Quote from: zircher on August 06, 2023, 03:17:42 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 03, 2023, 07:21:47 PM
WotC inherited loads of diverse IPs from TSR and freelancers invented plenty in Polyhedron during the d20 Modern era. By extension, Hasbro owns all of those. Star Frontiers, Star*Drive, Gamma World, Dark•Matter, Shadowchasers, Agents of Psi, Urban Arcana, Thunderball Rally, Iron Lords of Jupiter, DeathNet, BugHunters, Kromosome, GeneTech, etc. They're drowning in IPs that run the gamut of genres and could be turned into toys, video games, movies, tv shows, etc. But they're not exploiting any of it. In age when studios are snatching up IPs and driving them into the ground. Make it make sense! Do the executives just not know they own these IPs because nobody bothered to keep a list?

I wonder if people could leverage the DM's Guild to create new official content on DTRPG?  Sure, you're throw half your profits to WotC, but that might be acceptable if you're really wanting to revive a IP that they have sat on.

Not that I plan on doing that, but I should read up on that option to see if it is really viable for not 5e stuff.

There's also the question of whether or not it is legally allowed in the first place. Copyright law also protects against derivative works. That was whole point behind the OGL... to allow for the production of derivative works (within certain constraints).

The OGL is exclusively an "opt-in" license. By attaching a copy of the license to your work, you agree to it. To the best of my knowledge, none of those other IPs WotC acquired from TSR include the OGL, nor do they have SRDs listed what is Open Content and what is Product Identity. So the logical conclusion is they are not licensed with the OGL, and subject to regular copyright law.

Quote from: zircher on August 06, 2023, 03:17:42 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 03, 2023, 07:21:47 PM
WotC inherited loads of diverse IPs from TSR and freelancers invented plenty in Polyhedron during the d20 Modern era. By extension, Hasbro owns all of those. Star Frontiers, Star*Drive, Gamma World, Dark•Matter, Shadowchasers, Agents of Psi, Urban Arcana, Thunderball Rally, Iron Lords of Jupiter, DeathNet, BugHunters, Kromosome, GeneTech, etc. They're drowning in IPs that run the gamut of genres and could be turned into toys, video games, movies, tv shows, etc. But they're not exploiting any of it. In age when studios are snatching up IPs and driving them into the ground. Make it make sense! Do the executives just not know they own these IPs because nobody bothered to keep a list?

I wonder if people could leverage the DM's Guild to create new official content on DTRPG?  Sure, you're throw half your profits to WotC, but that might be acceptable if you're really wanting to revive a IP that they have sat on.

Not that I plan on doing that, but I should read up on that option to see if it is really viable for not 5e stuff.

Not all of the originals are even available on drivethrurpg anyway. The Alternity books still aren't back after the 2008 hissy fit. The Polyhedron mini-settings are only sold on Paizo's website.

With WotC moving to mobile mtx hell, they have no impetus to bother preserving any of their prior IP.

Quote from: Scooter on August 06, 2023, 03:58:24 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 06, 2023, 11:49:34 AM

It's especially frustrating because a fair amount of these IPs are so unique that you can't do anything similar without worrying about being sued. I've searched fruitlessly for years to find anything similar.

I was thinking of this so I pulled out my '78 copy of Gamma world.  It would not be difficult to make a modern version of this using ZERO I.P. from the original.  Might prove profitable because gamers from the 90's and later probably have no knowledge of this game

As I said, it varies.

Mutant Future is apparently a pastiche of Gamma World (technically it's a pastiche of the post-apocalypse genre as a whole), but I don't remember if it has equivalents of things like the cryptic alliances and silly mutants that set GW apart from other less wacky post-apocalypse settings. Not to mention that Gamma Terra's backstory was retconned a few times: the first four editions had the conventional nuclear war, then subsequent editions used aliens, artificial intelligence, and most recently multiverse incursion.

The appeal of Gamma World is that it's basically D&D, with all the 80s era wackiness, but the genre is post-apocalypse instead of fantasy. Instead of dungeons it has the ruins of the old world, instead of monsters it has mutants and robots and whatnot, instead of spells it has mutations and psychic powers, and instead of heroes and dark lords it has the cryptic alliances.

I'm surprised the last edition was in 2010. You'd think the success of Fallout would've lead WotC to keep it around.

Dark•Matter is essentially the X-Files but with coherent worldbuilding. The downside to any revival is that its Fifth Sun Dark Matter tide background was tied into Y2K apocalypticism and thus would need to be accounted for. The upside is that the US government has acknowledged UFOs are real so the conspiracy premise isn't completely outdated.

Star*Drive is an extremely political setting. Not in the sense that it relates to any real world politics, but in the sense that the heart of the game was a political thriller in a space opera setting. The stellar nations are basically Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri in a space opera scale, they're currently recovering from a century of war, the Verge is a commentary on colonialism, human dominance comes at the detriment of their alien client races (as implied by the "client races" part), etc. The backstory involves the Roswell Grays being real and helping humanity make the first known FTL drives within a 1,000 ly of Earth. Then you have the externals who make things even more complicated... It would be hell to retroclone and I have yet to find anything similar. But even two decades after its cancelation the setting is pretty unique as far as space opera settings go. Star Trek and Star Wars are hugely dated in their worldbuilding and don't account for subsequent evolutions of scifi like cyberpunk. Alternity and Star*Drive accounts for basically the entire scifi genre as of the late 90s: artificial intelligence, aliens, psychic powers, mutants, cyborgs, cloning, etc. Each stellar nation takes a scifi trope and runs with it. Indeed, scifi seems to have stagnated since SD came out so you could probably reprint it with no change and it wouldn't feel outdated. The only bit that would be dated is its lack of smartphones and social media destroying society, but quite frankly I'm happier not shoehorning references to TikTube to make it "timely". (Technically SD already has smartphone watches as a basic device everyone has and which can be used to casually enter VR, gridrunners being a common profession, but people aren't addicted to it.)

I've looked into games like Traveller and Cepheus and there just isn't anything that tries emulating Star*Drive.

Star Frontiers is a genre pastiche that suffered an identity crisis. Are you playing Star Law officers or Cowboy Bebop? I've looked into a few other games I was told do similar stuff, but nobody's tried retrocloning the aliens that are one of the few elements setting it apart from other scifi. It's not like you couldn't tweak them enough to avoid copyright claims, the androidarts guy did some interesting redesigns: http://www.androidarts.com/RPG/StarFrontiers.htm

Galactos Barrier is a blatant Star Wars ripoff, although I thought some of the alien concepts were creative. The fish people needed to constantly submerge in iron-rich water or their flesh would slough off, the snake people had a genetic memory and reproduced by dissolving alive after going on a library binge, and the slime people could assume crude facsimiles of other species and reproduced exactly like angiosperms (leading to pollen dispensers being used as a common security measure against them, which is... a choice).

The various alien concepts could honestly be used in any space setting. d20 Future converted the Alternity and Star Frontiers races in the same chapter and didn't specify they were limited to specific settings, so you could easily use them all in either setting. Oddly, the book referenced the Bug Hunters setting but not Galactos Barrier and didn't use its aliens at all.

Bug Hunters is a mix of Aliens, Blade Runner and Schismatrix. You play as replicants who are sent to fight killer aliens and robots that were leftover from an ancient war between two alien civilizations: the Shapers and the Artificers. After Amazing Engine was cancelled, the Shapers and Artificers seemingly provided inspiration for the Glassmakers and Stoneburners in Star*Drive. It has a few other aliens: cat people, Roswell grays, and lizard people. I prefer it over the official Aliens RPG because Ridley Scott shat the bed when he introduced the eight foot albinos and said a malfunctioning android created the titular alien.

Agents of Psi is about playing secret agents with psychic powers. It is probably replicable with Hex Games' I Psi, which is about playing secret agents with psychic powers. Although you're on your own if you want to replicate Akira, Scanners, Doctor Sleep, Psychomech, Necroscope or the like.

The Polyhedron mini-settings, some of which were reprinted truncated in d20 Modern, d20 Future or d20 Past, are hit and miss. They're all genre pastiches with varying degrees of equivalents in the published rpg market. I'm not aware of any other rpgs that tackled 70s racing movies or tour bands. Mecha Crusade is essentially Jovian Chronicles. Shadowchasers is Buffy/Angel.

There's no other rpg that replicates Urban Arcana that I could find. (No, White Wolf is emo goth crap with an absurd partisan slant.)

I could go on, but you probably get the point.

One of the benefits of WotC turning d20 into a universal system meant that it introduced players to new settings they otherwise wouldn't be exposed to due to traditional ttrpgs being time consuming overly complicated nightmares that prevent you from investing in more than one game per lifetime. You didn't need to learn a new system and you could mix and match stuff.

With the current model of one overly complicated nightmare system per setting that unpredictability shifts edition every so many years, the ttrpg playerbase is pointlessly fragmented. The industry is dominated by WotC, with a handful of oscillating runner ups, and new games are largely unable to break into the market unless they use 5e and even that's not too reliable unless you keep churning out product to keep fans from leaving.

Quite frankly, my negative experiences in this regard have led me to believe that crunch and fluff should be kept firmly separated. Publishers should keep track of all their lore on wikis. I cannot keep count of the times I've seen writers fuck up lore due to not keeping track. Either keep track of your lore you fucking morons, or fuck the entire concept of lore.

I'm getting distracted. Sorry.

I feel like too many modern rpgs suck and I'm nostalgic for a time when I feel quality was higher, budgets were higher, and writers were way more creative and open-minded.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 06, 2023, 06:03:48 PM
Quite frankly, my negative experiences in this regard have led me to believe that crunch and fluff should be kept firmly separated. Publishers should keep track of all their lore on wikis. I cannot keep count of the times I've seen writers fuck up lore due to not keeping track. Either keep track of your lore you fucking morons, or fuck the entire concept of lore.

I agree.  Which is why I like Cepheus Deluxe.  It is a crunch rule set that I can hang the fluff of my choice on as far as Space gaming goes.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 06, 2023, 02:02:19 PM
IMHO what we need is a different site manned by fans to make reviews, but that requires a lot of money.

That's what I've been talking about.  If there was enough of us, then it could be done.

Quote from: BadApple on August 06, 2023, 06:30:32 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 06, 2023, 02:02:19 PM
IMHO what we need is a different site manned by fans to make reviews, but that requires a lot of money.

That's what I've been talking about.  If there was enough of us, then it could be done.

You need the site, then enough money to buy stuff to review, then people's time to ACTUALLY make the review and write it. You will not get any money back for a long while if ever (meaning covering the costs which should include the reviewer's time).

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 06, 2023, 06:03:48 PM

Long rant I mostly agree with.

My dude, instead of getting blackpilled let's do something about it, made a post on Guilded regarding your complaints about older games, I've been working on and off on one retroclone of one you seem very fond off.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 06, 2023, 06:39:06 PM

Quote from: BadApple on August 06, 2023, 06:30:32 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 06, 2023, 02:02:19 PM
IMHO what we need is a different site manned by fans to make reviews, but that requires a lot of money.

That's what I've been talking about.  If there was enough of us, then it could be done.

You need the site, then enough money to buy stuff to review, then people's time to ACTUALLY make the review and write it. You will not get any money back for a long while if ever (meaning covering the costs which should include the reviewer's time).

Slow down.  I like the energy but I think you're getting the cart before the horse.

First, you need to network people who are willing to help and see what can actually be contributed. 

Second, do an inventory of gaming material already on hand.  Start doing reviews of things that we already own.  Set a base line.  Also, get as many people as possible to review each product.

Third, set a standard for reviews.  Build a template.  Then set up a spreadsheet to aggregate scores.

Fourth, set up a blog and publish reviews and review scores.

If this all works out, then get finances in order and build a company to do this.  Once it's established and there's some clout, then OneBookshelf can be negotiated with as well as other publishers.

Quote from: Tod13 on August 06, 2023, 10:06:13 AM
*JOKE* Sounds kind of unoriginal (see changes in bold below).

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 06, 2023, 08:30:07 AM
All this talk has given me an idea for a new Dystopian setting to run a campaign in.

In this dark present mankind has been reduced to menial laborers and foot soldiers while the media and academic elite creates all approved art and literature and controls the flying kill drones and reality TV shows that keep the human cattle in line.

I call the setting "Our Mainstream Media Present."

Not sure if you're aware of how badly the media/academic establishment totally controls what fiction gets published through brick and mortar bookstores (which is still where a lot of authors see over half their sales).

When I go to any of our local bookstores I want to barf at the absolute domination of far left books and the lack of anything to the right of Chairman Mao.

Children's book sections are crammed full of gender ideology which got smuggled in with kid-friendly rainbows a decade or so ago.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 06, 2023, 06:03:48 PM

Not all of the originals are even available on drivethrurpg anyway. The Alternity books still aren't back after the 2008 hissy fit.

Is that because 4th edition sucked and people were choosing to buy the PDF's to play old editions instead of adopted that new shitty edition?

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 07, 2023, 03:39:32 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 06, 2023, 06:03:48 PM

Not all of the originals are even available on drivethrurpg anyway. The Alternity books still aren't back after the 2008 hissy fit.

Is that because 4th edition sucked and people were choosing to buy the PDF's to play old editions instead of adopted that new shitty edition?

Supposedly it was about piracy. But they still haven't restored it even after restoring the D&D books and a few other games

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 02, 2023, 12:56:32 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 02, 2023, 12:44:31 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 02, 2023, 12:05:04 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 01, 2023, 11:32:50 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 01, 2023, 11:23:49 PM
Well, if it's better than some of the crap already there...

where's the harm?

Mother fucker...

You know what, just go ahead and PM me with your personal contact info so I can gift you with one of these gems.  After you spend the 2 minutes it takes to read it and 20 minutes to figure out what it's supposed to be, post here whether or not that's something you want encouraged.  A thousand of these things a day being uploaded to DTRPG will end my relationship with them.

Language...

Didn't you say it was better than what's vhis face?

Actually, his crap makes me think he's actually using ChatGPT.  It's usually a brief, one page description of a situation.  No developed NPCs, no developed explanation of the situation for the GM to play off of, no maps, nothing.  Everything is "player: here's the situation" and "GMs: this is the hidden fact and roll on this table in three days."

OTOH, Old School Roleplaying does 25-40 page adventures that really fill in all the necessary gaps for a GM to prep a session.  Same audience, same price point, way better product.  NPCs with stat blocks and necessary descriptors, locations, events, and branching results make them a good buy IMO.

Well if what's his face is using chatgpt he's a lazy fucker, he's not doing the work to have a good product, like I said, it can generate an adventure, usually a one page thing, but if you want it fleshed out you need to either keep prompting it to expand on the different parts or you need to flesh it out yourself.

Even if you keep prompting it you'll still need to do some work to have a decent product. Not only editing, you'll need to check for consistency since it fails at that.

I tried.

What I'm using it for is to produce the different columns of my tables.

It's so retarded it won't produce evil NPCs that are nazis, really, I asked it to do it. But it had no problem producing evil NPCs that were commies.

I've, too, found out chatgpt can inventory stuff well. I asked it to make me 7 Staves of the Archmagi and it did pretty good. I didn't ask for details, but the basics was all I needed.

There's more commies than nazis, so it might be doing you a favor.

Quote from: Jason Coplen on August 07, 2023, 06:47:07 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 02, 2023, 12:56:32 AM


Well if what's his face is using chatgpt he's a lazy fucker, he's not doing the work to have a good product, like I said, it can generate an adventure, usually a one page thing, but if you want it fleshed out you need to either keep prompting it to expand on the different parts or you need to flesh it out yourself.

Even if you keep prompting it you'll still need to do some work to have a decent product. Not only editing, you'll need to check for consistency since it fails at that.

I tried.

What I'm using it for is to produce the different columns of my tables.

It's so retarded it won't produce evil NPCs that are nazis, really, I asked it to do it. But it had no problem producing evil NPCs that were commies.

I've, too, found out chatgpt can inventory stuff well. I asked it to make me 7 Staves of the Archmagi and it did pretty good. I didn't ask for details, but the basics was all I needed.

There's more commies than nazis, so it might be doing you a favor.

Overcoming writter's block, generating random tables one column at the time, generating ideas for stuff you will flesh out, that's the stuff it can do reasonably well.

Thing is the Nazi NPCs are for a Pulp game set after WWII, so I need both, but converting Commies into Nazis isn't all that difficult (I also had to create the stats for those since the ones it gave me are wonky because it always reverts to 5e).

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 07, 2023, 06:53:39 PM

Quote from: Jason Coplen on August 07, 2023, 06:47:07 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 02, 2023, 12:56:32 AM


Well if what's his face is using chatgpt he's a lazy fucker, he's not doing the work to have a good product, like I said, it can generate an adventure, usually a one page thing, but if you want it fleshed out you need to either keep prompting it to expand on the different parts or you need to flesh it out yourself.

Even if you keep prompting it you'll still need to do some work to have a decent product. Not only editing, you'll need to check for consistency since it fails at that.

I tried.

What I'm using it for is to produce the different columns of my tables.

It's so retarded it won't produce evil NPCs that are nazis, really, I asked it to do it. But it had no problem producing evil NPCs that were commies.

I've, too, found out chatgpt can inventory stuff well. I asked it to make me 7 Staves of the Archmagi and it did pretty good. I didn't ask for details, but the basics was all I needed.

There's more commies than nazis, so it might be doing you a favor.

Overcoming writter's block, generating random tables one column at the time, generating ideas for stuff you will flesh out, that's the stuff it can do reasonably well.

Thing is the Nazi NPCs are for a Pulp game set after WWII, so I need both, but converting Commies into Nazis isn't all that difficult (I also had to create the stats for those since the ones it gave me are wonky because it always reverts to 5e).

That sucks! You'd think one of the leftards would have considered that, but they probably think the Nazis were the good guys regardless of how many times they call them evil. Mind you, they're evil, but the left has used the slur so many times it's impotent.

Quote from: Jason Coplen on August 07, 2023, 07:34:11 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 07, 2023, 06:53:39 PM

Quote from: Jason Coplen on August 07, 2023, 06:47:07 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 02, 2023, 12:56:32 AM


Well if what's his face is using chatgpt he's a lazy fucker, he's not doing the work to have a good product, like I said, it can generate an adventure, usually a one page thing, but if you want it fleshed out you need to either keep prompting it to expand on the different parts or you need to flesh it out yourself.

Even if you keep prompting it you'll still need to do some work to have a decent product. Not only editing, you'll need to check for consistency since it fails at that.

I tried.

What I'm using it for is to produce the different columns of my tables.

It's so retarded it won't produce evil NPCs that are nazis, really, I asked it to do it. But it had no problem producing evil NPCs that were commies.

I've, too, found out chatgpt can inventory stuff well. I asked it to make me 7 Staves of the Archmagi and it did pretty good. I didn't ask for details, but the basics was all I needed.

There's more commies than nazis, so it might be doing you a favor.

Overcoming writter's block, generating random tables one column at the time, generating ideas for stuff you will flesh out, that's the stuff it can do reasonably well.

Thing is the Nazi NPCs are for a Pulp game set after WWII, so I need both, but converting Commies into Nazis isn't all that difficult (I also had to create the stats for those since the ones it gave me are wonky because it always reverts to 5e).

That sucks! You'd think one of the leftards would have considered that, but they probably think the Nazis were the good guys regardless of how many times they call them evil. Mind you, they're evil, but the left has used the slur so many times it's impotent.

In 30 minutes, I have the gunporn for one game, I still need to stat things out (if I choose to stat every one and not got Small/Medium/Large), IF I choose to go the simple way I already have the stats for those from a different project and can add the firearms list as is to the game.

Try and do that by hand and tell me how long it took you.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 09, 2023, 06:57:16 PM
In 30 minutes, I have the gunporn for one game, I still need to stat things out (if I choose to stat every one and not got Small/Medium/Large), IF I choose to go the simple way I already have the stats for those from a different project and can add the firearms list as is to the game.

If you want to stat them out individually, let me know.  I can help.