The peripheral community that is a f*cking pox on our hobby

[Jackalope]

Then again, I didn't play White Wolf games. Or buy their books.

One of the major factors that ultimately turned me off WW games was the large number of city guides and supplements that were almost completely useless for play, but were interesting to read.

They would describe complex networks of relationships, ongoing plots and intrigues and the like, but none of the ideas were particularly original, just the arrangement.  There was essentially nothing of use to players, and very little that was useful to DMs.  I don't think any DM could convey the depth and nuance of the various non-player characters relationships in a way that wouldn't come off as "hammer of exposition!"

There wasn't the things you'd expect: adventure hooks, ways to involve the players, etc.  These supplements came off more as show bibles -- the books that TV show writers use to maintain consistency between episodes written by different people.  They were great sourcebooks for telling stories...but they had no room for other characters!  There was no place for actual player characters.

Very much what's being discussed in this thread.

[Haffrung]

One of the major factors that ultimately turned me off WW games was the large number of city guides and supplements that were almost completely useless for play, but were interesting to read.

They would describe complex networks of relationships, ongoing plots and intrigues and the like, but none of the ideas were particularly original, just the arrangement.  There was essentially nothing of use to players, and very little that was useful to DMs.  I don't think any DM could convey the depth and nuance of the various non-player characters relationships in a way that wouldn't come off as "hammer of exposition!"

Sounds like the Earthdawn setting books. Thirty-eight pages on the various trading houses of lizard-men who ply the Serpent River. Detailed character portraits. Pages on pages of intrigue. History of the houses. But if your party of adventurers actually finds themselves on the shores of the Serpent River, you still have to make up every shred of actual adventure content (locations, maps, encounters, cults, monsters, lairs, beasts, treasures) yourself. Bunch of arse.

[Jackalope]

The Iron Kingdom's World Guide is the same way.  400+ nice looking pages of information on the world of Iron Kingdoms that will never, ever be relevant to anyone's campaign.

Claims to be a OGL D20 RPG supplement, is actually just a giant book of fluff for Warmachine players.  About half of the actual Warmachine and Hordes books themselves are half-assed Warmachine fan fiction to set up a few pages stats that you get with the miniatures.

[Sweeney]

Fucking christ, that's stale.

I guess to cut off the inevitable page that followed my post a ways back, I should have said, "DISCLAIMER: We all understand some people think GNS is terrible and to be mocked. However, it, in part, describes some things that I've personally seen in game play, and they do not necessarily have anything to do with the theory itself. Because it would be awesome to discuss these things without getting bogged down in how evil the theory that mentions them is, I will now reference one of those things, in terms of what a previous poster has said." before I used the "N" word.

I just figured people were tired of beating a dead horse so I skipped the waiver. My bad.

[Sweeney]

You guys are hitting one of my pet peeves really hard -- "gamers" that hoard and fondle huge collections in lieu of ever fucking playing, and the publishers that pandered to them. This may be just my gut reaction to remembering "that guy" who was a friend but owned far too many White Wolf books, though.

If the book isn't useful in actually running a game, sell it as "game-related marginalia" or something, but it's not a sourcebook.

(I'm okay with art and fiction in a rulebook, though, if they're actually doing their job of supporting the book's design goals by conveying tone and theme.)

[Drew]

I don't, just because you don't actually use them around the table, or even when preparing to go to the table. They're more part of the fandom surrounding a game than the game itself. That's why I think they're more for collectors or casual fans of the setting than for gamers (Though gamers can enjoy them, certainly).

I think no small part of Exalted's success is due to White Wolf applying the collectable, armchair-appreciation design philosophy to the ruleset as well as the setting. The increasingly elaborate charm system is the most obvious example, featuring esoteric, narratively inspired effects that employ ever more baroque methods for altering dice pool probabilities in less than significant ways. Charm discussions (and more broadly, system concerns) are pretty much the engine of Exalted debate over at RPGnet, and I don't think this is by accident.

Unfortunately WW's approach proved itself a poisoned chalice, an entropic recursion that gradually degraded the integrity of the entire game. Exalted is fucked at a systemic level, as most people who've played it for more than a short while are quite aware. Roll on 3e.

[Engine]

One of the major factors that ultimately turned me off WW games was the large number of city guides and supplements that were almost completely useless for play, but were interesting to read....They would describe complex networks of relationships, ongoing plots and intrigues and the like, but none of the ideas were particularly original, just the arrangement.

Sounds like the Earthdawn setting books. Thirty-eight pages on the various trading houses of lizard-men who ply the Serpent River. Detailed character portraits. Pages on pages of intrigue. History of the houses.

Yep, FASA's guilty of this one - if you think it's a crime, of course! Earthdawn and Shadowrun setting books - rules expansions are completely different - are nothing but long descriptions of the specifics of the settings, including various conflicting rumors.

Every sourcebook meant for the GM is meant to do some of the GM's work for him; books full of maps mean the GM doesn't have to draw maps; books full of statted monsters mean the GM doesn't have to stat monsters. Shadowrun and Earthdawn setting books were meant to do the part of the GM's job that explains who is where and what they've been doing to whom. Not everyone needs that job done for them, and wishes instead the developers had done some other portion of their job for them; Shadowrun and Earthdawn might be frustrating for such GMs. For my part, I found the intense descriptions gave me dozens of adventure hooks per page, and gave me a real glimpse of the setting as a real place, rather than as a fictional setting; that, of course, is their real purpose. But it's not for everyone.

[shewolf]

I once came up with this brilliantly simple plot:  An evil sorceress who prophesies her own death at the hands of a particular person, and in the process of attempting to eliminate the threat to her own life, creates the very reality she fears.  

Sounded like a fantastic game. Too bad your PC didn't play along.

[Aos]

Yep, FASA's guilty of this one - if you think it's a crime, of course! Earthdawn and Shadowrun setting books - rules expansions are completely different - are nothing but long descriptions of the specifics of the settings, including various conflicting rumors.

Every sourcebook meant for the GM is meant to do some of the GM's work for him; books full of maps mean the GM doesn't have to draw maps; books full of statted monsters mean the GM doesn't have to stat monsters. Shadowrun and Earthdawn setting books were meant to do the part of the GM's job that explains who is where and what they've been doing to whom. Not everyone needs that job done for them, and wishes instead the developers had done some other portion of their job for them; Shadowrun and Earthdawn might be frustrating for such GMs. For my part, I found the intense descriptions gave me dozens of adventure hooks per page, and gave me a real glimpse of the setting as a real place, rather than as a fictional setting; that, of course, is their real purpose. But it's not for everyone.

Dude, I loved ED almost as much as you do. I played the hell out of it. However, imo, its presentation was deeply flawed right from the beginning. Barsaive is rammed down your throat throughout the first edition core book, so much so that it just seemed futile to me to make a homebrew for it. A default setting is great- but it belongs at the back of the book- not mixed in with the mechanics. it's like when you mix the sauce with the pasta instead of serving them separately, no one can control how much sauce they get, and you can't unmix them.
Beyond that, Creatures of Barsaive has to be one of the shittiest monster books I've ever seen. The fact that it's narrated by a dragon takes it from being merely lame to being painful.
The mechanics and classes and races were great though, too bad they had watery ass Ragu smeared all over them. RAAAAAOOOOR1111!!!!!!

[Haffrung]

Not everyone needs that job done for them, and wishes instead the developers had done some other portion of their job for them; Shadowrun and Earthdawn might be frustrating for such GMs.

I wish the books had more of a mix of content - history, characterizations of bigwigs, intrigue, and boots-on-the ground encounters, maps, cults, lairs, etc.

For my part, I found the intense descriptions gave me dozens of adventure hooks per page, and gave me a real glimpse of the setting as a real place, rather than as a fictional setting; that, of course, is their real purpose. But it's not for everyone.

The descriptions do indeed inspire a lot of plot hooks. Too many, in fact. You could run a two year campaign of Earthdawn doing nothing but playing out all those Tskrang trading house hooks. Nobody is ever going to use more than small fraction of them. But the adventure-level, concrete content is non-existent. It's a matter of balance.

I get the impression the Nations of Barsaive books were written by aspiring fantasy authors, rather than by experienced GMs who had run real games in the setting.

[Engine]

Barsaive is rammed down your throat throughout the first edition core book, so much so that it just seemed futile to me to make a homebrew for it. A default setting is great- but it belongs at the back of the book- not mixed in with the mechanics.

See, FASA didn't - note the past tense - see it that way: to them, setting [and progressing metaplot] were intended from the very beginning to be absolutely integral to the mechanics. As much freedom as you were given to ignore their setting, they weren't going to stop producing huge chunks of it. To them, it was really supposed to work like a whole package, and the GM picked bits and pieces out of it when they didn't suit his taste, and interpreted the various hints to choose which of FASA's apparent metaplots you felt were true and which manufactured. Their game design philosophy just worked that way; it didn't suit everyone. Or else they'd still have open doors!

I wish the books had more of a mix of content - history, characterizations of bigwigs, intrigue, and boots-on-the ground encounters, maps, cults, lairs, etc.

You know, I have no idea why there wasn't more of that in the sourcebooks. I think they really believed people would buy their adventures, which did contain that stuff, but their adventures were terrible. FASA always did nice overview maps - here's the entire city! - for Shadowrun, but in neither ED nor SR contained particularly useful maps of specific buildings. [With the exception of Sprawl Maps, which was nothing but.] And for the life of me, I don't know why. Very interesting point, Haffrung.

[Aos]

See, FASA didn't - note the past tense - see it that way: to them, setting [and progressing metaplot] were intended from the very beginning to be absolutely integral to the mechanics. As much freedom as you were given to ignore their setting, they weren't going to stop producing huge chunks of it. To them, it was really supposed to work like a whole package, and the GM picked bits and pieces out of it when they didn't suit his taste, and interpreted the various hints to choose which of FASA's apparent metaplots you felt were true and which manufactured. Their game design philosophy just worked that way; it didn't suit everyone. Or else they'd still have open doors!

Yeah- I get you. I do think, however, that they kind of limped their own dick by doing things this way. I mean, if you stick the default setting at the back of the book- or (for maximum greed) in another book entirely that allows you to sell not only the default setting- but other settings as well, also crammed with metaplot. Likely to the same people.

Did you use your own setting, or Barsaive? I must have opened the book a hundred times with writing my own setting in mind, but all the Barsaive stuff on pretty much every page just kind of interfered with my imagination (lame but true).

Does anyone know if the newer editions have the same issues?


As an aside, I hated barsaive so much that I rolled a moon into at the end of my (years long) campaign.

[Engine]

Yeah- I get you. I do think, however, that they kind of limped their own dick by doing things this way. I mean, if you stick the default setting at the back of the book- or (for maximum greed) in another book entirely that allows you to sell not only the default setting- but other settings as well, also crammed with metaplot.

That's certainly something they could have done, but I'm pleased that they didn't. I - overall - enjoyed the metaplots of both ED and SR, and believe both would have been drastically less enjoyable for me if they'd been offered in multiple settings.

To me, Shadowrun [and Earthdawn] is a setting. It's a dynamic and evolving setting, with a system you can use to roleplay in it. Making Shadowrun into a system, with several settings you can apply it to...well, it's the emphasis the wrong way 'round for me. It would have been the right way 'round for many others, but those people fortunately had many games available to them to play.

Did you use your own setting, or Barsaive?

Definitely 100 percent Barsaive, but only informed by the setting books, never limited by it. I also set my biggest campaign 100 years before the events described in the game, which gave me a huge advantage in not being limited by metaplot, but we played a year-long campaign [Paul's] set completely within the setting of Barsaive, in which all the book-related Barsaive things were happening, and never interacted with the book metaplot at all.

[Balbinus]

Well, I have no idea what it is you are trying to say, then. "Things were better in the good old days?" Really? Is that all there is to this?

Ned

That games are negatively impacted by a comercially driven emphasis on non-play factors, this is the first time in all honesty I've encountered someone not understand what my point was (plenty disagree, but I've never had someone not get the argument).  Turning that into they're designed purely for collectors is a reductio ad absurdum, it's not something I've ever said.  I don't even see how one could get that from my posts.  Particularly you, because we've had this argument before and you clearly understood it then, you didn't agree, but you never previously came to that conclusion as to what the argument was.

I've rather lost interest in arguing the point frankly, but I do think my posts have been pretty clear and I think everyone understands my argument, it's not that games are designed purely for collectors (which would be absurd) and nor is it simply things were better in the old days.  It's that things are worse than they could be because of the way the current gaming market operates.  That the purchasing habits of collectors distort the industry away from play focussed games.

[Balbinus]

This argument always goes the same way.

Someone asks for examples to be posted.

Examples get posted, and those asking for them leave the thread, generally without further comment.

Rinse and repeat.

White Wolf is the poster boy for this sort of marketing, games aimed so firmly with collectors in mind that the books produced are of limited value for actual play. Gamelines that get so choked they eventually have to be reset in new editions.  Rules that are manifestly broken, but because almost nobody buying the supplement they appear in is using them in play it doesn't matter and they continue to be part of the canon.

Everytime this argument comes up eventually people do start citing examples, in another thread I saw someone citing some GOO books.  But the trouble is, the system has no memory and next time we have to post all the examples all over again.  And when we do, those asking for them will ignore them all over again.

I actually think the evidence is pretty good, it's just that those who oppose the argument aren't familiar with the games at issue and so think there isn't an issue.  Last time this came up the opponents of the argument argued that these collectors were mythical, Bruce Baugh turned up and said that they existed in notable numbers, that didn't change the perspective of those arguing to the contrary in the slightest.

I doubt I'll post further to this thread.