Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 30, 2024, 05:30:01 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 30, 2024, 04:29:24 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 30, 2024, 12:24:22 PMUpon re-reading Venger's blog post, he's not even close to blaming Shadowdark or her creator for his woes, what he's saying is that you need to make slick promotion campaigns to make that kind of money.

You certainly have to have something.

I occasionally have a few bucks to burn and go through Steam looking for a video game. I wind up spending hours going through the reccomended list and searching categories and find nothing to spend my money on. Theres
So
Much
Stuff
on there and all of it starts to look the same.

I think we have a similar situation with RPG material. ACKS, Fifth Frontier War, Star Trek Adventures, Knave, Fabula Ultima, Wierd Ancestries, Metro:Otherscape, Alien RPG, Dune RPG, Transformers RPG, The One Ring RPG, Cosmere RPG, Skyrm RPG, Curseborne, Diplomacy and Conflict, Entity, Solasta, Dwarrowdeep, DCC, MCC, Mork Borg,  etc, etc, etc, etc.

Somethings got to make a product stand out from the crowd for it to take off.

As I clearly say right above your post.

Even products that follow your list can get lost in the clamour. I think there's a certain amount of serendiptiy that goes in a product taking off.

I watched Shadowdark go from play test materials to what it is now.  I don't have strong opinions of it as a game system but I fully respect that Kelsey spent years developing it and marketing it until it finally paid off.  She used the KS as a marketing campaign primarily and she developed friendships with people who helped her get it into the public eye.  She also knew the audience she was going for and how to appeal to them.

Was any of her success due to her being a woman and her stuff being bought for woke points?  I think so but I don't think there's enough money for virtue purchases to account for the sales that Shadowdark has had.  What she did do was work very hard to develop mass appeal.

Venger OTOH, has cultivated an image of being an iconoclast and an edge lord, eschewing mainstream appeal.  He has seemed to almost resent the mass audience and I think that has hampered Cha'alt's growth.  It's sad to me because I can see Cha'alt running with the likes of Ultraviolet Grasslands and Barbarians of the Lost World.  I think Venger could use some help from an editor to get it dialed in but I love the Cha'alt stuff I have.  It would also need a big PR push to get it going as well but I think it could be done.

Quote from: BadApple on August 30, 2024, 07:54:22 PMWhat she did do was work very hard to develop mass appeal.

Well, yes, but that's a circular argument.  She got masses of people to buy her game by having mass appeal.  In the dictionary under "redundant" it says "see redundant..."

She did several things right.  First, she built a reputation by creating modules for an already existing game.  This gave her a reputation for quality as well as a little name recognition.  This is a very good strategy (at least when it comes to convincing your potential audience that they are going to get their money's worth).  Second, she produced a game that was pretty "familiar" (nothing exotic or outlandish, just a small iteration) and had one or two "innovations" (that were really just ideas collected).  It's always easier to sell people what they already like, just in new packaging.  Third, she made sure to cultivate a group of YouTubers to help shill her product, creating a circular economy (giving her press and them something to report on).

So, she definitely created a successful product.  Not a bad model if you are interested in creating a successful product.  If you are interested in creating a innovative of creative game, however...

Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 30, 2024, 07:27:28 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 30, 2024, 05:30:01 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 30, 2024, 04:29:24 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 30, 2024, 12:24:22 PMUpon re-reading Venger's blog post, he's not even close to blaming Shadowdark or her creator for his woes, what he's saying is that you need to make slick promotion campaigns to make that kind of money.

You certainly have to have something.

I occasionally have a few bucks to burn and go through Steam looking for a video game. I wind up spending hours going through the reccomended list and searching categories and find nothing to spend my money on. Theres
So
Much
Stuff
on there and all of it starts to look the same.

I think we have a similar situation with RPG material. ACKS, Fifth Frontier War, Star Trek Adventures, Knave, Fabula Ultima, Wierd Ancestries, Metro:Otherscape, Alien RPG, Dune RPG, Transformers RPG, The One Ring RPG, Cosmere RPG, Skyrm RPG, Curseborne, Diplomacy and Conflict, Entity, Solasta, Dwarrowdeep, DCC, MCC, Mork Borg,  etc, etc, etc, etc.

Somethings got to make a product stand out from the crowd for it to take off.

As I clearly say right above your post.

Even products that follow your list can get lost in the clamour. I think there's a certain amount of serendiptiy that goes in a product taking off.

IMHO what we need is a marketing team, not a corporatized one but multiple voices able and willing to promote good stuff.

As soon as I learn how to have a guest in a livestream (it used to be really simple) I'm starting a weekly podcast to help in such efforts, but I'll need at least one co-host.

Quote from: jeff37923 on August 30, 2024, 05:43:53 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 30, 2024, 04:29:24 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 30, 2024, 12:24:22 PMUpon re-reading Venger's blog post, he's not even close to blaming Shadowdark or her creator for his woes, what he's saying is that you need to make slick promotion campaigns to make that kind of money.

You certainly have to have something.

I occasionally have a few bucks to burn and go through Steam looking for a video game. I wind up spending hours going through the reccomended list and searching categories and find nothing to spend my money on. Theres
So
Much
Stuff
on there and all of it starts to look the same.

I think we have a similar situation with RPG material. ACKS, Fifth Frontier War, Star Trek Adventures, Knave, Fabula Ultima, Wierd Ancestries, Metro:Otherscape, Alien RPG, Dune RPG, Transformers RPG, The One Ring RPG, Cosmere RPG, Skyrm RPG, Curseborne, Diplomacy and Conflict, Entity, Solasta, Dwarrowdeep, DCC, MCC, Mork Borg,  etc, etc, etc, etc.

Somethings got to make a product stand out from the crowd for it to take off.

I think that there is an important distinction here though. A video game is more convenient to play than a tabletop RPG. Since most of us are adults who have to deal with Real Life, it takes a greater investment of time to get together with people for a RPG session (even if you are using a VTT online). It is because of this that many game consumers have to pick and choose which games they buy if they are going to ever play them. Yeah, you can buy a game to read it, but that is kind of missing the point (that games are meant to be played).

There are a lot of games out there on the market, many of them promoted by people on social media. How many of them are actually played? I'm betting that not as many RPG darlings are played that people think. Seriously, how many people do you think actually play Thirsty Sword Lesbians?

Would you really want to see people play, Thirsty Sword Lesbians?  Perhaps a LARP?

I for one, would rather not.....


Back to Shadowdark: no one should be jealous, of her success.  She found a way to make it.  She was a guest for years, on the same channels that later highlighted her breakout RPG.  She figured out networking.  I don't own a copy myself, but she made lots of people want it.

Quote from: BadApple on August 30, 2024, 07:54:22 PMI watched Shadowdark go from play test materials to what it is now.  I don't have strong opinions of it as a game system but I fully respect that Kelsey spent years developing it and marketing it until it finally paid off.  She used the KS as a marketing campaign primarily and she developed friendships with people who helped her get it into the public eye.  She also knew the audience she was going for and how to appeal to them.

Was any of her success due to her being a woman and her stuff being bought for woke points?  I think so but I don't think there's enough money for virtue purchases to account for the sales that Shadowdark has had.  What she did do was work very hard to develop mass appeal.

Venger OTOH, has cultivated an image of being an iconoclast and an edge lord, eschewing mainstream appeal.  He has seemed to almost resent the mass audience and I think that has hampered Cha'alt's growth.  It's sad to me because I can see Cha'alt running with the likes of Ultraviolet Grasslands and Barbarians of the Lost World.  I think Venger could use some help from an editor to get it dialed in but I love the Cha'alt stuff I have.  It would also need a big PR push to get it going as well but I think it could be done.

Her game has quite a bit of problems, but its easy to fix.  She did get good art and a slid well put together and edited book, so its easy to fix.  Create your own racial bonuses and races and its not too bad.  The table in the book can be used for other games as well.  I would say Castles and Crusades are significantly better.

Quote from: Man at Arms on August 30, 2024, 11:45:18 PMCreate your own racial bonuses and races and its not too bad.

I prefer the simple SD races. Makes it much easier to add new ones. I definitely don't want racial ("ancestry") stat mods.

It occurred to me yesterday that a point in Shadowdark's favor is that it has the potential to be a serious market competitor to OSE. It occupies the same niche of a vanilla OSR game for people who just want simplified D&D without any particular quirks or flavoring. Whether or not OSE turns out to be going woke, it's got a little too much market dominance in the OSR for my taste.

It's not really vanilla in the sense of being another BX clone, it definitely leans a bit more to the grim dark tone. No raise dead magic, for a start.

I don't like Shadowdark's fans, primarily, but the game itself and the author are fine. People get extremely defensive at any criticism and assume there's this massive movement of gamergate people sending death threats to the author or something. If you say that it's unoriginal and that it sold mainly based on presentation and marketing, they flip out and accuse you of jealousy or some kind of political ideology.

The Black Lodge guys are so pathetic it's hilarious. They want to be edgy and right wing but they're also desperate to be accepted by normies and to be seen as belonging to the cool kids. They're constantly lecturing their audience about how they need to stop being nerds, and they need to recruit new people into the hobby from all their "normal" friends. A lot of their advice sucks. They have this weird simping thing going on with at least one female youtuber. I can just tell they're going to have a scandal at some point and get cancelled by the people they're trying to impress so much. Their first big kickstarter adventure thing they're selling is a gross brothel.

Quote from: S'mon on August 31, 2024, 10:10:27 AMIt's not really vanilla in the sense of being another BX clone, it definitely leans a bit more to the grim dark tone. No raise dead magic, for a start.

Ok, so I'm not trying to restart the argument here about whether Shadowdark is too similar other games. I'm trying to look at this from a broad market perspective. Let me try to clarify:

Imagine you're John Q. Roleplayer. You're into RPGs. You buy a few; you play more. You probably play both OSR games and non-OSR ones. You watch enough YouTube to know what's out there, but you don't hang out on forums or reddit or RPG Twitter. You don't have your own BX homebrew heartbreaker. You buy a game and play that game. I want to stress that there are a lot of people like this out there.

Now imagine that you, John Q. Roleplayer, are looking to either start or join a game. You don't want a wacky setting; you don't want to learn a bunch of new rules. You want to have some simple fantasy dungeon adventures with your mates, just like grandad used to make them. OSE and Shadowdark are both going to do that job about as well as each other. Frankly, lots of OSR games will. I'll bet anyone here can name 10 of them off the top of their head. Looking at the game books in a vacuum, choosing between them is down to presentation and relatively minor rules differences.  That's what I mean by "vanilla OSR".

As things stand today, if you want it to be easy to find games to join or players for your own game, then the smart choice is OSE. It's got little to no controversy, one of the easiest rulesets, and the largest number of active games. My point was that if Shadowdark keeps building momentum, it might end up being an equally viable choice for those criteria. Whether or not it will remains to be seen. We probably won't know if it has that kind of legs for another 3-5 years.

Edit: I realize that comment is way too wordy and could come off as patronizing. I don't mean it that way. I just talk like an elderly Victorian college lecturer sometimes.

All I'm trying to say is OSE has an outsized market share in the OSR, and I wouldn't mind if Shadowdark can successfully challenge that.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on August 30, 2024, 08:17:09 PMShe did several things right.  First, she built a reputation by creating modules for an already existing game.  This gave her a reputation for quality as well as a little name recognition.  This is a very good strategy (at least when it comes to convincing your potential audience that they are going to get their money's worth). 

Quite a few successful games were successes only because the people behind the product had a track record of producing something worth spending on. Sometimes years building a rep.

Others seem to garner attention from the glitz, when theres actually no substance. Seen this a few times. Back when I was on BGG there was one guy who people fawned all the fuck over for his games. But there was never once an actual game. Just some board art and talk OF a game.

And a depressing number of designers build up a good rep and following. Then take the money and run when they make the big KS. Or fail to deliver in some way. Seen a few of those.

Haven't played Shadowdark yet but I'm looking forward to it.  I've been listening to Sly Flourish and it sounds like a fun mash up of 5e, old school, and Paranoia.  The last mostly in the sense that your characters die a lot not in the Paranoia sense.  "Who cares about story, we're all 3 characters in on this quest so no one knows why we're here anymore."

The creator basically followed the usual business methods of building a business but did it in a niche hobby populated by hobbyists.  Shocking!

Honestly this game looks miles better and was way cheaper than the Stormlight KS I just backed.

Quote from: KingCheops on August 31, 2024, 06:55:10 PMHaven't played Shadowdark yet but I'm looking forward to it.  I've been listening to Sly Flourish and it sounds like a fun mash up of 5e, old school, and Paranoia.  The last mostly in the sense that your characters die a lot not in the Paranoia sense.  "Who cares about story, we're all 3 characters in on this quest so no one knows why we're here anymore."

The creator basically followed the usual business methods of building a business but did it in a niche hobby populated by hobbyists.  Shocking!

Honestly this game looks miles better and was way cheaper than the Stormlight KS I just backed.

If you're talking about the 0 level characters dying in a funnel, that's directly from Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Greetings!

Yep, ShadowDark is awesome! No, ShadowDark is not some huge groundbreaking achievement in "Innovation". Fuck that. It doesn't need to be, and Kelsey never claimed it was. Most fans of ShadowDark also have not claimed that the game is some kind of Tyrannosaurus Rex in "Innovation."

What IS INNOVATIVE about ShadowDark is the precision in which Kelsey has taken inspiration from other games--like the "Funnel" and crazy magic from DCC, elements of BX, AD&D, and 5E, and blended them all together, and then presented her creation in a very professional, appealing manner.

And also accompanied her work with awesome, "Old School" black & white artwork. NOT Jenny Craig fat fucking Elves, "Mexican Orcs", or gay fucking Dwarves baking pastries while trying to engage in a circle jerk.

None of that BS. Just awesome, inspiring, sword & sorcery artwork.

And not a word of fucking "Culture War" politics. Not in ShadowDark, and not outside the game in any interviews that Kelsey has participated in.

Besides all that, I *LIKE* how she has carefully selected and blended great ideas and concepts from other games, while leaving those games' baggage, awkward mechanics, and BS behind. I don't give a fuck about DCC's weird dice, and my patience for endless charts embraced by DCC is a thing in my rear-view mirror like Rolemaster. No thanks. Kelsey has taken what is good, and made it BETTER. THAT is what is "Innovative" and fun, and special about ShadowDark. All the while, ruthlessly keeping the ShadowDark game focused on being quick, simple, and brutal.

I wish the ShadowDark haters would get these concepts rammed like a fucking brick through their fucking heads, and stopped opening their mouth with baseless, stupid criticisms and BS claims about the game that they clearly do not comprehend. Most of them DON'T PLAY ShadowDark--and most of them also don't own the fucking book, either.

The ShadowDark book is also an absolute pleasure to read. You won't need a degree in Forgotten Realms Studies to know what is going on. Furthermore, the ShadowDark book is crafted--yes, CRAFTED--in material, style, layout, and font size, readability, to be USED AT THE GAME TABLE. Running ShadowDark is a blast! Running a ShadowDark game is simple, fun, and intuitive.

Anyone on the fence should dive in. It is a fantastic game!

Those just not interested, for whatever reason, cool. YOU DO YOU.

The ShadowDark haters should just get fucked and get a fucking life.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK