Quote from: SionEwig;836649What issues did you have with the Serenity RPG?  I'm not saying the game didn't have issues, it certainly had a lot, but I'm just curious as to what you saw.

It took them until the fourth printing to include a character sheet and an index.  The lack of trading rules and guidelines, given that wheeling and dealing formed the plot of damn near every episode of the show, was downright negligent. There were four times as many pages devoted to full-page full-color still photos of the Serenity crew (eight) than there were to space combat – more space was devoted to how to arm and armor your ship than in what to do with it.  The prices on the same were also ridiculous, and the authors' claim that they were based on real-world examples didn't survive ten minutes' worth of fact checking. So many pages were wasted on puffery and pretty production values, and I hated the space wasted on the Aces & Eights ship and crew: one of the fundamental elements of the 'Verse is scarcity. If all you want is generic space adventure with rich crews on ships dripping with weapons, sheesh, Traveller's been doing that for thirty years.

Universal was a bitchier license holder than most, and the authors were under some constraints, but they had no business releasing a product so deficient in gaming basics.  It took me and my group all of 15 minutes to pitch it and use GURPS instead to play Firefly.

Quote from: Ravenswing;836702It took them until the fourth printing to include a character sheet and an index.  The lack of trading rules and guidelines, given that wheeling and dealing formed the plot of damn near every episode of the show, was downright negligent. There were four times as many pages devoted to full-page full-color still photos of the Serenity crew (eight) than there were to space combat – more space was devoted to how to arm and armor your ship than in what to do with it.  The prices on the same were also ridiculous, and the authors' claim that they were based on real-world examples didn't survive ten minutes' worth of fact checking. So many pages were wasted on puffery and pretty production values, and I hated the space wasted on the Aces & Eights ship and crew: one of the fundamental elements of the 'Verse is scarcity. If all you want is generic space adventure with rich crews on ships dripping with weapons, sheesh, Traveller's been doing that for thirty years.

Universal was a bitchier license holder than most, and the authors were under some constraints, but they had no business releasing a product so deficient in gaming basics.  It took me and my group all of 15 minutes to pitch it and use GURPS instead to play Firefly.

Based entirely on your description, I suspect that non-gamers looking for one of those movie-atlas book thingies were more of a target audience than gamers looking for a ttrpg.

Quote from: Old One Eye;836714Based entirely on your description, I suspect that non-gamers looking for one of those movie-atlas book thingies were more of a target audience than gamers looking for a ttrpg.

Thats too often the case with licensed RPGs that pay so much for the license that its only the idea that drawing in fans of the IP rather than relying on the rpg hobby that makes the game potentially financially viable. This leads to emphasizing the sourcebook/fan mag aspect of the project over the game itself in a lot of instances.

Quote from: TristramEvans;836717Thats too often the case with licensed RPGs that pay so much for the license that its only the idea that drawing in fans of the IP rather than relying on the rpg hobby that makes the game potentially financially viable. This leads to emphasizing the sourcebook/fan mag aspect of the project over the game itself in a lot of instances.

Say what you will of Palladium. But one thing they excelled at was intigrating the series sourcebook aspects with the game aspects for the TMNT and Macross/Robotech stuff.

Quote from: Omega;836721Say what you will of Palladium. But one thing they excelled at was intigrating the series sourcebook aspects with the game aspects for the TMNT and Macross/Robotech stuff.

Yeah, tho in those cases it helped they picked things that didn't have hugely popular IPs (their TMNT game predated the cartoon/action figure explosion).

Quote from: TristramEvans;836723Yeah, tho in those cases it helped they picked things that didn't have hugely popular IPs (their TMNT game predated the cartoon/action figure explosion).

Robotech was a pretty hot deal to have snagged. In the US it was the most well known anime for a while and Macross has been going on and off in Japan ever since.

Chaosium...I will never buy another product from them ever. I specifically mean their online store; I will be happy to purchase new products from Amazon or the FLGS, but their store? Fuck that. Zero customer service, had to contact AMEX to get a refund after literally a month of non-response. No thanks, Jeff.

Maybe it'll be better now that the original crew is back, but someone else can be the goat on the pyre...

Quote from: Omega;836580Except that if you do not speak up about bad business practices then those bad business practices will likely continue or get worse. And businesses are accountable for their actions and can be brought to task for it.

But yeah sure. Lets no one talk about how so-n-so company robbed customers or treated customers or workers like dirt. Its THEIR business and they can run it how they want. Who are we to tell them not to grind up a worker in a machine for an hour? Nope. Not us. Its THEIR business and they can run it how they want.

Speaking up is what gives "voting with your wallet" any chance to have any bite, and even then it's generally not enough. Some game companies do dissolve from awful management, but some don't.

Of course, when there are good games coming from crummy companies, that creates a dilemma.

With games, hopefully the creative people gravitate to the better companies. The evil companies try hard to sell themselves as the best option, though (sometimes before turning around and betraying said creative people...).

Quote from: Skarg;836790Speaking up is what gives "voting with your wallet" any chance to have any bite, and even then it's generally not enough. Some game companies do dissolve from awful management, but some don't.

Here's the thing, most companies do not care who says what on what forum.  What they do care is how much money that comes in.  And as long as people pay for a product, then you're telling them that it's OK to keep on trucking.

QLI and Evil Hat are two companies I have sworn off in the past due entirely to non-existent and/or belligerent customer support.

These days, I am having more fun with Kickstarter projects and free stuff than store shelf stuff, so I can't say that I even register the various company drama anymore. If somebody makes something I like, I will give them cash.

As for Palladium and Kevin, here's my deal. I've met Kevin a few times and I really like the guy, we resonate for whatever reason, but then I read about the latest Crisis Du Jour and I am WTF? and I can't cheer on bad decisions (like what got revealed in the latest 17 page apology over the Robotech Kickstarter), but I personally have to respect the guy (not asking you to respect him, just me) because (a) he keeps on kicking 30 years later and (b) whenever I read through his RPG stuff, I get jazzed and inspired, even if I don't plan to use it RAW.

I don't get jazzed or inspired by most RPG stuff I read. Kevin's got some whacky voodoo and I like it!

Quote from: TristramEvans;836678One would be hard pressed to find a significant historical figure who wasn't a bastard in some way. Ghandi was a wife beater. Martin Luther King cheated on his. Winston Churchill was a racist, sexist pig. JFK was a massive tool. CSLewis was one of the worste "born again" Christian apologists on the planet. Charles Dickens was a massive dick to his wife. Lovecraft buttered his toast on the wrong side. Most of the Founding Fathers were slavers, and in some cases, rapists. Abraham Lincoln didnt actually give that much of a crap about the slaves.

So...men were/are sexist pigs, and in the past slavery was condoned. While much of this is true, it's sad that the contemporary focus on these things separates us from virtually all great human achievements. There is barely a great artist, scientist, leader or anyone else in the history books that your teenage daughter won't wrinkle up her nose at as a sexist homophobe.

And I don't believe that she and her enlightened peers are necessarily leading us into a better future. While saying the right things about the evils of sexism, etc, we remain passive consumers, and the nasty wife-beaters will generally still make all the running, as long as they hide it better. Because their nasty side is linked to the drive to achieve that makes them rule nations and invent iPhones.

Something is off with this aspect of contemporary culture. We're like a newly Christianised Roman empire that can barely bring itself to acknowledge the achievements of the past, because they were all pagans. And we know better now.

But this is all another discussion.

Evil Hat beyond a doubt.  They threaten DriveThruRPG to take down a product they didn't like.  Which while I am at it DriveThruRPG is shit for caving in to that threat.

Quote from: Snowman0147;836957Evil Hat beyond a doubt.  They threaten DriveThruRPG to take down a product they didn't like.  Which while I am at it DriveThruRPG is shit for caving in to that threat.

Uh? What product was that?

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;837074Uh? What product was that?

Some guy tried making a card game making fun of pro vs anti gamer gaters. It was seen as "problematic" by Evil Hat and so drivethrurpg pulled it.