New Releases - 20th August
Angus Abranson
Here are this weeks new releases plus a few late releases that hit the UK
the tail end of last week.
All of the below should be in UK stores within the next couple of days.
ROLE PLAYING
Deadlands d20 RPG
arrived late last week
Pinnacle Ent.
Horrors O'The Weird West
Monster Manual for Deadlands d20
arrived late last week
Pinnacle Ent.
Weird War II: Blood on the Rhine d20 RPG
arrived late last week
Pinnacle Ent.
Denver
Hell on Earth
Pinnacle Ent.
Time of the Void
Legend of the 5 Rings
Alderac Ent.
Sins of the Blood
Vampire : The Masquerade
White Wolf
MET Gift Deck
Minds Eye Theatre - Laws of the Wild
White Wolf
Exalted Storytellers Companion
Exalted
White Wolf
Adventure RPG
1920's pulp action
White Wolf
Crouching Wizard, Smashing Hammer
Rune Adventure
Atlas Games
Avoirdupois
Ironclaw Sourcebook
Sanguine
NOVELS
Lay Down With Lions
Year of the Scarab Book 2
White Wolf
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
Monster Manual 3rd Edition
Restock
Wizards of the Coast
D20 SUPPLEMENTS & ADVENTURES
Sovereign Stone
d20 Campaign Setting by Larry Elmore, Margaret Weiss & Tracey Hickman
Sovereign Press
Taan Sourcebook
Sovereign Stone Campaign Setting
Sovereign Press
Mithril : City of the Golem
Scarred Lands Setting Sourcebook
White Wolf
A Thief's Tale
City Sourcebook inc 4 Adventures
Guild House Games
Red or White
Adventure for Levels 5-7
Guild House Games
d20 Character Folio
Green Ronin
Harvest of Darkness
Adventure for Levels 1-9
Kingdoms of Kalamar Setting
Kenzer
MAGAZINES
Dork Tower 14
Dork Storm
Regards
Angus
James Graham
an...@cubicle7.freeserve.co.uk (Angus Abranson) wrote:
> Adventure RPG
> 1920's pulp action
> White Wolf
Anyone know if this is any good? It seems intriguing from what I've
heard.
Killans - First And Last And Always
I've read one or two advance reviews that have been good. It's part
of the Trinity/Aberrant line, so presumably it'll use the new
variation on the Storyteller system, and presumably will play
similarly to those games. I'll probably buy it, as the Trinity books
are a good read, and I'm a slavering Warren Ellis fanboy.
Not that I've actually played either of those games. I'm signed up for
my first game of Trinity at Gencon (having bought some Trinity books
at last year's Gencon). I hope to run it for my group at some point in
the future, so it'll be interesting to see how it plays.
Mike
--
"It's better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness."
James Graham
LAA...@Mice.com (Mr. Analytical) wrote:
> > Anyone know if this is any good? It seems intriguing from what I've
> > heard.
>
> Regardless there'll be shed loads of supplements.
>
> White Wolf... the Mtv form of marketting. With Mtv and the radio
> they play Limp Bizkit 6 times an hour until millions relent and, in a
> zombie like daze, buy their games.
>
> People buy White Wolf because they're fed up of seeing their
> supplements on the shelves and just want them to go away :-)
I'm as cynical about White Wolf as the next person, but I try to make a
habit of taking each game as they come. In this case, the game looks right
up my street, so I think I might buy it. Sorry if that's selling out to
The Man.
Your criticisms apply to every single successful games company by the way.
That tends to be why they're successful.
James
Mark Threlfall
">
> What is it with the D20 system? It's pants and despite this fact
> it's everywhere and games with fairly decent systems are being
> adapted into it.
> WHAT is going on?
Simple people are buying the system, because they are giving it a go. If
they are buying the supplements to the system, its because they like it.
Trust me there are people out there who have different opinions to you.
> I imagine its for that massive market of slack-jawed yokels in the
> US who only ever play DD. "Ayuh... Cthulhu ain't bad but if there
> ain't no thac0's I ain't in'erested!"
Firstly considering you use the jargon THAC0 I presume you have not read the
D20 system as the THAC0 rule is no longer in use?
However, considering your more than likely just anti-D&D then you probably
have but wanted to call the game pants...because after all going against D&D
makes people think your intelligent and highbrow.
I am sure you are intelligent, your a roleplayer, most of us are, however
surely you have read the rules? Personally i find them damned simple, and
therefore easy to use, therefore its easy to put a game together, and
considering usualy the most important part is to have fun and have good
roleplaying encounters the rules dont really matter do they? Or do you think
good roleplaying is occuring because of the system? Trust me it does not.
I have played using many systems, some I like, and some I hate. Some I loved
for a certain ammount of time and grew to hate them due to over familiarity
with all the bugs present and looking at a stack of house rules that could
have been turned into my own system.
Currently I play
d20 Star Wars...its fun, its cool, the game is great...of course thats all
down the GM, he could have used ANY system to make the game great, but we
used the one available that allowed us to get into the Heroic Nature of the
game.
Witchcraft...The rules SUCK, i have spent something like two months turning
the magic system into something workable, and designing character and
creature generation rules that make sense. In actual fact we are playing a
rules system that should be read Inspired By Witchcraft its that far
removed. The setting and the game are however fantastic....hats of to the
GM.
Werewolf...again the rules basically suck, but a fix we have employed has
stopped highly skilled characters from having a high degree of fumbles as
opposed to the novice who misses often, but hardly ever fumbles. The game
though is really good, and the rules are just their as a guide any way and
the dice hardly come out of their containers...so thats not much of a
problem is it?
Fading Suns...sheesh you roll only 1d20? damned linear dont you think, in
fact the mechanic is almost as bad as D&D in its own way. But certain fixes
from the net have made this one heck of a skill based system. The setting
though is trully amazing, I have come to this game late, and wished I had
made the discovery years ago....hopefully when I GM it soon my campaign will
reach the heights of my friends Star Wars campaign. Oh yeah trust me so far
that Star Wars campaign has been dificult to beat...even in the short time
its been going.
Star Trek (LUG version)...cool, but the system has its problems if you let
it get out of hand. Its easy to crit/fumble if the drama dice is used in the
wrong way, and impossible to fail in most situations. But hey its Star Trek
right? well in our starting scenario recently the GM had me convinced I was
meeting the Great Old Ones so I am not sure.
Incidentally, I reccomend that you don't buy anything D20, you dont like it
and wont give it a chance.
Phil Masters
> > Anyone know if this is any good? It seems intriguing from what I've
> > heard.
>
Strangely enough, this is, apparently, wrong.
Bruce Baugh of WW seems to have declared specifically that *no*
supplements are planned to automatically follow *Adventure*. If it turns
out to sell like hot wotsits from the start, they'll be very happy and
will start scheduling follow-ups - but they aren't assuming that it'll
be any sort of biggie, and it may well just be a one-book game.
I saw Bruce's statement quoted in full at
http://trio.rpg.net/rf07/read.php?f=655&i=2&t=1
Sorry if this confuses anyone's nice, easy, one-dimensional view of
reality.
("Shedloads of supplements"? Pfah. If Only, as us *Mage: the Sorcerers'
Crusade* fans will say...)
--
Phil Masters * Home Page: http://www.philm.demon.co.uk/
"Battle not with flamers, lest ye become a flamer; and stare not too
deeply into the 'net, or you will find the 'net staring into you."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche (loosely translated)
Killans - First And Last And Always
Mr. Analytical <LAA...@Mice.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 21 Aug 2001 20:08:58 +0100, Angus Abranson wrote
>(in message <9lud3k$v3f$1...@news6.svr.pol.co.uk>):
>
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> Here are this weeks new releases plus a few late releases that hit the UK
>> the tail end of last week.
>>
>> All of the below should be in UK stores within the next couple of days.
>>
>> ROLE PLAYING
>> Deadlands d20 RPG
>> arrived late last week
>> Pinnacle Ent.
>
>it's everywhere and games with fairly decent systems are being
>adapted into it.
>
> WHAT is going on?
Just a wild stab in the dark but - maybe there are just lots of people
who don't think it's "pants"?
James Graham
(Phil Masters) wrote:
> "Mr. Analytical" wrote, regarding *Adventure*:
> > > Anyone know if this is any good? It seems intriguing from what I've
> > > heard.
> >
> > Regardless there'll be shed loads of supplements.
>
> Strangely enough, this is, apparently, wrong.
>
> Bruce Baugh of WW seems to have declared specifically that *no*
> supplements are planned to automatically follow *Adventure*. If it turns
> out to sell like hot wotsits from the start, they'll be very happy and
> will start scheduling follow-ups - but they aren't assuming that it'll
> be any sort of biggie, and it may well just be a one-book game.
>
> I saw Bruce's statement quoted in full at
> http://trio.rpg.net/rf07/read.php?f=655&i=2&t=1
>
> Sorry if this confuses anyone's nice, easy, one-dimensional view of
> reality.
>
> ("Shedloads of supplements"? Pfah. If Only, as us *Mage: the Sorcerers'
> Crusade* fans will say...)
The number of supplements WW produce for a game is directly proportional
to its popularity. Fact is, uncomfortable though it may be to some people,
quite a lot of people own and indeed play Vampire: The Masquerade.
Mage: The Sorcerers' Crusade fans are spoilt for supplements compared to
Werewolf: The Wild West players...
James
David Damerell
> What is it with the D20 system? It's pants and despite this fact
>it's everywhere and games with fairly decent systems are being
>adapted into it.
Pants it's not; it's pretty adequate. My main criticism of it would be
that HP are an adequate combat mechanic for some genres (heroic fantasy,
say), but not for others (although better than the realistic mechanics
that make some people moist.)
At least the resolution mechanics have been designed by someone with a
grasp of elementary probability and not by some gimboid who wrote down
something that sounded good without actually working out how hard things
were going to be. Hem-hem Storyteller.
> I imagine its for that massive market of slack-jawed yokels in the
>US who only ever play DD. "Ayuh... Cthulhu ain't bad but if there
>ain't no thac0's I ain't in'erested!"
FYI, there are no THAC0s in d20.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?
David Damerell
FYI, there are no THAC0s in d20. How curious that someone who has read it
(since I'm sure your assessment of it is not simply bullshit about a game
you've never seen) would be unaware of that.
DC
> I am sure you are intelligent, your a roleplayer, most of us are, however
> surely you have read the rules? Personally i find them damned simple, and
> therefore easy to use, therefore its easy to put a game together, and
> considering usualy the most important part is to have fun and have good
> roleplaying encounters the rules dont really matter do they? Or do you think
> good roleplaying is occuring because of the system? Trust me it does not.
But funnily enough (and i've said this before on this very newsgroup)
system does influence how players react to settings.
Try running CoC using Tunnels and Trolls rules rather than BRP if you
don't believe me, See the atmosphere and attitude of your group change
in almost an instant. Dangerous rules = Cautious (and generally more
realistic) play, less deadly rules systems tend to veer games in a more
hack 'n slay direction.
> d20 Star Wars...
D6 was better.
> Fading Suns...
Love it. Great background average system.
> Incidentally, I reccomend that you don't buy anything D20, you dont like it
> and wont give it a chance.
Ive bought a lot of the Scarred Lands stuff, but only to use in
conjunction with my modified Stormbringer/RQ3 rules.
But I agree with Mr. Analytical on the d20 thing, Its not a good enough
system for anything other than D&D. The flavour just seems to ingrained,
and levels? I ask you, this is supposed to be the 21st century.
--
_______________________________________________
DC
"You can not reason a man out of a position he did not reach through
reason"
"Don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice."
Have you visited the hunger site today?
http://www.hungersite.com/index.html
Your visit donates grain to the United Nations world food program.
Bruce Baugh
Analytical <LAA...@Mice.com> wrote:
> Regardless there'll be shed loads of supplements.
Not unless you know something that White Wolf doesn't, and something
co-developer Andrew Bates and I don't. What we know is that Adventure
is a stand-alone volume, with future supplements happening only if
there proves to be sustained demand for Adventure products.
There are several kinds of games that gamers say, noisily, they want
but don't buy when offered them. Pulp is one of them. (Historical
fantasy of the sort that Mage: Sorcerers Crusade does is another; Phil
Masters and I are in sort of the same boat here.) Andrew and I hope
that we've produced a game that deals with some of the things people
find less than satisfactory about other pulp games, and we can expect
sales that would be outstanding for the vast majority of game companies
but iffy for White Wolf.
If folks go for Adventure the way they went for, say, Vampire: The Dark
Ages or Kindred Of The East, both of which began as stand-alone
projects, then we'll cheerfully do more. We would happily do a guide to
the world and a player's guide and big books of super-science and
sorcery and a guide to pulp in various decades and...a lot. But we
won't be doing any of that unless sales figures seem to warrant it.
Adventure the book that's now on sale is therefore for true a
stand-alone release.
--
Bruce Baugh, Writer of Fortune <*> bruce...@sff.net
http://www.tkau.org/ - personal ramblings, bibliography, etc.
http://www.tkau.org/p-38/index.html - archives of a WW2 P-38 pilot's work
Morgoth's Cat
<mart...@blueyonder.co.uk> scribed:
<snip>
>Witchcraft...The rules SUCK, i have spent something like two months turning
>the magic system into something workable, and designing character and
>creature generation rules that make sense. In actual fact we are playing a
>rules system that should be read Inspired By Witchcraft its that far
>removed. The setting and the game are however fantastic....hats of to the
>GM.
>
I think the rules are fine...but go on, I'm interested in hearing what
you changed...
Best Regards,
Dave
--
**************************************************************
* Supernovae, Supernova Remnants and Young-Earth Creationism *
* http://www.valinor.freeserve.co.uk/supernova.html *
**************************************************************
Mark Threlfall
"DC" <sws9...@met.rdg.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3B865A69...@met.rdg.ac.uk...
> Try running CoC using Tunnels and Trolls rules rather than BRP if you
> don't believe me, See the atmosphere and attitude of your group change
> in almost an instant. Dangerous rules = Cautious (and generally more
> realistic) play, less deadly rules systems tend to veer games in a more
> hack 'n slay direction.
Yes I totally agree with you on this point, system does influence what you
are likely to do. The atmosphere can be driven by the perception people have
of the system you are using. I and other GMs who i know have used this to
our advantage on several occasions.
I have, however, noted that occasionally you can also do the opposite and
really scare your players by running something Cthulhu but under a different
system. This is simply down to the fact that the best horror is usually
unexpected, and in a standard CoC game EVERYONE knows something bad is going
to happen.
> > d20 Star Wars...
>
> D6 was better.
Many say this, but I never played it beyond two one shot adventures. The
only thing I can remember was it was funny, heroic and my character died
falling down a very long lift shaft...bummer.
> > Fading Suns...
>
> Love it. Great background average system.
Which is my own current perception. I will have a better idea after I have
ran it for a while.
> > Incidentally, I reccomend that you don't buy anything D20, you dont like
it
> > and wont give it a chance.
> But I agree with Mr. Analytical on the d20 thing, Its not a good enough
> system for anything other than D&D. The flavour just seems to ingrained,
> and levels? I ask you, this is supposed to be the 21st century.
Yeah it is, but that does not mean that we are going to find the golden
system. We never will.
To be honest the ideas brought into gaming that came with storyteller and
other products were a great thing but for the group i game with, they
created more problems than level based systems ever did.
Even now we are playing a different skill based system i can see the drama
taking over from the challenge of actually thinking about what needs to be
done. With the system we are using (LUG Star Trek) it seems obvious to me
that I can hardly fail at the tasks linked with my characters specialisation
BUT (and its a big but) getting into combat is asking for character death.
In fact combat is so deadly you can see the unwritten rule...dont do combat,
its not supposed to happen.
And because you are mostly going to succeed in tasks its obvious that the
really important information in the game presented will only be given out
when the GM decides its good for the story. This i fell out with long ago.
M
Dan Joyce
> But funnily enough (and i've said this before on this very newsgroup)
> system does influence how players react to settings.
>
Well, of course. The system dictates the metaphysics, and even the
physics, of the world in which you're roleplaying. In D&D, all religious
characters have broadly similar spells and abilities, e.g. turning or
controlling undead, healing spells etc (metaphysics), while a sling is
vastly inferior to a bow (physics). So this always colours things.
I started off running Dragons of Melnibone with the D20 rules and after a
while, I just thought 'This isn't Elric's world at all - this is Elric's
world seen through the lens of D&D.' I should have seen this in advance,
really.
--
Dan Joyce
uly...@easynet.co.uk
Phil Masters
> BUT, given that WW do have a history of bringing out big bucks, big
> powers, big pseudo-intellectual games why are they suddenly
> publishing a game for a niche market with no p[lans to support it?
>
> Change in policy?
> Tax write-off?
You underestimate how fannish the people at WW still are, I think. Sure,
they like a (fairly) honest dollar as much as the next game company, but
they give the impression of still being in the business because they
enjoy it.
Even their dodgier products, such as the supplements full of munchkin
kewl powerz, often look suspiciously like they were written by people
who enjoy that sort of stuff themselves. You don't have to enjoy the
same things as them, but that doesn't mean that they're totally cynical.
Or, if you insist on putting the worst complexion on everything, you
could note that they got big by putting out a weird new game with little
obvious appeal to the mass market of the time. Perhaps they're still
alert enough to think that taking the odd flyer on something off-beat
might just give them a chance of hitting on the next big thing.
(And it's hardly a "change in policy" when they've been running a
sub-label - Arthaus - specifically for niche products for a couple of
years now.)
> I don't think so. I don't think it's unfair to say that WW have
> made milking their players with dodgy supplements into an art form.
> but you're right... that is why they're succesful. And I don't have
> to buy their crap supplements. And I don't :-)
Out of interest, do you consider *all* of their books "crap"? Or just
some of them? And how do you distinguish? Borrowed copies, or are your
senses so finely tuned that you can tell by scent?
> *Cynicism and bombast on demand*
I've noticed. Not that anyone seems to have to demand it to get it
anyway.
Bruce Baugh
Analytical <LAA...@Mice.com> wrote:
> BUT, given that WW do have a history of bringing out big bucks, big
> powers, big pseudo-intellectual games why are they suddenly
> publishing a game for a niche market with no p[lans to support it?
Because it's a long-planned piece of a thematic and setting trilogy,
mostly. It goes alongside Trinity and Aberrant as the third view of a
world, and as the opportunity to do some stuff that doesn't really fit
in the other games that we wanted to do. The troika of Hope, Sacrifice,
and Unity is built into the way games were planned at the outset, and
getting the third piece in place struck our bosses as worth doing
despite the financial risks.
And if it takes off like, well, gangbusters, we'll do more.
This is not a tacit admission that you're right about the other games
we put out. I'm just choosing not to re-fight that battle, which seldom
persuades anyone, in favor of explaining what we're up to with this
particular game. And yes, I _do_ hope that being reasonably calm and
informative in the face of such smugly self-confident bigotry will win
us some customers. We had fun working on Adventure and want folks to
have fun playing it.
Charles Taylor
- Professor Yaffle - <LaaaaA...@mice.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Aug 2001 13:59:34 +0100, Dan Joyce wrote
> (in message <ulysses-2508...@ulysses.easynet.co.uk>):
>
> > I started off running Dragons of Melnibone with the D20 rules and after a
> > while, I just thought 'This isn't Elric's world at all - this is Elric's
> > world seen through the lens of D&D.' I should have seen this in advance,
> > really.
>
> Exactly! It also modifies the perceived social structure of the
> world. I'm hoping that the Elric adaptation doesn't have the
> traditional fighter/thief/mage/cleric classes :-/ don't see how it
> could work if that is the case.
>
> give the fighters the odd spell maybe? Big powerful magical
> weapons?
>
>
Well, you _could_ just treat the classes as skill packages, using the
multi-classing mechanic, (a concept much under-used by the WOTC
designers IMHO),
:
or
:
you could just use of of the many Basic-Role-Playing based Eternal
Champion games (Elric, several editions of Stormbringer, Hawkmoon,
etc.) - which have this sort of thing built in,
:
or
:
you could use some other system of your choice, and modify to fit the
system (some systems would be a _bad_ choice here :-)
I think the middle choice is easiest :-)
Charles
--
James Graham
LAA...@Mice.com (Mr. Analytical) wrote:
> BUT, given that WW do have a history of bringing out big bucks, big
> powers, big pseudo-intellectual games why are they suddenly
> publishing a game for a niche market with no p[lans to support it?
>
>
> Change in policy?
> Tax write-off?
>
> You can understand my confusion, I'm sure.
Well, understand my confusion then. While I accept that there are several
games out there by White Wolf which are pretty piss poor (actually the
current editions by the look of them don't seem too bad, but most of the
first eds were released without even the most basic proofing or testing
done), its the customers who made those games not EEEEEVVIILLL White Wolf.
Personally for example, I really despise Werewolf: The Apocalypse. It's a
simple fact of life that an awfully large number of people would disagree
with me there.
Unless you are alleging some kind of mind control of which I was
previously unaware of actually working in the real world.
On the other hand, I can think of shedloads of White Wolf games (and boy,
there's been a lot of them) which have hardly had any supplements produced
for them at all. The reason? The demand simply wasn't there.
I happen to believe that if White Wolf COULD have made lots of money by
producing loads of books for their less well known games, they would have.
> > Your criticisms apply to every single successful games company by the
> > way. That tends to be why they're successful.
>
> I don't think so. I don't think it's unfair to say that WW have
> made milking their players with dodgy supplements into an art form.
> but you're right... that is why they're succesful. And I don't have
> to buy their crap supplements. And I don't :-)
You don't appear to have ever been to a game shop. Have you seen all those
GURPS books? Or AD&D (in whatever edition, especially 2nd Ed)? 10 years
ago, Cthulhu's shelves were looking pretty crowded. Rifts?
Face facts: game companies abide by the same economic rules as any other
company. The Invisible Hand of the Market is not some freaky Level 6 Magic
User spell. Learn to distinguish fantasy from reality, eh?
James
Bruce Baugh
Analytical <LAA...@Mice.com> wrote:
> WW have a history of quoting poetry and putting forth appalling
> philosophical bollocks and then flogging supplements full of
> uber-powerful powers for characters.
I started writing for White Wolf in 1997. At that time, a change in
general guidelines was mostly done, and it's been in place for years
now. The poetry and quotes from last year's pop sensations are gone. So
are the books locked into a spiral of escalating powers - heck, one of
the primary criticisms made by the old guard of players is in fact that
in the last four years, too much has been weakened. This year there's a
fresh round of flaps over the existence of a growing number of books
which have very little mechanics at all, and instead discuss the
game-level meaning of the numbers and ways of fleshing out details in
narrative terms precisely so as to reduce the importance of abstract
numbers.
You don't have to like any of this. But at this point it's a lot like
if I were to mount a sustained criticism of the British government on
the assumption that John Major were still the Prime Minister, and
dismissed any indication that a change had occurred, or that if it had
it could possibly matter to the substance of my criticisms. I feel
quite comfortable calling that attitude bigoted, because it is anchored
in unchecked assumptions. You greatly dislike some things which, as it
happens, the current developers also dislike and have therefore
committed themselves to changing, and which in fact they have changed
substantially.
The current crop of WW games may well not be to your taste. There's
nothing wrong with that. But they are not simply the same thing again.
Bruce Baugh
Analytical <LAA...@Mice.com> wrote:
> Let's not cloak them in the "struggling
> fans/artists trying to put together games they love" image and the
> respect which comes with that.
Okay. Please, then, since you clearly have the evidence to deny the
oft-repeated claim that gaming is necessarily a labor-of-love venture
except for the one-in-a-million lucky shot, tell us what the income and
expenses of a company like White Wolf are. Compare the salaries of
veteran developers and editors in gaming to other branches of
publishing, and to more general labor like office temporary work and
entry-level retailing.
Since you claim my employer's on the far side of whatever the gap
between "labor of love" and "generic business", you must know both what
you have in mind as the gap and reason to know that they're across it.
The alternative would be to speculate that you're speaking totally
without factual foundation merely because you dislike the company, and
I much prefer not to start by ascribing that sort of motive to people.
And I'm sure that in turn you would prefer not to come across as
another ignorant ranter who's substituting prejudice for evidence in
the senseless pursuit of another useless diatribe.
David Damerell
>On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 11:46:48 +0100, David Damerell wrote
>>Pants it's not; it's pretty adequate. My main criticism of it would be
>>that HP are an adequate combat mechanic for some genres (heroic fantasy,
>>say), but not for others (although better than the realistic mechanics
>>that make some people moist.)
>cross-setting imperialism we're getting nowadays?
Well, I would have said no, but then a lot of SW fans seem happy with d20
SW, and I thought that would be a non-starter. So perhaps it is more
adaptable than we thought.
>Where games with
>settings for which the rules are DESIGNED get re-adapted for D20 a
>setting designed for dungeon crawling originally.
Well, quite; OTOH, a lot of games have rules which are pretty awful,
really, and I can't see them taking any harm from being fitted into a
set which is at least fairly consistent.
David Damerell
>"Mr. Analytical" wrote:
[White Wolf]
>>but you're right... that is why they're succesful. And I don't have
>>to buy their crap supplements. And I don't :-)
>Out of interest, do you consider *all* of their books "crap"? Or just
>some of them? And how do you distinguish? Borrowed copies, or are your
>senses so finely tuned that you can tell by scent?
Now is your chance to insist he can tell by the lack of the words
"Sorcerer's Crusade" on the front cover. :-)
Geoffrey C. Grabowski
> If they want to make money by pandering to
>consumers... pander ho but be honest about it is what I say.
I am completely honest about the fact that I try to publish games that people
will enjoy playing. There's obviously a value judgement of some sort going on
here -- "pander" is about as slanted a word as they come. I really must ask --
what do you think we should give people, other than what they want?
>Let's not cloak them in the "struggling
>fans/artists trying to put together games they love" image and the
>respect which comes with that.
>
> They run a business. End of story.
I hate to ask this, but why in the world are these incompatible? I mean, maybe
they do it a little different over there in Merrie Olde, but hereabouts, when
you don't like what you do for a living, you find a new job. I really like my
job, and I love my game, and yet I get a paycheck. Are you going to tell me
I'm lying, or what?
> What gets up my nose is the unrelenting pretention which runs
>through a lot of their games. I mean COME ON "ArtHaus"? PUH-LEASE!
>Why don't you just wear a plackard with "struggling artist" written
>on it and beg for food at Gencon.
ArtHaus is a separate imprint we run for games that can't reliably cover their
own overhead. Yet we finagled a way to get them out anyway. Sounds pretty arty
to me.
Geoffrey C. Grabowski
Exalted Developer, WWGS
rai...@white-wolf.com
Phil Masters
> I started writing for White Wolf in 1997. At that time, a change in
> general guidelines was mostly done, and it's been in place for years
> now. The poetry and quotes from last year's pop sensations are gone.
*Whistles casually while trying to hide own M:tSC products.*
(Well, the period poetry quotes in *The Swashbuckler's Handbook* felt
just plain relevant. And *The Artisan's Handbook* included a little
exercise in concentrated inappropriate weirdness. Seeing how many
*Rudyard Kipling* quotes I could smuggle into a WW project felt like a
good joke at the time.)
Phil Masters
> > (And it's hardly a "change in policy" when they've been running a
> > sub-label - Arthaus - specifically for niche products for a couple of
> > years now.)
>
I didn't say that *Adventure* was. Though from Bruce's comments, it
maybe logically should have been.
Phil Masters
> As I say elsewhere, I'm not making value judgements. I don't care
> what kind of games WW make. If I don't like em I wont buy em but what
> they do is none of my business.
So you jump into factual/informative threads using words like "crap".
Yeah, yeah. We believe you.
> What gets up my nose is the unrelenting pretention which runs
> through a lot of their games. I mean COME ON "ArtHaus"? PUH-LEASE!
> Why don't you just wear a plackard with "struggling artist" written
> on it and beg for food at Gencon.
"Mr Analytical"?
Bruce Baugh
<ph...@philm.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> (Well, the period poetry quotes in *The Swashbuckler's Handbook* felt
> just plain relevant. And *The Artisan's Handbook* included a little
> exercise in concentrated inappropriate weirdness. Seeing how many
> *Rudyard Kipling* quotes I could smuggle into a WW project felt like a
> good joke at the time.)
I should have said that I regard historically or thematically
appropriate material that _isn't_ tied to some fad of the moment
strikes me differently. I hunt hard for good quotes to use for Dark
Ages books, and I go for relevant stuff out of Chinese and other
historical traditions for Kindred of the East books. Even there, of
course, we use a lot fewer quotes - one per chapter, if that, except in
remarkable cases.
(I confess to having used a Bruce Cockburn lyric for the section of
World of Rage that covered the visible aftermath of the Ravnos
antediluvian's final rampage, but I'll go out on a limb and argue that
"If a Tree Falls" really is Werewolf in one song.)
Bruce Baugh
Analytical <LAA...@Mice.com> wrote:
> Why do I detect a hint of inconsistency here? On the one hand you
> can't criticise WW for putting out crap supplements as that's what
> the punter wants, but you can't criticise them for being capitalistic
> as they're fans who do it out of love.
I don't see a contradiction here, because I think both charges are
ludicrous.
The one actual fact we've gotten so far is that White Wolf publishes
supplements you don't like. There's nothing wrong with this. But you've
gone on to make assertions that you clearly can't back up about the
motives involved in doing so and the results of the undertaking.
For starters, it's quite clear that you don't know anything about what
WW has actually been publishing for the last half-decade, because the
things you're ranting about are all on the list of practices the
current developers actively discourage, and edit out if writers persist
in trying them anyway. There's no duty to keep up with the proceedings
of game lines that don't appeal to you _except_ when you make
assertions of fact about the current state of affairs. You are, so far
as any of us can tell, writing out of a combination of obsolete
memories and typical fanboy prejudices, and none of us are obliged to
sit around and let you do this.
Note that the straightforward statement "I didn't like the last ones I
looked at and haven't been motivated to look at any more since then"
would not expose your ignorance or make you look like a buffoon. If you
said it and stuck to it, then the only suitable response would be along
the lines of "okay, we're doing different stuff now but I agree that
life's too short to spend on hobbies you're unlikely to have fun" or
something like that.
It's also clear that you don't know anything about the economics of
running a game business. Your phrasing evokes plutocrats raking in
scads of dough. In fact, apart from senior management at Wizards of the
Coast or Games Workshop, and the occasional company prez engaging in
luxury spending as his company falls over and burns, it just isn't so.
White Wolf is one of the largest game companies around, and its total
staff including warehouse personnel and the like runs to a few dozen,
and some of its long-established game lines generate sales good enough
to support ongoing work by freelancers but not to cover the costs of
in-house staffers.
This isn't just about White Wolf, though. The whole game business is
much smaller than many gamers think. Atlas Games, widely regarded as a
model of quality and consistency and swell stuff, has, depending on the
vicissitudes of fortune, anywhere from one to three full-time
employees. Steve Jackson Games has a couple dozen. And so it goes - the
typical corner drugstore or rural fuel depot compares favorably in
employment opportunities, and probably offers better benefits and
compensation.
Given that we did choose to do this, no particular pity is called for.
But there are reasons that gaming is almost exclusively a young
person's field, with the vast majority of gaming professionals in their
20s or the first half of their 30s, and with a great many of those
older relying on an external income like that of a spouse or disability
benefits. A lot of game companies never do make an actual profit, they
just eat up the publisher's free cash until it runs out, and then the
company stops. Getting to a point of sustainable income - simply
reliably breaking even - is rare. And yes, actually, we do it because
of the creative satisfactions involved in doing it. When everything
clicks, it's worth foregoing some of the benefits that would come from
other kinds of work for the emotional and intellectual satisfactions of
it all.
It's just that if we were in any sense really the money-grubbing
soulless hacks you imagine, we wouldn't be in this field at all. The
returns aren't there for it. Trying to get rich in gaming is _stupid_.
We do it as long as we can until external circumstances - family,
chronic health problems, something that requires more income on a
regular basis - or sheer fatigue kicks in, and then we go do something
else. Along the way, we hope to do work that satisfies the people it's
aimed at, and ideally some folks who don't yet know they'll like it.
Once it's clear that you simply aren't going to go for it, by all
means, set it aside. But it's not clear to me that any good comes from
doing your best impersonation of an asshole and attacking the character
and competence of people who happen to have creative priorities
different from yours. Enjoy your stuff. Let others enjoy theirs. Get on
with your life.
James Graham
rai...@white-wolf.com (Geoffrey C. Grabowski) wrote:
> Merrie Olde
As the publisher of that offensive Britain sourcebook you did for
Changeling a couple of years ago (can't remember the name), please don't
use that term here. :o(
James Graham
LAA...@Mice.com (Mr. Analytical) wrote:
> I am FULLY grounded in reality here. I just want an honest analysis
> of WW. I'm not making value judgements about what they do I just want
> us to be honest about what it is they do.
How does this square in any way to your original post:
> Regardless there'll be shed loads of supplements.
> White Wolf... the Mtv form of marketting. With Mtv and the radio
> they play Limp Bizkit 6 times an hour until millions relent and, in a
> zombie like daze, buy their games.
> People buy White Wolf because they're fed up of seeing their
> supplements on the shelves and just want them to go away :-)
Either you are alleging that White Wolf operate "MTV style marketing" and
force people "zombie like" to buy their games. Or you are making an
value-free "honest" analysis of White Wolf. Which is it?
James
James Graham
LAA...@Mice.com (Mr. Analytical) wrote:
> Why do I detect a hint of inconsistency here? On the one hand you
> can't criticise WW for putting out crap supplements as that's what
> the punter wants, but you can't criticise them for being capitalistic
> as they're fans who do it out of love.
Personally, I don't see any contradiction here. The fact is no games
company EVER survived more than two years on the basis of a single rule
book with no supplements. If you want to survive you have to keep churning
out new product.
I pounced on you in this thread because of your hackneyed refrain about
evil games companies forcing people "zombie like" (your exact words) to
buy their products. If people aren't bleating on about White Wolf, they're
going on about Games Workshop or Wizards of the Coast. Turn the clock back
and ten years ago the "villain" was TSR. Yet when they got bought out by
WotC, people jumped on the bandwagon about how they were tragic victims
who been taken over by an evil empire.
The simple fact is that NO games company is up there in the FTSE 100 and
no games company ever will be. They tend to be run by fans for fans, and
occasionally both sides indulge in a little mutual self-deception and get
caught up in crazes such as White Wolf and its afficionados did in the
mid-90s.
If you buy a supplement or game and its crap, say so. But let's stop
turning this into a battle of Them vs Us. The reality of the situation is
far more boring.
James
James Wallis
James Graham <james...@cix.co.uk> writes
>The simple fact is that NO games company is up there in the FTSE 100 and
>no games company ever will be.
Maybe not FTSE100, but Games Workshop turned over a very healthy UK92.6
million last year. There's gold in that thar lead-alloy.
--
James Wallis
Director of Hogshead Publishing Ltd (ja...@hogshead.demon.co.uk)
Posting this from his home address (ja...@erstwhile.demon.co.uk)
Dan Joyce
>
> you could just use of of the many Basic-Role-Playing based Eternal
> Champion games (Elric, several editions of Stormbringer, Hawkmoon,
> etc.) - which have this sort of thing built in,
>
I don't think the BRP games model the Young Kingdoms world that well,
either. (I have a copy of Elric!) Better than D20, but still not the world
of the books.
> or
> :
>
> you could use some other system of your choice, and modify to fit the
> system (some systems would be a _bad_ choice here :-)
>
Currently using Fudge. It works okay.
--
Dan Joyce
uly...@easynet.co.uk
James Graham
LAA...@Mice.com (Mr. Analytical) wrote:
> No one is forced to buy WW games just as no one is forced to buy
> pop music, but to deny that WW know the value of efficient marketting
> and produce a huge number of supplements is just silly.
Yeah, but going back the start of this thread, I was asking about the
launch of Adventure. As has been made very clear here, there are no plans
to produce any supplements for Adventure ATM.
There is more than one kind of marketing, and I'm pleased to see that
White Wolf are being more creative these days. Eg. They rereleased Trinity
last year at the knock down price of $15 (less than a tenner), which meant
that personally I picked it up and may yet play it. In general, the
"Trinity universe" range has a very different ethos to its marketing than
the World of Darkness range, the latter of which appears to be aimed at a
slightly younger demographic.
James
James Graham
LAA...@Mice.com (Mr. Analytical) wrote:
> Changeling was marvelously offensive culturally speaking. Aside
> from the stereotypical views in that supplement the game originally
> was predicated on the fact that faeries had disappeared from the
> world except in America, because in America there's still a sense of
> wonder.
Here we are on more common ground. Perhaps someone will correct me here,
but Changeling always came across to me as a very uninspired attempt to
cross-fertilise the appeal of the World of Darkness with cashing in on
Sandman (something which DC themselves are in no small way guilty of doing
themselves). I'm very pleased to see that it would seem the whole project
went arse-over-tit.
James
Geoffrey C. Grabowski
> Uh-Huh... the land of Who's the Boss, Alluminium sidings and
>Walmart is full of wonder. I understand why they did it (why would
>americans want to play a game set in Ireland? less mass market
>appeal) but come on! LOL
Are you going to answer my post, or are you just going to talk about how my
country is inadequate? I seem to recall you made some charges I called you out
on. Do you actually have a response?
Geoffrey C. Grabowski
> I agree, but there's a shifting of ground. On the one hand one
>can't criticise WW for being populist as they're giving people what
>they want and they're a business but one can't criticise them for
>being cynical as they're poor struggling artists.
So being a populist and giving people what they want is being cynical? Is it
then the mark of an idealist to produce work that nobody likes?
> The problem is that WW have cultivated an image of being artists
>and poets and merry philosophers (or something) thereby denying the
>fact that they DO live in the real world and are succesful as a
>result.
Perhaps it may shock you, but I consider myself an artist /and/ I live in the
real world. Why is it that you seem to feel that poets, artists and
philosophers must be consigned to a marginal existence?
>> If you buy a supplement or game and its crap, say so. But let's stop
>> turning this into a battle of Them vs Us. The reality of the situation is
>> far more boring.
>
> Exactly... I want us to be honest about the boring bits.
You like the word "honest" an awful lot, but you seem to be shifting footing
an awful lot for an honest man. Previously White Wolf was guilty of "Mtv
marketing" where we forced people into a zombie-like state to buy products.
Now we seem to be calling ourselves heroic artists while we're really dreadful
old businessmen. "Being honest," as near as I can tell, means assenting that
White Wolf is disagreeable without asking too many questions.
James Graham
> So being a populist and giving people what they want is being cynical?
Erm, yes. It is very worrying that as a spokesperson for White Wolf you
don't seem to be able to tell the difference between aiming for the
lowest common denominator and producing high quality product.
White Wolf has produced some damn fine games over the past few years. It
is also guilty of cashing in on a regular basis and people periodically
get sick of it - your regular changes in policy would tend to suggest that
you accept that yourself. All companies have the same problem - striking
the balance is very difficult. But coming here and claiming to be pure as
a lamb isn't very convincing I'm afraid.
James
James Graham
> Are you going to answer my post, or are you just going to talk about
> how my country is inadequate?
I remember the name of the book now "Isle of the Mighty". If ever there
was a 100 page tract on how inadequate and "twee" a country is, that was
it. If you have a problem with arguments descending into pointless
rows about nationality, don't make patronising statements about "Merrie
Olde Englande" on a UK newsgroup.
James
James Graham
LAA...@Mice.com (Mr. Analytical) wrote:
> AND the trading-card magic system of the first edition? Struggling
> artists I tells ya! That was an absolute monstrocity.
Ah, you see I avoided that because by that time I had come to the
conclusion that 1st edition WW games weren't worth the paper they had been
printed on.
It was reading through Mage: Book of Shadows which taught me that. Errata
dressed up as a supplement...
Fortunately it would appear that White Wolf actually typeset and proofread
their games these days.
James
Bruce Baugh
Analytical <LAA...@Mice.com> wrote:
> Not pretend to be something that you're not.
Which I don't think we are. The fact is that we're a bunch of fanboys
and fangirls doing stuff we like and that we hope others like,
balancing off known sources of success with the interest and need to
incorporate new material as well. As Geoff Grabowski remarked, it gives
us checks and we like what we're doing.
In the particular case of Adventure, there's really no way to tell
whether it'll succeed or not, so it's a self-contained volume that we
can follow up on if circumstances warrant, and which can stand alone if
circumstances do not warrant follow-up. It's work I'm proud of that I
hope folks will take a look at if they like pulp stuff - whether it's
the old magazines or the recent spate of period adventure films. It's
not what people are expecting from a White Wolf game, I think, and
that's one of the things that pleases me. Our playtesters included a
lot of people who don't play other WW games as well as some stalwarts
of various lines, and both types came away satisfied.
Geoffrey C. Grabowski
>In article <Ocbi7.139970$EP6.38...@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>,
>rai...@white-wolf.com (Geoffrey C. Grabowski) wrote:
>
>> So being a populist and giving people what they want is being cynical?
>
>Erm, yes. It is very worrying that as a spokesperson for White Wolf you
>don't seem to be able to tell the difference between aiming for the
>lowest common denominator and producing high quality product.
Giving people the game they want produces low quality product? I'm sorry,
there seems to me to be a logical disconnect there. I really must ask -- how
are quality and accessibility inversely related?
>James
Geoffrey C. Grabowski
> That may or may not be right but I can at least detect the bullshit
>assertion that America is a less banal place to live than anywhere
>else on Earth. Your company said it... not me. There's a difference
>between putting down a country and tearing down a claim that a
>country is better than all the others.
If you look in _Isle of the Mighty_, you'll see that my name is, in fact,
/nowhere/ in the book. If you don't like it, find the person who wrote the
book and tell them how much /they/ suck for writing it. Find the person who
developed the book, and tell them how much /they/ suck for letting it through
development and into print. Don't bitch at me -- I didn't have anything to do
with it. It's not in my product line, it's not related to my product line, and
it was done years before I came onboard at the company. You obviously have a
lot of pent-up anger -- possibly with good reason, possibly not, I've never
read the book -- but I can't really help you. If you think Exalted portrays
your country in a poor light, that I can help you with. Changeling not so
much.
Tom McGrenery
>assertion that America is a less banal place to live than anywhere
>else on Earth. Your company said it... not me. There's a difference
>between putting down a country and tearing down a claim that a
>country is better than all the others.
As slightly narky as this "Analytical" fellow may be, I concur in one
respect at least.
It was half funny and half sad that an implied message in Isle of the Mighty
was:
"In San Francisco, people pay less attention to crazy chimerical stunts,
because they are creative and fun and cool. In London, people pay less
attention to crazy chimerical stunts, because they are Banal and cold and
boring."
Whatever.
-- Tom McGrenery
>
>--
>
>Mr. Analytical
>
>*Cynicism and bombast on demand*
>
>
>
>
Tim Ellis
> It's not in my product line, it's not related to my product line,
> If you think Exalted portrays
>your country in a poor light, that I can help you with. Changeling not so
>much.
>
>Geoffrey C. Grabowski
>Exalted Developer, WWGS
Aha! I've just realised that "Exalted Developer" is a Job title and not
an adjective.... It all makes sense now
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Tim Ellis EMail t...@timellis.demon.co.uk |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Geoffrey C. Grabowski
>Aha! I've just realised that "Exalted Developer" is a Job title and not
>an adjective.... It all makes sense now
Yeah, as cool as it would be if we all had masonic titles ("Go ask the High
Priest of Sales if we could get that added to the schedule?"), it's just the
name of the product line I manage. =)
Geoffrey C. Grabowski
Exalted Developer, WWGS
Phil Masters
> ... I made a joke and you and others
> wheeled out the tired old shifting ground argument you usually deploy
> against fanboys. As a result I was drawn in to tackle the questions
> you raised.
Translation: "I engaged in some cheap trolling, and when I was called
out on it, I tried to claim that I was talking about something
completely different."
*plonk*
The Mad One
"Bruce Baugh" <bruce...@sff.net> wrote in message
news:250820011656318771%bruce...@sff.net...
>. The poetry and quotes from last year's pop sensations are gone. So
> are the books locked into a spiral of escalating powers -
Beifly...
Aberant Players Guide !
Not so briefly...
OK - I know that its meant to run up to events at a later campaign date, but
some of the things in here are just way too good - namely Mastery. e.g. a
Telepath with Mastery, area effect --> world domination. If you try to
change this, odds are he can sense it via a global mind scan and 'change
your mind'. Admittedly it takes quite a few XP, and a second eruption (to
get Quantum 6) but after this there are powers available to ramp up your
abilities on a DAILY basis (don't have the book to had but one power gives
you 3*successes NOVA POINTS per use!!!).
Of course, any GM worth his salt isn't going to allow powers like this as
they simply 'end the game'. So, why put them in!
Having said all this, I'm co-running an Aberrant campaign right now and
thoroughly enjoying it!
BFN
Paul
The Mad One
"Mark Threlfall" <mart...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:XTCh7.28466$5_3.2...@news1.cableinet.net...
>
> "DC" <sws9...@met.rdg.ac.uk> wrote in message
> news:3B865A69...@met.rdg.ac.uk...
> > Try running CoC using Tunnels and Trolls rules rather than BRP if you
> > don't believe me, See the atmosphere and attitude of your group change
> > in almost an instant. Dangerous rules = Cautious (and generally more
> > realistic) play, less deadly rules systems tend to veer games in a more
> > hack 'n slay direction.
>
> Yes I totally agree with you on this point, system does influence what you
> are likely to do. The atmosphere can be driven by the perception people
have
> of the system you are using. I and other GMs who i know have used this to
> our advantage on several occasions.
>
> I have, however, noted that occasionally you can also do the opposite and
> really scare your players by running something Cthulhu but under a
different
> system. This is simply down to the fact that the best horror is usually
> unexpected, and in a standard CoC game EVERYONE knows something bad is
going
> to happen.
>
I'm currently running a Rolemaster campaign in which things have turned very
Cthulhu-esque (four NPCs out of the Expedition of twelve died rather
abrubtly session before last) and the party is nicely fragmented at the
moment. The aim of the exercise is basically for them to realise how much
danger they are in and that they have to work together if they are going to
face a future threat (and any of my players who read this can take that as a
very big hint.;-) )
And just for Spenny's info - the total bodycount last week came to 13 PC
grade characters (including 3 PCs) ! I appear to be back on the form of the
good old days...
BFN
Paul
The Mad One
"- Professor Yaffle -" <LaaaaA...@mice.com> wrote in message
news:01HW.B7AD8EA80...@news.clara.net...
> On Sat, 25 Aug 2001 13:59:34 +0100, Dan Joyce wrote
> (in message <ulysses-2508...@ulysses.easynet.co.uk>):
>
> > I started off running Dragons of Melnibone with the D20 rules and after
a
> > while, I just thought 'This isn't Elric's world at all - this is Elric's
> > world seen through the lens of D&D.' I should have seen this in advance,
> > really.
>
> Exactly! It also modifies the perceived social structure of the
> world. I'm hoping that the Elric adaptation doesn't have the
> traditional fighter/thief/mage/cleric classes :-/ don't see how it
> could work if that is the case.
>
> give the fighters the odd spell maybe? Big powerful magical
> weapons?
>
>
> --
not actually read d20 rules yet, but I was always a fan of allowing anyone
to multiclass if they had a decent background for it, but allow the player
to set up fractional XP to each class involved. e.g. I ran for an samurai
type character who had been dishonoured prior to the start of play and his
families swords were stolen. I allowed him to play a Fighter / Assassin with
90% of his XP going to the fighter class and 10% to Assassin - to represent
his main area of expertise, tempered by his desire to see those who
dishonoured him dead by any means. Worked very well. And whose to say that
all Clerics need to be honest upstanding types e.g. 'I 'm a human worshipper
of a thief god' - why can't I pick pockets, etc like a thief? Hence human
multi class thief-cleric. Probably concentrating on the cleric aspect to get
higher up in the guild through closeness with the relevant deity, but with
some thief skills...
anyway, just in case D20 allow this, I'll stop before going on too long
(unless I already have!)
BFN
Paul
Bruce Baugh
<pdse...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote:
> >. The poetry and quotes from last year's pop sensations are gone. So
> > are the books locked into a spiral of escalating powers -
>
> Beifly...
> Aberant Players Guide !
It's been part of the game setting from its first appearance in
Trinity, in 1997, that in the mid-21st century powers spun out of
control, though. The Aberrant Player's Guide only quantifies stuff that
folks knew from the outset was in the game. This contrasts a lot, I
think, with bringing in brand-new stuff out of left field.
And, of course, the PG has a lot else in it.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> bruce...@sff.net <*> http://www.tkau.org
Writer of Fortune
Dan Joyce
<pdse...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote:
> > --
>
> not actually read d20 rules yet, but I was always a fan of allowing anyone
> to multiclass if they had a decent background for it
Anyone can multiclass. It doesn't solve all the problems, however.
--
Dan Joyce
uly...@easynet.co.uk
Tim Ellis
>
> I suggested my gf lobby for the job title "Corporate affairs
>reichsfuehrer" but she though director had a better ring to it. Ah
>well.
Is the "Corporate Affairs Director" the person responsible for deciding
who gets to sleep with the bosses secretary?
James Graham
(Bruce Baugh) wrote:
>
> In the particular case of Adventure, there's really no way to tell
> whether it'll succeed or not, so it's a self-contained volume that we
> can follow up on if circumstances warrant, and which can stand alone if
> circumstances do not warrant follow-up. It's work I'm proud of that I
> hope folks will take a look at if they like pulp stuff - whether it's
> the old magazines or the recent spate of period adventure films. It's
> not what people are expecting from a White Wolf game, I think, and
> that's one of the things that pleases me. Our playtesters included a
> lot of people who don't play other WW games as well as some stalwarts
> of various lines, and both types came away satisfied.
FWIW, having now bought Adventure, I think it is excellent and am well
pleased with my purchase.
James
Lynne Hardy
Bruce Baugh <bruce...@sff.net> wrote in article
<250820011036278811%bruce...@sff.net>...
> In article <01HW.B7AD8BE30...@news.clara.net>, Mr.
> Analytical <LAA...@Mice.com> wrote:
> This is not a tacit admission that you're right about the other games
> we put out.
As with all game companies, some of the stuff WW has put out has been very
good, well thought out and beautifully presented. Some have had good ideas
at the core, but have needed work to bring the material on to the point of
usefulness. Other stuff has been dire. But hey, no company has produced a
100% hit rate and it would be really stupid to expect such.
> We had fun working on Adventure and want folks to
> have fun playing it.
>
It looks like you had fun and we're definitely looking forward to playing
it. Its been very nicely done.
Lynne
Lynne Hardy
Tim Ellis <t...@timellis.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
<B5kjsGAv...@timellis.demon.co.uk>...
<snip>
> >Geoffrey C. Grabowski
> >Exalted Developer, WWGS
>
> Aha! I've just realised that "Exalted Developer" is a Job title and not
> an adjective.... It all makes sense now
>
Well, our beloved editor of XPS2 (source material for Dying Earth, in case
you hadn't heard of it) is known as the Reality Facilitator. You just can't
argue with a job title like *that*.
Lynne
David Damerell
> XP's Jesus Christ! Those bloody sheets of paper you had to keep
>track of which monsters your character had kill so you could get the
>bonus XP.
The only people who do that are teenage ubermunchkins, and it's a good
mechanic for them because they love doing just this.
> Is there anyone out there who still thinks that XPs are a good
>idea?
> Especially when you can easily replace them with character points.
>10 points per level and you award maybe 3 to 5 per session depending
>upon how effective the various classes are.
So that would be exactly the same mechanic with less fine-grained
resolution.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?
David Damerell
> If you look at the thread there's a desire to have one's cake and
>eat it. To be the struggling artist AND to be the business man.
I think what's you miss, fundamentally, is that in the games industry the
struggling artist had better _be_ the business man too; and being the
business man isn't going to save the artist from any struggling.
Hogshead are very fortunate to have the rights to WFRP; to be kind, it's
unoriginal (to be unkind, it's grossly flawed); but it does keep on
selling and it keeps them in business; but it's the money from WFRP that
lets them do the 'New Style' games, which are experimental and arguably
art. So if they can be at the same time innovative and cranking out dull
bill-paying stuff, why can't White Wolf?
David Damerell
>And I'm sure that in turn you would prefer not to come across as
>another ignorant ranter who's substituting prejudice for evidence in
>the senseless pursuit of another useless diatribe.
Ooh, can I have a rant?
I'll try for a slightly more concise summary of what I feel are valid
points about White Wolf.
Several of their games - especially Vampire, but all of the WoD games -
were very successfully marketed as being more serious role playing. For
Real Role Players. Not like those dungeon crawling games. No, no.
Investigate the very crannies of the human condition. And stuff.
[This I don't really have a problem with; the business is about flogging
games, and "this game is better than those other games" is a pretty
fundamental approach - even if it is plainly bogus to say you get better
roleplaying when your character class also comes with a personality
stereotype.]
Only a raging angst-bunny teenager would have believed that nonsense.
[But so what? GW can sell games to raging chaos-bunny preteens; and some
of the people playing the game were doing so without buying into this
whole rubbish about it being Better because it was Serious.]
It seemed that at least some of the games designers (hem-hem particularly
the ones with splats in their names) also believed this nonsense.
[Doesn't really matter in and of itself, but made you wonder.]
The games were also prone to the most ridiculous munchkinism; because they
were Serious, they didn't have the same mechanisms for balancing
characters as those bad old dungeon-bashing games, because no Serious
Roleplayer would ever need anything like that, right?
The real problem came when later supplements seemed to pander explicitly
to that munchkinism - not just by containing gross powers, but by being of
such low quality that only munchkins desiring gross power would buy them.
At that point, you had to wonder what had happened to the original clear
vision of Serious Roleplaying.
Basically, if you [1] try to claim you know better than the rest of the
industry and can do a game that's better than the others because it's a
new paradigm, a work of art, yadda, you're going to look pretty foolish
when you end up doing what the rest of the industry does in desperation
to make a quick buck - ie, release not just supplements but crap hack job
supplements.
And past performance _is_ an indication of future prospects; the current
White Wolf may be nothing like this, but until we see some high quality
material the expectation that WW supplements are crap will persist - and
it'll be hard to shake that, because given that expectation we're not
going to see the high quality material even if it is released. Unless it
says "Sorcerer's Crusade" on. [2]
[1] White Wolf as was c. 1992, not you-you personally.
[2] Cuvy; hfhny oyngnag cyht srr, cyrnfr?
James Graham
"splat"? I always assumed that it meant one of the
clans/tribes/traditions/guilds/miscelleneous types of characters that
always crop up in WW games which inevitably get their own book (let's not
go into the relative merits of "splatbooks" for now), but references to
"splats" in names (which I assume is a reference to Mark Rein-Hagen's
rather pretentious bullet point in the middle of his surname), have left
me confused.
James
James Graham
LAAAa...@Mice.com (Mr. Analytical) wrote:
> Well fair nuff but when Hogsehead bring out a supplement on chaos
> warriors who all have so mane spikes that they're just spheres and
> pepper it with poetry and claim to be intellectuals struggling for
> their art whilst listening to Dead can Dance I get to bitch about
> them too :-)
You've got a preview copy of Realms of Sorcery...? :o)
James
Phil Masters
> Can somebody explain to me the precise meaning and etymology of the term
> "splat"?
I think it's programmer slang for an asterisk used as a "wildcard".
Hence, clanbooks, breedbooks, tribebooks, etc., are all, well, *books -
splatbooks.
And MR-H is or was prone to putting a non-standard typographical symbol
in the middle of his surname. Irreverent persons and those using 7-bit
ASCII may well choose to make that an asterisk, and then, in programmer
style, read it as "splat".
--
Phil Masters * Home Page: http://www.philm.demon.co.uk/
"Battle not with flamers, lest ye become a flamer; and stare not too
deeply into the 'net, or you will find the 'net staring into you."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche (loosely translated)
Nick Eden
wrote:
>In article <3B865A69...@met.rdg.ac.uk>, DC <sws9...@met.rdg.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> But funnily enough (and i've said this before on this very newsgroup)
>> system does influence how players react to settings.
>>
>Well, of course. The system dictates the metaphysics, and even the
>physics, of the world in which you're roleplaying. In D&D, all religious
>characters have broadly similar spells and abilities, e.g. turning or
>controlling undead, healing spells etc (metaphysics), while a sling is
>vastly inferior to a bow (physics). So this always colours things.
>
>I started off running Dragons of Melnibone with the D20 rules and after a
>while, I just thought 'This isn't Elric's world at all - this is Elric's
>world seen through the lens of D&D.' I should have seen this in advance,
>really.
To be fair Dan, one of the problems (IMHO as always) was that the
Elric feel wasn't really present right at the start, and so D&D
sensibilities got themselves into our minds before any Elric had had a
chance to get there. Then again, I've never read an Elric book, so
that doesn't help.
If you look at the characters we've wound up with (in particular the
Druid and the Bard - even if the Bard has resolutely resisted ever
casting any magic) and the number of people sporting crossbows (which
according to DLoM don't exist in the Young Kingdoms) then Elric never
got a chance.
I suspect that it could have worked, but you'd have had to be far more
ruthless about enforcing an atmosphere from the word go.
-----------------------------------------------------
Hero Wars Resources, fonts, breifings, cults soon
http://www.pheasnt.demon.co.uk/HeroWars/HeroWars.html
Dan Joyce
ni...@pheasntDOTdemon.co.uk (Nick Eden) wrote:
>
> I suspect that it could have worked, but you'd have had to be far more
> ruthless about enforcing an atmosphere from the word go.
That and rewrite the rules some more.
It's been said that D&D models heroic fantasy. Well, it models *a certain
kind* of heroic fantasy. That is: D&D. You can get a rather better fit for
most heroic fantasy (Conan, Elric etc) using the D6 System, Fudge - or
even Feng Shui.
--
Dan Joyce
uly...@easynet.co.uk
Jim Davies
>On Mon, 27 Aug 2001 13:49:09 +0100, The Mad One wrote
>(in message <9lri7.9595$hm3.6...@news1.cableinet.net>):
>
>
>> not actually read d20 rules yet, but I was always a fan of allowing anyone
>> to multiclass if they had a decent background for it, but allow the player
>> to set up fractional XP to each class involved. e.g. I ran for an samurai
>> type character who had been dishonoured prior to the start of play and his
>> families swords were stolen. I allowed him to play a Fighter / Assassin with
>> 90% of his XP going to the fighter class and 10% to Assassin - to represent
>> his main area of expertise,
>
> XP's Jesus Christ! Those bloody sheets of paper you had to keep
>track of which monsters your character had kill so you could get the
>bonus XP.
Nobody ever did this. The GM might have kept a rough summary, but
that's about it.
Actually, over a 10-year campaign, one of my players kept a 'hit list'
of every single monster he'd ever killed. Orcs, trolls, paladins*,
nycadaemons, otyughs, drow, peasants**, all went on the list. It's
quite impressive.
* this was an accident
** so was this
-
Jim Davies
----------
Mind your manners, son! I've got a tall pointy hat!
Bruce Baugh
James Graham <james...@cix.co.uk> wrote:
> FWIW, having now bought Adventure, I think it is excellent and am well
> pleased with my purchase.
Glad to hear it. :)
We are, by the way, under no delusion that we produced a perfect game.
When you find oopses and stuff suitable for errata and FAQ, feel free
to say something - e-mail to me would probably be particularly
efficient, but whatever works.
Bruce Baugh
<l.a....@ncl.ac.uk> wrote:
> As with all game companies, some of the stuff WW has put out has
> been very good, well thought out and beautifully presented. Some have
> had good ideas at the core, but have needed work to bring the
> material on to the point of usefulness. Other stuff has been dire.
> But hey, no company has produced a 100% hit rate and it would be
> really stupid to expect such.
A very fair assessment. My own bibliography includes nothing I now
regard as dire, but there's work I'd do again if I had the chance to go
back and fix it simply to make it more of what I think customers of
that book deserved. And from there it's just a hop, skip, and jump to
work that seemedlike a good idea at the time to the folks involved, but
just wasn't.
Bruce Baugh
Analytical <LAAAa...@Mice.com> wrote:
> Exactly. Most succinctly put and this is the hypocrisy I have been
> trying to outline. It's not that there's anything wrong with
> pandering it's pandering whilst at the same time flouncing round
> GenCon in big puffy shirts pretending to be struggling artists who
> are transgressing the boundaries of roleplaying.
I have this feeling that you're talking about some of WW's less
desirable fans than about the company.
I've been at cons with WW folks in professional capacities. T-shirts
and jeans are the norm, with some folks who go in for suits and ties
(or mandarin collar shirts and good jackets) or dresses, as the case
may be. Some are heavily pierced; some aren't. Some are neo-pagan; some
are Jewish or Christian; some are agnostic or atheist. Personal
conversation will range over, depending who's involved, current
professional wrestling news, how easy it is to make Exalted be a
Thundarr the Barbarian game, what's happening in this developer's D&D
game, new music by Transglobal Underground or recent re-releases from
Big Country, the health and doings of our families, the state of MU*
clients for Mac OS X, the best places to find electronic texts of
Dunsany and Lester Dent stories...fairly typical stuff. Take off the
name tags and drop them in a mixed group of gamers and netters, and you
won't spot them except perhaps insofar as they have particularly funny
anecdotes about the idiocies of their day jobs. And this has been the
case as long as I've been associated with WW.
The folks out there who seem to believe that they are faeries (or
vampires, or whatever), and who talk like SCA rejects, and whose
fashion sense seems to have become locked in stasis at a Bauhaus or
Enya concert 12-15 years ago apart from the occasional fetish update,
are not staff or freelancers. As a working rule of thumb, few things
are as good for reinforcing the "it's just a game" realization as
actually making the things. It's people who are not themselves actually
creating much who turn it all into a lifestyle.
James Graham
(Bruce Baugh) wrote:
>
> We are, by the way, under no delusion that we produced a perfect game.
> When you find oopses and stuff suitable for errata and FAQ, feel free
> to say something - e-mail to me would probably be particularly
> efficient, but whatever works.
Haven't spotted any references to page XX yet... :o)
One omission in the bibliography though - given the metaplot I suspect
that The Invisibles was an influence (Hand of Glory ritual and all that).
Even if that wasn't the case, the 20s set subplot warrants a mention IMHO.
James
David Damerell
>The folks out there who seem to believe that they are faeries (or
>vampires, or whatever), and who talk like SCA rejects, and whose
>fashion sense seems to have become locked in stasis at a Bauhaus or
>Enya concert 12-15 years ago apart from the occasional fetish update,
>are not staff or freelancers.
But, to be fair, WW must surely realise that they make their money by
encouraging these people.
[It worked very well, actually; all the people who used to dress up as
drow because they were combat monsters - er, to examine the tortured
angst of a damned soul - simply started dressing up as vampires for much
the same reason.]
David Damerell
>On Tue, 28 Aug 2001 15:26:40 +0100, David Damerell wrote
>>So that would be exactly the same mechanic with less fine-grained
>>resolution.
I really don't see that not needing to say 'thousand' when awarding 3
character points rather than 3,000 XP is a hell of a lot easier.
> Alternately you could play a gam,e with a grown up set of character
>devellopment mechanics.
A 'grown up' set, eh? Neatly illustrating why White Wolf were so
successful marketing games on the basis of claimed superiority; people
want to believe their favourite system is superior and will become raging
fanboys for it.
Most 'grown up' systems are not the be-all and end-all of RPGs.
Level-based systems, much as they are hated, provide a straightforward
mechanism for comparing one character's power with another; conversely,
many skill-based systems are open to grinding overspecialisation (oddly,
the bad old level-based systems often produce well-rounded characters,
because when you gain a level you don't have much choice about developing
abilities across the board). A lot of the supposedly superior systems are
flawed; I trust everyone's played the game of WFRP where Alice starts as a
Noble and Bob as a Beggar (gee, that's fair); classic Runequest has the
slight problem that you're better off staying home with a good teacher,
which is all very realistic but not very adventure-producing; and the list
goes on.
It depends on what you want from the game; but if you want a simple system
with a straightforward measure of character advancement...
Rob Harper
Mr. Analytical wrote...
> No... I'm saying that rather than keeping track of how many
> monstrers were killed and how many gp's worth of treasure were found,
AIR those elements have never been necessary in D&D (you can just make a
note of points whenb earned).
Oh, and you said earlier in this thread that you:
> had to keep track of which monsters your character had kill so you could
> get the bonus XP
Well, if you mean the "who killed what" XP allocation, that went out the
window with AD&D 2nd edition, over 10 years ago.
> You just keep the levels and then award character points on the basis
> of how well they did like any other game.
Well, like many other games anyway. The problem is that giving points
for something like "how well they did" can cause problems for some styles
of play, as it is based on a subjective GM decision. D&D is (IMHO) more
of a *game* in which you can roleplay, rather than being primarily about
characterisation and storytelling as many other games say they are. As
such, the experience system is a clear and easy to understand mechanism
for character progression that isn't liable to having players cry foul
because of GM favouritism.
> You can even get rid of different character classes having different XP
levels
Uhh, they did that in D&D3e.
> and demanding more XPs for higher levels.
I don't see a problem for this. This is just a part of the system. A
party is likely to gain more and more XP per session as they progress
(though this has a brake put onto it by the 3rd ed rules), and this
helps prevent character levels from accelerating into the distance.
I'm not a huge D&D fan, but I recognise it for what it is: a decent
heroic fantasy adventure game which can be played as a roleplaying
game, a skirmish wargame, or anything in between. While the rules
don't appeal to everyone, they have a lot to recommend them to the
"right" people, and they have certainly come a long way in terms of
coherence and internal consistancy with the release of 3rd edition.
I do have one recommendation, though: if you don't want to find out
first hand what new versions of games are like (we have threads full
of apparently unresearched and un-thought out arguments against both
D&D and White Wolf), then why not ask questions and listen to what
the fans of a system like about it. Then ask more questions. It's
amazing how things can turn into an intelligent debate where we all
might learn a great deal.
Rob
--
Excuse me while I kiss the pie.
David Damerell
>On Wed, 29 Aug 2001 12:21:20 +0100, David Damerell wrote
>>I really don't see that not needing to say 'thousand' when awarding 3
>>character points rather than 3,000 XP is a hell of a lot easier.
>monstrers were killed and how many gp's worth of treasure were found,
Which no-one does. Straw man. These 'character points' are just what
people do with XP, only with the serial numbers filed off.
[The 'monster XP value' can be valuable, though; it gives a ballpark
figure for the difficulty of an encounter or series thereof, or the XP for
a session.]
>of how well they did like any other game. You can even get rid of
>different character classes having different XP levels and demanding
>more XPs for higher levels.
Ano... different classes don't have different XP requirements in D&D 3rd;
and the 'more XP for higher levels' mechanic is effective in keeping
discrepancies in party level reasonably small.
>>A lot of the supposedly superior systems are
>>flawed; I trust everyone's played the game of WFRP where Alice starts as a
>>Noble and Bob as a Beggar (gee, that's fair);
> I've always thought that one of the great advantages of WFRP was
>the character creation system. not great on paper but in terms of
>group dynamics and roleplaying it's fantastic.
It might induce roleplaying if many of the character classes were at all
likely to be doing whatever the PCs are doing; as it is, you just have the
usual WFRP mess of Sea Captains who've never seen a boat.
>Plus the characters
>are reasonably well balanced stats wise I seem to remember.
Then you don't remember. Alice's Noble has better equipment, better
skills, can spend XP on more effective stat advances, and can move to more
attractive careers. The downside? Er, there isn't one.
>>It depends on what you want from the game; but if you want a simple system
>>with a straightforward measure of character advancement...
> Then don't play a level based game unless you want to use
>calculators.
Dunno about you, but I can add 3,000 to 21,000 without a calculator.
Lynne Hardy
James Graham <james...@cix.co.uk> wrote in article
<memo.20010829...@jamesgraham.compulink.co.uk>...
<snip>>
> One omission in the bibliography though - given the metaplot I suspect
> that The Invisibles was an influence (Hand of Glory ritual and all that).
> Even if that wasn't the case, the 20s set subplot warrants a mention
IMHO.
>
But the Hand Of Glory is a very old belief - its just cropped up in our
Victorian LRP, with some very gruesome phys-reps being used as candles.
Medieval in origin, I think.
Lynne
Robin Low
Analytical <LAAAa...@Mice.com> writes
>On Wed, 29 Aug 2001 12:13:05 +0100, David Damerell wrote
>(in message <jNb*qo...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>):
>
>> But, to be fair, WW must surely realise that they make their money by
>> encouraging these people.
>>
>> [It worked very well, actually; all the people who used to dress up as
>> drow because they were combat monsters - er, to examine the tortured
>> angst of a damned soul - simply started dressing up as vampires for much
>> the same reason.]
>
>interest in that game and that game alone.
*Sigh* Does it really need to be pointed out, yet again, that you also
get people who only ever play GURPS or Dungeons and Dragons or Palladium
or Call of Cthulhu or Runequest or Star Wars or whatever happens to be
their favourite game? Or that there are people who only ever watch the
original Star Trek or listen to the Archers and don't bother with any TV
soaps.
It's no use pointing to this phenomenon as if it's unique to Vampire or
even White Wolf.
Regards
Robin
--
Robin Low
Robin Low
<dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes
>Mr. Analytical <LAAAa...@Mice.com> wrote:
<On WFRP and nobles>
>>Plus the characters
>>are reasonably well balanced stats wise I seem to remember.
>
>Then you don't remember. Alice's Noble has better equipment, better
>skills, can spend XP on more effective stat advances, and can move to more
>attractive careers. The downside? Er, there isn't one.
No downside's for nobles? Whilst the lower classes may act subserviently
towards them, nobles are likely to be disliked and distrusted by the
common herd, and be prime targets for pickpockets and highwaymen. And
then there are all those tedious familial obligations and
responsibilities.
Sure, these are plot and roleplay-related downsides, rather than ones
imposed by the system, but I've never been convinced that divergent
power-levels amongst PCs are inherently bad anyway. Actually, looking at
the Noble career's stat advances, they are not that much more impressive
than most other career's, and other careers have more impressive ranges
of skills (look at Outlaw). I'd be just as happy playing a pedlar as a
noble. Pharmacists are a bit weak, but then they have the Heal Wounds
skill, which is of enormous value in the WFRP world, and get to do
interesting stuff like make drugs and poisons.
If WFRP has a fault in its character creation process, it's the random
determination of careers, rather than different relative strengths. It
makes more sense if careers are chosen by players according to the
nature of the specific campaign, and at the GM's discretion.
James Graham
l.a....@ncl.ac.uk (Lynne Hardy) wrote:
> > One omission in the bibliography though - given the metaplot I
> > suspect that The Invisibles was an influence (Hand of Glory ritual
> > and all that).
>
> > Even if that wasn't the case, the 20s set subplot warrants a mention
> IMHO.
> >
>
> But the Hand Of Glory is a very old belief - its just cropped up
in our
> Victorian LRP, with some very gruesome phys-reps being used as candles.
> Medieval in origin, I think.
What I'm referring to is the Hand of Glory subplot (metaplot?) in
Invisibles in which pretty much the entire events of that series are
sourced back to a single ritual performed by a bunch of
occultist-adventurers in the Twenties, which has parallels with the
science experiment gone wrong which starts off the Adventure! Age.
James
Bruce Baugh
Analytical <LAAAa...@Mice.com> wrote:
> Sorry... I read that and thought it said "But the hand of Glory is
> a very old Relief"
This is where the Onan's Clenching Hand jokes start, right?
--
Bruce Baugh <*> bruce...@sff.net <*> http://www.tkau.org
Writer of Fortune
Bruce Baugh
James Graham <james...@cix.co.uk> wrote:
> One omission in the bibliography though - given the metaplot I suspect
> that The Invisibles was an influence (Hand of Glory ritual and all that).
> Even if that wasn't the case, the 20s set subplot warrants a mention IMHO.
I'm personally a huge Invisibles fan, as are several of the authors,
but it wasn't much of an influence on the game, actually. Certainly
it's good work that deserves mention as worth reading, in any event.
Bruce Baugh
<dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> But, to be fair, WW must surely realise that they make their money by
> encouraging these people.
Truthfully, we _don't_ make much money off them. The really thorough
goobers are pains in the ass as customers. I know they're highly
visible, but they're scarcely more representative than the cosplay
crowd is for Big Eyes, Small Mouth. (See http://www.otherkin.net/ for
the extreme form.) The folks who are really into it as a lifestyle or,
worse yet, a description of reality tend to be very finicky about what
they're after.
Most of our customers are not readily distinguishable from any others
at your local game store.
Jo
"David Damerell" <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:jNb*qo...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...
You don't have to be a freak who has no connection to reality to enjoy a
melodramatic, well-plotted LARP. Jeez. Is it just that angst is too
romantic/girly for the typical overweight male gamer?
And I'd always assumed that WW made their money by producing decent games
that *people* wanted to play/ read/ collect/ whatever.
jo
Lynne Hardy
James Graham <james...@cix.co.uk> wrote in article
<memo.20010829...@jamesgraham.compulink.co.uk>...
<snip>
>
>
> What I'm referring to is the Hand of Glory subplot (metaplot?) in
> Invisibles in which pretty much the entire events of that series are
> sourced back to a single ritual performed by a bunch of
> occultist-adventurers in the Twenties, which has parallels with the
> science experiment gone wrong which starts off the Adventure! Age.
>
Ah, sorry - haven't had chance to do anything other than read bits of the
book over my husband's shoulder (it was his present, so I thought I'd
better let him read it first). And I'm still finishing off GURPS Atlantis,
Underworld and Little Fears.......
Lynne
Bruce Baugh
<jra...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Is it just that angst is too romantic/girly for the typical
> overweight male gamer?
I'm not indulging in a capricious sneer when I say that many
intellectuals/nerds/geeks get very poor preparation for dealing with
emotions. I am not sneering because I've been there and had to work
hard for a lot of years to acquire a set of social skills and the
associated thoughts and feelings. Bright guys get cues from various
directions that say all that complicated stuff about strongly held,
strongly expressed emotions is for girls - or, worse, for sissies. When
one is already on the social fringe for preferring, say, weirdo
pasttimes like science fiction and gaming, it's awfully easy to decide
not to pick up more hassles, and then to regard them as threats and
menaces.
One does hear "fag" and "queer" used as descriptive terms when
referring to guys who go in for any of the various Romantic and
Romantic-influenced looks, who read poetry, who enjoy gothic
literature, and the like. Since a lot of gamers have already had the
experience of being denounced as queerbait and, in many cases, beaten
up as putative homosexuals for the aforementioned other geek tastes,
again, I can see why someone would rather not tussle with it.
The sad part is that there's this pervasive myth that the experience of
persecution is enlightening or ennobling, and I've been told with a
perfectly straight face by some of my fellow geeks (and I _am_ a geek -
nobody else would take this much pleasure in their autographed Howard
Waldrop volumes or in getting to host preview pages for Steve Stirling)
that of course they wouldn't be prejudiced or narrow-minded, their
hobbies are broadening and they've been there themselves and know what
it's like...immediately before or after dismissing some of my friends
as well as some of my customers as art fags and drama queens.
I certainly have no objection to anyone deciding not to bother with the
ambience of Vampire LARP - though I'll note that when I finally
succumbed after years of pestering from Deirdre Brooks and a few others
and gave it a try, I had a wonderful time. I simply would prefer that
it seem neither a threat nor a menace, nor something that can be safely
mocked and denigrated in precisely the way that the mockers would
object to when, say, enthusiastic blokes do it to them.
Bruce Baugh
> And I'd always assumed that WW made their money by producing decent
> games that *people* wanted to play/ read/ collect/ whatever.
That's what we try for, anyway.
Deirdre Brooks made a good point recently, which is that in her
experience, and mine as well, there are a lot of WW LARPers who aren't
at all goth in any meaningful sense. They don't live the lifestyle in
any of its manifestations, they do not dote exclusively on goth music,
they don't base their reading habits around Anne Rice and the newest
Melmoth reprints, and so on. They enjoy getting into costume and
persona for the LARP itself. It is very much a bit of playacting, being
someone they wouldn't _want_ to be on any long-term basis but who's fun
to be for a while. This is not wildly different from the experience of
anyone into dungeon-crawling or mecha miniatures, it's just that the
props are different and perhaps more visible. (More so than someone who
plays D&D with no figurines, less so than OGRE minis.)
This is very likely to be one taste among many for them. They are not
goth. They like some goth stuff along with other stuff. It's just that
they're very unlikely to show all the rest of their lives to random
strangers, particularly ones who are making a point of being
obnoxiously sniggering about the part that's visible at the moment.
Having trolled obnoxious news polltakers myself over the years, I find
this an eminently sensible reaction, and I would hope that when
explained this way, it might more sense to others, too.
David Damerell
>On Wed, 29 Aug 2001 16:56:37 +0100, David Damerell wrote
>>Which no-one does. Straw man. These 'character points' are just what
>>people do with XP, only with the serial numbers filed off.
No-one with any sense does, then.
> and (B) the fact that people don't use crap rules
>doesn't stop them from being crap.
Crap, but hardly the 'standard' way of playing the game post-1st. Ed.
>>Then you don't remember. Alice's Noble has better equipment, better
>>skills, can spend XP on more effective stat advances, and can move to more
>>attractive careers. The downside? Er, there isn't one.
>How do you define "attractive"? How do you define "effective"?
The numbers are good. Now you're going to spout some nonsense about "but
it's the roleplaying"; but that's rubbish. The hideously unbalanced stats
for careers don't aid roleplaying; one could equally well have a system
where the noble and the beggar had equal prospects for character
advancement (while still having different social prospects.)
>end. Sure it's less traditionally fantasy RPG than playing a squire
>or something like that but that doesn't make the game unbalanced or
>unfair. If anything it's overly fair.
Using the word 'fair' to describe a scheme where characters awarded
similar quantities of XP can be of widely varying effectiveness is a
strange approach.
>>Dunno about you, but I can add 3,000 to 21,000 without a calculator.
>Yes, but can you add up a list of dozens of monsters killed, the
>treasure accumulated
No-one does this, and it's not required or even encouraged. Please stop
advancing this ridiculous claim.
David Damerell
>On Wed, 29 Aug 2001 16:43:53 +0100, Rob Harper wrote
>>AIR those elements have never been necessary in D&D (you can just make a
>>note of points whenb earned).
>You get XP's from the creatures you kill.
>Fighters get extra Xps per creature THEY kill.
>All of this in ADD2.
Eh, quite heavily flagged as optional and even deprecated.
> It's quite possibly that no one useds these rules but please, lets
>not say that ADD doesn't do this because most people choose to ignore
>these rules. Yeah... and deadlands is a really good horror game if
>you ignore all of the cowboy stuff :-)
Well, I think there is a case to be made for any game being what is
usually played; for instance, one might criticise a game for an obvious
typo, but you wouldn't then say that people shouldn't play it "because the
rules say that powered assault armour costs two shillings".
David Damerell
><dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>But, to be fair, WW must surely realise that they make their money by
>>encouraging these people.
>Truthfully, we _don't_ make much money off them. The really thorough
>goobers are pains in the ass as customers. I know they're highly
>visible, but they're scarcely more representative than the cosplay
>crowd is for Big Eyes, Small Mouth. (See http://www.otherkin.net/ for
>the extreme form.)
Oh, believe me, as a keen anime fan, I know my cosplayers... :-)
Robin Low
Analytical <LAAAa...@Mice.com> writes
>
> Speaking for me dressing in black, wearing loads of black eye liner
>and listening to Joy Division whilst moaning about how miserable you
>are isn't romantic it's just pathetic.
And how, exactly, does any of the above affect you?
>
>Goth culture is just too
>silly for words and WW, in their early work at least, pandered and
>encouraged it.
Rolepaying culture is just too silly for words and gaming companies, in
their early work at least, have pandered and encouraged it.
Come on, be honest. You just don't like the idea that some other people
enjoy some things you don't enjoy, feel terribly insecure about it and
respond by sneering at them.
David Damerell
>On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 11:51:05 +0100, David Damerell wrote
>>Well, I think there is a case to be made for any game being what is
>>usually played; for instance, one might criticise a game for an obvious
>>typo, but you wouldn't then say that people shouldn't play it "because the
>>rules say that powered assault armour costs two shillings".
>system of game mechanics. That's an uncharitable comparison.
Ever sat out a Traveller session because your character was generated
dead? It can happen, and it's not a typo.
David Damerell
> Speaking for me dressing in black, wearing loads of black eye liner
>and listening to Joy Division whilst moaning about how miserable you
>are isn't romantic it's just pathetic.
Speaking as a part-time goth, likewise. What you evidently don't know is
that the whole ridiculous angst vampire vannabe crap is a relatively
recent addition; we are talking about something that's originally an
outgrowth of punk. Who wants to sit around and whine when you can have
loud music and beer?
Like RPGs, don't confuse the antics of teenagers with the thing as a
whole.
David Damerell
>On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 11:56:28 +0100, David Damerell wrote
>>No-one with any sense does, then.
It's still untrue to claim it's anything but optional in 2nd Ed.
>>The numbers are good.
>"good" in which sense? It's possible that after a few adventures a
>character which started as a beggar wouldn't stand up to a fight with
>someone who started as a squire but the thinking behind it, surely,
>is that he'd be a better and more experienced beggar.
2 objections; most scenarios don't really have much use for begging skills
(any streetwiseness the beggar might get is offset by the noble's ability
to move in other social circles); and the skill and stat sets of the game
are primarily oriented around combat effectiveness, so the noble grows in
a measurable way where the beggar does not.
>>Using the word 'fair' to describe a scheme where characters awarded
>>similar quantities of XP can be of widely varying effectiveness is a
>>strange approach.
> again, it depends what you mean by "effective". I'm sure an
>experienced nopble wouldn't be nearly as effective at begging as an
>experienced beggar.
That's as may be; but the noble gets far more opportunities to become
effective in the fields the game system actually measures.
>>No-one does this,
>Which is false given that my group did.
Again, no-one with any sense counts XP for each monster.
>>and it's not required or even encouraged. Please stop
>>advancing this ridiculous claim.
>No, because it's true. it's a fact that fighters got a bonus in XP
>per HD of monster killed. It's in the rules. It's not optional.
I believe it is - above and beyond the sense that 2nd (but not 1st) Ed.
emphasises that everything is optional.
Steven Kitson
That doesn't stop it being a bad rule (insofar as you can judge rules
'good' and 'bad' of course).
What it _doesn't_ do is make 'Traveller' a bad _game_. It's entirely
possible, and justifiable, to say something's a bad rule even if no one
ever played it.
Whether it's worth this amount of effort to either say it, or argue with
someone saying it, is another matter entirely...
--
Now the warriors of winter they give a cold triumphant shout
Tom McGrenery
>and I'm sure and CERTAIN that they feel the same way about what I do.
>
Post excessively to Usenet under a pseudonym, you mean?
-- Tom McGrenery
>--
>"Mr. Analytical"
>Bombast and cynicism on demand.
Ian Sturrock
>Mr. Analytical <LAAAa...@Mice.com> wrote:
>> I've always thought that one of the great advantages of WFRP was
>>the character creation system. not great on paper but in terms of
>>group dynamics and roleplaying it's fantastic.
>
>It might induce roleplaying if many of the character classes were at all
>likely to be doing whatever the PCs are doing; as it is, you just have the
>usual WFRP mess of Sea Captains who've never seen a boat.
Except that if you want to be a Sea Captain, you must first accumulate
all the Trappings of that career - which are as follows:
"Leather Jack
Rapier
Telescope
Ship and crew"
>>Plus the characters
>>are reasonably well balanced stats wise I seem to remember.
>
>Then you don't remember. Alice's Noble has better equipment, better
>skills, can spend XP on more effective stat advances, and can move to more
>attractive careers. The downside? Er, there isn't one.
There is one - the Noble will need 900 XP to finish her current career,
whereas the Beggar only needs 400 XP to finish his. If you're right, and
combat skills are the most crucial part of the game, the Beggar's rapid
career finish, and swift move on to, say, Racketeer, allows him to get
+20 bow skill and weapon skill well before the Noble, while the latter
is still messing about picking up all that non-combat nonsense like
Fellowship.
--
"We got to be *Pope*! We had a roomful of *gold*!
What *happened*? How *stupid* can we *be*?
Prime Minister! *Pope*!... A roomful of *gold*!
And we end up lying in our own *puke* in some smelly old *tavern*?" - Cerebus
Tim Fitzmaurice
> On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 17:40:27 +0100, David Damerell wrote
> (in message <FRq*ES...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>):
>
> > Ever sat out a Traveller session because your character was generated
> > dead? It can happen, and it's not a typo.
>
> You're kidding! How does that happen?
You roll badly, get injured in your tour of duty and fail to survive the
randomly rolled operation table...The Traveller game system had a
wonderful idea for generating a character and giving it a survice and
development background, but this feature was just a pain in the butt.
You either had to modify it out. One GM I met ruled it as a medicaly
retired from the service add 5 years obtaining medical treatment to return
to normal health...end of character generation, another group I played in
simply set aside an entire game session to generate characters and kept
going till we all had characters. Its a fairly reare event but the more
you power in the stats and skills the more opportunities you get of it
happening.
Tim
When playing rugby, its not the winning that counts, but the taking apart
ICQ: 5178568
M.S. Caldwell
Steven Kitson <ski...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>
>>Ever sat out a Traveller session because your character was generated
>>dead? It can happen, and it's not a typo.
From what I've heard this rule comes about from the concepts the creators of
traveller were working from. They didnt see character generation as
something separate from play, it was supposed to be part of play. Hence
since a character can die in other parts of play they could die in the
part of play that covered their background.
I've played in games where this rule is used. When it happens we would
give the character sheet a decent sending off and then make another
character. The dead character was often used in the background of other
peoples characters. It actually added to the game when used this way.
> That doesn't stop it being a bad rule (insofar as you can judge rules
> 'good' and 'bad' of course).
No. It makes it a rule judged bad in the light of a couple of decades of
experience of how a good game should be put together. If they hadnt tried it
though no one could ever be certain it didnt work; as I say above, with a
creative referee and a willingness to see character generation in Traveller
as part of play like the original writers did it can be quite fun.
Cheers
Mark
Lynne Hardy
Mr. Analytical <LAAAa...@Mice.com> wrote in article
<01HW.B7B471960...@news.clara.net>...
>
<SNIP>
>
> Well, isn't it fair to say that teen goth culture is AS goth as
> goth was in the day?
It has to be said that when passing the local gathering spot for baby
Goths and proto-Punklets, I get a moistened eye. They're all so little and
baby-faced (as well as wearing far too much in the way of surfer-dude
clothing and not enough white face paste, lace or leather). Most of them
are far too clean as well. I just want to take them home and feed them.
Goth and Punk were never meant to inspire maternal feelings ;0)
Lynne
Robin Low
Analytical <LAAAa...@Mice.com> writes
>On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 16:55:44 +0100, Robin Low wrote
>(in message <JMFPbPAA...@celephais.demon.co.uk>):
>
>> Come on, be honest. You just don't like the idea that some other people
>> enjoy some things you don't enjoy, feel terribly insecure about it and
>> respond by sneering at them.
>
>tastes and I'm not going to ignore what those tastes scream to me
>whenever I see goths :-) Good luck to them if they enjoy themselves
Well, I've seen the same accusations about Goths on this newsgroup time
and time again, and I've yet to see any Goths feel the need to call non-
Goths and their interests pathetic.
Blimey, I've met enough Goths in my time, but I've yet to meet one that
comes anywhere near the stereotype. I met a truckload a couple of
weekends ago at my uni RPGsoc annual get-together and they spent their
time laughing, joking and having fun with the rest of us.
M.S. Caldwell
Mr. Analytical <LAAAa...@Mice.com> writes:
> On Fri, 31 Aug 2001 9:59:13 +0100, M.S. Caldwell wrote
> (in message <9mnjl1$dt6$2...@oceanus.connect.org.uk>):
>
>> I've played in games where this rule is used. When it happens we would
>> give the character sheet a decent sending off and then make another
>> character. The dead character was often used in the background of other
>> peoples characters. It actually added to the game when used this way.
>
> character creation and I applaud the writers for taking the risk but
> I can't help thinking that the players might well think "That's
> funny... never had that happen. Hang on... we could have been playing
> this evening".
But when traveller was written the way games worked wasnt so set in stone
that everyone saw character creation and play as separate things. I've
talked about this rule with several people who played traveller as their
first game back when it first appeared. Since they wernt coming at it
from the point of view of an experienced role-player they saw character
creation as a part of play and not a set up action. To them setting up
the game involved getting people together, getting dice and books out
etc. One player from that era that I know was positivelly shocked on
playing D&D that his characters life before creation wasnt worked out as
part of play.
If you made a set of life path rules that worked that way
these days you would be taking a risk and it could be a bad decision that
I can understand people deriding you for. Doing it back then was just
experimenting that showed in the long run not to work and which in the
light of the first version and influenced by other games where character
creation wasnt part of play later versions didnt (as far as I remember)
include the death during creation rules.
I just feel sorry that people pick on this one aspect of traveller's
design now using 20 years of game design experience and the way things have
ended up that the original creators didnt have.
Cheers
Mark