Yum.  
I mean...Yum.  That was actually one of the best written and best thought-out diatribes I've perused in a while.  And it would be educational for Mr. Goodman, who is semingly a little too used to kow-towing readers.

As I have said a few times, I'm thrilled for anyone that is making money in the RPG world, and that goes for 4e and goodman.  I love reading Clash's stuff and was more than happy to jump in to Akrasia's thread about some rule work he was doing.
I just don't respond well to anyone telling me 'How It Really Is', from on high.  I view it as suspect from the start.

Understandable, but on the other hand there is so much misinformation, innuendo, and opinion presented as fact out there on ye olde intartubez, that I can imagine its hard to resist the temptation to go 'OI!  You don't know shit about shit, and I actually do.  Here's the real deal, now fuck off and get back to debating the best system for playing a fairy princess!"

It's not surprising that GG sales are doing well - all of their competitors are dead or have moved to other games.  

The fact that sales of 3rd party 4e products aren't strong enough to keep Necromancer in the 4e stable and that no new companies are even making a dent this time around speaks a lot more loudly than his post.

Quote from: mhensley;309619It's not surprising that GG sales are doing well - all of their competitors are dead or have moved to other games.  

The fact that sales of 3rd party 4e products aren't strong enough to keep Necromancer in the 4e stable and that no new companies are even making a dent this time around speaks a lot more loudly than his post.

Or that 3rd party rules for 4ed are more onerous than previously, and that the 3rd party zeitgeist of 3ed has come and gone, and we will likely never see its like again.

Quote from: obryn;309570I dunno, why don't you share why it's "significant"?  Or are you happy with vague innuendoes?  I mean, few things work better to shield you from your own asshattery!

Otherwise, just ... well, you know how that one ends!

-O

Sure, if you bother to look at the time stamps, you can see that the post was yanked within two hours of it coming online. That is pretty fast for ENWorld, IMHO, so it looks like they were watching the thread closely because they knew that Goodman's comments were going to be controversial.

I guess that's enough of a conspiracy theory for you to do some knee-jerk posting.

EDIT: And after reading the post that was yanked, it looks like the ENWorld mods were overreacting.

Quote from: LordVreeg;309613Yum.  
I mean...Yum.  That was actually one of the best written and best thought-out diatribes I've perused in a while.  And it would be educational for Mr. Goodman, who is semingly a little too used to kow-towing readers.

As I have said a few times, I'm thrilled for anyone that is making money in the RPG world, and that goes for 4e and goodman.  I love reading Clash's stuff and was more than happy to jump in to Akrasia's thread about some rule work he was doing.
I just don't respond well to anyone telling me 'How It Really Is', from on high.  I view it as suspect from the start.

Goodman said "here's what I know, why I know it, now prove me wrong if you can." He put his balls on the table. Let's see if someone else will do so to rebut. It's telling that so far the only counterarguments are snark and indignation that he acted like an alpha dog. If it's suspect, then someone will - or should, really - produce the evidence that it's hogwash.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;309633Goodman said "here's what I know, why I know it, now prove me wrong if you can." He put his balls on the table. Let's see if someone else will do so to rebut. It's telling that so far the only counterarguments are snark and indignation that he acted like an alpha dog. If it's suspect, then someone will - or should, really - produce the evidence that it's hogwash.

Actually, Joe Goodman doesn't cite much in the way of actual evidence, outside of an appeal to his own authority.

That's what the snark is about.

FASERIP doesn't believe that Joseph Goodman has access to TSR's or WotC's sales records, so FASERIP doubts the grounds for Joseph Goodman's claims to authority, even though FASERIP is pretty sure 4e is selling well.

Quote from: Colonel HardissonLet's see if someone else will do so to rebut. It's telling that so far the only counterarguments are snark and indignation that he acted like an alpha dog. If it's suspect, then someone will - or should, really - produce the evidence that it's hogwash.

As I said, I'm happy anyone is making some money in our little world, and this certainly includes our Mr. Goodman.  I hope his second business makes a ton of money, as everyone wins then.  And furthermore, I was happy to have access to his thought process.

But the only people really in a position to rebut this with evidence (i.e., people with access to the sales numbers)are probably people who's best interests are being served by Goodman's hypothesis.  The best kept secrets are those where everyone with access to the truth has a vested interest in keeping that data from the light of day.  

So my breath is not being held waiting for someone to rebut it.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;309633Goodman said "here's what I know, why I know it, now prove me wrong if you can."

That's certainly the way I read it.
Course the success of his business model should be proof to back up his claims  in itself. He seems to be expanding rather than shrinking. That speaks volumes.

Quote from: JollyRB;309647That's certainly the way I read it.
Course the success of his business model should be proof to back up his claims  in itself. He seems to be expanding rather than shrinking. That speaks volumes.

As I said on Enworld, the pity about Joe's post is that he dived into the general "4E is going well" area quite needlessly when the really interesting thing would have been to elaborate a bit more on why, in his case, being a GSL license taker really paid off.

Just to mention two factors that came to my mind.

First, when 4E designers first announced their "points of light" setting and the inclusion of dragonborn as a "core race", the designers of GG's own campaign world "Aereth" were overjoyed, for in these (and other) respects, Aereth already was that type of campaign world. If you wish, Aereth was the first 4E campaign setting there ever was. In that regard, 4E incidentally helped to make "Aereth" more prominent, and more accessible to the (soon current) mainstream of D&D gamers, than it ever was before. Contrast Paizo or Necromancer Games for whom the 4E changes were positively moving into directions contrary to these companies' expectations of what to pull off in a D&D product.

And that's just talking about world design. Let's talk about rules. So, second, as Harley Stroh said in an interview at Kobold Quarterly, he frequently caught flag for his rules ignorance on monsters, traps, etc. when designing the Dungeon Crawl Classics. Well guess what. 4E's attitude that DMs can cook up rules as they please comes as a godsent to designers of Harvey's bent. And that's what Harvey says himself. Harvey always enjoyed making up his own stuff no matter what the rules said. But now he's basically walking the party line in doing that where previously he would be stigmatized as a heretic or an ignoramus. (Don't believe me? Take a look at the mega-review of the 3.5 DCC line over at RPGNet.)

I'm sure there are other factors, but basically I think a lot more needs to be said than just pointing to one's distribution model to explain why one's product is doing well under the GSL. I mean, Clark Peterson always said he wanted to like 4E. You look at Goodman Games and you see a staff who actually likes 4E because at the level of world and rules design it serves their interests far better than 3E ever did.

Would you say Final Fantasy has the points of light theme?

Quote from: Cranewings;309650Would you say Final Fantasy has the points of light theme?

I've only played XI, and it definitely isn't.  Coherent nation-states and small, peaceful villages is just the opposite of PoL.

Quote from: RPGPundit;309519Did anyone actually save the guy's parody before it got deleted by the mods? I would have liked reading it.

And so you can... It's been reposted in it's entirety here:
http://wondrousimaginings.blogspot.com/2009/06/really-funny-comment-on-joe-goodmans.html

Quote from: Hairfoot;309654I've only played XI, and it definitely isn't.  Coherent nation-states and small, peaceful villages is just the opposite of PoL.

I mostly played 10 and 3... and in both of those you get attacked by all kinds of shit 5 seconds out of the gate...

Wait...it's FFXII I played, not XI.