Quote from: bryce0lynch;745764Then I would modify my review. You can't make the DM do that much work. Writing your supplement in cuneiform is not the sort of usability a designer should be providing. Note the overview sectoions in Stonehell, explaining the factions and what's going on on the sublevels.

Being a reader of your blog I will check it out.
That is IF there is actually some kind of grant "design" in the book (it will be kinda hard to figure this out from all the hexes though) then you can really say its a case of "show and don't tell anyone, ever" I guess you can have too much of a good thing.

Quote from: Malfi;745750There are more layers of intentional design in Isle of the Unknown than there are in Carcosa. Perhaps I can be faulted for being too subtle, though when writing my fear was of being too obvious.

To me, this sounds freaking awesome.

I love the idea of layered mysteries and I use them in my campaigns too. I love the idea of the GM being semi-in-the-dark too as the campaign continues BUT I think that must be a GM by GM choice. AKA, he should have offered a secret download or just a "Don't Read It's Secret" chapter in the book so those who want the secret NOW can read it and those who want the mystery to unfold both have the option.

Geoffrey's fatal mistake was not giving GMs the choice.  And for that, he must be BANISHED FROM THE HOBBY 4VER!!!!

Quote from: RunningLaser;745800Don't see where the game writer's rebuttal was anything that would induce rage.

It induces thread posts.

If RPGPundy took his talent for milking faux-rage and used it to create marketing for his RPGs, I bet he would be a more successful author.

His Lord of Olympus game should be rocking the stores considering the popularity of stuff like Percy Jackson, 300 and Wrath of the Titans.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but i just read your blog Pundit and i have to say that i've missed the overblown rhetoric you used to belch out 3 times a week, but now only manage once every month or so.

Quote from: bryce0lynch;745775Let's not conflate amateur authors and self/small publishing with anything larger. Geoffrey is not a monster nailing things to church doors. He's a dude with a day job who took initiative and wrote a couple of supplements for a niche version of a niche hobby. Criticisms and suggestions for improvement are fair. Conflating him with Evil, as Pundit does a bit, is not fair. Isle is a gorgeous book. If G had done a little bit more with each entry and had included a single page or so overview then I think he would have produced one of the best supplements EVER.

Geoffrey produced Carcosa and published several OD&D works through Psychedelic Fantasies. His bona fides to not only the OSR but to OD&D are real and established, more so than the Pundit if we just went off of product.

That's my #1 sticking point with most of what the Pundit writes; the bile and vitriol, IMO, detract from the credibility of the good points he often raises. Whatever my differences in taste with both Pundit and Geoffrey, I wouldn't dream of accusing either of them of being "not a Real Old School Gamer" or "acting in bad faith" or any other ad hominem devoid of relevancy with regards to the actual quality of the game, or its review.

Quote from: Ravenswing;745792As against that, the guy could've been speaking to me, as well.  I didn't like the old Wilderlands style of having completely unrelated and random-gen wandering encounters in every third hex.  I like my gameworld to have nations, and nations require trade, and both are incompatible with having horrid monsters permanently rampaging over the landscape.

I think it was Jeff Rients who once wrote that "the default, implied setting for D&D is post-apocalyptic, period, full stop." I tend to side with this school of thought, that was once (in)famously bandied around circa D&D 4e as "Points of Light" — that is, enclaves of civilization liked by precarious trade routes along crumbling roads, across a Long Night of monster-haunted wilderness and treasure-laden ruins, similiar to a fantasy take on the Romantic idea of the "Dark Ages" and the historical late Antiquity and early Medieval period, with the decline of the Roman Empire in Europe and the Near East. Which I feel also neatly ties into the OD&D, B/X and BECMI/RC single-axis Law (civilization) vs. Chaos (barbarism) and possibly mirrors a cosmic conflict along the lines of Poul Anderson, Michael Moorcock et caterva's writings.

That's my favorite kind of D&D world because I feel it breeds the sort of adventure (and adventurers) I enjoy seing in my games, whether as a player or as a GM. Kind of hard to buy a ring of protection +2 at Ye Olde Magick Shoppe (a la WotC-era D&D) just around the corner, when trade routes are long and prone to attack, and getting a hold of a non-magical suit of plate armor is tricky and expensive enough.

Quote from: Spinachcat;745854I love the idea of layered mysteries and I use them in my campaigns too. I love the idea of the GM being semi-in-the-dark too as the campaign continues BUT I think that must be a GM by GM choice. AKA, he should have offered a secret download or just a "Don't Read It's Secret" chapter in the book so those who want the secret NOW can read it and those who want the mystery to unfold both have the option.

Geoffrey's fatal mistake was not giving GMs the choice.  And for that, he must be BANISHED FROM THE HOBBY 4VER!!!!

Managing secrets and mysteries a published setting is admittedly tricky business. Too much upfront exposition and detail rob it of its magic, while deliberate vagueness can come across as obfuscatory or nonsensical.

Personally, I favor presentations that briefly discuss several possible explanations for the mysteries of the setting, making it clear that it's always up to the GM which one is the Truth, while also helping the less bold or creative among us to make sense of the often conflicting elements presented.

Quote from: The Butcher;745963I think it was Jeff Rients who once wrote that "the default, implied setting for D&D is post-apocalyptic, period, full stop." I tend to side with this school of thought, that was once (in)famously bandied around circa D&D 4e as "Points of Light" — that is, enclaves of civilization liked by precarious trade routes along crumbling roads, across a Long Night of monster-haunted wilderness and treasure-laden ruins, similiar to a fantasy take on the Romantic idea of the "Dark Ages" and the historical late Antiquity and early Medieval period, with the decline of the Roman Empire in Europe and the Near East. Which I feel also neatly ties into the OD&D, B/X and BECMI/RC single-axis Law (civilization) vs. Chaos (barbarism) and possibly mirrors a cosmic conflict along the lines of Poul Anderson, Michael Moorcock et caterva's writings.

That's my favorite kind of D&D world because I feel it breeds the sort of adventure (and adventurers) I enjoy seing in my games, whether as a player or as a GM. Kind of hard to buy a ring of protection +2 at Ye Olde Magick Shoppe (a la WotC-era D&D) just around the corner, when trade routes are long and prone to attack, and getting a hold of a non-magical suit of plate armor is tricky and expensive enough.

/signs up for lifetime subscription

"Take my money!"

Quote from: The Butcher;745963Personally, I favor presentations that briefly discuss several possible explanations for the mysteries of the setting, making it clear that it's always up to the GM which one is the Truth, while also helping the less bold or creative among us to make sense of the often conflicting elements presented.

I like this as well because I have found that my greatest creative strength is to work within the framework given to come up with plots, story lines, and twists rather than make stuff up on my own out of nothing.  Having several plausible and possible explanations gets my creative juices flowing and then I work from there to develop my ideas and how to mesh all the elements together.

So what chunk of awesome would you make of that flying poisonous skunk Pundit mentioned?

Quote from: Simlasa;746016So what chunk of awesome would you make of that flying poisonous skunk Pundit mentioned?

"being chased by foppish petty noble french perfume hunters and their minions, from hex XXXX"

Quote from: RunningLaser;745800Don't see where the game writer's rebuttal was anything that would induce rage.

He accused me of being a fucking Dragonlance-fan!

Quote from: D-503;745813Pundy's prone to rage. If he asked the time and you said it was three o'clock that might provoke rage.

No, but if you tried to claim that my problem is that I "just don't understand three o'clock", especially when you've got no watch and its actually 1:30, then that might induce rage.

He went for the Swine defense: "Pundit is just one of those unwashed masses who 'doesn't get it', and my game setting actually only looks like a crock of shit to him because of how sophisticated/pure it is; and he's not a true Old-schooler anyways like me".

For you it was a incoherent mess. For me it was another day in Gamma World...

aheh...

Im in two camps at once on this.

In one. I like these sorts of information dead settings. I CAN make something from all of that random.

In the other though, as the DM, I tend to buy things like that to save me having to flesh out a setting and to have some sort of cohesion going on somewhere in there. Or just for something interesting to read.

I can see what the designer was trying to accomplish and it seems like he succeeded 100%. But this is the sort of setting that is going to appeal to some, intrigue others, bore some, and repulse the remainder.

Quote from: RPGPundit;746106He accused me of being a fucking Dragonlance-fan!

Are you Jerry Lawler or Andy Kaufman?

Go for Lawler since I like the image of Latka DMing Carcosa.

Quote from: RPGPundit;746107No, but if you tried to claim that my problem is that I "just don't understand three o'clock", especially when you've got no watch and its actually 1:30, then that might induce rage.

He went for the Swine defense: "Pundit is just one of those unwashed masses who 'doesn't get it', and my game setting actually only looks like a crock of shit to him because of how sophisticated/pure it is; and he's not a true Old-schooler anyways like me".

Seriously, I hate to agree, but this is exactly how it read to me too.

I think people are forgetting that the references to Pundy's assumed tastes are not considered complementary by the standards being applied. It's an academic insult, but it's definitely meant to be one.

Quote from: Spinachcat;746115Are you Jerry Lawler or Andy Kaufman?

Go for Lawler since I like the image of Latka DMing Carcosa.

:rotfl:

Quote from: J Arcane;746129Seriously, I hate to agree, but this is exactly how it read to me too.

I think people are forgetting that the references to Pundy's assumed tastes are not considered complementary by the standards being applied. It's an academic insult, but it's definitely meant to be one.

It would be best if both sides refrained from ad hominem attacks of this type, because fundamentally this is what their exchange looks like:

Pundit: "This book sucks and the author is a Swine."
McKinney: "Pundit doesn't get it because he's a Dragonlance fan."

This is dumb and uninformative. But at least it spawned a bit of meaningful debate on game-table-useful stuff, that might have been even better without the taint of elf-pretend nerds throwing elf-pretend insults at each other.

Forget about the crappy random monsters and crypto-nonsensical writing for a moment and watch this. If you're a parent, and you found out your kid's tutor was casually dismissing criticism of graphic portrayals of child rape and murder in his published hobby supplement on youtube would you shrug it off as no-big deal or would you feel like it was time to, AT THE VERY LEAST, find a new tutor?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsJo4Ht9ITg

Quote from: RPGPundit;746106He accused me of being a fucking Dragonlance-fan!

LOL!  I guess there is that:)