So, in my mindless scrolling of reddit I stupidly, occasionally do, I read the sjw r/rpg subreddit. In the past couple of months they have talked about rpg's that they've been disappointed in.
And it warms the dead cold cockles of my heart to hear how disappointed they were regarding two in particular.
One is Coyote & Crow and the other is Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Who would have thought that non game designers would flub up those games? Question of the century I think.
A game designed completely for nothing more than an sj virtue signal is bad? But, but how could that be? We all know that these are the only games we should be playing or be labeled as terrible people. ::)
Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on October 10, 2023, 10:53:47 AM
One is Coyote & Crow and the other is Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Who would have thought that non game designers would flub up those games? Question of the century I think.
Coyote and Crow was explicitly racialized. It was a work of hatred first, and everything else was secondary. It is no surprise that it's broadly disliked, and this is before the creator escalated with ludicrous demands and comments that, in fairness, did get him publicity.
But is the Avatar game really made by a non game designer? I know that this game:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/magpiegames/avatar-legends-the-roleplaying-game
Ended up with pretty disappointed users, and that it rehashed another system Magpie had used for a less lucrative IP. But with a kickstarter like that, it's extremely far from a failure. It looks like it was a smashing success, and no matter how disappointed its users are, I suspect they'd all come back around for a second edition.
Assuming that's the game being discussed.
I don't actually believe going woke results in going broke. In a functional free market, it would, but when we're talking about publishing books with political agendas, well, you don't need Larry Fink of BlackRock (https://www.blackrock.com/americas-offshore/en/larry-fink-ceo-letter) or Stephen A. Schwarzman of Black Stone (https://www.standard.co.uk/business/blackstone-diversity-bame-lgbtq-boards-a4572594.html) doing ESG crap and demanding "diversity" quotas behind the scenes (the threat of a bad score and a dumped stock serving as a pretty big stick even for large companies). You don't need heavy weights because books are cheap.
Compared to other mouthpieces of mass media- radio stations, television broadcasts, access to cable, promoted and primary presence on the web and on all the various gadgets everyone carries with them everywhere- publishing is chump change. So are hobbyist forums, subreddits, and everything else in this entire hobby. If someone wants to crap out a make-work SJW-preachpoint screed and call it an RPG every year for decades, while a bunch of leftists slap them with RPG awards for
Bestest Game Evah, well, I'm sure there will be plenty of money for that, and to keep it promoted enough.
To me, at this point, all of that stuff only entertains me because of the haterade videos that Pundit and Pundit-adjacent community members create. The fact that the free market could save us from this tiresome wave of nonsense isn't something I hold out on, because I figure that money will just always flood in and renew everything.
But it's still nice when something goes woke and actually loses money as a result. Hiring people based on skin color and politics instead of ability has definitely hurt WotC's book sales, as Pundit pointed out in his last video. Where the market is big enough to matter, we can see it trying to reject this kind of nonsense. That is legit satisfying.
Their failure isn't because of the ideology. These game designers fundamentally fail to make a game because they aren't even interested in making a game. These product are to dishonestly sell a low effort package. So that we are clear, I am calling these products out as intentional confidence schemes.
When you dig into the background of the products you're talking about, you'll quickly see that it's a package of shit crated by people from the art world, not gamers. Fake RPGs are just one more grift along with comics, children's books, community projects, etc. I'm not saying all artist are con men, I'm saying that the art community is a good place for con men to ply their trade and learn the craft of selling low effort materials.
I know there's a lot of people that just play because it's their hobby and then they turn their setting, collection of house rules, or some other homebrew into a product. Even when it fails, even when it's garbage, you can see that it's an attempt to make something playable. There are certainly left leaning products like this too but that's not the same as the recent flood of high visual impact product with an obvious failure to play test the mechanics.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th edition has it bad right now with the critical reception from fans. This is especially hilarious because the game was a proto-woke nightmare when it first released in the early 90s.
Quote from: BadApple on October 10, 2023, 12:46:35 PM
When you dig into the background of the products you're talking about, you'll quickly see that it's a package of shit crated by people from the art world, not gamers. Fake RPGs are just one more grift along with comics, children's books, community projects, etc. I'm not saying all artist are con men, I'm saying that the art community is a good place for con men to ply their trade and learn the craft of selling low effort materials. I know there's a lot of people that just play because it's their hobby and then they turn their setting, collection of house rules, or some other homebrew into a product. Even when it fails, even when it's garbage, you can see that it's an attempt to make something playable. There are certainly left leaning products like this too but that's not the same as the recent flood of high visual impact product with an obvious failure to play test the mechanics.
Historically, there's a category especially of licensed games that have good art and marketing but are low-effort generic rules at best. Back in the 1990s, I'd call out West End Games' Masterbook this. WEG put a bunch of design into Ghostbusters, Star Wars, and Torg -- but then they rolled out low-effort adaptations like Indiana Jones, Necroscope, Species, Tales from the Crypt, Tank Girl, World of Aden, and Hercules & Xena -- all of which were just sort of cursory book-making for fans. Take generic Torg rules, throw in a handful of customizations, and add a lot of art and filler text from the series. In the early 2000s, Decipher made similar with their Star Trek RPG and Lord of the Rings RPG.
I played Decipher LotR, and I wouldn't call it a fake RPG, but it was poor and low-effort game design with a lot of stuff that was clearly not playtested. Though, there are a ton of amateurish, badly-designed RPGs out there - and plenty of people have fun playing them.
It seems possible Avatar: The Last Airbender is in a similar category, but I haven't read it, so I don't know.
I have read Coyote & Crow, and while I think it's too difficult on learning curve to be interested in, it is by no means low-effort. It is clearly a labor of love from the author, who worked hard to put together an original system. It might not be good, but it isn't low-effort.
Quote from: jhkim on October 10, 2023, 03:51:43 PM
I have read Coyote & Crow, and while I think it's too difficult on learning curve to be interested in, it is by no means low-effort. It is clearly a labor of love from the author, who worked hard to put together an original system. It might not be good, but it isn't low-effort.
I have a copy of it right here in front of me and the mechanics are shit sandwich of stoner ideas that haven't been ironed out. It's complicated like a shitty Portland street mural collage rather than complicated like a Swiss clock. Just because there's lots of part that doesn't mean that it's a product of committed design and high quality crafting.
I was going to do a review but it's literally not worth my effort.
Its hard to find SJWs that regularly actually play RPGs, rarer still are the ones that buy them. Combine these two rarities together and not so hard to understand why blatant SJW games failed. It was geared to a market that does not exist.
Quote from: BadApple on October 10, 2023, 04:12:39 PM
I have a copy of it right here in front of me and the mechanics are shit sandwich of stoner ideas that haven't been ironed out. It's complicated like a shitty Portland street mural collage rather than complicated like a Swiss clock. Just because there's lots of part that doesn't mean that it's a product of committed design and high quality crafting.
I was going to do a review but it's literally not worth my effort.
Something can take a lot of effort and still be utter garbage. If the guy was truly committed to just running a con he could've slapped FATE or PBtA on it and called it a day. I haven't bothered ever looking at it so I have no opinion on whether lots of work got put into it or not, but the guy could simply be a shitty designer rather than a scammer.
That said, lots of effort from a talentless hack does not in itself redeem a broken-ass game. FATAL probably took a lot of work too, but that hardly improved it. I agree with jhkim about those cookie-cutter property RPGs that cluttered up store shelves back in the 90s; those things sucked and were clearly money grabs even at the time. I avoided them like the plague.
Quote from: Valatar on October 10, 2023, 05:19:52 PM
Something can take a lot of effort and still be utter garbage. If the guy was truly committed to just running a con he could've slapped FATE or PBtA on it and called it a day. I haven't bothered ever looking at it so I have no opinion on whether lots of work got put into it or not, but the guy could simply be a shitty designer rather than a scammer.
That said, lots of effort from a talentless hack does not in itself redeem a broken-ass game. FATAL probably took a lot of work too, but that hardly improved it. I agree with jhkim about those cookie-cutter property RPGs that cluttered up store shelves back in the 90s; those things sucked and were clearly money grabs even at the time. I avoided them like the plague.
Absolutely. There are some games that I hate and are terrible designs, but that doesn't mean that they're a scam or lazily-done. (I've never read FATAL so I have no opinion either way on it.)
There are low-effort RPGs. I gave some before. Another example that comes to mind is the Cortex systems: Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, Smallville, Leverage, and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. These were mostly low-effort adaptations of the generic Cortex system to a property. They may have put more effort into MHR, but my impression is still that it isn't heavy on game design.
There are good licensed RPGs, though. James Bond 007 was excellent. WEG's Ghostbusters and Star Wars took a lot of effort to create a good design that works for the setting. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG also thoroughly reworked the Unisystem to fit the action.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 10, 2023, 02:11:42 PM
Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th edition has it bad right now with the critical reception from fans. This is especially hilarious because the game was a proto-woke nightmare when it first released in the early 90s.
This brings me joy. ;D
Quote from: Valatar on October 10, 2023, 05:19:52 PM
Quote from: BadApple on October 10, 2023, 04:12:39 PM
I have a copy of it right here in front of me and the mechanics are shit sandwich of stoner ideas that haven't been ironed out. It's complicated like a shitty Portland street mural collage rather than complicated like a Swiss clock. Just because there's lots of part that doesn't mean that it's a product of committed design and high quality crafting.
I was going to do a review but it's literally not worth my effort.
Something can take a lot of effort and still be utter garbage. If the guy was truly committed to just running a con he could've slapped FATE or PBtA on it and called it a day. I haven't bothered ever looking at it so I have no opinion on whether lots of work got put into it or not, but the guy could simply be a shitty designer rather than a scammer.
That said, lots of effort from a talentless hack does not in itself redeem a broken-ass game. FATAL probably took a lot of work too, but that hardly improved it. I agree with jhkim about those cookie-cutter property RPGs that cluttered up store shelves back in the 90s; those things sucked and were clearly money grabs even at the time. I avoided them like the plague.
Yeah... you're never going to convince me that they did more than throw some ideas up on a whiteboard and spent a couple of hours stitching them together.
Quote from: BadApple on October 10, 2023, 06:26:47 PM
Yeah... you're never going to convince me that they did more than throw some ideas up on a whiteboard and spent a couple of hours stitching them together.
It's going to come down to semantics. A person beating his toes repeatedly with a sledgehammer is putting in a lot of "effort". It's "work" lifting that hammer, technically and figuratively. The "accomplishment" is somewhat less, however. Take that into the mental realm where "work" is defined as worrying really hard about irrelevant things. With similar "accomplishment" produced.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on October 10, 2023, 06:44:51 PM
Quote from: BadApple on October 10, 2023, 06:26:47 PM
Yeah... you're never going to convince me that they did more than throw some ideas up on a whiteboard and spent a couple of hours stitching them together.
It's going to come down to semantics. A person beating his toes repeatedly with a sledgehammer is putting in a lot of "effort". It's "work" lifting that hammer, technically and figuratively. The "accomplishment" is somewhat less, however. Take that into the mental realm where "work" is defined as worrying really hard about irrelevant things. With similar "accomplishment" produced.
I don't care if it took them 10 minutes or four years if they didn't actually follow through on making it all work the way it was intended. If a team of super geniuses spend a day crafting the greatest game system ever and they play tested it and ran all the math then it's excellent and they put in the effort. If, as I suspect with this, a group of guys got together, got stoned, and spent a year half assing it, it's low effort.
I've seen high effort, low quality shit before. There is a difference.
Quote from: oggsmash on October 10, 2023, 04:16:47 PM
Its hard to find SJWs that regularly actually play RPGs, rarer still are the ones that buy them. Combine these two rarities together and not so hard to understand why blatant SJW games failed. It was geared to a market that does not exist.
This.
RPG's are still niche. They're more accepted these days, but real players are still a minority. Now let's make a niche of a niche. Yeah, that customer base is tiny.
If I ever get around to making an RPG, it's not going to reference any woke talking points.
Hell, RPGs are already more egalitarian than they should be by not having males and females roll different stats to reflect male size, speed, and strength averages. A female fighter is just as good as a male.
Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 10, 2023, 07:23:11 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on October 10, 2023, 04:16:47 PM
Its hard to find SJWs that regularly actually play RPGs, rarer still are the ones that buy them. Combine these two rarities together and not so hard to understand why blatant SJW games failed. It was geared to a market that does not exist.
This.
RPG's are still niche. They're more accepted these days, but real players are still a minority. Now let's make a niche of a niche. Yeah, that customer base is tiny.
If I ever get around to making an RPG, it's not going to reference any woke talking points.
I don't see how this adds up. You claim that SJW buyers are even rarer than players, but Coyote & Crow made $1 million in its Kickstarter, despite being an unknown designer with no track record.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/connoralexander/coyote-and-crow
And Avatar Legends RPG made $9.5 million for its Kickstarter, which is the biggest RPG Kickstarter ever, even more than 5E products.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/magpiegames/avatar-legends-the-roleplaying-game
Those may well be flashes in the pan, but that still suggests market potential.
Quote from: jhkim on October 10, 2023, 10:45:31 PM
Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 10, 2023, 07:23:11 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on October 10, 2023, 04:16:47 PM
Its hard to find SJWs that regularly actually play RPGs, rarer still are the ones that buy them. Combine these two rarities together and not so hard to understand why blatant SJW games failed. It was geared to a market that does not exist.
This.
RPG's are still niche. They're more accepted these days, but real players are still a minority. Now let's make a niche of a niche. Yeah, that customer base is tiny.
If I ever get around to making an RPG, it's not going to reference any woke talking points.
I don't see how this adds up. You claim that SJW buyers are even rarer than players, but Coyote & Crow made $1 million in its Kickstarter, despite being an unknown designer with no track record.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/connoralexander/coyote-and-crow
And Avatar Legends RPG made $9.5 million for its Kickstarter, which is the biggest RPG Kickstarter ever, even more than 5E products.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/magpiegames/avatar-legends-the-roleplaying-game
Those may well be flashes in the pan, but that still suggests market potential.
Greetings!
Come on, Jhkim! Yes, he was probably writing with some hyperbole. After all, I myself have hedged against the popular narrative that WOKE people are somehow all unemployed, broke troglodytes that never buy anything.
Somewhere I even cited evidence, but I argued *bullshit* Lots of Woke fucking Liberals have very high-paying jobs, and make *BUCKETS* of money--more than a few of them are also very much under the age of 40, as well. Many in the 20's or early 30's, swimming in money from having fantastic jobs.
What's the term I'm thinking of? A Dichotomy? Two seemingly contradictory things may both be true all at the same time.
Having said that--yes, there are good numbers of very prosperous Woke Liberals. There are also, however, a huge number of them that are unemployed and broke, or barely capable of holding down a part time job at fucking Starbucks.
Then, you have seemingly large numbers--testified by some industry study somewhere--that there is a large segment of Woke Liberals that buy trainloads of gaming books--but seldom actually play RPG's at all.
A subset of these Liberal types--generally--are these extra Woke Hippy types that also just buy game books to be "Coffe Table" books that they look at, read, and gibber to their friends about--but again, such books are seldom actually played with in games by such people.
Am I making sense?
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Avatar at least has a huge fanbase and plenty of people willing to shell out for it, which make it even sadder that such a trash product got released for it. It deserved much better. And Coyote and Crow got a huge boost from random medias fawning all over Indian Wakanda, product sight-unseen. In both cases people were putting money on the table because of name recognition or hype, not because they were proven contenders. Because they weren't released yet, it would've been impossible. I'll note that post-release both of them basically dropped off the map, aside from an occasional puff piece still talking up how innovative C&C's setting is and with no mention about the mechanics of the system.
Quote from: SHARK on October 10, 2023, 11:07:42 PM
Come on, Jhkim! Yes, he was probably writing with some hyperbole. After all, I myself have hedged against the popular narrative that WOKE people are somehow all unemployed, broke troglodytes that never buy anything.
Somewhere I even cited evidence, but I argued *bullshit* Lots of Woke fucking Liberals have very high-paying jobs, and make *BUCKETS* of money--more than a few of them are also very much under the age of 40, as well. Many in the 20's or early 30's, swimming in money from having fantastic jobs.
What's the term I'm thinking of? A Dichotomy? Two seemingly contradictory things may both be true all at the same time.
Having said that--yes, there are good numbers of very prosperous Woke Liberals. There are also, however, a huge number of them that are unemployed and broke, or barely capable of holding down a part time job at fucking Starbucks.
Then, you have seemingly large numbers--testified by some industry study somewhere--that there is a large segment of Woke Liberals that buy trainloads of gaming books--but seldom actually play RPG's at all.
A subset of these Liberal types--generally--are these extra Woke Hippy types that also just buy game books to be "Coffe Table" books that they look at, read, and gibber to their friends about--but again, such books are seldom actually played with in games by such people.
Am I making sense?
Sort of, but there's an extreme of hyperbole and "SJWs suck" that moves into head-in-the-sand ignorance. If a $9.5 million Kickstarter and the biggest RPG Kickstarter in history is being touted as proof that there's no market for SJW games, then that's past the line.
I haven't read the Avatar Legends RPG and have no opinion about it. From reviews, it apparently adapts the system from Masks: The New Generation. It has a list of eight writers, who were probably contracted. It's possible that it's like a bunch of previous low-effort licensed RPGs from the 1990s onwards like Masterbook, Decipher, and Cortex. That wouldn't surprise me, though it might be more work. I'm sure those previous lines made money - that's why the company kept making new adaptations.
Coyote & Crow is a different beast. One might dislike the system, but it isn't the same model of production. It's a startup RPG from a new designer, with no pre-existing setting or system that it adapts.
Quote from: jhkim on October 11, 2023, 02:34:45 AM
I haven't read the Avatar Legends RPG and have no opinion about it. From reviews, it apparently adapts the system from Masks: The New Generation.
Which is the reason the game is seen as a failure despite having caught a ton of money on Kickstarter.
You can't use a system that practically treats fights as window dressing (PbtA; the fact that is also a bad system to boot doesn't help) and use it to model a world where
martial arts are used to shape elements (and where, therefore, fights must be detailed and well simulated). You're missing the point by a couple of lightyears if you use PbtA for an Avatar game.
Quote from: Valatar on October 11, 2023, 12:02:44 AM
Avatar at least has a huge fanbase and plenty of people willing to shell out for it, which make it even sadder that such a trash product got released for it. It deserved much better.
I'm one of those fans, and I'm really sad to hear that it got a crap RPG. It really does deserve much better. Maybe someday...
Money generated by a kickstarter is no guarantee of game quality. Whether a game raises several million on KS or less than 50k makes no difference. All that matters is the game play and how many people love the final product and actually play it.
Quote from: jhkim on October 11, 2023, 02:34:45 AM
Quote from: SHARK on October 10, 2023, 11:07:42 PM
Come on, Jhkim! Yes, he was probably writing with some hyperbole. After all, I myself have hedged against the popular narrative that WOKE people are somehow all unemployed, broke troglodytes that never buy anything.
Somewhere I even cited evidence, but I argued *bullshit* Lots of Woke fucking Liberals have very high-paying jobs, and make *BUCKETS* of money--more than a few of them are also very much under the age of 40, as well. Many in the 20's or early 30's, swimming in money from having fantastic jobs.
What's the term I'm thinking of? A Dichotomy? Two seemingly contradictory things may both be true all at the same time.
Having said that--yes, there are good numbers of very prosperous Woke Liberals. There are also, however, a huge number of them that are unemployed and broke, or barely capable of holding down a part time job at fucking Starbucks.
Then, you have seemingly large numbers--testified by some industry study somewhere--that there is a large segment of Woke Liberals that buy trainloads of gaming books--but seldom actually play RPG's at all.
A subset of these Liberal types--generally--are these extra Woke Hippy types that also just buy game books to be "Coffe Table" books that they look at, read, and gibber to their friends about--but again, such books are seldom actually played with in games by such people.
Am I making sense?
Sort of, but there's an extreme of hyperbole and "SJWs suck" that moves into head-in-the-sand ignorance. If a $9.5 million Kickstarter and the biggest RPG Kickstarter in history is being touted as proof that there's no market for SJW games, then that's past the line.
I haven't read the Avatar Legends RPG and have no opinion about it. From reviews, it apparently adapts the system from Masks: The New Generation. It has a list of eight writers, who were probably contracted. It's possible that it's like a bunch of previous low-effort licensed RPGs from the 1990s onwards like Masterbook, Decipher, and Cortex. That wouldn't surprise me, though it might be more work. I'm sure those previous lines made money - that's why the company kept making new adaptations.
Coyote & Crow is a different beast. One might dislike the system, but it isn't the same model of production. It's a startup RPG from a new designer, with no pre-existing setting or system that it adapts.
FWIW I think you're right. I have been trying to point this out in other threads too. Of all the hobbies I love, RPGs are the most heavily infested by SJW-types.
Let me expand on that a little. I can think of two reasons why TTRPGs became a canary in a coal mine when it comes to SJW capture:
-RPGs are attractive to people who think of themselves as outsiders, day dreamers, and nerds. Many of these seem to have an irrational hatred of successful business types and cowboy types (both of who can tend to be more conservative)
-RPGs seem to be attractive to people with gender issues, perhaps because role-playing lets you play someone you're not.
Quote from: jhkim on October 11, 2023, 02:34:45 AM
Quote from: SHARK on October 10, 2023, 11:07:42 PM
Come on, Jhkim! Yes, he was probably writing with some hyperbole. After all, I myself have hedged against the popular narrative that WOKE people are somehow all unemployed, broke troglodytes that never buy anything.
Somewhere I even cited evidence, but I argued *bullshit* Lots of Woke fucking Liberals have very high-paying jobs, and make *BUCKETS* of money--more than a few of them are also very much under the age of 40, as well. Many in the 20's or early 30's, swimming in money from having fantastic jobs.
What's the term I'm thinking of? A Dichotomy? Two seemingly contradictory things may both be true all at the same time.
Having said that--yes, there are good numbers of very prosperous Woke Liberals. There are also, however, a huge number of them that are unemployed and broke, or barely capable of holding down a part time job at fucking Starbucks.
Then, you have seemingly large numbers--testified by some industry study somewhere--that there is a large segment of Woke Liberals that buy trainloads of gaming books--but seldom actually play RPG's at all.
A subset of these Liberal types--generally--are these extra Woke Hippy types that also just buy game books to be "Coffe Table" books that they look at, read, and gibber to their friends about--but again, such books are seldom actually played with in games by such people.
Am I making sense?
Sort of, but there's an extreme of hyperbole and "SJWs suck" that moves into head-in-the-sand ignorance. If a $9.5 million Kickstarter and the biggest RPG Kickstarter in history is being touted as proof that there's no market for SJW games, then that's past the line.
I haven't read the Avatar Legends RPG and have no opinion about it. From reviews, it apparently adapts the system from Masks: The New Generation. It has a list of eight writers, who were probably contracted. It's possible that it's like a bunch of previous low-effort licensed RPGs from the 1990s onwards like Masterbook, Decipher, and Cortex. That wouldn't surprise me, though it might be more work. I'm sure those previous lines made money - that's why the company kept making new adaptations.
Coyote & Crow is a different beast. One might dislike the system, but it isn't the same model of production. It's a startup RPG from a new designer, with no pre-existing setting or system that it adapts.
Dude you have to have a head injury if you think everyone who put up money for Avatar is some SJW type. It is a massively popular IP with a massive fan base. Most people buying things anywhere do not bother checking how much the authors rant about white privilege of how much money they gave BLM. Avatar was not marketed specifically as a big woke project. It was marketed behind its MASSIVELY popular ip.... if you are going to look at that as some proof SJWs are a big market to cater to you are not actually looking at the situation with a hint of honesty. Perhaps now you can tell us a tale of the one thing that happened that one time?
Quote from: jhkim on October 10, 2023, 03:51:43 PM
Quote from: BadApple on October 10, 2023, 12:46:35 PM
When you dig into the background of the products you're talking about, you'll quickly see that it's a package of shit crated by people from the art world, not gamers. Fake RPGs are just one more grift along with comics, children's books, community projects, etc. I'm not saying all artist are con men, I'm saying that the art community is a good place for con men to ply their trade and learn the craft of selling low effort materials. I know there's a lot of people that just play because it's their hobby and then they turn their setting, collection of house rules, or some other homebrew into a product. Even when it fails, even when it's garbage, you can see that it's an attempt to make something playable. There are certainly left leaning products like this too but that's not the same as the recent flood of high visual impact product with an obvious failure to play test the mechanics.
Historically, there's a category especially of licensed games that have good art and marketing but are low-effort generic rules at best. Back in the 1990s, I'd call out West End Games' Masterbook this. WEG put a bunch of design into Ghostbusters, Star Wars, and Torg -- but then they rolled out low-effort adaptations like Indiana Jones, Necroscope, Species, Tales from the Crypt, Tank Girl, World of Aden, and Hercules & Xena -- all of which were just sort of cursory book-making for fans. Take generic Torg rules, throw in a handful of customizations, and add a lot of art and filler text from the series. In the early 2000s, Decipher made similar with their Star Trek RPG and Lord of the Rings RPG.
I played Decipher LotR, and I wouldn't call it a fake RPG, but it was poor and low-effort game design with a lot of stuff that was clearly not playtested. Though, there are a ton of amateurish, badly-designed RPGs out there - and plenty of people have fun playing them.
It seems possible Avatar: The Last Airbender is in a similar category, but I haven't read it, so I don't know.
I have read Coyote & Crow, and while I think it's too difficult on learning curve to be interested in, it is by no means low-effort. It is clearly a labor of love from the author, who worked hard to put together an original system. It might not be good, but it isn't low-effort.
I checked out the Species ttrpg once. While it did introduce some lore for the aliens who sent the message that depicted them as amoral observers seeing how humanity used the knowledge they sent, it was otherwise fairly low effort as you said. It had nothing that a sufficiently creative and learned GM couldn't invent themselves. Indeed, it had weird contradictions with the sparse source material: the titular species were depicted as being able to turn into various terrestrial animals, not Giger monsters. It's like the writers didn't actually watch the movie but operated off an abridged synopsis of the plot. You can listen to a review here: https://systemmasterypodcast.com/2018/12/04/the-world-of-species-system-mastery-137/
The dryden PDF (https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/18560/Dryden-Hero-or-Horror) is more faithful to the movie. It has three versions respectively for D&D, d20 Modern, and d20 Future. The D&D version is just another weird fantasy hero option. The d20 Modern version is identical to the movie, except that it has a month-long pregnancy and is... hermaphroditic. The d20 Future version is a mix of
Aliens and
Species II, which is just as repugnant as you would think. The product is very... exploitative, so keep that in mind. If I was using the concept, then I'd reflavor it to be more like genestealers and have the human hosts be brainwashed into helping the aliens. I know mind control is still non-consensual, but it's less visually exploitative if you know what I mean. I am not touching that dumpster fire with a ten foot pole.
Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on October 10, 2023, 06:14:59 PM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 10, 2023, 02:11:42 PM
Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th edition has it bad right now with the critical reception from fans. This is especially hilarious because the game was a proto-woke nightmare when it first released in the early 90s.
This brings me joy. ;D
I'm tired of schadenfreude myself. Seeing Paradox constantly fail was funny the first few years, but after nobody else tried to make better games I got sick of it. I want to play games that don't suck. But it seems that indie devs are only interested in cashing in on transient fads to get rich and famous... which never works but they don't learn from that.
The paranormal romance genre has vampires, werewolves, dragons, unicorns, leprechauns, mummies, angels, demons, etc. as hunky love interests. It is oversaturated. But modern urban fantasy is almost non-existent in video games (not counting mobile games, those suck ass). Troika's
Bloodlines has shown that there's no shortage of players who will play that sort of thing (by some estimates it has 500k lifetime sales on Steam), but thus far almost nobody has tried unless they can tack Paradox's worthless brand name onto their shovelware.
But of course the Tolkien-ripoff genre is oversaturated. As if we need more of those to be made when there are more custom modules for Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 than it would take to play in a lifetime.
Quote from: jhkim on October 11, 2023, 02:34:45 AM
Sort of, but there's an extreme of hyperbole and "SJWs suck" that moves into head-in-the-sand ignorance. If a $9.5 million Kickstarter and the biggest RPG Kickstarter in history is being touted as proof that there's no market for SJW games, then that's past the line.
Consumerist culture cultivates impulse buying and boom/bust cycles, not building communities around new franchises. How many of these wildly successful projects are still remembered or still supported even a few years later?
I will point out that if Kickstarter money is an indication of actual merit for a product, Star Citizen is the best videogame in history. The unfortunate fact is that people get taken for rides on Kickstarter 24/7 between inflated promises, eternal delays, and outright scams.
"Exalted"
Anyone remember "EXALTED" ?
Wasn't that an 'SJW' role playing game?
-Ed C.
Quote from: Valatar on October 11, 2023, 10:14:15 AM
I will point out that if Kickstarter money is an indication of actual merit for a product, Star Citizen is the best videogame in history. The unfortunate fact is that people get taken for rides on Kickstarter 24/7 between inflated promises, eternal delays, and outright scams.
There's plenty of gamers who will tell you that Star Citizen is the best videogame in history already, and a larger number that will tell you it may well end up as that should it ever stop being mostly vaporware. Star Citizen already does a lot of things that other games do not, even in its highly incomplete state.
By contrast, the reskinning of an unrelated existing product for millions of dollars is both successful and a failure; it's much more of a ripoff than Star Citizen honestly. I think it's successful because if the same company came right back and promised a second edition with unique new mechanics and this and that, all those players would sign right back up.
Quote from: jhkim on October 10, 2023, 03:51:43 PM
I have read Coyote & Crow, and while I think it's too difficult on learning curve to be interested in, it is by no means low-effort. It is clearly a labor of love from the author, who worked hard to put together an original system.
More a labour of hate.
Quote from: Koltar on October 11, 2023, 12:50:35 PM
"Exalted"
Anyone remember "EXALTED" ?
Wasn't that an 'SJ
W' role playing game?
-Ed C.
Exalted was rooted in the exuberant, irreverent, highly libertine spirit of the young progressives of the early 00s. Current progressives are still as libertine and irreverent of traditional pieties, but sterner and demanding more overt and strident mouthing of their heresies and worship of the Beast. :)
Quote from: Koltar on October 11, 2023, 12:50:35 PM
"Exalted"
Anyone remember "EXALTED" ?
Wasn't that an 'SJ
W' role playing game?
-Ed C.
exalted is like an unTolkien unAbrahamic fantasy setting.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 11, 2023, 02:10:39 PM
Exalted was rooted in the exuberant, irreverent, highly libertine spirit of the young progressives of the early 00s.
Ah, how I miss those days, before we started winning the culture wars on most fronts and became the sort of sanctimonious bullies we used to decry. I didn't know any better.
I guess that is what human 'victory' is - pulling up the ladder behind you, snidely settling old scores, rewriting the history books, waiting in total paranoia for the backlash to topple you, and then repeating the process. Sigh.
Quote from: Exploderwizard on October 11, 2023, 07:39:33 AM
Money generated by a kickstarter is no guarantee of game quality. Whether a game raises several million on KS or less than 50k makes no difference. All that matters is the game play and how many people love the final product and actually play it.
Money raised on KS is no guarantee you'll get a game at all.
Quote from: Omega on October 11, 2023, 07:09:57 PM
Quote from: Exploderwizard on October 11, 2023, 07:39:33 AM
Money generated by a kickstarter is no guarantee of game quality. Whether a game raises several million on KS or less than 50k makes no difference. All that matters is the game play and how many people love the final product and actually play it.
Money raised on KS is no guarantee you'll get a game at all.
Ain't that the truth. I see backing games on KS akin to paying for a mystery loot bundle (assuming it isn't a complete scam). You pay good money for something of unknown quality and quantity. Sometimes you receive it and can't believe the bargain that you got. Other times you look at what you got and it's like " I got a rock."
Quote from: Omega on October 11, 2023, 07:09:57 PM
Quote from: Exploderwizard on October 11, 2023, 07:39:33 AM
Money generated by a kickstarter is no guarantee of game quality. Whether a game raises several million on KS or less than 50k makes no difference. All that matters is the game play and how many people love the final product and actually play it.
Money raised on KS is no guarantee you'll get a game at all.
Yeah. The only times I've supported a Kickstarter is when I personally know the person doing it. I find the popularity of it weird. I generally get interested in a game after I've read hear talk about how it actually plays, and/or actually play it as a one-shot.
Sure, a flash-in-the-pan Kickstarter isn't a mark of quality. Even being long-term popular isn't a sure mark of quality. I accept that what I like and think of as best isn't what everyone else likes. I like some popular things, but I also hate some popular things.
In general, I think RPG players are found all across the population and the political spectrum. There are death row prisoners who play RPGs, and there are political extremists who play RPGs. There are people with opposed values to me who still enjoy RPGs, and it doesn't change how or what I play.
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2023, 02:34:49 AM
Quote from: Omega on October 11, 2023, 07:09:57 PM
Quote from: Exploderwizard on October 11, 2023, 07:39:33 AM
Money generated by a kickstarter is no guarantee of game quality. Whether a game raises several million on KS or less than 50k makes no difference. All that matters is the game play and how many people love the final product and actually play it.
Money raised on KS is no guarantee you'll get a game at all.
In general, I think RPG players are found all across the population and the political spectrum. There are death row prisoners who play RPGs, and there are political extremists who play RPGs. There are people with opposed values to me who still enjoy RPGs, and it doesn't change how or what I play.
On that last part:
Yes, it doesn't change the way you play,
but the majority of SJWs want to change the way you and everyone else plays.Therin lies the problem.
Not just an labour of hate he came off as an hypocrite when he went back on his comments that only non-whites could play his rpg. Who would have thought that telling one of the largest segments of gamers to not play your rpg due to their skin colour would backfire.
Honestly we are shocked shocked I tell you!
Quote from: Abraxus on October 12, 2023, 09:43:45 AM
Not just an labour of hate he came off as an hypocrite when he went back on his comments that only non-whites could play his rpg. Who would have thought that telling one of the largest segments of gamers to not play your rpg due to their skin colour would backfire.
Honestly we are shocked shocked I tell you!
So my wife can play it, but she'd be playing alone, because virtually all her friends are white.
From a "money is success" perspective, many RPG kick starters are very successful. But maybe another measure of success is how many people are playing the game? How robust is the community of people playing it - are they creating tons of fan content for it? etc.
Lots of games have great kickstarters that bring in a ton of money, but seem to fail on the second part.
Quote from: PencilBoy99 on October 12, 2023, 10:11:14 AM
From a "money is success" perspective, many RPG kick starters are very successful. But maybe another measure of success is how many people are playing the game? How robust is the community of people playing it - are they creating tons of fan content for it? etc.
Lots of games have great kickstarters that bring in a ton of money, but seem to fail on the second part.
Just like the latest woke Marvel/Disney movies: first weekend it rocks the box office, after that the word gets out that it's garbage, and tanks in the 2nd or 3rd week (and to be honest, most Disney garbage doesn't even break even anymore. box office bombs aplenty)
It's like there's a connection: woke = BROKE
Quote from: Abraxus on October 12, 2023, 09:43:45 AM
Not just an labour of hate he came off as an hypocrite when he went back on his comments that only non-whites could play his rpg. Who would have thought that telling one of the largest segments of gamers to not play your rpg due to their skin colour would backfire.
Honestly we are shocked shocked I tell you!
He backtracked on the "no whites" but made it so much worse by telling white people they have to play within a little box of acceptable behavior. Yeah, I love being bullied by ideologues while trying to enjoy my leisure activities.
Quote from: blackstone on October 12, 2023, 07:23:07 AM
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2023, 02:34:49 AM
In general, I think RPG players are found all across the population and the political spectrum. There are death row prisoners who play RPGs, and there are political extremists who play RPGs. There are people with opposed values to me who still enjoy RPGs, and it doesn't change how or what I play.
On that last part:
Yes, it doesn't change the way you play, but the majority of SJWs want to change the way you and everyone else plays.
If it doesn't change the way I play, then why should I care? In particular, why should I care if there's a successful or failed RPG for people with different politics and/or gaming tastes than me?
To be clear - I have political causes, and I care about them. But I don't see RPGs as a way to further my political causes.
I care about how my political opposition vote. But I don't care if they have fun playing RPGs that they enjoy, or whether they play RPGs at all.
Quote from: Trond on October 12, 2023, 10:07:38 AM
Quote from: Abraxus on October 12, 2023, 09:43:45 AM
Not just an labour of hate he came off as an hypocrite when he went back on his comments that only non-whites could play his rpg. Who would have thought that telling one of the largest segments of gamers to not play your rpg due to their skin colour would backfire.
Honestly we are shocked shocked I tell you!
So my wife can play it, but she'd be playing alone, because virtually all her friends are white.
Heh. I hope they release solo modules for all these lonley gamers.
It's well worth pointing out that SJW entertainment on all fronts is failing. Movies, TV, cartoons, comics, books, they are all failing. They are all failing for the same reason, low quality. RPGs certainly not the only area where SJWs are proving that they are unable to be successful.
Quote from: BadApple on October 12, 2023, 10:50:33 AM
Quote from: Abraxus on October 12, 2023, 09:43:45 AM
Not just an labour of hate he came off as an hypocrite when he went back on his comments that only non-whites could play his rpg. Who would have thought that telling one of the largest segments of gamers to not play your rpg due to their skin colour would backfire.
Honestly we are shocked shocked I tell you!
He backtracked on the "no whites" but made it so much worse by telling white people they have to play within a little box of acceptable behavior. Yeah, I love being bullied by ideologues while trying to enjoy my leisure activities.
Yeah, if I remember right from the one read I did of it, you can play the game as a white person. You "just" can't play some things. That's so much better.
"Women can totally play this game. They just can't play fighters."
"Black people can totally play this game. They just can't play Clerics."
None of those work, do they?
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2023, 04:12:29 PM
If it doesn't change the way I play, then why should I care? In particular, why should I care if there's a successful or failed RPG for people with different politics and/or gaming tastes than me?
To be clear - I have political causes, and I care about them. But I don't see RPGs as a way to further my political causes.
I care about how my political opposition vote. But I don't care if they have fun playing RPGs that they enjoy, or whether they play RPGs at all.
You can say, "Hey, it doesn't change the way I play, my group is still rolling around in second edition GURPS, they can't take that away from us!" and that is certainly true, but people who don't have a forever-group camping out in whatever generations-old system they like are going to find themselves harder and harder pressed to find players or GMs. Take White Wolf for example. The 90s World of Darkness was my jam back in the day. The 20th anniversary and 5th edition versions of it are hot garbage that took a dump all over the source material in the name of "sensitivity". But if I roll into my local game store with my moldy old copy of Werewolf under an arm and say, "Who wants to play?", how many takers do you bet I'd get?
Consumers have the attention spans of gerbils; once a system is old enough that it's not on the front shelves any more it will become progressively more difficult to get a game going with it. And if the money, resources, and attention are going to shoddy new games, the better stuff of yesteryear will steadily vanish under the pile. I realize a grognard site like this with people still debating which flavor of 1st edition D&D is best is not a crowd overly susceptible to that phenomenon, but if the fresh blood dries up the hobby will wither.
Quote from: Valatar on October 13, 2023, 02:32:53 AM
The 20th anniversary and 5th edition versions of it are hot garbage that took a dump all over the source material in the name of "sensitivity".
I absolutely agree about the various 5th editions (that are
also pure garbage system-wise; holy fuck, I've never seen something so horrible as V5), but unless I'm missing something in terms of supplements, V20 is simply a collection of all the clans, bloodlines and disciplines in existence (with some minor rule adjustment) at the time of publication. Nothing was changed in terms of lore.
Not sure about W20 or M20 since I don't have them, but V20 right now is the best option available to run "classic" Masquerade without any changes.
Quote from: Valatar on October 13, 2023, 02:32:53 AM
Consumers have the attention spans of gerbils... but if the fresh blood dries up the hobby will wither.
I feel what you're saying to some extent, but who really wants to play with newbies that have the attention span of gerbils?
Add to the short attention span a general inability to measure complexity and a tendency to instantly drop anything deemed "too crunchy" and things tend to go to shit fairly quickly.
Just take a look at r/rpg general trends (it's reddit, so the average age of contributors tend to be fairly low compared to other online places) and you'll see a disturbing amount of threads promoting "rules light" games (read: rules simple, which is not the same as light) as the best thing since the invention of dice and an equally disturbing amount of threads against "rules heavy" or "math heavy" games.... disturbing because the general consensus about what "heavy" means is so unbalanced towards "anything beyond single digit additions and single roll resolutions" that I'm starting to suspect that the subreddit is being used as a sort of support group by a special needs class of some high school lost in the middle on nowhere.
I've seen some heavily upvoted threads and posts claiming that Savage Worlds is a "heavy crunch, math heavy system", for fuck's sake...
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2023, 04:12:29 PM
If it doesn't change the way I play, then why should I care? In particular, why should I care if there's a successful or failed RPG for people with different politics and/or gaming tastes than me?
To be clear - I have political causes, and I care about them. But I don't see RPGs as a way to further my political causes.
I care about how my political opposition vote. But I don't care if they have fun playing RPGs that they enjoy, or whether they play RPGs at all.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Quote from: Valatar on October 13, 2023, 02:32:53 AM
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2023, 04:12:29 PM
If it doesn't change the way I play, then why should I care? In particular, why should I care if there's a successful or failed RPG for people with different politics and/or gaming tastes than me?
To be clear - I have political causes, and I care about them. But I don't see RPGs as a way to further my political causes.
I care about how my political opposition vote. But I don't care if they have fun playing RPGs that they enjoy, or whether they play RPGs at all.
You can say, "Hey, it doesn't change the way I play, my group is still rolling around in second edition GURPS, they can't take that away from us!" and that is certainly true, but people who don't have a forever-group camping out in whatever generations-old system they like are going to find themselves harder and harder pressed to find players or GMs. Take White Wolf for example. The 90s World of Darkness was my jam back in the day. The 20th anniversary and 5th edition versions of it are hot garbage that took a dump all over the source material in the name of "sensitivity". But if I roll into my local game store with my moldy old copy of Werewolf under an arm and say, "Who wants to play?", how many takers do you bet I'd get?
Consumers have the attention spans of gerbils; once a system is old enough that it's not on the front shelves any more it will become progressively more difficult to get a game going with it. And if the money, resources, and attention are going to shoddy new games, the better stuff of yesteryear will steadily vanish under the pile. I realize a grognard site like this with people still debating which flavor of 1st edition D&D is best is not a crowd overly susceptible to that phenomenon, but if the fresh blood dries up the hobby will wither.
This is why I decided to make spiritual successors to old dead IPs I liked and release them into public domain.
Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on October 13, 2023, 04:00:27 AM
Add to the short attention span a general inability to measure complexity and a tendency to instantly drop anything deemed "too crunchy" and things tend to go to shit fairly quickly.
Just take a look at r/rpg general trends (it's reddit, so the average age of contributors tend to be fairly low compared to other online places) and you'll see a disturbing amount of threads promoting "rules light" games (read: rules simple, which is not the same as light) as the best thing since the invention of dice and an equally disturbing amount of threads against "rules heavy" or "math heavy" games.... disturbing because the general consensus about what "heavy" means is so unbalanced towards "anything beyond single digit additions and single roll resolutions" that I'm starting to suspect that the subreddit is being used as a sort of support group by a special needs class of some high school lost in the middle on nowhere.
I've seen some heavily upvoted threads and posts claiming that Savage Worlds is a "heavy crunch, math heavy system", for fuck's sake...
Greetings!
Excellent observations, NotFromAroundHere! ;D
Sadly, I must confess some of my own experience very much lines up with your analysis. Beyond my home groups--I frequently keep a campaign going in my local game store, where there are numerous younger gamers coming and going. I've read about scholars doing studies showing that American's average IQ has dropped like two standard deviations over the last 20 years. Again and again, evidence suggests that the average American really is much *dumber* than in previous generations. Tangential education studies suggest other aspects, such as an alarming decrease not merely in attention span, but also large decreases in functional reading abilities, basic mathematics skills, and essential logic and reasoning abilities. Taking these negative trends and social developments throughout the last 20 to 25 years as seen in fields such as business, education, psychology, and even studies in pediatrics--and overlay those implications over a splinter population, such as gamers.
The result is, I think, yes, gamers are going to be part of, and reflect the same essential trends going on within the context of the larger culture. Thus, we see elements and signs of this intellectual erosion and lack of abilities increasingly throughout the gaming hobby. Many of my friends--also older gamers--have made similar observations. Lamenting how younger gamers haven't read all the literature that we have read when we were kids; they don't have much knowledge of history, certainly not much prior to the 20th Century; they consistently whine about reading, writing, accomplishing basic math, and a host of other ancilliary skills and attributes related to the game hobby as a whole.
It is frustrating, and sad, as well. Many modern gamers, younger gamers, are unfortunately far less intellectually equipped that many of us achieved as a baseline standard by high school. This affects references, jokes, game play, teaching new people to DM and run games, and all kinds of things involved socially and engaging with the game and the gaming hobby. These kinds of things flow into expectations, baseline creativity, their ability at understanding references, and on and on. Nonetheless, yes, ut is frustrating, and sad, as I mentioned. I think these larger social and cultural trends are already having an impact on shaping the hobby--and unfortunately causing a kind of spiraling schism within the hobby. If that makes any sense? On one hand, the hobby of course has expanded and grown like never before, and yet, on the other hand, there seems to be a kind of shrinking silo effect going on.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2023, 04:12:29 PM
Quote from: blackstone on October 12, 2023, 07:23:07 AM
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2023, 02:34:49 AM
In general, I think RPG players are found all across the population and the political spectrum. There are death row prisoners who play RPGs, and there are political extremists who play RPGs. There are people with opposed values to me who still enjoy RPGs, and it doesn't change how or what I play.
On that last part:
Yes, it doesn't change the way you play, but the majority of SJWs want to change the way you and everyone else plays.
If it doesn't change the way I play, then why should I care? In particular, why should I care if there's a successful or failed RPG for people with different politics and/or gaming tastes than me?
To be clear - I have political causes, and I care about them. But I don't see RPGs as a way to further my political causes.
I care about how my political opposition vote. But I don't care if they have fun playing RPGs that they enjoy, or whether they play RPGs at all.
Because the people who's politics we're talking about aren't here to play their way and let you play yours. They are here to force their way on you or push you out altogether.
Now if you have a static group and play only games from decades past, maybe you think you are fine. But all this shit is creeping into the hobby and you are going to be stuck with it even if that's not how you roll. Want to go to a convention and play, guess what.... it's going to be their way, not yours.
Video games got hit with it during the whole Gamergate saga. Anita and others kept claiming they weren't trying to take our video games away, they just wanted these other things added to the mix. It was all BS. Now the games are full of girl bosses, body type A and body type B, uglified female characters, and double standards. Balder's Gate 3 if full of kinks and sex and raunch and multiple genital types for whatever body but heaven forbid you try to have a anime looking game with that in it.
TV, movies, comics, anime... it's all been hit the same way. They forced their way into every inch of escapist media and took over. It has changed the landscape and the "your way" of storytelling doesn't exist anymore in the mainstream.
We've seen how in TTRPGs race is being weaponized. You can't have evil races in a product or you'll get brigaded. Hell, it's a 50/50 if you can even use the word race. How many games are moving over to something like bloodline or heritage? How many books these days are including sections, not just a mention, but whole sections on inclusion, triggers, safety protocols like X cards, etc? Their way is making it into every product you may want to play. It's all going to be grey goo gaming.
I was reading a game the other day. The setting has the human population in a death spiral. Having kids is a HUGE fucking deal because it's so rare. There isn't enough population to keep the work force going so they came up with a way to reanimate the newly dead. As soon as you die your body becomes property of the state and they do their thing and off to work you go, with no memory of your past life. You know what the book is full of? Gay and lesbian couples! In a world where they need every last possible person, and you've already established an authoritarian government, why isn't it illegal to participate in non-reproductive sex? It could have been a major element to the game world, part of the setting's intrigue and something for the PCs to fight for. But no. Just same sex couples running this store, talking over there, worrying about what will happen when their partner dies. They eschew any sense of interesting world building just to check off the inclusion box.
Quote from: BadApple on October 12, 2023, 09:09:06 PM
It's well worth pointing out that SJW entertainment on all fronts is failing. Movies, TV, cartoons, comics, books, they are all failing. They are all failing for the same reason, low quality. RPGs certainly not the only area where SJWs are proving that they are unable to be successful.
Amen to that.
It's like the people who write or produce such SJW cannot da thin why they failed. Or if they do in denial and blame toxic ( insert buzzword).
I used to be an huge fan of Station 19 then it became unwatchable due to the writers injecting Wokeness into every storyline. One of the main female characters is almost sexual assaulted and she hits her assailant so hard in the neck he falls yo the ground and dies.
Then is shocked that she has to go to court for having killed her assailant who died of his injuries while of course the writers need to include the character claiming if she was an man it would have never made it to court. No moron your not in court because your a women your in court because while morally justified you injured someone then he died.
Did I mention the character has an habit of doing stupid things like getting drunk and walking off with strangers.
Quote from: SHARK on October 13, 2023, 08:01:39 AM
The result is, I think, yes, gamers are going to be part of, and reflect the same essential trends going on within the context of the larger culture. Thus, we see elements and signs of this intellectual erosion and lack of abilities increasingly throughout the gaming hobby. Many of my friends--also older gamers--have made similar observations. Lamenting how younger gamers haven't read all the literature that we have read when we were kids; they don't have much knowledge of history, certainly not much prior to the 20th Century; they consistently whine about reading, writing, accomplishing basic math, and a host of other ancilliary skills and attributes related to the game hobby as a whole.
There is one silver lining in all of this: If you can get a young person into your game, get them interested, get them off their cell phone, and engaged--then not only will you have fought back a little against the culture erosion, it will also help that young person. Because it has been shown that not paying attention and being bad at basic skills is partly bad habits and lack of good practices. Give someone an outlet where they want to reverse that, it helps. It's not going to turn a high-school dropout into a mathematics whiz, but it can build some critical basic skills.
What goes around comes around. I saw the same thing happen in the early '80s with a few kids that had spent the late '70s throwing their lives away and rapidly becoming unemployable, but turned it around. You can't fix the culture this way, but you can help an individual.
Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on October 13, 2023, 03:22:45 AM
Not sure about W20 or M20 since I don't have them, but V20 right now is the best option available to run "classic" Masquerade without any changes.
M20 was a travesty. They renamed like half of the traditions and made sure to put in sidebars on things like how many mages love changing their genitals regularly.
Quote from: SHARK on October 13, 2023, 08:01:39 AM
Greetings!
Excellent observations, NotFromAroundHere! ;D
Sadly, I must confess some of my own experience very much lines up with your analysis. Beyond my home groups--I frequently keep a campaign going in my local game store, where there are numerous younger gamers coming and going. I've read about scholars doing studies showing that American's average IQ has dropped like two standard deviations over the last 20 years. Again and again, evidence suggests that the average American really is much *dumber* than in previous generations. Tangential education studies suggest other aspects, such as an alarming decrease not merely in attention span, but also large decreases in functional reading abilities, basic mathematics skills, and essential logic and reasoning abilities. Taking these negative trends and social developments throughout the last 20 to 25 years as seen in fields such as business, education, psychology, and even studies in pediatrics--and overlay those implications over a splinter population, such as gamers.
The result is, I think, yes, gamers are going to be part of, and reflect the same essential trends going on within the context of the larger culture. Thus, we see elements and signs of this intellectual erosion and lack of abilities increasingly throughout the gaming hobby. Many of my friends--also older gamers--have made similar observations. Lamenting how younger gamers haven't read all the literature that we have read when we were kids; they don't have much knowledge of history, certainly not much prior to the 20th Century; they consistently whine about reading, writing, accomplishing basic math, and a host of other ancilliary skills and attributes related to the game hobby as a whole.
It is frustrating, and sad, as well. Many modern gamers, younger gamers, are unfortunately far less intellectually equipped that many of us achieved as a baseline standard by high school. This affects references, jokes, game play, teaching new people to DM and run games, and all kinds of things involved socially and engaging with the game and the gaming hobby. These kinds of things flow into expectations, baseline creativity, their ability at understanding references, and on and on. Nonetheless, yes, ut is frustrating, and sad, as I mentioned. I think these larger social and cultural trends are already having an impact on shaping the hobby--and unfortunately causing a kind of spiraling schism within the hobby. If that makes any sense? On one hand, the hobby of course has expanded and grown like never before, and yet, on the other hand, there seems to be a kind of shrinking silo effect going on.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
First, a sidenote: I'm not American (I'm Italian: born, raised and living in Italy).
Having said that, this..... shift, so to speak, in general cognitive attitudes has been happening here, too. My mother worked as a teacher (kindergarden: in the italian school system it more or less works as a preparatory school for children aged 3 to 6, teaching the kids how to behave in the company of others and some very basic concepts useful in "proper" school, like rudimentary reading skills and arithmetics) for more than 40 years, starting in the early seventies and retiring in the early 2010s. She started noticing some issues
as soon as the early 90s, with an increasing number of children having much more difficulty than usual to relate with others; this number slowly but gradually increased along the years.
Other relatives and acquaintances (for some reason I'm pretty much surrounded by teachers: wife, in-laws, family friends...), working in elementary, middle and high school pretty much all reported the same thing: from the 90s onward children/teens started to demonstrate more cognitive/learning difficulties than before and a rising decrease in general attention span.
The general idea based on these... field experiences is that the rise of "screen media" like TV, computers and (mainly) smartphones and tablets negatively impacted the ability of children to interact with each other, while relying on image/short video formats instead of writing
massively impacted attention spans and concentration.
Yeah, I've noticed that tastes have massively declined. Modern audiences are largely incapable of noticing basic storytelling errors, such as the the plot contradicting how characters would realistically behave in their situations.
E.g. Castlevania suffers from a huge amount of this, with almost everyone making decisions that run directly counter to their own motivations, cares, skillsets, and basic intelligence. But I've chatted with several Zoomers who think it's amazing because it has "representation". My boomer friends found it very boring, uninteresting, and thought the cast acted like idiots. I'm a zillenial myself and I wasn't engaged with it, although I went in after hearing about the controversy so I didn't really pay attention to begin with. But upon thinking about it critically I did find it... not good. In general the Netflix shows suffer hugely from the writers wanting to force ham-fisted and offensive messages on the audience rather than telling good stories, along with doing the game protagonists really dirty. Adi Shankar, a fan of the games who wanted to keep the canon characters faithful, was the only voice of reason and they drowned him out ultimately.
Quote from: rgalex on October 13, 2023, 08:26:02 AM
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2023, 04:12:29 PM
Quote from: blackstone on October 12, 2023, 07:23:07 AM
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2023, 02:34:49 AM
In general, I think RPG players are found all across the population and the political spectrum. There are death row prisoners who play RPGs, and there are political extremists who play RPGs. There are people with opposed values to me who still enjoy RPGs, and it doesn't change how or what I play.
On that last part:
Yes, it doesn't change the way you play, but the majority of SJWs want to change the way you and everyone else plays.
If it doesn't change the way I play, then why should I care? In particular, why should I care if there's a successful or failed RPG for people with different politics and/or gaming tastes than me?
To be clear - I have political causes, and I care about them. But I don't see RPGs as a way to further my political causes.
I care about how my political opposition vote. But I don't care if they have fun playing RPGs that they enjoy, or whether they play RPGs at all.
Because the people who's politics we're talking about aren't here to play their way and let you play yours. They are here to force their way on you or push you out altogether.
Now if you have a static group and play only games from decades past, maybe you think you are fine. But all this shit is creeping into the hobby and you are going to be stuck with it even if that's not how you roll. Want to go to a convention and play, guess what.... it's going to be their way, not yours.
Video games got hit with it during the whole Gamergate saga. Anita and others kept claiming they weren't trying to take our video games away, they just wanted these other things added to the mix. It was all BS. Now the games are full of girl bosses, body type A and body type B, uglified female characters, and double standards. Balder's Gate 3 if full of kinks and sex and raunch and multiple genital types for whatever body but heaven forbid you try to have a anime looking game with that in it.
TV, movies, comics, anime... it's all been hit the same way. They forced their way into every inch of escapist media and took over. It has changed the landscape and the "your way" of storytelling doesn't exist anymore in the mainstream.
We've seen how in TTRPGs race is being weaponized. You can't have evil races in a product or you'll get brigaded. Hell, it's a 50/50 if you can even use the word race. How many games are moving over to something like bloodline or heritage? How many books these days are including sections, not just a mention, but whole sections on inclusion, triggers, safety protocols like X cards, etc? Their way is making it into every product you may want to play. It's all going to be grey goo gaming.
I was reading a game the other day. The setting has the human population in a death spiral. Having kids is a HUGE fucking deal because it's so rare. There isn't enough population to keep the work force going so they came up with a way to reanimate the newly dead. As soon as you die your body becomes property of the state and they do their thing and off to work you go, with no memory of your past life. You know what the book is full of? Gay and lesbian couples! In a world where they need every last possible person, and you've already established an authoritarian government, why isn't it illegal to participate in non-reproductive sex? It could have been a major element to the game world, part of the setting's intrigue and something for the PCs to fight for. But no. Just same sex couples running this store, talking over there, worrying about what will happen when their partner dies. They eschew any sense of interesting world building just to check off the inclusion box.
Every generation bemoans the idiocy of the next. It is a curse called the circle of life. Eventually humans will become too stupid to even feed themselves and some other species might get a shot. Who knows? The only thing one can hope to accomplish when trying to get everyone else to stop being idiots is going insane. At my age, I will continue to enjoy games with like minded individuals . Eventually the glut of woke virtue signalling games will hit a critical mass in the market. You see, when you seek to exclude the largest segment of the TTRPG market (white males) from your game and the remaining small fraction of the rpg community has to support all these woke trash games to the point where there may be .6 of a gaming group per game that plays a particular game then the market for the garbage games will dry up. Those of us who do not have the attention span of a gnat do not need a new game every 3 months in any event.
No matter who you are, or how you identify chances are you like to play fun games. A game written just to virtue wank that isn't fun can only be put up with by actual gamers for so long. Real gamers will gravitate towards games that they can have fun playing no matter what gibberish they like to spout online. Online communities allow the virtue signaling wankers to appear way more numerous than they are, and gaming companies that alienate their core fans to pander to this tiny crowd with loud voices will realize that when quarterly sales reports start rolling in.
Subsequent generations becoming incompetent is actually a result of easy times. Hard times make hard men, hard men make easy times, easy times make weak men, weak men make hard times, wash rinse repeat. It's not the cycle of life, it's the cycle of decadent civilizations. This is why every dynasty and non-dynastic government that has ever existed has generally been overthrown within 500 years.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 13, 2023, 02:00:45 PM
Subsequent generations becoming incompetent is actually a result of easy times. Hard times make hard men, hard men make easy times, easy times make weak men, weak men make hard times, wash rinse repeat. It's not the cycle of life, it's the cycle of decadent civilizations. This is why every dynasty and non-dynastic government that has ever existed has generally been overthrown within 500 years.
I forget where I read it, but someone actually figured out the average dynasty lasts about 150 years (basically 3-5 generations of leadership) and anything past 200 years was a genuine anomaly.*
Definitely something worth considering in setting up your own fantasy settings (adjusted for lifespan of rulers obviously).
* This isn't to say the system of government changed. Usually it just meant the monarch was overthrown and the conqueror or usurper was installed as the new one.
Basically, forget the unbroken dynasties spanning millennia.
I'd actually find it fun to play with that... a kingdom is screwed because the demons escaped their 1000 year imprisonment that everyone thought was just some wild fairy tale... and the line of the king whose blood is needed to reseal them lost power a hundred years after that and has been replaced six times over by now (leading to a search for whoever would have been that king's legit heir... if not for the waves of usurpers and conquerors... and ultimately a true resurrection spell because it turns out one of the usurpers thought it'd be a good idea to hunt down and execute every last member of the previous dynasty to secure their rule.
Quote from: Chris24601 on October 13, 2023, 03:46:19 PM
I forget where I read it, but someone actually figured out the average dynasty lasts about 150 years (basically 3-5 generations of leadership) and anything past 200 years was a genuine anomaly.*
Definitely something worth considering in setting up your own fantasy settings (adjusted for lifespan of rulers obviously).
* This isn't to say the system of government changed. Usually it just meant the monarch was overthrown and the conqueror or usurper was installed as the new one.
Basically, forget the unbroken dynasties spanning millennia.
I'd actually find it fun to play with that... a kingdom is screwed because the demons escaped their 1000 year imprisonment that everyone thought was just some wild fairy tale... and the line of the king whose blood is needed to reseal them lost power a hundred years after that and has been replaced six times over by now (leading to a search for whoever would have been that king's legit heir... if not for the waves of usurpers and conquerors... and ultimately a true resurrection spell because it turns out one of the usurpers thought it'd be a good idea to hunt down and execute every last member of the previous dynasty to secure their rule.
As a modern variation on that --
A friend suggested a scenario where an ancient evil awoke in Britain and the prophecy was that only the "most reknown knghts of the kingdom" could defeat her -- so the team of defeat her are famous knights like Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, Dame Judie Andrews, Dame Judi Dench, and Sir Idris Elba.
I thought it was a great and hilarious concept, and I might run a scenario like that some day.
Quote from: Exploderwizard on October 13, 2023, 01:44:49 PM
Every generation bemoans the idiocy of the next. It is a curse called the circle of life.
I just want to mention that I don't think that this has anything to do with politics. Radical activists had shitty politics, very similar to today's politics, at several times in the last hundred and twenty years. If you want to bitch about how the young commies of today are ruining shit, you'd have been correct in the 1920s or the 2020s.
There may be a few things that are simply generational- where the new generation is doing a new thing, and the old generation doesn't get it. But that's definitely not left/right politics, or the rehashed 1970s terminology that people call social justice, or the anti-white politics from that era either. All that stuff was old and tired when I was born, and it sucked then, and it sucks now, even if a brave confused 20 year old screams about it at college. Nothing to do with age, or generations, or anything like that.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 13, 2023, 02:00:45 PM
Subsequent generations becoming incompetent is actually a result of easy times. Hard times make hard men, hard men make easy times, easy times make weak men, weak men make hard times, wash rinse repeat. It's not the cycle of life, it's the cycle of decadent civilizations. This is why every dynasty and non-dynastic government that has ever existed has generally been overthrown within 500 years.
Quite correct and corroborated by known history of civilizations.