Quote from: Jaeger on February 03, 2022, 03:50:54 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 03, 2022, 02:29:55 PM
A CEO isn't necessarily supposed to be a gamer or game designer. They're someone who handles the business side of things.

Exactly.

They don't care about Dungeons and Dragons the game.

I think that a CEO of a production company *shouldn't* necessarily be a creative designer. Many of my favorite books and movies often come from publishers/studios where the CEO is a business person rather than a creative type. The books and movies themselves were made by creative types who knows their stuff, but the production company CEO is instead someone who knows how to manage and back creative types instead of doing it themselves.

A bad CEO can be someone who thinks they're creative and micromanages their designers. A good CEO can be someone who steps back and lets them do their work while focusing on the budget, advertising, and so forth.

Obviously, opinions differ - but I like 5th edition compared to other D&D editions. I think Greg Leeds evidently did a good job of managing the creative team for that.

--

That said, D&D has never been my main game - so I'm also happy for it to fade. I doubt my favorite games will ever become market leaders, but maybe a more varied market will lead to more innovation.

Quote from: Jaeger on February 03, 2022, 03:50:54 PM
The Game VS the Brand:
https://grumpywizard.home.blog/2022/01/20/the-game-vs-the-brand/

The claim that OSR has had a big influence on 5e is fricking DELUSIONAL. They played YOU to give them good buzz, not the other way around.
If the RPG pundit is to claim 'consulation', I would consider said consultation a massive failure if the goal was parity to OSR style materials. 5e has some of the worst of OSR elements and some of the worst of all non-retro elements combined.

This reminds me of the old school Star Wars fans excited with The Force Awakens because they got rid of all the crap from the prequels. And sure they did, but it was pure nostalgia mush. The core at the center lacked any sort of creative spark, even a misplaced one.

Quote from: jhkim on February 03, 2022, 04:43:04 PMI think that a CEO of a production company *shouldn't* necessarily be a creative designer.

But they should be a creative person, with a respect of what they own. Disney wasn't an artist, but he was a dreamer interested in furthering animation. He took many risks and his monatary support of the field took it years into the future.

Compare that to Andrew Wilson, or Bobby Kotick for instance who are men without a soul. Who not only exclusively care about the money, but would destroy the entire industry if it meant more money in the short term.

Quote from: jhkim on February 03, 2022, 04:43:04 PM
...
Obviously, opinions differ - but I like 5th edition compared to other D&D editions. I think Greg Leeds evidently did a good job of managing the creative team for that.

Personally I'd give more credit to Mearls for being lucky enough to be in the right place/time to be promoted to influence the game.

Leeds was just the suit who said: "Uhh, sure, let's do that."  But to his credit he did make that call...

Quote from: jhkim on February 03, 2022, 04:43:04 PM
That said, D&D has never been my main game - so I'm also happy for it to fade. I doubt my favorite games will ever become market leaders, but maybe a more varied market will lead to more innovation.

IMHO, the RPG hobby was as its best when D&D was not as strong as it is now, and the #2 RPG was a different genre from D&D.

In the 90's there was D&D, then we had Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC still banging around.

All talked about, all actively played, with dedicated fanbases. And all available on the shelves at your FLGS...

Now we just have D&D, and D&D's clone, with the flavor of the month rotating the other top three positions...

Not that we'll ever really get back to the swinging 90's... the d20 OGL has done it's work. But IMHO the hobby as a whole is better off when D&D is not the 80'000lb gorilla it is now taking all the air out of the room.

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on February 03, 2022, 02:02:04 PM
Won't be the first time. 2e caved to censorship and was ruined by splatbooks.

4e's only saving grace was it was a decent (if overcomplicated) small-scale wargame if you stuck to the core books; the supplements just added a bunch of nonsense and the adventure modules were lazy and slapped together  -- Halls of Undermountain only included the first level, and The Stone of Sakkara was flat-out unfinished: you had to download the map from the Web after you bought the module.

It's probably time for the hobby to outgrow the One True Game anyway.

1: TSR caved but only in that they changed the names of some monsters and temp removed some classes and races. I suspect the change was also for marketing reasons as you can TM Tanrii and Baatezau and whatnod.

2e actually did not suffer a splatbook problem. Alot of the material in say the Complete Handbooks/Guides/etc were built off Dragon articles and player submissions. Much as the AD&D DMG was.

2: 4e D&D GammaWorld showed that 4e could be a decent RPG in the right hands. Unfortunately WOTC kinda lacks those.

3: As if that ever existed.

Quote from: Jaeger on February 03, 2022, 05:27:40 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 03, 2022, 04:43:04 PM
Obviously, opinions differ - but I like 5th edition compared to other D&D editions. I think Greg Leeds evidently did a good job of managing the creative team for that.

Personally I'd give more credit to Mearls for being lucky enough to be in the right place/time to be promoted to influence the game.

Leeds was just the suit who said: "Uhh, sure, let's do that."  But to his credit he did make that call...

Well, yeah. That's my point. As CEO, Leeds' job was greenlighting, funding, and marketing the game - not doing the design himself. He didn't need to be a gamer or game designer to be a good choice.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 04:17:27 PM
WoD and all it's associated IP has been infected beyond salvation.

WoD has always been political in all the worst ways.

Vampire has an obnoxious counterculture narrative where it's impossible to advance without literally cannibalizing your elders and the fan favorite Sabbat (an apocalypse cult that wants to enslave mankind) is characterized by doing this.

Werewolf has an obnoxious environmentalist message that says human civilization is fundamentally evil and we need a return to anarcho-primitivism under eugenicists who periodically cull the weak.

Mage operates under the premise that science is a lie created by The Man to enslave humanity and everything will be better if we start believing in pseudoscience and homeopathy instead.

Wraith is about fighting slavery in the afterlife, because for some reason the writers didn't think playing dead people with evil split personalities was harsh enough.

Changeling is about how modern civilization sucks, growing up sucks, everything sucks so you might as well retreat into a delusion while you still can until you eventually wither up and die inside.

All of those are political statements. It's an insane franchise that sucks up all the market share in the urban fantasy genre.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 03, 2022, 06:55:37 PMWoD has always been political in all the worst.

Amen, amen, and a-frickin-men. WOD has always been only interesting by sloughing off the political stuff, and focusing on the leftovers as sort of a-political superheroics if that makes sense.

Sort of like separating the wheat from the chaff. The wheat is absolutely a product of the chaff, but if you don't take it super seriously, the end results are pretty fun. But that is in part working against the desires of the system. The system wants you to take it super serial.

And because WOD is a product of its politics, NOW its all about the support of the Technocracy. Because in modern times the politics is that the people are dumb and can't be trusted with their own opinions, the Technocratic control over others is now seen as the good guys.

Edit: And through its connections to WOD, Exalted is fundementally an obnoxiously infuriating game.

There was also Hunters were Billy Jake huffs meth and drives a baracuda and triple shot gun bowie knife dynamite arrows gas can them sunsabiches.

Somehow this became a TV show on the CW only they filed the serial numbers off and then that mutated into some where fan service mocking fan service for fan service paradigm that I still haven't fully unraveled in my head.

Then they did that goofy Antideluvian demigod fantasy mythic fashion show diorama nonsense called Exalted.

Quote from: HappyDaze on February 03, 2022, 03:54:39 PM
It's not terribly unusual for corporate executives to have minimal knowledge of the base product. The defining part of those positions is providing leadership, navigating corporate culture, and maximizing returns. WotC doesn't need an executive that plays/runs/writes games, they need one that can run a corporate division for the parent company.

Agreed. If they can run it well, listen to their people, and not tank stuff.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 03, 2022, 07:46:50 PM
And because WOD is a product of its politics, NOW its all about the support of the Technocracy. Because in modern times the politics is that the people are dumb and can't be trusted with their own opinions, the Technocratic control over others is now seen as the good guys.

Oh, god, have they actually brought old Mage back? I can't even imagine the tortured retcons and mental gymnastics you'd have to do to it to make it palatable to the target audience these days.

Quote from: palaeomerus on February 03, 2022, 07:54:05 PM
There was also Hunters were Billy Jake huffs meth and drives a baracuda and triple shot gun bowie knife dynamite arrows gas can them sunsabiches.

...which is why Hunter was objectively the best oWoD game, even though nobody would admit it at the time. Don't @ me.

Also Demon: The Edgelord which at least finally made Vampire's backstory fit with the rest.

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on February 03, 2022, 08:31:28 PMOh, god, have they actually brought old Mage back? I can't even imagine the tortured retcons and mental gymnastics you'd have to do to it to make it palatable to the target audience these days.

Here it is off the presses.

QuoteWelcome to the Future

As the third decade of the 21st century dawns, the Technocratic Union stands on the cutting edge of a future imperiled. As science and technology draw humanity closer than ever before, certain factions within the Masses display gross negligence, undermining the Union's work and endangering the world for shortsighted gains. Despite global telecommunications, new frontiers in virtually every field of study, and an understanding of the universe only dreamed of by earlier generations, humanity faces threats on all sides.

Can You Save It?

Climate change threatens to destroy life as we know it. Religious fundamentalism breeds terror around the globe. Diseases, once eradicated in the developed world through vaccination, have returned due to antivaxxer movements. Totalitarian, nationalist governments rise as the Masses succumb to fear of the other. The world stands on the brink of destruction, and it is up to the agents and operatives of the Technocratic Union to save it...or be its ultimate destruction.

Its difficult to root for rebels, when you are the authority.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 03, 2022, 08:40:57 PM
Here it is off the presses.

Thanks, I hate it.

If anything, the main change I would have made from the old setting would be to have a charismatic, edgy billionaire (maybe from South Africa IDK) become the leader of the Void Engineers, straining their relationship with the Technocracy further, with whispers that he or she is secretly a Son of Ether.

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on February 03, 2022, 08:31:28 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 03, 2022, 07:46:50 PM
And because WOD is a product of its politics, NOW its all about the support of the Technocracy. Because in modern times the politics is that the people are dumb and can't be trusted with their own opinions, the Technocratic control over others is now seen as the good guys.

Oh, god, have they actually brought old Mage back? I can't even imagine the tortured retcons and mental gymnastics you'd have to do to it to make it palatable to the target audience these days.

The Technocracy are now the good guys. I'm serious.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 03, 2022, 06:55:37 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 04:17:27 PM
WoD and all it's associated IP has been infected beyond salvation.

WoD has always been political in all the worst ways.

Vampire has an obnoxious counterculture narrative where it's impossible to advance without literally cannibalizing your elders and the fan favorite Sabbat (an apocalypse cult that wants to enslave mankind) is characterized by doing this.

Werewolf has an obnoxious environmentalist message that says human civilization is fundamentally evil and we need a return to anarcho-primitivism under eugenicists who periodically cull the weak.

Mage operates under the premise that science is a lie created by The Man to enslave humanity and everything will be better if we start believing in pseudoscience and homeopathy instead.

Wraith is about fighting slavery in the afterlife, because for some reason the writers didn't think playing dead people with evil split personalities was harsh enough.

Changeling is about how modern civilization sucks, growing up sucks, everything sucks so you might as well retreat into a delusion while you still can until you eventually wither up and die inside.

All of those are political statements. It's an insane franchise that sucks up all the market share in the urban fantasy genre.

If you need vampires, theriantropes, etc as PCs then I have good news for you Actual Fucking Monsters by Grim Jim.

If you want to hunt monsters in a modern setting then you need to wait till I'm done with my take on it.