Quote from: jhkim on September 14, 2024, 02:07:55 AMThe question is how much I care. I haven't seen the 2024 PHB, and thus I have no opinion on the art yet. I may well hate it.

Well here you go.  Some of the art from the PHB 2024:









Just terrible and totally WOKE BS "art".

Quote from: Eirikrautha on September 02, 2024, 06:12:15 PM

Quote from: Skullking on September 02, 2024, 06:10:11 AMRegarding to the marketing, Kelsey is married, and her wife (yes she does get a free pass from some for being a lesbian) works in marketing which goes a long way into explaining why the campaign was so successful, a point I think missed by most.

I don't think it's missed at all.  I think this is part of the instinctive reaction a lot of people have against Shadowdark.  When many of the Youtube reviews (by folks who either know or have worked with Kelsey) sound like infomercials, many viewers will have a learned reaction based on the way that modern marketing works.  Think about the way you generally respond to TV infomercials.  I've seen several products on TV that someone I know has bought; a few of them are very good products, but the majority are very flawed at the best.  When you get that same vibe from the marketing for an RPG, people can be forgiven for having a natural reaction of skepticism.  Especially when so much of the marketing is telling you how much you need this game, and how innovative it is... sounds just like something I'd hear on a TV infomercial.  Watch the Baron DeRopp video linked earlier in the thread.  It gushes over the illustrations, the organization, the brevity of the spell descriptions and the rules.  Is that really a selling point?  It slices, it dices, it makes Julian fries!  I actually think, as much as the marketing helped make the game successful with 5e converts and relative newbies to RPGs, it hurt with some segments of the hobby that have seen these marketing pitches before.

None of this has anything to do with how good the game actually is.  I know some people like it a lot.  My group is a bit more of an optimizer group, and Shadowdark's lack of character options turned them off quickly (I'm a bit more of a rules-lite person myself).  I don't begrudge anyone else's fun.  But I do begrudge other people telling me how I am allowed to react to marketing...

Exactly. The insane marketing hype is irritating. When you bring it up people assume you're just jealous, or you're just too cynical, or you're a right winger engaging in tribalism, etc.

Speaking of which I haven't actually seen all the alleged haters that are everywhere. Most of the videos and posts about the situation are just parroting each other. Red Room said they don't like it, Venger made some vague reference to it, and Pundit made a video about how he isn't Red Room or Venger. Sprinkle in some nobody twitter posters for taste, and apparently you have yourself an omnipresent frothing mad hate mob that requires response videos lecturing the audience about the dangers of gatekeeping or something.

I also want to talk about an example of where Shadowdark falls short and its brevity and unoriginality is a problem (at least in the quickstart rules, I haven't bought the whole thing, but I think it is the same).
It has the same issue as a lot of these rules light games do (EZD6 being another example). In many cases you're essentially paying for an index card that says "Make it up yourself" for the game master and "Play mother may I with the game master" for the players.
As one of the core combat rules, Shadowdark basically handwaves all rules for conditions away and says "use advantage/disadvantage and common sense." Okay fine, but I'm not paying you 30 dollars for "common sense," common sense which is likely only developed from already playing existing rpgs like 5e, where you got advantage/disadvantage from in the first place.

Another example is spell descriptions, which a lot of reviewers hyped up because they're so much shorter than other games (still comparable to many existing OSR games). They are. It's nice. But that comes at a cost.
Take the Alter Self spell. "You magically change your physical form, gaining one feature that modifies your existing anatomy. For example, you can grow functional gills on your neck or bear claws on your fingers."

Okay, why would I get bear claws or any other natural weapon? Would that do more damage than just using the weapon I have? If it's for climbing, how fast can I climb with it? Again, this essentially relies on the GM knowing how Alter Self already works in another game. I don't like the 5e version and I think it's weak, but it at least tells me the benefits, and it doesn't get nearly enough credit for already heavily condensing the 3rd edition version.

This won't bother a lot of people going to SD from 5e or the OSR because everyone will rely on what they already know, or handwave it away with "rulings not rules." But is that really a credit to SD?

I like OSR design, I like a lot of the 5e design, and I like SD's presentation. Not for everyone though obviously. My player who tried to get us to switch to Pathfinder 2e and thinks 5e is too simple is not a fan.

I did find myself adding quite a lot of house rules, especially around movement. Mostly because we play on a grid and like detailed tactical movement.