As fun as it is watching Voros cry about mean peoples' irrational hatred of poor Lorraine Williams, while, as usual, spitting his own brand of Gygaxian venom and bile...

We now have actual information about Empyrea thanks to Dan.

So now there's no excuse for being off-topic in this Empyrea thread.

Everything I said are facts you can find in Peterson's essay and Ewalt's book. Sorry if they hurt your delicate feelz towards Gygax CK, you many also have noted I wasn't the only one here doubting the rumours about Williams, Armchair and Willie were as well. I was just responding to them with some actual info.

Spoiler

The only 'bile' I stated about Gygax is that he was driving the business into the ground and wasn't a fair player with his business partners, I hardly see how any rational person could dispute that. Even Gronan knows that.

Although I admire Gygax's adventure writing I don't feel that I need to softpedal his failures as a businessman.

I somehow doubt if I had just dumped on Williams you would have felt any need to comment.

If you want to just do the usual grognard circlejerk I think you'd be more comfortable on DF aka. TBP for manchildren.

Now that there's a topic to get back to, I'll at least answer, but then I'm off the threadjack:

Spoiler

Oh please, you take shots at anything you can that you think will goose those imaginary Gygaxian {insert hyperbolic metaphor representing incarnation of ultimate human evil here}.

Everyone who ran TSR was a lousy businessman, of all of them Williams was probably the best technically.
I can forgive Gary because he helped create all of it.  He could certainly be a dick though.  So can we all.
What did the Blumes ever do but lie, cheat, steal, mismanage and betray?  I dunno.
Williams kept it alive long enough to sell to WotC.  Whether that is a good thing or not, in the end, I don't know.  I'm 100% convinced TSR paid a fair market value for the license of Buck Rogers to her own family's trust, though. :rolleyes: Good on her for unlimited vacation borrowing.

I would have commented about the getting back on topic in any case, because I just read the interview and it's worth discussing.

Fair point about a thread derail although I'll note I rarely see you be such a stickler for being OP on other threads. But I've returned the favour by hiding my responses same as you have.

Spoiler

I agreed that Pundit's rhetoric of an OSR Taliban was in bad taste, so take it up with him not me. Gotta say I doubt you will though.

It is a good discussion so let's address that.

I do worry about the promise of so many rules sets. Steve Winter may be the biggest coup in terms of the team as he just co-designed ToA with Perkins which puts him pretty near the top of the RPG pile these days and could give the project industry cred since Frank has been out of the industry for so long.

Excited if the promise of Darlene returning to work bears fruit as she is my favourite of the classic era artists and map makers. Obviously a great lineup of artists is slated, almost too good to be true? If even just a few of them come through it should look great.

Am I understanding that they're going for boxsets? I know fans love them but aren't they financially difficult and couldn't it drive it into the collectors-only price bracket? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding that part.

I don't really Kickstart anymore but I do really hope it pans out as I would really like to check it out on PDF and then hardcopy if reasonably priced and available.

Although ambitious I think there is good reason to expect an actual product at the end of this, Bruce Heard for instance has proven that it can be done.

I'm intrigued but also confused. The fact they're doing a Savage Worlds version is good for me, as that's likely the version I'd get. But this is definitely going to be expensive and I'm not really sure what the heck to expect. Frank says to play with whatever races, deities, etc. you want, but I'd think those sort of details should be kinda important to shaping the world. It almost sounds like they've made a generic fantasy world with a lot of weird stuff in the background, and it's just up to the GM to fit things in and make it work. That sounds... not ideal. Hopefully the Kickstarter has more information and makes things a little more clear.

Boy, those online chat transcripts are a pain to read. Nothing about what I read pulls me in at all, but then I'm not that big on fantasy, especially not when you're calling it "average" and "vanilla" as selling points, but it sounds like an ambitious project.

They had me with the art name drops and Runequest (which I can fiddle to Mythras), roll on KS.

Quote from: Brand55;997178I'm intrigued but also confused. The fact they're doing a Savage Worlds version is good for me, as that's likely the version I'd get. But this is definitely going to be expensive and I'm not really sure what the heck to expect. Frank says to play with whatever races, deities, etc. you want, but I'd think those sort of details should be kinda important to shaping the world. It almost sounds like they've made a generic fantasy world with a lot of weird stuff in the background, and it's just up to the GM to fit things in and make it work. That sounds... not ideal. Hopefully the Kickstarter has more information and makes things a little more clear.

You sum up in one post why I am not really ecxcited about this. It sounds very kitchen sink, vanilla fantasy, lots left to the GM to make it work and all the "good stuff" kept far in the background and left unexplained.

Lots of name drops, starting with Frank Mentor, but the project sounds like something that is past its best by date. This woud have been great in the late 80s or early 90s. But I feel like the gaming world has moved on.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;997122I agree about the tone and presentation of 2e being a major factor in why I prefer 1e over 2e.  However, where the rules differ, I almost always prefer the 1e variation, so I wouldn't say that the rules have nothing to do with it. I think 2e is undeniably clearer, but clearer isn't always better (e.g., 2e initiative is far clearer, but I prefer 1e initiative - or at least my interpretation of 1e initiative). I also think 2e included some good ideas/concepts, but I often found the implementation of those ideas bland and lacking (e.g., the way 2e implemented spell schools and specialist MUs, etc).

But here's the thing, better isn't really subjective as in this sense it speaks to play-ability.

You mention Initiative. I think everyone who is honest will admit that 1st edition Initiative is a mess, no way around it and 2nd Edition works. 1st is overly elaborate and wordy and when you have DMPrata creating what? A massive doc to explain it you know its bad. You even admit as much when you say "your interpretation of it". Back in the day we never used it "as is" because its near impossible. And every time since, when we play 1st we uses something else in terms of initiative.

Tone and feel is likewise objective and doesn't really mean much because it means different things to different people.

And completely disagree on spell schools, an illusionists is just another spell caster with a different set of spells. Spheres and powers for priests is also a master stroke as opposed to every cleric having the same spells as in 1st.

Yeah I can't see how one can call 2e schools, spheres, etc 'bland and lacking' but somehow find 1e somehow superior in those terms? I mean does it get more bland than the very term 'magic user'? And as Willmark says the 1e Illusionist is pretty underwhelming and the 2e variety of Priests is way better than 1e.

Quote from: Willmark;997346You mention Initiative. I think everyone who is honest will admit that 1st edition Initiative is a mess, no way around it and 2nd Edition works.

Sure, 1e initiative is a confusing mess, and 2e initiative is much clearer. But I also think that 2e initiative's approach introduces some side effects that I don't like. I prefer taking the mess of 1e, once I've made some sense of it for my game, over the 2e approach.

QuoteTone and feel is likewise objective and doesn't really mean much because it means different things to different people.

Yep. I agree. There's no point in arguing about subjective preference.

QuoteAnd completely disagree on spell schools, an illusionists is just another spell caster with a different set of spells. Spheres and powers for priests is also a master stroke as opposed to every cleric having the same spells as in 1st.

As I said, I don't think the concept or idea is bad, I just don't think the execution was that great. For example, I like the idea of specialist magic users, I just don't like 2e's approach. I'd much prefer to have specialist sub-classes with custom lists and more flavor/abilities as part of the class.

Quote from: Voros;997353Yeah I can't see how one can call 2e schools, spheres, etc 'bland and lacking' but somehow find 1e somehow superior in those terms?

I wasn't calling the 2e approach to specialist schools bland and lacking in comparison to 1e, I was calling it bland and lacking, in general.

KS is live

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/extsr/frank-mentzers-empyrea-fantasy-setting-for-10-rpg

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;997365I wasn't calling the 2e approach to specialist schools bland and lacking in comparison to 1e, I was calling it bland and lacking, in general.

Fair enough.

That KS campaign is asking for an enormous goal--$250,000?!  

I think that is very unrealistic.  To compare, Monte Cook Game's campaigns, both for Boxed Sets and original products, have been under $100k.  The only one that even comes close to this KS amount was the recent Invisible Sun campaign, and that one has very high production costs with all the physical do-dads.

Also not entirely sure about the 10 different rules sets.  That tends to be a problem.  They recently had to cancel 2 of the 5 proposed rule sets available to the Talisanta: The Savage Land KS because of the problems getting support for it.  

I'll likely back it, and I hope he can get it funded, but this is an awfully high goal.