities and limitations, but it's about as accurate as claiming E=mc^2 is the whole of mass/energy equations.

All your eye-searing examples do is just remind me why I dislike Ascension in the first place.

If I was writing a magic setting then I would let magic just work, offering a banal platitude about the Anthropic Principle at most, and then let various in-universe organizations come up with magical theories. I suspect that might even fit better thematically with a DIY magic system rather than the purple paradigm, but YMMV.

This is why I found myself attracted to Opening the Dark's magic rules. In addition to being a distillation of Ars Magica's syntactic magic and its innumerable derivatives, it puts the players and GM firmly in control rather than pretending the RAW can account for all eventualities.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 13, 2021, 12:10:44 AM
Reality warpers with security blankets (their paradigm, practices and props) is really the only sort of system that can allow "everyone's magical practices work" in any sort of coherent fashion.

Well darn, why didn't you say that in the first place?

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 13, 2021, 12:10:44 AM
The alternative is basically the largely rejected "one true way" approach that Awakening used.

I think that's an uncharitable description of Awakening. Especially when you're cherrypicking the entire publication history of Ascension to bolster arguments about it, but seemingly not affording the same luxury to Awakening. Tho I'm not enough of a shill to try defending it further.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 13, 2021, 11:17:59 AM

Quote from: Pat on February 13, 2021, 09:34:13 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 13, 2021, 08:30:38 AM
I love how the entire argument started from a simple statement that Marvel comics are floundering, while the IP is making all the money.  The comics defenders come out of the woodwork to assert that "ackshully, comics are doing just fine..."  Then, the very stats and links they provide establish that Japanese and alternative comics might be doing well, but Marvel comics don't appear to be the driving force, even on the very list they linked!  So why argue the point in the first place?!?  It's like they hear "Marvel" and think "Oh no, someone is attacking my beloved hobby!"  Well, there's a difference between the weeb crap that's popular with kids today and the traditional superhero comic that Marvel is famous for.  It's like getting in an argument with a religious zealot.  Even evidence against their position is somehow warped as support for it in their mind...

A lot of the discussion (like mine) has been about the comics industry as a whole, with no mention of Marvel. And calling someone like me a comics defender is ridiculous, since I don't like modern comics. There are a handful of people, including you and Pundit, who seem desperate to turn this into some kind of partisan thing, and are jumping to all kinds of false conclusions.

The hit dog is the one that barks.

Someone in this thread made a comment about Marvel comics vs the IP.  Then you and others jump in with assertions about comics and graphic novels in general, which had nothing to do with the original statement or argument.  Nobody here thinks that manga is the same thing as Marvel, so what is your point, if not to defend comics in general, which apparently not even you care about?  It certainly has nothing to do with the topic of this thread, that Hasbro might be trying to grow the D&D IP without concern for the RPG.  The only person who seems to have an ideological axe to grind is you, trying to defend against arguments irrelevant to the topic at hand...

Bullshit. When you make broad, general statements about a group of people in the thread with certain characteristics, and don't reply to a specific post or identify who you're talking about, then you're attacking anyone who meets any of the criteria. That's passive aggressive bullshit and I called you out for it.

And I replied to a specific post. I'm not responsible for every other thing every other poster has said in the thread. That's insane. And I hope you realize the whole discussion on comics has absolutely nothing to do with the thread's main topic.

I posted because I was curious what the comics industry was like, looked up some data, and shared it. Zero ideology, because I don't have any real investment in the modern comics industry. You're the one who posted as an emotional ideologue -- which should be obvious even to you.

Quote from: RPGPundit on February 13, 2021, 03:01:31 AM

Quote from: Mistwell on February 13, 2021, 01:35:58 AM

Quote from: Conanist on February 12, 2021, 10:24:12 PM

Quote from: Mistwell on February 12, 2021, 05:35:05 PM
Most graphic novels are new and not reprints of monthly published prior comics. The market shifted. It's not Watchman. It's not old comics in a new format. For the most part, it's brand new stuff.

Are you referring to manga? The western "graphic novels" I'm aware of are 99% reprinted monthly stuff. Marvel and DC did produce original graphic novels back in the 80's but you don't see those on the shelves these days.

Here's the top selling graphic novels of 2020/

So NOT ONE is a traditional superhero comic. It's a mix of Manga and the books sold to library and pushed on parents through the 'scholastic press' scam. The latter mostly being SJW propaganda, none of which would sell under a system that wasn't explicitly set up to trick families into buying them as "educational".

It's so nice your grandchildren taught you how to post to the interwebs, old man.

Oh for fucks sake, how on earth could you be this out of touch? Scholastic's graphic novel sales are not a scam and there hasn't been in person school in a year. The change-over to Scholastic's massive REAL hits with Raina Telgemeier which spawned literally hundreds of others appealing to middle school age kids which are selling massively and have become a dominant trend with middle schoolers for give years now. Marvel and DC picked up on the trend and followed as well. It's not SJW anything - it's just they all figured out (finally) that the original comics sold TO KIDS and so now they're SELLING COMICS THAT APPEAL TO KIDS AGAIN.

There's also a boom in spanish-language comics by the way. Which, if you were not a senile old man you'd know given you live in one of those nations where that trend has spread to.

Jesus, it's like talking to my parents when I come here sometimes (and I am in my early 50s). You seriously thought the comic book market was still dominated by superheroes? Superheroes still do OK, but the market changed a while ago. And not from some nefarious political agenda, but because markets sometimes change and this one did. And it's not aimed at old people as much as it was.

Quote from: Pat on February 13, 2021, 09:17:34 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 13, 2021, 11:17:59 AM

Quote from: Pat on February 13, 2021, 09:34:13 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 13, 2021, 08:30:38 AM
I love how the entire argument started from a simple statement that Marvel comics are floundering, while the IP is making all the money.  The comics defenders come out of the woodwork to assert that "ackshully, comics are doing just fine..."  Then, the very stats and links they provide establish that Japanese and alternative comics might be doing well, but Marvel comics don't appear to be the driving force, even on the very list they linked!  So why argue the point in the first place?!?  It's like they hear "Marvel" and think "Oh no, someone is attacking my beloved hobby!"  Well, there's a difference between the weeb crap that's popular with kids today and the traditional superhero comic that Marvel is famous for.  It's like getting in an argument with a religious zealot.  Even evidence against their position is somehow warped as support for it in their mind...

A lot of the discussion (like mine) has been about the comics industry as a whole, with no mention of Marvel. And calling someone like me a comics defender is ridiculous, since I don't like modern comics. There are a handful of people, including you and Pundit, who seem desperate to turn this into some kind of partisan thing, and are jumping to all kinds of false conclusions.

The hit dog is the one that barks.

Someone in this thread made a comment about Marvel comics vs the IP.  Then you and others jump in with assertions about comics and graphic novels in general, which had nothing to do with the original statement or argument.  Nobody here thinks that manga is the same thing as Marvel, so what is your point, if not to defend comics in general, which apparently not even you care about?  It certainly has nothing to do with the topic of this thread, that Hasbro might be trying to grow the D&D IP without concern for the RPG.  The only person who seems to have an ideological axe to grind is you, trying to defend against arguments irrelevant to the topic at hand...

Bullshit. When you make broad, general statements about a group of people in the thread with certain characteristics, and don't reply to a specific post or identify who you're talking about, then you're attacking anyone who meets any of the criteria. That's passive aggressive bullshit and I called you out for it.

And I replied to a specific post. I'm not responsible for every other thing every other poster has said in the thread. That's insane. And I hope you realize the whole discussion on comics has absolutely nothing to do with the thread's main topic.

I posted because I was curious what the comics industry was like, looked up some data, and shared it. Zero ideology, because I don't have any real investment in the modern comics industry. You're the one who posted as an emotional ideologue -- which should be obvious even to you.

The only bullshit here is what you are peddling.  The discussion was about whether or not Hasbro was motivated to sell D&D (you know, in the thread title?), and the Disney/Marvel IP was used as an example.  Several people chimed in to dispute that Marvel was doing poorly.  No one was arguing that all comics were failing, because that's irrelevant; they were talking about Marvel comics.  But you and Mistwell then start babbling about manga and kid's graphic novels.  So do you have any opinion on the actual topic of discussion?  How about Marvel?  Are their superhero comics profitable, or is the IP carrying the brand (as wa s stated by several people, including Pundit, above)?  How about those statistics...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 13, 2021, 10:06:33 PM
The only bullshit here is what you are peddling.  The discussion was about whether or not Hasbro was motivated to sell D&D (you know, in the thread title?), and the Disney/Marvel IP was used as an example.  Several people chimed in to dispute that Marvel was doing poorly.  No one was arguing that all comics were failing, because that's irrelevant; they were talking about Marvel comics.  But you and Mistwell then start babbling about manga and kid's graphic novels.  So do you have any opinion on the actual topic of discussion?  How about Marvel?  Are their superhero comics profitable, or is the IP carrying the brand (as wa s stated by several people, including Pundit, above)?  How about those statistics...

Projection, they name is Eirikrautha. I replied to a post, not to everything everyone else said in the thread. That's insane. It's tangential to the thread topic, but then so is the entire discussion of comics. Claiming otherwise is absurd. And I literally asked, several post ago, if anyone had any information on how much of the market was super hero comics.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 13, 2021, 07:05:17 PM


If I was writing a magic setting then I would let magic just work, offering a banal platitude about the Anthropic Principle at most, and then let various in-universe organizations come up with magical theories. I suspect that might even fit better thematically with a DIY magic system rather than the purple paradigm, but YMMV.

There's lots of different ritual trappings used in magick throughout time and culture, but there's only one philosophia perennia.

To bring the comics tangent back to the topic of rpgs, I don't think the point is about the overall state of the comics industry or what the Kids These Days are reading (that's pretty obviously more manga than super heroes).

I think the point was that Marvel's attempt to revive their flagging super hero lines by woke-ifying them failed miserably, and that has implications for the future of D&D in the event that 5e's sales start to decline.

Quote from: Dimitrios on February 14, 2021, 10:40:39 AM
to revive their flagging super hero lines by woke-ifying them failed miserably, and that has implications for the future of D&D in the event that 5e's sales start to decline.

Get Woke Go Broke is pretty much the standard Marvel seemed and still seems to be striving for, and quintupling down on even more lately. The sales were hurting yet mostly due to DC and Marvel over saturating the market with comic events that had ties in to every single comic which made it impossible for many to even try and collect when Crisis on Infinitely Multiple Earths touches every character.

The huge slump in sales began when they lost their minds and sanity and started targeting the Woke audience that make a large amount of noise to get the changes they want, once the change is implemented run off to something else to ruin. I could see the rot from awhile back when Kitty is talking with the Hulk and one of her lines was "You know whose fault is Bruce men...specifically white men who ruin everything." When the writer actually turns a character into their own Woke mouthpiece myself and other comic fans were not at all interested. That's when the major decline in sales began. Shocking really when both Marvel and DC and especially the Woke writers give not one but two big middle fingers to the regular comic fans .

Not to mention absolute garbage like this on comic covers is not going to increase sales: https://images.app.goo.gl/EM2kxU1m6KUsY92y8 . Notice the year on the cover way back in 2016. So the rot started way back when.