TheRPGSite

I'm starting this thread so as not to derail the one in which Balbinus made (pretty much) the above statement.

I've seen Balbinus (and others) say the same thing before both here and on RPG.net, and seem to recall Bruce Baugh backing it up with anecdotes from within the industry. It really intrigues me. I think I get the underlying argument: games company producing books that appeal to collectors aren't necessarily producing books that work for gamers. And so long as the collectors are buying those books there's no incentive to correct or evolve the game itself because collectors don't care about it. Collectors won't give you feedback about how your initiative system reads beautifully but sucks spotty fat ass in play, or how ZOMG POWERZ X make playing anything without them a flat-out waste of time, for example.

So (in particular I'm asking this of Balbinus, but I'm expecting others to have an opinion too), can you expand or correct my take on the argument, and tell me how much of an impact it really has? Are there immediate concerns, or are you talking more about a gradual erosion of game quality? Can you cite games where you have seen the negative effects you're worried about actually take place?

I note in the meanwhile that the discussion continues in Settembrini's Luke Crane thread, but would still like to talk about the core issues here.

Test: fucking


okay I just wanted to see if there was a filter.

Collecting is good. Only collectors can become great DMs.

I´ve never encountered anyone who DMed with "Just one book" who was worth anything.

Player-Collectors keep systems afloat: Battletech for example

That said, the most vile species is not the collector itself, but the obnoxious "single book" collector. I hate them, they never start or maintain campaign with any single one of their "handy single volume"-wonderbooks.

If I can choose between a DM that owns EVERYTHING from ONE game line and nothing else, or a DM that has 300 different HSV-wonderbooks and written 400 reviews on RPG.Net, I´ll go to the first guy.

Quote from: Aos;232082okay I just wanted to see if there was a filter.

Nah, that was just me auto-asterisking. Fucking fucking fucking.

I can even not do it if I try.

Quote from: Settembrini;232083Collecting is good. Only collectors can become great DMs.

Ouch.  

Reading this hurts my brain.

Quote from: Stuart;232086Ouch.  

Reading this hurts my brain.

Reading Sett doesn't make my brain hurt.

Reading Sett trying to understand/repeat what I've written makes my brain hurt.

Quote from: Stuart;232086Ouch.  

Reading this hurts my brain.

Settembrini is full of shit again. News at 11.

Ignoring the troll is the best thing you can do

Quote from: Quire;232076So (in particular I'm asking this of Balbinus, but I'm expecting others to have an opinion too), can you expand or correct my take on the argument, and tell me how much of an impact it really has?

IMO, not much for the simple reason that good rules are not a reason significant number of people buy games.

Quote from: gleichman;232088Reading Sett doesn't make my brain hurt.

Reading Sett trying to understand/repeat what I've written makes my brain hurt.

Settembrini talks out of his ass.  I don't even bother reading what he writes.  if there is a post by him I just move on.

Quote from: Mike S.;232092Settembrini talks out of his ass.  I don't even bother reading what he writes.

You can read what he writes? For me, it's like spilling a bag of marbles on a tile floor and trying to watch where they all go simulataneously...

Seanchai

Quote from: Stuart;232086Ouch.  

Reading this hurts my brain.

Why that?

Only collectors make good DMs. That´s my point here. I can´t see anything difficult to understand there.

Again: I´ve never encountered someone who wasn´t a collector of the system he DMs who was worth his salt.

Kibitzers suck, it's true.

Quote from: Settembrini;232115Why that?

Only collectors make good DMs. That´s my point here. I can´t see anything difficult to understand there.

Again: I´ve never encountered someone who wasn´t a collector of the system he DMs who was worth his salt.

What would collecting mean for someone who just played OD&D, B/X D&D, or AD&D (pre Unearthed Arcana)?  What's the minimum requirement for their collection before they could be a good DM?  Was that always true, or is it only true circa 2008?

Quote from: Settembrini;232115Only collectors make good DMs. That´s my point here. I can´t see anything difficult to understand there.

I agree, the incredibly stupid argument you make is very easy to understand.  :rolleyes:

Well, an OD&D DM would have had an extensive library of Novels, Wargames, Miniatures & non-fiction books all around "his" subjects.

And as of 2008 I expect that AS WELL as a collection of "his" system he wants to run.

Again, I have only encountered DMs who were deep into "their" thing that were any good.

I can´t stand half assed efforts.

So I see a big difference in collecting "deep" and collecting "broad".

The bane of RPG.Net are the flavour of the month single book purchasers, for example.

Take collectors out of the market, and most RPGs and publishers are no longer commercially viable. Period.

Now, I know Balbinus has a dislike of the commercial RPG industry to begin with, so no doubt he would be okay if most publishers stopped production. But other haters of collectors should stop and ask themselves if they enjoy what professional products add to their hobby.

Because the choice isn't between games that are published with an eye towards collectors, and games that are geared strictly towards players. The choice is between games that are just barely viable by trying to appeal to both sorts of customers, and no professionally produced games at all.

And of course, there's no reason to believe games designed by hobby publishers will be any more thoroughly developed and playtested than professional products.

Quote from: jgants;232121I agree, the incredibly stupid argument you make is very easy to understand.  :rolleyes:

See? I told you so. Now, please give me an example of a DM who had only a single book and who blew your mind.

BTW, what´s your favorite system?

Quote from: Settembrini;232126Well, an OD&D DM would have had an extensive library of Novels, Wargames, Miniatures & non-fiction books all around "his" subjects.

I never played OD&D, so let's talk about two games I'm more experienced with.  B/X D&D and AD&D.  

How much of a collection is required for a good DM of those systems?

Quote from: Settembrini;232129See? I told you so. Now, please give me an example of a DM who had only a single book and who blew your mind.

BTW, what´s your favorite system?

Age of Heroes, there's only one 'book'  and I've played with a GM who 'blew my mind' running it...

Same with HERO System 5th edition although it has many supplements, etc. Almost none are needed or used IME.

I'm sort of in the reverse mindset. Anyone who needs all the books for a system to run great games is running low on creative talent...

Quote from: gleichman;232133I'm sort of in the reverse mindset. Anyone who needs all the books for a system to run great games is running low on creative talent...

The two arguments are not mututally exclusive.

Quote from: Settembrini;232129See? I told you so. Now, please give me an example of a DM who had only a single book and who blew your mind.

BTW, what´s your favorite system?

Hmm...that's tough because I prefer to be the GM so I don't tend to enjoy being a player.  But I had a lot of fun when I was younger with friends who ran games and only owned the main book, or didn't even own a book at all (they'd borrow mine or someone else's).

Recently I've only found GMs I didn't care for, but they owned tons of books.

My favorite system...hard to say because I like variety (currently I have at least 4-5 games I'd love to run a campaign for, but I'm stuck playing for now).  I'd prefer to run several smaller campaigns for a few months at a time then one giant one for years on end.

I don't really feel there's any correlation between amount of books owned vs. game running skill. I guess I'm a little leery of someone running a game they don't have books for, or only a .pdf of, but that's about it.

Quote from: Stuart;232132I never played OD&D, so let's talk about two games I'm more experienced with.  B/X D&D and AD&D.  

How much of a collection is required for a good DM of those systems?

You are parsing it backwards. Required? Not a single one.

But if the DM isn´t really deep into it, he´ll most likely suck. And I´ve never met a good DM who wasn´t ALSO a fan & collector of said system.

To be a good Moldvay/Cook DM you need:

Moldvay Basic
Cook/Marsh Expert

That's it for me.  Or you can just go with Labyrinth Lords and get it down to one, albiet longer book.  

Sure having a background in fantasy adventure is good, but you don't have to own a ton of books from Tolkien, Howard, etc.  There are such things as libraries.  

In my younger days I would have been much more inclined to agree with the "only collectors make good DMs" line, but ever since the end my few years running Earthdawn, I've come to the belief that a lot of times less is more in terms of rules and supplements for a game.  An overabundance of "canon" material suffocates the DM's creative mojo.  At least that's my take.

I tend to buy core only. I make everything else up myself. i did, however buy the true20 companion, and I might buy the 4e PHB2 for the Barbarian. I enjoy creating my own monsters and settings, it is a huge part of the fun for me. I only use commercial systems because I grew tired of my homebrews and tinkering with mechanics is my least favorite part of gaming.

Quote from: Settembrini;232143You are parsing it backwards. Required? Not a single one.

GM: "You read another of Settembrini's posts. Make a SAN check."

:confused:

Quote from: Settembrini;232129See? I told you so. Now, please give me an example of a DM who had only a single book and who blew your mind.

I GMed Shadowrun and DSA for the longest time with just the core set of books, and I think that I faired fine.
Same with Savage Worlds, although I cheated a bit by mining conversions and other fan-created internet stuff.

Thinking of games I GMed with just one book, while there _are_ more, there's also Vampire... But I guess the sucktitude wouldn't have changed even if I had owned a bazillion of sourcebooks back then.

I don't necessarily agree.


I do think that people who only participate in this hobby by buying books and talking about them.. aren't really participating in any meaningful or useful way, and may in fact be a pox. Eventually you end up with a culture almost entirely composed of reviewers and fan-fic writers, and pretend-designers.

But I'm agnostic on the rest. Have a collection? Great. No collection? great. It doesn't matter. What matters is what you bring to the game.

There was a good 18 months before I ever used (or knew about) a Rifts supplement, when I ran that game. I adapted things from other games, I wrote up new equipment, armor, weaponry, I created monsters on the roll up tables in the back, etc. I designed tons and tons of mechas and vehicles, I think I still have some of the art laying around.  All of this from the single corebook.

Quote from: Quire;232076games company producing books that appeal to collectors aren't necessarily producing books that work for gamers.

There is NO problem here.   If you don't like something, don't buy it.   Capitalism means the product that appeals to the most people makes the most money.   Those products that lack appeal die off.

Quote from: Settembrini;232083Collecting is good. Only collectors can become great DMs.

There is zero correlation between buying books and being a great GM.   By your definition, every great GM suddenly loses his ability when he buys a new game.  

Quote from: Settembrini;232129BTW, what´s your favorite system?

System is low priority.   Games of any sort do not sell because of their system.   Fun gameplay trumps everything and creates word of mouth regardless of system flaws.

Quote from: Settembrini;232115Again: I´ve never encountered someone who wasn´t a collector of the system he DMs who was worth his salt.

That's been my experience, as a general rule, at least as regards D&D. It's a very general rule though, as I've met shit DMs who couldn't run a decent game despite having massive collections.

I could offer several explanations:
DMs with large collections of support material are, obviously, going to have more support for their game, and thus can devote more time and creative energy to creating original material.  These DMs spend less time re-inventing the wheel by using quality pregenerated material written by professional game designers.  The players cannot distinguish between the professionally written material and DM generated material, thus the DM is given creative credit for the total. EX: If I want to run a murder mystery in a good church, and I own Bastion of Faith (a 2E book the super-details a large sized good church), then I can spend more time developing the murder mystery, and not waste time developing a good church.  My players can't tell which parts I wrote and which parts TSR published.

Also, DMs who actually read their vast collections, whether specifically related to their game or not, are exposed to the voices of many different game designers, and may develop an understanding of adventure structure and design simply by reading large numbers of adventures -- DM growth through osmosis.  Furthermore, many supplements contain tidbits to entire sections of DMing advice, and reading the advice from several different designers almost has to give a DM a broader perspective than the DM whose entire understanding of the art is filtered through one designers perspective.  Much liek a fine artist develops not only through practice but through the study of other artists and ideas about art, so the game master learns by studying the work of other game masters/designers.

Finally, for most people a passion for a system or setting will translate into an investment in that setting or system.  If you love running D&D, you're probably going to find it hard to not buy stuff to support the game.  Sure, this isn't a universal tendency, but it's common enough.  A passion for the game will also tend to make for superior gaming, and obviously a bored or disinterested DM isn't going to lead to better gaming.

Natural talent can make up for lack of "education," and no amount of collecting can overcome a true deficit of talent, but it only stands to reason that well-read DM with plenty of ready support material is generally going to be the better DM.  The best DMs will inevitably have both natural talent and large support collections.

I think Jackalope made my argument in American-English.
Thanks!

Passion it is, indeed.

I can buy the passionate GMs = better GMs argument, as a general rule.  It's the passionate GMs = collectors axiom that Sett is making I disagree with.

Sure, some GMs may show passionate by buying more and more stuff.  But others might not.  And what about all those games where there really aren't any essential supplements (Call of Cthulhu comes to mind).

And I find no correlation whatsoever between good GMs and people who collect non-game materials.  I've had plenty of D&D gaming fun with people who never really read any classic fantasy novels.

Quote from: Seanchai;232110You can read what he writes? For me, it's like spilling a bag of marbles on a tile floor and trying to watch where they all go simulataneously...

Seanchai

I can read what he says- it's just shit 99% of the time.  Him making claims that people who collect games are better GMs then people who have one book is nothing but garbage and I have gamed with people who have only used one book and have had a lot of fun.

I am running a game right now that I am only using one book with (All Flesh Must be Eaten) and my group is having a blast.

Quote from: Jackalope;232157T
DMs with large collections of support material are, obviously, going to have more support for their game, and thus can devote more time and creative energy to creating original material.

I will add that being an avid reader of your chosen genre as well as a reader of books about the historical period of your genre also help broaden your base of support material.

For example, because of my work developing add-on and reading the source material for the realistic space simulator Orbiter has made adjudicating detailed space travel a snap for me* and allows me to focus on the areas I am weak on or need to flesh out more.

Rob Conley

*Basically my experience has taught that realistic spaceflight is esstentially on of budget management. The budget you are managing is change in velocity.

Basically your craft will have one of two characteristics. Either you are fuel limited which means you change only change your velocity so much and that it (realistic fuel and engines). Or you are limited in the amount you can change your velocity at a single moment but have esstentially unlimited fuel (Traveller 1G drives).

The two situations produce a different feel to space flight and different challenges. I know how to outline the choices for the player to make meaningful decisions and when skill rolls are called for. And most importantly how to cut out the boring or non essential parts.

Quote from: jgants;232165I can buy the passionate GMs = better GMs argument, as a general rule.  It's the passionate GMs = collectors axiom that Sett is making I disagree with.

He is overstating the point a bit, but as a general rule, I've noticed it.

QuoteSure, some GMs may show passionate by buying more and more stuff.  But others might not.  And what about all those games where there really aren't any essential supplements (Call of Cthulhu comes to mind)

Obviously the best Attack of the Humans GMs aren't going to have vast collections of AoH books (there were no supplements).  it's a general rule: apply common sense as needed. That said, of the CoC GMs I've played with, the best had pretty much everything available for the game, the worst were borrowing the core book from a friend.

QuoteAnd I find no correlation whatsoever between good GMs and people who collect non-game materials.  I've had plenty of D&D gaming fun with people who never really read any classic fantasy novels.

Eh, that's not been my experience when it comes to players, but I've never met a GM who wasn't familiar with the genre he was working in.  It's really noticeable in a supers games, like Champions.  I can't stand running Champions for people who aren't very familiar with the tropes of the superhero genre.

I drive a late 80s BMW. Lest anyone feel I'm being elitist and/or showing off, I should note it's in a condition that would cause any sane human to run screaming from the experience of driving it; I recently spent a couple of months driving it with no clutch - "rev-matching," is the answer to the question some of you are asking - for example. Anyway, I point it out because it's the last of what BMW aficionados consider "real BMWs."

Why is this? Because in the last 80s, facing increased competition from its domestic competitors, BMW was under a great deal of pressure to radically expand its customer base. [Which is the inevitable result of building cars meant to last 20-30+ years.] This meant, since it was the greatest consumer of cars in the world, selling more cars for the US market.

Then as now, Americans were a sizeable people, so the cars needed to be larger, which meant they needed to be heavier, which meant they couldn't change direction - acceleration, cornering, braking - as well. Americans also held the strange - to das Germans - belief that they should be able to do other things while driving, like suck down a Big Gulp, which meant cup holders. [Drinking on Highway 60 while going 70MPH is no big deal; drinking on the autobahn when going 240KPH is highly unwise. Smoking's okay, though: I have a very nice ashtray.] It also meant increased emissions controls [although they wisely chose not to cripple cars for the European market]. In the end, it meant a more complicated, less focused car, which wasn't nearly as much fun to drive, which cost more to repair, and which got radically worse gas mileage [from emissions controls and increased weight]. If someone gave me the choice between a brand new 1986 3-series and a brand new 2008 3-series, I would choose the '86 with no delay.

What's my point with this automotive diversion? The fact is, if BMW hadn't made the changes they did, it is highly unlikely they would still exist as the company we know today. Given the choice between a BMW that made chunky cars and no BMW at all, most BMW fans - and certainly most BMW accountants - would choose the former. While I, of course, would simply drive an old BMW.

If "collectors" - which appears to be the term in use for "people who buy RPGs but don't play them, thus diluting the purity of our gaming intent and sending signals to the RPG companies that we gamers don't agree with" - are significant enough in number to effect the RPG companies' products, they must exist in numbers sufficient to effect their bottom lines. If the voices of collectors are so many that they drown out those of players, they must be a very significant portion of the sales. So you've a choice, between RPG companies making products informed by sales numbers "distorted" by people who aren't playing the game, or RPG companies who don't make nearly so many sales, which in this business often means "no RPG company at all."

While I, of course, will simply play old RPGs.

Quote from: Quire;232076I'm starting this thread so as not to derail the one in which Balbinus made (pretty much) the above statement.

I've seen Balbinus (and others) say the same thing before both here and on RPG.net, and seem to recall Bruce Baugh backing it up with anecdotes from within the industry. It really intrigues me. I think I get the underlying argument: games company producing books that appeal to collectors aren't necessarily producing books that work for gamers. And so long as the collectors are buying those books there's no incentive to correct or evolve the game itself because collectors don't care about it. Collectors won't give you feedback about how your initiative system reads beautifully but sucks spotty fat ass in play, or how ZOMG POWERZ X make playing anything without them a flat-out waste of time, for example.

So (in particular I'm asking this of Balbinus, but I'm expecting others to have an opinion too), can you expand or correct my take on the argument, and tell me how much of an impact it really has? Are there immediate concerns, or are you talking more about a gradual erosion of game quality? Can you cite games where you have seen the negative effects you're worried about actually take place?

I note in the meanwhile that the discussion continues in Settembrini's Luke Crane thread, but would still like to talk about the core issues here.

Since everyone else is busy rambling on about some bullshit Settembrini tangent, I felt it necessary to quote the original post again, to remind everyone what I'm talking about when I say I agree with that sentiment.

Really, you need only look to some of the stuff that's boomed then died by the RPGnet darling phenomenon to see it at work.  Some game with a marginally cool premise gets hyped to shit, pumped out in semi-gloss, and everyone and their mother buys it, and then promptly never actually plays it because the actual game is tripe and virtually useless.  Meanwhile, the initial sales are still enough to keep milking the hype with further releases for a game that no one is actually playing, until eventually the whole thing fizzles and dies as more and more people start realizing this game is fucking useless and stop buying up every release.  

This kind of flash in the pan crap does hurt the hobby, and the industry, despite claims to the contrary, because if you flood enough of the market with useless tripe, eventually people just give up on buying the things altogether.  It happened in 1984 to the Atari, it happened to the D20 market, it's happening to the Wii slowly but surely.

Okay, 35 posts in. Summation: next to nothing about the issues raised in the opening post.

After the first few posts we could have called for the thread's title to be changed to 'Let's shit on the Prussian!' and move it to Off-Topic. Fun,  but not what I asked about. Then it meandered quite wildly into 'Can you DM Iteration X of D&D Or Indeed Any Game With Only Core Book(s)?'. WTF?

Does anyone fancy addressing the actual issue I started the thread to talk about, or am I really wasting my fucking time here?

Thanks J. That puts some shape in the concept.

Engine - you're as full of shit as ever. One day, you'll take a crap, and reverse climate change. Or something.

Quote from: Quire;232180Okay, 35 posts in. Summation: next to nothing about the issues raised in the opening post.

That's about par. Next will be 70 posts discussing the thread, but not what the thread was about, mixed in with complaints about the complaints about the person being complained about. Welcome to theRPGsite: we really just like to argue about shit; it doesn't actually have to be about gaming.

Quote from: Quire;232181Engine - you're as full of shit as ever.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Why do you think so?

Quote from: Quire;232180After the first few posts we could have called for the thread's title to be changed to 'Let's shit on the Prussian!' and move it to Off-Topic. Fun,  but not what I asked about.

The Prussian is walked into it by posting this bullshit rant.  Myself as well as others have proven that what he is saying is not true and all this thread amounts to is Settembrini saying "look at me, look at me! I need attention!"

keep moving, there is nothing to see here

Quote from: Quire;232181Engine - you're as full of shit as ever.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Why do you think so?

Quote from: Mike S.;232185Settembrini saying "look at me, look at me! I need attention!"

Don't give it to him then. Yeah?

Quote from: Quire;232187Don't give it to him then. Yeah?

If you will notice I haven't directly replied to any of his replies, only those of other people in this thread

Quote from: Engine;232177If "collectors" - which appears to be the term in use for "people who buy RPGs but don't play them, thus diluting the purity of our gaming intent and sending signals to the RPG companies that we gamers don't agree with" - are significant enough in number to effect the RPG companies' products, they must exist in numbers sufficient to effect their bottom lines. If the voices of collectors are so many that they drown out those of players, they must be a very significant portion of the sales. So you've a choice, between RPG companies making products informed by sales numbers "distorted" by people who aren't playing the game, or RPG companies who don't make nearly so many sales, which in this business often means "no RPG company at all."

I don't know if there really are enough of these so called "collectors" to distort the market.  I've met at least one guy who simply bought everything on the market, read it, and stashed it away in an archive.  But that's one guy in twenty years of being involved in the gaming scene.  I myself am guilty of picking up stuff "just to check it out", but I find reading any gaming related book -- good or bad -- to be useful to some degree.

There certainly are classes of books -- a lot of FR supplements, "system less books" -- that I think appeal mostly to collectors, but I could be wrong.

Quote from: Engine;232183I'm sorry you feel that way.

Don't apologise 32. You're perfectly entitled to ramble on nonsensically before getting to the point. You can then verbosely make said point and feign confusion when no-one gives a flying fuck over a rolling doughnut what the hell you are on about.

Anyone else got more to add the issue of The Collectors Conundrum?

Quote from: Jackalope;232190I don't know if there really are enough of these so called "collectors" to distort the market.

I don't either; it's one of the problems I have in assessing the validity of the thesis. I can only speak from my own experience, and I don't know anyone who buys RPGs and doesn't play them. But I'm also not a member of RPG.net or Storygames, where many of these people, I'm told, are.

Does anyone have anything like an estimate of the proportion of "collectors" to "players," that we might more accurately judge the validity of the thesis?

Quote from: Engine;232177I drive a late 80s BMW. Lest anyone feel I'm being elitist and/or showing off, I should note it's in a condition that would cause any sane human to run screaming from the experience of driving it; I recently spent a couple of months driving it with no clutch - "rev-matching," is the answer to the question some of you are asking - for example. Anyway, I point it out because it's the last of what BMW aficionados consider "real BMWs."

Why is this? Because in the last 80s, facing increased competition from its domestic competitors, BMW was under a great deal of pressure to radically expand its customer base. [Which is the inevitable result of building cars meant to last 20-30+ years.] This meant, since it was the greatest consumer of cars in the world, selling more cars for the US market.

Then as now, Americans were a sizeable people, so the cars needed to be larger, which meant they needed to be heavier, which meant they couldn't change direction - acceleration, cornering, braking - as well. Americans also held the strange - to das Germans - belief that they should be able to do other things while driving, like suck down a Big Gulp, which meant cup holders. [Drinking on Highway 60 while going 70MPH is no big deal; drinking on the autobahn when going 240KPH is highly unwise. Smoking's okay, though: I have a very nice ashtray.] It also meant increased emissions controls [although they wisely chose not to cripple cars for the European market]. In the end, it meant a more complicated, less focused car, which wasn't nearly as much fun to drive, which cost more to repair, and which got radically worse gas mileage [from emissions controls and increased weight]. If someone gave me the choice between a brand new 1986 3-series and a brand new 2008 3-series, I would choose the '86 with no delay.

What's my point with this automotive diversion? The fact is, if BMW hadn't made the changes they did, it is highly unlikely they would still exist as the company we know today. Given the choice between a BMW that made chunky cars and no BMW at all, most BMW fans - and certainly most BMW accountants - would choose the former. While I, of course, would simply drive an old BMW.

If "collectors" - which appears to be the term in use for "people who buy RPGs but don't play them, thus diluting the purity of our gaming intent and sending signals to the RPG companies that we gamers don't agree with" - are significant enough in number to effect the RPG companies' products, they must exist in numbers sufficient to effect their bottom lines. If the voices of collectors are so many that they drown out those of players, they must be a very significant portion of the sales. So you've a choice, between RPG companies making products informed by sales numbers "distorted" by people who aren't playing the game, or RPG companies who don't make nearly so many sales, which in this business often means "no RPG company at all."

While I, of course, will simply play old RPGs.

Whilst I was reading that I was totally agreeing, apart from all the bollocks about cars of course :-)
The truth of the matter is that if collectors are important they they are supporting the industry for everyone else and in so doing they allow good games to get designed and played by other people. Yes there may be more crap but better some crap as well as the good stuff than nothing at all.

As for the collector = good DM I would disagree. I often just make the system up as I had my fill of games that spew 1000 splat books. Now do I have loads of other stuff that feeds this yes sure, libraries of books, etc etc but I don't collect this stuff I buy books to read them so now I have a lot of books.
I think being a fan does help being a DM but even that is not necessary. A really good DM, and I have met a few, can create a great game from nothing

Collectors virtually destroyed the comic industry, and I see the same thing with the RPG industry too.  Although it's more the companies that focus on selling to the collectors than the collectors themselves that are the problem.  You can't blame the collectors for enjoying what they do.

So it more "gaming companies that are too focused on the peripheral community" that is a f*cking pox on the hobby.

Quote from: Quire;232192You're perfectly entitled to ramble on nonsensically before getting to the point. You can then verbosely make said point and feign confusion when no-one gives a flying fuck over a rolling doughnut what the hell you are on about.

No, really, Quire, I'm serious. Clearly you feel my view as presented is incorrect, but thus far all you've done is said that it's incorrect. Could you please elucidate your objections to it, or refute my view? I'm really just putting out a possibility, and corrections to that possibility would be most welcome.

Also, I would personally appreciate it if you could manage to do so in a mature, reasonable fashion, rather than simply insulting me, which doesn't illuminate your own counterpoint in any way; thank you.

Quote from: Stuart;232195Collectors virtually destroyed the comic industry, and I see the same thing with the RPG industry too.

Now that is interesting.

Can you go into that a bit more, Stuart?

Quote from: Engine;232197Also, I would personally appreciate it if you could manage to do so in a mature, reasonable fashion, rather than simply insulting me, which doesn't illuminate your own counterpoint in any way; thank you.

It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it. It's not what you say... and so on.

You know how a lot of people look at you strangely?

They're wondering if you're upside-down, because that shit must surely be coming out of your ass.

Thanks for playing, 32.

I don't think collectors are destroying the hobby. In some ways I think they prop it up financially. I don't think, however, they have much to add to any back and forth chatter about gaming, about games yes, but not about gaming. But, I'm often wrong.

Quote from: Engine;232193I don't either; it's one of the problems I have in assessing the validity of the thesis. I can only speak from my own experience, and I don't know anyone who buys RPGs and doesn't play them. But I'm also not a member of RPG.net or Storygames, where many of these people, I'm told, are.

Oh, I think the non-gamer distortion effect on game forums is quite pronounced.  RPGsite is one of the best in terms of gamer:kibitizer ratios, rpg.net one of the worst.  But I don't know if they have real effect on the market for games.  It certainly does lead to a bunch of noise and poorly informed reviews, bad ideas about in-game behavior, and worse ideas about dealing with OOC inter-player conflicts.  I can pretty much assure you that 90% of the people who champion the "don't play with assholes" idea don't play with anyone.

Seriously, if you have a gaming group and think there is no asshole in it, then the asshole is you.  Because all gaming groups have at least one asshole.

QuoteDoes anyone have anything like an estimate of the proportion of "collectors" to "players," that we might more accurately judge the validity of the thesis

Exactly, need more data.

@Quire: Yes, I thought that was a bit much to ask. Next time, perhaps!

[edit: That was some passive-aggressive bullshit on my part. My sincere apologies, Quire.]

Quote from: Quire;232198Now that is interesting.

Can you go into that a bit more, Stuart?

By over-focusing on making comics "not just for kids!" they ended up making comics that weren't for kids... and then were surprised that they had a shrinking market as they had fewer kids getting into comics to replace people who were growing out of them.

The collectors wanted convoluted, confusing story lines and dark, gritty characters.  They didn't want to grow out of superman and batman -- they wanted them to get older and more "mature" with them.  So rather than add comics for adults, they changed the kids stuff to be more grown up.  Great for the adults... not so great for the kids.

It was a short-term success in that the collectors would buy a lot of product compared to a casual consumer (or kids!) -- but it was a bit like killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  It's was a non-sustainable business, and eventually the house of cards started to collapse.

Over time there was a conscious decision to focus more on the mature gamer, and the collector in particular.  This is virtually the same thing that happened with the comics industry -- but about 10 years later.

The RPG industry saw it's peak in the early 80s when TSR put "Ages 10 and up" on the covers of it's books.  In 2000 WotC decided RPGs would be for adults.

And the results look very, very similar to what we say with the comics industry.

Quote from: Aos;232200I don't think collectors are destroying the hobby. In some ways I think they prop it up financially.

Yeah... That's why I'm asking about it. I'm thinking along the same lines.

I also recognise that people like Balbinus have got a good thinking head on their shoulders, so I'm hoping they can cast a light in my general direction and illuminate me a little.

Quote from: Jackalope;232201Oh, I think the non-gamer distortion effect on game forums is quite pronounced.

One of the greatest errors I see on gaming forums is that people on them feel the population of that forum is representative of gamers as a whole, which just often isn't true at all! So like you say, you can have this terrible kibitzer ratio on a site, while not having one in the market. Need more data.

Quote from: Stuart;232204And the results look very, very similar to what we say with the comics industry.

Stuart, that was very interesting, thanks. It's given me a lot of food for thought.

Quote from: Quire;232198Now that is interesting.

Can you go into that a bit more, Stuart?

I think he's referring to the 90's "speculators".  (EDIT: Actually, it appears Stuart was referring to something else.  Oh, well)

But it's unfair to blame just them.  The full history is quite a sordid affair.

First, you had Marvel owner Ron Perelman constantly raising prices and adding new titles for the more popular properties, all the while alienating a lot of the talent in the industry.  

Then there was Diamond, the distributor who gave anyone and everyone massive amounts of credit.  You could literally open a comic store with a couple hundred bucks at the time.

Finally, speculating comic collectors kept buying new #1 and "limited edition" comics, thinking they would be worth something some day.  However, because they were published in the millions, most are worth about 50% or less of their cover value more than 10 years later.

Chuck Rozanski, owner of Mile High Comics, has written several essays about those times: see http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg36.html (http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg36.html), http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg37.html (http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg37.html), and http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg38.html (http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg38.html) for some interesting highlights.

Quote from: Stuart;232195Collectors virtually destroyed the comic industry, and I see the same thing with the RPG industry too.  Although it's more the companies that focus on selling to the collectors than the collectors themselves that are the problem.  You can't blame the collectors for enjoying what they do.

So it more "gaming companies that are too focused on the peripheral community" that is a f*cking pox on the hobby.

I really hate it when companies do that, but very few companies engage in this bullshit.  TSR and WOTC have both released prestige versions of the core books, which is fine.  But then you see people releasing games in only super-deluxe special editions -- Nobilis, Fantasy Imperium -- that are overpriced and fall apart when used for regular gaming.  They don't seem to have much success though, so I think it's unlikely the dominate the market.

Quote from: Stuart;232204By over-focusing on making comics "not just for kids!" they ended up making comics that weren't for kids... and then were surprised that they had a shrinking market as they had fewer kids getting into comics to replace people who were growing out of them.

The collectors wanted convoluted, confusing story lines and dark, gritty characters.  They didn't want to grow out of superman and batman -- they wanted them to get older and more "mature" with them.  So rather than add comics for adults, they changed the kids stuff to be more grown up.  Great for the adults... not so great for the kids.

It was a short-term success in that the collectors would buy a lot of product compared to a casual consumer (or kids!) -- but it was a bit like killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  It's was a non-sustainable business, and eventually the house of cards started to collapse.

Over time there was a conscious decision to focus more on the mature gamer, and the collector in particular.  This is virtually the same thing that happened with the comics industry -- but about 10 years later.

The RPG industry saw it's peak in the early 80s when TSR put "Ages 10 and up" on the covers of it's books.  In 2000 WotC decided RPGs would be for adults.

And the results look very, very similar to what we say with the comics industry.

Actually you are correct up until you get to the conclusion.

I go to events and I see *tons of kids* ages 10,11,12.. playing D&D. The group I Dm on Saturday contains mom, boyfriend and an 11 year old son. My own kids play from time to time.

I in fact, have the official standards in front of me for writing adventures that demand "PG-13" levels of content.

We D&D players are not the throat rapers or the "dark and gritty" guys by any means. In 2000, common wisdom said "Yeah, this D&D thing is just rudimentary crap like pokemon, real roleplayers will continue to play Unknown Armies and Vampire for the next decade.."

THAT did not happen as planned.

So when you guys say "collector" in this thread, do you mean people who just buy stuff to have it rather than because they are going to play it?  Because I am not aware of any collector's market for gaming products.  I mean you can't put a game book in a plastic bag and think it will go up in value over time, can you?

Quote from: walkerp;232212So when you guys say "collector" in this thread, do you mean people who just buy stuff to have it rather than because they are going to play it?

Yes. Just that.

I'm addressing the argument that people who buy RPGs but don't play them damage the RPG market. I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it.

Quote from: walkerp;232212So when you guys say "collector" in this thread, do you mean people who just buy stuff to have it rather than because they are going to play it?  Because I am not aware of any collector's market for gaming products.  I mean you can't put a game book in a plastic bag and think it will go up in value over time, can you?

Dude, this shit happens all the time.  You really don't believe that?  You've spent time on RPGnet.  The amount of people there with piles of books they've never so much as played once is staggering.

Quote from: Stuart;232204By over-focusing on making comics "not just for kids!" they ended up making comics that weren't for kids... and then were surprised that they had a shrinking market as they had fewer kids getting into comics to replace people who were growing out of them.

The collectors wanted convoluted, confusing story lines and dark, gritty characters.  They didn't want to grow out of superman and batman -- they wanted them to get older and more "mature" with them.  So rather than add comics for adults, they changed the kids stuff to be more grown up.  Great for the adults... not so great for the kids.

It was a short-term success in that the collectors would buy a lot of product compared to a casual consumer (or kids!) -- but it was a bit like killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  It's was a non-sustainable business, and eventually the house of cards started to collapse.

Wow, you are really confusing two different trends in the comics market.

It wasn't the collectors who drove the trend towards darker storylines, more sex and violence, and other symptoms of grim and gritty syndrome.  That trend was driven by readers and critics, by the success of Frank Miller's Dark Knight and Alan Moore's Watchmen, by the increasing sophistication of the new generation of artists and writers who grew up post-Marvel Silver Age. ETA: And jibbajabba's point about cross-pollination with the European market.

The collectors drove the holographic covers, the sealed polybag comics, the endless Punisher/Wolverine/Ghost Rider crossovers and guest appearances, the alternate cover schemes, the one-shots, etc.  Because they bought these things in the futile hope that they would be "valuable" some day, but didn't care if they were crappy comics, they drove off many readers and Marvel went bankrupt when the market for these speculative collector's comics started bottoming out.

Hmm.. I am not sure about Stuarts point here. When comic were written for kids they sold more comics but they were shit. US superhero comics in particular were repetative and full of crap.. people look back on a goldn age becuase there were a few but there was a lot more crap. This is especially true when you compare to the European comic market that was always aimed at Adults.
So the move towards more mature comics, largely led by British writers who had always written more mature complex stuff (just look at 2000ad and Wizard), might have led to decreasing sales but it increased quality immeasureably.

So basically that process was exactly the opposite of Balbinus saying collectors increase the number of crap games maintaining sales at the cost of quality.

Quote from: walkerp;232212So when you guys say "collector" in this thread, do you mean people who just buy stuff to have it rather than because they are going to play it?

I believe so. I prefer Jackalope's term "kibitzers," but I've been told I have a weakness for Jewry.

Quote from: Jackalope;232201Exactly, need more data.

Another data point: does anyone have examples of games which have been "ruined" by kibitzers? What percentage of games are effected by this movement, and how much of the game's content is designed for these people?

There's a lot of opinion-sharing going on, which is well and good for as much as it's worth, but if proof-of-thesis is the point, some kind of perspective and context is essential. If four rules in eight games have been effected by the fifteen kibitzers, it's largely a non-issue; if 90 percent of games are 80 percent crap because 99 percent of consumers don't play the game, that's something essential and crippling to players.

Quote from: walkerp;232212So when you guys say "collector" in this thread, do you mean people who just buy stuff to have it rather than because they are going to play it?  Because I am not aware of any collector's market for gaming products.  I mean you can't put a game book in a plastic bag and think it will go up in value over time, can you?

Sure.  I sold an extra first printing copy of the 1E Deities & Demigods I had for about $125 maybe three years ago.  I just recently bought Tome of Horrors II off Amazon.  The low price was $33, just over cover.  The high price was $175.00.  A mint copy of The Arcanum, a cheap little unofficial supplement for AD&D from Bard Games that had a very small print run, will fetch $100+  You don't even want to know what some people want for a near mint copy of OD&D.

In fact, even though they're completely useless to me these days (having been updated and revised many times), my first printing Deities & Demigods and my 1E Fiend Folio are some of my prized gaming possessions.

nevermind.

Quote from: SettembriniOnly collectors make good DMs. That´s my point here. I can´t see anything difficult to understand there.

That is one of the most ridiculous comments Ive seen for a while, Ive played with a fresh GM who I gave the game to read and he was perfect at it.
It had nothing to do with him collecting but knowing the genre and style of the setting, that being CoC.

Rog.

Quote from: Mike S.;232169I can read what he says- it's just shit 99% of the time.

True dat.

Seanchai

Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is.

A collector that doesn't run or play is a net zero to the playing community as a whole, except that they're giving their money to companies who tend to have trouble making lots of money. So, you know, win, right?

And if they derive enjoyment from their purchases, no matter where that enjoyment stems from, it's good for them. I don't have anywhere near the kind of money to buy things that arn't critical to me (and that includes books - so my collection has kind of frozen), but more power to 'em if they do.

And if they don't, well, they've got other problems.

Quote from: Thanatos02;232245A collector that doesn't run or play is a net zero to the playing community as a whole, except that they're giving their money to companies who tend to have trouble making lots of money. So, you know, win, right?

Upon reflection, I'm not rejecting Stuart's comic example. Collectors in this sense will prop up rpg lines that otherwise would die due to lack of sales. This has impact across the whole hobby.

I for example would like to see GURPS die so that HERO could take that niche of rpgs completely, and thus be able to expand its product line even more. It may not turn out that way (or it may turn out to be the reverse), but I think there's a lot to be said for the concept.

As is, given that even crappy Forge games can hit even or turn a small profit- segmenting of the market is from a sales PoV a given and overall quality of game design can safely drop.

Quote from: Quire;232076Can you cite games where you have seen the negative effects you're worried about actually take place?

White-Wolf books being padded with in-character fiction of mostly middling quality. It eats up quite a lot page space and adds nothing to the playability of the game, but is of interest to the collector because it tends to feature the same or similar characters across books and develops their story.

As a specific example: Hunter: the Reckoning, which was otherwise a very good game, had this problem. The line had some truly excellent books, but many of the smaller books, especially the splats, were heavy on fiction and light on actual gaming material.

Stephen Lea Sheppard, the mod at RPG.net / actor, is an example of a guy who owns everything White-Wolf has ever made (and even works for them now) despite barely playing the games anymore (Last I'd heard, he was too busy acting and modding at rpg.net to get a game going).

That's one set of examples.

Quote from: Roger Calver;232227That is one of the most ridiculous comments Ive seen for a while, Ive played with a fresh GM who I gave the game to read and he was perfect at it.
It had nothing to do with him collecting but knowing the genre and style of the setting, that being CoC.

Rog.

How long did that campaign last?

EDIT:
BTW: Aren´t you the guy working on Dr. Who and Starblazers? Fuck if there ever were collector/heavily invested fan products, than it´s those!

Also, while I don't think a DM or PC needs to have a lot of books to be good at a game, they do need to have a habit of reading books for pleasure. One of the most important ways people learn how to tell stories and use language in interesting ways is by experiencing complicated, engaging, well-written stories of the sort that only written fiction really provides.

In our group, the guy who's the worst DM is the guy who only reads D&D novels because he doesn't really understand how stories work. His models are highly simplified versions of movie and TV plots (if they're even that good). He just doesn't quite understand how characters and plots work because he doesn't experience them except in the radically simplified forms they appear on TV. Similarly, on RPG.net, people have some really stupid ideas for stories simply because they read very little worthwhile literature. They frontload the story with the idea like a television show does, instead of developing it like a book does.

I think the growing influence of anime in RPGs comes from the decline in reading and the increase in television and movie watching amongst young people. The models they have for how stories work are shitty Japanese cartoons instead of say, the Iliad or Blood Meridian. The kinds of stories they like and want to tell are based on those same shitty Japanese cartoons. And, because they are unfamiliar with the complicated narratives of literature, they prefer the superficial sequences of the lowest sort of anime. People don't recreate Wings of Honneamise (one of two anime movies I've seen that isn't laughably stupid, even controlling for differences in the visual grammar of a Japanese audience), they are interested in recreating Yu-Gi-Oh, Naruto, Bleach and Dragonball Z.

I think it also drives people towards rules-light systems and away from anything that demands that they read more than a few pages of light fiction. As evidence that people really do object to reading just a few hundred pages:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=408102
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=408226

Quote from: Roger Calver;232227That is one of the most ridiculous comments Ive seen for a while

Rog.

Apparently you haven't read many of Settembrini's postings.  This is very common.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;232211I go to events and I see *tons of kids* ages 10,11,12.. playing D&D. The group I Dm on Saturday contains mom, boyfriend and an 11 year old son. My own kids play from time to time.

Then that is a really good thing, and something WotC didn't expect.  In one of our past discussions, Ryan D said he thought it very unlikely that kids under 12 would play D&D pre-3.0 and with 3.0+ they shifted the focus of the game to a more mature audience.

Quote from: Jackalope;232219Wow, you are really confusing two different trends in the comics market.

It wasn't the collectors who drove the trend towards darker storylines, more sex and violence, and other symptoms of grim and gritty syndrome.  

Some collected to keep them in boxes in 'mint' condition, and others collected because they were just really into into.  This is different from the casual reader who might pick up a copy of Spiderman for their kids to read on a car ride to see Grandma.

Quote from: jibbajibba;232221Hmm.. I am not sure about Stuarts point here. When comic were written for kids they sold more comics but they were shit.

Now they're written for "adults" and they sell less comics... and they're still shit. :D

Just kidding.  Except, you know, not really. :-/

But 100 is a big number, Psuedo!

Ok. You know that I am kidding.

It might be that I'm not a good person to be talking, because I've been known to enjoy a bit of the anime, myself.* I do, however, think you have some valid points even if I speculate that perhaps the Stephen L. thing is an edge case. Plus, I'm not sure if I've ever disliked anything he put out. I don't recall what he's worked on.

In addition, I wonder if it's more that people who are predisposed to a simplistic view pattern their games off of simple children's television rather then children's television making them simple. I don't know where this begins,  though. I think that maybe, though, your dislike for a lot of that stuff took you on a tangent?

I think you could have stopped at 'people think reading is too much work', and your examples were good ones. Perhaps if the majority of viewable product were complex, they would think complexly, but these arn't people who are reading anyhow.


*I make no pretenses! While I'm pretty (some have called me overly) critical of the media I watch, I've enjoyed some pretty ridiculous shit in my time even if I wouldn't pattern games off it.

Quote from: gleichman;232248I for example would like to see GURPS die so that HERO could take that niche of rpgs completely, and thus be ab.....blah, blah, yadda -yadda, yadda...

Blasphemer!  

  Heretic!!


  Nah - its okay, I think the same way the other diection. Sorry, my knee-jerked a tad there.

As to the main topic: Say What??!


- Ed C.

SLS worked on WoD: Armoury, which is actually a really good book. I don't think there's any contradiction between being a collector and being a good player or writer.

I've got three complaints really. I'll separate them out more clearly in case they weren't before, and develop them in a bit more depth.

1) Books designed for collectors, by which I mean people who are going to treat reading the book as the primary recreational activity they use it for, rather than playing a game with it demand different features in their books than people who are mainly interested in playing games using the books.

Some of these features include more in-character fiction, better production values, more space devoted to art, less space and attention devoted to rules (especially to charts and tables), and less space and attention devoted to dealing with issues surrounding running a game. More attention also tends to be devoted to wacky or weird takes on the game rather than ideas that could actually be developed in play.

As an example of that last point, I'd point to the Exalted 2e book, which seriously proposes a Voltron-style game as legitimate (I have never heard of anyone actually running one of these, merely people exclaiming on the internet about how neat it would be to), while including no information on using the system to run a game with the stylistic elements of the Iliad or Aenead (Some of the original inspirations for Exalted 1e).

2) People ought to read fewer game books but more books in general. A good reading habit is immeasurably valuable to roleplaying. Reading works of literature like Blood Meridian, Don Quixote and the Iliad, as well as a broad variety of non-fiction, is more important than getting the newest book in some line.

It's valuable to read these books because they show one methods and styles of using language that can achieve certain effects in an audience. They show one how complicated narrative structures can be deployed properly. They equip one with a variety of information that provides one with a tool set for telling stories, creating worlds and characters, and resolving disputes.

People ought to take the money they piss away on getting complete runs of game lines and spend it on other books. They ought to devote the attention they currently spend on reading game books as light fiction and instead read some fiction of real merit.

3) People learn how to tell stories by modeling other stories they have encountered. Too many gamers have their primary experience with stories through television, crappy movies, low-quality genre fiction and mediocre comic books. The little reading they do is of game books, genre fiction and comic books, especially intellectually and aesthetically undemanding forms of these. This has several pernicious effects.

First, it means that many games are just variants of the same impoverished story-models found in these media. Second, it stultifies public discussion of more complicated narratives, especially of the sort (most relevant to us) found in long-term actual play. It does so by creating a climate of idiocy where discussions of complicated narratives are ordinarily reduced to a set of references to the impoverished story models they are familiar with. Third, it means that the influence of these simplistic models in roleplaying game books increases, leading designers to try to reduce the complexity of stories one can tell with the game to a handful of simplistic models.

As a paradigmatic example of this, I point to the creeping influence of anime throughout gaming. As a specific example, the Voltron suggestion in Exalted 2e is once again an example of how a game with potentially complicated narratives available experiences pressure to simplify and stultify.

I don't mind that there are a lot of games. I don't care if people buy them. That's not a bad thing, really. But it does lead to something I find sort of . . . annoying.

Gaming has a huge percentage of fans that go on to try to create something. Kudos to designers and all--I'm not putting anyone down for being creative. But due to the nature of gaming, it's not productive or possible to try to institute any kind of criteria for quality, so there's just too much of it. I mean--think of it like every twelve year-old that ever read a comic trying to draw one himself and actually getting it sold.

There's a huge contingent of wannabe designers with more money than sense who buy everything they can from other wannabe designers, so they can stay in some kind of imaginary "design loop," maintaining their delusion of being "in" an industry.

It's not just games. There's a similar contingent of bad internet musicians and bad podcast novelists and bad creative hobbyists. I don't mind that they're getting their bliss on or letting their freak flag fly or whatever they're doing.
It's the shared conceit that they are all doing something more than they are that's sort of . . . unseemly.

All that said, my favorite game product ever is Arduin--which is just another GM's demented, self-published campaign notes/house rules. So. I don't know. I'm not sure what it is that bugs me.

It has something to do with the fact that when I used to go to screenwriting conferences, all anyone wanted to know about was what kind of software they should use for formatting.

I'm rambling. At any rate, I don't think it's a pox on the hobby. I think it's a separate hobby.

Psuedo, I've read tons of lit- including everything on your short list, but I'm sorry to admit that my gaming is more likely to be informed by  stuff like People of the Black Circle, Guyal of Sfere, Ill Met in Lankmahr and Jack Kirby comics than Gravaty's Rainbow.

Quote from: stu2000;232310It has something to do with the fact that when I used to go to screenwriting conferences, all anyone wanted to know about was what kind of software they should use for formatting.

I've worked with a couple of fledgling fiction writers in my time, and man you are 100% right about this.

Quote from: Aos;232314Psuedo, I've read tons of lit- including everything on your short list, but I'm sorry to admit that my gaming is more likely to be informed by  stuff like People of the Black Circle, Guyal of Sfere, Ill Met in Lankmahr and Jack Kirby comics than Gravaty's Rainbow.

Structurally, or just in terms of content? I don't have a problem with using genre fiction to supply the content, or even using genre tropes in a particular story. I just finished up playing in a campaign that had a lot of content stolen from George R.R. Martin and steampunk, personally. My problem here is that cliche is coming to dominate the _structure_ of play, not just the content of it (though I'd prefer it didn't dominate content so much either).

For example:

QuotePicture a Japanese author from the year 2899. He knows as much about European history as the kid who screams "Ninja Turtles" knows about the Meji Restoration. And he is writing the defining novel about the West for his century. And the theme music is METAL!

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=408117

The description of this game is just basically a collection of references and allusions to crap, and the various character ideas and description of the setting are just cliches stapled together. And this is just a game I randomly found on rpg.net. While rpg.net is more extreme than most perhaps, I think we can see this in weaker forms throughout most of gaming, both on the design side and on the play side.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232324Structurally, or just in terms of content? I don't have a problem with using genre fiction to supply the content, or even using genre tropes in a particular story. I just finished up playing in a campaign that had a lot of content stolen from George R.R. Martin and steampunk, personally. My problem here is that cliche is coming to dominate the _structure_ of play, not just the content of it (though I'd prefer it didn't dominate content so much either).
.

Well, to be perfectly honest I can go both ways on this and often at the same time. My last campaign's story (at least at the onset) was very influenced by Stevenson's Kidnapped,  Hamlet and Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. The short campaign I ran before that was an attempt to do something very much like a 30's Republic serial, with elements of Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon and Hitchcock's North by Northwest. I've thought quite a bit about trying to do something like the Illiad though, but I have to cop to being a fan of the movie Troy. FWIW, and correct me if I'm wrong- Hamlet is part of a tradition of similar if inferior revenge plays and is built on a rather cliched structure itself.

Quote from: Aos;232331Well, to be perfectly honest I can go both ways on this and often at the same time. My last campaign's story (at least at the onset) was very influenced by Stevenson's Kidnapped,  Hamlet and Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. The short campaign I ran before that was an attempt to do something very much like a 30's Republic serial, with elements of Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon and Hitchcock's North by Northwest. I've thought quite a bit about trying to do something like the Illiad though, but I have to cop to being a fan of the movie Troy. FWIW, and correct me if I'm wrong- Hamlet is part of a tradition of similar if inferior revenge plays and is built on a rather cliched structure itself.

I think you're right about Hamlet, but the cliches it draws on aren't really ones with the same familiarity or immediacy for a modern audience as say, those of popular television crime dramas. The structure and style has a freshness for a modern reader because of that - it's not really like most of the stuff that they're familiar with from the television and children's books they've probably grown up with.

Okay, I get where you're coming from. Truthfully, though, most GMs I've met have trouble getting any kind of structure at all into their game.

Quote from: Aos;232349Okay, I get where you're coming from. Truthfully, though, most GMs I've met have trouble getting any kind of structure at all into their game.

Yeah, but I think that's part of the same problem. Reading fiction gives you all sorts of ideas for things characters can do and why so that you're not completely surprised when your PCs do something unexpected.

By contrast, if your main experience and idea of how characters act is anime or TV (where characters are notoriously stupid for plot purposes) then you're just less equipped to deal with that sort of thing when it comes up.

Jared Diamond makes a similar point in Guns, Germs and Steel when he points out that the Incan emperor was willing to (foolishly) enter the fortified compound of Pizarro's company with an unarmed retinue of nobles simply because it hadn't occurred to him that Pizarro might ambush him, and the Incas had no literature or history about similar situation to advise him to act differently.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232324http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=408117

The description of this game is just basically a collection of references and allusions to crap, and the various character ideas and description of the setting are just cliches stapled together. And this is just a game I randomly found on rpg.net. While rpg.net is more extreme than most perhaps, I think we can see this in weaker forms throughout most of gaming, both on the design side and on the play side.

thanks for the link. this looks interesting.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232361Yeah, but I think that's part of the same problem. Reading fiction gives you all sorts of ideas for things characters can do and why so that you're not completely surprised when your PCs do something unexpected.

To be honest, I think real life experience combined with non-fiction (history, biographies, psychology, current affairs, etc.) are a better source of inspiration than fiction.  Good fiction is usually someone else's distillation of real life experiences and knowledge of the real world and when a person writes fiction based on what they know primarily from other fiction, they become two (or more) steps removed from reality and produce something derivative rather than something unique and interesting.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232343I think you're right about Hamlet, but the cliches it draws on aren't really ones with the same familiarity or immediacy for a modern audience as say, those of popular television crime dramas. The structure and style has a freshness for a modern reader because of that - it's not really like most of the stuff that they're familiar with from the television and children's books they've probably grown up with.

The problem is that you'll see many of the works of Shakespeare (as well as other famous works of literature) borrowed or even overtly ripped off in everything from movies to cartoons.  Before I ever read Shakespeare, I saw Gilligan's Island do a Hamlet musical.  And people who wouldn't know Joseph Conrad from Robert Conrad know the plot of Heart of Darkness from Apocalypse Now or perhaps Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death or, two steps removed, Eek the Cat's cartoon parody of Apocalypse Now Eekpocalypse Now! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq_-ADVG4LQ).  I recently read an article (couldn't find a link to it) where the author talked about making an allusion to a work of literature and having someone else think he was talking about The Simpsons, which had done a parody of the work of literature.

Quote from: Aos;232200I don't think collectors are destroying the hobby. In some ways I think they prop it up financially.

I think this is probably true. On the other hand, we are all collectors.

I think there needs to be a sort of critical mass of game systems out there and books being published to keep people interested. It's a bit like this thing the tv networks tried with taking a normal season of a series, say 22 episodes, and splitting it into two lots of 11 episodes, separated by a month. Surprise, surprise, rating rise steadily from episodes 1-11, then start up again at half as much on episode 12. So the network cancels the series. Brilliant.

When I go into the game store, I look for new stuff, both stuff entirely new to me, and stuff new in the game lines I already enjoy. If there's nothing new I get bored and next time I think of visiting the game store, don't.

If game books were restricted to those which definitely saw play, there'd be about one-tenth as many, published a lot slower than they are today. Just think about your own rpg collection, how little of it sees regular use. The game store would be very boring and you'd hardly ever visit there. And it'd close. "Oh but we have online shops, and -" yeah, yeah, but a life online is one where you know less people (as amusinlg described (http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html) by David Wong), so you have less people to game with. Plus being in a game store amongst all those books, all those potential brilliant campaigns in alien worlds, that's just more inspiring than clicking on links.

Consider something else: clothes. Some people recommend that once a year you go through your wardrobe, and anything you haven't worn once in the past 12 months, get rid of it. If we did the same to our game collections we'd all have much smaller collections.

There are not many people who only own the minimum clothes, something like 3 shirts, 2 pants, several undies and pairs of socks, one coat, etc. There are not many gamers who own the minimum of game books - one system and one setting book. Most of us are collectors, in that we own stuff we rarely or never play.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232324The description of this game is just basically a collection of references and allusions to crap, and the various character ideas and description of the setting are just cliches stapled together. And this is just a game I randomly found on rpg.net. While rpg.net is more extreme than most perhaps, I think we can see this in weaker forms throughout most of gaming, both on the design side and on the play side.

The essay A Critical Appreciation of John Milius's Conan the Barbarian (http://www.barbariankeep.com/ctbds.html) goes a bit overboard in it's praise of the movie but down near the bottom in section 5, the author talks about what he calls "recombinant-genre" movies:

   [...]In an article published shortly before Conan was released in 1982, Stephen Schiff refers to the "repeatable experience" that formed the appeal of genre movies--Westerns, films noir, war pictures, screwball comedies--during the heyday of the Hollywood studios and points out that "true genre movies don't exist anymore" because so-called genre movies produced today are more about a genre as defined in retrospect rather than of a genre:  "It's a matter of ontology.  When a being is aware of itself, it becomes a different being.  And even though Body Heat is a very good movie, it's not a true film noir because it's too much about the form--as Double Indemnity and D.O.A. and Out of the Past never were and never could be."

In the 1970s, Schiff says, such directors as Robert Altman and John Milius's film school contemporaries Steven Spielberg and George Lucas "began to use genre as if it were a recombinant nucleic acid--to create new forms."  A "recombinant-genre" movie such as Star Wars

   can give birth to what looks like a new genre . . . but it doesn't act the way genres act . . . .  George Lucas doesn't work within or even on genre.  He plugs in genre, flashing its proven elements at us as though they were special effects . . . .  [R]ecombinant-genre movies delight in the viewer's ignorance.  The audience for Outland doesn't necessarily know from High Noon, and the crowds that flock to Raiders of the Lost Ark may never have heard of Lash LaRue or Tailspin Tommy.  Parts of old genres replace the nuts and bolts of narrative that used to keep movies running.  More and more, genre becomes a secret junkyard.

The secret junkyard of postmodernism, that is (the term was not yet commonplace when Schiff wrote his essay).  Postmodernism is concerned with demographics more than it is drama, with form more than function, with the mechanical more than the natural.  It is cynical, relying for its effects on the automatic identification and instant appeal of known quantities, the "junkyard" of images, icons, motifs, and gimmicks that have developed in the kinetic, commercial, American twentieth century. Postmodernism is the sound bite, the bumper sticker, the high concept:  content removed from its context and now accepted in and of itself, one dimensionally.  Postmodernism does not reinterpret; it merely reiterates.  Purveyors (one hesitates to use the word creators) of postmodern entertainment do not as a rule respectfully borrow from and build upon the work of their artistic forebears or stand upon their shoulders; they simply take.  Postmodern narrative is a series of non sequiturs lined up like so many separate squares on a game board.  Cut to the chase.  Go over the top.  Use stick figures who do not grow or mature but who transform.  Astonish with sudden shocks, or persist in ratcheting up precalibrated shocks; do not enlighten with outcomes of gradual revelation.  Above all, be impatient.

Schiff was prescient.  His essay was written before MTV signed on via cable television, before our summer entertainment became dominated by big-budget, lighter-than-air action-adventure movies at the metroplex, before word-processing authors of popular fiction became corporate profit centers (just as their stories became assembly-line widgets that either enhanced the bottom line or were dropped to make room for more successful, more appealing products), and long before the personal computer revolution, pushed into fast forward by Bill Gates, digitized everything from payroll checks to the Five-Foot Shelf to pin-ups on the Internet.  Schiff saw that Star Wars itself was the source "of a genre that transcends cinema:  the video game"; little could he know that just on the horizon were new and improved, vastly more sophisticated video games as well as Dungeons and Dragons, a product that begat a whole new sensibility in action-fantasy novels, movies, and games that in turn begat such hybrid, more-context-than-content corporate falderal as the syndicated television programs Hercules and Xena, Warrior Princess--recombinant-genre products no doubt designed that way from the first strategy session.

The ease with which images and token concepts are digested and burped back up in our accelerated, manic, postmodern "communications" culture trivializes everything.  As a filmmaker, John Milius is constitutionally incapable of creating such cross-pollinated, live-action cartoons as the Indiana Jones movies or Xena, Warrior Princess.  Conan the Barbarian is indeed a genre movie, albeit of a genre only sporadically represented on the screen until the 1980s and not universally identified as a cinematic genre until then.  It stands on solid storytelling ground and is very different movie from, for example, Return of the Jedi, with which it is more or less contemporaneous but which is little more than a marketing tool posing as a feature film.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232324The description of this game is just basically a collection of references and allusions to crap, and the various character ideas and description of the setting are just cliches stapled together.

You just pissed on my gaming sessions and GMing style. And boy does it sting.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Aos;232349Okay, I get where you're coming from. Truthfully, though, most GMs I've met have trouble getting any kind of structure at all into their game.

I think that if you can comment on Hamlet's narrative structure, you probably don't have the same problem as people who think it's a Porky Pig cartoon.

But, since we're on this tangent, I think that reading more books is a good thing. I'm not certain it's objectively better, but I feel I'm a better person for having done it. It's also more cost-effective then buying gaming books, considering how much I can get out of some of my novels. Gaming books have never been as layered, even if their 'fluff' has its place.

Generally speaking, though, I think the collection of gaming books over time is probably less harmful to a good game then someone who only ingests gameline novels and rpg books.

How the fuck do you do Hamlet in gaming?  I cannot wrap my head around that.

Quote from: Jackalope;232453How the fuck do you do Hamlet in gaming?  I cannot wrap my head around that.

You're not trying to duplicate it, of course. But you might consider bringing layers and themes from it into your game. It's one of the classics of Western lit, so even if you don't copy it, players are still likely apt to recognize its tropes as familiar and act accordingly.

Quote from: Stuart;232204By over-focusing on making comics "not just for kids!" they ended up making comics that weren't for kids... and then were surprised that they had a shrinking market as they had fewer kids getting into comics to replace people who were growing out of them.

The collectors wanted convoluted, confusing story lines and dark, gritty characters.  They didn't want to grow out of superman and batman -- they wanted them to get older and more "mature" with them.  So rather than add comics for adults, they changed the kids stuff to be more grown up.  Great for the adults... not so great for the kids.

It was a short-term success in that the collectors would buy a lot of product compared to a casual consumer (or kids!) -- but it was a bit like killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  It's was a non-sustainable business, and eventually the house of cards started to collapse.

Over time there was a conscious decision to focus more on the mature gamer, and the collector in particular.  This is virtually the same thing that happened with the comics industry -- but about 10 years later.

The RPG industry saw it's peak in the early 80s when TSR put "Ages 10 and up" on the covers of it's books.  In 2000 WotC decided RPGs would be for adults.

And the results look very, very similar to what we say with the comics industry.

This is precisely my position on the issue.

The problem with "collectors" is that a gaming companies knows it will sell a couple of thousand copies easily by making a 900 page full-glossy gold-plated ultra-slick total-colour hardcover with leather binding that's priced at $150 a pop; rather than the "risk" of promoting a $10 or $20 game directed at 14 year olds with limited budget.

Kids don't play RPGs anymore not because they've abandoned the RPG hobby; the RPG hobby abandoned them, as in, any serious and well-thought-out attempt to be directed at them, decades ago.
And now the same people who whine about how the "hobby is dying!" are the ones who bitch and moan if their RPG isn't hardcover and full-colour, and will consider any game priced under $50 to be "low quality", as if that affects how you play the motherfucking game.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Jackalope;232453How the fuck do you do Hamlet in gaming?  I cannot wrap my head around that.

I set up the situation, and the players responded. In that particular case, 'Haemlid' ran away and went to sea. Later he returned with an army and took his kingdom back.

Quote from: droog;232459I set up the situation, and the players responded. In that particular case, 'Haemlid' ran away and went to sea. Later he returned with an army and took his kingdom back.

Oh, so Hamlet wasn't one of the players.  I get it now.  The players are Rosencratz and Guilderstein, they're observers who can choose to get involved or not, but the "hamlet plot" doesn't actively involve them, yeah?

Quote from: Jackalope;232462Oh, so Hamlet wasn't one of the players.  I get it now.  The players are Rosencratz and Guilderstein, they're observers who can choose to get involved or not, but the "hamlet plot" doesn't actively involve them, yeah?

Haemlid actually was a PC on that occasion. One of my friends had dropped into town and I gave him the chr. But I'm sure there are many ways to make use of Hamlet in a game.

I ran a year long solo using elements from Hamlet, (murdered father, occasional ghostly manefestations of the same) Kidnapped (hoodwinked, fucked over and sold into slavery) and Count of Monte Cristo (The PC increased his competence with REVENGE in mind). After the initial fuck over the game pretty much ran itself.
The fuck over is important, because you have to do it in such a way that the player isn't railroaded, which requires a bit of finesse.

Quote from: Mike S.;232271Apparently you haven't read many of Settembrini's postings.  This is very common.

I'm glad you didn't waste all that money spent on camoflage gear.

We fucking get it!!



On topic, is it a peripheral community? I think it's very much a mainstream part of the community (at least, online). Dunno about a pox though.

Quote from: Engine;232223Another data point: does anyone have examples of games which have been "ruined" by kibitzers? What percentage of games are effected by this movement, and how much of the game's content is designed for these people?

Seriously, if this is a major problem, there should be some evidence, somewhere, to back it up. Does anyone have any evidence of a game being influenced by kibitzers, or is this all unsupported speculation?

Quote from: Engine;232485Fuck you, Engine. Speculation is way more fun that your stupid "evidence." You're an asshole.

:D

From my own perspective no content is designed for the collectors. If you aren't writing gameable material, you're not writing a game. However, i do think that the preponderence towards shiny art/layout, hardcover books and fancy bells and whistles does exactly that...and it's been driven by the purchasers, not the developers. Prices don't reflect the increase in production standards and as a result, unless you're WotC and a select couple of others, you don't make any money. That is a threat to the industry IMO. 'Disposable' pdfs from Joe Bloggs (soon to be me as well) make the collectors job easier and less expensive too. He can buy 3 pdf games for the price of 1 hardback, so if his curiosity is piqued, he buys. Collections can easily build up this way.

I'm quite happy with a b&w softcover that contains great material than a cool looking colour hardback with fancy borders, wierd fonts and half a page of art every couple of pages. I seem to be in the minority though.

I dunno about Pseudo's whole "read more classic lit to give your games structure" thing.  Sounds like a case of :forge:

I'm going to keep basing my games off of movies and comic books, thanks.

Damn you, One Horse Town! You've ruined my ninja edit! ;)

I was trying to back up and be a better man, but now we all see my initial instinct is to be a lesser one.

Quote from: jgants;232490I dunno about Pseudo's whole "read more classic lit to give your games structure" thing.  Sounds like a case of :forge:

I'm going to keep basing my games off of movies and comic books, thanks.

Well, according to Settembrini and Prof. Inverarity, the problem with Forge games is that they're based on movies and comic books.

Beat me to it.
Add: TV shows.

Quote from: Settembrini;232495Beat me to it.
Add: TV shows.

You're fighting a losing battle, and some of your opponents aren't on the side you're fighting.

Quote from: Engine;232491Damn you, One Horse Town! You've ruined my ninja edit! ;)

I was trying to back up and be a better man, but now we all see my initial instinct is to be a lesser one.

Ouch. That's 15 fewer hit points and no Improved Critical feat.

Quote from: Jackalope;232210But then you see people releasing games in only super-deluxe special editions -- Nobilis, Fantasy Imperium -- that are overpriced and fall apart when used for regular gaming.

Actually, the first (Pharos) edition of Nobilis was a two-hundred-page POD publication which cost $28, the second (Hogshead) one was the better-known "coffee table book" with 304 pages and the price tag of $43, and the third (Eos) one will include 450 pages in more conventional proportions and cost $44.95: the game's never exactly had one of those gold-embossed leatherbound collector's editions. (And I'd contest that it falls apart for "regular" gaming, of course.)

Quote from: John Morrow;232377To be honest, I think real life experience combined with non-fiction (history, biographies, psychology, current affairs, etc.) are a better source of inspiration than fiction.  Good fiction is usually someone else's distillation of real life experiences and knowledge of the real world and when a person writes fiction based on what they know primarily from other fiction, they become two (or more) steps removed from reality and produce something derivative rather than something unique and interesting.

Life experience is handy, but it's only really valuable if your goal is to mimic a certain style of story - the "realist" story. While that's a popular genre (one I'm interested in, certainly), it's a genre amongst genres, not an aesthetic foundation.

Quote from: John Morrow;232381The problem is that you'll see many of the works of Shakespeare (as well as other famous works of literature) borrowed or even overtly ripped off in everything from movies to cartoons.  Before I ever read Shakespeare, I saw Gilligan's Island do a Hamlet musical.  And people who wouldn't know Joseph Conrad from Robert Conrad know the plot of Heart of Darkness from Apocalypse Now or perhaps Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death or, two steps removed, Eek the Cat's cartoon parody of Apocalypse Now Eekpocalypse Now! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq_-ADVG4LQ).  I recently read an article (couldn't find a link to it) where the author talked about making an allusion to a work of literature and having someone else think he was talking about The Simpsons, which had done a parody of the work of literature.

Yes, but they're brutalised in those productions by being stripped down structurally for presentation on the idiot box. The point isn't to read them for cliches to appropriate, but to understand how the complicated narrative structures of literary fiction operate, something that TV is particularly bad at representing.

Quote from: David R;232395You just pissed on my gaming sessions and GMing style. And boy does it sting.

Sorry, mate. I'm not opposed to cliche in content, but I favour structural innovation in the narrative when it comes to games. Surprisingly, from the perspective of the history of culture, the most innovative narrative structure in RPGs is actually the sandbox.

Quote from: Engine;232485Seriously, if this is a major problem, there should be some evidence, somewhere, to back it up. Does anyone have any evidence of a game being influenced by kibitzers, or is this all unsupported speculation?

I pointed to WW games earlier on this thread.

Quote from: droog;232494Well, according to Settembrini and Prof. Inverarity, the problem with Forge games is that they're based on movies and comic books.

A game being based on something like movies and comic books?  That's crazy talk.  Surely games should be based on things like Chekhov, Dickens and Shaw - and nothing else.  This is especially true if it's a game about killing monsters and taking their stuff.

The sandbox as a narrative structure is what makes games interesting as an activity. I almost said "medium," but they aren't really a medium, are they? They're a process. A game is only what happens at the table. Writing it down is like codifying fairy tales. As a story process, it's more defined by the fact that there're are a lot of things that could happen that don't.

There are great games that try to do things differently, but it always seems a little like a ballet about archetecture. Media that don't suit the content.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232507I pointed to WW games earlier on this thread.

And actually, I did see that, at the time, and had forgotten about it. My apologies.

I have many RPGs I haven't played but that doesn't mean I haven't gotten any use from them.  A fair portion of the collection is there for an inspirational value or at very least, material to steer my imagination down different avenues.  They are outlets for imagining possibilities of games I would like to play.

Quote from: RPGPundit;232457...rather than the "risk" of promoting a $10 or $20 game directed at 14 year olds with limited budget.

The risk in $10 and $20 RPG books is that there was an enormous glut of them with d20 and the open license, and retailers were burned badly with unsold stock. When you have 40 companies churning about small books of varying quality, how is the retailer supposed to judge which ones are worth stocking? Furthermore, retailers have told publishers that they can't properly display 32 page softcover books, so they get stuck in stacks where the customers has to flip through them. And these aren't comics, that can be sorted by title and issue. In the experience of retailers,  small softcover RPGs end up as a mess of bent books that don't sell. The market has spoken.

And frankly, I find the qualitity of many small softcover RPG books to be low. Goodman's Dungeon Crawl Classics aren't much better than PDFs I could find for free on the net. I wish it weren't so - I happen to enjoy standalone adventures. But with such a low barrier of entry, there doesn't seem to be much quality control.

Nor does there seem to be a huge demand - DCCs are produced for the most popular RPG on the market, in a format that is easily recognizable for a large part of the customer base. And they don't exactly fly off the shelves. Necromancer Games stopped publishing small standalone adventures a few years ago, after their sales dropped below the viable level (I'm guessing well below 1,000).

Finally, I don't think there was ever a business case for a $10 to $20 game. Moldvay Basic, adjusted for inflation, was about $35. I don't know that RPGs have ever been popular among kids who couldn't afford a single Nintendo cartridge, or who couldn't talk their parents into buying them Risk or Axis and Allies.

No, the folks who complain about $40 hardcover, full-colour RPG books are hardcores with a serious RPG book habit who feel a need to buy book after book after book, but who maybe don't have the money to buy everything they want, and so resent the publishers of premium books and the people who are wealthy enough (or who buy fewer books), and so can afford them.

Quote from: RPGPundit;232457This is precisely my position on the issue.

The problem with "collectors" is that a gaming companies knows it will sell a couple of thousand copies easily by making a 900 page full-glossy gold-plated ultra-slick total-colour hardcover with leather binding that's priced at $150 a pop; rather than the "risk" of promoting a $10 or $20 game directed at 14 year olds with limited budget.

I would agree that this is true. The problem is that companies are about making money and the reason they do this is because it works.   It sucks, but its true.

Quote from: RPGPundit;232457Kids don't play RPGs anymore not because they've abandoned the RPG hobby; the RPG hobby abandoned them, as in, any serious and well-thought-out attempt to be directed at them, decades ago.

I would partly agree with this.  Part of the problem is that the hobby has abandoned them by not making games that help bring new gamers into the fold at a reasonable cost.  Part of it is that kids have abandoned rpgs simply because there are way too many choices for entertainment these days.

I am not arguing that rpgs are not a good value for the entertainment value you get from them, I am simply pointing out an aspect that is true, as much as it sucks

Quote from: RPGPundit;232457And now the same people who whine about how the "hobby is dying!" are the ones who bitch and moan if their RPG isn't hardcover and full-colour, and will consider any game priced under $50 to be "low quality", as if that affects how you play the motherfucking game.

RPGPundit

I would agree 100% with this.  I have played games in the past (like the Marvel Superheros RPGS and the like that weren't hardcover, full color and had a blast with them.  

Some of my best memories are from games like those and they were the games I learned to game with.

If companies want to make full cover hardcovers, etc fine but also make games to help bring people into the hobby.

Quote from: Stuart;232512A game being based on something like movies and comic books?  That's crazy talk.  Surely games should be based on things like Chekhov, Dickens and Shaw - and nothing else.  This is especially true if it's a game about killing monsters and taking their stuff.

You mean like Beowulf, or the Nibelunglied, or the Odyssey?

Your problem is exactly what I said: You haven't read enough books. Otherwise you'd know the wealth of great monster-slaying and gold-thieving literature that's out there.

re this argument: I agree with everyone, really. Chew on that.

Quote from: stu2000;232514A game is only what happens at the table. Writing it down is like codifying fairy tales. As a story process, it's more defined by the fact that there're are a lot of things that could happen that don't.

There are great games that try to do things differently, but it always seems a little like a ballet about archetecture. Media that don't suit the content.

What he said.

Trying to make an RPG game follow the structure and motifs of the Iliad is like trying to make a tennis match into the Nutcracker.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232534Your problem is exactly what I said: You haven't read enough books. Otherwise you'd know the wealth of great monster-slaying and gold-thieving literature that's out there.

Right.  I disagree with the assertion that games can only be based on classical literature, and that means I haven't read enough. :rolleyes:

Edit:

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232531I kept on trying to strike up games at Queen's University, which is a bastion of old upper-middle class alumni families and new money parvenus.

So you're doing your undergrad in English right now, so everyone reads less than you.  Awesome. :D

Personally, I force nothing, there are always avenues and choices. I do draw inspiration from a number of sources ranging from pop culture to journal articles on the paleolithic.

Quote from: Haffrung;232545Trying to make an RPG game follow the structure and motifs of the Iliad is like trying to make a tennis match into the Nutcracker.

Yes.  And why is Sett arguing the classic "Swine" argument that he's raged against for so long?  A game isn't a piece of literature.

Quote from: Haffrung;232545Trying to make an RPG game follow the structure and motifs of the Iliad is like trying to make a tennis match into the Nutcracker.

Well in my case I'm not trying to follow the structure of - insert title here - but rather drawing inspiration from the source material be it themes, character motivations, plot elements etc. This of course reached it's apogee in my old Hunter campaign based on the early works of John Carpenter. Now , I'm not really suprised when my players tell me that my Aces game feels like a Sam Fuller movie.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Stuart;232551Yes.  And why is Sett arguing the classic "Swine" argument that he's raged against for so long?  A game isn't a piece of literature.

Trying to fathom set's logic is like trying to jerk off a blender. You can push buttons all day long, you'll even get it to make appreciative noise, but in the end all you've done is waste some energy.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232534You mean like Beowulf, or the Nibelunglied, or the Odyssey?

Ooh, snap! :D

Quote from: Aos;232550I do draw inspiration from a number of sources ranging from pop culture to journal articles on the paleolithic.

I don't want to speak to what makes the "best" GM, because it seems to me "best" is one of those words that sounds objective but which is ultimately subjective, so I'll just say I think the GMs whose games I like the most draw inspiration from the greatest variety of sources possible. Taking the best of real life, Futurama, Beowulf, Guns Germs & Steel and A Practical Treatise on the Steel Square makes for the broadest, and thus most interesting to me, experience at the table.

I probably qualify as a collector, even though I've been Gming and playing for over 20 years I have amassed hundreds of different systems probably 2/3rds of which I will never run (usually because I've found I either didn't like the rules or setting or just an existing game already did the same just as well) but bizarely I can't think of a single one that I would consider was created just to read and not to play.

What specific examples are people talking about when they say games created for collectors rather than for gamers?

Or is it just putting in a few extra pieces of artwork or occasional short stories that is winding people up? Should the only 'worthy' games look like semi-professional homebrews?


Vadrus

Stuart's post (and Pundit's) re the comic industry really hit home with me.  I used to "collect" comics back in the 80's and I bought into the hype about how some of them were "edgy and cool".  As a result, I now have a basement full of high gloss crap....anyone who says "you can't polish a turd" should read my comic collection.

Because I wasted so much money on crappy "collectors" comics I had less to spend on good but less hyped and polished titles (e.g. First Comics..."Badger" and "Grimjack"...gone but not forgotten).  

I think the same is true about my rpg's but with a slight difference.  I've been gaming for about 30 years and in that time I've purchased a lot of games and related materials that I haven't played, which means that I had less money to buy other gaming stuff and in the process I probably propped up gaming companies that were putting out crap.  On the other hand, I think collecting has had value for me since I've gotten some good inspiration from games like Arduin, EPT, Jorune, Ringworld, Earthdawn, etc., and I certainly don't regret that I bought up nearly every Judges Guild and Chaosium product made.

I think the biggest difference for me though is that now I have access to reviews of games here and elsewhere so that I can educate myself and avoid buying crap.  That is why I appreciate anyone who takes the time to review a game since I shudder to think how pissed I would be if I had actually paid money for a Blue Rose or 'shudder' FATAL.

Bottom line, while I don't think collectors are necessarily bad, I think anyone who doesn't do their homework before wasting a chunk of cash on a crap game these days is harming the hobby to a degree by artifically inflating demand for games that should die a quick death.

As to another point in this thread, in law school my sadistic criminal law professor for our final exam made us watch Mel Gibson's "Hamlet" and identify all the crimes and defenses relevant to different characters.  Since I had to dissect that entire fucking play/movie I have to say that Hamlet does have some good usable plot devices for games but I would need an insanity defense myself if anyone ever used them in a game I was playing.  Ugh.

Quote from: Stuart;232551Yes.  And why is Sett arguing the classic "Swine" argument that he's raged against for so long?  A game isn't a piece of literature.

Correct. Your memory is like a sieve, it seems...

again:

1) Forgers/SGlers proclaim they are all about STORY NOW!!!
2) to them STORY NOW!!! == moral dillemmata on the level of Superhero comics, Grey´s Anatomy and Star Wars.

Now, there´s NOTHING in the WORLD to say against playing out adventure themes from pop-culture. ADVENTURE.

But being pretentious about your STORY, while re-enacting ultra-hackneyed EXCUSES for STORY is, well, swinish.

Understand?

See, even if there WAS a high falutin´dramatic engine RPG that would yield literary meaningful results, I´d not be interested. But that would at least not be swinery. it would be what it would be. But it doesn´t exist.

Can you be so forgetful as to forget all these things that even droog remembers?

Quote from: Aos;232554Trying to fathom set's logic is like trying to jerk off a blender. You can push buttons all day long, you'll even get it to make appreciative noise, but in the end all you've done is waste some energy.

This is only a direct function of your inability to remember past discussions and explanations.

Most of these actually happened without me, so you can´t blame it on my person.

It´s just you who forgets what has been established and explained time and time again. Please, disagree with the actual argument.

But forgetting what you yourself have been a part of (the well laid out argument of only months ago) is insulting to all of civilization.

WhrrrrWhrrrrrrWrrrrrr.

Quote from: Stuart;232549Right.  I disagree with the assertion that games can only be based on classical literature, and that means I haven't read enough. :rolleyes:

It's pretentious wankery, that's for sure.  

Can anyone really think that stuff like Anna Karenina, Ulysses, Lord Jim, or Great Expectations would be better inspiration for a game than the average airport novel by Micheal Crichton, Tom Clancy, Robin Cook, or Dean Koontz?

Depends on what you want to emulate:

Emulate Tom Clancy-style Techno-Thriller action, with lots of military hardware?

--> You are golden.

Take Tom Clancy´s prose and characterization of the human condition as a profound basis for the exploration of the same?

--> Wanker, and an unsuccesful one, too.

Actually Sett I'll blow some time trying to talk to you. It wont have any impact, but what the fuck.
First forgetting an RPG conversation is not an insult to "all of civilization." Get some perspective, or maybe just an occasional piece of ass, will you?
I don't doubt that I was involved in many of the conversations. I bet there were more that I wasn't. I really don't care. They are not so important to me that I commit them to memory. Beyond that, some of us enjoy chatting with one another, and dont mind rehashing some of the same things a few times- because if for no other reason, new people enter the conversation, and previous participants change their minds or offer new insights.  You, however, stand at the edge of every conversation screaming about how we've already had it, or how it's not worth talking about- you contribute nothing, not even links to all the things only you can remember. Not to put fine a point on it, but you are the catpissman of this forum.

I dunno, I just know I steal all my characters, situations and cliches from books, movies and tv shows. I just mix them all up so the resulting stew looks original.

Quote from: Stuart;232549Right.  I disagree with the assertion that games can only be based on classical literature, and that means I haven't read enough. :rolleyes:

Well, you certainly haven't read my argument enough, since you don't really get it. I don't think games should be "based on classic literature" or whatever the heck you've dumbed it down to.

I think that the structural elements of complex narratives of the sort that enrich roleplaying games are to be found only in literature (Even then most genre fiction won't contain them), and that people who want to tell complicated stories in their games ought to find models and inspiration in literature rather than relying on models drawn from comic books, movies or TV. If you want a bunch of impoverished models for stories, you're welcome to continue using the plot of the Amazing Spiderman #214 or whatever pastiche of comic book plot elements you can stitch together.

QuoteSo you're doing your undergrad in English right now, so everyone reads less than you.  Awesome. :D

Actually, I've been out of university (I was a Philosophy, not an English major, never even took a course on the subject at the university level) and working for years now, and everyone still reads less than me. That's their moral failing though, not mine.

Story Now means you build the story through the gameplay, rather than have it pre-scripted before play (railroading) or created after play (how it normally works for most games). That the stories some people want to focus on are like those in comics, Grey's Anatomy, or Star Wars is incidental to that.  Story Before, Story Now, and Story After have nothing to do with a genre or themes.

It's also worth reminding you that you have an alternate definition for Story from what most people who speak English would expect it to mean.  You're being very pretentious any time you talk about Settembrini-Story and how all TV, Movies, Comics etc. don't meet your standards.  In spoken english people say "Story" in a very general way.  "What's the story with Settembrini?  Oh him, he's just a bit confused.  He's still learning English, so cut him some slack."  The word you probably want is "Literature" to distinguish it as a more elevated art form from just a common story.

Nobody (except maybe you) is talking about Literature Now! or even Literature Before or Literature After.

Quote from: Haffrung;232545What he said.

Trying to make an RPG game follow the structure and motifs of the Iliad is like trying to make a tennis match into the Nutcracker.

Actually, the Iliad is one of the easiest pieces of great literature to draw models from, which is why I mention it all the time. It's the story of a group of violently-inclined fellows in search of loot who participate in a series of loosely linked escapades in a persisting setting that provides various challenges for them to overcome. The motif is the fragility of human life and the glory of facing that fragility boldly. Both are elements that are easily incorporated into roleplaying games.

No, sweetheart. Don´t blame it on me. Pretty please check out what STORY NOW! actually means.

It´s the "addressing of premises". That´s the definition.

It´s nice and cozy that YOU use story in a colloquial way. So do I. But when the Forgers talk, it´s totally NOT like that.

STORY = addressation of premise == "how low can you go?"-style dillemmata challenging petit-bourgeious North American morality.

Buffy-style. At best.
At the very best.

You think that´sfucked up? So do I. But go, blame the Forgers.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;232595I dunno, I just know I steal all my characters, situations and cliches from books, movies and tv shows. I just mix them all up so the resulting stew looks original.

That's what I do, too.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232596I think that the structural elements of complex narratives of the sort that enrich roleplaying games are to be found only in literature (Even then most genre fiction won't contain them), and that people who want to tell complicated stories in their games ought to find models and inspiration in literature rather than relying on models drawn from comic books, movies or TV. If you want a bunch of impoverished models for stories, you're welcome to continue using the plot of the Amazing Spiderman #214 or whatever pastiche of comic book plot elements you can stitch together.

Who in their right mind wants to tell complex narrative stories as part of a RPG?  I certainly don't.

I want my RPGs to be like a good action movie or horror movie - an interesting backstory with plenty of action.  The purpose of the backstory is to provide a reason and emotional attachment to the action parts, with a little bit of comedy mixed in for fun.  [This would be opposed to bad action / horror movies, where there is little to no backstory and you get all action with no emotional investment]

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232596Actually, I've been out of university (I was a Philosophy, not an English major, never even took a course on the subject at the university level) and working for years now, and everyone still reads less than me. That's their moral failing though, not mine.

Moral failing?  Please.  :rolleyes:

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;232595I dunno, I just know I steal all my characters, situations and cliches from books, movies and tv shows. I just mix them all up so the resulting stew looks original.

I do that as well.  In fairness though I think most TV plots these days are actually stolen from old Gunsmoke and Bonanza episodes so the people who are "creating" this stuff use the same system of "plot reuse".  Whether it is classic literature or a comic book it can all make for a very good game if the DM is talented enough (IMHO).  That to me is the value of collecting, I ran a Shadowrun adventure through Chaosium's Hall of Risk for the Stormbringer game system once and it kicked ass (mostly player ass).  

Oh, and not to be a nitpicking wanker, but are we talking about the Iliad or the Odyssey?  I think the Iliad would be hard to use for plot but I agree the Odyssey pretty much was an RPG adventure minus the dice.

Quote from: jgants;232603That's what I do, too.



Who in their right mind wants to tell complex narrative stories as part of a RPG?  I certainly don't.

I've been in games with complex narrative stories and they always felt a bit like railroading to me.  I agree that giving the players a decent backstory and then turning them loose makes for a more engaging game but YMMV.

Quote from: jgants;232603Who in their right mind wants to tell complex narrative stories as part of a RPG?  I certainly don't.

I want my RPGs to be like a good action movie or horror movie - an interesting backstory with plenty of action.  The purpose of the backstory is to provide a reason and emotional attachment to the action parts, with a little bit of comedy mixed in for fun.  [This would be opposed to bad action / horror movies, where there is little to no backstory and you get all action with no emotional investment]

Where is it that you learn to weave a compelling backstory or to develop emotional tension so that certain scenes are gripping for the audience (the other players)?

Is your answer "Television's hit series Grey's Anatomy!"? I'm willing to give you enough credit to say that it's probably not, but if it's not, you should investigate where those abilities actually come from. It probably isn't from horror movies, which use images and ambient sounds to do those things, since you're presumably using good old language like the rest of the roleplaying hobby. So where do you think you learnt to describe things in language in compelling and interesting ways?

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232609So where do you think you learnt to describe things in language in compelling and interesting ways?

on the internet, telling fuckwits how fuckwitted they are.

Quote from: Settembrini;232143But if the DM isn´t really deep into it, he´ll most likely suck. And I´ve never met a good DM who wasn´t ALSO a fan & collector of said system.

I kind of get why folks are giving Sett flack, but this is also my experience. I figure the good GMs are the ones who are interested in what they're running, whether it be the genre or system or what have you. They tend to accumulate piles of supplements or at the very least fiction.

I think earlier on you were stating it a little backwards, Sett. A person isn't a good GM 'cause he has books; he has books 'cause he's into what he's running.

FWIW, I'm an obsessive houseruler and system cannibal, so I've got a lot of one-book-cores and a huge 3.5 collection.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232611on the internet, telling fuckwits how fuckwitted they are.

It is very educational.  The first time I referred to my co-workers as "fucktards" it certainly got their attention.

As to the compelling language argument, I think that it is true that many good gamemasters probably got that way from reading a lot of literature, classic and otherwise, to help hone their storytelling/narrative skills.  That doesn't mean that classic literature necessarily makes for good game plots but at the same time having a good education so that you can communicate effectively certainly helps a GM.  Once you have gained that ability though then you can take plots from anywhere and turn them into good games.

Quote from: Grimjack;232606I've been in games with complex narrative stories and they always felt a bit like railroading to me.  I agree that giving the players a decent backstory and then turning them loose makes for a more engaging game but YMMV.

It's amazing what comes up if you develop an N/PC in conversation. Like this evening we had a session, a player activated a contact. The player gave me the guy's name and profession - Albert Roach, works in the immigration department. We went from there, and sometimes I'd have Al say something, and the player would say, "I suppose that's because of so-and-so," and I'd riff off that, "well actually -".

As he talked to him and got information, we discovered that Albert is a bit lonely because he's a bureaucrat and when at parties he tells people his job is "helping protect Australia from asylum seekers" it sort of turns people off. Also it turned out that he liked 1980s slasher flicks, we weren't sure if his geekiness was a result of his loneliness or vice versa. Either way he didn't have any mates at the office, either. The PC was very careful to call him up just at the end of lunch. "Oh, you've just finished, that's a pity, we could have met up, oh well."

It's amazing the shit that just pops up in a game session.

Quote from: jgants;232587Can anyone really think that stuff like Anna Karenina, Ulysses, Lord Jim, or Great Expectations would be better inspiration for a game than the average airport novel by Micheal Crichton, Tom Clancy, Robin Cook, or Dean Koontz?

Well, I suppose it all depends on what sort of game you're running, and for what sorts of people. Ulysses is a "better" inspiration if your audience likes deep character exploration of deeply flawed people and detailed experiences of an unfamiliar location but isn't interested in beating the shit out of things. [These people exist, by the way.] If your players are looking for some light, non-complex action/adventure full of pseudoscience, I would think Jurassic Park would be "better."

Quote from: jgants;232603Who in their right mind wants to tell complex narrative stories as part of a RPG?  I certainly don't.

I think perhaps the error in this case is the presumption that anyone who doesn't want what you want is insane. Some people want something more complex than "go here, fight this, get stuff, win!" There are people - many of them, one presumes - who want something more complex than I do, but I don't think they're mad, I just think they enjoy something other than I do. The notion that "different" must mean "deficient" is one I'd like to see stamped out.

Somewhere, right now, there's a guy writing on a message forum: "Why would any stupid, uneducated piece of shit want to base his adventure on second-rate modern novelists? This hack tripe isn't even good reading, and roleplaying in such a superficial environment - oh, my choices are kill or run? Wow. - is clearly for people so stupid they cannot understand how sublime the experience of my game is." You call him "pretentious." He calls you "simple." It's all - there's that word - relative.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;232620It's amazing what comes up if you develop an N/PC in conversation. Like this evening we had a session, a player activated a contact. The player gave me the guy's name and profession - Albert Roach, works in the immigration department. We went from there, and sometimes I'd have Al say something, and the player would say, "I suppose that's because of so-and-so," and I'd riff off that, "well actually -".

As he talked to him and got information, we discovered that Albert is a bit lonely because he's a bureaucrat and when at parties he tells people his job is "helping protect Australia from asylum seekers" it sort of turns people off. Also it turned out that he liked 1980s slasher flicks, we weren't sure if his geekiness was a result of his loneliness or vice versa. Either way he didn't have any mates at the office, either. The PC was very careful to call him up just at the end of lunch. "Oh, you've just finished, that's a pity, we could have met up, oh well."

It's amazing the shit that just pops up in a game session.

Excellent. I deal with tons of bureaucrats (albeit the American variety) and you have certainly done a realistic portrayal.  And I would be willing to bet that the PC got a lot more enjoyment out of the unscripted play as well.  Out of curiousity, what game were you running?

Quote from: Engine;232628blah blah blah

And how fucking cool would it be to put the players into, say, King Lear, and leave them free to alter the direction of events by making their own decisions? Now, I'm not a big fan of Shakespeare - I think he's the Michael Crichton of his time - but many people would count that as pretentious literary twaddle, and I think that's wrongheaded. Roleplaying - the idea of taking a character and making his decisions for him and letting events play out on that basis - transcends genres and time periods. I don't see why roleplaying in a confused Dublin wouldn't be fun, but I think confused Dublin is fun. Paul derives a lot of his inspiration from superhero comic books, the most unpretentious genre I can think of, and I think that's fun. Maybe people just need their idea of "fun" expanded to include something beyond the superficial; would that be so terrible?

Quote from: Grimjack;232630Excellent. I deal with tons of bureaucrats (albeit the American variety) and you have certainly done a realistic portrayal.  

Al Roach is not a bad man, he just has to justify himself the long boring hours of his job. Which leaves him with not much to talk about at parties. He likes slasher movies because he has sublimated his hostility to the rather drab world he lives in, and enjoys the 1980s ones because they're not very realistic, and thus not confronting for him.

I just made that up. I find that's the best way to do NPCs, to just toss in whatever traits pop into your head, and then rationalise them later.

Quote from: GrimjackAnd I would be willing to bet that the PC got a lot more enjoyment out of the unscripted play as well.  

Well, they were laughing, which I usually take as a good sign... Ideally the player would come up with all of this, it's his character's contact after all, but that particular player usually GMs so he probably wants to slack off when he games, plus not everyone is comfortable with that collaborative sort of thing, it can be a bit communist after all.

Quote from: GrimjackOut of curiousity, what game were you running?

We're playing the sequel to Osere (http://www.gamecircle.org/modules/wiwimod/index.php?page=Osere&back=WiwiHome) (since nobody reads or comments on the campaign pages, I've been too lazy to make a new one), a modern espionage game, using the SixLetterSystem. They were trying to look up some foreign nationals who might have recently come to the country, which is why they chose the Immigration Dept guy as a contact. They did find them.
"So, Suvorov, Lavrentiy Suvorov, he on your records?"
"Yes, entered Australia July 1st this year."
"Hmmm."
"Hah!" laughed Al, "that's funny!"
"What?"
"The Federal Police have an alert looking out for Suvorov, he's wanted in Germany over a nightclub bombing, and in the Czech Republic for something similar. Funny."
"Why is that funny?"
"The stupid Feds didn't bother telling the Department of Immigration, did they? Or Foreign Affairs. So he entered the country unchallenged. Idiots! Haha!"
"Um... so won't you pass on an alert?"
"No, why? That's not my job. Plus then they would know I was looking up files for you and I'd get in trouble. But anyway it's not my job. When we going to have lunch?"
"Um, well, I'm quite busy this week..."

Quote from: Engine;232637Maybe people just need their idea of "fun" expanded to include something beyond the superficial; would that be so terrible?

why? if you and your players enjoy playing games that riff on themes cribbed from literary fiction, that's great. if me and my players enjoy playing games that riff on themes cribbed from... let's say spider-man comics, for lack of a better example, then what's the problem? we're talking about games of make-believe here. games should be fun. why can't we all agree that we should all do what makes our games more fun? oh wait... it's the internet. without porn and pointless arguments, it would have no purpose and cease to function.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232646why? if you and your players enjoy playing games that riff on themes cribbed from literary fiction, that's great. if me and my players enjoy playing games that riff on themes cribbed from... let's say spider-man comics, for lack of a better example, then what's the problem?

I absolutely agree! When I say people need to have their idea of fun expanded, I don't necessarily mean their own personal idea of fun, i.e. what they'll have fun doing, but rather what they can understand is fun for other people. Sorry I wasn't clear.

Quote from: RPGPundit;232457Kids don't play RPGs anymore not because they've abandoned the RPG hobby;

How do they pay for their broadband, MMOs, console games, music downloads, iPods, etc.?

Yeah. If they want something, they'll manage to get it. They don't want RPGs. Not because some industry abandoned them, but because there are other things they want instead...

Seanchai

Quote from: Engine;232653I absolutely agree! When I say people need to have their idea of fun expanded, I don't necessarily mean their own personal idea of fun, i.e. what they'll have fun doing, but rather what they can understand is fun for other people. Sorry I wasn't clear.

no big, i wasn't trying to pick a fight with you. it's just frustrating for me to see the same kind of behavior here that i see on "that other rpg site:" people telling other people how to have fun. i'm sure pseudoephedrine is a certifiable super genius, but telling people they're bone-headed and their games suck because they're not drawing on the "complicated narrative structures of literary fiction" seems kinda stupid and pointless to me.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232665i'm sure pseudoephedrine is a certifiable super genius, but telling people they're bone-headed and their games suck because they're not drawing on the "complicated narrative structures of literary fiction" seems kinda stupid and pointless to me.

Exactly. [And I'm a pretty big PSE fan, as far as that goes.] And then similarly, it bothers me to see jgants [also a fan] saying you're nuts for liking the kind of game PSE likes. I mean, shit, isn't it possible both are fun for the people who find those things fun? Isn't it possible someone would find both things fun?

But as you say, it's the internet, and fighting's common. So's absolutism, or Onetruewayism, or hatred of BadWrongFun, or whatever jargon one chooses to use. I dislike objective-sounding criticism of what is an essentially subjective experience.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232665no big, i wasn't trying to pick a fight with you. it's just frustrating for me to see the same kind of behavior here that i see on "that other rpg site:" people telling other people how to have fun. i'm sure pseudoephedrine is a certifiable super genius, but telling people they're bone-headed and their games suck because they're not drawing on the "complicated narrative structures of literary fiction" seems kinda stupid and pointless to me.

That's just because you're a stupe!

In aesthetics, the idea of sophisticating one's tastes is very important. Sophisticating one's taste means trying unfamiliar things and understanding why they are good or not, based not just on immediate impressions but through providing explanations and justifications why one favours or does not favour a particular thing.

Most roleplayers, like most people, have pretty bad taste because we live in a culture that thinks that tastes are innate and completely obvious to the person with the taste. They aren't, as anyone who's looked into the matter in the last say, hundred years or so can tell you, and so I think we, both in the specific case of roleplaying and in the more general case of our society in general, should devote effort on both an individual and a public level to improving one another's tastes by the process outlined above.

Not only should we be doing this for ethical reasons (the more sophisticated one's tastes, the better one's life), I think the unsophisticated tastes of most roleplayers are dragging specific game lines, and with them, the hobby, into the shitter.

My paradigmatic example of this, once again, is Exalted turning from a game of heroic adventure with a variety of influences and ways to play it in the first edition into an anime action-adventure game in the second edition. Some  (James Skach) would probably say Tome of Battle did the same thing to D&D 3.5.

This isn't some hypothetical thing that might someday happen. We can see it going on right now in multiple games (there are more examples than the two I just pointed out, but they're the ones I'm most familiar with that fall under this issue).

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232673...important...good or not...bad taste...improving one another's tastes...better...

*sigh* And I like you so much, otherwise.

Quote from: Settembrini;232602No, sweetheart. Don´t blame it on me. Pretty please check out what STORY NOW! actually means.

I already have my little wienerschnitzel.  While it's poorly explained and nonsensical, reading it through the Settembrini filter makes it even less clear.  Your mistakes compound their mistakes.

Quote from: Settembrini;232602STORY = addressation of premise == "how low can you go?"-style dillemmata challenging petit-bourgeious North American morality.

I don't see anyone from the Forge arguing in this thread about how TV, Movies and Comics aren't "real" stories, and shouldn't be used as inspiration for RPGs, and that only classical literature is sufficient.

There's only you.

You have become that which you hate.  You are now a swine.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232665no big, i wasn't trying to pick a fight with you. it's just frustrating for me to see the same kind of behavior here that i see on "that other rpg site

There's a number of people here who may as well be card carrying members of that site.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232609It probably isn't from horror movies, which use images and ambient sounds to do those things, since you're presumably using good old language like the rest of the roleplaying hobby. So where do you think you learnt to describe things in language in compelling and interesting ways?

Do you honestly think that a roleplaying game, rather than the stories you write as background or to sum up the game, is more like a written piece of literature than it is like a performance (Radio, TV, Film, Theatre)?

If the experience at the table is more like a performance, wouldn't looking at what makes for successful performances be a good idea?

There's a lot you can learn from horror movies and how they're structured that would make for a more enjoyable experience at the table.  If your focus is writing background material and game fiction, then sure -- looking at literature is probably a better idea than looking at any of the performance arts.

Quote from: Engine;232672Exactly. [And I'm a pretty big PSE fan, as far as that goes.] And then similarly, it bothers me to see jgants [also a fan] saying you're nuts for liking the kind of game PSE likes. I mean, shit, isn't it possible both are fun for the people who find those things fun? Isn't it possible someone would find both things fun?

But as you say, it's the internet, and fighting's common. So's absolutism, or Onetruewayism, or hatred of BadWrongFun, or whatever jargon one chooses to use. I dislike objective-sounding criticism of what is an essentially subjective experience.

Sorry mate, this my maniac point (We all get one). I really do think that even with content that's goofy or action-oriented or whatever, we get more out of it with a proper understanding how we can use language to convey specific emotional effects, and how to develop a story so that the narrative development causes specific emotional and aesthetic effects and avoids others. I think we can only get those skills from reading literature and seeing how others have done those things effectively. Even light-hearted games benefit from this - check out Mel Helitzer's Comedy Writing Secrets for a simple non-fiction book on how to tell jokes, and how to structure stories and anecdotes to be humourous.

I'd also point out that while I'm suspicious of genre fiction, I'm not hostile to it. People are putting the words "classic literature" in my posts. I'm not. I'm talking about plain, well-written and interesting fiction whether genre or high-lit or whatever. The examples I give are from classic literature because it's what I'm most familiar with. You can just imagine the titles "Starship Troopers" or "the Cyberiad" or "Murder at La Rue Morgue" if you prefer that stuff (those are all books I love).

Quote from: droog;232468Haemlid actually was a PC on that occasion. One of my friends had dropped into town and I gave him the chr. But I'm sure there are many ways to make use of Hamlet in a game.

But what if the player decides they don't want revenge?  What if they decide they weren't particularly attached to their father, didn't really want the throne, and are more than happy to let their uncle take it.  Then the whole thing falls apart.

This is why I don't get using plots like Hamlet with PCs in the major roles.  You have no control over what the characters decide to do, and a plot like Hamlet is driven almost entirely by the protagonists actions.  You should never get Hamlet as the outcome unless both the GM and the player are consciously attempting to do Hamlet...but that doesn't seem like real gaming to me.

This is really the problem with all plot-driven gaming:  either the players are passive participants watching the action unfold (and in the worst case, unable to pull their eyes away), or you're hinging the whole plot on the assumption that players will do X, which is like pretty much asking them to do Y.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232673That's just because you're a stupe!

In aesthetics, the idea of sophisticating one's tastes is very important. Sophisticating one's taste means trying unfamiliar things and understanding why they are good or not, based not just on immediate impressions but through providing explanations and justifications why one favours or does not favour a particular thing.

so i'm a stupe, am i? well, have at you, sir! but seriously... i dig the pseudo-intellectual thing you have going on here. it reminds me a lot of my own literary criticism courses. i have fond memories of those courses. just one thing... "sophisticating" isn't a verb. you sound like a twat.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232673Most roleplayers, like most people, have pretty bad taste because we live in a culture that thinks that tastes are innate and completely obvious to the person with the taste. They aren't, as anyone who's looked into the matter in the last say, hundred years or so can tell you, and so I think we, both in the specific case of roleplaying and in the more general case of our society in general, should devote effort on both an individual and a public level to improving one another's tastes by the process outlined above.

Not only should we be doing this for ethical reasons (the more sophisticated one's tastes, the better one's life), I think the unsophisticated tastes of most roleplayers are dragging specific game lines, and with them, the hobby, into the shitter.

most people have bad taste? based on whose standards? academicians? even harold "defender of the western canon" bloom wouldn't take the stance you have. umberto eco certainly wouldn't. a close reading will reveal worth in any printed text.

let's be absolutely clear here. i would whole-heartedly agree that broadening one's horizons is a fantastic idea. i would never tell someone not to try something new, whether it's a book, or an unfamiliar dish, or a different vacation getaway. trying new things is the only way we can grow. that said, you're going to have a pretty rough time convincing people that one set of tastes in anything is better than another. you seem like an educated guy, so i'll assume you picked up some latin at some point. there's an old quote that's relevant to this discussion: "de gustibus non disputandum est." you just can't argue taste.

@Jakolope:
It's not a problem. If they want to do something else, they do something else. How is that different from any other game? Beyond that, i have never seen a player turn away from a chance to get revenge, ever. I'm sure there are the 'turn the other cheek' players out there, and I'd certainly be willing to accommodate such a player, but ime, I'm more likely to game with a pink unicorn named Gumdrop Rainbowcock.

Quote from: Stuart;232681Do you honestly think that a roleplaying game, rather than the stories you write as background or to sum up the game, is more like a written piece of literature than it is like a performance (Radio, TV, Film, Theatre)?

If the experience at the table is more like a performance, wouldn't looking at what makes for successful performances be a good idea?

There's a lot you can learn from horror movies and how they're structured that would make for a more enjoyable experience at the table.  If your focus is writing background material and game fiction, then sure -- looking at literature is probably a better idea than looking at any of the performance arts.

I agree that looking at how successful performances work is useful. However, I consider the radio teleplay and improv theatre in that list far closer to the kinds of successful performances that go on in RPGs than TV or movies.

TV and movies, once again, use a lot of visual grammar and image-tools that simply don't exist in real life. The close-up for emphasis on a character's expression, the costume change, the ability to change locales, etc. Heck, the simple ability to have actors react to actual objects is tremendously important and almost totally unavailable at the table.

By contrast, radio teleplays and improv theatre are highly mediated by language, with radio teleplays obviously being so to a greater extent than improv theatre. Once again, it's that ability to use language to engage the listener, both in the content of the sentence and the form it takes, that is key. And you don't really get that from listening to radio teleplays because they're so ephemeral. It's text that's key to learning it, so that you can scrutinise the words and syntax at your leisure.

Quote from: gleichman;232678There's a number of people here who may as well be card carrying members of that site.

undoubtedly. i'm one of them as well. don't read too much into my post. rpg.net can be a lot of fun, and i don't have a beef with any specific poster or group of posters there. i just find that specific behavior grating. that's all.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232684Sorry mate, this my maniac point (We all get one).

Fair enough. ;)

Quote from: Jackalope;232686But what if the player decides they don't want revenge?  What if they decide they weren't particularly attached to their father, didn't really want the throne, and are more than happy to let their uncle take it.  Then the whole thing falls apart.

No no! That's what makes it...uh, fall together! [Rise apart? I don't know.] I think that's what's supposed to be fun about it, and it looks to me like that's what they did: just took it and ran with it, not really being concerned about the original.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232692undoubtedly. i'm one of them as well. don't read too much into my post. rpg.net can be a lot of fun, and i don't have a beef with any specific poster or group of posters there. i just find that specific behavior grating. that's all.

It's a natural behavior. People want to say that what they do is good and wonderful and better than what the other guy is doing. Even if it's a hobby, it still have to have impact on 'real life'.

This one point IMO is the only thing that defines a "Swine", Pundits attempts to make it more complex than that only clouds it. And it's why he's also a Swine himself...

Quote from: oktoberguard;232687just one thing... "sophisticating" isn't a verb.

Actually, it is. Check it out in one of those fancy dictionary things. It'll sophisticate your knowledge of the English language.

Quotemost people have bad taste? based on whose standards? academicians? even harold "defender of the western canon" bloom wouldn't take the stance you have. umberto eco certainly wouldn't. a close reading will reveal worth in any printed text.

Sure it will. Most people aren't doing that kind of close reading, and their tastes do not naively prefigure complicated literary analysis that reveals hidden merit.

I'm trying to argue that one needs to build the necessary tool set to reappropriate crap, lest it appropriate you. To do that, one has to understand how these structures and systems work in the first place, both the complicated ones and the simple ones.

Edit: I also think that most people lack that tool set, and are born down by crap rather than really making much of it. Not everyone - just as there are many people with bad taste, there are many people with spontaneously good taste. But enough people that the born-down-by-crap crew is the more common of the two. My example is rpg.net's PbP and Tabletop Open forums, both of which are filled with garbage ideas that are unplayable, unoriginal, uninteresting and cliched. I would contend that they are like this because they have not sophisticated their tastes adequately.

Quotelet's be absolutely clear here. i would whole-heartedly agree that broadening one's horizons is a fantastic idea. i would never tell someone not to try something new, whether it's a book, or an unfamiliar dish, or a different vacation getaway. trying new things is the only way we can grow. that said, you're going to have a pretty rough time convincing people that one set of tastes in anything is better than another. you seem like an educated guy, so i'll assumed you picked up some latin at some point. there's an old quote that's relevant to this discussion: "de gustibus non disputandum est." you just can't argue taste.

I follow Gadamer on that point. While I'm sending you scurrying after books, you might as well read Truth and Method, the first chunk of which is devoted to showing that in fact, matters of taste are subject to rational debate (specifically through the mode of a hermeneutical interpretation).

Quote from: gleichman;232696It's a natural behavior. People want to say that what they do is good and wonderful and better than what the other guy is doing. Even if it's a hobby, it still have to have impact on 'real life'.

This one point IMO is the only thing that defines a "Swine", Pundits attempts to make it more complex than that only clouds it. And it's why he's also a Swine himself...

you are, of course, totally correct. i still hold out hope that someday people will get tired of arguing on hobby fora and stick to talking about the fun they're having and how to have more fun.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232665telling people they're bone-headed and their games suck because they're not drawing on the "complicated narrative structures of literary fiction" seems kinda stupid and pointless to me.

I would agree that seems to be a pretty pretentious argument. However, I must say that I would rather game under a GM whose bookshelf has books besides Forgotten Realms paperbacks and other gaming fiction. For that matter if I'm playing a superhero game with someone, they better have read those Lee/Ditko Spider-Man comics (and Lee/Kirby FF, of course). I wouldn't want to be railroaded through someones attempt to run King Lear, but it wouldn't be a bad starting premise for a game.

The qualities that make for good literature and good gaming might overlap some, but ultimately there are irreconcilable differences. You don't get to go back and do a second draft of your gaming session for one thing. Being well read is no guarantee that one will be a good GM either. One has to be a performer, a host, a referee, etc. It looks like people have already addressed some of this while I was typing, but yeah, old radio shows and improv theatre are as good of outside sources as books or movies for the sorts of skillsets one can draw on for gaming.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232673In aesthetics, the idea of sophisticating one's tastes is very important. Sophisticating one's taste means trying unfamiliar things and understanding why they are good or not, based not just on immediate impressions but through providing explanations and justifications why one favours or does not favour a particular thing.

Most roleplayers, like most people, have pretty bad taste because we live in a culture that thinks that tastes are innate and completely obvious to the person with the taste. They aren't, as anyone who's looked into the matter in the last say, hundred years or so can tell you, and so I think we, both in the specific case of roleplaying and in the more general case of our society in general, should devote effort on both an individual and a public level to improving one another's tastes by the process outlined above.

Not only should we be doing this for ethical reasons (the more sophisticated one's tastes, the better one's life), I think the unsophisticated tastes of most roleplayers are dragging specific game lines, and with them, the hobby, into the shitter.

My paradigmatic example of this, once again, is Exalted turning from a game of heroic adventure with a variety of influences and ways to play it in the first edition into an anime action-adventure game in the second edition. Some  (James Skach) would probably say Tome of Battle did the same thing to D&D 3.5.

This isn't some hypothetical thing that might someday happen. We can see it going on right now in multiple games (there are more examples than the two I just pointed out, but they're the ones I'm most familiar with that fall under this issue).

QUOTED FOR TRUTH!!!!

This:  "we live in a culture that thinks that tastes are innate and completely obvious to the person with the taste" is one of the most frustrating things about living in this country.  Americans have no fucking taste at all.  A nation of philistines.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232699you are, of course, totally correct. i still hold out hope that someday people will get tired of arguing on hobby fora and stick to talking about the fun they're having and how to have more fun.

I much prefer that, but find even what seems to be honest attempts filled with potholes.

The most serious one IME is the person who says they want to improve, but really only wants it either to work or for suggested improvement to in now way cast light upon the fact that either their goals or their method needs to change.

Things can blow up quickly when dealing with such people.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232691TV and movies, once again, use a lot of visual grammar and image-tools that simply don't exist in real life.

Literature lacks a lot of the timing and verbal tools that are available at the table.  No reason to discard it entirely though.

When I was in school I knew a very pretentious Theatre Studies student who wore a button that said:
"Theatre is Life.
Cinema is Art.
Television is Furniture".  

Don't be that guy.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232687so i'm a stupe, am i? well, have at you, sir! but seriously... i dig the pseudo-intellectual thing you have going on here. it reminds me a lot of my own literary criticism courses. i have fond memories of those courses. just one thing... "sophisticating" isn't a verb. you sound like a twat.

You need a better dictionary.  Mine (dictionary.com) lists sophisticating as a verb form of sophisticate.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232698Actually, it is. Check it out in one of those fancy dictionary things. It'll sophisticate your knowledge of the English language.

i stand corrected. from the random house unabridged dictionary:

so·phis·ti·cate  
–noun 1. a sophisticated person.  
–adjective 2. sophisticated.  
–verb (used with object) 3. to make less natural, simple, or ingenuous; make worldly-wise.  
4. to alter; pervert: to sophisticate a meaning beyond recognition.  
–verb (used without object) 5. to use sophistry; quibble.

so yeah, this thread has become quite sophisticated.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232698Sure it will. Most people aren't doing that kind of close reading, and their tastes do not naively prefigure complicated literary analysis that reveals hidden merit.

I'm trying to argue that one needs to build the necessary tool set to reappropriate crap, lest it appropriate you. To do that, one has to understand how these structures and systems work in the first place, both the complicated ones and the simple ones.

Edit: I also think that most people lack that tool set, and are born down by crap rather than really making much of it. Not everyone - just as there are many people with bad taste, there are many people with spontaneously good taste. But enough people that the born-down-by-crap crew is the more common of the two. My example is rpg.net's PbP and Tabletop Open forums, both of which are filled with garbage ideas that are unplayable, unoriginal, uninteresting and cliched. I would contend that they are like this because they have not sophisticated their tastes adequately.



I follow Gadamer on that point. While I'm sending you scurrying after books, you might as well read Truth and Method, the first chunk of which is devoted to showing that in fact, matters of taste are subject to rational debate (specifically through the mode of a hermeneutical interpretation).

and i'd refer you to eco's "a theory of semiotics" and "misreadings." as i don't see either of us changing each other's opinions any time soon, i suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on the proposition of objective worth (or lack thereof) of literature or tv or any other medium for communication.

is there a lot of stuff on rpg.net that seems (to me, at least) out of whack and almost if not totally unplayable? i'd agree with you there. where you lose me is when you suggest we need to resort to critical theory to unfuck our tastes to enjoy a "proper" role-playing game. either way, yours is an interesting perspective. you should put up some actual play posts. i'd be really interested to hear about how your games go.

Quote from: Aos;232689@Jakolope:
It's not a problem. If they want to do something else, they do something else. How is that different from any other game? Beyond that, i have never seen a player turn away from a chance to get revenge, ever. I'm sure there are the 'turn the other cheek' players out there, and I'd certainly be willing to accommodate such a player, but ime, I'm more likely to game with a pink unicorn named Gumdrop Rainbowcock.

You should try running a game for my group.  The only player in my group who would play along is the one most likely to have his character die on a bad roll, which is a great way of running a plot right off the rails.

I don't know, I've yet to see plot-driven play turn into anything toher than a nightmare of railroading.  And as I've said before, to Engine, my experience of DMs is the ones that talk up how deep and amazing the plots of their games are tend to be either boring as hell or utterly delusional.

TV can be OK, but I do consider it to be just about the most different medium from roleplaying that we ordinarily use. So I find the endless invasion of television into RPGs frustrating, pointless and annoying. TV is fine in its own domain.

Improv theatre strikes me as pretty useful skill set to have for roleplaying, but different than the skill set you get from reading. I don't see the two as incompatible in any way.

Quote from: Jackalope;232706You need a better dictionary.  Mine (dictionary.com) lists sophisticating as a verb form of sophisticate.

already fixed, friend. note to self: do not rely on memory when arguing on the internets, as you will appear to be a fool.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232709and i'd refer you to eco's "a theory of semiotics" and "misreadings." as i don't see either of us changing each other's opinions any time soon, i suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on the proposition of objective worth (or lack thereof) of literature or tv or any other medium for communication.

I just need to stop and have a little chuckle at the guy defending the futility of sophistication in aesthetics by pointing to critical essays by Umberto Eco.

Quote from: Jackalope;232717I just need to stop and have a little chuckle at the guy defending the futility of sophistication in aesthetics by pointing to critical essays by Umberto Eco.

hey man, i go where i'm led.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232709and i'd refer you to eco's "a theory of semiotics" and "misreadings." as i don't see either of us changing each other's opinions any time soon, i suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on the proposition of objective worth (or lack thereof) of literature or tv or any other medium for communication.

is there a lot of stuff on rpg.net that seems (to me, at least) out of whack and almost if not totally unplayable? i'd agree with you there. where you lose me is when you suggest we need to resort to critical theory to unfuck our tastes to enjoy a "proper" role-playing game. either way, yours is an interesting perspective. you should put up some actual play posts. i'd be really interested to hear about how your games go.

I already have two campaign records up, unfortunately both are incomplete (even though the campaigns are finished) but they should give you an idea:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=8427 is the first post from "The Dessinger Saga". It's written by my buddy Rob, not me, and it continues for about 21 posts or so. Unfortunately, when they ported it over from the old site design, it posted them all as separate topics without links between them, so it's a bit hard to read. I know for a fact that Rob has the rest of the campaign written up (almost completely, I think the last two or three sessions are missing) but won't post it unless blogs are brought back.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=6783 is our campaign previous to that, which didn't have a name, but I affectionately referred to as "Iron Heroes for Bad People" because we played a bunch of unstable maniacs. The summaries end the session before the main PC driver, Victor Geiste, died in a bullshit sidequest.

They have their strengths and their weaknesses, both as games and as write-ups, and they don't explicitly deal with the themes we've been talking about, but they give a fair idea of the variety of games I'm a PC in (there are no write-ups of the games I've run for these guys, unfortunately).

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232711TV can be OK, but I do consider it to be just about the most different medium from roleplaying that we ordinarily use. So I find the endless invasion of television into RPGs frustrating, pointless and annoying. TV is fine in its own domain.

Really ? The structure of most genre shows translates very well to roleplaying campaigns.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232722I already have two campaign records up, unfortunately both are incomplete (even though the campaigns are finished) but they should give you an idea:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=6783 is our campaign previous to that, which didn't have a name, but I affectionately referred to as "Iron Heroes for Bad People" because we played a bunch of unstable maniacs. The summaries end the session before the main PC driver, Victor Geiste, died in a bullshit sidequest.

They have their strengths and their weaknesses, both as games and as write-ups, and they don't explicitly deal with the themes we've been talking about, but they give a fair idea of the variety of games I'm a PC in (there are no write-ups of the games I've run for these guys, unfortunately).

the "iron heroes for bad people" thread is pretty badass nevetheless. definitely post something next time you run a game, though. i'd like to check it out.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232711TV can be OK, but I do consider it to be just about the most different medium from roleplaying that we ordinarily use. So I find the endless invasion of television into RPGs frustrating, pointless and annoying. TV is fine in its own domain.

Improv theatre strikes me as pretty useful skill set to have for roleplaying, but different than the skill set you get from reading. I don't see the two as incompatible in any way.

I've studied, acted and directed for Theatre (including improv), Film and TV.  There's a lot of overlap between the mediums, and people usually overstate the differences between Film and TV in particular.  Usually when they're being pretentious. :D Since most TV is shot on film or digital these days it's mostly how you frame up shots (changing with HDTV) and the length of stories you can tell (2-hour one-shot vs 1-hour series).  Most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference if they visited the set for a TV show or a movie.  The people who write for movies are often the same ones who write for TV as well.

All things considered, I think that a better skill to develop than improv acting is public speaking.

Quote from: Jackalope;232710I don't know, I've yet to see plot-driven play turn into anything toher than a nightmare of railroading.  And as I've said before, to Engine, my experience of DMs is the ones that talk up how deep and amazing the plots of their games are tend to be either boring as hell or utterly delusional.

And as I've said, you're always welcome at our table! Of course, I guess if you really want to get into the plot, you've got to "see" more than one "episode."

I've thought a lot about it since you and I've discussed this, and I can totally see how what you're talking about could happen: the GM has this story in mind, and then sets out the initial premise for his players, and suddenly they start going in every which way, nowhere near the path he had in mind, and so he's got to shove them back on the path.

No, if you're going to make a plot-driven game work, you've got to involve the players from day one, and you've got to manipulate the circumstances of character generation, and you've probably got to be very, very flexible in the story that eventually gets told. I think if the GM just makes up a story in his head, and thinks the players will naturally walk down this path, he's probably going to make a terrible abomination of a game. I think plot-driven games can work [well, I know they can], but I agree there's a billion ways for them to not-work, too.

Quote from: Engine;232628I think perhaps the error in this case is the presumption that anyone who doesn't want what you want is insane. Some people want something more complex than "go here, fight this, get stuff, win!" There are people - many of them, one presumes - who want something more complex than I do, but I don't think they're mad, I just think they enjoy something other than I do. The notion that "different" must mean "deficient" is one I'd like to see stamped out.

Quote from: Engine;232672And then similarly, it bothers me to see jgants [also a fan] saying you're nuts for liking the kind of game PSE likes. I mean, shit, isn't it possible both are fun for the people who find those things fun? Isn't it possible someone would find both things fun?

I guess I didn't lay on the sarcasm thick enough.  It was meant as a mocking joke, not a declaration of badwrongfun war.

I was trying to go out of my way (like picking really dull books that were not really what he was talking about) to mock pseudo's "classic literature is the only true narrative structure" nonsense.  I don't literally believe anyone who tries to play Great Expectations: The RPG is mentally ill (though they clearly have a different definition of fun than I do).

Next time I'll just repeat my old joke about writing my story game, "Remains of the End - The RPG of Romantic Merchant-Ivory Intrigue".  I don't think anyone ever took that seriously (even if I did get offers to buy it). :p

Quote from: Jackalope;232710And as I've said before, to Engine, my experience of DMs is the ones that talk up how deep and amazing the plots of their games are tend to be either boring as hell or utterly delusional.

I'm both, obviously.

Quote from: David R;232723Really ? The structure of most genre shows translates very well to roleplaying campaigns.

Regards,
David R

Really? I find characters in genre television shows fairly static in comparison with PCs. "Fake amnesia" in episodic shows (where a character doesn't really seem to remember what happened last week, last month, even last season sometimes) is a IMHO perfect example of something that's nearly impossible to actually roleplay, and even inimical to roleplaying.

@ Jackalope: But let me ask you this: Somebody drugs your pcs at a feast, takes all their stuff and strands them on a desert island. Are they just going to walk away from that? I never ask my guys to play along, I don't have to- after the fuckover- which i always give them ample opportunity to avoid- they run things themselves, and i never railroad, ever.

Quote from: Stuart;232728I've studied, acted and directed for Theatre (including improv), Film and TV.  There's a lot of overlap between the mediums, and people usually overstate the differences between Film and TV in particular.  Usually when they're being pretentious. :D Since most TV is shot on film or digital these days it's mostly how you frame up shots (changing with HDTV) and the length of stories you can tell (2-hour one-shot vs 1-hour series).  Most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference if they visited the set for a TV show or a movie.  The people who write for movies are often the same ones who write for TV as well.

I agree, but there are a few differences, like the "fake amnesia" issue I mentioned with David down below, that movies don't normally have. Otherwise, sure. My interest, remember, is in literature and theatre here, rather than arguing that one should be watching great films or something.

QuoteAll things considered, I think that a better skill to develop than improv acting is public speaking.

I found high school debating tremendously useful in the OOC components of roleplaying since it showed me how to quickly evaluate arguments and then develop my own position persuasively.

Popular action movies of the sort people try to model with RPGs often have conceits that I just can't get past. For instance, how many times do you see a character who has known the protagonist for only a few hours (or even minutes) suddenly form a devoted attachment to him that trumps all other relationships with friends, family, etc.? It's simply ridiculous that Eowyn is more concerned about the safety of Aragorn (who she has known for a few hours) than her own brother, or any of the other men of Rohan she has known all her life. Or that Gimli, who is about 200 years old, should get choked up over a guy he's travelled with for a couple weeks.  

And we don't find this sort of emotional distortion only in adolescent action films. Film, by its nature, has to compress time and drama in weird ways. Ongoing RPG campaigns do not have to do that. To my mind, the realm where RPGs are far superior to movies, or TV, or books is in exploring fictional settings in a plausible manner, at the pace and direction of the players.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232739I agree, but there are a few differences, like the "fake amnesia" issue I mentioned with David down below, that movies don't normally have. Otherwise, sure. My interest, remember, is in literature and theatre here, rather than arguing that one should be watching great films or something.

That's a difference between Episodic and Serialized formats for TV shows.  An Episodic RPG would be like a one-shot, or maybe a highly structured game like My Life With Master.  Most RPGs would be more like a Serialized show anyway, so this is a non-issue.

I think you're also comparing the best of literature to all of television and film and using that to dismiss their relevance.  Is Hamlet better than a random episode of Alf?  Sure -- I doubt anybody (except maybe Rotwang!) would argue otherwise.  Is The Italian Job or even an episode of Law & Order a better thing to reference for your games than some self-published and badly written crime novel?  I'd say so.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232739I found high school debating tremendously useful in the OOC components of roleplaying since it showed me how to quickly evaluate arguments and then develop my own position persuasively.

I was thinking more about being able to speak clearly and in a way that keeps your audience's attention.

I dunno, back in the Earthdawn days, my guys would put away like a case of beer on game night- there was nothing fake about the resulting amnesia, I assure you.

Quote from: jgants;232731I guess I didn't lay on the sarcasm thick enough.

Yeah, they need tags for that shit. I had to abandon sarcasm, because it works so poorly when your audience doesn't know you [or your writing] well enough. Message received now, though.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232737"Fake amnesia" in episodic shows (where a character doesn't really seem to remember what happened last week, last month, even last season sometimes) is a IMHO perfect example of something that's nearly impossible to actually roleplay, and even inimical to roleplaying.

I think pointing to a confirmed and well-known flaw of television as something that's difficult to roleplay doesn't make your case well; "fake amnesia," if I'm understanding the term properly, is an artifact of writer ignorance, and not anything like a "feature" you'd want to import into roleplaying.

Still, if you can watch, say, Stargate SG-1 or Angel - those are "genre television," right? I'm not a television watcher, as a rule - and not come away with something to aid your campaign [no matter how intellectual that campaign may be], then you're watching it wrong. Serial television, particularly, shows how the structure of campaign [season] and adventure [episode] can be woven so as to tell a broad story while not beating people constantly over the head with it, for example.

I like to think my games are as high-minded as the next fellow's, but I've learned a lot from television, both in terms of what to do, and what not to do. For example, I did a study of science fiction television broadcasts from the last three decades, which included as a matter of course the sublime Starhunter; if you can watch that and not learn how not to run an RPG game, you're watching it wrong, too.

Massive thread drift. Oh well.

I think Sett is more right than not when he says Clancy et. al. are good sources for adventure-oriented gaming, but crap when (as all too often) they're used as sources for emotion/morality oriented gaming.

I'm not sure about Pseudo's argument. I don't really care much about description beyond basic competence. (That said, a lot of people fail at diction, especially when they're trying to be fancy.) If he's talking about narrative structure in the sense of how a plot is introduced and develops across time, I'm also suspicious (though not completely dismissive) since I don't think the GM ought to be managing mood and theme. If he's talking about narrative structure in the sense of establishing interesting and believable character motivations and conflicts, then I pretty much agree and see this as another version of Sett's point.

If people want to emulate a certain type of theme, then it usually has to be discussed a little ahead of time. Kind of like in the same way that a DM might sit down with the players and say something like,

"Ok, everyone. I'm as excited about running this game as you are about playing it, and I know what I threw out there was "Agents of the Crown, ala high-fantasy Ghost in the Shell. One of the things that Steve and I talked about was individual freedoms versus the safety of the state, and what it was worth doing in the name of the state. So, you know, that might come up. Steve wrote up a Rogue who owed his life to the crown after he was pulled out of the gulag. .."

So, the players are already kind of aware that you might throw more twists then just "For your next mission...". A discussion like that doesn't need to be done, but it can inspire the players to work with that angle, if they're interested, and prevents something like a bait-and-switch feel.

And... I don't know. I think that you can help facilitate themes in games, if your players want that kind of thing. I tend to talk about what kind of game I want to run a lot before I run them, though, and I get a lot of player support. Sett would think it's shit (especially how I ran my last game), but you know, whatever.

EDIT: And you know I went right ahead and drug out a piece of anime for this. I don't know if it helps, but I prefer the Stand Alone Complex series to the movie, hands down. Amusingly, if I were going to run something like this, I'd take more cues from G:tS, history, and Spy Games then from novels. I never much liked espionage books.

Quote from: Jackalope;232686But what if the player decides they don't want revenge?  What if they decide they weren't particularly attached to their father, didn't really want the throne, and are more than happy to let their uncle take it.  Then the whole thing falls apart.

No, the plot of Shakespeare's Hamlet falls apart, but you now have an original story. Everybody wins! Unless what you wanted to do was run in lockstep through the plot of Hamlet.

Shakespeare didn't stick to the earlier story (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/amleth.html) he drew inspiration from, so why should I?

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232737Really? I find characters in genre television shows fairly static in comparison with PCs. "Fake amnesia" in episodic shows (where a character doesn't really seem to remember what happened last week, last month, even last season sometimes) is a IMHO perfect example of something that's nearly impossible to actually roleplay, and even inimical to roleplaying.

Well by structure I meant elements like the serial nature of TV shows, seasons, story arcs, stand alone "episodes", cold openings, cliffhangers, pacing etc. I do agree that narrative conceits like the one you mentioned whether it's from film, television or books are by their very nature (for my crew anyway) immersion breakers and are best avoided.

If I was a cool internet guy I would link you to some articles by Robin Laws who wrote interesting stuff about this subject in Dragon and in his Laws of Good Gamemastering.....

BTW, some who have read your Iron Heroes for Bad People have commented that it is so Peckinpah.....which may not exactly thrill you.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;232800I think Sett is more right than not when he says Clancy et. al. are good sources for adventure-oriented gaming, but crap when (as all too often) they're used as sources for emotion/morality oriented gaming.

Do you think he's talking about character based emotion/morality oriented gaming?

Quote from: Stuart;232861Do you think he's talking about character based emotion/morality oriented gaming?

Ah....the Return or should I say Revenge of Thematic....

Regards,
David R

I don't mind people who never play - but I do dislike people who play once then stop turning up.

Seldom has this site degenerated into such pretentious bollocks.

The Illiad is not an accessible bit of fiction its a bloody long and often tediously repetative ancient poem written in fucking dactylic hexameter. I might well run a game based on the story of the Illiad but I would stick to a reread of the Roger Lancelyn Green kids version to refresh my memory.

I have to defend comics and TV. There is so much great TV and so many great comics. Yes Spiderman 214 might be shit (where he teams up with the sub-mariner to take on the Frightful 4 right?) but Moonshadow is just fantastic (would make a crap game though) and Gaiman is a genius in any genre.

Anyone that takes a pompous stance and says classic literature is a better source of inspiration for games is just stating an opinion and suspect doing so for the sound it makes not out of any real conviction. The fact of the matter is I never managed to read the whole of the Worm Orborous or Gormenghast, My life is just too short. Likewise I think the Life and times of Tristram Shandy, which I did finish thanks to a really long train journey in Thailand is absolute shit. I fail to find the characters engaging. I much prefer to base a game on the pulpy crappy fiction of Fiest or Gemmel and gain a lot more inspiration from watching an episode of BattleStar Galactica than from reading Chekov. If I want some Slavic misery I'll just talk to the wife.

Comics are great TV is great. Episodic storytelling that links character arcs and gives everyone some time in the spotlight is something to strive towards in Role Playing and these are the genres that have mastered the art but if it doesn't happen and the guys just have fun then fantastic. Of course there is shit telly and character amnesia but with Heroes, Lost, the Sopranos etc there is a also a thread of gold in there.

I thought Tristram Shandy was funny . . .

I get more game ideas from Land of the Lost, though.

Quote from: David R;232862Ah....the Return or should I say Revenge of Thematic....

Bingo.

I'll run through it very quickly since Stuart seems a bit lost.

Sett likes to focus on adventure. That means, front and center, you have political-strategic-tactical conflict. Ends and means may be questioned, but not "values". You do not ask if you want to rescue the princess, rather the premise of the game is "let's rescue the princess" so that we can then move out and have an adventure. It's like the head in the dungeoncrawl I posted recently--or more precisely, it's like the PCs' greed and the fact that their patron handed them a treasure map.

I posit that there's other stuff there, in fact you do not exclude the possibility of one day wondering if the princess really ought to be rescued, but it's not the immediate focus of the action.

The formulation of STORY NOW, particularly in the hands of poxy followers of the good Dr. Edwards, is focusing on those values and hitting them hard. Problem is, aside from the risk of jumping from plot point to plot point and ending up with a hollow resume of a story, the plot points themselves are horribly, horribly cliché when they're drawn from 1980's superhero comics, summer blockbusters, and geek operas.

Well Elliot, I'm sure you are aware I have "issues" with Sett's definition but I'll let them be for this thread. But I will say that this :

QuoteI posit that there's other stuff there, in fact you do not exclude the possibility of one day wondering if the princess really ought to be rescued, but it's not the immediate focus of the action.

[/I]
is very interesting and something I'll pick up on some other time.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232596Actually, I've been out of university (I was a Philosophy, not an English major, never even took a course on the subject at the university level) and working for years now, and everyone still reads less than me. That's their moral failing though, not mine.

I think that everyone reading less then you is a pretty big assumption you're making.  For my part I am currently reading several books/ literature at the moment, it all depends on the kind of mood I happen to be in.  As for others in the world, I have had the privilege of knowing many individuals who are quite well versed in all types of literature and still enjoy a good movie or television program.  Variety is the spice of life, or so I have heard, and given different avenues of entertainment seems to add to one's character.  I have gamed with these individuals as well, and we have found ways of letting those avenues cultivate in different outcomes and scenarios during our games.  
Saying that everyone reads less is their moral failure is an unfair assessment as well.   Let's assume people actually have busy lives and can't always be sticking their nose into a book, or any other reading material at any moment.  I myself am a mother, full-time worker, student, wife and devoted family member.  Besides allowing myself to play an RPG game everyone once in a while, reading is my favorite pastime.  There is no moral failure simply because one can't keep up with you.

Quote from: Engine;232729I've thought a lot about it since you and I've discussed this, and I can totally see how what you're talking about could happen: the GM has this story in mind, and then sets out the initial premise for his players, and suddenly they start going in every which way, nowhere near the path he had in mind, and so he's got to shove them back on the path.

What the fuck?  You ruminated on something someone said on the internet and realized eventually they had a point?  What the fuck planet are you from, you freak!?!

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.  The idea is simple: what happens when one person is so convinced that you -- who have no particular beef with this person -- is out to get you that they force you to confront them.  I'm fascinated by the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy.

So I kicked off this plot by having wanted posters start popping up.  One of the characters was traveling under a pseudonym, and the wanted posters claimed his pseudonym was wanted for the murder of his actual identity.  (I'm a Phillip K. Dick fan, so naturally the idea of being wanted fro killing yourself appeals to me greatly).

The player I picked out?  He bolted, ran from the party, wouldn't tell anyone what happened or where he was going.  So I ended up having to ditch the whole plotline and handwave away the wanted posters to get the player to come back to the party.  It was very annoying.

And sure, I could have told the player wanted I wanted to do, but then...what's the point?  There's no tension when everyone knows what's going on.

Quote from: droog;232835No, the plot of Shakespeare's Hamlet falls apart, but you now have an original story. Everybody wins! Unless what you wanted to do was run in lockstep through the plot of Hamlet.

Then you aren't really borrowing the plot from Hamlet, you're borrowing the premise.  And unless you get to decide what your players play for their characters, you're going to end up having to modify the premise quite a bit.

And at a certain point, you're so far removed from Hamlet, that claiming you're borrowing from Hamlet or that Hamlet informs your game in some way is, frankly, a bunch of pretentious horseshit.  Just because it's a revenge story with a ghost doesn't make it Hamlet.

Seriously man, I think if Ophelia doesn't end up drowning herself in a pool, then claiming your game has fuckall to do with Hamlet is just bullshit intended to make your game appear more literate than it is.

Quote from: Jackalope;232686But what if the player decides they don't want revenge?  What if they decide they weren't particularly attached to their father, didn't really want the throne, and are more than happy to let their uncle take it.  Then the whole thing falls apart.

This is why I don't get using plots like Hamlet with PCs in the major roles.  You have no control over what the characters decide to do, and a plot like Hamlet is driven almost entirely by the protagonists actions.

Of course. So it would only come about if the player said, "I am creating a character who has a strong sense of honour, in that medieval loyalty sense, and responsibility towards his family, but who is a bit indecisive." The GM could then respond by creating the situation, "your father dies and your mother marries his brother, you suspect your uncle may have killed him." Voila, you got Hamlet.

If the GM just springs the situation on random PCs, of course it won't work. The average PC would just walk over and stab the uncle straight up, then say, "Hail to the King, bitches!" As GM, you have to look at the traits the player gives their character, and make the complications of the campaign out of that. Of course you can ask the players to have certain traits in their characters, too, so there's a bit of back-and-forth in campaign and character design.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;232877I'll run through it very quickly since Stuart seems a bit lost.

I wasn't (it was a rhetorical question), but thanks for the recap. ;)

Quote from: JackalopeThen you aren't really borrowing the plot from Hamlet, you're borrowing the premise.

Exactly.  And borrowing a premise has very little to do with what makes literature and the various performance arts distinct from one another.  I don't see how taking a premise from a book, play, tv show, movie, or even comic would be all that much different.

Edit:

Quote from: jibbajibba;232868I much prefer to base a game on the pulpy crappy fiction of Fiest or Gemmel and gain a lot more inspiration from watching an episode of BattleStar Galactica than from reading Chekov. If I want some Slavic misery I'll just talk to the wife.

:D

QuoteI have to defend comics and TV. There is so much great TV and so many great comics. Yes Spiderman 214 might be shit (where he teams up with the sub-mariner to take on the Frightful 4 right?) but Moonshadow is just fantastic (would make a crap game though) and Gaiman is a genius in any genre.

I personally find it hard to apply much credibility to someone who complains about pretension and then cites Gaiman as a work of genius.

Quote from: Jackalope;232890Then you aren't really borrowing the plot from Hamlet, you're borrowing the premise.  And unless you get to decide what your players play for their characters, you're going to end up having to modify the premise quite a bit.

And at a certain point, you're so far removed from Hamlet, that claiming you're borrowing from Hamlet or that Hamlet informs your game in some way is, frankly, a bunch of pretentious horseshit.  Just because it's a revenge story with a ghost doesn't make it Hamlet.

Seriously man, I think if Ophelia doesn't end up drowning herself in a pool, then claiming your game has fuckall to do with Hamlet is just bullshit intended to make your game appear more literate than it is.

Fair enough, really. I borrow a premise or two here and there. I borrowed some of it from Hamlet, admitting as much isn't so much being pretentious as it is being honest. Revenge stories with ghosts in them were not my idea in the first place, obviously.

Quote from: Stuart;232895Exactly.  And borrowing a premise has very little to do with what makes literature and the various performance arts distinct from one another.  I don't see how taking a premise from a book, play, tv show, movie, or even comic would be all that much different.

It totally doesn't!

This (http://www.jibjab.com/view/175851) is as viable a source of the premise of Hamlet as this (http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/full.html).  Because as a GM, you have no control over what happens after the ghost tells Hamlet what the mission is.  In fact, the Simpsons version does a better job of introducing the ghost, since the play has the ghost beckon Hamlet away from his companions, and there's no way in hell any PC would fall for that.

Once given the misson, will the PC try to trick Claudius into a confession, and then murder him in vengeance?  That's the player's choice, and from that point on Hamlet has exactly as much to do with it as the player decides ("I'm gonna get my melancholy dane on!") and what the player knows about Hamlet.  The chances of a player stumbling across that particular plan (let alone the particular implementation of that particular plan) without knowing Hamlet and intentionally aping the actions of the titular melancholic dane.

So this idea that you need to read the classics to use classic premises?  BS.

and just to be clear-

Quote from: Aos;232314Psuedo, I've read tons of lit- including everything on your short list, but I'm sorry to admit that my gaming is more likely to be informed by  stuff like People of the Black Circle, Guyal of Sfere, Ill Met in Lankmahr and Jack Kirby comics than Gravaty's Rainbow.

I stole stuff for a Mage campaign from Gravity's Rainbow....(guess this makes me uberswine - one for the choice of game, the other for the book)

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Jackalope;232890Then you aren't really borrowing the plot from Hamlet, you're borrowing the premise.  And unless you get to decide what your players play for their characters, you're going to end up having to modify the premise quite a bit.

To be precise, not the premise but the opening situation. And a jolly good opening situation it is.

You need to chill, young man. Throwing the word 'pretentious' into this is shooting your wad a bit early. I suggest you review what I've actually written.

Quote from: Jackalope;232886What the fuck?  You ruminated on something someone said on the internet and realized eventually they had a point?  What the fuck planet are you from, you freak!?!

I know, isn't it crazy? They're going to take my membership card, soon.

I once came up with this brilliantly simple plot....

So I ended up having to ditch the whole plotline and handwave away the wanted posters to get the player to come back to the party.  It was very annoying.

And sure, I could have told the player wanted I wanted to do, but then...what's the point?  There's no tension when everyone knows what's going on.[/QUOTE]
That does sound like an excellent plot, and a great example of the form. I can't speak to what might have been done to prevent its unraveling - I don't know your group, or even really you - but I can say this happens to us all the time. I had a metaplot for every character in my last Earthdawn game, and all but one of them died in the second adventure. Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do now? And of course, I just let the threads fall; part of "realistic" roleplaying is that sometimes in real life, stories end in the middle, and it's sad.

Quote from: Settembrini;232083Collecting is good. Only collectors can become great DMs...If I can choose between a DM that owns EVERYTHING from ONE game line and nothing else, or a DM that has 300 different HSV-wonderbooks and written 400 reviews on RPG.Net, I´ll go to the first guy.

Yes, I know this was covered, but if I hadn't spoiled it by seeing the username, I was going to give huge props to the guy that wrote this. It reads like a perfect parody, illustrating the original poster's premise extremely well. (Still, knowing that it wasn't written tongue-in-cheek actually makes it even funnier.)

As to the more recent discussion: If the literature you're reading or the TV shows/movies you're watching are less useful as idea fodder than your average RPG book, then you need to find better literature/TV/movies to watch. I'll say that GURPS sourcebooks are generally an exception, because they're distillations of ideas and material and are pretty fucking solid.

Quote from: Engine;232729No, if you're going to make a plot-driven game work, you've got to involve the players from day one, and you've got to manipulate the circumstances of character generation, and you've probably got to be very, very flexible in the story that eventually gets told. I think if the GM just makes up a story in his head, and thinks the players will naturally walk down this path, he's probably going to make a terrible abomination of a game. I think plot-driven games can work [well, I know they can], but I agree there's a billion ways for them to not-work, too.

Hey, you know ,nobody punch me in the nuts for even using the "N" word, but I think you just stated what the fuck Narrativism is supposed to be better than anybody. Good on ya.

(Yes, GM-driven plots can very easily suck, player-driven plots are the bomb if you enjoy that kind of play. I'm one of those who thinks "PCs hose themselves and have to pick up the pieces" can end up being a plot, so in practice those are pretty damn common. :) )

I really ought to read this theory - GNS, yeah? - that Narrativism comes from, so I'd stop being so ignorant when people mention it. Does anyone have a good - neutral - primer on it, that's not on RPG.net or storygames or the Forge or wherever it is this comes from, so I can laugh or nod, depending on how absurd or correct I feel it is?

Quote from: Engine;233017I really ought to read this theory - GNS, yeah? - that Narrativism comes from, so I'd stop being so ignorant when people mention it. Does anyone have a good - neutral - primer on it, that's not on RPG.net or storygames or the Forge or wherever it is this comes from, so I can laugh or nod, depending on how absurd or correct I feel it is?

This is probably as neutral as you're going to get:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_Theory

Thanks, Stuart. Based on that brief but reasonably neutral article, my thoughts are that someone described fairly accurately the different types of roleplaying, and then drew utterly the wrong conclusions from that description.

Hey, I'm a Simulationist/Narrativist/Gamist, in that order! I think that means I'm impossible!

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;232641Well, they were laughing, which I usually take as a good sign... Ideally the player would come up with all of this, it's his character's contact after all, but that particular player usually GMs so he probably wants to slack off when he games, plus not everyone is comfortable with that collaborative sort of thing, it can be a bit communist after all.

Now see to me that is the level of detail and roleplaying that makes for a great game.  You can get a plot from a book, comic, classic, whatever, but you need a good GM who can improvise rather than slavish adherence to a script.

Quote from: Engine;233029Hey, I'm a Simulationist/Narrativist/Gamist, in that order! I think that means I'm impossible!

No, you're quite possible- indeed common. Rather you're just simply incoherent*.

But we knew that already :)


*in GNS terms

:D

I cannot imagine a game that did only one of those things. Bo-ring. [For me.]

Quote from: EngineThanks, Stuart. Based on that brief but reasonably neutral article, my thoughts are that someone described fairly accurately the different types of roleplaying, and then drew utterly the wrong conclusions from that description.

Hey, I'm a Simulationist/Narrativist/Gamist, in that order! I think that means I'm impossible!

There are other approaches to RPGs (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=9420) that the theory doesn't account for.

Here's the other big problem:

QuoteNarrativist refers to decisions based on what would best further a dramatic story or address a central theme.

QuoteGamist refers to decisions based on what will most effectively solve the problem posed.

When the problem posed is "Tell a dramatic story as best you can" then it's *both* 'Narrativist' and 'Gamist'.  In fact all games are 'gamist' whether it's get the most points, or give a great performance, or weave an interesting story.  This is a serious flaw in the theory.

But if you like it and it makes you happy, then groovy.  Personally, I think it has no utility in designing games.

Quote from: Stuart;233038When the problem posed is "Tell a dramatic story as best you can" then it's *both* 'Narrativist' and 'Gamist'.  In fact all games are 'gamist' whether it's get the most points, or give a great performance, or weave an interesting story.  This is a serious flaw in the theory.

I don't see that as a flaw in the theory, because the "problem" being solved by gamist thought ["what will most effectively solve the problem posed"] would be the problem in game, not the metagame consideration of most points, great performance, interesting story. Or am I reading it wrong?

I can see how understanding that all three types of players exist would help you write games, but the idea that you should only use one in each game seems absurd to me, and runs completely counter to my experience in roleplaying. It's like saying a car - seriously, the only kind of metaphor I know - can be fast, comfortable, or economical, but any attempt to do any combination of them will fail; it's just not true, and is patently untrue to anyone who has ever spent any time at all looking at cars.

Quote from: Stuart;233038When the problem posed is "Tell a dramatic story as best you can" then it's *both* 'Narrativist' and 'Gamist'.  In fact all games are 'gamist' whether it's get the most points, or give a great performance, or weave an interesting story.  This is a serious flaw in the theory.

As much as I hate GNS, that line of debate doesn't carry water. By definition a Gamist never attempts to tell a story as best as he can, that's not his interest.

GNS sucks because of the conculsions (and poor and unclear wording in the defintions), not because of word games such as you attempted here.

GNS is a pox on our hobby!

Quote from: Engine;233067GNS is a pox on our hobby!

GNS is the natural result of the acceptance of post-modernism by Western institutes of higher learning. Edwards was nothing but the result of that mindset.

And yes, it's pox on everything.

Quote from: Engine;233017I really ought to read this theory - GNS, yeah? - that Narrativism comes from, so I'd stop being so ignorant when people mention it. Does anyone have a good - neutral - primer on it, that's not on RPG.net or storygames or the Forge or wherever it is this comes from, so I can laugh or nod, depending on how absurd or correct I feel it is?

Wikipedia's the best summary. The thing to keep in mind with GNS is that the Wikipedia article states it very mildly, but the actual proponents are very extreme with it. Wikipedia also makes it seem relatively coherent, but "narrativism" in use means "Game I like" rather than picking out a distinct feature that those games share and no other games share. Or sometimes a playstyle. No one every really decided whether GNS was about playstyles or games.

Quote from: gleichman;233062As much as I hate GNS, that line of debate doesn't carry water. By definition a Gamist never attempts to tell a story as best as he can, that's not his interest.

If your interest is winning the game, and you win the game by telling a good story, then your interest during that game is telling a good story. :)

For example:

We each take turns passing the story stick around the campfire.  When you get the story stick it's your turn to add to the story.  After we've all had a turn, we write down the name of another person in the game that we think did the best job telling a story.

If you want to be declared the winner, you need to try and tell a good story.

Then to approach that from a "gamist" perspective is exactly the same as a "narrativist" perspective.

Edit:

Quote from: GleichmanGNS sucks because of the conculsions (and poor and unclear wording in the defintions), not because of word games such as you attempted here.

It sucks because it doesn't recognize that all games involve challenges and win conditions.  That's not a word game I'm attempting, but it's a point of view I know isn't accepted by everyone -- particularly RPG designers and "theorists". :)

Quote from: gleichman;233073GNS is the natural result of the acceptance of post-modernism by Western institutes of higher learning. Edwards was nothing but the result of that mindset.

And yes, it's pox on everything.

I´d like clarify. Orthodox GNS is a direct result of the unreflected spread of  pseudo science: evolutionary psychology.

Quote from: Stuart;233094Then to approach that from a "gamist" perspective is exactly the same as a "narrativist" perspective.

Circular reasoning. These are games, thus if one wishes to one may always play the logic you just did and end up at the same place under nearly all conditions.

However to do so, you have to ignore the defintions put forth- i.e. Gamists are defined as people who are not seeking the best story or exploration of theme.

You're doing the old 1 = 2 proof thing, and hoping no one noticed you've divided by zero. Sorry, it doesn't work.

GNS however is crap even so. Just find a better way of pointing that out please.

Quote from: GleichmanYou're doing the old 1 = 2 proof thing, and hoping no one noticed you've divided by zero. Sorry, it doesn't work.

Likewise.

Quote from: Settembrini;232083Collecting is good. Only collectors can become great DMs.

I don't know guys.  I got a good chuckle out of this. :D

!i!

[Edit: Holy crap.  Page 25 of replies already?  I'm really behind the curve here.]

Quote from: Settembrini;233095I´d like clarify. Orthodox GNS is a direct result of the unreflected spread of  pseudo science: evolutionary psychology.

Would you mind to elaborate that. I like evolutionary psychology (actually I was testing some its hypothesis in my master thesis) yet disagree firmly with GNS.

Not so much 'thread-drift' as ranting like complete self-obsessed twats.

Tell you what, let's speculate on whether or not the forthcoming Watchmen movie could live up to the comic or not.

Or whether any Western nation should have boycotted the Olympics on human rights grounds.

How sustainable is Apple's recent growth? Can they keep out-gadgeting Microsoft?

Hell! It's all about as relevant to the _fucking_ OP as this drivel, isn't it? DIG IN MOFOS!

Fucking hell.

Quote from: Alnag;233174Would you mind to elaborate that. I like evolutionary psychology (actually I was testing some its hypothesis in my master thesis) yet disagree firmly with GNS.

While I disagree with Sett that it's the cause of GNS, EvoPsych _is_ a pretty good example of pseudo-science as it's currently practiced, and Ron Edwards is drawing on it in the infamous Brain Damage article.

Quire> Go fucking whine somewhere else, you dumb cunt.

You haven't responded to the examples I gave yesterday. If you're not even going to make the effort to talk about the things that you started the thread about, don't complain when we start talking about other things.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;233204Quire> Go fucking whine somewhere else, you dumb cunt.

You haven't responded to the examples I gave yesterday. If you're not even going to make the effort to talk about the things that you started the thread about, don't complain when we start talking about other things.

If you hadn't wandered off into doodoolala-land yourself, there might have been a fucking chance to do so.

As it is, your examples included "I don't like fiction in my gamebooks" and "that actor/mod collects ALL those damn books".

That's as far as you got, Pseudo, so lay off the "dumb cunt"s.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm ambivalent about fiction in gamebooks, and I couldn't give a shit about about whether a guy that was in The Royal Tenembaums wants to buy everything White Wolf publishes.

When you come up with some arguments that hold water, I'll respond, you dumb cunt. Until then, wind your fat ugly thick-framed glasses trunk back into your fucking ugly bald head and continue spouting your routine bullshit.

Now you're just being a whiny little puss. You're tossing my examples out because you're angry I called you a "dumb cunt" rather than because they're bad examples. They show how someone who collects rather than games can become the writer for a gaming company and the moderator for a gaming website; how game fiction takes away space from gaming material profitably by converting the book into the sort of light fiction collectors want, and how a particular line changes over time to appeal to people who prefer talking about a game rather than people interested in playing the game (Exalted-as-Voltron).

If that's not the kind of directly relevant evidence you're looking for, then I can't think of anything that would satisfy you, you self-righteous arse-dripping.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;233218Now you're just being a whiny little puss.

I know you are, but what am I? Quid pro quo.

Fair enough Pseudo, and _you're_ just pissed that I didn't discount _you_ from the mass of self-obsessed twats. I would have - should have - thanked you for at least responding to the point, but when you toss out a "dumb cunt" point ...well fuck you bud.

Very-nearly-imaginative insults (from both parties) aside, I STILL feel ambivalent about game fiction, and STILL don't care about Stephen's book-collecting habit. The idea that he doesn't/hasn't/won't play seems quite ridiculous. I really don't think he counts, no matter how busy he is right now. You're not...JEALOUS of him, are you? *joke*

If a gamebook has (yet) another little story rather than more beastie stats, or chase rules, or another character class... I do not see how that is a pox on the hobby. It's a flavour I might not like the taste of, but how is it a pox on the hobby? Or is it only a pox on the hobby if I don't like the taste of it?

I'm really hoping to find out more. Even though I'm a self-righteous arse-dripping. *fesses up*

There's an ointment for that.


P.S. I think I did answer the question at some, point, but i did participate in the crazy thread drift too.  I'm sorry about your cunt, though.

Quote from: Aos;233265There's an ointment for that.

I'm sitting in a puddle of it even as I type. Squidgy.

Quote from: Aos;233265P.S. I think I did answer the question at some, point, but i did participate in the crazy thread drift too.  I'm sorry about your cunt, though.

You did. Both of those things. I'm not going to hold it against you though.

It's covered in ointment, and I don't want to spoil your lovely red cyberbiker gear.

Quote from: Quire;233197Fucking hell.

Don't know why you're getting so upset. At least people talk about stuff on your threads....

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;233269Don't know why you're getting so upset. At least people talk about stuff on your threads....

I've never noticed before that Johnny's helmet looks like it's made out of the end of a HUGE banana.

Quote from: Quire;233270I've never noticed before that Johnny's helmet looks like it's made out of the end of a HUGE banana.

Finally somebody besides me....

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Quire;233197Not so much 'thread-drift' as ranting like complete self-obsessed twats.

sorry about that. i didn't mean to be a dick. won't happen again.

Quote from: gleichman;233073GNS is the natural result of the acceptance of post-modernism by Western institutes of higher learning. Edwards was nothing but the result of that mindset.

And yes, it's pox on everything.

Fucking christ, that's stale.

Quote from: Thanatos02;233330Fucking christ, that's stale.

Once I would have thought GNS would be gone by now too. But some bad pennies keep on giving.

Quote from: gleichman;233333But some bad pennies keep on giving.

You don't say.

Great thread.

Love seeing someone worked up and spiteful over something a little different. I haven't connected all the dots yet; not sure yet what's so bad about collectors--- we tolerate all breeds of non-gamers on gamer sites (otherwise there wouldn't be tangency/off topic fora)--- but loving the vitriol.

This isn't off-the-rack ranting. I likes it.

Quote from: Quire;233254....STILL don't care about Stephen's book-collecting habit. The idea that he doesn't/hasn't/won't play seems quite ridiculous. I really don't think he counts, no matter how busy he is right now. You're not...JEALOUS of him, are you? *joke*

I actually find the guy pretty decent other than on this point. I liked WoD: Armoury precisely because it was a good book for gaming with rather than obscurely-written crap like much of WoD: Antagonists. But we're not looking at him as a writer, but as a representative purchaser of books.

QuoteIf a gamebook has (yet) another little story rather than more beastie stats, or chase rules, or another character class... I do not see how that is a pox on the hobby. It's a flavour I might not like the taste of, but how is it a pox on the hobby? Or is it only a pox on the hobby if I don't like the taste of it?

White Wolf's supplements used to come in a standardised soft-cover format of 96 pages IIRC (Now they're around 128 pages hard-cover, IIRC). Every page devoted to game fiction is another page taken away from gaming material. For example, Legacies: the Sublime, has _twelve_ pages of fiction at the beginning of it, most of that due to the formatting and the use of space-eating art throughout the story. That's the space for two additional legacy write-ups eaten away by what could plausibly fit on two or three pages. When game fiction directly competes for space with the material that is actually used by gamers to play the game, it certainly is damaging to the hobby.

We can also tell that WW intended for its fiction to be for collectors by its short in-character collections of them. Stuff like Hunter: Apocrypha is of almost no real gaming use (except perhaps as a prop), and one even has trouble mining it for ideas because of how obtusely it's written. It's beautifully bound though, and it is referenced in-character throughout the rest of the line as tremendously interesting and important for what's going on. I can't see anyone but a collector wanting a book like that.

Another example, this time not with game-fiction, but with the gaming contents of books. D&D 3.5 books were designed under the principle that they should contain at least one thing that would sell them to any and every player around the table. That meant every book had at least one PrC, at least one new monster or obstacle, one new magic item, one new spell, one piece of GMing advice, and whatever space was left, was devoted to the actual topic under discussion. The idea was to force people to collect as many books as possible to get the material they wanted. You couldn't just buy a book devoted entirely to PrCs, and until the very end of the line, you couldn't just buy a book with all the spells. Everything was dribs and drabs here and there so that you'd have to assemble as large a collection as possible.

In my experience, the biggest collectors have also been the biggest players. They don't play everything they buy - there's no way all those fat settings books are ever going to see play - but they are typically the twice-weekly guys. Of the half-a-dozen super-collectors I know these days, only a couple bother with message boards. The others seem happier getting together and bullshitting in the pub.

I'd say there's strong brand-loyalty within the RPG community, and this leads to a "completist" mentality, among other things (eg, imaginary style wars, tooth-grindingly bad Hunter S Thompson pastiche etc etc). I think the effect non-playing collectors have on the hobby is negligible.

As for inspirations for games, I like a nice strong set-up with an obvious call to action. I don't think I've ever consciously ripped one from some other medium, although it all mulches around in my mental compost heap. More and more I wait and see what the players come up with before thinking about things too hard.

Ned

Hi,

I'm afraid this thread has drifted so far from the OP, I don't actually know what it's about.

In the absence of Son of Kirk, who usually disagrees with me on these issues, I'd note that he normally queries whether there has been any deterioration in the quality of games since collecting became widespread and queries whether my argument is basically a species of badwrongfunism.

The first is a good point, and I think they have deteriorated though he thinks they haven't.  The second I don't think is a good point, but I would note that he has persuaded others with it on occasion so obviously he makes it better than I do (which is fair, it is his point after all).

This is actually a better argument for rpg.net.  Most posters here actively game, so nobody really takes offence.  Huge numbers of rpg.net posters aren't actually active gamers, so tons take offence.  It makes for a more polarised thread.  That said, I have no fucking clue what this thread is about.  GNS?  WTF?

The problem, Balbinus, is that your argument is entirely anecdotal, and runs counter to the experience of numerous gamers of a similar vintage to yourself (SoK is late 30s, btw).

I could argue vigorously and eloquently that the sky is purple, but I would never convince any of those people who look outside and see a blue sky.

Ned

I'm confused.

I have a large collection of games and buy suppliments for extensive game lines, a variety of individual games and core books for game lines that don't interest me enough to pursue the entire line. Of the books I buy, I typically get serious use out of maybe a third of them, if that. The rest I generally read and use for inspiration in other games, or occasionally for campaign ideas in that system should the opportunity ever arise to run it (I have at least half a dozen campaign ideas for different systems ready to go at the drop of a hat, and periodically dust those ideas off and look for improvements based on material from recent purchases).

I also read extensively and have pretty eclectic taste. I frequently reread the same books two or three times. Recent authors that I've read include, but are not limited to Roger Zelazny (too much time spent in the Amber forum), HP Lovecraft, Umberto Eco (I prefer his earlier stuff), Joe Abercrombie (check out his First Law trilogy - it's pretty good), Shakespeare (I like to read the plays before I go to see a new performance) and Eddings. I have read all of the Iliad, the Odyessy and the Aeneid, much of it in the original Greek and Latin (MA in Classics) and written more essays on literary structure than I care to think about.

At the same time, I'm a big fan of a lot of modern "geek" tv shows. Buffy, Firefly, Flash Gordon, Highlander, Heroes, Dark Angel to name but a few. I freely admit that I apply no critical judgement to the tv I watch, mostly it's just free and easy escapism.

So, am I a collector of RPGs and a blight on the industry? Am a a proud and noble supporter of my chosen hobby? Am I a slave of modern pop culature tv with no understanding of deeper narrative structure nor ability to apply it to the games I run? Or am I a pretentious fool who reads too much dull shit and enjoys highbrow entertainment that the bulk of potential players won't appreciate?

Or is it possible that I'm just a fairly typical representative of a lot of gamers of a certain age and educational background, and that none of the stereotypes fit me any more than they do anyone else, and the notion that something as broad and ill defined as a "collector" could be a universally positiove or negative influence on the industry is absrd? Ditto the notion that certain forms of background reading can be objectively better or worse for GMing without reference to teh games being run and the interests of the players involve.

Thanks for your time, you may now flame me at your leisure.

Quote from: Ned the Lonely Donkey;233400The problem, Balbinus, is that your argument is entirely anecdotal, and runs counter to the experience of numerous gamers of a similar vintage to yourself (SoK is late 30s, btw).

I could argue vigorously and eloquently that the sky is purple, but I would never convince any of those people who look outside and see a blue sky.

Ned

I did say he had a good point, I don't think I was unfair in summarising his view on the matter.  I disagree with him, but I don't regard his view as absurd.  Merely wrong, much as he views mine of course.

Besides, all arguments about rpgs are basically anecdotal, we have so little reliable data.  Either we argue on anecdote or we don't argue at all, and where would that leave us?

That said, I would say my argument is based more on economic principles than pure anecdote, put simply I argue that if price signals reward x and not y then x will over time tend to dominate.  The anecdotal bit is how many pure collectors there are and whether there are enough of them for their price signals to swamp those of players or player/collectors.  I don't think anyone much argues that there are different price signals, and on my side I would cite such luminaries as Bruce Baugh and Brand Robins (of Tribe 8 fame), both of whom have agreed with my analysis and both of whom said that pure collectors had a very real impact on games they worked on.  In the case of Tribe 8, a highly detrimental impact according to Brand.

Various rpg.net posters saying something to the contrary is all well and good, but I do personally place more confidence in what industry professionals have had to say on the topic, and they tend to take my side of this particular argument.  Quite honestly, I think many rpg.net posters have a vested interest in my being wrong because they recognise themselves in my description of collectors who don't play, though I don't include SoK among their number.

Both Bruce and Brand have publicly posted about how they have seen collectors making comments on games that were not the sort of comments that those who actually played were making, and in the case of Tribe 8 those collectors massively outweighed players in terms of purchases made.  OWoD at the end actively marketed to those who bought just to read, their adverts specifically referred to those who were buying for that purpose.  I do rather think there are some facts on my side here.

Edit:  In fact, on recollection, my argument isn't entirely anecdotal, every industry pro who posted to the relevant rpg.net threads agreed with me.  It was just general posters who didn't.

Quote from: Balbinus;233478Either we argue on anecdote or we don't argue at all, and where would that leave us?

In heaven, Balbinus, in heaven.

Just in case it's 39 virgins Heavan- I'd like to take a moment to agree with all of of you.

Quote from: Balbinus;233478Both Bruce and Brand have publicly posted about how they have seen collectors making comments on games that were not the sort of comments that those who actually played were making, and in the case of Tribe 8 those collectors massively outweighed players in terms of purchases made.  OWoD at the end actively marketed to those who bought just to read, their adverts specifically referred to those who were buying for that purpose.  I do rather think there are some facts on my side here.

Edit:  In fact, on recollection, my argument isn't entirely anecdotal, every industry pro who posted to the relevant rpg.net threads agreed with me.  It was just general posters who didn't.

IIRC, the substance of Bruce's comments was "we knew the collectors were there and tried to focus our games to move the collectors to players" while Brand's were "why did no one play my game (sob)!"

Neither of those games were designed with collectors in mind, which is the negative effect you are trying to imply with your economic principle. Show us the successful game line that is unambiguously designed to be collected and not played and you will have proved your case.

Ned

Quote from: Balbinus;233478I don't think anyone much argues that there are different price signals, and on my side I would cite such luminaries as Bruce Baugh and Brand Robins (of Tribe 8 fame), both of whom have agreed with my analysis and both of whom said that pure collectors had a very real impact on games they worked on.  In the case of Tribe 8, a highly detrimental impact according to Brand.

I'm betting the impact of collectors not buying RPG books would be highly detrimental to publishers as well. Given how marginal many RPG companies are already, a loss of say 30 per cent of the market would make many game lines commercially unviable. Looking at my shelf, I have my doubts that Talislanta 4E, Castle Whiterock, or the Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane would have made it to market if the only people they were sold to were gamers who were pretty sure they were going to run a game. How many of the people who own those books have run games with them? Blind guess - maybe a quarter. But I'm still glad they were published.

Quote from: Ned the Lonely Donkey;233490IIRC, the substance of Bruce's comments was "we knew the collectors were there and tried to focus our games to move the collectors to players" while Brand's were "why did no one play my game (sob)!"

Neither of those games were designed with collectors in mind, which is the negative effect you are trying to imply with your economic principle. Show us the successful game line that is unambiguously designed to be collected and not played and you will have proved your case.

Ned

My case isn't that there are games purely designed for collectors.  I don't think any such thing.

I can point though to OWoD which as I say had adverts expressly aimed at people buying to read rather than to play.

I'd say the high watermark was the late 90s, with the metaplot explosion, which I think was a clear case of marketing to collectors.  Happily I think we've backed off that particular gaming cul de sac.

Brand posted mostly on storygames about the impact of collectors on the Tribe 8 line, and he was very clear that their effect was negative.

Quote from: Haffrung;233493I'm betting the impact of collectors not buying RPG books would be highly detrimental to publishers as well. Given how marginal many RPG companies are already, a loss of say 30 per cent of the market would make many game lines commercially unviable. Looking at my shelf, I have my doubts that Talislanta 4E, Castle Whiterock, or the Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane would have made it to market if the only people they were sold to were gamers who were pretty sure they were going to run a game. How many of the people who own those books have run games with them? Blind guess - maybe a quarter. But I'm still glad they were published.

Sure, the loss of collectors would hurt the industry pretty badly, but I don't think the industry and the hobby are synonmyous.

Personally, I tend to see much of the industry as irrelevant to my hobby, which is playing roleplaying games.  I'm far from persuaded that hobby requires the type of industry we have, I think it's only kept afloat by the constant influx of well meaning gamers who blow their money on their dreams of being games designers/publishers.  I don't actually think the gaming industry in its current form is economically viable, or has been for a very long time (if ever).

Quote from: Balbinus;233499My case isn't that there are games purely designed for collectors.  I don't think any such thing.

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

Quote from: Ned the Lonely Donkey;233511Well, 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?

I think he makes a clear and interesting point.

I just don't know how significant it is. The games in the old days were 90% crap and today they're 99% crap- but that increase seems to be to be due to the total increase in number of games.

So what would removing collectors do? Would it alter the nature of that 1% that isn't crap, or would it remove much of the crap (I include Tribe 8 in this group) basically altering nothing in the good games (just making them a higher percentage the total remaining).

One needs to answer this question I think before worrying much about collectors.

Quote from: Balbinus;233503Personally, I tend to see much of the industry as irrelevant to my hobby, which is playing roleplaying games.  

Then why do you even care what kinds of books the industry publishes?

QuoteI'm far from persuaded that hobby requires the type of industry we have, I think it's only kept afloat by the constant influx of well meaning gamers who blow their money on their dreams of being games designers/publishers.  I don't actually think the gaming industry in its current form is economically viable, or has been for a very long time (if ever).

Probably not. But I've gotten a fair amount of enjoyment out of a lots of RPG books that I've only read and sketched out scenarios for. If RPG publishing become even less worthwhile of an endeavour because prints runs and margins get even smaller, I'll have fewer game books to buy. Which sucks for me. And what will you have gained? Some sort of personal satisfaction from knowing that your hobby isn't sullied by commercial considerations?

Quote from: Balbinus;233499I can point though to OWoD which as I say had adverts expressly aimed at people buying to read rather than to play.

First, let me say, "excellent!" That means that in theory, someone must have made some effort to make the game pleasurable to read. I, for one, don't see anything wrong with that. Many of the FASA books from the same era take a similar tack, trying to be more than just a manual, a list of rules, bunches of tables. [Not that there's anything wrong with enjoying lists of tables, either, a pleasure of mine as well.]

Second, in order for this to apply to the thesis, the quality of being written for people to read needs to be shown to make the playability of the game lesser. What is it about these books which made them appeal to collectors but not to players?

See, I think one of the problems I'm having with the whole idea is that somehow, by appealing to collectors, a game would then be worse for players. Why would that be? I mean, it can't be like rules changes, because why would someone change the rules to satisfy people who are just reading the books, not playing them? So is it the idea of making the setting more interesting, and thus the books more readable, that ruins the books for players? Because that doesn't make much sense to me.

So maybe you could walk me though what happened to a particular game - just pick one - and how the designers made it suck for players by appealing to collectors.

I know I bought NWoDs Mysterious Places basically to collect.  I didn't intend to use it as such, basically just to observe layout and how they structured locations, plus the fiction they included.

I've got not delusions that it's masterful, I just figured I was going to look at it enough to warrant my money. This was back when I was working and could afford to splurge every now and then, but I don't really regret it.

I've also bought Wraith and Vampire: Dark Ages mostly to read. I'd run or play either, but I don't think it's likely. They were ridiculously cheap, and I think they're good games. So, I'm known to collect occasionally, if I think I'm getting my money's worth. It's still collecting if you read through them, I gather.

On a different topic, I don't believe that games used to be better. Or at least game books. I think higher production standards are nice, but I also approve of a cheaper printing run. Sadly, it doesn't always make sense to do both. In that case, I personally prefer a more expensive book. I don't need many, which kind of belies my collectors point above, but I'd prefer if the ones I sprung for are cool looking and fun to read, because I'm going to be doing it a lot. If I have to choose between high values and lots of books, it's high values in nearly all cases.

I already did, E-comrade. White-Wolf used a standardised format of about 96 pages for their soft-cover oWoD splats. The more fiction in there, the less space for gaming material. The more pages, half-pages and quarter-pages devoted to art, the less space for gaming material. The formatting as well reduces the space for gaming material by breaking up text in complicated ways, using large text and large spaces between it, etc. The actual gaming material in a book like say, Hunter: Hermits is perhaps five pages in 11 pt. type, and even with the formatting of the rest book, is only about 12 or so out of 96. The rest is fiction, extremely vague discussions of interest only to people who want to debate things on the internet, and tons and tons of art.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;233572I already did, E-comrade. White-Wolf used a standardised format of about 96 pages for their soft-cover oWoD splats. The more fiction in there, the less space for gaming material. The more pages, half-pages and quarter-pages devoted to art, the less space for gaming material. The formatting as well reduces the space for gaming material by breaking up text in complicated ways, using large text and large spaces between it, etc. The actual gaming material in a book like say, Hunter: Hermits is perhaps five pages in 11 pt. type, and even with the formatting of the rest book, is only about 12 or so out of 96. The rest is fiction, extremely vague discussions of interest only to people who want to debate things on the internet, and tons and tons of art.

This is true, and I should know, because I owned a copy of Hermits before someone stole it from me.

I'm cross about that, too. I think I know who it is, and that means I'll never, ever recover it.

I liked the Hunter line a lot. It was a guilty pleasure of mine that I don't mind sharing. I even liked the fiction, which is good, because that's what I got. On the other hand, that's where the line was going and I don't think that anyone paging through Creed books was surprised when they bought their copy and brought it home. Even the most cursory look through will have told a casual reader that there's few if any mechanics in there.

On the other hand , to the lines credit, you really didn't need anything besides the core book to play. As far as White Wolfs traditional problem of compelling you to buy more books to fight things or risk statting up baddies yourself. I guess in that respect it's not really worse then D&D though, depending on what you're fighting.

Side note: I wish more core books came with good tools to come up with antagonists. It is frustrating to buy a core book and discover you need 40 more dollars to fight goblins.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;233572White-Wolf used a standardised format of about 96 pages for their soft-cover oWoD splats. The more fiction in there, the less space for gaming material. The more pages, half-pages and quarter-pages devoted to art, the less space for gaming material.

Ah, now see, I think fiction and art are gaming material. I'm not saying it can't be overdone, or that bad fiction or bad art don't detract from the game, but my bar-none favorite sourcebooks all include enormous dollops of art and fiction, and that's for a game I spent 17 years playing with a giant smile on my face.

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

Quote from: Engine;233585Ah, now see, I think fiction and art are gaming material. I'm not saying it can't be overdone, or that bad fiction or bad art don't detract from the game, but my bar-none favorite sourcebooks all include enormous dollops of art and fiction, and that's for a game I spent 17 years playing with a giant smile on my face.

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).

Quote from: Engine;233585Ah, now see, I think fiction and art are gaming material. I'm not saying it can't be overdone, or that bad fiction or bad art don't detract from the game, but my bar-none favorite sourcebooks all include enormous dollops of art and fiction, and that's for a game I spent 17 years playing with a giant smile on my face.

If it's SR as I think it is from your past posts, I feel I should add to that the fact that in addition to all that fuff, they also producted much crunch. Tons of rules and options over many supplements. So it was a product line that attempt to fill both needs and if anything overfilled it.

The more evil side of me notes also that their rules sucked :)

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;233614I don't, just because you don't actually use them around the table, or even when preparing to go to the table.

Then it's bad fiction. The point of fiction-in-sourcebooks - whether it's shadowtalk in Shadowrun or short stories in Vampire or the sort of all-immersive "real-world document as gameworld document" of SR and Earthdawn - is to understand better the color and texture of the gameworld, and that you do take to the table.

That said, I can see your point: done poorly, fiction does nothing but appeal to collectors/readers. But it doesn't have to be done poorly, so I don't find the collector/reader a pox on the hobby - hey, they're propping up the game company! - but rather the people doing it badly that I consider the pox.

Quote from: gleichman;233627If it's SR as I think it is from your past posts...

Shit, I'm a fanboy, aren't I? Yes, Shadowrun and Earthdawn.

Quote from: gleichman;233627...I feel I should add to that the fact that in addition to all that fuff, they also producted much crunch.

Yep. Tons of it, sometimes more than needed. Then they shifted to producing nothing but crunch, and the line imploded; fortunately, some stupid dicks yelled long and loud and got themselves heard, and/or grabbed the reins and just did it themselves as freelancers. [Which seems like a good job until you realize you haven't been paid in a half-decade.]

Quote from: gleichman;233627The more evil side of me notes also that their rules sucked :)

Sucking's relative, too. ;)

Quote from: Engine;233643Sucking's relative, too. ;)

Only in Kentucky.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;233614I don't, just because you don't actually use them around the table, or even when preparing to go to the table.

Well, you might not do so, but that's hardly universal. Personally I use even flavour fiction for the purposes of actual play all the time, as mentioned previously... hmm... here (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=200374).

Also, speaking of White Wolf, their Book of Worlds for Mage: The Ascension was basically a travelogue of the entire setting with all the crunch in a brief appendix at the end. It still remains one of my favourite supplements for the line.

Quote from: Aos;233670Only in Kentucky.

Here it's Tasmania!

Quote from: Engine;233585Then 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.

Quote from: Jackalope;233778One 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.

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.

Quote from: Thanatos02;233330Fucking 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. :)

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.)

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;233614I 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.

Quote from: Jackalope;233778One 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.

Quote from: Haffrung;233779Sounds 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. ;)

Quote from: Jackalope;232886I 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.

Quote from: Engine;234418Yep, 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!!!!!!

Quote from: Engine;234418Not 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.

Quote from: Engine;234418For 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.

Quote from: Aos;234460Barsaive 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!

Quote from: Haffrung;234475I 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.

Quote from: Engine;234555See, 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.

Quote from: Aos;234583Yeah- 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.

Quote from: Aos;234583Did 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.

Quote from: Ned the Lonely Donkey;233511Well, 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.

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.

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.

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

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?

Quote from: Haffrung;234815I 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."

Your opinion is wrong.

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.

QuoteI 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.

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.

QuoteSeems 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.

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.

Here's the thread....here (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=408978&page=6)

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.

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.

Quote from: Trevelyan;235106Back 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.

Quote from: Trevelyan;235106They 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.

Quote from: Kellri;234982I'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?

I hear you Eliot...I wrote two 1st edition Gamma World netbooks at the time of GWd20's release pretty much in the hopes of doing what little I could to slap back. I didn't get involved in the flamewar at the time because I was just too busy writing. I' m satisfied with the warmhearted emails from gamers using the netbooks- something I really doubt Baugh is getting from his GW stuff.

I tried to be conciliatory in that thread but the guy just can't let it go...must be too much mold in that Seattle basement.

Quote from: GrimGent;235129Actually, 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?

From what I've been told by people in my group who have both books, the Ordo Dracul book refers to information in passing that is detailed in the Rites of the Dragon book. I don't think that it directly refers to RotD, but the suggestion is that anyone who wants to understand everythnig in Ordo Dracul needs to invest in a separate bit of fiction.

Quote from: Trevelyan;235339From what I've been told by people in my group who have both books, the Ordo Dracul book refers to information in passing that is detailed in the Rites of the Dragon book.

Only in the sense that it consists of Dracula's autobiographies which the Ordo Dracul obviously has a vested interest in. Rites of the Dragon is as much pure gaming fiction as the novel A Hunger Like Fire (which was also written by Greg Stolze): it expands on the material that was already in mentioned in the Vampire splat core, but isn't required reading in any way. Besides, it's not as though there are any particularly dependable historical accounts about vampires in the setting. In the oWoD, the existence of Caine and the Antediluvians was more or less an established fact, whereas in the nWoD no one really knows where the bloodsuckers came from, although there are all sorts of conflicting beliefs and theories about that. Pick and choose as you wish: again, there's no metaplot, only optional background information.

Quote from: Trevelyan;235339From what I've been told by people in my group who have both books, the Ordo Dracul book refers to information in passing that is detailed in the Rites of the Dragon book. I don't think that it directly refers to RotD, but the suggestion is that anyone who wants to understand everythnig in Ordo Dracul needs to invest in a separate bit of fiction.

I got the Ordo Dracul book. I don't have the Rites of the Dragon little book thingy thing. Not once, in reading the Ordo Dracul book, did I feel like I needed Rites of the Dragon to understand something. They talk about Rites, but when they do they usually explain what they're talking about. So you don't need Rites to understand anything in Ordo Dracul.

Did that make sense? I only slept a couple of hours last night and I'm doped up on Opiates to boot, so I'm friggin' looped right now. I can't tell if any of my posts are making sense.

-=Grim=-

There are tons of fiction set in gaming universes.  TSR and WotC have had multiple lines of D&D-related novels ever since Dragonlance in the eighties. I don't think a pure fiction work (i.e. no gaming content) is at all distinctive these days.

Quote from: jhkim;235611There are tons of fiction set in gaming universes.  TSR and WotC have had multiple lines of D&D-related novels ever since Dragonlance in the eighties. I don't think a pure fiction work (i.e. no gaming content) is at all distinctive these days.

I think the novels have had a restrictive, stultifying effect on Dragonlance as a campaign setting. The setting as it existed in the 3.x DLCS was nearly unplayable. There were few hooks for PCs, and all sorts of badly written PrCs with ganked class abilities that PCs were expected to take or else suffer in-game consequences. The Wizard of High Sorcery PrC, for example, is fiddly, overly-restrictive, and has several abilities or features that cannot actually be used based on the setting as-written. The longest chapter in the book was the history chapter, which badly explains the history of the setting and assumes a great deal of pre-existing knowledge on the part of the reader (who Raistilin Majere is, for example).

Dark Sun is another example of the same process with an inferior second edition based on the novels' changes to the world.

Quote from: jhkim;235611There are tons of fiction set in gaming universes.  TSR and WotC have had multiple lines of D&D-related novels ever since Dragonlance in the eighties.

I know! I have a friend who reads MechWarrior books. It's a shame, he's such a decent fellow otherwise.

QuoteThere are tons of fiction set in gaming universes. TSR and WotC have had multiple lines of D&D-related novels ever since Dragonlance in the eighties.

But still no Great RPG Novel.... or even a very good one.

I've never even found one that I could get past the first chapter or two of.

I used to read Shadowrun novels on long flights, but have never played or really read much of the rpg. Some (Nigel Findley) were better than others...but nowhere near as good as say, Butcher's The Dresden Files or Windling's Borderlands. My attitude toward Dragonlance, OTOH, is kind of like the  Dude's attitude toward the Eagles in the Big Lebowski: 'I've had a rough night and I hate the fucking 'Lance, man!'

The problem with fiction in gaming is that almost every game I've ever played that I liked took a few liberties with the setting. Maybe they didn't change 'canon', or even touch on it, but every game fleshes out some aspect of the setting, and PC actions have a positive (ie - they add to the history of the setting) effect. In many cases, the GM makes a call on some aspect of the setting that wasn't defined before (left open by writers to allow GMs to fill it in).

Fiction is going to do kind of the same thing, but often times, is made 'canonical'. That means, setting information is being added, but at the same time, GM and player options are trimmed back. The worst thing about it is that it adds useless setting information that never saw a proper gaming book, so in order to get all the canon, the players and GM need to buy non-gaming books.

Rational people discard this, but in OWoD, a lot of setting information near the end took place in texts that had nothing to do with gaming. They were novels. And novel protagonists took the place of PC's.

It's a small issue, because the GM can disregard it. But it's a real one when a player shows up to the game with their head full of what the game 'should' be like, because he read all the Forgotten Relms novels, or read every Hunter: the Reckoning and Demon: the Fallen novel that was ever published.

I've read a few pieces of gaming fiction I enjoyed. I wouldn't call them amazing pieces of literature, and using them as canon would be folly. I prefer to think of them as aspects of a setting that could be, and primarily use them as light reading.

I normally don't read game-related novels - I remember Dave Langford's (White Dwarf) anticipation of reviewing Dragonlance "waiting for my ten foot pole in which I intend not to touch these novels" - but I liked some of the WFRP & 40K books, like Brian Criag's Orfeo Trilogy and Ian Watson's Inquisitor books.

Regards,
David R

I once read Feist's novels without knowing they were somehow based upon Dungeons and Dragons... It wasn't bad, and I even picked some interesting ideas from that books...

Quote from: David R;235762I normally don't read game-related novels - I remember Dave Langford's (White Dwarf) anticipation of reviewing Dragonlance "waiting for my ten foot pole in which I intend not to touch these novels" - but I liked some of the WFRP & 40K books, like Brian Criag's Orfeo Trilogy and Ian Watson's Inquisitor books.

Regards,
David R

Which issue?

Quote from: Cole;235766Which issue?

Sorry can't remember the issue.

Here's a link to some of Langford's old reviews he did for various publications. It could be in here...

http://ansible.co.uk/writing/revindex.html

Regards,
David R

Here's a snipped review from sffworld. She loves the 'Lance, esp. those cover paintings...because there's a h'Elmore where that came from! Me, I want those complicated seams.

QuoteI have read the Dragonlance Series since I was a little girl. Being 22, I believe I have read Chronicles over 15 times. I read it once every year. "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" is an excellent leap into the vast world of Krynn, introducing you to characters, races, gods and all other complicated aspects of fantasy in an easy, seamless way. The original cover art by Larry Elmore is by far the most moving. My favorite Character has always been Laurana for her ever evolving personality.

I highly reccomend this book, as well as the original artwork by Larry Elmore. There are so many more paintings that bring this novel to life. - Venusmelody

I read some Warhammer Fantasy book years and years ago that involved a dude filled with bugs.  I remember liking it a lot at the time, and being really creeped out by it, and the idea of Chaos in that setting.

I really loved some the small little chapbooks that White Wolf put out that simulated in-game fiction pieces.  I still have copies of the Book of Nod and the Black Spiral Dance even though I got rid of all my WoD gaming material years ago (like '95).  They make excellent props for evil arcane tomes in any fantasy game.

I don't think it's fair to lump fiction derived from a setting, or books like the WoD ones I mentioned, with the sort of complaints raised earlier in the thread.  No one ever mistook a paperback novel for a gaming supplement, and while it might be possible to mistake Black Spiral Dance for a game product (I knwo I did the first time I glanced at it), if you actually read the back before buying it it's clear it's not a game supplement.

The real issue is stuff that is sold as a game supplement that doesn't do anything to help run the game except possibly "inspire" the GM.

Quote from: Fritzs;235763I once read Feist's novels without knowing they were somehow based upon Dungeons and Dragons... It wasn't bad, and I even picked some interesting ideas from that books...

I believe the system of Feist's game group was, in fact, proto-Rolemaster. He dedicates his first book to "the Friday Nighters", and the same group is mentioned, and the individuals named the same, in some of the credits for Rolemaster.

If you look at the way Rolemaster depicts magic - Mentalism/Essence/Channeling, it's plain that magic in one of the worlds is all Essence, and in the other, all Mentalism, and poor Pug was the wrong kind for his home world, that's why he had trouble learning at first.

Looking around at interviews with the people involved, it seems that they began with D&D, houseruled a lot, merged it into AD&D, houseruled yet more, and this all eventually turned into Rolemaster.

QuoteLooking around at interviews with the people involved, it seems that they began with D&D, houseruled a lot, merged it into AD&D, houseruled yet more, and this all eventually turned into Rolemaster.

Very interesting. I'd heard Feist abandoned rpgs when his novels became popular, Midkemia Press just sort of hanging around selling the leftover stock or farming it off to for reprints.

I've got a slight obsession with what I call the 'D&D Cartoon Plot' wherein one or more normal people get sucked into a role-playing game. Andre Norton's Quag Keep and the Guardians of Flame series by Joel Rosenberg are the best known examples....anybody know of any more??

Quote from: Kellri;235998....anybody know of any more??

This article mentions a few : http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ridler_howe_05_08/

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Kellri;235998I've got a slight obsession with what I call the 'D&D Cartoon Plot' wherein one or more normal people get sucked into a role-playing game. Andre Norton's Quag Keep and the Guardians of Flame series by Joel Rosenberg are the best known examples....anybody know of any more??

The Narnia series :D

It's a shame that most fantasy role-playing games don't have a "person from modern times" class/set of skills (or, similarly, "stranded time/space traveller").

Quote from: Age of Fable;236017It's a shame that most fantasy role-playing games don't have a "person from modern times" class/set of skills (or, similarly, "stranded time/space traveller").

Two word possibility:

GURPS: BANESTORM

..or maybe even:

GURPS: INFINITE WORLDS.

Both of those have tempates for that type of character & idea.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Kellri;235700But still no Great RPG Novel.... or even a very good one.

Depends on how you define "very good." I'm not a fan of game fiction at all, but I found Paul Kidd's "Greyhawk" novels (White Plume Mountain, Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Queen of the Demonweb Pits) for WotC to be pretty good sword & sorcery books. Surprisingly good, in fact.

Quote from: Age of Fable;236017It's a shame that most fantasy role-playing games don't have a "person from modern times" class/set of skills (or, similarly, "stranded time/space traveller").

I have a provision for the latter in my setting:
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=11468&page=6

Towards the bottom of post 54, I have delivery mechanism, but I haven't gotten as far as figuring out how character gen would work.

Quote from: David R;235762I normally don't read game-related novels - I remember Dave Langford's (White Dwarf) anticipation of reviewing Dragonlance "waiting for my ten foot pole in which I intend not to touch these novels"

I didn't find that quote, but Dave Langford did touch a Dragonlance novel:

"Not so OK is Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman and a cast of thousands (TSR 447pp £2.25), inspired by an AD&D campaign full of chunks ripped bleeding from Tolkien. The blurb says it all: 'The first fantasy novel from the people who know fantasy best - TSR, Inc.' Considering the relationship of games to books, this is a bit like 'The first country landscape from the people who know open-cast mining best'. Deadly predictable questing, with stock D&D characters in familiar encounters: nearly as bad as Valley of the Four Winds ... (Some of the poetry is of McGonagall standard: 'Through his doomed veins the horizon burst', etc).
Couldn't finish this one."

Source:
Dave Langford
in Critical Mass, White Dwarf #65, May 1985

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;235974I believe the system of Feist's game group was, in fact, proto-Rolemaster. He dedicates his first book to "the Friday Nighters", and the same group is mentioned, and the individuals named the same, in some of the credits for Rolemaster.

I didn't really know who Feist was, although I'm a minor fan of Midkemia's RPG works, so when the connection was made in this thread, I did some googling and came up with this (http://www.midkemia.com/who_we_are.html). In summary, they started with D&D, streamlined it, then made their own game called "Tome of Midkemia".

This explanation (http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=5953574&postcount=13) seems plausible to me, that is, that ToM isn't a proto-Rolemaster but that "the Friday Nighters" played/playtested both. (See also posts 19 & 20 in the same thread.)

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;236031I didn't find that quote, but Dave Langford did touch a Dragonlance novel:

"Not so OK is Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman and a cast of thousands (TSR 447pp £2.25), inspired by an AD&D campaign full of chunks ripped bleeding from Tolkien. The blurb says it all: 'The first fantasy novel from the people who know fantasy best - TSR, Inc.' Considering the relationship of games to books, this is a bit like 'The first country landscape from the people who know open-cast mining best'. Deadly predictable questing, with stock D&D characters in familiar encounters: nearly as bad as Valley of the Four Winds ... (Some of the poetry is of McGonagall standard: 'Through his doomed veins the horizon burst', etc).
Couldn't finish this one."

Source:
Dave Langford
in Critical Mass, White Dwarf #65, May 1985

Well perhaps I'm mistaken then or he said it in an earlier issue.

In issue #64, April 1985 he says:

"I don't want to think about what those sods at Games Workshop have just gloatingly sent , The Dragonlance Chronicles 1, produced by TSR, based on some campaign, and apparently written by committee. Have I really got to...(Yes. By next issue please - Ed)"

He was much kinder to Hickman & Weis then he was to Brooks of whose The Wishsong of Shannara he wrote - "concludes the trilogy of an author who unlike Tolkien and Hambly, can take the most powerfully magical fantasy archtypes and with a single touch of his style transform them into rotting hulks of cardboard. I reeled back in awe as the book slipped from my nerveless fingers. There are secrets of the universe with which reviewers should not meddle: they abadon the effort and go to the pub instead" -

Issue 69 September 1985.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Age of Fable;236017It's a shame that most fantasy role-playing games don't have a "person from modern times" class/set of skills (or, similarly, "stranded time/space traveller").

I'd love to see an OGL supplement that added classic fantasy literature archetypes as character classes.  Modern Man would definitely be one of them.

Clearly I need to hunt down more pre-Citadel White Dwarf.  This Dave Langford guy sounds right up my alley.  

Also a "transplant from the modern world" campaign set in 40k that ended as much WHFRP/40KRP does with most of the PCs being violently dismembered or insane would be hilarious.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;232154I don't necessarily agree.


I do think that people who only participate in this hobby by buying books and talking about them.. aren't really participating in any meaningful or useful way, and may in fact be a pox. Eventually you end up with a culture almost entirely composed of reviewers and fan-fic writers, and pretend-designers.

I really WANNA run a game, but juggling a day job, a fledgling writing career, a wrestling career, plus wife and kids makes me one of the above FAR more than it makes ma an active participant...but its certainly not for lack of desire.

Quote from: Stuart;232195Collectors virtually destroyed the comic industry, and I see the same thing with the RPG industry too.  Although it's more the companies that focus on selling to the collectors than the collectors themselves that are the problem.  You can't blame the collectors for enjoying what they do.

So it more "gaming companies that are too focused on the peripheral community" that is a f*cking pox on the hobby.

I am inclined to agree with this when I'm looking for Ultimate Power for Mutants & Masterminds and see Amazon sellers selling it for $150...as I want it for the intention of someday (hopefully) PLAYING with it, I waited out until I bought it from someone on RPG.net for $20.

I'm guilty of buying and not playing, though I'm certainly no collector.  I just get excited about the games and want to play them and sometimes I buy them. Usually, due to real life, I don't end up having the time to play them.  

From my experience, there are a lot of people in the hobby in a similar situation.  I'd risk to say there are more owners of unplayed games in this category than in the true collector's category.

Having read the thread (and especially your point about the super tight settings with no space for PCs, J Arcane), I understand better the argument and it does seem like a concern, but not one at the level that is really hurting the hobby overall.  Especially when you factor in all the really good free stuff (and the Indie movement) that is focused much more on playing.

Quote from: Age of Fable;236017It's a shame that most fantasy role-playing games don't have a "person from modern times" class/set of skills (or, similarly, "stranded time/space traveller").

Alas, they don't. And it's not just "D&D cartoon", it's an old fantasy idea. From Barsoom to Narnia, modern day people - and not just children - have been transported to fantasy worlds for generations. In fact, when my friend was setting up a Banestorm campaign, what turned me off it was that no-one was choosing to be such a character, they all wanted to be natives. Well, one guy was nominally from this world, but since he was choosing an alternate form and latent magical abilities and so on...

There are not enough such campaigns, what I call the "Stranger in a Strange Land" settings.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;236138Alas, they don't. And it's not just "D&D cartoon", it's an old fantasy idea.

And more broadly, the "theme of initiation character," which is - strictly in my opinion - simultaneously the most convenient and most heinous means of introducing the reader to an unfamiliar world. It's delightful wish fulfillment, and as a tool is performs admirably, but perhaps because of this efficacy it always strikes me as too transparent [and thus a barrier to suspension of disbelief], and is certainly much-overused in science fiction and fantasy, again, strictly in my opinion.

But much underused in rpgs.

And, like any other device- it can still be done well.

Much original fantasy and sci-fi used the "man of our time in a strange world" concept one way or another. The notion of a complete and self contained fantasy or sci-fi setting with no link to our own, modern world is a relatively new feature of fantasy and didn't really catch on for the mainstream (i.e. outside of pulp) until LotR.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;236265But much underused in rpgs.

Narnia the RPG (http://www.brendow-verlag.de/tunnel.html?content=/D/Produkte/narniadasrollenspiel.html)

But even there it's only an option, as the book has full character creation guidelines for inhabitants of Narnia - speaking animals and all.

Yep, 1 game out of maybe 1,000 fantasy rpgs out there. And it's in German, so maybe 0.5 out of 500 or so in English - Banestorm sort of counts as one, but there's this whole silly thing of a Ministry of Serendipity, bunch of wizards who go round finding humans who've zapped in from Earth and wiping their memories in case they know how to make gunpowder. I think it's a union thing, demarcation, "it says in our collective agreement that only prestidigitators, magi, sorcerors, clumsy alchemists and people with pointy hats can blow shit up." So really it's zero, since a person from our world who has their memory wiped in Yrth becomes just a person from Yrth with no background. Split the difference, call it half.

I've always liked mixing black powder arms and the occasional revolver or ray gun into my fantasy worlds.  I mean how much can a couple of pistols fuck up a setting that has something like dragons in it?

The nice thing about the using modern protagonist in a strange land approach is it really facilitates exploration of a new world. My group doesn't enjoy dealing with existing relations - we like a clean slate to start play. And I find it very difficult to come up with plausible reasons why the PCs don't know anything about the lands and peoples they're exploring - especially if you've got educated PCs, or 500 year old elves or whatever.

Quote from: Aos;236297I've always liked mixing black powder arms and the occasional revolver or ray gun into my fantasy worlds.  I mean how much can a couple of pistols fuck up a setting that has something like dragons in it?

Guardians of the Flame or whatever that book series was called, did stuff like this. Bunch of earth kids zapped to a fantasy world. One was an engineering student and he remembered how to make gunpowder. It was a nice advantage until one day they got attacked by slavers... who also now had gunpowder weapons. I don't remember if the series was good or not since I read it when I was a wee lad, but I always liked how the author didn't nix their Earth knowledge. Shit, they even taught people how to make denim.

-=Grim=-

I've seen enough players acting like 20th & 21st century bozos in fantasy games to render the idea meaningless.

Quote from: Drew;236313I've seen enough players acting like 20th & 21st century bozos in fantasy games to render the idea meaningless.

Personally it always felt like a cop out to me.  Like the guy who just makes "a fighter" and only bothers to put a name on his sheet midway through the third session when the GM realizes he didn't even have one.

Quote from: GrimJesta;236302Guardians of the Flame or whatever that book series was called, did stuff like this. Bunch of earth kids zapped to a fantasy world. One was an engineering student and he remembered how to make gunpowder. It was a nice advantage until one day they got attacked by slavers... who also now had gunpowder weapons. I don't remember if the series was good or not since I read it when I was a wee lad, but I always liked how the author didn't nix their Earth knowledge. Shit, they even taught people how to make denim.

That was a good series.  Not great literature, but very fun reading for D&D players.  The engineering student you refer to was the party wizard, and he accidentally blew up his spellbook seconds after arriving on the game world and never got to use his magical abilities.  I loved that twist.

In the context of "there are many RPG novels..."

Quote from: Kellri;235700But still no Great RPG Novel.... or even a very good one.

Excuse me, sir, I believe you have not considered the greatness of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gord_the_Rogue


"If my life force were divided into thirty-nine equal parts, I would have eighteen left!"

How can you fail to recognize the greatness?



Edit:
Okay, let me be less flippant.  I think games have soaked into the culture so deeply that a lot of novels really are game novels with the serial numbers filed off.

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, I am convinced, is merely Old World of Darkness fan fic that spiralled out of control and assumed a life of its own.  Of course, you could argue that the Dresden Files are great precisely because they eliminated the lame-ness of game fiction, thus they ceased to be game fiction.

I don't think literature, especially adventure literature, was doing well before games burst onto the scene. But after D&D, everyone who might have written a Moorcock homage was really writing a D&D homage.  Moorcock himself wrote about this in one of his books of criticism.  It might have been _Wizardry and Wild Romance_, but I forget.

The deleterious effects on quality have already been mentioned upthread with the "cliches stapled together" comment.

Speculations on how far game tropes have soaked into fiction could rapidly escalate off topic, and I don't have access to the works I would need to support my claims, so I should cease thread derailment forthwith.

Guardians of the Flame, so that's what the series was called.  I've been trying to remember what the hell the books were called for like a decade now.  I remembered reading the first book in the series (from the library) back when I was in 5th grade (circa 1988) but never did read any more of it.

For the past several years, I've always been on the lookout for the books in used book stores, but since I couldn't remember anything other than the general synopsis, it was kind of a futile effort.

Great books! I loaned mine to all my players after I borrowed it from my aunt.

One of my favorite series actually. Ranks right up there with Quag Keep and of course stories from Tanith Lee.

I liked the Guardian of the Flames series as well.  My best friend in high school was a quadriplegic.  We met a new kid who introduced us to RPGs.  It was interesting reading about the quadriplegic character.  Also, I liked how the real earth characters had to fight the personalities of their in-game characters.  The magical mishap at the beginning really set the whole FUBAR mood right away.  Also, I like how the older thief player lost the personality battle was caught stealing right away.