Quote from: mythusmage"It means -4 to your spot rolls as your brain is sort of numbed by the cold. It also means -4 on initiative and combat because of the shivering. If you don't do something to warm up you'll have a -6 penalty within a half-hour.

"Did I mention it's not a natural cold?"

It's just a matter of style and rhetoric, though, isn't it? Description #2 works quite well for some people, because they bring their own imagination to the party. It doesn't all have to be about the GM's virtuoso prose abilities.

Quote from: droogIt's just a matter of style and rhetoric, though, isn't it? Description #2 works quite well for some people, because they bring their own imagination to the party. It doesn't all have to be about the GM's virtuoso verbal abilities.

FIFY.

I'm agreeing with Droog: both descriptions seem totally legitimate, depending on the GMs style.

Often you see a synthesis: The GM will describe "You feel like ...(blah blah  blah)" and then pause for a second and say "by the way, -4 on (whatever).."

The important thing in this style of game is that the GM must communciate the rules implications to the players as to what is going on, so they can play off of it.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalI think the explosion of indie games has brought some real creativity into the scene but it's telling that the only new succesful game is one that dresses the D&D format up in a cosplay outfit.

Which one are you thinking of?

On Dogs by the way, one thing that strikes me is a genuinely innovative game should be capable of being loathed.  It's like music in that, if nobody really hates what you're doing it's probably too bland.

On the more general points, I think the basement dwellers are plainly the market to go for.  Apart from anything else, for sales your target market are consumers not creators.  Creators create their own content, much of the history of the hobby has been a move from giving people the tools to create their own content to giving them precreated content.

Oh, Warren Spector wrote tabletop rpgs?  I never knew that, I only knew him from computer games where sadly he is leading the charge in dumbing down the content there.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalYeah, I wouldn't be so quick to buy into the whole "The Best and Brightest are going to work in videogames spiel".

  Videogames are incredibly knuckleheaded modes of entertainment.  On this level, there's been no development over the last 30 years.  Sure you get your civs and your football managers but they're very much the exceptions that make the rule.  Videogames are all about the kind of activity that even the more neanderthal gamist would consider a bit brutal and violent.

  If the best and the brightest are leaving for the videogame industry and the best the videogame industry can produce is EA Sports Penis Wars 4 then I say god bless and don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out as clearly they're either not all that gifted to start with or their impact has been completely negligeable.

It seemed to me that middle para could easily be rephrased as follows:

Tabletop rpgs are incredibly knuckleheaded modes of entertainment.  On this level, there's been no development over the last 30 years.  Sure you get your DitV and your Transhuman Space's but they're very much the exceptions that make the rule.  Tabletop rpgs are all about the kind of activity that even the more neanderthal video game player would consider a bit brutal and violent.

Quote from: BalbinusWhich one are you thinking of?

I figured he meant Exalted. Right?

About Warren Spector, I associate his name with SJG and the Space Gamer, but that's probably because I didn't have much interest in the other stuff he did work for. According to Pen & Paper he did a moderate amount of work for TSR and WEG (Paranoia stuff), plus Toon & GURPS work for SJG.

Quote from: Elliot WilenI figured he meant Exalted. Right?

About Warren Spector, I associate his name with SJG and the Space Gamer, but that's probably because I didn't have much interest in the other stuff he did work for. According to Pen & Paper he did a moderate amount of work for TSR and WEG (Paranoia stuff), plus Toon & GURPS work for SJG.

  Yeah, Dancy said Exalted was the only successful new RPG to have emerged in the last decade.

  Also Warren Spector... of Deus Ex fame?  he's hardly noted for his dumbing down to be fair.

Quote from: BalbinusIt seemed to me that middle para could easily be rephrased as follows:

Tabletop rpgs are incredibly knuckleheaded modes of entertainment.  On this level, there's been no development over the last 30 years.  Sure you get your DitV and your Transhuman Space's but they're very much the exceptions that make the rule.  Tabletop rpgs are all about the kind of activity that even the more neanderthal video game player would consider a bit brutal and violent.

  I diagree.

  One of the most notable differences between video games and pretty much every other entertainment medium is that the economics of videogames ensure that there is no counter-culture or indie scene.

  If you look at RPGs there's a large and comparatively healthy indie scene full of innovation and experimentation.  But look at videogames (particularly over the last couple of generations) and there's very little innovation or experimentation going on that isn't graphical.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalYeah, Dancy said Exalted was the only successful new RPG to have emerged in the last decade.

  Also Warren Spector... of Deus Ex fame?  he's hardly noted for his dumbing down to be fair.

Not when he was doing Deus Ex, no, but since then he has been a key proponent of cross-platform development in order to maximise profits, which has led to several new games he has been involved with having suboptimal PC performance because they were developed on a cross-platform basis on a lowest common denominator approach.

There's a reasonably vibrant indie pc game scene actually, it just doesn't have much commercial penetration.  That said, Darwinia, Kudos, Uplink and most recently Defcon (three of those from the same house admittedly) have all had reasonable commercial success and there are a lot of indie games just covering their costs.

Not unlike the rpg scene in fact, but like rpgs you have to follow the industry closely to be aware of them at all.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalI diagree.

  One of the most notable differences between video games and pretty much every other entertainment medium is that the economics of videogames ensure that there is no counter-culture or indie scene.

  If you look at RPGs there's a large and comparatively healthy indie scene full of innovation and experimentation.  But look at videogames (particularly over the last couple of generations) and there's very little innovation or experimentation going on that isn't graphical.

This is the funniest thing I've read in weeks.  I laughed out loud.  Probably woke half the household in the process.

It's funny because it's so incredibly wrong.

There is a HUGE indie scene in games, especially the PC variety, and has been since people started writing games for computers.  And as long as there is an Internet where any random schlub can get a free website or a Sourceforge account and throw up some random little game he slapped together in Visual Basic, there always will be.  And before the Internet, it was shareware and BBS and trading disks with your friends.  Before that it was companies setting up at cons and selling their games on floppies in little ziploc baggies.  Richard Garriot got his start that way.

But in recent years, the indie and homebrew scenes have absolutely exploded, and have even been finding ways to sneak onto consoles.  Gaming has developed it's own "Swine", in the form of the "casual gaming" movement, which has even taken over an entire console with the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii.  

In Japan, "dojin-soft" as it's often called has produced some of the finest examples of what had been thought mostly dead genre in years.  In the US, the adventure game genre has been largely kept alive by indie developers.

Whole companies and products have sprung up catering to indie developers.  Garage Games sells it's Torque engine for a minimal license to developers.  ASCII has been making money in Japan for years with it's "RPG Maker" engine, and after ages of begging from the US market even finally released it stateside.  Microsoft recently launched XNA Game Studio Express, a specialized platform for C#/.NET designed to make game programming easier and foster the homebrew movement, and even contains cross-platform support for the Xbox 360 console.  Sony's PS3 offers a custom Linux distro for homebrew purposes, Nintendo's Wii offers full Flash support (another long known hotbed of homebrew gaming), the PSP is so known for it's homebrew app and gaming scene that it's unfotunately overshadowed it's commercial library, and there's even still people developing games for consoles as old as the Atari 2600.

Which is all a very long way of saying:  Yes, there is an indie video game scene, always has been, and it is in fact much bigger and healthier than it's TRPG counterpart.