Quote from: Summon666 on May 03, 2023, 01:13:10 AM
These super popular reviewers actually affect the entire scene perception of what a good game is. He says a game is good became of his preferences, people play it, people like it, they look for similar games. He says a game is bad because of his preferences, people do not even try it. After years and years of this, the entire ors and ors-like scene (as that is his focus) shifts closer to his sensibilities. We saw this with the Tome Vassel and the Dice Tower in boardgames as well. Future kickers even design their games to appeal to these influencers as a way to ensure success.

Can you share a couple times he has said a game is bad? His promotions....er....reviews are paid reviews. I'd be curious how many people you can find who paid and had their honestly bad game given an honestly bad review.

And if you cannot see how "kickers" designing games to appease a paid reviewer isn't a red flag, I think we probably see the world differently.

Dunno.. I do not watch his videos very often.. but if he is like most of the boardgame and tabletop reviewers I know of, the vast majority of stuff is reviewed as good becuase the stuff he buys is based on his own taste. So there is a bias to them being "good", to him. He is probably not reviewing randomly.. he is reviewing the stuff he gets for his own collections, so stuff he already thinks looks good, or stuff sent to him, and they will of course be sending stuff they think he will respond positivly to. So this is why you very rarely see bad reviews on youtube. Particularly when they are trying to just say what it is. I just watched a few of his recent ones and, to his credit, he doesn't actually say things are good or bad.. just reads out the various mechanisms, describes the world, and comments if an aspect of the game here and there, like say layout or how resting works or something appeals to him, personally.

Quote from: FingerRod on May 03, 2023, 08:10:33 AMAnd if you cannot see how "kickers" designing games to appease a paid reviewer isn't a red flag, I think we probably see the world differently.

I didn't say it wasn't a red flag.. I said that is the reality of the industry you and I play in. I also was kinda saying that Knave is made by him, for himself and his fans.... and there is nothing wrong with that. Building a RPG for a target audience is smart. Why do you think publisher spend so much to get Bladerunner or Dune when they could just make something new like Wildsea?

Quote from: FingerRod on May 03, 2023, 08:10:33 AM

Quote from: Summon666 on May 03, 2023, 01:13:10 AM
These super popular reviewers actually affect the entire scene perception of what a good game is. He says a game is good became of his preferences, people play it, people like it, they look for similar games. He says a game is bad because of his preferences, people do not even try it. After years and years of this, the entire ors and ors-like scene (as that is his focus) shifts closer to his sensibilities. We saw this with the Tome Vassel and the Dice Tower in boardgames as well. Future kickers even design their games to appeal to these influencers as a way to ensure success.

Can you share a couple times he has said a game is bad? His promotions....er....reviews are paid reviews. I'd be curious how many people you can find who paid and had their honestly bad game given an honestly bad review.

And if you cannot see how "kickers" designing games to appease a paid reviewer isn't a red flag, I think we probably see the world differently.

He has 1 negative review iirc its of Dark Albion that he did early on before he was all paid reviews. He also deleted a positive revoew of ACKS

Knave is good.  Ben's videos are good.  I don't watch his videos to get hard-hitting reviews.  His videos are very useful for showcasing physical products that I may be interested in buying.  There is no local gaming store where I can physically flip through a copy of Vaults of Vaarn or The Haunted Almanac or other somewhat obscure items.  But videos showing flip-throughs of potentially interesting products have me subscribed to his channel. 

Knave 2 looks good also.  It looks like something myself and my gaming table would be interested in playing, so I happily backed the Kickstarter.  Congrats to Ben for its early success.

Quote from: Crusader X on May 03, 2023, 10:53:06 AM
Knave is good.  Ben's videos are good.  I don't watch his videos to get hard-hitting reviews.  His videos are very useful for showcasing physical products that I may be interested in buying.  There is no local gaming store where I can physically flip through a copy of Vaults of Vaarn or The Haunted Almanac or other somewhat obscure items.  But videos showing flip-throughs of potentially interesting products have me subscribed to his channel.

agreed.. this is my main use of youtube reviewers.. to see the book, its size, the binding the pages, art and a over view of the mechanisms.

I think Ben gives honest reviews in the context of what his channel is about.

I'd say there were very few instances of overall bad reviews, but I'd also suggest that is not the tack he tends to take on his channel.  His reviews are generally more akin to a flip through of the product with commentary on what works or doesn't work in his opinion.  So he's going to focus on readability, usability, the vibe, the occasional broken or golden mechanic, but not necessarily giving an overall score to the game.  The thought being that individual preference is going to vary wildly, so just show the product and let people make their own decision.

Of course, he still is a paid reviewer.  I have heard that he gives some initial feedback to the publisher/creator before taking their money.  I imagine most won't pay to  have a negative review of their creations, so I'd assume that the reviews will trend on the positive side.

I view all of these RPG kickstarters with extreme skepticism to say the least, but this does seem to be the new meta for marketing them.

As far as the old Knave goes, all I can say is that outside of one comment earlier in this thread, I'd never met or heard of anyone who said they'd played a campaign of it.

As far as Knave 2e goes, I watched DungeonCraft's (extremely shill-y) review of it. It looks...fine? I like the classless thing. "OSR but classless" is an obvious take that I'm surprised more people haven't done. The art is nothing special, and it looks like a lot of the book is devoted to random tables. As I've said elsewhere, D100 random adjective tables are utterly useless to me. I do like the overhauled reaction roll table I saw in Milton's preview video, but it's hardly worth buying a book just for that.

As far as Ben Milton himself goes, I haven't really paid attention to him for a while. I know a lot of old-schoolers resent him as being an interloping johnny-come-lately who they see as having adopted the OSR as a means of grifting for money. I don't think it's that bad, but I do get it. He did a video a while back about OSR DM-ing being easier than 5e DM-ing, which a lot of people took exception to. The premise was right, but he gave the impression that he thinks old-school play is nothing more than random dungeon crawling.

As a reviewer, yeah, he's pretty much useless. Let's be honest though, between the internal politics of the RPG world and just flat out getting paid, Youtube RPG reviews are mostly pretty useless. The only Youtube reviewers I'm aware of that even make a pretense of giving impartial reviews are Seth Skorkowsky and Grim Jim. Dungeoncraft for example, falls back on the "I only review games I like" line, which come to think of it, would be a pretty good cover for when he is shilling. It's also worth pointing out that a reviewer doesn't have to be getting paid to have a conflict. Being friends with the creator is just as much of an influence on your judgment, if not more.

Quote from: ForgottenF on May 03, 2023, 01:42:31 PM

As a reviewer, yeah, he's pretty much useless. Let's be honest though, between the internal politics of the RPG world and just flat out getting paid, Youtube RPG reviews are mostly pretty useless. The only Youtube reviewers I'm aware of that even make a pretense of giving impartial reviews are Seth Skorkowsky and Grim Jim. Dungeoncraft for example, falls back on the "I only review games I like" line, which come to think of it, would be a pretty good cover for when he is shilling. It's also worth pointing out that a reviewer doesn't have to be getting paid to have a conflict. Being friends with the creator is just as much of an influence on your judgment, if not more.

Yeah, I don't really decide to buy or not buy based on what any one reviewer says. I hope that a reviewer can dive me some kind of information that I otherwise wasn't able to glean. But I'm also going to look for play experiences and reports on forums.

Quote from: Summon666 on May 03, 2023, 09:03:33 AM
Dunno.. I do not watch his videos very often.. but if he is like most of the boardgame and tabletop reviewers I know of, the vast majority of stuff is reviewed as good becuase the stuff he buys is based on his own taste. So there is a bias to them being "good", to him. He is probably not reviewing randomly.. he is reviewing the stuff he gets for his own collections, so stuff he already thinks looks good, or stuff sent to him, and they will of course be sending stuff they think he will respond positivly to. So this is why you very rarely see bad reviews on youtube. Particularly when they are trying to just say what it is. I just watched a few of his recent ones and, to his credit, he doesn't actually say things are good or bad.. just reads out the various mechanisms, describes the world, and comments if an aspect of the game here and there, like say layout or how resting works or something appeals to him, personally.

Quote from: FingerRod on May 03, 2023, 08:10:33 AMAnd if you cannot see how "kickers" designing games to appease a paid reviewer isn't a red flag, I think we probably see the world differently.

I didn't say it wasn't a red flag.. I said that is the reality of the industry you and I play in. I also was kinda saying that Knave is made by him, for himself and his fans.... and there is nothing wrong with that. Building a RPG for a target audience is smart. Why do you think publisher spend so much to get Bladerunner or Dune when they could just make something new like Wildsea?

Okay, and I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth, but I was specifically replying to this comment:

Quote from: Summon666 on May 03, 2023, 01:13:10 AM
These super popular reviewers actually affect the entire scene perception of what a good game is. He says a game is good became of his preferences, people play it, people like it, they look for similar games. He says a game is bad because of his preferences, people do not even try it. After years and years of this, the entire ors and ors-like scene (as that is his focus) shifts closer to his sensibilities. We saw this with the Tome Vassel and the Dice Tower in boardgames as well. Future kickers even design their games to appeal to these influencers as a way to ensure success.

I was pointing out that he doesn't say games are bad, tho. He is not a true critic. He is not a true 360 influencer. He is more of a promoter.

Thankfully, I do not think he has the reach that game designers are designing with his tastes in mind. That would be terrible. To your point, designers should design for themselves and their audience.

The original Knave was mechanically sound. I found Maze Rats to be sound as well, even as more of a toolkit. That said, the spell tables were not as good.

To my knowledge Maze Knights never made it to release? Can somebody check me there?

I think one of the watch points for me is that two of the larger kickstarters this year has come from a slowly forming consortium. If the Arcane Library and Runehammer release a hype video for this, as PDM has, then I think we have officially moved out of the tinfoil hat arena.

Edit: Sorry, one of the more humorous parts of the Kickstarter is the "world-class GM's toolkit" bragged about that hasn't been finished yet, with writing that will not be complete until the end of the year. This is why people should Kickstarter responsibly.

Quote from: FingerRod on May 03, 2023, 05:54:24 PM
To my knowledge Maze Knights never made it to release? Can somebody check me there?

Maze Knights never came out.  Ben was asked about it in the comments section of the Knave 2 Kickstarter.  His response was "It's on the backburner right now because I wasn't making much progress on it."

Quote from: Crusader X on May 03, 2023, 06:36:16 PM

Quote from: FingerRod on May 03, 2023, 05:54:24 PM
To my knowledge Maze Knights never made it to release? Can somebody check me there?

Maze Knights never came out.  Ben was asked about it in the comments section of the Knave 2 Kickstarter.  His response was "It's on the backburner right now because I wasn't making much progress on it."

Interesting. Thanks. I know he strung that out on Patreon for a long time.

Quote from: ForgottenF on May 03, 2023, 01:42:31 PM
As a reviewer, yeah, [Ben Milton]'s pretty much useless. [...] The only Youtube reviewers I'm aware of that even make a pretense of giving impartial reviews are Seth Skorkowsky[. ...]

I don't care much for impartiality, because nobody can be really impartial: I prefer when people state their biases. But I think Seth (I am unfamiliar with Grim Jim reviews) is the only real reviewer because he only reviews the games he played. Just reading an RPG book is a literary review; you need to play it to be able to review a game. Ben Milton's reviews are just him flipping pages. (Even though sometimes I like a book only because it is pretty and it would look nice on my shelves.)

About Knave, the original, I remember that when I got the PDF, I redownloaded it twice thinking there was a problem with the download and the document was missing pages. I never played it and I find how it deals with equipment too strict, too much like a cRPG. But I know that is personal preference.

I read the Kickstarter entry and was intrigued. There are some elements of Knave that really appeal (quoting here:)

• A relationship-driven divine magic system in which PCs make bargains with patrons for their blessings.
• A monster-hunting alchemy system where PCs can hunt down magical creatures for their special abilities and then refine them into potions.
• Downtime activities where PCs carouse, gamble, recruit hirelings, and build bases.
• A utility-focused magic system that empowers PCs to alter the world in creative ways

So I downloaded the preview, and my excitement level waned a bit. Granted, the concepts listed above weren't mentioned, but some of the other elements (no classes, core mechanic, equipment slots) gave me pause. I wish there had been more to examine. At this point, I'm on the fence.

Can anyone who has played Knave provide any more information?

Quote from: Aglondir on May 14, 2023, 10:46:39 PMno classes, core mechanic, equipment slots) gave me pause.

No Classes and Equipment Abilities are the basic core ideas that make the game what it is. It is kind of the entire point of the rule system. So if that is a red flag to you, I'd pass on the game.. as it is ingrained into the entire design, even the non player stuff like monsters and npc and wot not.

Personally no classes is awesome and something I wish more games had and the Equipment Abilities thing is imo a great way to allow free form party building where your character is based on their personality, not their "role" as the role is malleable.

Quote from: Aglondir on May 14, 2023, 10:46:39 PMCan anyone who has played Knave provide any more information?

I made a more detailed post, you may have missed on the 1st page of this thread...
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/knave-2e-thoughts/msg1252814/#msg1252814

Quote from: Crusader X on May 03, 2023, 06:36:16 PM

Quote from: FingerRod on May 03, 2023, 05:54:24 PM
To my knowledge Maze Knights never made it to release? Can somebody check me there?

Maze Knights never came out.  Ben was asked about it in the comments section of the Knave 2 Kickstarter.  His response was "It's on the backburner right now because I wasn't making much progress on it."

It has been out for a long time, but only as a pdf.. there has never been a physical release.