Here are my modest and meek thoughts on this event.

Mildly intresting blog post, Pundy.

One thing did attract my attention was the "games not played even by their designers."

(When did games stop being written and start being designed?  For that matter, when did computers stop being programmed and start being "developed?"  But I digress.)

Anyway... back in the late 90s and early 00s a model railroad loose group, the Layout Design SIG, got hit with a huge influx of people who weren't interested in model trains, or real trains, but in achieving some sort of "perfect" model railroad layout.  It reached the point where people actually trying to build a railroad layout spun their wheels for literal years because every design would be tossed out onto the forum to be criticized... by over a thousand people!  You can't get that many people to agree on "OXYGEN IS GOOD," never mind something with any element of personal taste to it.

I don't know what the denoument of that was, because about 2005 or so I totally lost interest in the LDSig.  But the notion of "hobby artifact designed by people not actually interested in the hobby" seemed reminiscent to me of the "games not played by their designers."

No great philosophical insight, just something mildly interesting that occurred to me.

Quote from: robiswrong;863058There's a wide difference between "I want to create My Thing" and "I want to create something for other people to enjoy."

And great designers exist in the intersection of the two.

Quote from: Doughdee222;863321Am I the only person, when I see Future Villain Band my mind says "Future Bond Villain"?

We need Maxwell's Silver Hammer now. :cool:

Quote from: RunningLaser;863178I mean, how do you know sifting through it all what is good criticism and what's just teeth gnashing?

Follow up questions are hugely helpful.

It's not uncommon for a playtester who isn't outgoing verbally to actually has good ideas. Instead of letting them just say "I did not like that part" (or worse, stay silent), don't get defensive, but ask them follow up questions to probe. Once the playtester sees that you are not being defensive just inquisitive, they often open up and give you a deeper perspective. Not always, but often enough.

Quote from: tenbones;863223BOOM! I squared the circle, bitches!

Damn it tenbones! Now I'm never gonna be able to invent the wheel!

Quote from: Omega;863248Conventions are a good place to test a game.

Agreed.

At the LA cons, its common for name designers to bring one playtest to the con to test out.

Quote from: Doughdee222;863321Am I the only person, when I see Future Villain Band my mind says "Future Bond Villain"?

Now I see it!

Also, there's a great rock band in Los Angeles called Future Villains that opens for Steel Panther so I always assume FVB is the lead singer.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863336But the notion of "hobby artifact designed by people not actually interested in the hobby" seemed reminiscent to me of the "games not played by their designers."

Not as uncommon as all of that.  I've got my name on several MERP books without ever playing MERP.  I've got two DC Heroes credits; never played the game.  I got my start writing Gamelords' stuff without ever touching their fiddly weird VD&D system.  I bet anyone who has significant ongoing income from RPGs has had to have written for systems they've never actually played.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863266Get drunk, dance with girls, and listen to some extremely evil music?

Man, I wish I had not been in the Geek clique growing up.  I might have had a chance to do some of that...

Quote from: Doughdee222;863321Am I the only person, when I see Future Villain Band my mind says "Future Bond Villain"?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863323That is how I always read his name.

Quote from: Bren;863326Me three.

It's NOT?

Quote from: flyingmice;863329You mean it's *BAND* villain? Huh!

-clash

I just realized that TODAY!  Right now. Nov. 7 2015, and I think I remember the name from the TBP days!

Quote from: RPGPundit;863330Here are my modest and meek thoughts on this event.

One quick thing, Pundit, apparently there IS a Pathfinder for 4e, isn't that what 13th Age was supposed to be?

I could be wrong, I've not looked into it, though.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863336(When did games stop being written and start being designed?  For that matter, when did computers stop being programmed and start being "developed?"  But I digress.)

I'm going to digress, because it is actually related IMO. Disclosure: I'm a software developer.

Computer programs are, or should be, "developed" when they are complex in some manner. Either in what they do, what they work with, or how they work.

At work, I take scripts/algorithms which have been "programmed" or "written" by biologists, statisticians, or other forms of cancer researcher, to work with their individual data set. I then "develop" them into a program that works with (hopefully) anyone's data set.

I also fix problems like "you're using UCSC's transcripts file as if it were a gene annotation file, which it isn't, which will give you incorrect results", which again is a "development" issue. An issue requiring knowledge, inside and outside of code syntax, in order to address properly. As opposed to a "programming" issue of having the path or file name wrong.

RPGs often get designed because they have a lot of moving parts that have to fit together, and a lot of continuity. As opposed to few moving parts, which may have been designed, but the bulk of the work is the writing, rather than the designing. (See the 64 page RPG thread for example.)

And for a lot of people "designer" sounds more prestigious than "writer". And I think nowadays, the designer may not be the actual writer (as in word-smith). In software development, the latest "fashionable form of idiocy" is "software architects" that can't write or design code.

Quote from: Spinachcat;863369Follow up questions are hugely helpful.

It's not uncommon for a playtester who isn't outgoing verbally to actually has good ideas. Instead of letting them just say "I did not like that part" (or worse, stay silent), don't get defensive, but ask them follow up questions to probe. Once the playtester sees that you are not being defensive just inquisitive, they often open up and give you a deeper perspective. Not always, but often enough.

Ask them why. Make sure they understand, you aren't upset that they don't like it. You want to understand *why* they don't like it.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;863376One quick thing, Pundit, apparently there IS a Pathfinder for 4e, isn't that what 13th Age was supposed to be?

I could be wrong, I've not looked into it, though.

  I have, and 13th Age is more a 3E/4E/narrative hybrid.

  Of course, there are several other factors that may be contributing to the absence of a Pathfinder for 4E: The lack of the ability to do much of the system design through copy and paste from the SRD, the centrality of the still-functioning D&D Insider to so many 4E fans' approach to the game, the fact that the books are generally not hard to find and are now available in PDF format, and the lack of any third parties that depend on 4E product for their livelihood.

   Once DDI goes down, and once the hostility fostered by the edition wars and poor transition (and fed by Pundit and his ilk) dies down a bit, we may see some more serious efforts at retrocloning the game, or a new appreciation for its merits.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863336(When did games stop being written and start being designed?  For that matter, when did computers stop being programmed and start being "developed?"  But I digress.)

Blame it on Military-Industrial Complex of Free World and modern telecommunication system with digitalized communication network that allowed us to create weapon systems rather than weapons. You can see it in practice in impossibly complex modern F-4 Phantom II jet which is so complicated and filled with electronics you need two men to fly it.

Oh yes. The software engineering was coined to meet needs of Free World in 1960's and you all in civilian world got interested about it in mid-1970's when "Mythical Man Month" came out and secret techniques used by IBM for their massive military software projects got spilled out in plain English.

The main reason we went from writing to design was that things got complex.

The main point why we design anything is that it is professional way to look at things and ponder issues that might look invisible to hobbyist but will bite you in the ass when your money is in it - like marketing to an audience and importance of different kinds of play testing. This is why I deplore complete lack of reading about game design. People do not seem to actually want to study game design at all. It is all either personal experience war stories of doing things like some old fart has done 20, 30 or 40 years or invention of buzzwords in RPG forums.

Quote from: Tod13;863399I'm going to digress, because it is actually related IMO. Disclosure: I'm a software developer.

Computer programs are, or should be, "developed" when they are complex in some manner. Either in what they do, what they work with, or how they work.

At work, I take scripts/algorithms which have been "programmed" or "written" by biologists, statisticians, or other forms of cancer researcher, to work with their individual data set. I then "develop" them into a program that works with (hopefully) anyone's data set.

I also fix problems like "you're using UCSC's transcripts file as if it were a gene annotation file, which it isn't, which will give you incorrect results", which again is a "development" issue. An issue requiring knowledge, inside and outside of code syntax, in order to address properly. As opposed to a "programming" issue of having the path or file name wrong.

RPGs often get designed because they have a lot of moving parts that have to fit together, and a lot of continuity. As opposed to few moving parts, which may have been designed, but the bulk of the work is the writing, rather than the designing. (See the 64 page RPG thread for example.)

And for a lot of people "designer" sounds more prestigious than "writer". And I think nowadays, the designer may not be the actual writer (as in word-smith). In software development, the latest "fashionable form of idiocy" is "software architects" that can't write or design code.

I was more taking a dig at the fact that one day my job title changed from "computer programmer" to "software developer" when I was, in point of fact, doing the same damn thing I'd been doing the day before.

I'm also old enough to have lived through the "Who Cut My Cheese" book era.

Quote from: RPGPundit;863330Here are my modest and meek thoughts on this event.

Wait a minute, what's the relationship between D&D4 and the Forge/storygame movement?

Quote from: Frey;863461Wait a minute, what's the relationship between D&D4 and the Forge/storygame movement?

  Pundit is convinced that D&D4 was a concerted effort by the Forge or Forge-sympathetic designers to change D&D into a game more suited to their tastes. The best evidence anyone has come up with is the tight focus of the mechanics and a few designers referring to it as 'gamist', generally after the fact.

  On this point, as on so many, the Pundit makes me think of Matthew 17:21 (or Mark 9:29) and the Inferno, Canto III, verse 28.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863445I was more taking a dig at the fact that one day my job title changed from "computer programmer" to "software developer" when I was, in point of fact, doing the same damn thing I'd been doing the day before.

At my work at a cancer research hospital, job titles that don't really make sense are normal, since it is often easier to change the description of an existing job title than to create a new one.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863445I'm also old enough to have lived through the "Who Cut My Cheese" book era.

Me too. I've been programming professionally for 27+ years. Don't forget the "7 habits" and "servant leader" and "patterns" and "UML". (I worked one place where upper management mindlessly worshiped patterns. It didn't matter what you did, as long as you could name the pattern. Same thing with UML. Didn't matter whether it was right, as long as you had a UML diagram.) The latest seems to be "agile", which isn't, as an excuse not to document requirements.