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

[Balbinus]

Here's how Bruce Baugh described how this works:

"Page count and other physical resources are finite.

Non-players are often very interested in matters of world-building. To take examples from the World of Darkness, which of the Triat went mad first, and which might most easily be returned to sanity? Is there a truth within spectres' madness, and might the Shadow be a tool of secret enlightenment? What is the tenth sphere?

Players, on the other hand, realize (quickly or slowly) that such questions are in general pointless. How are you (a character) ever going to tell? And what would the knowing do for you? The most relevant questions are generally, who's telling you what account, why are they doing it, and what happens when evidence contradicts them? (It is a given of the World of Darkness that, at a minimum, no mortal soul has all of the big picture, and also that there are fundamental discontinuities in the world because of ancient/pre-temporal calamities. Sooner or later, every systematic body of knowledge will be contradicted by the facts because the World of Darkness is perverse.) Players will want to know things like how their characters might assemble their own spin on the issues and go about spreading their ideas, building influence overt and covert among their peers, subjects, victims, and so on.

There are ways of making a lot of player-focused info also interesting to non-players, and vice versa. But whenever a book gives a lot of space to "here is an objective statement of overall facts of the world" relative to "here is what your character is likely to experience and what it's likely to mean to them", then players are getting the short end of the stick. And that's a bad thing, IMHO, because the urge to explore imaginary worlds can be scratched in a variety of ways, but nothing is a game book except a game book. In his marvelous book Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud touches on the importance of matching the work and its medium - if it's a painting, it should have some quality that's distinct from being a photograph or movie or essay, for instance. I feel that way about game books."

He went on to say that Captain Ned was correct that White Wolf had tried to move more toward players than gamers, but that I was also correct that the collectors had had an impact on the actual product.  Cap is only remembering the first part of that follow up comment.  Bruce was of the view that in the above he was describing past practice and efforts that were being made to make it past practice (ie to stop it going forward).  He was perfectly clear it remains an issue.

[Ned the Lonely Donkey]

The problem is that you:

1. Don't have any idea of the size of the RPG collector market relative to the player market, even leaving aside player/collectors.

and

2. Cannot say with confidence that gaming products have deteriorated due to the influence of collectors (and in fact your best example is a publisher reacting to the phenomenon with more play-focused products).

The entire argument is bit on huge wobbly piles of supposition! It looks to me like you have a found a behaviour you don't like (collecting game books) and are inventing reasons to piss all over it - that's classic badwrongfunism.

I am fed with this stupid argument myself, which is why I dipped out of the thread. I wasn't aware I had to apply for an exit visa.

Ned

[Haffrung]

I understand that game books written for non-players can be shitty (see my posts about Earthdawn's Nations of Barsaive books). However, it doesn't follow that publishers are turning away good gaming content in order to publish this stuff. That's what you need to prove Balbinus - that the volume of non-gaming fluff has restricted the amount of gaming content available to buyers. And you haven't proven that. You haven't proven that the inclusion of useless background content came at the expense of other material that was rejected and left on the cutting room floor.

Maybe the useless background content is simply what the writers turned in. Maybe it's much harder to find writers who can provide solid, professional, game content than it is to find writers who can provide mediocre genre fluff. Maybe the choice isn't between books full of fluff and books full of solid gaming material - maybe it's a choice between books full of fluff and fewer books altogether.

And again, if you don't care about the RPG publishing industry, why do you care what gets published?

[Engine]

I understand that game books written for non-players can be shitty (see my posts about Earthdawn's Nations of Barsaive books). However, it doesn't follow that publishers are turning away good gaming content in order to publish this stuff.

Plus, most of the examples given - I can't speak to World of Darkness, because I don't know it well - aren't cases of "material for non-gamers," which then ruins the material for gamers: the "non-game" material for Earthdawn and Shadowrun are why some of us play those games, and not GURPS or D&D or other games which produce a lot of what's being called "stuff for players." In other words, what I've seen so far is a different between what sort of material is useful for different types of gamers, not cases of roleplaying books being written for non-gamers.

Then there's the face that nothing has led me to believe - again, I can't speak to WoD - that developers made decisions based on sales to non-players. ["More color! It sells books!"] Rather, what I've seen is cases of developers writing the sort of games they want to write, and those games being liked by non-gamers and selling well to those people. I haven't seen a case of a game being written for gamers, and then slowly distorting due to non-player sales.

And at the end of the day, finding one or two long-dead game lines which altered over time to provide material useful to non-gamers rather than gamers...well, that doesn't really look like a "pox" on the "hobby."

[Aos]

Your opinion is wrong.

[arminius]

Yeah, I don't really know. I think Balbinus's argument is sound, but I have little direct experience of this.

One point I would emphasize is that if you're marketing to collectors, it's a lot easier to include crappy, untested mechanics that sound cool on paper, and which may appear to "concretize" some piece of setting fluff, but which don't really work in actual play. Or conversely, they wind up dominating everything else if you include them.

I've glimpsed a little of this in the old Cyclopedia Talislanta books; however, as an old-school system that's highly amenable to houseruling, in some ways it doesn't matter if some weapon, spell, or combat move sucks as written, you just treat the books as idea resources and kitbash them into functionality. I imagine Rifts is similar.

An altogether different matter is the effect that collectors have on the consumer side. I don't have any hard evidence but there seem to be people who transmit enthusiasm about games based only on the concept, neat-sounding mechanics, and fluff (since they don't really play them). I may be a bit guilty of this myself, but I try to include caveats. The problem with this, if it happens, is it may contribute to a general culture of both collecting and seeking out "the perfect game" for a given RPG need, when in fact people would be better served by regularly playing the "good-enough" game they already have.

[J Arcane]

I don't have any hard evidence but there seem to be people who transmit enthusiasm about games based only on the concept, neat-sounding mechanics, and fluff (since they don't really play them).

This effect is at the absolute core of the "RPGnet Darling" phenomenon.

A phenomenon that, all on it's own, gives me no doubt in my mind that there is definitely a negative collector effect on the market.

[Kellri]

I'm enjoying a bit of throwdown with Baugh at the moment on the Big Purple. Seems he's now come to the conclusion that d20 Gamma World was pretty successful...but I'm guilty of making a personal attack by bringing it up. I also love his name-dropping skills - he's the last word in kick down-lick up rhetoric as long as his buddies are nearby. I could have dropped some names of my own - Gygax, Ward, Marsh, Pulsipher - but none of them have the same cool cachet as say, Lizard.

I think I've finally stumbled on the unwritten rule over there - thou shalt not piss on the basement dwelling warthog who survives on 1 cent a word. Kneel, consumer, and suck from Baugh's admittedly large man-teats of wisdom.

[J Arcane]

Seems he's now come to the conclusion that d20 Gamma World was pretty successful...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA . . . Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha . . . HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH . . . *wheeze* . . . . bwahahahhhaaaaaaaaa . . . *deep inhale*  *cough* *snicker*

Oh man.  That's just awesome.  So awesome it hurts.

[Koltar]

You're Frakking Kidding - right?


D20 GAMMA WORLD gathered dust on the shelves. I remember the original GAMMA WORLD - this new stuff did not compare favorably.

There was NO excitement of any kind in the past 3 years GAMMA WORLD D20 books while we've carried them.

 None...

 Nada,

Zip,

 Pagh!!

So, this Baugh guy is more than a tad bit delusional.
Its may be successful -as in he got paid for his writing it.
But if it was really this "Great Success" - then I would have seen some indication or blip of that trend in Ohio.


- Ed C.

[Kellri]

Here's the thread....here

Enjoy the lulz.

If the download figures for my Gamma World netbooks are any indication, it's still a very popular game. It may not get a whole lot of playtime, but everybody and his brother loves reading the stuff, and they want more. Consumer expectations are also pretty clear with GW (and indeed any post-apoc rpg), people want more GONZO. I just can't understand how d20 GW got everything so pitifully wrong and they still act smug about it, like it was a superior aesthetic the fans just were too stupid to grasp. Dammit, if I go to see a production of "Equus", I want to see the motherfucking nudity or I want my money back.

[Trevelyan]

Back on topic, can I sumbit items like "The Book of Nod" and, more recently, "Rites of the Dragon" as exhibits A and B for the presecution in the case of Gamers vs. White Wolf?

They are both books with the swuare root of fuck all actual game content (I admit I'm going by hearsay on RotD) that certain other parts of the gameline neverthe less assume that you will possess, which were sold largely to appeal to teh kind of people who like supporting game fiction.

[Drew]

Back on topic, can I sumbit items like "The Book of Nod" and, more recently, "Rites of the Dragon" as exhibits A and B for the presecution in the case of Gamers vs. White Wolf?

They are both books with the swuare root of fuck all actual game content (I admit I'm going by hearsay on RotD) that certain other parts of the gameline neverthe less assume that you will possess, which were sold largely to appeal to teh kind of people who like supporting game fiction.

Those I can live with. They're written as artifacts of their respective settings, and can be used as props that signify documentary evidence of the deeper mysteries of the worlds they inhabit. As products they cater to a very specific niche, and can be easily ignored.

It's when stuff like this starts appearing in core books that I have a problem.

[The Yann Waters]

They are both books with the swuare root of fuck all actual game content (I admit I'm going by hearsay on RotD) that certain other parts of the gameline neverthe less assume that you will possess, which were sold largely to appeal to teh kind of people who like supporting game fiction.

Actually, if memory serves, there's only one nWoD supplement which refers to anything other than the main book itself and the respective "splat" core: Fall of the Camarilla, I think? With the new World of Darkness WW decided to replace metaplot with optional material that can be used or discarded as the GM wishes, in keeping with the game's toolkit approach. Since they are all independent of each other in this way, you only ever need the books that focus on some aspect of the setting that interests you.

That is, they don't rely on each other. Supplement A doesn't stat out an NPC with an obscure power from Supplement B, and Supplement B doesn't expect the reader to know a tidbit of historical background from Supplement A. Instead they both build on the information from the core books. And while some supplement might include crossover rules and material for those who want them, all that is strictly optional: no book is going to tell you that "canonically" vampires have always fought against werewolves. There'll only ever be werewolves in your game of Vampire: The Requiem if the GM deliberately put them there.

[arminius]

I'm enjoying a bit of throwdown with Baugh at the moment on the Big Purple.

There are some major cases of people talking past each other on that thread. Like the comment about "physics engines" being taken to mean Phoenix Command, when all komradebob meant was "games that just have rules for physical stuff instead of 'shaping roleplaying'".

In your case Bruce Baugh is getting prickly because "filthy lucre" sounds like "getting rich" which of course it doesn't for him. What he fails to realize is that, yes, GW D20 is a prime example of (1) a piece of crap [by all accounts] (2) that he was able to indulge in only because of the "pushing product" mentality of his "industry" employers. His account of how it all came together is proof enough, and to top it all off he talks about success purely in terms of sales. How many of those copies got any real play?