Quote from: SHARKAs far as SWINE go, do SWINE really deny this? I actually bought a few of the early White Wolf books way back when--werewolf and vampire--and after reading them threw them into a closet and haven't touched 'em since. Their pathetic ideology bleeding through on every fucking page drove me nuts, and turned me off of them entirely. In short order, I really didn't give a shit about any "mechanical" innovations or systemics that they may have designed--their ideology told me everything I needed to know and what I could expect from them. The fucking White Wolf "system"--such as it is--seemed then, and apparently now as well--as nothing more than window dressing for an exercise in radical, ideological fantasies masquerading as a roleplaying game.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Well, first of all keep in mind there isn't *really* any such thing as "Swine", outside of Pundit's fevered delusions.  I only started calling myself that to mock the very idea that there's a horde plotting to destroy gaming.

And yeah, early White Wolf was pretty strongly ideological in their lines, and that did turn some people off.  But they have by and large grown up.  The new werewolf has dropped the whole 'Eco-warriors fighting against evil corporations' angle entirely.  Mage stopped treating the Technocracy entirely, and stopped treating them as the bad guy awhile back (inspiring some great flame wars for fans of the game at the time).  I'm not sure what the ideology would have been in the original Vampire, but from what I understand the current game is little like the original, focusing more on the personal horror instead of metaplots and global conspiracies.

And Exalted has no ideology at all, from what I've been able to tell.  From what I've heard of your gaming, SHARK, I would guess that Exalted would be a game you'd enjoy.  It's a fantasy game about larger than life heroes, reborn heroes of a lost age come back to lead humanity into a new golden age.  Or maybe destroy it.  I mean Cyberzombie likes Exalted, it can't be too Swinish.  

So did White Wolf put out some PC crap in the 90s?  Yeah, they did.  A lot of companies did, including TSR with the 'cleaning' of D&D.  They've left that behind for the most part - that quote is pretty crappy and I don't agree with the content of it, but to be honest it's a bit misplaced in the rest of the book.  I've not seen any paticular ideology pushed in the core book, just a horror game.

Quote from: MaddmanWell, first of all keep in mind there isn't *really* any such thing as "Swine", outside of Pundit's fevered delusions.  I only started calling myself that to mock the very idea that there's a horde plotting to destroy gaming.

You mean there is no real war. Jeebus, Maddman you should have said something to me before I went and replaced pages of the new edition of D&D with pages of the new edition of Nobillis

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RYou mean there is no real war. Jeebus, Maddman you should have said something to me before I went and replaced pages of the new edition of D&D with pages of the new edition of Nobillis

Regards,
David R

Exellent!  Now if we can only replace all d20s with instructions on how to play rock-paper-scissors and fire the Homotron 3000 at the GURPS table at GenCon my master plan will be complete!

Quote from: MaddmanExellent!  Now if we can only replace all d20s with instructions on how to play rock-paper-scissors and fire the Homotron 3000 at the GURPS table at GenCon my master plan will be complete!

Your plans will come to fruition, because as you always tell the faithful, the Pundit has proxies but you have idiot(ic) savants.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: MaddmanWell, first of all keep in mind there isn't *really* any such thing as "Swine", outside of Pundit's fevered delusions.  I only started calling myself that to mock the very idea that there's a horde plotting to destroy gaming.

And yeah, early White Wolf was pretty strongly ideological in their lines, and that did turn some people off.  But they have by and large grown up.  The new werewolf has dropped the whole 'Eco-warriors fighting against evil corporations' angle entirely.  Mage stopped treating the Technocracy entirely, and stopped treating them as the bad guy awhile back (inspiring some great flame wars for fans of the game at the time).  I'm not sure what the ideology would have been in the original Vampire, but from what I understand the current game is little like the original, focusing more on the personal horror instead of metaplots and global conspiracies.

And Exalted has no ideology at all, from what I've been able to tell.  From what I've heard of your gaming, SHARK, I would guess that Exalted would be a game you'd enjoy.  It's a fantasy game about larger than life heroes, reborn heroes of a lost age come back to lead humanity into a new golden age.  Or maybe destroy it.  I mean Cyberzombie likes Exalted, it can't be too Swinish.  

So did White Wolf put out some PC crap in the 90s?  Yeah, they did.  A lot of companies did, including TSR with the 'cleaning' of D&D.  They've left that behind for the most part - that quote is pretty crappy and I don't agree with the content of it, but to be honest it's a bit misplaced in the rest of the book.  I've not seen any paticular ideology pushed in the core book, just a horror game.

Well, there you have it Shark. They can and do deny it, all weight of evidence to the contrary.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditWell, there you have it Shark. They can and do deny it, all weight of evidence to the contrary.

RPGPundit

What? That White Wolf indulges political stances? Sure. They indulged lots and lots of different ones. Sometimes it depended on the freelancer and sometimes it depended on development intentionally giving different groups various political viewpoints. This has led to a few amusing assumptions in the Mage line, for example, where some dystopian stuff was taken as being utopian and vice versa.

The common theme seems to be, as usual, that many people have no idea how White Wolf books -- or any commercial RPG books -- are actually put together.

Quote from: MaddmanAnd yeah, early White Wolf was pretty strongly ideological in their lines, and that did turn some people off.  But they have by and large grown up.  The new werewolf has dropped the whole 'Eco-warriors fighting against evil corporations' angle entirely.  Mage stopped treating the Technocracy entirely, and stopped treating them as the bad guy awhile back (inspiring some great flame wars for fans of the game at the time).  I'm not sure what the ideology would have been in the original Vampire, but from what I understand the current game is little like the original, focusing more on the personal horror instead of metaplots and global conspiracies.

And Exalted has no ideology at all, from what I've been able to tell.

Actually, the funny thing is that Exalted was intentionally designed with a very specific political stance, and the World of Darkness wasn't. And I don't mean a POV you could make political when you wrote something. I mean that Grabowski's development notes told you exactly what Exalted is supposed to be a metaphor for. Meanwhile, you have games such as Werewolf, which was broadly about ecology and kicking ass, but intentionally made the tribes as politically diverse as possible.

QuoteThe common theme seems to be, as usual, that many people have no idea how White Wolf books -- or any commercial RPG books -- are actually put together.

Wrong. I for one know, that most RPGs outside WoTC or Malhavoc are typed up by some underpaid semi-fanboy who is able to write a grammatically correct sentence as qualification. The results are dependant on his personal motivation and skills. Thus we get all kinds of c-class would-be-novelist drivel, politics, gender issues, PowerMechaSuperGodling or what have you into the gaming books. Then the weirdest typos are cleared out, without any serious playtest.
That leads to the [for me lovable] mess of continuity and broken rules that Palladium´s products are, or to WoD-stuff, which I personally don´t like. Generally it´s worse than Star Trek in regards to maintaining in-Universe rules and continuity what we see in the Hobby.

Face it: There is no quality control in non WoTC products. Thus quality is elusive in Gaming and only happens under unlikely circumstances. Some people, who are mostly DMs, are satisfied with getting half-baked ideas or kewl vistas for getting their juices started (like it is with me and Rifts), but the general gaming populace demands playtested quality, and rightly so.

Do you actually know what a developer does?

As for WotC: Check out a WotC errata or a John Cooper review on ENWorld some time. For profitable print companies, they're about average.

Quote from: SettembriniFace it: There is no quality control in non WoTC products. Thus quality is elusive in Gaming and only happens under unlikely circumstances. Some people, who are mostly DMs, are satisfied with getting half-baked ideas or kewl vistas for getting their juices started (like it is with me and Rifts), but the general gaming populace demands playtested quality, and rightly so.

*ahem*

Polaris did serious, 3-cycle, year-long playtesting.  The games I'm working on right now are in playtest right now, Bliss Stage in 2nd cycle.  Almost all the forgie games I know of did heavy playtesting.  Amber was seriously playtested for years.

yrs--
--Ben

P.S.  I totally agree that heavy playtesting is required for any game.  I disagree that Wizards is the only one who does it.

Polaris is a niche game. It´s not a game line.
System/game line = D&D, Harnmaster, Traveller, WoD
More power to you and the forge, but as I said, playtesting is dependent on the work ethic of the people responsible for final publishing.

@WoTC: Of course they are just average, it´s gaming not rocket science. But most games are way below that. Look at another of my personal favorites: GDW.3

@Forge: The whole reason for many Forge games is to make COHERENT games which obviously the regular channels aren´t able to produce. Which only supports my point.

Quote from: Settembrini@WoTC: Of course they are just average, it´s gaming not rocket science. But most games are way below that. Look at another of my personal favorites: GDW.3

GDW has been dead for what? A decade? They aren't really a successful game company. And for comparison, you should look at counterparts made during that period. Technology has definitely helped raise standards. For a comparison by period, swing by Dragonsfoot for the Rules Cyclopedia errata.

This is one reason why Palladium has problem with QA. They are about a decade behind in actual production technology, right down to wax and photostat.

Quote@Forge: The whole reason for many Forge games is to make COHERENT games which obviously the regular channels aren´t able to produce. Which only supports my point.

*snicker* If RPG were all 50,000 words or less I'm sure they'd be *damn* coherent. If you want a valid point of comparison look at The Riddle of Steel or The Burning Wheel, which are standard length works from author-driven channels. They're the same to slightly worse than company lines, except for being very poorly organized. Mind you, both are great games -- its why I have them on hand.

I think we mean the same, Eyebeamz. Nearly all bigger game lines suffer from the Star Trek syndrome, and are written by semi-professionals. Wereas some Forge game, whith only one book and no financial pressure can take all the time they want with playtesting. It´s like comparing short artiste movies with TV shows in their 4th season.

Quote from: SettembriniI think we mean the same, Eyebeamz. Nearly all bigger game lines suffer from the Star Trek syndrome, and are written by semi-professionals. Wereas some Forge game, whith only one book and no financial pressure can take all the time they want with playtesting. It´s like comparing short artiste movies with TV shows in their 4th season.

Not really, no. I mean that lots of these RPGs have a smaller wordcount. It's easier to keep things consistent in a smaller wordcount, wheras a game that sacrifices openness for brevity is, frankly, quite a bit easier to get down right.

If you look at a larger self-published game, though, you see all the isues that exist with full game lines, and then some. The Riddle of Steel is, for example, an innovative game with terrible organization. The magic system is very powerful but instead of justifying it through the internal logic of the system and design aims, they toss in an Ron Edwards essay where he begs you to like the magic system.

(The funny thing is that this desperate measure is something that I've seen once in other writing too, and it, too, was to preemtively defend a game system from being seriously examined.)

As for playtesting: Every line I've worked on has had all major supplements go through playtesting. I personally playtest everything I work on as well. I can tell you for a fact, too that playtesting brings negative feedback almost as much as it does positive.

QuoteI can tell you for a fact, too that playtesting brings negative feedback almost as much as it does positive

:confused:

Which is the whole point in playtesting, not to get your drivel applauded!

Well but I am elsewise of your opinion:
It´s not  nearly a big a feat to polish a small game, than to match in 20 new PrCs without unbalancing the whole D&D-iverse.