Is getting a free copy of the item to be reviewed low-scale payola or just the way most reviews work?

Quote from: GeekyBugle on March 05, 2023, 09:08:17 PM
Since I can't comment in the red list thread I'll say it her because it seems the best place to do so:

#GamerGate started because of corrupt and incestuous relationships between the games journos and certain game designers.

The creator of Shadowdark paying to QuestingBeast (and maybe others) to review her game stink to high heaven of the exact same corruption and or incestuous relationships, since I suspect that some of the glowing reviews were due to friendship and not money.

I know it's fashionable to browbeat Pundit but I find myself agreeing with the questions.

Pointing out elements of the game taken from other games isn't a sign of "look, she's profiting from my work!" (I doubt Pundit has that mindset since I TOLD him I was taking his monkey people for my Mayan game and he NEVER mentioned crediting him or anything), it's a sign that it's not a product of her mind alone.

Several people here and on mewe have agreed the game doesn't seem all that innovative, so why all the glowing reviews?

I think this is a fair question.

Greetings!

Interesting, GeekyBugle!

As far as Kelsey's Shadowdark promotion and marketing goes--and the numerous glowing reviews--I don't think there is anything nefarious or corrupt going on. Questing Beast requires everyone to payfor reviews, as I understand. Professor Dungeon Master, of Dungeon Craft, has a long-standing policy of only reviewing games that he likes. Why? Because, as he has explained, he doesn't want to waste his time on products that he doesn't enjoy. He also doesn't get any satisfaction or enjoyment from being negative. So, there you go. That seems reasonable to me. Runehammer, another game designer and YouTube content creator--famous for ICRPG--is also an artist. Furthermore, he is also one of the artists involved with doing work for Shadowdark. THEN--all three of them are also personal friends with Kelsey of Shadowdark. I would think that anyone would want their friends to support their efforts and products. So, that all seems reasonable to me as well. As far as accuracy and preference goes, well, how have you reacted to previous reviews and recommendations by any of the above? Dave Thaumavore has also been very positive, as well as DM Bloodworth. In my experience, most of these people have long demonstrated preferences and appreciation for games, styles, and rules that I myself enjoy. To me, that is most important. Having said that, these individual's have a long and pretty solid track record as far as I am concerned. That doesn't mean that I always agree with them--but I look at their long-term consistency, over time.

It is a relatively small community and industry. Some people are far better and more skilled at making friends and socializing with others. Meanwhile, others are often negative and maladjusted, and don't have many friends, or people that enjoy working with them. People that are friendly, and nice, and sociable are generally more successful or at least succeed more easily and faster--than people who simply aren't. That being a reality doesn't mean that some people simply must be nefarious, incestuous, and otherwise corrupt.

Concerning the game--indeed, much of it is not particularly new, or absolutely original. As I've said before, most ideas have inspired everyone else, and you have many people arriving at similar conclusions--just getting to the destination may have been different. I think the real appreciation for Shadowdark comes from several factors--the wonderful artwork; the crisp layout; the terse, and direct presentation; and the gathering together of a dozen different ideas and elements from a dozen and more sources--OSE, AD&D, OD&D, DCC, Five Torches Deep, Deathbringer, ICRPG--and presenting them all with her own spin and interpretation, all in ONE BOOK. Then, you add on cool advertising videos, and a slick marketing campaign, and that all adds up to a very popular game product.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on March 05, 2023, 10:26:04 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on March 05, 2023, 09:08:17 PM
Since I can't comment in the red list thread I'll say it her because it seems the best place to do so:

#GamerGate started because of corrupt and incestuous relationships between the games journos and certain game designers.

The creator of Shadowdark paying to QuestingBeast (and maybe others) to review her game stink to high heaven of the exact same corruption and or incestuous relationships, since I suspect that some of the glowing reviews were due to friendship and not money.

I know it's fashionable to browbeat Pundit but I find myself agreeing with the questions.

Pointing out elements of the game taken from other games isn't a sign of "look, she's profiting from my work!" (I doubt Pundit has that mindset since I TOLD him I was taking his monkey people for my Mayan game and he NEVER mentioned crediting him or anything), it's a sign that it's not a product of her mind alone.

Several people here and on mewe have agreed the game doesn't seem all that innovative, so why all the glowing reviews?

I think this is a fair question.

Greetings!

Interesting, GeekyBugle!

As far as Kelsey's Shadowdark promotion and marketing goes--and the numerous glowing reviews--I don't think there is anything nefarious or corrupt going on. Questing Beast requires everyone to payfor reviews, as I understand. Professor Dungeon Master, of Dungeon Craft, has a long-standing policy of only reviewing games that he likes. Why? Because, as he has explained, he doesn't want to waste his time on products that he doesn't enjoy. He also doesn't get any satisfaction or enjoyment from being negative. So, there you go. That seems reasonable to me. Runehammer, another game designer and YouTube content creator--famous for ICRPG--is also an artist. Furthermore, he is also one of the artists involved with doing work for Shadowdark. THEN--all three of them are also personal friends with Kelsey of Shadowdark. I would think that anyone would want their friends to support their efforts and products. So, that all seems reasonable to me as well. As far as accuracy and preference goes, well, how have you reacted to previous reviews and recommendations by any of the above? Dave Thaumavore has also been very positive, as well as DM Bloodworth. In my experience, most of these people have long demonstrated preferences and appreciation for games, styles, and rules that I myself enjoy. To me, that is most important. Having said that, these individual's have a long and pretty solid track record as far as I am concerned. That doesn't mean that I always agree with them--but I look at their long-term consistency, over time.

It is a relatively small community and industry. Some people are far better and more skilled at making friends and socializing with others. Meanwhile, others are often negative and maladjusted, and don't have many friends, or people that enjoy working with them. People that are friendly, and nice, and sociable are generally more successful or at least succeed more easily and faster--than people who simply aren't. That being a reality doesn't mean that some people simply must be nefarious, incestuous, and otherwise corrupt.

Concerning the game--indeed, much of it is not particularly new, or absolutely original. As I've said before, most ideas have inspired everyone else, and you have many people arriving at similar conclusions--just getting to the destination may have been different. I think the real appreciation for Shadowdark comes from several factors--the wonderful artwork; the crisp layout; the terse, and direct presentation; and the gathering together of a dozen different ideas and elements from a dozen and more sources--OSE, AD&D, OD&D, DCC, Five Torches Deep, Deathbringer, ICRPG--and presenting them all with her own spin and interpretation, all in ONE BOOK. Then, you add on cool advertising videos, and a slick marketing campaign, and that all adds up to a very popular game product.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Game Journos were also giving glowing reviews to the games by their friends.

It's still corruption (Nepotism), even if no money changed hands, the fact that QB charges everyone for his reviews doesn't make it any better on his part, in fact it makes it worst.

No, you are just remaining dumb.

If you have an issue with Questing Beast maybe breaking FCC rules, take it up with him. Or narc him out to the FCC as they monitor nothing. Zero traction on the KS itself.

Quote from: Myrdin Potter on March 05, 2023, 10:55:42 PM
No, you are just remaining dumb.

If you have an issue with Questing Beast maybe breaking FCC rules, take it up with him. Or narc him out to the FCC as they monitor nothing. Zero traction on the KS itself.

"All your bases are belong to us"

Yet you dare call other's dumb.

As for the second paragraph: WTAF?

Quote from: Myrdin Potter on March 05, 2023, 10:05:11 PM
It is a dumb question when aimed at the Kickstarter which everyone expects to have glowing marketing videos on the campaign page. Right down to the friends and family push. No one expects that the Kickstarter page has anything but fluff marketing videos so there is zero corruption there.

If you want to mount up and tilt at windmills, go ask Questing Beast why he does not label his reviews as paid as per the FCC rules. Especially if he includes affiliate links.

If you are going to huff and puff about the Kickstarter, then you are just showing that you lack sophistication and ability to parse reality.

he does label them as paid, or at least youtube does. Theres a little banner at the beginimg of the video. I only noticed thanks to this issue that its included on moat if hia recent videos. Some have some shirt company aponsoring but i assume the videos where he never mentions a sponsor are paid reviews since the paid promotion banner still appears.

Quote from: Myrdin Potter on March 05, 2023, 10:05:11 PM
It is a dumb question when aimed at the Kickstarter which everyone expects to have glowing marketing videos on the campaign page. Right down to the friends and family push. No one expects that the Kickstarter page has anything but fluff marketing videos so there is zero corruption there.

If you want to mount up and tilt at windmills, go ask Questing Beast why he does not label his reviews as paid as per the FCC rules. Especially if he includes affiliate links.

If you are going to huff and puff about the Kickstarter, then you are just showing that you lack sophistication and ability to parse reality.

Who said ANYTHING  about KS? Not me!

As for QB, yes, he should tell upfront it's an infomercial and not a review, FCC or not FCC it's a matter of integrity, something I guess you're way too sophisticated to have or understand.

Who said anything about the fucking kickstarter!?

Have you finished white knighting? She's not gonna fuck you dude, or maybe it's QB you're simping for?

Quote from: Ruprecht on March 05, 2023, 10:11:06 PM
Is getting a free copy of the item to be reviewed low-scale payola or just the way most reviews work?

That's regarded as legitimate, but should still be disclosed during the review. I was just watching a review of Army Painter Speedpaints, the reviewer disclosed she got the sample bottles free from Army Painter. I have no problem with that and it's very common. I don't think $50 or $400 to do a review is the same thing.

Quote from: Chainsaw on March 05, 2023, 07:25:56 PM
The art's pretty cool, she may have a few good rules (original or not) and I have zero issues with using KS, but I already have a *ton* of great RPG material I'll never use, so I'm passing on this the same way I pass on hundreds of others. I wish her good luck!

My impression from the Quickstart is - nice art, several interesting rules tweaks on OD&D/OSR norms, and a very minimalist writing style that is practically Haiku-like. I find the GM & play advice the most interesting thing and I intend to refer to it for ideas.  But basically this is still just another OSR near-clone. And the Kickstarter pledge levels are notably high; much higher than I'd be interested in supporting.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 01, 2023, 10:24:18 AM

Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on March 01, 2023, 10:14:05 AM
The whole torch burning for an hour in real time that these youtubers seem to thing is gold is just stupid. No race....er ancestries have darkvision thing I don't particularly care for either.

I appreciate the attempt to grapple with the issue of making light sources interesting again, which is what it comes off as to me.  The only thing I don't like about it is that if I ever publish, people will think I copied that idea from Shadowdark, when in fact I've had no races with night vision of any kind  (bar one with mild adjustment for the standard poor light penalties) since the start of my testing over a year ago.

In all fairness, the "characters with no night vision" thing traces back to OD&D in 1974. Arneson didn't give PCs any sort of night vision and if they hired a monster then the monster lost its darkvision. He wanted the dark to seem mysterious and dangerous from the get-go.

Quote from: finarvyn on March 06, 2023, 06:09:47 AM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 01, 2023, 10:24:18 AM

Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on March 01, 2023, 10:14:05 AM
The whole torch burning for an hour in real time that these youtubers seem to thing is gold is just stupid. No race....er ancestries have darkvision thing I don't particularly care for either.

I appreciate the attempt to grapple with the issue of making light sources interesting again, which is what it comes off as to me.  The only thing I don't like about it is that if I ever publish, people will think I copied that idea from Shadowdark, when in fact I've had no races with night vision of any kind  (bar one with mild adjustment for the standard poor light penalties) since the start of my testing over a year ago.

In all fairness, the "characters with no night vision" thing traces back to OD&D in 1974. Arneson didn't give PCs any sort of night vision and if they hired a monster then the monster lost its darkvision. He wanted the dark to seem mysterious and dangerous from the get-go.

Absolutely.  My difference is that that most races don't have it at all.  It's not just that they lose it.  Thus there are sometimes light sources in the dungeon, because the goblins or whatever also need them.  But more broadly, the kind of person who would assume "influence" from Shadowdark wouldn't know any of that. 

Note, this is nothing against Shadowdark or its creator.  It's not her fault that some of her buyers will be shallow and/or ignorant.

Quote from: Tasty_Wind on March 05, 2023, 08:49:49 PM

Quote from: S'mon on March 04, 2023, 05:29:49 PM

Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on March 04, 2023, 05:21:31 PMIn the OSR is archetype, there's racial bonus' and minus'. If you don't like it, don't play in the OSR sandbox.

BX/BECMI D&D and its OSR derivatives don't have racial attribute mods.

TBF, BX/Becmi has race as class, which still puts one in the mindset of "while these races are human-like in their appearance, their cultures, mindsets, and goals are alien to humanity".
There are no black elves or Asian dwarves, but there are black and Asian humans,  because while humanity may not be immortal or have a natural resistance to magic, their strength lies in their adaptability, both physical and mental.

The original argument is without racial attribute mods, it doesn't match the OSR archetype. The add-on was around grey-goo races (or ancestries in this case).

Bringing up race as class is shifting goalposts. But fine, they shifted, so...OD&D does not have racial attribute modifications. OD&D also does not have race as class.

In the countless OSR sacred cow debates, you will see things around the original six attributes, AC, saving throws, reaction rolls, some debate vancian magic, etc. Nobody says, Elves must get +1 dexterity, -1 constitution.

Also, Shadowdark has racial bonuses. Just not to attributes.

And just to be clear, I am not purchasing Shadowdark. It looks like a good product, but I already have good products in this area, namely OD&D

Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on March 04, 2023, 05:21:31 PM

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.

There's a culture of how OSR designers interact with each other and promote their own and each other's work. What there is NOT is a "Community", which is a dogwhistle for a situation where people create an artificial hierarchy run not by the people most competent at design but by celebrity and influence, and demand that the hobby kowtow to them in the name of all kinds of groups including many that don't even play the game, much less design.

Quote from: Ruprecht on March 05, 2023, 10:11:06 PM
Is getting a free copy of the item to be reviewed low-scale payola or just the way most reviews work?

The simple answer to that question is that it is standard procedure that a publisher send a review copy at their expense, and it is understood that this does not include any requirement of favoritism from the reviewer.

There are some complexities though, because it certainly seems like certain companies send things for "review" (in the RPG field, WotC) with the understanding that you must do a glowingly favorable review if they're ever going to send you more "merch" again (outside the hobby other companies apparently do this with youtubers as well, like Disney).

Quote from: S'mon on March 06, 2023, 02:35:24 AM

Quote from: Ruprecht on March 05, 2023, 10:11:06 PM
Is getting a free copy of the item to be reviewed low-scale payola or just the way most reviews work?

That's regarded as legitimate, but should still be disclosed during the review. I was just watching a review of Army Painter Speedpaints, the reviewer disclosed she got the sample bottles free from Army Painter. I have no problem with that and it's very common. I don't think $50 or $400 to do a review is the same thing.

Yes; for example I make it clear that anyone who wants me to do a review must send a print edition of the actual final commercial product. Partly I did this because if I was reviewing PDFs I'd have a waiting list so long people would see their babies get to college before my review would be out, but also because this avoids any indication of partiality or favoritism that could be generated by someone sending me a print copy rather than "just" a PDF (or to accidentally create the impression of that expectation among publishers).