Quote from: Dracones on March 03, 2023, 11:56:33 AM

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on March 03, 2023, 09:23:44 AM
Does this new game bring anything innovative to the table?  Anything I haven't already houseruled into my own games during my 42-years of playing?

No, not really. But the vast majority of players aren't going to take the time to house rule OSR from different sources into something they like.

So far I've been digging into the game thinking I'm finding flaws here and there, but then seeing those decisions are actually balanced. The game feels like someone took OSE, collected and tweaked a lot of house rules, did some core balance changes(short bows are d4 damage, torches/food are balanced against inventory slots) and spent 3 years play testing it at the tables of some decent designers.

Greetings!

Excellent commentary and analysis, Dracones! I agree, just about everything in Shadowdark, game-wise, mechanics, and so on, has been done before. However, all of these different mechanics and ideas are spread out over house rules, modules, and a dozen different game books and sub-systems.

Bringing them all together, in in one book, presented in a slick, bold manner, along with fantastic, "Old-School" style of artwork is brilliant. It all combines into a very nice package, again, all in one core book.

I'm hopeful everything will turn out awesome.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 03, 2023, 09:53:09 PM
If it's great, it'll usually get hyped.  But if it's great, why does it need to be hyped? 

So that people are aware of the product?

The free quickstart was released 4 months before the KS, and includes 120 pp. of rules, pregens and an adventure. So it's possible some of the hype is based on actual read-throughs, play-throughs, etc. My read-through was enough to convince me it wasn't for me, maybe others had the opposite reaction, leading to informed KS pledges?

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on February 28, 2023, 11:25:04 PM
There are no racial stats and ancestry rather than race.  To me, that's a sign of woke.  Maybe she's trying to avoid twitter rage or maybe she's woke.  But those are two things I saw in a review that made me go NOPE.  Pro-tip, if you want to get the old school players and not use race, then use demi-humans.

Well, we got into a fight on Twitter and she didn't once use a "woman card" or call for me to be cancelled, so I'm not sure how Woke she is. I think more likely she's anti-woke (she's a gal from Wisconsin, after all) but is scared of admitting it because of potential cost. It's probably why she switched to 'ancestry' and also why she denied having been inspired by anyone in the OSR, in spite of having mechanics that are very clearly OSR mechanics. She can't be associated with us, even though she clearly would really like to be, but she's scared of a Woke 5e Mob cancel campaign.

Quote from: rhialto on March 04, 2023, 05:21:49 AM
The free quickstart was released 4 months before the KS, and includes 120 pp. of rules, pregens and an adventure. So it's possible some of the hype is based on actual read-throughs, play-throughs, etc. My read-through was enough to convince me it wasn't for me, maybe others had the opposite reaction, leading to informed KS pledges?

That sounds wise overall, campaigns can be competitive for attention when everyone and their grandmothers are releasing RPG materials or anything like Gloomhaven. Both sides are spread out a little thin as a result.

Quote from: S'mon on March 03, 2023, 08:34:38 AM

Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on March 03, 2023, 08:22:45 AM
Cheers to her success! I will root for her, but I'm still not going to back (not that it matters now anyway). It just doesn't interest me.

I feel the same. I wonder if Pundit's interjection has contributed at all to her success, from the "Save the Fair Damsel from the Evil Nazi (TM)" crowd.  Everything I've seen indicates Arcane Library is determinedly apolitical, this could have been just what she needed to rally support from the Wokeosphere!

From what I've seen it's more like the Simposphere. But she's not encouraging them.

Honestly this whole thing seems to me to be a culture clash issue. She grew up playing 2e or whatever, but never got into the OSR, she went into 5e. She did a lot of stuff with 5e and knows that culture. That's a culture full of influencers, where pretty people who talk well are the most powerful in the hierarchy (and there's definitely a hierarchy) and it's all about the grifting of the Current Thing, and consooming what the Influencers tell you is so hot right now.
In other words, a shallow, infantile toxic hierarchy.

Whereas the OSR is a counter-culture. Nothing about you matters (not race, age, sex, gender, sexuality, how good you look, how many twitch followers you  have, anything) except how well you design games. And the culture is not a top-down culture like 5e's where influencers tell you what to like and you buy it, it's a non-hierarchical MERITOCRACY, where the people who are the coolest designers have the most clout but there's no pope or king, and ANY attempt to generate buzz with anything other than being a great designer looks "phoney" to us.

So she came in here, wanting to unite 5e and OSR, but her entire Marketing agenda was TOTAL 5E. It was all about influencers and fake buzz. It wasn't about talking about design influences and stuff. In fact she so doesn't understand how that works in the OSR that when I suggested that a lot of the stuff she has in her game (random leveling, spell checks, random background events, etc etc) are in Lion & Dragon, she took that as if I was accusing her of a crime rather than expressing pride at how some of my design ideas are being redone by someone else in new and interesting ways.

So is there a danger in all this? Yes. In theory, Shadowdark could end up drawing in thousands of new people into the OSR, but who are essentially immigrants from 5e culture and the mentalities of their toxic "5e Community". They'll bring wokeness, the idea that popular twitch actors or youtube influencers who have never produced a single mechanic are the equals or even superiors of the actual designers, and a culture that demands "niceness" and thus turns the kind of constant criticisms we make of each other's products in the OSR into "hate speech" that can't be allowed (destroying creators' ability to improve their skills). You might think that's exaggeration, but look at the thousands of tweets from people saying that actually "reviews" like dungeoncrafts that only say NICE things are way better than MEAN ones because "we need to support each other and not be triggering" or whatever. OMG LOL, etc etc

So the OSR does have to be careful here, and put its foot down. Starting with a RESOUNDING CONDEMNATION of paid reviews. There's no such thing as a "paid review": there's a Review (unpaid) or there a FUCKING INFOMERCIAL.

Also, reject in every way anyone who claims to be an influencer but has never produced a successful game. Those people will be absolute poison to the OSR.

Quote from: FingerRod on March 03, 2023, 09:30:21 AM
Nothing feels off to me. Her content and background as an adventure writer is well established.

I'm sure she is in certain scenes. But if you're from the actual OSR (as opposed to some 5e circles or the garycon grognard crowd), NO ONE had ever heard of her until 3 days ago and suddenly it looked like EVERYWHERE was talking about her game all at once, from a total unknown. It had all the looks of a carefully pre-planned marketing blitz campaign.

Quote from: S'mon on March 03, 2023, 11:36:40 AM

Quote from: rytrasmi on March 03, 2023, 11:31:47 AM
I said this earlier and I'll say it again, they have loads of virtue signaling ammo, but they aren't using it.

Ayup. It's almost uncanny! I see Kelsey even deleted her Pundit-criticising Tweet, even though stirring up the Twitterati against Pundit could likely have generated more backers for her Kickstarter.

Assuming this wasn't all some cunning ploy to generate interest in a Green-list/non-Woke OSR project, I feel Pundit could barely have found a worse target if he'd tried.

I'm very impressed with her, actually. Except for the fact that she doesn't understand the culture of the design school of the OSR, but she can fix that. She could fit right in actually, by the looks of it, because she certainly doesn't seem to care about invoking the woke bullshit. She doesn't advertise her pronouns, and this thread is the first I hear of her sexuality.

I bet if someone spoke to her in private they'd get an anti-woke rant, but she just feels that in terms of her fan base she has to stay apolitical, and I understand that.

Im notni terested in Shadowdark, but some of her adventures for Shadowdark look fun.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 03, 2023, 09:53:09 PM
Ehhh.  So a industry vet "pre-markets" her kickstarter on Youtube.  Makes financial and marketing sense, sure.  But does it equal quality?  I mean, if she's friends with the Youtubers she's not paying, how is that any more reliable?  Do you honestly think any of them are going to tear down a friend's game publicly?  Take food off her table?

See, this is the problem with hype.  And at this point, this game is all hype.  No one here has played it.  No one has seen anything other than previews and carefully presented material.  So, at this moment, everyone who is enthusiastic about this product is doing so based on faith.  Now, could it be good?  Sure.  The fact that she's got some good (so I've been told) modules under her belt is very encouraging.  This could be a good game.  Or it could be crap.  And no one knows (at least no one not in the marketing of the game...).

And that's why the OP was right.  There is something "off" here.  But it's not something malicious or nefarious.  It's just that she has played the hype machine perfectly.  Which means NOTHING about the actual quality of the game.  But the hype is the "something."  If people haven't learned to distrust hype, based on the last few years of kickstarter and media (including lots of hype not related to gaming), then I guess we are just that stupid as a species.

Note: I'm not knocking the people who are supporting this.  I've supported kickstarters based on what I hoped they would be before myself.  So I'm not criticizing that.  I just hope people will be a little more self-aware about their reasoning and risk.  And not let hype blind them.  So I've got no problem with Pundit asking questions.  Because hype, by its very nature, is suspicious.  It's the double-edged sword of hype.  If it's great, it'll usually get hyped.  But if it's great, why does it need to be hyped?  So when I see hype before I see great, it makes me wary...

The sad part of this is that I'm pretty sure the game is likely to be fine. It's just that the hype makes it look sus.

Quote from: RPGPundit on March 04, 2023, 01:46:18 PM
I'm very impressed with her, actually.

I'd barely heard of her either, but the little bit I'd heard was positive. AIR she did come up in the Woke Companies discussion a wee while back as a suggested addition to the Green List, rejected for lack of notability.

While I thought Arcane Library and Professor DM both handled you on Twitter with considerable grace and dignity, that Indestructoboy fellow is quite a dick. 

Quote from: RPGPundit on March 04, 2023, 01:37:40 PM
But if you're from the actual OSR (as opposed to some 5e circles or the garycon grognard crowd), NO ONE had ever heard of her until 3 days ago

Not entirely true.  Kelsey has been mentioned several times over at Bryce Lynch's tenfootpole.org blog.  Now I realize that's not exclusively an OSR site, as Bryce reviews some 5e stuff there as well.  But I would say that Bryce's site is fairly popular among the OSR crowd.  And Bryce has praised Kelsey there often.  Not just when reviewing her own adventures, but name-dropping her when he talks about good game designers in general.  Bryce held a "Wavestone Keep" adventure design contest, and while Kelsey didn't win the top prize, she was one of the top entrants and runners up.  And she occasionally interacts with others in the comments sections of Bryce's reviews.

I'm not saying that Kelsey is super well-known among OSR gamers.  But she's not completely unknown either.  Regular readers of Bryce's blog have heard of her.

I first heard about Shadowdark when James Mishler Games started producing supplemental material, FWIW. I'm not interested in the game itself, largely because the OSR and BrOSR have pretty well convinced me than I'm not well suited to anything closer to D&D's roots than 2nd Edition , but it was already getting buzz before the Kickstarter hit.

Quote from: RPGPundit on March 04, 2023, 02:20:12 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 03, 2023, 09:53:09 PM
Ehhh.  So a industry vet "pre-markets" her kickstarter on Youtube.  Makes financial and marketing sense, sure.  But does it equal quality?  I mean, if she's friends with the Youtubers she's not paying, how is that any more reliable?  Do you honestly think any of them are going to tear down a friend's game publicly?  Take food off her table?

See, this is the problem with hype.  And at this point, this game is all hype.  No one here has played it.  No one has seen anything other than previews and carefully presented material.  So, at this moment, everyone who is enthusiastic about this product is doing so based on faith.  Now, could it be good?  Sure.  The fact that she's got some good (so I've been told) modules under her belt is very encouraging.  This could be a good game.  Or it could be crap.  And no one knows (at least no one not in the marketing of the game...).

And that's why the OP was right.  There is something "off" here.  But it's not something malicious or nefarious.  It's just that she has played the hype machine perfectly.  Which means NOTHING about the actual quality of the game.  But the hype is the "something."  If people haven't learned to distrust hype, based on the last few years of kickstarter and media (including lots of hype not related to gaming), then I guess we are just that stupid as a species.

Note: I'm not knocking the people who are supporting this.  I've supported kickstarters based on what I hoped they would be before myself.  So I'm not criticizing that.  I just hope people will be a little more self-aware about their reasoning and risk.  And not let hype blind them.  So I've got no problem with Pundit asking questions.  Because hype, by its very nature, is suspicious.  It's the double-edged sword of hype.  If it's great, it'll usually get hyped.  But if it's great, why does it need to be hyped?  So when I see hype before I see great, it makes me wary...

The sad part of this is that I'm pretty sure the game is likely to be fine. It's just that the hype makes it look sus.

She's using direct marketing via facebook ads, there's nothing wrong with that, anyone in the OSR can do the same thing. 

For the influencers, Questing Beast and Professor Dungeoncraft are the two whose talked about her work, and both have put out work.  I used a lot of Professor Dungeoncrafts idea to fix Keep on the Borderlands and give it a cohesive plotline that I used to tie into Temple of Elemental Evil -> Against the Giants -> Vault of the Drow -> Demonweb pits (us a drug coming from the mines, set up trilateral trade amongst the factions, build some unique monsters, put in a quack physician to help with some of those statuses oops you might die on his rolls, put in a wizard to apprentice).  Questing beast covers a lot of OSR materials in his videos and he doesn't do 5E, so that's a win as well. 

Now, do you see her stuff on Critical Role, Nerd Immersion (original white male in the basement who refused to ask Kyle about his shots fired against people like him when he interviewed Kyle - Nerd Immersion is a feminized male I'd be surprised if his wife allows him to have more than 3 male friends), Ginny D or Bob the World Builder, she'd be more suspect.

I'm not about to buy new content at this moment, and some of her stuff is sus, but using marketing is Capitalism 101.  She's not using guys focused on 5E, but more OSR centered content.  If Jorphan reviews her, I'll give her a shot.  His Jocular Junction is fairly good.  The DM's Lair as well for a content review, he's pretty good making his own 5E content, and boy did the OGL make him grow his balls 3 sizes too large.  In the past he's make low level digs at D&D for fucking shit up but not mentioning it directly, but lately he's in the fuck D&D 5E camp he's in it for himself now.

Quote from: RPGPundit on March 04, 2023, 01:34:13 PM
From what I've seen it's more like the Simposphere. But she's not encouraging them.

Honestly this whole thing seems to me to be a culture clash issue. She grew up playing 2e or whatever, but never got into the OSR, she went into 5e. She did a lot of stuff with 5e and knows that culture. That's a culture full of influencers, where pretty people who talk well are the most powerful in the hierarchy (and there's definitely a hierarchy) and it's all about the grifting of the Current Thing, and consooming what the Influencers tell you is so hot right now.
In other words, a shallow, infantile toxic hierarchy.

Whereas the OSR is a counter-culture. Nothing about you matters (not race, age, sex, gender, sexuality, how good you look, how many twitch followers you  have, anything) except how well you design games. And the culture is not a top-down culture like 5e's where influencers tell you what to like and you buy it, it's a non-hierarchical MERITOCRACY, where the people who are the coolest designers have the most clout but there's no pope or king, and ANY attempt to generate buzz with anything other than being a great designer looks "phoney" to us.

So she came in here, wanting to unite 5e and OSR, but her entire Marketing agenda was TOTAL 5E. It was all about influencers and fake buzz. It wasn't about talking about design influences and stuff. In fact she so doesn't understand how that works in the OSR that when I suggested that a lot of the stuff she has in her game (random leveling, spell checks, random background events, etc etc) are in Lion & Dragon, she took that as if I was accusing her of a crime rather than expressing pride at how some of my design ideas are being redone by someone else in new and interesting ways.

So is there a danger in all this? Yes. In theory, Shadowdark could end up drawing in thousands of new people into the OSR, but who are essentially immigrants from 5e culture and the mentalities of their toxic "5e Community". They'll bring wokeness, the idea that popular twitch actors or youtube influencers who have never produced a single mechanic are the equals or even superiors of the actual designers, and a culture that demands "niceness" and thus turns the kind of constant criticisms we make of each other's products in the OSR into "hate speech" that can't be allowed (destroying creators' ability to improve their skills). You might think that's exaggeration, but look at the thousands of tweets from people saying that actually "reviews" like dungeoncrafts that only say NICE things are way better than MEAN ones because "we need to support each other and not be triggering" or whatever. OMG LOL, etc etc

So the OSR does have to be careful here, and put its foot down. Starting with a RESOUNDING CONDEMNATION of paid reviews. There's no such thing as a "paid review": there's a Review (unpaid) or there a FUCKING INFOMERCIAL.

Also, reject in every way anyone who claims to be an influencer but has never produced a successful game. Those people will be absolute poison to the OSR.

I agree. I think the thing we have to do is what we've said we always should have done. If this game converts 5e players, great. But, we gatekeep the shite outta the 5e mentality coming into the OSR culture.

And admit it, there is an OSR culture, whether you like it or not. The OSR, like legionofmyth says about gaming, can be for everybody. That doesn't mean it is for everybody.

Don't bring your gray goo, everyone is the same, mentality to the OSR. Your want that, stay with WotC. In the OSR is archetype, there's racial bonus' and minus'. If you don't like it, don't play in the OSR sandbox.